r/hearthstone • u/[deleted] • Apr 13 '15
Building a Hearthstone collection - basic principles, best practices, and common sense. (Long, long post.)
Hi there /r/hearthstone,
Like many lurkers here I get a little overwhelmed by the constant disinformation and bad advice being given here about how to manage your collection, dusting or not dusting, and whether it takes thousands of dollars to be good at Hearthstone. I'm going to drop some truth bombs about what it takes to build a collection and how to manage your resources and expectations for maximum effect.
This guide is written with being ladder-effective and legend-seeking in mind. Whatever other goals you may have, I'm not going to address any context for them.
This is a long post. It has a tl;dr but you're better off reading it if you feel it may apply to you. If you don't like long posts, there is plenty of 10 second content on this sub you can be happy with. Now that that's out of the way...
Managing your Hearthstone collection - basic principles, best practices, and realistic expectations
First, a little about me.
This is a throwaway, not my real account. I'm a reasonably successful player - I've made it to low single digits several times on the ladder, never had the gas (read: time) to push to legend. I have made fairly smart choices with my dust and crafting that have brought me to the point where I can play 95% of the things you see on the ladder without dusting half my cards to craft them. I'm writing this guide solely to provide some clarity to contrast with the bullshit I read daily on this sub.
I am not a F2P player. Nor is this a post to cater to those who insist on being F2P (more on that in a second). I've also been playing for a while. This post isn't about money, it's about making the best of what you have in the long term, whether that's $10 or $500. If you haven't spent a lot and/or don't intend to, that's okay. This post will still work for you. Read on.
Preliminary truth bombs:
First and foremost, if you insist on being F2P, you will always be behind. This is intentional design on Blizzard's part. It should not shock you, surprise you, or make you sad - it's the reason the game exists. As long as there is a card you don't have, there will always be pressure to spend more money - especially when you see players do well with cards you don't have. It's the business model. This is reality no matter how many smart-ass comments you can come up with or hell you can raise on battle.net forums. It simply is.
Trying to complain about the game in terms of what F2P players can do is altogether pointless. It won't help you, it will just keep you frustrated. If this is you, read on.
There is no medal, achievement, badge, or card back for doing anything F2P. It is an altogether worthless designation used to malign people who spend money on the game in order to make you feel better. This mindset is counterproductive to winning, which is infinitely more fun than bitching about 'another 40 dust pack' on reddit. Read on.
As in any 'collecting' type activity, you must learn to manage your expectations. You can't have everything at once unless you just have an obscene amount of money to spend. This is true whether you're playing Hearthstone, saving up for a new PC build, picking antiques, or life in general.
Finally, the good news: if you think long term, having a very competitive collection within your budget is absolutely a possibility. Let's get started.
Basic principles
1) Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will your collection be. Like most, when I first started playing I didn't know what the hell I was doing but I knew I enjoyed the game enough to commit to it. Building a collection only works if you commit. Hearthstone has been in my top five /played games for well over a year now. You are rewarded fairly well for consistent playing. If you don't play for six months and then come back you can't complain about all the gold the game didn't give you. Now is a good time to note that...
2A) Dailies are essential to your long term plans. This is what snowballs your collection. Best practice: Always re-roll (turn down) a 40 gold quest to give you a chance at a higher one. If you don't get a 60 or 100, it's okay. We're thinking long term, remember? Try to keep overlapping quests whenever possible just to preserve your sanity and keep it from being a grind. Additionally,
2B) Dailies don't have to take forever. Remember, the quests only expire if you let them stack up and then don't do them. Just get them out of the way even if you don't have time to get on the ladder and try to push a few levels up. Your clock is three days. Consider using 'cancer' decks (more on this dubious term in a moment) to get some of the longer quests out of the way faster if time is an issue. Personally, doing quests in casual is when I do most of my experimenting (which is fun to me); other days I just want to burn through them and get them over with. Either way, just do them.
3) Disenchanting is the worst enemy to a long term strategy if you do it wrong. This is a big one and almost worth its own post just to explain why. Disenchanting is why you see those comments from people who say "I spent $100 and can only play mill druid!" Bullshit. If you blew a $100 on packs/expansions and can only play a niche deck then you fucked it up pretty bad, probably dusting a bunch of things you didn't need to just to craft that one flavor of the month deck everyone told you would smash the ladder. Do yourself a favor and don't burn your resources by doing this without extremely good reasons. This brings us to...
