Help needed for an adventurer at a crossroads

[ScottFoster 1]

Okay, so I've been playing for a couple of months now, and I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. But I'm afraid I'm stuck. I've finished the arachnid quarter in Naxramas, and have beaten the class challenges. I appear to have topped out, as I get absolutely crushed in Heroic mode, and have only reached level 17 in ranked play. I find myself hovering around 20-18 most of the time. I've DE'd cards that I never use and have crafted a few others. I have 80 dust to spare. I fear that the cards in my deck are insufficient to carry me any further. I am currently sitting on only 550 gold. Should I spend the gold on more cards and hope I get some that can improve my overall decks, or should I save up and attempt to go through the next quarter in Naxramas? I'm a dad of two kids so almost all of my disposable income goes to their welfare, meaning that spending actual cash on card packs is a rarity, so making the correct decisions in-game is crucial to me. I fear that no matter what decision I make I'll end up with buyers remorse.

Any kind of advice would be appreciated. I'll be more than happy to "give back" to future n00bs like myself once I start to get better.

[Aposter 0]

Personally in your situation, I would probably blow all the gold on GvG packs and make a mech deck.Either that or dust everything for my druid deck (I do that a lot).

 

But thats just me.

 

What do you like to play?  Youve managed to give surprisingly little information for that number of words :p

[Skurvy87 1]

As above, what kind of deck are you playing? Depending on the class and deck you are playing investing in some card packs could help you get into the next level of competition.

[ScottFoster 1]

I suppose I should have been a bit more informative. Lol. All of my class decks are in between levels 12-15 except my Mage deck which is at 25. My Mage deck is pretty good at crowd control, so I've been doing well at maintaining numbers on the board, but I've run into several players who simply are better than me and have the ability to overwhelm my deck. I have no legendary cards in my collection either. Just a bunch of frees, commons, rares and a few epics. Bad luck, I suppose, but it is what is. My boss plays as well and he's actually really good, but he told me to not bother spending gold on cards. Not sure that's the best advice, to be honest.

[Aposter 0]

A lot of people say that buying packs is a waste, and you should spend your gold on arena.  

 

A word of warning, this only works if you are good at arena :)

[ChaosKnightI 0]

What I would advise is to spam Arena. If you get 7+ wins you get all the gold you spent back and a pack.

As was said already, however, you need to be good at it, which is hard when you are new. Don't worry, though! I am more than willing to teach you. I average about 9 wins per run and have almost 2000 in total. Just add me on Battle.net at ChaosKnightI#2912 and I will help. :)

Hope to hear from you soon!

P.S. I play on EU. :)

[Modalko 10]

There's really no right or easy decision here, but I hope that the following information will help you anyway.

 

First of all, buying Naxx/BRM with in-game gold is very inefficient. You mention that you hardly ever are able to spend real money on the game but hardly ever may or may not be the same as 'never' in your case.  If you are considering spending real money, then I'd spend in on the adventures. The reason is that a full adventure costs 3500G, which equals 35 packs or almost $70. You get 54 cards if I counted correctly when you buy Naxx, but 35 packs would get you 175 cards. Plus the Naxx cards can not be disenchanted.

However, if you never intend to spend any real money on the game, then the second wing of Naxx isn't too bad. It contains Sludge Belcher and Loatheb which are really good cards, arguable the strongest wing of all Naxx, reward-wise. The 3rd wing is rather weak though, so I'd stop there for the time being.

Regarding buying BRM: it is generally regarded a bit weaker than Naxx, but it may have some benefits that are particularly suited for your situation, which is the internal synergy. Naxx has some powerful cards for different decks, but the dragon theme in BRM can help you build a decent Dragon-themed deck. So if you are considering buying a FULL expansion, then I'd suggest BRM. Buying single wings is less useful though, as the synergistic cards are spread across all wings.

 

Should you decide to go for packs, then there is a hard decision ahead again: personally I'd go for GvG. Again, there is more internal synergy in GvG than in Classic and the set is smaller, which gives you a somewhat decent chance of getting a decent Mech-deck quickly, like Aposter wrote. With Mage and Shaman especially you can make some competitive mech-decks, but with most other classes you can achieve decent results as well. But at the same time that plus could be a minus as apart from the mech-theme GvG doesn't offer that much so it will sort of restrict your options on the medium-long term.

 

Finally Arena: this is a completely different beast as your collection is not relevant at all. It all depends on your skill and the quality of the cards that you are offered. Arena will always reward you with one GvG pack, so if the GVG-route mentioned above appeals to you, then this may be a suitable alternative. The most important factor is whether or not you like the format. Some people do, some don't. If you like it, then I'd play arena instead of buying GvG packs directly. But be aware that it may be more expensive than buying GVG packs directly because you generally have to get 3 wins to break even on your admittance cost, which is not as easy as it sounds. Though if you are better, then it can be substantially cheaper too because if you average 4 or 5 wins then it will be cheaper than buying packs. Basically, if you enjoy the format enough that you are willing to take a small loss if you only get 1 or 2 wins, then I'd go Arena. If you however just want to boost your collection with GvG packs as fast and reliably as possible, and if it feels frustrating to you to lose money and waste time on a poor run, then simply buying them is the better option. Make sure to use the card-quality matrix on this site to help your with picks if you want to try Arena though!

 

Whatever you decide, remember that the goal is to have fun. Because whatever you do, you will probably again hit a wall somewhere, be it at rank 12, rank 5 or rank 1-2, so you will end up in the same situation whatever you do. Better make sure that you just enjoy the journey!

 

Hope this helps, and good luck on your decision!

[ScottFoster 1]

Wow, guys! Thanks for the feedback. I will definitely take all of your advices to heart. ChaosKnight I will be contacting you in the near future for some sparring/tutoring. Thanks to everyone for your advice. I'm still having a great time with the game because I'm still not overly concerned with winning/losing. The wins will come in due time, but for now I'll be happy to take my lumps and learn as I go. Winning is great, but losing gives me a chance to analyze what I did right or wrong, as well as learn how the opposition operates. Either way I come out ahead.

Cheers.

Edited June 8, 2015 by ScottFoster