Hearthstone's Arena Team is Testing a 20% Increase in Spells During Drafting
Hearthstone's Dean Ayala was recently on reddit responding to a thread discussing arena win-rates being higher without the coin. Within this thread, he mentioned a few things we thought were worth bringing up.
- They are currently testing a 20% increase in the amount of spells you will see during drafts.
- Another test is changing the card pool over to Standard. It is "A good idea".
- We will hear more about the upcoming changes in the "nearish" future.
What sort of changes would you like to see to the Arena?
Quote from IksarHSMy Arena Experience (Source)
Winrate with Coin: 53.9%
Winrate without Coin: 71.21%My thinking (mostly a theory) is that this has to do with decks being so heavily minion based in arena. Traditionally, decks that are more reactionary tend to do better with the coin. Priest, Rogue, Etc. I imagine the reason for this is because they would rather wait and respond to what their opponent does instead of playing minions proactively. The coin does a good job helping those reactive decks respond at the right moment. So in a world where decks are more reactive and the minion to spell ratio is a bit closer together... maybe going 1st vs going 2nd win rate feels less imbalanced than it does now. There are a number of game-to-game quality changes coming for arena, this is one of them.
Have you ever thought about increasing spell occurences in arena picks? I think that would be more fun if the percentage of spells were a little higher.
Right now we're testing at about a 20% increase. We think having spells occur more often and the card pool being standard is a good idea, but the thing we fight a bit is that when you have a smaller card pool and increase the rate of any set of cards....those cards appear quite frequently. I'm fairly certain it's not a good idea for every Mage deck to have 4 Volcanic Potions or every Shaman deck to have 5 Jade Lightnings, but it might be a good idea to increase the rate at which you get spells or the most recent set. In any case, we have a number of changes in test now and hope to announce the final changes in the nearish future.
I'd rather say that you should rotate cards out of arena rather than making it standard. Like take powerful Portals out, powerful minions and I guess even powerful legendaries to make it somehow viable. But instead Blizz makes standard arena. I guess the decade of shaman still goes on
Changing Arena to Standard is very very very BAD idea!
Yesterday I played an arena match, I think the first one or the second, against a Palladin, which casted 4 Consecration spells!
It was hilarious really!
And he managed to lose eventually...
My best arena run was 11-3 and I lost my last game to a mage who had 3 flamestrikes in his deck. It was a fun game, the win was close, but after seeing third flamestrike I lost my interest in arena.
However the idea of adding more spells is good. Lets just expand it a little more with "no AoE's in this 20%" :)
Making Arena Standard wouldn't make it any more fun, and I don't see how it would close the going first/going second gap. The only thing that I could foresee happening is Mage becoming cancer again, with a drastically increased chance for Blizzard/Flamestrike/Firelands Portal.
In arena I pick mostly paladin, warlock and priest. According to my tracker the difference is 7 % in favor of going first.
Can someone please give tracker data about their rogue and mage runs? I'm curious about the difference in those 2 classes.
Yea, I agree. Going first has its advantages in those classes. Nevertheless if pala goes second it's quite good to coin Grimestreet Outfitter on t1 hopefully buffing 4 minions. I was wandering if the percentage goes lower for mage and rogue. Maybe I should give mage a try since I'm terrible with rogue ^^
Changing Arena to Standard is not a ''Good Idea'' in fact it's one of the worst things they could do, it kills the variance, unpredictability, and fun.
There are much better solutions that could add onto Arena instead of cutting down and taking away.
Having Epics and Rares appear more frequently would improve Arena better then cutting the card pool down.
Lowering the card pool just dumbs down Arena and this game is already at brain dead levels. It's nice to have a competitive scene that has all the cards available to be experienced. Arena is meant to be more complex than Standard.
another talk just to talk?
nice move nazizzard
MORE!!! Flamestrike!!! MORE!!! Fireball!!! MORE!!!
What's the point of standard arena?
"More spells" is a good idea but not all classes benefit from that equally. Add weapons to that blizzard, please.
But if they implement standard arena, no doubt the next step will be standard-only tavern brawl. Blizzard is messing it up, having old cards and a variety of formats makes the game better, not worse. They still haven't caught that idea.
Playing around cards is not something new players do. Increasing predictability helps players who are able to memorize all the relevant cards and have enough game sense to play around them, which are the veterans.
Making the card pool standard will for example increase the amounts of Flamestrikes we get (reverting the format back to being mage dominated most likely, not the point I'm trying to make here tho). New players are FAR more likely to play into a Flamestrike and lose the game because of it.
The current state of arena should actually be helpful for new players as you don't need to play around things you have memorized as much. Playing on curve is easy enough.
I'm not sure how a "cardpool like constructed" is bad for veteran players. I think you have your arguments backwards.
Nice, why not make mage even greater in arena?
Also, standard arena is a dick move. Maybe if made optional would possibly work, but if they try to enforce it, they'll be more hurt than benefited.
NOOOOOOOOO standard arena, for the love of god. What makes arena great is the unpredictability and random cards you have to find a way to utilize. More spells is a great idea however.
Standard arena is only an acceptable idea if - and only if - they add it as a format so that you can choose standard and wild arena.
For the most part, it is a bad idea. It is blizzard deleting wild cards from the collective mind, so that we don't even think about them anymore.
This is the last consequence of a bad focus on standard. Blizzard should enrich the game experience with wild supporting standard. Instead they want us to constantly open the wallet and buy cards that just disappear.
Not fair.
But mages already have the upperhand in arena. I don't want 20% more flamestrikes.
inb4 kripp's getting excited about this
more salt is good