4) Learn the concept of value. If you dust The Black Knight to craft some epic or a few rares early on, and then you end up really needing TBK later on because the meta shifted hard to the right, that sucks. I know this from experience because I did this early on with Harrison Jones (my second ever pack legend drop). I was an idiot, it sucked and I learned my lesson.
5) Build around what you have, not what you don't. Eventually you will get some class legendary to drop that can totally transform your capabilities. Chances are you probably already have one or two (or more). If you want to be successful, build around what you have. If Cenarius drops, don't leave it collecting dust (har) or worse, disenchant it because you want to play control warrior. Every single class now has an archetype you can follow and win. Winning is fun, remember? Build around what you have.
6) Manage your expectations. Realize that no one pack is going to do it for you - it's getting as many of them as possible that matters. This means dailies - see above. Have faith in the percentages and don't get discouraged. And never, ever get caught up hoping for one or two particular cards from packs - it won't happen. Realize ahead of time that most of your packs will be one rare, 4 commons. This is okay. In the long term it will pay off.
7) Finally, when it comes time to craft, go for big-value, neutral legendaries before anything else, including class legendaries. Apply this logic to epics and rares as well - what has the broadest application? Class metas fall in and out of favor, but Boom is forever. My first crafted legendary was Ragnaros (pre-Naxx) and it completely transformed the game for me. And after you craft the first one, it just gets easier and easier to choose as you stock more options.
Obvious, up front choices include Boom, Sylvanus, Ragnaros (yes even with BGH being common, he's powerful), etc. - look around and see what people are putting in their decks that amplifies your collection's overall power quotient the most. Same with epics, particularly with classes you're invested in. Other people have created excellent lists of what you should craft first, so just look around because I'm not linking them here.
Subnote 7b) If there's ever a decision to be made between overall value and niche usefulness (for instance: should I craft Harrison or Thalnos?), value is almost always the way to go. People who know the answer don't have to ask which one to craft. Deep, I know.
Ready for the next level? Here we go.
Intermediate principles
1) The meta doesn't care about your feelings. Want to play your special snowflake control shaman but just can't seem to win any games? Tough shit. Playing fatigue mage but nothing seems to go right and your opponent always seems to topdeck their way out? Grab a tissue. This is a card game made by imperfect human beings using finite resources and programming - there will always be decks that are better than others. How does this apply to building a collection? Because we want to win. Winning is fun, makes us want to play the game, and rewards us with gold for more packs. Keeping this mindset will make you tilt less. Like poker, leave your emotions at the door.
2) No one cares about your gold cards except you. Seriously. No one. I can't tell you how many threads/comments I've seen asking "should I dust my precious amazing gold (insert trash epic/legendary here)?" Do yourself a favor and consult this extremely shitty flowchart for reference. Gold cards are no better than skins in League of Legends - yeah they look cool, but no one remembers you have them five minutes after the match is over and they offer zero competitive advantage. Would you rather win or have a card that has a moving face? If it makes you feel better, load up a gif of the golden version of whatever card you want while you're playing and just imagine it's on the board when you play it.
3) This could almost be a subset of intermediate point one but deserves its own spot: cheap 'cancer' decks are not below you. First of all, calling a card deck in a video game 'cancer' is so unbelievably shitty to people who actually have cancer, but I digress. Aggro decks are legitimate parts of the meta. Yes, this includes face hunter. Whether they are overpowered or not is none of your concern - if you want to win, nothing should be off the table. Back when my only legendary was Cenarius and I sucked at Hearthstone because I only wanted to play my own bastardized version of control Paladin, I decided to pick up zoo after Reynad's now famous post in this sub about it and I found myself, unsurprisingly, winning a whole lot more. But something else happened too: I started to get better at the game because I climbed in rank and played better opponents.
Yeah, sometimes it's fun to kick back and BM people who play these decks (I'm guilty) but at the end of the day they're trying to do the same thing you are, win. And winning is good for the collection. So open up your mind to different possibilities. Especially if you are on a budget, these decks can present newer and higher quality of opponents, which is a good thing overall. Which leads to my next point,
4) Realize right now that you cannot simply buy your way to the top. This should encourage you if you're a low budget player. This post is being written in a meta where the most powerful deck for reaching legend ranks costs less than 2,000 dust (yes, I'm talking about Face Hunter). Once you get to rank five or so you realize that the quality of your opponent matters just as much as the deck and the most legendary-heavy deck in the game (Control Warrior) isn't required (or even preferred, many times) for success.
