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!
It is good that they start changing things, we just have to see how it works out.
Maybe this is not good enough changes to balance arena. But that something. And this is move in a right direction. Mage probably will still be the best class, but maybe the diference between classes will be not so huge like right now.
are these guys in blizz drunk or what? 90% of banned cards are crap anyway, wtf Brode
That's the idea, the classes that are bad lose bad cards so that the overall strength of thir draft increases since they have a better chance for good cards and a lower chance for bad ones.
Notice that the only classes losing really good cards are the ones which they stated have been on top forever.
I wonder how they came up with a list like this. Seems like some of the cards are ones which noone likes to pick in a draft.
hairdresser is removed in order to nerf rogue
Do not like this at all .
Why is mage getting her best cards removed while others get rid of horrible ones ?
Well, if you look at the article, you'll notice that rogue is getting knocked down a bit as well.
And that mage and rogue have been the top two classes pretty much forever, so that's why they're losing good cards, to reduce their power slightly, and why others are losing bad cards, to increases the average strength of their drafts slightly.
And they thought we'll remove Flamestrike
Ben Brode: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH
"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."
Even Blizzard recognizes that Priest doesn't exist in Arena.
Why is everyone complaining about flamestrike when the real issue is that there aren't enough flamestrikes to make arena at all interesting? Right now, it just seems like either you tempo your opponent out or you lose.
Imma just spell it out for you right now. THEY SAID ROGUE, MAGE, AND PALADIN WERE TIER 1/2 CLASSES. ONLY REMOVE 5 CARDS FROM THE 3 COLLECTIVELY. LIKE HELLO? BLIZZARD? poodlecorp i swear
But strong cards that'll slightly reduce their average strength and buff the average strength of others by removing super situational cards. Going and nuking a class isn't the way to weaken it, small steps are better.
unfortunally all i can think of these changes is asinine
they need to rethink those lists and not remove things over and including rare( coz they are balanced by their rarity )
calm down mr.thesaurus
joke's on you, english isnt my 1st language and i have a broader repertoire
So they are ok with shamans to draft two four mana 7/7s in arena? what a joke man...
They removed a lot of bad cards so your choices would be higher quality overall. It's a better approach to remove shitty cards from your selections than take away good cards.
Games against Mage shouldn't come down to if the Mage doesn't have a Flamestrike i win and if he/she does the Mage wins. It's bad for Arena play Flamestrike needs to go, i don't think anyone will miss it.