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.
MCT Removed! ABOUT FUCKING TIME.
I never had succes with it in arena, but my opponent did often so I guess it iis a good change for me.
They surely mean the cards that have an odd/even requisite to do something, like the shaman eel.
in ranked you have the ability to play around cards, in arena you don't have a choice, since you can't build a deck of your choice.
obviously in arena you can play around cards, but imagine you always cant have more than 3 minions ? that's frustrating, in ranked Mind Control Tech isn't a problem, Shudderwock was and they dealt with him.
Saronite Chain Gang 's nerf.
You can't have infinite Shudderwock for 1 mana in your hand anymore. At least in standard.
they effectively removed Saronite Chain Gang from the game and therefore Shudderwock can't go infinite in standard (at least not as easy)
I love the changes, but kinda makes me wonder why
"unreasonably punish playing multiple minions"
Is deemed problematic for arena, but fine for ranked?
Lots of Tier 2 decks in standard can punish your for having MCT
That doesn't take away that MCT can "unreasonably punish playing multiple minions" in many other games?
Lots of cards CAN be swingy in Hearthstone based on getting very lucky or unlucky (Brawl is a good example of this). The main concern is the frequency in which it occurs. In constructed MCT is a tech cards against decks running lots of minions, the issue is that in Arena ALL decks are minion based - hence the issue.
Because one loss due to MCT in ranked is whatever, you dont even care. One loss in arena is so much more devastating. Such a high RNG card should not dictate wheter you lose the run early or not.
Not to mention, ranked decks have a game plan, so even if MCT screws you over, chances r you can recover. Arena decks r all about minion combat, so losing that much tempo is very likely gonna cost you the game on the spot.
I still remember the frequent arena run I had. lost two games because of MCT and never touched it again since then. THANK YOU BLIZZARD!
Wait, how are you meant to play a deck if they've removed odd/even cards?
Imo, having cards that are sometimes bad make arena more like physical card games' blind draft pack runs, which imo is what arena should have somewhat closely resembled from the very beginning, not some semi-optimized and commonly synergistic format.
Warsong Commander is back. Oh great XD
Blizzard should really buff the poor thing. Make at 2 drop at least, and remove the charge requirement for the +1 atk. Its just poor nerfing.
... what’s the point of putting all of those cards back? Like, who’s going to pick Sense Demons and Sac Pac?
Brackets are created automatically by pick rates. If no one ever picks those cards, they won't show up often and also only in brackets with other cards at the same power level. I guess it's fine.
Did they make any announcement for the nerf? Usually they will announce like a month before. This time I didn’t heard anything.
They announced it the night before. Not much time at all. Maybe because there isn’t a tournament currently happening?