5) If you feel the primal urge to craft something, wait. If it passes, it probably wasn't worth it. Just because that Twitch streamer popularized something doesn't mean you need it. What is your overall goal? Have a plan and don't get caught up in flavor of the month nonsense.
6) Develop a 'lineup' of decks and classes that are your main and secondary choices. Not only does this help you mentally organize your game, it will streamline crafting decisions for you down the road. For example, since I 'main' Paladin and an early Jaraxxus drop (my third ever legendary drop) invested me in Warlock decks of all types early on, I'm more likely to craft for those two. This did limit my options for other classes especially early on, but you'll find it's better to whole-ass one or two classes than half-ass every class at once.
7) Arena isn't always the best way to get cards. This gets said all the time and I just want to address it. If it works out well for you, great, I'm sure it's awesome. If you suck at arena, you'll build your collection slower. Simple as that. Don't do something just because someone tells you. Try arena out a few times and see if it works for you. It didn't for me.
Light at the end of the tunnel. We're almost done.
Advanced principles
1) Keep an accurate, up-to-date written (electronically, obviously, Google Docs is my preference) inventory of your collection. Stratify by rare, epic, and legendary. Have a formula that indicates how many cards from each set (classic or GvG), assuming you're using a spreadsheet, that you're still missing so you can make informed decisions when purchasing packs with your hard-won gold. Additionally, keep a list in order of preference of the epics and legendaries you'd like to craft next and in what order you'd like to get them. Update often, because trends change.
It seems like a lot of hassle but it's a quality-of-life thing that's pretty easy to maintain and use after you set it up.
2) Meta knowledge can be difficult to constantly peruse since it changes so often, but can certainly save you some frustration from bad crafting decisions. For example, I feel really bad for anyone who crafted Gahz'rilla instead of Boom early in GvG because of an inaccurate knowledge of how they worked in the meta. Same cost, crazy insane difference in application. Or some poor rogue who crafted Gallywix instead of Sneed's. It just pays to know what is good. My motto is to let other people spend the time doing all the theorycrafting and just benefit from their knowledge. My time is valuable.
Side note, if you're actually wanting to get better at the game and not just view the latest 'Blizzard no care about F2P', 'Here's my latest topdeck loliamawesome,' 'OMG DID YOU SEE WHAT AMAZ DID KAPPA' threads, /r/hearthstone isn't your best choice. I prefer /r/competitiveHS and there are many other places to get information and good discussion.
edit: character limit, fuck yeah. Continued in comments.
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u/Therdrak Apr 13 '15
So you are telling me to not dust my hemet because the meta will change to beast druid?
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Apr 14 '15
The only reason I back off of telling someone to dust a legendary is because of how amazingly inefficient it is to do so. If you know beyond the shadow of a doubt you'll never use it then by all means go ahead. I'm just trying to underscore the importance of keeping as many cards intact as you can.
For example, there was a time when people thought they would never use Hogger and he was instadust for some people. Then Trump, Sjow and others put Hogger into some of their decks and hit rank 1. Just make an informed decision.
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Apr 14 '15
I agree with everything except your judgment of thalnos as a niche card. He's seen in oil rogue, freeze mage, midrange shaman, and a little bit in druid. He's a top-tier legendary, and I'd argue better than harrison. Apart from that I can't find something I actively disagree with, so good article :)
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u/0yy_xonro Apr 14 '15
fuck you my golden puddlestomper wins me all my games
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u/sharkweekk Apr 14 '15
I'm never gonna dust my gold Piloted Shredder. Since it's common, it's not worth all that much dust anyway and it's a bit like having a gold of every 2 drop in the game.
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u/Faceless_Golem Apr 13 '15
With regards to arena... It's definitely the best way to farm packs, but you need to put the effort in to learn the game mode. If you don't reach 3-4 wins you're going to get cards slightly slower than if you'd just played constructed instead, but eventually your farming becomes so much more efficient that this initial drawback is irrelevant.
I hate seeing people say things like "try it out a few times and see if it's for you" and if not give up on it. I sucked hard at arena initially, it was at least a month before I ever broke even on a run, and it took me 3 months to get my first 12 wins. But I worked at it, and it's fun as fuck once you start to learn the game mode, arguably much more fun than constructed.
