Should Blizzard be more Transparent With Arena Rules? Have Odds on Weapons Changed?

Should Blizzard be more Transparent With Arena Rules?

Let's start things off with our first Arena question of the day with a simple answer; Yes. Does that mean they should have the entire formula out there with every little change? That depends on who you ask.

Arena has long had hidden rules which were somewhat known by the community but never with exact rates. When we were told about upcoming changes back in February, there was a general gist of the changes but nothing with numbers outside of two cards (Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer). This was somewhat addressed through an additional post by Dean on reddit which provided some numbers, but we were still left in the dark on others.

Recently, Blizzard adjusted the rate of Un'Goro cards in Arena down from 2x to 1.5x. Though this isn't really anything new as it has been happening for many expansions, they unfortunately never communicated this change to the community prior to or as it happened, leaving us without this knowledge during our drafts; Something that some people do spend real money on.

What do you think? Should we as players get to know the entire formula with every little possible change, or is it okay to only know the major stuff? Would knowing the formula change how you personally draft?

Dean "Iksar" Ayala believes that we should be told about all the major changes, but very minor ones such as a 3% less chance of seeing a particular card aren't as relevant and ultimately may be the path to more balance in the Arena. Before you ask, no, Primordial Drake does not have less chance of appearing in Mage decks (as of writing at least..), it was only used as an example.

Quote from Dean Ayala

Over the last year and a half, a bunch of exceptions to offering rules have accumulated and it has become really hard to keep track of it, even if you are constantly playing the arena.

Now I do fully agree that these informations should NOT be accessible inside the game client. I am not saying this for the "confusing new players"-meme but because I feel like those details do not belong there.

What I am asking for is a page that collects all the rules that are applied and that you can check for any updates. Right now, I am sure you could find all the rules if you googled them, but they will probably not be listed on an official site of blizzard. If you would like to collect the rules from official sources only, your only cholice would be to read through evry changelog existing.

This is pretty reasonable. We are currently working out a bunch of adjustments for a future patch and going back and forth on what is the most digestible way to view the 'arena rules'. What you have listed I think is very reasonable, some people would like more detail and I think some people would prefer less detail. The rules I think that are most important are the ones that might actually impact any of your gameplay decisions. A card like Flamestrike never showing up in arena is very relevant information, while a decrease in draft appearance rate of 3% on Primordial Drake in Mage is less relevant. One of the ideas on the table for arena balance specifically are thousands of very small changes to the appearance rate of a card in each individual class. I think if we move forward with that it is unlikely to list those thousands of individual changes, but likely to summarize what the goal of that strategy might be. Always happy to hear more feedback on this topic.

Wait... Drake is atm offered less in mage? And how should an Arena with [thousands] of [separate] draft rates for each class work? How would someone know to play around anything?

It is not, was just an example. In terms of playing around anything, the hope is that the differences are small enough they should not impact your gameplay decision making. When Flamestrike shows up 50% less I would expect that to make an impact on your decisions on turn 7 vs a Mage. If it showed up 1% less that decision is essentially no different.

Have Odds on Weapons Changed?

Going more into these silent changes, redditor /u/Tarrot469 recently stated they were confident a bonus to Weapons is active in the Arena which puts them on the same level as spell rates (1.75x). Using data found on HSReplay.net, they've put some pretty damning evidence against the Hearthstone team.

Simply looking at popular arena weapons starting on June 2, after the 8.2.2 Patch, the following cards had an increase in the amount of decks which included at least one copy of the card of around 50%. This also really shows just how popular Paladin is in Arena..

  • Jade Claws - 1.41% of decks included this card and it was increased to 2.16% and has remained steady.
  • Fiery War Axe - 0.43% of decks increased to 0.61%. (A must pick card!)
  • Eaglehorn Bow - 2.14% of decks increased to 3.29%.
  • Truesilver Champion - 6.01% of decks increased to 9.14%.

There are no significant changes in the pick-rates of any other card. Overnight, people certainly weren't just more interested in playing with these weapons, they simply were offered them more often and thus were taken.


Perecentage of decks that included Jade Claws over time.

Is this a significant enough change that players should have been informed of? Let us know what you think in the comments below. Personally, this is a major change and I believe it should have been addressed via an official blog post. Blizzard is no stranger to posting short blog so this wouldn't have been out of the ordinary.

Off-topic: While we're at it, let's get some better patch notes too that detail actual changes rather than "bugfixes" :)

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