Upcoming Arena Changes, Cards Being Removed from Arena Drafts
Blizzard just posted a blog post about their thoughts on Arena and some big changes that are coming in an upcoming patch! 45 Class cards will no longer show up in your arena drafts.
You can read the entire blog post below:
Quote from BlizzardThere’s been a lot of internal and public discussion regarding the state of Arena recently. Today, I’d like to share what the Hearthstone team’s goals are for Arena and shed some additional light on where our overall focus is for the future.
Hearthstone has four major game modes right now: Constructed, Arena, Solo Adventures, and Tavern Brawl. One goal we have for Arena is that we want it to feel meaningfully different from any other way you might play Hearthstone. I think we’re hitting that goal now, but it’s important for us to keep that in mind when thinking about future changes. Variety among all game modes is important to us, but an equally important goal is to have a wide range of experiences within each game mode.
This is an area where we feel Arena has some room for improvement. When you first enter Arena and are offered the choice of three different classes, our goal is that you can look at those choices and choose any class without feeling disadvantaged because of their difference in power level.
Most of the feedback we’ve received on Arena is centered around class balance. For the last few content releases, Mage and Rogue have bounced back and forth as the top two most played and most powerful classes. Paladin has been in a tier by itself below Mage and Rogue, while the last five classes have done some shifting around in a tier below these three.
So what are some ways we can address Arena balance? Tools that we have available immediately involve removing cards from Arena completely—C'Thun-synergy cards and Purify are examples of this. We’d like to avoid removing strong spells and weapons from the Arena, because they add to a lot of the unpredictability and excitement surrounding the possibilities outside the current board state. We’d also like to avoid removing iconic cards, since they are generally versatile and familiar tools to veteran and new Arena players alike. Additionally, we can remove lower-performing cards in order to make room for a class’ more commonly utilized cards to show up more often in your Arena draft.
With those things in mind, we will be removing the following cards from the Arena draft in an upcoming patch:
Mage
Rogue
Paladin
- No changes
Shaman
Warlock
Druid
Warrior
Hunter
Priest
We're looking to develop additional solutions to balance Arena as well, such as the ability to adjust the rate that individual cards show up in your draft depending on a designer input value. If we pursue that route, there is still the matter of deciding on the best way to go about using that tool to achieve balance for each of the nine classes and still have Arena feel fun and different each run.
Drafting by card rarity is another discussion that we’ve been hearing a lot. If it’s a matter of balance, we’re fairly confident the ability to adjust the “weights” of cards available can solve that.
We think Arena is a fun environment that could use some overall balance tuning. We hope the above changes will help to address that, and we will be monitoring the Arena closely to see the impact of these changes. We also need your feedback to help us ensure that the Arena remains enjoyable for years to come, so let us know your thoughts!
Coghammer , Shielded Minibot still in arena. Thank you Blizzard and Uther.
It's good that they try at least... but this feels like a parent giving a crying child what it wants without thinking about the consequences. I think this will make future changes harder to make and balancing even more complex.
I thought the way to go was changing the rarities but I guess they were too lazy to fix that.
Sorry for being negative, just expressing my thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I love Hearthstone... and that's why I'm very skeptic about this way of thinking from the devs.
Honestly I just wanna say its extremely sad to see weak cards with no synergy in any mode just removed, why not buff these cards slightly instead? why not?
They would rather make mistakes and release fixes to the card as other cards and make us foot the bill. So many cards could see play of their stats were just flipped or they were tweaked, but that doesn't make Blizzard money.
It's even worse now that Team 5 is following the World of Warcraft formula where each expansion will be just good enough to buy, but never great. If they design too many good cards they take them out and save them for the next expansion and give us filler.
By taking a break, you mean...
A simple solution would be to change de rarity of cards in arena only. It would be a bit hard to understand for new players, but they would quickly adapt. It would not create a mess with the dust spent to craft cards since the change would only apply to arena and it would balance the entire thing without removing cards, which is, in my opinion, the most desperate solution. It just does not sounds right to do so.
i am normally the first one to complain about dumb blizzard choices and i will always be pissed at blizzard for how they treat their hearthstone community as dumb. Seriously people, this is a good change and everyone should be happy about this temporary fix. this makes more classes playable. i will for one be playing more warrior after this, class was already close to pally tier, now i think it might actually be the same as pally in tier level. shaman is going to be insane too. im excited and to anyone that thinks this is a bad idea im pretty sure you dont play enough arena.
Axe Flinger is a good but underrated card.
#MAKEAXEFLINGERGREATAGAIN
I don't get why Mind Blast and Axe Flinger got shafted but this is at least a good temporary solution until they ideally rework the entire drafting system to allow for more strategy (how about getting 20 "Arena packs", essentially Wild packs without C'Thun synergy cards, and then picking two cards from each pack, then remove ten cards?).
Very disappointed with this decision. Once again, Blizzard decides to avoid the main issue with Arena balance by throwing dust into our eyes. Allow me to explain.
The whole concept of Arena should be drafting the best possible deck out of ALL the cards in the game. There are several variables that go into creating a good Arena deck and that includes RNG, card quality, synergy, combos, etc. It's part of the game, and whether we like it or not, bad drafts will occur more often then not. That how you distinguish a good from a not-so-good player. This being said, how often a good or a bad card is offered to you has to do with a simple feature called Card Rarity. And that's what's affecting class balance ultimately.