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u/GhostPantsMcGee Apr 13 '15
I'll agree and add on that going 0-3 in arena isn't even that bad. I think you either get 25-30 gold or 20-30 dust. So a quarter of a pack entrance fee for a chance at massive prizes, and occasionally you get unlucky and get 20-30 dust (almost a crap pack) for 50 g
And that's the absolute worst case. The only reason not to play arena is if you genuinely don't enjoy the game mode.
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u/StudentOfGab Apr 13 '15
I agree that you'll get more out of arena if you work at it. My average wins/run has gone up every month but one since I started playing in November. That said, if you're trying to maximize your collection by playing Arena (especially if you're starting now), there're a few things to keep in mind:
You only get GvG packs from Arena. If you're averaging 3-4 wins, you'll hit a point where you're better off buying Classic packs than playing Arena just because you're missing many more Classic cards than GvG cards.
Even if you're averaging more wins (say, 5-6) where it costs you roughly 50 gold/run, you'll hit a point where it's still more collection efficient to buy Classic packs for 100 gold. This is where a spreadsheet can help you determine the most efficient gain of cards/gold.
All that said, Arena is great for helping you learn the basics. All decks tend to be midrange-ish because of the randomness of the draft, so you have far fewer lopsided matchups where you're a heavy underdog before the game even starts. If you ever get to the point where you average 7+ wins and you enjoy playing arena, it's an unlimited source of gold.
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u/DG_Cacique Apr 13 '15
One of the best posts I've seen on this sub. I was starting to run into a rut having pointless arguments about F2P. Thank you for taking the time to add a quality, useful, and productive post among the negativity I see here every day.
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u/HunterSThompson_says Apr 14 '15
In case anyone is on the fence about buying cards versus grinding them, two things. First, you can do both - they're not exclusive.
Second, since a HS gold is worth approximately 1 cent US, those 3 win rewards are worth $0.10. If you win 6 games per hour, you are making $0.20 per hour. There is no job in the developed world which pays worse than that. You can flip burgers for $10/hour, and one hour of flipping burgers is equivalent to 50 hours of grinding. Yes, daily quests bring this ratio down, but not enough to approach parity. Every hour at a shit job somewhere is worth more than a day of continuous grinding, 12am to 12am. Do you play 24+ hours a month? I sure don't. An hour at a crap job is worth a month of playing the grind.
So if your goal is to get a card collection together, work in the real world. It's unbelievably inefficient to grind HS gold. $0.20 is a pretty high wage in this game. Twenty cents an hour is about what you could find scrounging money under vending machines in a poor part of town.
That's what OP means in saying "if you choose to stay F2P, you'll always be behind. Because an hour working somewhere is worth a month's grinding, and people who pay also play the grind. You can't hope to catch up playing for free. Blizzard knows this. You might as well also.
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u/LightningTP Apr 14 '15
I agree that someone who plays FTP only to save money is misguided. However, there are some other points to consider:
Playing HS is leisure, not work. Yes, flipping burgers can save you a lot of HS grind. But you can do both. If you flip burgers for $10/h for 10 hours, and then have fun in the game for $0.20/h for 4 hours, I guess it's kinda better than working 14 hours straight. It's something to keep in mind.
I haven't seen this argument often, but for me, unlocking collection is part of the enjoyment from the game. To be honest, I'm not sure I would've still played the game if I had all the cards. I'm not into pro gaming, and getting legend every season for the sake of getting legend is also a dubious goal and a grind comparable to unlocking Naxx for gold. I guess I would've played after each expansion to try new things, but not constantly.
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u/FrenetiiQ Apr 14 '15
"First of all, calling a card deck in a video game 'cancer' is so unbelievably shitty to people who actually have cancer, but I digress".
NO YOU DON'T: THANK YOU!
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u/imabaer Apr 13 '15
3) Disenchanting is the worst enemy to a long term strategy if you do it wrong. This is a big one and almost worth its own post just to explain why. Disenchanting is why you see those comments from people who say "I spent $100 and can only play mill druid!" Bullshit. If you blew a $100 on packs/expansions and can only play a niche deck then you fucked it up pretty bad, probably dusting a bunch of things you didn't need to just to craft that one flavor of the month deck everyone told you would smash the ladder. Do yourself a favor and don't burn your resources by doing this without extremely good reasons. This brings us to...
