Why am I losing?

[Guest Mike]

For hearthstone wether luck or skill is needed see why: I used to loose a lot, but now i got the top notch cards and i win, win, win ... - This game is garbage.

I agree. I am losing because I don't have the cards to win. As long as I only have the basic cards (and I am not willing to pay real money to get better ones) I will lose lose lose. I could be the greatest hearthstone player in the world but it wouldn't matter if I am goin up against someone with Dr. Boom.

[positiv2 952]

Actually luck is absolutely the most important factor.

 

To address 70% win rate in arenas imagine that half of players reached max skill (yea, HS is very primitive game ) and other half makes mistakes. Now because luck evens out in long run  and skill is even upper half has 50% win rate versus each other. And upper half versus lower half has 90% win rate (due to skill difference). Since you get paired against upper and lower half same amount of time your total win rate is 70%.

 

To address top rankings of pro players: sorry to disappoint you, but this has nothing to do with skill as well. As you move through the rankings you encounter people making mistakes less and less (who would have thought ) and when you start reaching pro player category you encounter people making mistakes lets say 4 out of 100 cases. That means to gain 8 points you need to play 100 games and normal people (even equally skilled as pros) simply doesnt have time to play hundreds of games.

 

To conclude: Skill cap is really low and many people reached it. If you are among these the luck is the only deciding factor, if not i thank you for maintaining others 70% win rate just please dont get better or there indeed will be 50% win rate and we can all stop playing.

 

 But if you are the one making misplays, you play badly and lose. Therefore if you make no mistakes you win everytime. So, you are contradicting yourself.

For hearthstone wether luck or skill is needed see why: I used to loose a lot, but now i got the top notch cards and i win, win, win ... - This game is garbage.

I agree. I am losing because I don't have the cards to win. As long as I only have the basic cards (and I am not willing to pay real money to get better ones) I will lose lose lose. I could be the greatest hearthstone player in the world but it wouldn't matter if I am goin up against someone with Dr. Boom.

It's not all about the budget. I have reached rank 10 with a basic deck and reached rank 8 or 7 (can't remember right now) with a deck that had about 400 dust in it. Of course, budget is important, but definitely not as important as skill.

[Guest Panda]

To Positiv: ahh logic and implications of this world educated in social sciences... :). Playing badly and loosing doesnt tell you anything about winning when playing well.

[Guest worst player of all]

As a noob nw player besides RNG there 2 more this which can determinate your ejoyment of the game. If you have a "chess" mind, like you can combine your cards foreseeing the possible events in the next 3 or more rounds. The other aspect is how detemined are you to play the game, like just playing in every couple of days to pass time, do serious researches, experiements before actual gameplay. Maybe i am wrong, but i think 10% is the time in HS that is actual gameplay, most of the time you are reading gudes, forums, analysing gameplays, spend many-many hours putting togeather decks. As a beginner the biggest issue for me is do I have the determination to spend this awful lot of time into the game, will it make any sense at the end?

[Sottle 221]

Actually luck is absolutely the most important factor.

 

To address 70% win rate in arenas imagine that half of players reached max skill (yea, HS is very primitive game ) and other half makes mistakes. Now because luck evens out in long run  and skill is even upper half has 50% win rate versus each other. And upper half versus lower half has 90% win rate (due to skill difference). Since you get paired against upper and lower half same amount of time your total win rate is 70%.

 

To address top rankings of pro players: sorry to disappoint you, but this has nothing to do with skill as well. As you move through the rankings you encounter people making mistakes less and less (who would have thought ) and when you start reaching pro player category you encounter people making mistakes lets say 4 out of 100 cases. That means to gain 8 points you need to play 100 games and normal people (even equally skilled as pros) simply doesnt have time to play hundreds of games.

 

To conclude: Skill cap is really low and many people reached it. If you are among these the luck is the only deciding factor, if not i thank you for maintaining others 70% win rate just please dont get better or there indeed will be 50% win rate and we can all stop playing.

 

 

The skill cap has not been reached, you're drastically under-estimating how many mistakes are made at top level play. If you go to a tournament and sit in the viewing area towards the end of the day, players who have been knocked out are all sat around analysing the games. At Dreamhack Winter for example, which was a huge 200 man Swiss with basically every top player in Europe, on the last day there were 40-50 great players, myself included sat around analysing the top 16. Multiple mistakes were spotted by at least one person every game.

Problem is these mistakes are not the obvious things that the average player can see are mistakes, they're mistakes where an alternative play was better against the average expected range of options your opponent can have at any time. These are the small things that stack up over time and increase your winrate, because the more often you make the best play on average, the more often you get rewarded for it.

