If you don't know, Trump is an incredibly successful Hearthstone Arena player. So successful in fact, that he was the first professional Hearthstone player to be sponsored. You can go check out his stream at www.twitch.tv/trumpsc where he does an excellent job of teaching while he plays, talking viewers through his thought process.

Now I don't know if this is coming specifically from him or if someone else threw this together, but there is now a site called ArenaValue that gives you advice as you build an Arena deck. While it mostly regurgitates the rankings that Trump has assigned the different cards, most cards also include a small blurb from Trump explaining his valuation.

If you're having some trouble figuring out the Arena, or just want to build a deck on autopilot, it seems like a pretty handy tool.

I tried an ArenaValue run, went 7-3 with mage. I disagreed with 3 of the 30 picks, mostly for mana curve reasons.

Trump has also posted his rankings for Neutral and Rare and now Epic/Legendaries cards in Arena

But you should also just watch Trump play since A) it's informative and B) it's kinda adorable

@colorbrandon said:

OK, but they aren't really meant to be "picks" in the first place. It's just a rating he has assigned to each card. The site isn't smart enough to weight the rating up or down depending on external factors like your mana curve, minion/spell count, etc. Also, some of the card descriptions he wrote expressly say "this Enrage card is better in a Mage/Warrior deck", or "Gurubashi what's-his-face is obviously better in a Priest deck", but it's up to you to estimate how much better you think it is.

So they're guidelines, and you should be disagreeing with at least 3 of the picks for mana curve and other reasons.

I kinda prefer Kripp, he is just more talkative.

Also at this point I kinda prefer watching someone else play arena then actually playing it myself. I just get too invested in 1v1 online fights, had the same problem with SC2 multiplayer, I just find myself no longer relaxing (like i would want to with a game) and tensing up. Another problem is that arena is just so very reliant on luck and not just your strategy. But constructed holds no appeal to me at all, with cookie cutter builds and the slog to try and collect the cards you would want.

@mrmazz:

Trump is pretty good but nothing particularly amazing. Those neutral card rankings are all over the place and the rare ones could be better as well. There's also a very important need to distinguish between classes and scarcity that is largely absent from such rankings. Stranglethorn Tiger is worse than Bloodfen Raptor in what universe? Tiger is basically a Venture Co. that can't be removed by anything save Deadly Shot and MC Tech and doesn't have the debuff (whereas if a Venture Co gets Big Gamed or Frost Elemental'd you pretty much lose the game on that turn). Tiger is a 50/50 with Silver Hand, always; but depending on the class you're playing against it could be much better. There's also a very solid argument that Faerie Dragon is better than absolutely everything including Yeti, particularly in a Paladin deck, at the very least it is a top 5 card against every class that doesn't have weapons and still pretty damn good against those that do.

Arenavalue has an algorithm to weigh cards differently to account for mana curve. You can toggle the option on and off in the settings. Since the site started, the admin has made some changes to the background math. I haven't tested it since though.