Update 9:55 PM EST: Added update regarding Golden Cards in the Arena! Woot!
Upcoming Changes to Hearthstone Arena - Standard Format, More Spells, & More
Changes are coming to Hearthstone's Arena Mode and things are being changed up quite a bit. Say goodbye to the Wild format as Arena takes on the Standard card pool, among other changes.
- Arena drafts will be using the Standard format.
- Common and Basic cards will show up less than before.
- We will see more spells in our drafts.
- Neutral Classic cards will show up less frequently.
- Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer specifically will show up 50% less.
- Golden cards will now appear in the Arena
- If you own 1 golden copy of a card, the first copy of the card you get in the Arena will be Golden.
- If you own 2 golden copies of a card, all copies of the card you get in the Arena will be golden.
- Owning a golden legendary makes every copy of that legendary in Arena golden.
Dean "Iksar" Ayala provided some additional information.
- 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks.
- The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate.
- Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer being 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type.
- Flamestrike's card type in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet.
- Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet.
- Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs.
- They want realistic synergies in to draft in the Arena.
- They want drafting the set that just came out a fun way to discover the cards.
- He does not consider these changes to be forever ones.
- Dean could see rotating different sets in and out of the pool at some point. (Not exactly Standard, or Wild)
- If you have a draft that is currently using the Wild pool, you will keep that draft until you complete it.
Dean will be on hand throughout the day to talk more about the changes. We'll keep updating this post throughout the day.
Poll Time!
Official Announcement
Quote from ZeriyahIn our next update, we will be making a few changes to the Arena that should make it more interesting for our players and offer a much different experience with each set release.
• Arena will change from Wild format to Standard
- As more cards are added to the Arena pool, having each game feel meaningfully different actually becomes harder to accomplish. Many of the cool synergies between cards, such as Jade Golems or Mechs, live within each individual set release. Attempting to create decks that utilize these meaningful synergies in a wide and diluted card pool will become more and more difficult as the Wild card pool grows larger. Arena runs then becomes less about card synergies and smart deck choices and more about being fortunate enough to be presented with the best card from each set. This change should put the focus back on the player for good, synergistic Arena choices and make Arena decks feel more cohesive.
- We’ll be monitoring using the Standard format in Arena carefully, and we may add additional changes or formats in the future if it doesn’t meet our goals of having Arena feel interesting and different with each set release.
• Changes to Card Rarity Distribution
- We’re making a change to the frequency in which Common and Basic cards show up in the Arena. Common cards were about 78% of all Arena cards, and we felt that number was too high considering that many of the cards that focus around individual class identity and power level rely on the common cards of any given class. After this change, the number of Common and Basic cards that show up overall should be lower, giving more room for fun Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards to show up in an Arena run. In addition, the cards Abyssal Enforcer and Flamestrike will show up approximately 50% less in Arena.
• More Spells in a Run
- Spells have the power to swing a board state, generally more than minions do. Obviously, there are some exceptions to this. When the distribution of spells to minions is too low, the game usually ends up in the favor of the player that gets out their minions faster and more efficiently than the other player, because there aren’t enough cards that punish overextending. Bringing the distributions of spells and minions closer together allows for more room to have an Arena game that is more strategic and facilitates more plays and counter-plays to occur.
• Neutral Classic Cards Show Up Less
- A lot of neutral Classic cards tend to be minions without any text that lack interesting effects. While they are great for introducing newer players to Hearthstone and providing baselines for power level comparisons, they don’t make for compelling Arena run choices. This helps make more room for spells, class cards, and expansion cards to show up at a higher rate.
Golden Cards in Arena
- If you own golden cards in your collection, copies of that card that appear in your Arena run will show up as golden. If you own a single golden card, the first copy of it you choose will be golden. If you own two copies of a golden card, every copy of that card you choose in the Arena will be golden. If you own one golden Legendary, every copy of that Legendary you choose in Arena will be golden.
These changes will occur in an upcoming update near the end of February. We’ll see you in the Tavern!
Dean Ayala Comments on the Changes
Quote from Dean AyalaFor context, the numbers are around 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks. The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate. Flamestrike is 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type. For Flamestrike, its definition in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet. Meaning cards that share that definition will show up around 50% more often. Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet, so it will show up ~50% less than cards in that bucket.
As a further note, rares and commons specifically have a very similar chance to show up on a card by card basis. What I mean by this is Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs. This is a little strange so I'm curious what the feedback will be on it.
Talking about the exact chances to get any particular card could be a blog on its own. Each of the classes vary slightly because of the differences in #cards available and minion/spell ratio within each rarity. I recently asked a bunch of friends (who very, very heavily play arena) if they had an idea what the current ratio of commons/rares was and they had no idea. Makes me wonder how necessary a full report on that kind of thing is. In any case, I'm happy to clear up any outstanding questions you all have of the new system. The blog post for this was not the place to go over 100's of numeric details.
Have Team 5 considered making those changes without making Arena wild? I love everything you plan for arena, but I'm scared it might be boring in standard. Now we can risk to build synergistic deck like mech anything, dragon priest, beast druid etc. Making Arena standard will remove the risk part and introduce "meta" to arena, at least I'm afraid It might.