No one is playing perfectly yet, no one.

[AleXx 0]

On ‎25‎/‎07‎/‎2014 at 3:01 PM, URjustSOL said:

My points (short and sweet):

 

1. Luck is more important than the author admits, but maybe less so than most new players believe.

 

2. Not everyone is a good card player, no matter how many hours you sink into it. Those rare few who have card skills and have sunk thousands of hours into HS have a win ratio of 75%.

 

Work hard, study the classes and the cards, pay attention to what cards beat you and how they played them. Once you get a decent card pool you'll be ready for the big chair.

 

couldn't agree more, luck has an importante role in the game, but in the end skill is what mathers the most: the first season i played aggro shaman i ended up rank 8, last season i achieved rank 3, i'm sure i had the same amount of luck in that two seasons, so what happened? Maybe i just evolved my game strategy and my decisions.

i usually see some of my friends playing and i notice a lot of bad decisions that tend to make them lose the game. It wasn't bad luck, just bad decisions...

 

Still, when you need your crackle to do at least 4 damage to make you win the game and it does 3, that wasn't a missplay, that was just a shitty lack of luck. when you are at a topdeck war with your opponent and his topdecks are a lot better than yours, that ain't a bad decision.

but sayind that luck has a very small role in the game, in my oppinion that's completely wrong, although a very good player tends to mitigate the rng factor by playing really good

 

ps: sorry about my english

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Just me]

The tenure of most opposing the content is "Luck is more important, cuz when you have equal skill, the outcome can only depend on luck."

Ehm, yeah, if you disallow anything but luck in your 'analysis', guess what you'll find.

As someone replied after being accused of being 'just lucky': "Yeah, it's funny, though, that I get luckier the more I practice"

 

[Kobal 13]

On ‎09‎.‎03‎.‎2016 at 5:22 PM, Sottle said:

Problem is these mistakes are not the obvious things that the average player can see are mistakes, they're mistakes where an alternative play was better against the average expected range of options your opponent can have at any time. These are the small things that stack up over time and increase your winrate, because the more often you make the best play on average, the more often you get rewarded for it.

This then poses a big problem for the average player out there (myself included) trying to improve. How are you supposed to work on your mistakes when you aren't even able to realize which mistakes you made? There was more than one lost match where afterwards I had that gut feeling that I must have misplayed somewhere, but could not pinpoint where exactly. 

[Keizoku 185]

2 hours ago, Kobal said:

This then poses a big problem for the average player out there (myself included) trying to improve. How are you supposed to work on your mistakes when you aren't even able to realize which mistakes you made? There was more than one lost match where afterwards I had that gut feeling that I must have misplayed somewhere, but could not pinpoint where exactly. 

If you really want to go all the way with this: Record your games and go over them again. Analyse your losses wondering what you could have done better. Don't hesitate to ask others to spectate your games or go over your replays and point out what they see/would do differently/...

Then do the same for your victories. By the same token that you'll lose some despite doing the best with what you had available (really poor opening hand/mulligan/draw do happen), you'll win some despite making mistakes that could have been avoided (your opponent missed or just couldn't capitalize upon them).

[Guest ravells]

I've been playing Hearthstone for about a year now, and I think Vlad's article is spot on the money - it was one of the keystones to my improvement in the game - thanks Vlad for taking the time to write it.

When watching streams of legendary players and their turn by turn analysis of why they are playing what when, a great deal of decision making revolves around them accurately predicting (most of the time) within a turn or two what the general make-up of the opponent's deck will be and playing around that. Also, calculating odds on card draws a turn or two ahead when making the current play.

As much as people might say 'this is a very luck based game', that can't be true because if it was, the same players wouldn't keep hitting legendary and players like me, struggle to get to level 10.

Thanks again Vlad for a great article!

ravells

[positiv2 952]

3 hours ago, Guest ravells said:

As much as people might say 'this is a very luck based game', that can't be true because if it was, the same players wouldn't keep hitting legendary and players like me, struggle to get to level 10.

Using ranks as a measure of skill is not wise. You can grind your way to rank 5 with a winrate lower than 50%, and a simulation showed that you can even reach legend with about 45% winrate. Then, there are players that have like 60% winrate, yet they can't reach legend because of insufficient amount of free time. Then, of course, if you play anti-meta deck, then even as an skilled player you will have problems reaching high ranks - you can't reach legend with basic priest deck.

[Vlad 411]

On August 9, 2016 at 5:40 PM, Guest ravells said:

I've been playing Hearthstone for about a year now, and I think Vlad's article is spot on the money - it was one of the keystones to my improvement in the game - thanks Vlad for taking the time to write it.