Upon every new expansion or adventure, the developers have a pretty good idea (which is to say "they know") which cards will be popular in constructed. Wanna know how I know this? They design the cards themselves! Shhhh, don't tell anybody!
A certain rarity will be attributed to each card according to an estimate sales revenue generated by real money purchases. Simple example: If you release 10 new cards and all of them are common, that would translate into an X amount of packs purchased in order for the players to own them all, either by opening the packs or by crafting. However, if all the cards were rare, it would take them X + Y. And so on.
There you have it boys. Card rarity was a feature implemented mainly as a control mechanism to guarantee cash influx. Oops, I wasn't suppose to say it. But there you have it. They'll try to blow smoke up our asses and tell us it has something to do with the complexity, the text or the flavor, but we all know it's not.
And with all this being said, I'll invite you to list all the forms of removal for Mage in the basic/common slot. It's OK, I'll do it for you: Arcane Missiles, Arcane Explosion, Flamecannon, Frostbolt, Forgotten Torch, Cone of Cold, Fireball, Polymorph, Dragon's Breathe, Flame Lance, Firelands Portal and Flamestrike. That's 12. Even if you want to remove Arcane Missiles due to it's RNG element, you still have 11 direct damage or hard removal spells, some of the with freeze effect. IN THE BASIC/COMMON SLOT. Lets not even waste time bothering with rare and epic cards.
In addition to this, lets take a look at the quality of basic/common class specific Mage minions, shall we? Mana Wyrm, Snowchugger, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Spellslinger, Twilight Flamecaller, Dalaran Aspirant, Water Elemental, Ethereal Conjurer and Faceless Summoner. With the exception of Dalaran Aspirant and maybe Spellslinger (again, due to the RNG effect), you have 7 minions that you'll pretty much always pick if given the choice to draft in Arena.
With the latest announced changes, you're removing one spell and two minions, all of them in the common slot. Which is still way further ahead of any other class.
So as you can see, despite Blizzard "noble" attempt to try to convince us otherwise, they don't give a damn about Arena. Money is the bottom line. Fixing it would be the simplest of tasks: change the freaking rarity of some of the cards and control how often pretty much EVERY card shows up in Aarena. That goes not only for Mage but for all the classes. Wanna know how to fix Priest? Let's give them Lightbomb as a common! Oh wait... Lightbomb is epic... which would mean people would not buy as many packs to get X amount of dust to craft it. And that hurts the button line... Money.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them from trying to make a profit. They have to and I'll gladly pay for quality entertainment. However, the truth about Hearthstone is that the quality of the game, the user experience and the entertainment value are being sacrificed in order to achieve bigger profits. And that I don't nor will I ever condone. That's why I haven't made a real money purchase in Hearthstone for a very long time.
It's a sad truth, but one we'll have to live with. As long as people are purchasing packs, it's worth generating some hatred among fanboys who, let's be honest, will never quit playing the game.
You forgot arcane blast too lol
Nvm basic /common go on lol
i think you are missing the point of removing some of the worst cards in the game from classes that are rarely played. without doing this those classes will always be the way they are and not worth picking over pally/rogue/mage/warrior.
on a side note, removing bouncing blade is dumb, card was actually decent for removal against a single target which i have had happen on many occasions.
I'm struggling to see how this is relevant. Is this a problem? Not really. They have to make money or we'll get nothing. It's fine.
no one cares if they want to get money. does someone complane about useless heroskins? no? bc they dont matter at all.
the problem with hearthstone is: its free to play, therefore you could balance the game but with every nerf they lose money bc you can dust for full value.
there are two ways to control this mess: 1. you could create a hardcounter to the previous best card but this will create ether powercreep or limit design space. 2. the other way is to "ban" cards in some playmodes. they are still there and maybe a problem (sludge with n'zoth, dr 7, chrismas tree...) but you can just ignore it, "it's just wild or arena". and that is where we are...
what blizzard has to do is: rework the classic set (replace unplayed cards with ether new ones or old good ones *coughhealbotcoughcough*), fix the rarities for arena and stop making cards like shredder, murloc knight or faceless common.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I like arena but always get my butt kicked...maybe some balance will help with that...or I just suck haha.
Not Bolster I had a great run with 2 Bolsters a lot of Taunts and twoProtect the King
I still think they could tinker with the rarities in the adventures at least. I am looking at you Firelands Portal
Just gonna put this here
https://twitter.com/bdbrode/status/773944388145717248
"working on a more elegant system but we felt like it was going to take too long and we needed to make faster changes"
Basically, they are working on a better solution but they wanted to change things now and that is why this is happening.
We're not at all impressed.
They are professionals. We are patrons.
It's like watching a government funded Zimbawe space program, where they're trying to launch a man into space with high explosives and the modified remains of an F16.
You wonder how the hell they managed to get in the position to make these kinds of decisions, and got approval.
SURE -- everyone watching, and it's a spectacular sight. But...
Everyone with a minimum of experience in any relevant field could tell them that there was a problem from the very start, YEARS before the moment thefuse doesn't light, and they try to ignite the explosive fuse manually, with a lighter.
Don't get how this is going to balance heroes...