Most people are shit at draft. Here is an attempt to fix that a little.
Tips!
MOST CREATURES WITH TAUNT SUCK.
Goldshire footman, frostwolf Grunt, Shieldbearer, Mogu'shan warlord are all unplayable garbage. Fen Creeper, ironfur grizzly, Lord of the Arena and Booty Bay body guard are all mediocre but can be played if nothing else is there to pick. Sen'jin shieldmasta is one of the best cards in the game. Sunwalker and Abomination are alright.
This is probably the most important tip I can give. So many people pick these cards and I cannot understand why. In what universe is a 1/2 with taunt ever useful? Creatures in this game at worst have to trade for one of your opponents creatures and at best trade with more. 1/2 with Taunt does not do this. 1/7's do not do this. 3/5's generally do. The arguement that a Taunt guy is just buying you time until you play important cards is a bad one. Putting yourself down on cards deliberately is generally not a good strategy (unless ur Druid, innervate and Wild Growth are boss cards)
DON'T OVERRATE SPELL POWER.
Spell power is a neat effect but you can't ensure it's going to be relevant. Azure Drake is almost always playable though, even without spells.
TWILIGHT DRAKE IS PRETTY COOL
But don't be afraid to run out other cards before you play it. There's a lot of ways to deal with a Twilight Drake and you don't want to fall too behind on board if it gets quickly answered. Even a 5/5 Drake is reasonable.
MAGES ALWAYS HAVE FLAMESTRIKE.
Don't overcommit to the board! generally having 2 creatures out with them on none is where you want to be vs mage. Also not within Pyroblast range helps.
NOT VERY MANY PEOPLE PLAY AGGRO
Generally you can't play a real aggro deck, so it's fine to have more expensive spells then you'd normally like. This isnt' to say you don't want AoE spells or good taunt creatures, just that you generally don't have to worry about it as much.
MOST DECKS WIN THROUGH SOLID CURVE AND GOOD CARD EFFICIENCY.
This is probably the other most important tip. A solid curve is (approximately) 13 0-3 spells, 12 4-6 spells, 5 7+ spells. If your druid and you have + mana spells you can even go a little higher then that!
When picking cards, you generally want to pick first based on how good of a card it is and how it fits into your overall strategy, and secondly on curve. Don't pick Core Hounds or something just because "we need 7's! iaguz said so!". Generally a solid mix of good creatures, card draw, removal and AoE can easily 7-x a draft.
Sometimes it's very hard to evaluate cards properly. When I'm playing Druid I really like Ironbark protector but in constructed it's terrible. I also tend to snatch up a few Big Game Hunters if I can as there's generally very good targets for them. This is a really hard skill to grow since we generally have a lot of biases about what makes a card good or not. Just play a good few games, try to get a feel of how the game flows and also note which creatures you and your opponents use, what they're achieving and if it's above or below your expectation.
WEAPONS ARE AWESOME
Trading health for creatures is fine, especially since it's both mana and card efficient to do so.
ROGUES ****** OP
Rogue, Druid and shaman have been my groups top Arena heroes to draft. But I'm not sure if this really is correct.
DON'T DRAFT MURLOCS
raglglglgglglmrdmgfloaksdgfmlggl!
IF YOU LOSE, WAIT A MINUTE BEFORE HITTING PLAY AGAIN
To avoid hitting the same player twice. Unless you think you can take them this time!
Well, that oughta do it!
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Reluctant new users of this so called... Twitter- @ROOTiaguz
I'm going with Rogue, Mage and Huntards for drafting. Personal experience, my priest 6-3 felt like a fluke. I will add more to this later because I'm swamped at the moment.
The amount of cheap and cost efficient spells they have is generally what wins the games many a times. Any +9001 for your tip on curving. That is the single most important aspect for drafting. You don't want to be stuck doing nothing for the first 4-5 turns.
Never drafted Priest and don't really want to. same goes for hunter. Priests just look like they have weak spells. I'm a bit leery of hunters. They have some neat synergies and some very solid removal but it's easy to get disrupted trying to get them online. I also think that you end up taking shit cards simply because they are beasts and ideally you want cards just to be good on their own (like river crocalisk and bloodfen raptor and stonetusk boar are pretty mediocre but hunters play it because maybe it'll trigger hyena or buzzard)
They have some really solid removal spells and Savannah highmane is actually a good card but they really hurt for card draw. I think it might be possible to draft a sweet hunter deck simply by focusing on card efficiency above all else.
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Reluctant new users of this so called... Twitter- @ROOTiaguz
Hunters can be pretty good to draft with but you basically have to cross your fingers and pray for a lot of beasts. They're either a free 9 win deck or 4-5 wins at best.
I've done pretty damn well on arena just by drafting cards that are good. Try not to care too much about mana curve or anything like that, just pick the best of the 3 cards and hope you get some rng. Generally drafting cards for the sake of synergy later on is a terrible idea (i.e omg i got a murloc warleader as a choice, let me pick it up and hope for more murlocs).
agreed on never drafting for synergy, i've tried it a few times, but it hardly ever works in your favour.
i tried spellpower and beast before, didn't go too well. The only time it worked was for a mage secret deck. because i had a lot of secret spells with the Ethereal something soemthing. Gains +2/+2 when you have a secret at the end of your turn.
it's like trying to force a colour in mtg. pick the best cards and if there is synergy along the way, go for it, but don't FORCE it.
Best guide/discussion I've seen on the internets to date.
I've taken a Hunter 9-2 in arena but I believe a lot of it was luck cos i had abundant of removals. I never draft beasts with Hunter, did that once and regretted it forever. After taking the hunter to 9 wins (my second ever Arena run) I thought hunter was ezpz mode. Tried about 3 more times after that, realized that 9 run was pure luck.
Been hearing Warrior is ez mode for Arena on reddit/blizz forum. Never tried myself. Thoughts?
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