When watching streams of legendary players and their turn by turn analysis of why they are playing what when, a great deal of decision making revolves around them accurately predicting (most of the time) within a turn or two what the general make-up of the opponent's deck will be and playing around that. Also, calculating odds on card draws a turn or two ahead when making the current play.

As much as people might say 'this is a very luck based game', that can't be true because if it was, the same players wouldn't keep hitting legendary and players like me, struggle to get to level 10.

Thanks again Vlad for a great article!

ravells

Thank you for your post. It's nice to see my original points got across to at least some of the readers (this is guide is well up there as one of the most contentious I've ever written). I'm glad you found it helpful.

Also, as I may have mentioned before, regardless of how much of a factor luck is/isn't, there's another very good reason to discard it from your thinking/strategizing when you're looking to improve as a player: you can't affect or change the luck you or other players have, and you should instead focus on the aspects of gameplay that you can change.

[Kokuendan 10]

1 hour ago, Vlad said:

Also, as I may have mentioned before, regardless of how much of a factor luck is/isn't, there's another very good reason to discard it from your thinking/strategizing when you're looking to improve as a player: you can't affect or change the luck you or other players have, and you should instead focus on the aspects of gameplay that you can change.

I feel the need to clarify something about the argument: Hearthstone is a game where you need to entrust yourself to luck sometimes, but I believe that there are ways to manipulate your luck at least (manipulating opponent's luck is much more situational and harder).

First part may sound strange, but the starting point is deckbuilding. Choosing whether to include something like Yogg-Saron in your deck is already showing how much you're comfortable with letting luck affect your games (and I strongly believe that whoever has Yogg-Saron as a win condition cannot complain about any luck he brings you).

Then board state is important. It may sound obvious, but throwing a Madder Bomber when you have 5 Tentacles on board is like picking a fight with the RNG. That's an extreme example but it's a way to show that often, even if you do need to rely on luck, there are ways to maximize your chances to get a favourable outcome and that's where usually where you sort the good players from the normal ones. There will be times where RNG will screw you over even if you make the best plays, but in a game where to get the top spots the biggest resource required is time it will make a difference in the end.

Lastly, there are situations where you can affect your opponent's luck too but those are much rarer and harder to pull off, it's stuff like summoning 2 smaller minions instead of a big one to avoid a Ragnaros hitting face but even small things like that may save you one day.

I believe the guide is a great help to newer players and a necessary starting point, so I really thank the author for the great work, I just felt the need to discern on to what kind of luck can be affected and what kind cannot because usually when people start thinking that luck is a mystic factor dispenser of wins and losses completely outside their control that is the moment they stop improving and blame everything besides themselves.

[positiv2 952]

@KokuendanSadly, current meta forces players to play RNG reliant decks, such as tempo mage. My most recent match with it, which actually caused me to rage-quit and take another break from HS included Arcane Missiles with +1 spellpower and Flamewaker on my side, and opponent's damaged 5/1, that actually survived. However, I still managed to somehow get into late-game, where I was forced to play Spellslinger that gave me Shatter, and my opponent got Bloodlust to be one off lethal, and he topdecked burn spell after I regained board control. My opponent played (traded and used resources) like trash, but he still won because of RNG. This was off-topic, but I just had to let off some steam. Now back to your post:

Yogg-Saron, Hope's End isn't usually used as a win condition, but as a last resort when you are about to lose, when you want to gain board position where you hope he doesn't die, and when you need cards. Playing him as a win condition is too risky and will not work. 

I think you have seen a few games where I played really bad and I won anyway thanks to RNG and vice-versa. HS needs a lot less of RNG, but Blizzard does the exact opposite, for example the portals from Karazhan. That's why I'm slowly switching to Runescape Chronicles as my primary card game.

[Guest Joanna]

First of all: Thanks, Vlad, for an excellent article. There is a lot of useful information in what you write.

I would like to add some comments, however. I have played the game for some weeks now and although I still consider myself a beginner, I am not new to card games in general. So far I have played with the basic cards, basically with the setups that are recommended on this site, but with some minor twists. I am fairly successful against the innkeepers in expert mode. So far so good. 

So let's go ranked. That's where frustration starts. I still chalk up a decent win rate against basic packs (70-75%), but these are getting rare above level 20 (why am I pitted against one level higher half of the time anyway? And never lower?). So my win rate plummets to a frustrating 30% or so. 

Why am I losing? The simple answer is that the opponents have access to better cards. Yes, I can still win against players with C'Thuns or other legendary card. Occasionally. But when my opponent plays a 4/4 taunt in the second round, there is not much I can do if I don't happen to have a Frostbolt or similar in my hand. I am behind, I stay behind and I lose. 

