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!
No changes to Paladin was slightly shocking. Sure, they have high value cards, but they also have a ton of terrible cards, like pretty much every secret without synergy.
A question I have is what happens if I draft a mage deck today with Forgotten Torch, Snowchugger, and Faceless Summoner, and play the deck well after the patch when decks won't have those cards at all? I suppose that's the only real way to go about doing it, I just think it's interesting.
I'll definitely be playing more arena, specifically with classes I tend not to play much with, exclusively because of these changes. Arena definitely focuses on upfront values and little else, so these changes balance classes quite well, I think. It's nice to see Blizzard taking a little bit more action towards proactively shifting how a meta like Arena or Wild plays out. Hopefully this means they're also going to pay closer attention to the state of the meta in Standard and add cards to the game at appropriate times to help balance each class, similarly to what they've done here. Hearthstone is still relatively new for a card game, so I'm definitely happy to see them adjusting to the rockiness of a rapidly expanding card count quite gracefully.
Good changes! Balancing classes in this way should be fairly straightforward. Remove cards that are above average in terms of strength for overperforming classes, remove cards that are below average for underperforming classes.
Not the final solution, but a good stepping stone. Still feels like adjusting rarity is a more flexible way to do it, and more intuitive than adjusting individual card frequency in a hidden manner.
I think out of all the cards they thought were shitty for some of the classes, I'd like to mention Cobra Shot definitely didn't need to be removed. This card is actually encouraged to be picked at times since it offers reach for a class that really needs all the reach it can get. Is it overcosted? Sure, but it's not nearly as bad as some of these cards.
Nice try to improve arena balance.
I like it but let's see if this will be enough.
So, considering the love of priests here.
My curiousity is why Mind Blast and Inner Fire? Perhaps:
Mind Blast, sure it doesn't kill a minion and only goes face. But with the right help its akin to mages direct damage spells. Guess it was treading too close to Mages territory. Thus removed.
Inner Fire, The option for a potential beefy creature is not something a priest should have. Might hurt someones feelings to have a priest kill them with a combo by making a weaker set up useful. Thus removed.
As always nice to see blizzard taking a moment to show they read players feed back. The real fun now is to see if it was actually beneficial.
Sorry to disagree in all you stated. What the developers are doing is they are taking away many of the specific syngergetic cards from each class so you can have a more individually valuable card draft chance. That means if you dont run prophet velen priest you will never get proper value from mind blast, and if you dont have divine spirits yseras deathlords or whatever (plus rng) you can NEVER be willing to pick inner fire, meaning there is one less spot to choose between. Basically what they do is taking out the most specific synergetic cards, and also nerfing a little the mage. Besides Mindblast will never be a mage alike card, cos mage spells are 95% any character targetable, better than a 1 mana 2.5 times hunter hero power. That means mage can make u sweat without decent minions just playing spells while priest with mind blast...you gotta think before commenting man, new players might actually believe u are right :p
Mind Blast is obvious. It's simply a shitty card in Arena. One of the shittiest imaginable. Arena is all about tempo and board control. Mind Blast doesn't help Priests at all in this format. If you asked experienced players, they'll likely pick something bad like the 2/2 taunt over a mind blast (I sure would.)
Inner fire is a strange card to remove to be honest. I'm not sure if Blizzard thinks the card is too weak or too strong. This meta is filled with the 4 mana priest of the feast which benefits quite a bit from inner fire. The card pretty much becomes a blessing of might for the card
Should update the post. The Blizzard thread was updated to write "six classes" instead of "five". Although the Priest memes had its laughs.
I feel like some people aren't understanding these changes.
First and foremost, this is not a permanent solution, but it's something they can do now to let everyone know that they care about Arena balance and are working on it. The long term solution is in the works, whatever it may be.
Secondly, a lot of people are saying, 'Why not get rid of Flamestrike?', 'Why not Keeper of Uldaman?', 'Why not Flamewreathed Faceless?'. Several reasons - Flamestrike is explained that they don't want to remove 'iconic' cards, which I think is fair enough, they already hit Mage pretty hard (and yes, all the cards hit for Mage are big blows, Arena-wise).
The others can be explained that they are specifically trying to reach a level where any class can be picked and have an equal chance to do well. Paladin is clearly - and has been confirmed to be - the level they want all the classes to be at, so it remains as is, no changes needed. Shaman, meanwhile - assuming that the changes to the classes were listed in order of their performance in Arena - is apparently somewhere significantly below Paladin power level, so they removed some of their very weak cards, as well as some inconsistent ones. If Flamewreathed Faceless was removed, either more changes would have to happen to other classes to significantly weaken them (which is slippery slope and just ugh) or even more of its 'below average' cards would have to be removed, and gutting a class further than they already have sounds insane.
arena is real gimmick show by blizzard. Average arena win only around 3. due to stupid rng feast. Meet bad deck= win meet good deck= lost.
the arena cycle always end up > meet with op deck ie construct level deck in arena or 3 flame strike guy. =loses. bad draw=loses bad draft= loses. u can only win vs stupid guy, worst draft guy and unlucky guy
n't tell me xxx pro can get 12 win easily. 80% of they win is come from good draft and vs bad deck. Only 20% of win come from skill. ie: have better skill compare to stupid player when 2 player using average deck.
even kripp also keep loses when have bad draft and blame rng feast and say bad player just win because good draft deck.
Uh, how experienced you are is judged by your win rate. No pros claim they can get 12 wins easily, but they do have an average rate of 7+ wins per run. Considering the global average win rate for Hearthstone players is around 3, I'd hardly say any of your comment here is accurate.
global average win rate is 3 because is rng feast. every games just flip the coin, 50% vs 50%.
if u have good draft then will be 70% vs 30%. vs stupid player 60 vs 40 %. bad draft prepare to get 0-3, 1-3 result
sometime the stupid player just draft high cost minion card and skip first 7 turn but still win due to insane deck ie:3 flames strike , 3 icebolt etc.
most pro in stream always talk they are very goods, easy 12 win etc, blame opponent just stupid guy that carry by rng when loses.
i also no idea why every time , i watch pros stream they 80% of time have perfect curve and good draft . maybe some of them just misleading player that arena is very easy to get 12 min using delay stream. only streaming when get good draft .
Uhm... 3 wins avg per run is a 50% winrate. It's mathematically impossible for the global average winrate to be anything other than 50%.
This is basic stuff.
If arena is a show business, I gotta say Jaina had slept with the right guy(s).
While I approve the changes, I think that rarity swaps (making the removed mage/rogue cards epic) would have been far more elegant
And yes, Firelands Portal should also be an epic.
Epic might be stretching it. Rare is good enough in my eye.