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 agree with them changing arena to standard. Arena as it is now is even more stale than constructed, because while you have access to more cards, the card pool is so diluted that ALL decks no matter what hero you draft have the exact same strategy: big bodies on curve, control board...thats it. synergies and card combos are almost non existent. whether youre a priest or a rogue your "dream cards" are always Chillwind Yeti into Pit Fighter into Boulderfist Ogre so on and so on.
Instead of standard they should have rotating sets available. So for example one month BRM , LOE , Naxx and classic cards are available, next month it changes again. I think this way it would keep arena fresh and still unique.
is standard not the rotating of sets?....
Standard arena would be terrible. Repetitive, unbalanced, and boring way too quickly. We already have increased occurrence for newest set.
Do you even play arena? There is absolutely 0 card consistency anymore. While mages used to be good, they sometimes no longer get any good spells (aka no frostbolt, firelands, fireball, flamestrike, blizzard, etc..) because the card pool is too large. Cutting it down to standard would still have a wide card pool. It would just have more focus than before.
Yes I play arena, which is why I can say your counterargument of standard arena is good because we can go back to autopicking Mage is ridiculous. Standard arena +20% spell selection = autopick Mage. Do you really want control Mage decks at high wins with 1 or 2 Flamestrike, 1 or 2 Frostbolts and a random Blizzard to be a permanent fixture in Arena? We just had years of that!
Standart in arena is awful.
For fucks sake just change the drafting method already, even if you increase the percent of spells given it will still be the same no brainer pick the best of the 3.
Also making arena standard is a step backwards IMO as it serves no other purpose than dumbing it down. It's not the size of the card pool what creates the deck disparity in power level but the drafting system itself.
Dont make arena standard or atleast amke to diffrent arenas. One for standard and one for wild.
why not just pick class then build deck from pool of expansion/set with addition restricted rule(one legendary allowed, 3 total secret. etc)
tbh am not fan of arena let alone ranked play too much randomness too much competing play, nvm to each to their own i guess
What about letting people going 2nd mulligan twice (4 cards and also double mulligan) ???
It will be too complicated for a player, especially a returning player; Further more the technology does not support it; It is under our rader, we are thinking about it.
Let's add to the list,
Brawl destroyed (looking at you flamewaker)
Fun in hearthstone destroyed
...
Wild mode was never good lmao
Just introduce "Sealed" for God sake
The issue is not all spells are created equal. If you increase a Mage's spell occurence by 20 %, you'll have fireballs, frostbolts and flamestrikes galore. Do the same for hunter or paladin and you will weep over the trash you are being offered, because these classes win more on minions than the quality of their spells. When is the last time a constructed Hunter was interested in playing anything other than some Quick Shots, Unleashes and Kill Commands?
Call of the Wild doesn't ring any bell ?