I admit that I have not reached the skill cap. Skill in HS is both knowing the cards and spells you may encounter (and there are quite a lot), knowing how to adapt your play against different heroes and how to make best use of the cards in your hand.

In my  opinion, luck plays a considerable role for players with basic cards. Firstly, you need a good opening hand to counter your opponent's initial dangerous cards, secondly you are often forced to play aggressively early on to have a chance to win which leaves fewer options, and thirdly you need opponents which either lack "hit-you-in-the-face-cards" or have lesser skills. At least occasionally. 

What I am getting at is that reaching a win rate of 70% requires experience, but also better cards and opponents with poorer cards. Yes, I know, there are people who have reached level 10 with a basic card set, but most other people will probably never be able to do this. What I can do is either spend money on card decks (out of the question for me) or spend an awful lot of time in the Arena in order to acquire decks with good cards. I don't have an awful lot of time to spend so my last option is to accept losing a lot or quit. 

My point is that I lack an Arena where basic card players can play against other basic card players. Losing there means that there is room for skill improvements or occasionally sheer bad luck. And not having a poor card deck. Imagine playing Bridge and your opponent says: "I have just crafted a card. I call it "Lady in Waiting" and it makes all your kings impotent and all my Queens superior to everything!"...

[Valks 2,375]

6 hours ago, Guest Joanna said:

Why am I losing? The simple answer is that the opponents have access to better cards.

This can cause a huge amount of losses. People often have built decks in the past, don't play that much and stay at a low rank. They then log in, have a game or two and have much better decks than the people around them.

Introducing Standard/Wild attempted to stop this happening, at least too much. It phases out older card collections to allow newer players more of a chance. It is still a problem, but nowhere near what it could be in Wild.

It's understandable, not everyone is good enough to win with a basic deck vs. a Tier 1 meta deck, but until you can build slightly stronger decks, you just need to keep trying and seeing what you can do. It's tough, but it will get better, I'm sure!

Playing arena can be a nice way to play without the pressure of needing cards.

[positiv2 952]

On 9. 9. 2016 at 9:51 PM, Blainie said:

Introducing Standard/Wild attempted to stop this happening, at least too much. It phases out older card collections to allow newer players more of a chance. It is still a problem, but nowhere near what it could be in Wild.

Sadly, they didn't realise that it won't help new players at all, since the wild cards will be just replaced by different cards that you still need to craft. You still need 30 cards to make a deck.

[Guest Joanna]

On 2016-09-09 at 9:51 PM, Blainie said:

It's understandable, not everyone is good enough to win with a basic deck vs. a Tier 1 meta deck, but until you can build slightly stronger decks, you just need to keep trying and seeing what you can do. It's tough, but it will get better, I'm sure!

Playing arena can be a nice way to play without the pressure of needing cards.

Yes, indeed, I certainly hope it will get better. It is utterly rewarding to win against a player with much better cards, but this happens far too seldom.

I don't mind losing. But I get frustrated when I don't even stand a chance after the second turn or so. It's like battling tanks with cavalry. 

I haven't played Arena yet, I didn't want to waste coins before I had got a solid understanding of the mechanics of the game and know how to build a good deck. Although the first entrance is free, Arena costs 150 and it takes a lot of time to earn this in Ranked with my winning rate and the limited time I can spend on this. 

And no, spending real money on something that I do occasionally (a few times per day at most) is not an option.

[Valks 2,375]

54 minutes ago, Guest Joanna said:

Yes, indeed, I certainly hope it will get better. It is utterly rewarding to win against a player with much better cards, but this happens far too seldom.

I don't mind losing. But I get frustrated when I don't even stand a chance after the second turn or so. It's like battling tanks with cavalry. 

I haven't played Arena yet, I didn't want to waste coins before I had got a solid understanding of the mechanics of the game and know how to build a good deck. Although the first entrance is free, Arena costs 150 and it takes a lot of time to earn this in Ranked with my winning rate and the limited time I can spend on this. 

And no, spending real money on something that I do occasionally (a few times per day at most) is not an option.

That's understandable. If you're looking to expand your card-base, saving coins for packs is probably the best thing to do. We discussed this recently in another thread that you can check out.

[Guest Joanna]

On 2016-09-13 at 10:15 AM, Blainie said:

That's understandable. If you're looking to expand your card-base, saving coins for packs is probably the best thing to do. We discussed this recently in another thread that you can check out.

So I bought  a few packs. Got a few rare cards. Switched one or two basic cards for rare in my deck. Played five or six games.

Lost them all.