We did consider it. One of the most difficult draft problems for us to overcome is the ever-increasing card pool. Something I'm relatively sure of is that when a new set comes out, it would be cool to go to arena to draft that new set and check out what its synergies are all about. It becomes difficult to accomplish that when there start to be 1500+ cards available to draft. We want there to be realistic synergies to draft in arena, and we want drafting the set that just came out to be a fun way to discover the latest and greatest new cards.
That said, making arena standard is just one way to do this. I would not consider these current changes to be forever ones. The main takeaway for me in this development time was that smaller card pools lead to more interesting draft experiences, standard-arena specifically was a simple way for us to accomplish that. I could definitely see us rotating older sets in and out of the pool at some point, but for now I'm curious how these current changes will play out. Looking forward to getting feedback once the changes are released. (Source)
Why not have every areana run randomly generate 3 or four sets (also with classic/basic cards) so that each run has consistency but the arena itself has diversity. At the beginig of the run it might tell you that you rolled WOG GVG Naxx and MSG, you know what sets will appear and can plan your choices accordingly. The way this Change is I fell that arena will lose its fun identity and people will attempt to draft the same sort of decks that are being played in standard. I understand wanting consistency but I feel there are better ways to do that then taking away so many fun and memorable cards that have already been taken away in many formats.
I think this is a cool idea and one we've talked about in the past. I think it's a pretty reasonable solution but we decided to go with the simplest form of this for now and see how it plays out in practice. From doing a few hundred standard arena drafts myself, I think it's a pretty fun and different draft experience. Constructed and Arena decks on average are still a good distance apart even if they are using the same cards. I mentioned this above, but unless standard only arena gets overwhelmingly positive feedback post-release, I would expect there to be continued changes over time to the format. (Source)
What if I had drafted a arena deck before the changes go live with wild cards, am I still able to play or do I have to draft a new deck?
Will still be able to play. New drafts will have no Wild cards, but you will still run into a deck that does have them from time to time because it was an older draft that is being completed. (Source)
What dzquetzal said - I really hope they do not change that aspect and that it always will reward you the newest packs
Arena has always rewarded with a classic card pack, and sometime ago it changed to reward with always at least 1 last expansion pack that came out
I'm pretty sure I've got a GvG pack some runs ago...not so sure btw
I'm not an arena player but I don't understand why they have to remove wild cards from arena.In my opinion a good way to change things would be this:
1st of all after your payment to enter you SHOULD have the right to choose whether you want to play standard or to play wild.
Some people may want to play with all cards and some maybe not.It's ok as you give them this option.Removing the option to choose make a portion of people unhappy and with reason.Arena should have 2 formats as ranked has also.
2nd As a lot people said before it might be cool to have "quests" which rewards arena entries or tavern brawls choice(you can choose if you want a classic pack or an arena entry for reward).This would make arena far more attractive for every player and it would be more fun to explore.
Last I want to say that at least they listen some advice from the community.This is good news and let's hope that they will continue doing so in the right way for the game.(Adding golden portraits and cards in arena is cool if you fancy gold animation but overall changes have to be cooler)
To be honest, Blizzard should implement something akin to MtG drafting.
Choose 2/4/6/8 players to a "group", then everyone can buy 8 boosters with gold or money. You should be able to choose (for the whole draft) if everyone can use only one specific set, specific set + classic, or any set available from shop. For example, people could join "GVG-only" -draft, or "Classic-only" draft or "all sets" draft etc. Not sure if this could be applied to wild cards as well, as they are not on sale.
Then you would draft them like in MtG. Everyone opens a booster and chooses one card. You get to keep that card and then the rest of the booster contents will be moved to next person in the group, and he can pick one card from the four that is left, and same thing happens with everyone. Thus, you pick 1 of the 5 (of the booster you opened), then 1 of the 4 (of the cards you received from another person in the group), then you pick 1 of the 3 (of the cards you received from yet another person in the group) until all cards in the boosters are taken.
Then everyone opens another booster.
After all cards are dealt, you make a 30 card deck from the 40 cards you have chosen. After the game, you would keep all 40 cards you picked, of course (as you paid for them).
Then there should be automatic system where people could play 3 games vs the others and who gets most points would win. The game should be possible to put on pause and then continued on next day or whenever the participants would have time. The draft would "stay up" until all the games would have been played, or someone forfeits etc, similar to Arena. Thus you wouldn't need to play every game the same night.
Being standard allows for more synergy and more predictability, but less variation. It will also raise the power level of arena a bit.
Predictability is good to some degree, especially when it comes to higher rarity boardclears. When you don't know what the opponent is likely to have it becomes the right play to not play around anything. Too much predictability and games can feel too much like constructed (where you never play into Swipe on turn 4).
Synergy is imo not necessary for arena. Having a few cards that benefit each other (like a Blackwing Corruptor and 3 dragons) is fine, but when you can craft a deck with 6+ Jade cards it gets a little out of hand and doesn't feel like arena anymore.
