Hearthstone Arena Updates For December 19, 2018 - Rastakhan Bonus, MCT Removed, Some Old Cards Return
A big update came out today for Hearthstone's Arena featuring removal of Mind Control Tech, some old cards returning, and the bonus which makes Rastakhan cards show up more often.
Quote from BlizzardIn this Arena update we’re adjusting the appearance rate of a number of cards, restoring older cards to the Arena, removing a Mind Control Tech from drafts, and adjusting Arena buckets.
Read on for details!
Appearance Rates
Cards from Rastakhan’s Rumble now have a +50% appearance rate in drafts – The bonus appearance rate for the most recent set has returned to freshen up Arena with newer cards.
Draft
A number of cards were removed from Arena for balance reasons in the past. Our new systems provide tools to tweak balance in other ways, and we would prefer to make Arena as true as possible to the cards available in Hearthstone.
The following cards are once again available in Arena picks:
Druid
- Savagery
- Soul of the Forest
- Mark of Nature
Hunter
- Starving Buzzard
- Timber Wolf
- Snipe
Priest
- Mind Blast
- Lightwell
- Inner Fire
Shaman
- Dust Devil
- Totemic Might
- Ancestral Healing
- Windspeaker
Warlock
- Sacrificial Pact
- Sense Demons
- Succubus
Warrior
- Warsong Commander
- Charge
- Rampage
The following card will no longer appear in Arena picks:
Neutral
- Mind Control Tech – Minion based combat plays a major role in the Arena, and Mind Control Tech is a (3) mana card that can unreasonably punish playing multiple minions. While we love that there are cards that help players come back from unfavorable positions, we recognize that the high variance gameplay of Mind Control Tech could create a negative Arena experience. As a result, Mind Control Tech is no longer able to be drafted.
The following cards will remain unavailable in Arena drafts:
- Hero Cards
- Quests
- Whizbang the Wonderful
- Vicious Fledgling
- Ancient Watcher
- Humongous Razorleaf
- Odd/Even Cards
Bucket Adjustments
This is a snapshot of the current Arena buckets. Keep in mind that card promotion or demotion is almost entirely based on whether a card has a very high or very low pick rate. Adjusting buckets helps change the average composition of Arena decks so they feel more varied.
You can download a snapshot of the Arena buckets for this time period on the forums.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)hahahahahahahaha. best comment on this thread. gave me a good chuckle
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Kripp will be happy for MC tech. 🐒
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)And how does current bucket system can affect worse ever class cards in arena? I bet, thet in my several next druid runs i'll have to pick between Savagery, Mark of nature and Soul of the forest, because this cards are surely in one bucket.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Just cant get their mindset... Do MCT become a more problem in arena in 2018 than it was in 2015?
Innervate was nerfed because it felt "frustrating", and by that time Wild Growth was less obligatory than now...
They become too brave with their nerfes. In a month they will be balancing again Rumble cards.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)This is amazing, i always felt like blizzard were ignoring theses problems and now they just make great changes out of nowhere.
Mind Control Tech was my main reason to not play arena much, because it just randomly fucks you over with little counterplay
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Its time to Snipe Kripp again with Hunter !
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)I don't really get why some of the cards are added again. The balancing system might have changed, but these cards were removed for a good reason, namely that they made the respective classes perform much worse.
Also, I disagree with the whole occurence boost thing. Most class cards are not designed with Arena in mind, and this just threatens to give some classes big advantages over others, if certain cards appear too often again (remember Spikeridged Steed?).
I can only hope this won't result in huge differences between classes in Arena again. I mean, with the current system, this should not happen anyway, but...
Removing MC Tech is a good idea though.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)There's no reason to keep these cards out of the pool now that we have the bucket system (The 6th and 7th bucket have a 50% lower offering rate than other buckets). A couple of these are also quite reasonable picks like Snipe, Succubus or Rampage.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)What? As long as there’s RNG of any kind Kripp will continue to supply the world with all our sodium chloride needs.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)"That's bullshit" ;).
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Finally finally finally MCT it out, god this is the worst card ever in arena, can't tell you how many time I almost broke the PC becuase of it, you can go to hell now MCT.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Well guys, Christmas came earlier indeed!
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)These changes are awesome, including the card nerfs. I'd just complain about the cards that were made once again available since many of them aren't good at all (Totemic Might, Warsong Commander), and by this I mean they're litterally unpickable & unplayable.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Thank you thank you THANK YOU! Not only do they remove the absolutely terrible class cards from each class, but MCT too? This is the best Christmas gift a man could ask for.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)No, the absolute worst class cards actually return to arena drafts, but since they have auto-adjusting balancing system in place, it should be fine.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)OHHHHHHH
Wow I'm stupid. Thank you, that makes much more sense.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)nah..they are putting those shitty class cards back in.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)That's it, no more salt videos from Kripp.
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)◥█̆◤ WE BACK BOYS ◥█̆◤
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Posted Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)Finally MCT is gone from arena, thank god.