Every opponent had a deck filled with legendary cards. Maybe I made a few poor choices, but basically I had not many choices to make. 

No gold gained - no gold to buy new packs. No new packs - no chance to get better cards and upgrade my decks. So all I do for the time being is feeding players with great cards (not necessarily better skills!) to achieve higher ranks. I don't want to play a game out of altruistic reasons. I also want to have fun when playing. At the moment I haven't. I want to have a chance to win if I play well. I haven't. I can't see how I could improve my skills, I loose if I play poorly and I loose if I play my hand optimally. 

I have a decent win rate against the expert innkeepers, so I do not think I play poorly in general. But IMO the game is fairly unbalanced and puts beginners at a great disadvantage and I fear that losing a lot disencourages many new players. Maybe the idea is to create an incentive to buy packs for real money...

It's a shame, because it is a great game. Or better, it could be.

[Valks 2,375]

30 minutes ago, Guest Joanna said:

But IMO the game is fairly unbalanced and puts beginners at a great disadvantage and I fear that losing a lot disencourages many new players. Maybe the idea is to create an incentive to buy packs for real money...

This is kind of it, basically. Yes it is definitely possible to win with basic decks, yes it is possible to reach legend as a F2P player. Can everyone do it?

No.

It might be worth looking into the new "beginner's package" that's releasing very soon. It does cost real money, but the value you get for that money is amazing. 

Here's the news post concerning it: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/23173-blizzard-introduces-a-welcome-bundle-for-hearthstone/

As it stands right now, I'm not sure what I can do to help unfortunately :(

[Guest Jigsawn]

Thanks for this article, as a new player I'm struggling a bit now I'm up to rank 20 and this piece has helped me rethink where I might be goi g wrong. Its definitely a game where you only start improving once you learn the main cards that each class will probably pull put on you which takes time, so my advice is just pay attention to counters like Firestrike and Polymorph, what class uses them, have they played it yet this game and how much mana does it cost. I'm still learning them myself but its a start and already keeping that in mind is helping meme to be prepared for the worse.

[Valks 2,375]

20 hours ago, Guest Jigsawn said:

Thanks for this article, as a new player I'm struggling a bit now I'm up to rank 20 and this piece has helped me rethink where I might be goi g wrong. Its definitely a game where you only start improving once you learn the main cards that each class will probably pull put on you which takes time, so my advice is just pay attention to counters like Firestrike and Polymorph, what class uses them, have they played it yet this game and how much mana does it cost. I'm still learning them myself but its a start and already keeping that in mind is helping meme to be prepared for the worse.

I'm glad to hear it has helped you and good luck in your future games! I'm sure it will go well for you, just need practice! 

[Guest Eronaile]

Generally a nice guide but I notice you often employ statements that are quickly undone. You point out "always use this strategy" but then go "of course, this will often not work so you have to do something else or just accept it".

This is a typical issue in many guides that hints at the author being over-concernded with their reputation or whatever. They try to make every statement fail-safe but thereby actually make the statement simply 'nil'. It defeats itself because after every recommendation you make it overly clear that the player also has to watch out for X other outcomes that are more or less likely.

I advise to use 'often' less and 'sometimes' more. Be bold, if you truly believe in what you write, don't relativize everything, keep it to a minimum. If you're confident your reader has at least some basic knowledge, they will automatically insert this stuff 'in their heads' anyway.

Also, in a guide clearly aimed at new or unexperienced players, never EVER blame anything on the game itself ("this is simply Hearthstone") because it makes you look unprofessional. Whether or not some things are actually just plain HS is irrelevant in a newbie guide in my opinion. Point out the issue, point out possible solutions, but don't blame the game.

 

Hope my critique is comprehensible :)

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Guest Eronaile said:

 If you're confident your reader has at least some basic knowledge, they will automatically insert this stuff 'in their heads' anyway.
 

 

Beg to differ. But in my experience, that isn't true. (Sadly.)

You overestimate lots of people. Way too many take something like a guide to be like 100% exact. You have to point out, that everything you say is true for a lot of situations, but for quite a few you just have to do something different. If you don't say this loud it clear they stick too closely to the guide and later on whine because it didn't work perfectly.

Furthermore, I have the more academic approach. Just making a claim (which is true for let's say 90%) whithout adressing the few percentages where it doesn't apply feels totally wrong to me. I just have to adress the missing 10%, first to give the more educated readers more in depth knowledge and second just to have the feeling that my writing is correct and not flawed. (Like I said, that is my personality, I don't claim the author has the same feelings. But I think if you put lot's of effort in a guide you just want it to be as perfect as possible - and you don't achieve that by ignoring the examptions.)