Variety is a big deal. After playing Standard constructed for a long time it can be a refreshing experience to do an arena with some cards you don't normally see, the biggest downside of limiting the card pool.
Adding a set rotation in the arena was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
Having every possiblr option means you can't realistically play around anything and at the same time any thematic card is worthless as the chance to get enough mechs, dragons or whatever is too small.
Maybe moving specifically to Standard is not perfect, they definitely need to seriously consider rotating different sets in and out (as they stated), but overall it's good news.
I love those changes so much !
For a person like me who likes to create more and more golden cards, having to be able to use them in arena is absolutely amazing !
Thank you blizz for making this happen !
stupid decission. (Arena = Standart.)
I'm heavily looking forward to these changes and can't wait to try them out once they go live. Arena was one of the area's on the game that really needed a re-vamp, especially in the drafting portion. Was growing tired of seeing Abyssal Enforcer all the time, including the times that I've drafted.
It's a shame they're making it standard though. One of the things I enjoyed about Arena was that it used cards from the entire set and not just standard cards. :c
Arena is/was only part of the game which keeps me going. This standard arena just ruins the whole idea. The point of Arena for me, is to be different than constructed - changing to standard and other changes to increase synergy levels in decks are making it more like a constructed with few missing legendaries. If you want synergy decks you should play constructed. Many of us are actually trying to escape those mech/jade/pirate synergies going for a slower paced experience in arena. Getting more spells from draft will probably just make mage even more broken than ever before since not every class has good spells.
Well played Blizzard, it was nice knowing you.
As a Wild player I can tell you that Arena was entirely different from Wild Constructed. I very much doubt it will be anything like Standard when it converts to Standard Arena either. It didn't boil down to the same decks as you see in Wild with a few cards missing. Your draft was a random scattering of unsynergistic shit, where you get offered Iron Sensei on pick 1 and never see another Mech the entire draft, or commit to Jade synergy because the other cards offered were crap, and then end up with a grand total of 3 Jade cards. The end result was that your deck was often aimlessly stumbling around between being Wild autofill and really, really, really shit attempt at Standard.
On one hand, that sucked for you because through no fault of your own you would often end up with fucking terrible drafts, where 3-4 picks of your draft were choices between cards that are awful without synergy (which you are unlikely to get), and a Wisp or Magma Rager, and on the other, there was little to no point in playing against outs, because your opponent could be playing literally anything, including but not limited to (from experience) two Deathwings, 4 Flame Strikes and 3 Volcanic Potions, 2 Mechwarpers followed by 8 straight Mech minions, an Unstable Portal which gives him Mysterious Challenger, pulling 4 secrets and a 6/6 on turn 3, or a single Murloc War Leader, a Mech Warper with one Annoy-a-Tron, 2 Mind Control Techs, Rend Blackhand with no Dragons in the deck and a single Fireball in the entire deck. And this shit deck then beats you because you've baited his removal and board wipes, saw there was none and then got hit by two MC Techs which lost you the game.
So you take the lesson to heart, you play around MC Techs for future drafts and never encounter one, because it is just one out of hundreds and hundreds of cards they could draft, and you lose games because you limit your board to 3 minions too often. And the dilution would only get worse with every set, until the cards in all decks might as well be random in terms of what you play around and into. Sooner or later, the pool would have to be restricted, and some would argue that this was already quite late. With the limitation, they can now test how things go, which cards over and underperform, and can then start trying fun twists like rotating sets.
Isn't that kind of the point? I mean if you want a format where you know what's in your opponent's deck, go play constructed.
Yup. Many top arena players have stated that the best strategy these days is to play around nothing since the chance of any one card appearing is incredibly small. Reducing the card pool size is a good thing. Maybe having the exact same pool or rotation schedule as Standard Constructed is not great, but limiting it to maybe 4 sets seems reasonable.
I was loving the changes up until this one. If we can be real for a minute, many people will never play wild. It's well known many disenchant their wild cards because grinding dust is so hard, and new players have no real hope of playing Wild without the old broken cards (this is why I hate when people say "just play wild" it's not reasonable for many to do so.) I will say the format change was completely necessary for standard, but arena was where us standard players could get to play with some of our old friends. Believe me, piloted shredder rng is much more fun and less tilting when you see him once out of ten games instead of ten out of ten.
Also, consider the actual gameplay impact this has. When the next expansion comes out, we will only have three expansions and one adventure in standard, meaning the card pool will be very low. If you think Abyssal Enforcer is op now, wait until you see the crazy class common of the next expansion when its occurrence bonus will coincide with the thin card pool.
I'm glad to see the change in arena. But I feel it maybe too boring to allow only standard format.
How about changing card pool for each month? Just make the most recent expansion as compulsory, and randomly select 2 or 3 expansion/adventures as the addition.
For example,
2017 March: [gadgetzan] + {Old Gods,LOE}
2017 April: [gadgetzan] + {GvG,Blackrock}
2017 May: [the next expansion] + {Naxx,Grand Tournament}
This sounds like a much better alternative.
Golden cards will now appear in the Arena
It honestly feels like the people that are upset about Arena moving to a standard format are just upset that they won't be able to use a lot of the broken cards anymore.