Is this a thread for Hearthstone Noobs? I just downloaded the app, I've unlocked Arena Mode but not much else.
So I have a few questions, if anyone knows the answers.
1. What are some pros and cons about each class?
2. Why is it bad to amass a bunch of cheap costing minions?
3. Any general strategy tidbits would be appreciated.
On Arena or just in general? Assuming Arena:
1. Rogue - has lots of great tempo cards at common, has the most useful hero power, has strong board clear against weak minions, has answers to big minions, generally just a very strong class, but the problem is that you're going to take a lot of damage due to your hero power, so it can be tricky to play right.
2. Paladin - has tons and tons of cards that have enormous effects relative to their costs, mostly at $4. Typically you will get more value than your opponent out of your mid game cards, but at that point, you might already have fallen behind in tempo against, say, a Rogue, and then you don't get to play your Blessing of Kingses and Consecrations which might cost you the game. Your hero power is also pretty weak, as it doesn't do anything immediately.
3. Mage - Has good answers to everything, doesn't have many threatening cards of is own. You can be very versatile with a Mage, since you do actually have somewhat decent board clear even against bigger minions in Flamestrike, so you can sometimes build pretty slow decks that work out well, or you can build faster decks too. Mage doesn't actually have many
weaknesses to speak of, it's just not quite as good as Rogue.
4. Druid - Another class suitable for slower decks because it has a million Taunts and some good board clear. A lot of people seem to play Druids very aggressively on Arena, but in my experience that doesn't seem to work out too well very often. Also has some pretty good value cards just like Paladin, but they're not quite as strong, and instead they're more likely to actually do something instead of getting stuck into your hand.
5. Shaman - Has a lot of cards that allow you to finish the game very fast if you manage to get an advantage, but doesn't have a lot of cards that actually allow you to get that advantage. Shamans have lots of decent cards that are, like, on-par or very very slightly better than the top tier neutral commons at the respective price points, but the super good cards are rare or epic so you don't get those too often, with the exception of Fire Elemental which is a super good common. The hero power is horrible. In general, you're going to have a slightly harder time with a Shaman than with the other classes, but if things work out, they can work out really well.
6. Warlock - It has some pretty good commons, but overall, it's not amazing. The hero power can work out super well for you if you can handle the lost tempo, or if you can't, it's awful.
7. Priest - a pretty swingy class on Arena, and usually it doesn't work as well as you'd want. The pros are that it's apparently still better than Warrior, but usually you should avoid picking Priest if possible.
In Constructed, you shouldn't think so much about the pros and cons of each class, but rather, the pros and cons of each deck. A face Hunter has vastly different match ups than a midrange Hunter, for example.
It's not necessarily bad to amass a bunch of cheap minions. There's a limit to how much you can do it, though, because you can only draw one card per turn unless you have extra card draw, and once you've emptied out your opening hand, it doesn't matter if your minion costs 1 mana or 4 mana because either way you can play it and it's the only thing you can play. Except that the 4 mana minion probably does more stuff for you, so you'd rather have that. The other reason is that board clears exist and they can amplify that problem.
For general strategy tidbits, you should read the old Magic article called Who's The Beatdown because it's a classic and it 100% applies to Hearthstone. And do what Grujah suggested (I haven't seen the videos myself, but those concepts are things that you should learn about and why not learn them from Trump given that he has a video series explaining them).