Another night and another arena draft suckage. This time I was able to at least pick mage, but this time I recorded the shitty cards I was offered. Did the best I could. I had a couple of decent cards, but overall mostly junk. Ended up going 1/3 but only because I went up against a horrible cleric deck that had even worse cards than me. The other 3 decks clobbered me as my deck literally stood no chance against them. At least there was only one deck with a legendary I went against tonight and they had the black knight. Still the others were full of good epics, rares, normals, and good spells. Just complete domination against my shitty draft deck. Normally I don't even bother playing such a deck. Waste of time really.
Here is the youtube video of the draft tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCRzDhPB2Po&feature=youtu.be
I've provided a pick-by-pick critique of your draft.
1 - Good.
2 - Panther would have been better. Wolfrider is essentially just a 3 damage nuke for 3 mana, which is occasionally useful for some classes, but as a Mage it is massively outclassed by Frostbolt and Fireball.
3 - Good.
4 - Argus is good, but Emperor Cobra is probably the safer pick here. Argus can very rarely be played on curve (i.e. on turn 4), and in many games you will struggle to find a good spot to play him at all. His value rises greatly if you have a strong early/mid game deck already, or cards that greatly benefit from being taunted (giants, ogres, etc). It's somewhat of a toss up, since they can both provide great value.
5 - Good.
6 - Good.
7 - Bad bad bad. Ice lance is a terrible arena card, especially taking it this early before you even have a single spell that freezes anything. Sorcerer's Apprentice is a top tier 2-drop, and you don't have any 2-drop's so far either (I don't count Kobold, he really should be used as a combo card whenever possible since he will trade unfavorably with many other 2-drops and almost all 3-drops).
8 - Baaaaad. I love me some Yeti as much as the next guy, and there are very few cards I will take over it, but Flamestrike is one of them (the first one, at least).
9 - Good.
10 - This may be the worst decision you made up to this point. Sea Giant is an amazing arena card. Because arena is inherently minion heavy, boards are quite often filled up, and it is very easy to get that Sea Giant out for 6 or less mana, often times right on curve as well. Spellbender on the other hand, is one of the worst arena cards. There will be many games where it will never even trigger, and even when it does the effect is unreliable. Its less bad than Hungry Crab, but this pick was a no brainer for Sea Giant, all day every day.
11 - Good.
12 - Argent Squire can be decent for some classes, but as a Mage you have no buffs or other synergies to take advantage of. It's not the worst card, but once again you are staring at a premium 2-drop in the Ooze, while you have no real 2-drops in your deck, and you pass on it. Ooze is valuable simply for its 3/2 stats against non-weapon classes, but Paladin and Rogue are very common arena classes and Ooze can be a game changer in those matchups.
13 - Good.
14 - Good.
15 - Another wolf rider, and again you take an inferior card over a solid 2-drop with still none in your deck. This is an alarming pattern. I would also have taken a second mana wyrm over a second wolfrider, but you really should have taken the Brewmaster here.
16 - This is a bit ticky-tacky, but you generally want to take a plain 3/2 (Raptor) over a plain 2/3 (Crocolisk). Its more likely to trade favorably, and is slightly less useless if you draw it late in a match.
17 - Good.
18 - Good.
19 - Mana Wraith is a tricky card to get value out of, and your deck to this point looks more likely to be harmed by it than benefitted. You have very few low cost minions, which means if you play Mana Wraith on turn 2, you are almost definitely going to be unable to play anything the following turn, and very possibly not until turn 4. Wailing Soul is nothing special, but it has solid stats for a 4-drop, and the silence from the battlecry is usually a lot less difficult to play around than it might initially seem.
20 - Molten Giant is a very bad arena card, especially for a class with no weapons and no heals. It gets a bit of a bump in value due to you already having an Argus in the deck, but thats 1 Giant and 1 Argus, which will very rarely be in your hand together at the right time. You have no synergy with Echoing Ooze, but you are now 2/3 of the way through your draft and still have only 1 true 2-drop. The Ooze can be dropped on turn 2 with no issue, it provides 2/4 worth of stats, and even if all it does is trade into your opponents 2-drop, thats fine.
21 - Good.
22 - Good. You could have taken the Sunfury here as well to increase the odds that you can actually taunt up that Molten Giant in some games, but Knife Juggler is a top tier 2-drop and rarely a bad pick.
23 - Good.
24 - Good.
25 - Good.
26 - Good.
27 - I would have taken the Scarlet Crusader here. Its a premium 3-drop, and you are very lacking in good early game minions. Duplicate can occasionally be amazing, but more often than not it ends up sitting dead in your hand for a long time, and then costs too much tempo when you do play it.
28 - Good.
29 - Ice Lance is bad. You have only 1 reliable way to freeze your opponent, and ideally you are using that Frostbolt to kill off an early minion rather than to combo it with Ice Lance late in the game. As a general rule, just stay far away from Ice Lance under all circumstances. You passed up an Acolyte of Pain for it as well, which makes this pick that much worse. Card draw is at a premium in arena, most of the time you will get very few chances to take any card draw at all. Your draft is essentially over at this point, and your only card draw mechanic is one Loot Hoarder and one Gnomish Inventor. This is a no brainer pick for the Acolyte.
30 - Good.
Overall, I have to agree that you were offered a pretty poor selection. No fireballs, no polymorphs, no arcane intellects. But you were also offered many great cards - 1 blizzard, 2 flamestrikes, 2 water elementals, 1 frostbolt, 1 sorc apprentice - some of which you didn't take. In addition, you were given quite a few good to great neutral cards, some of which you passed on as well.
You mucked it up pretty bad with your card picks though. The individual explanations are all above, but the end result is that you ended up with a deck that has an extremely low mana curve (you don't have a single 5 or 6 drop) and very limited card draw, basically ensuring that you will lose most matches on card advantage alone. The high number of simply inferior cards will ensure that you lose the rest.
I re-drafted using the card choices you were given, and this is the deck I ended up with:
http://www.hearthpwn.com/deckbuilde...1;523:1;542:1;576:1;589:1;604:1;614:1;7758:1;
You'll notice I didn't always make the choice I suggest in my comments above, which is because my comments are based on your deck, whereas some of my later picks are based on the deck I've drafted to that point. Of particular note is that I kept the Molten Giant, despite how bad it is. This is because by the time that pick came up, because I had picked up so many more 2-drops than you had up to that point, and seeing that the deck had almost no minions above 4 mana cost, the Molten Giant was now more valuable than the Echoing Ooze. Additionally, a few picks later, I opt to take a Frostwolf Warlord over another 2-drop (Faerie Dragon I think it was) - again, this is only the correct choice now because I picked up strong 2-drops earlier in the draft, and with so little late game in the deck, Frostwolf made more sense than another 2-drop.
This deck is stronger in all phases of the game. It has better early game minions (Apprentice, Raptor, Brewmaster, Ooze, Panther, extra Scarlet Crusader), it has more late game minions (Sea Giant, Frostwolf Warlord), it has more board clear (extra Flamestrike), it has more card draw (Acolyte of Pain), and it can more reliably combo the giants with taunters (2 giants and 2 taunters).
Will it get to 12 wins? Almost certainly not. But it should get to 5+ pretty easily.
Drafting properly is half the battle in arena, and it seems like you need quite a bit of help in that area. Bad luck happens, but even the worst drafts can produce a capable deck. I haven't drafted a 1-win (or worse) deck in weeks, and even on those rare occasions where I end with 0-2 wins, its usually a combination of a really bad deck AND really good opponents.