Hearthpwn

Honestly I didn't  consider that people would even want to play more rounds as that kind of makes it hard to draft, I figured those people would just play more constructed. Sorry for not including that you are right that it is a little biased.  

That is pretty gross, I would hope they at least give us an option to retire sooner and get at least enough gold to do another draft if they don't ever end up giving an option for an arena with less rounds.  

What you are suggesting is basically if hearthstone arena draft gave you 31 picks (when you play only 30 cards you are replacing one card with another) just in a more complicated way.  When you say that 30 picks makes it so that if you get a bad draft you are not too far behind but I would say it actually has the opposite affect.  More picks gives you more chances to patch holes in your deck, you can think of it like picking 30 cards and then replacing 10 cards for ones that better suit your deck ( with the potential to swap them back again later).  This makes arena more skill intensive but also more forgiving to poor options or sketchy picks early on. 

You are certainly not wrong, nor am I, we just want opposite things out of arena and that is why I would like to see the format cater to both ends of the spectrum.  

Personally I love drafting more than actually playing but I don't assume that is the case for everyone else.  Even if only half the reason you are playing arena is for the actual draft portion the playing portion greatly outweighs it.  I would like to see a little more balance between the two so it caters to players who really enjoy drafting.  

Of the multiple card games I have drafted most have 3 rounds at most (assuming you don't split ), and more card picks then your decks minimum size.  Having more picks than deck size lets you make risky synergistic picks that make your deck memorable and fun where as having no extra selections you have to just pick the best card in each pack because you will have to play with that interesting/risky card even if the correct cards to combo with it do not come around.  It is almost always correct to just take the best card in the pack (curve considerations) because at the end of the draft you have to register it regardless of whether it fits your deck or not.

I don't think 40 picks and maybe even just 2 less rounds would be unreasonable (i would prefer less) .  You could keep the prize payout similar by just knocking everything back x cut rounds, like 7-0 becomes current 9-0 and 5-2 becomes current 7-2 etc. with some slight change if needed.

I would personally love if they just had a second kind of arena where it was a 3-4 round max and kept the entry fee the same and prize payout similar to the current marathon arena.   

tldr at least select an option from the poll, thank you!

warlock, but you need all the wraths and sweet rares

Playing a subpar card to disarm another subpar card does not seem like it would be very useful.  If it was something like acidic swamp ooze it could be pretty sweet where it just has good stats and a decent body attached, or a card that cycled and could kill a secret or something.  

Thanks for all the responses!

I am kind of disappointed that most of the responses against splashing are due to breaking the flavor of the game as it doesn't affect actual gameplay.  I would take more intersting gameplay and deck design over flavor any day but I think that puts me in the minority (for this game) which I find a little surprising.  You guys are probably right though, breaking flavor and making the game more complicated would likely only help deter newer players  and take away from the casual nature of the game.  That's why I asked, honestly had no idea how everyone else felt about the idea.   

MSW112 thank you for the reply and I forgot to mention that obviously as more expansions get released the more interesting deck building becomes. I am not 100% sure about what you mean by as the game grows splashing would create balancing trouble? Do you mean certain cards will just see more play regardless of class and obsolete others or that more cards will create the potential for degenerate combos?  Either problem could be easily solved by making too heavily splashed cards become class only. For your point 2 I just simply want more tools :). 

Just want to start off by saying I love hearthstone so far and have been playing a ton these past two weeks since I got my key.  Just like the title says I think that not being able to splash makes a lot of the decks feel way too similar.  Two different people playing the same class will often end up with a very very similar deck configuration  because of the limited amount of cards that they can play from their class.  Even different classes often look very similar because of the neutral staples they play because well, they have to fill out their deck somehow.  

I do not want this to come off as a rant because I honestly just want some general discussion on whether splashing would make the game better and more interesting or not.  Splashing would (potentially) more than double the amount of playable deck configurations in the game and lead to more brewing rather than oh these are the best cards in my class that I have access too, now I will just fill in the rest with the best possible neutral cards I have access to.  With splashing you would be able to find synergies that make unplayable cards playable and in general just open up the game to more variation and possibilities. 

There is a multitude of different ways the game could go about making splashing fair without just letting everyone play every card with no penalty as that would lead to even less playable decks than there already are .

1 You can play out of class cards in your deck but when you play them they cost 1-2 mana more, or even cards less than 5 cost 1 more, and more expensive cards cost 2 more.  There is a lot of different ways you could do this, I got the idea from the Game of Thrones lcg and it has been a very effective strategy to make more creative deck building.  That game also makes certain cards say x class only for cards that should not be played in other classes which could also be a possibility.  It would seem a little strange if your druid deck was splashing lord Jeraxxus so cards like that could become x class only.

2 You can play a limited amount of out of class cards in your deck.  If you are playing a warlock deck you could be allowed to splash 4 out of class cards or 6 or whatever ends up being the best fit.  I like this idea a little less then the first option but it also has its own rewards like making splashing feel less clunky.  

Let me know what you guys think because I could be totally wrong or on to something, thanks !  

Agree with OP, almost all of the secrets are too weak because of how easy they are to bait.  You can usually just play your worst creature or attack with your worst creature to bait.  I would love if we had the option to choose when to cast a secret as it would make them all so so much better but as others have said it wouldn't work in this game.  I wish there was a way that you could hide that you even played a secret but because of the mana being displayed i don't think that is possible.  They could change the game to show how much mana a player has on a turn like turn 8 my opponent has 8, and when they play a 5 drop and there hero power they obviously only have 1 left but it doesn't only show that they have 1 mana so they could play that 1 mana secret that bring a guy back with 1 life.  I think something like that would be possible and actually realistic compared to letting us choose when to cast our secrets (no matter how sweet that would actually be).