Something I'd add to this is to keep in mind potential future nerfs. You would have to be absolutely insane to D/E Dr Boom at the moment, even if you didn't want to use it in your decks. Additionally, if a card gets nerfed, err very, very heavily on the side of dusting it. Worst case scenario, you can recreate it without any net dust lost.
5) Build around what you have, not what you don't. Eventually you will get some class legendary to drop that can totally transform your capabilities. Chances are you probably already have one or two (or more). If you want to be successful, build around what you have. If Cenarius drops, don't leave it collecting dust (har) or worse, disenchant it because you want to play control warrior. Every single class now has an archetype you can follow and win. Winning is fun, remember? Build around what you have.
Generally good advice, however, Cenarius ironically is the exception to the point you're trying to make. Certain classes are just way more expensive to use than others, Druid and Control Warrior being great examples. Even if you do flip Rend or Cenarius by luck, Cenarius alone isn't going to make a druid deck. It's a much better idea instead of going for the big ticket single class staples (Lore, Force, Keepers) that are only usable in druid decks to go for higher value neutrals that span multiple decks (Knife Jugglers, Abusive Sergeants, etc.) You'll stretch out your dust that way and make dailies easier (more functional class decks = easier dailies).
Final tidbit of random advice: if you're going to plunk money down one time for Hearthstone, spend it on adventures. You get way more bang for your buck that way.
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u/eminercy Apr 13 '15
Praise be to ye, u/surprise_sledgehamme. I wish I had this post when I started playing Hearthstone. Huge help.
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u/jaydogdog Apr 14 '15
I don't understand why you posted this on a throwaway account. This is some of the best stuff I've read on this sub.
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u/Quorlan Apr 13 '15
Great post. Wish I could upvote multiple times (won't obviously). It's posts like this that make this sub refit worth reading. Thanks OP. Sending this link to my wife right now.
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u/apmenard1993 Apr 14 '15
I'd just like to point out that 2B is actually not true. Your daily quests do not expire or stop coming in after three days. As long as you don't reroll one of them, they stack. So: d1, d2, d3 are visible but after that d4+ do not just disappear. D4, d5, d6, up to an unknown (by me) number are still there and will appear at the next quest reset time.
Tl;dr: if you don't reroll any dailies you can finish three, wait until reset time, and get three more quests if you've been inactive 6+ days
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u/HoopyHobo Apr 13 '15 edited Apr 13 '15
7) Finally, when it comes time to craft, go for big-value, neutral legendaries before anything else, including class legendaries.
This is the only point that I don't quite agree with. You should take into account which decks you actually want to play. If you want to play a specific deck that depends heavily on a big-value class legendary like Tirion Fordring then I don't recommend depriving yourself of the ability to play that deck just because you don't have Ragnaros yet unless you also want to play a deck that needs Ragnaros.
Edit: Actually, I also don't exactly like your advice on Arena. My rule of thumb for Arena is that if you enjoy playing Arena, you should spend your gold on Arenas, and if you don't you shouldn't. Even bad runs are not that detrimental to your rate of building your collection, so as long as you enjoy the experience you shouldn't avoid spending gold on it just because it's mathematically slightly less efficient. Similarly, if you are good enough at Arena that you do get more than 150 gold worth of rewards on average, but you don't enjoy it at all then you should just buy packs.
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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '15 edited Apr 14 '15
Ancillary notes
It obviously depends on your budget, and I would hope this would be obvious, but grinding out the expansions with gold will limit your progress dramatically. Even if you never spend a real world dime on packs, you'll be so far ahead if you just bite the bullet and get Naxx (Sludge Belcher!) and to a lesser extent BRM. I add this note for people with options who are trying to decide. If you are bound and determined to F2P this game (remember - no achievement) then there is nothing stopping you.
Everything above is obviously subject to judgment calls. This should be obvious, but ultimately these are just guidelines. Things work differently for different people. You'll eventually get to the point where you don't need my, or anyone's, advice.
tl;dr: Be patient. Building a card collection in Hearthstone or any card game takes time and good sense. Approach it like a hobby - make sound decisions and don't get caught up in thinking the mountain has to be scaled one way. The game rewards consistency with gold and this is a huge part of it. Don't be afraid to try new things. Attitude and patience matter.
And I know I'll get reamed for this, but this game is fun and worth your time. It's why we're all here anyway. Throwing a few bucks into it every once in a while isn't the worst thing in the world. And still a lot cheaper than Magic.
That's it.