New Arena Balances coming!

[Colmadero]

As seen in: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/7...ith-dean-ayala


There’s been a lot of internal and public discussion regarding the state of Arena recently. Today, I’d like to share what the Hearthstone team’s goals are for Arena and shed some additional light on where our overall focus is for the future.

Hearthstone has four major game modes right now: Constructed, Arena, Solo Adventures, and Tavern Brawl. One goal we have for Arena is that we want it to feel meaningfully different from any other way you might play Hearthstone. I think we’re hitting that goal now, but it’s important for us to keep that in mind when thinking about future changes. Variety among all game modes is important to us, but an equally important goal is to have a wide range of experiences within each game mode.

This is an area where we feel Arena has some room for improvement. When you first enter Arena and are offered the choice of three different classes, our goal is that you can look at those choices and choose any class without feeling disadvantaged because of their difference in power level.

Most of the feedback we’ve received on Arena is centered around class balance. For the last few content releases, Mage and Rogue have bounced back and forth as the top two most played and most powerful classes. Paladin has been in a tier by itself below Mage and Rogue, while the last six classes have done some shifting around in a tier below these three.

So what are some ways we can address Arena balance? Tools that we have available immediately involve removing cards from Arena completely—C'Thun-synergy cards and Purify are examples of this. We’d like to avoid removing strong spells and weapons from the Arena, because they add to a lot of the unpredictability and excitement surrounding the possibilities outside the current board state. We’d also like to avoid removing iconic cards, since they are generally versatile and familiar tools to veteran and new Arena players alike. Additionally, we can remove lower-performing cards in order to make room for a class’ more commonly utilized cards to show up more often in your Arena draft.

With those things in mind, we will be removing the following cards from the Arena draft in an upcoming patch:

Mage

Forgotten Torch
Snowchugger
Faceless Summoner

Rogue

Goblin Auto Barber
Undercity Valiant

Paladin

- No changes

Shaman

Vitality Totem
Dust Devil
Totemic Might
Ancestral Healing
Dunemaul Shaman
Windspeaker

Warlock

Anima Golem
Sacrificial Pact
Curse of Rafaam
Sense Demons
Void Crusher
Reliquary Seeker
Succubus

Druid

Savagery
Poison Seeds
Soul of the Forest
Mark of Nature
Tree of Life
Astral Communion

Warrior

Warsong Commander
Bolster
Charge
Bouncing Blade
Axe Flinger
Rampage
Ogre Warmaul
Hunter

Starving Buzzard
Call Pet
Timber Wolf
Cobra Shot
Lock and Load
Dart Trap
Snipe

Priest

Mind Blast
Shadowbomber
Lightwell
Power Word: Glory
Confuse
Convert
Inner Fire
We're looking to develop additional solutions to balance Arena as well, such as the ability to adjust the rate that individual cards show up in your draft depending on a designer input value. If we pursue that route, there is still the matter of deciding on the best way to go about using that tool to achieve balance for each of the nine classes and still have Arena feel fun and different each run.

Drafting by card rarity is another discussion that we’ve been hearing a lot. If it’s a matter of balance, we’re fairly confident the ability to adjust the “weights” of cards available can solve that.

We think Arena is a fun environment that could use some overall balance tuning. We hope the above changes will help to address that, and we will be monitoring the Arena closely to see the impact of these changes. We also need your feedback to help us ensure that the Arena remains enjoyable for years to come, so let us know your thoughts!





It seems this will make paladins stronger and mages a tad weaker in Arena.

Thoughts?

[Deleted]

Interesting they decided to do something about the arena so fast after the priest purify uproar. I haven't played arena in a while hopefully it gets better with this.

Also a lot of complaint about the current situation in ranking. We'll see if they will do something about that at all.

[Colmadero]

Interesting they decided to do something about the arena so fast after the priest purify uproar. I haven't played arena in a while hopefully it gets better with this.

Also a lot of complaint about the current situation in ranking. We'll see if they will do something about that at all.

I doubt it since ranked is supposed to be pretty organized right now, with Wild and Ranked having different ladders and all.

[apepi]

Honestly I don't mind having bad cards to choose from. It is that many common cards are bad for some classes and good for other.

[Pantalaimon]

Honestly I don't mind having bad cards to choose from. It is that many common cards are bad for some classes and good for other.

They should just adjust rarities for a number of cards. I don't see it being any more difficult than say changing a card's effect or stats during a card nerf.

[apepi]

They should just adjust rarities for a number of cards. I don't see it being any more difficult than say changing a card's effect or stats during a card nerf.

I think it might be better to base it on pick rate instead of rarity.

[Blueobelisk]

What weird changes. It doesn't even seem to help that much.

They think THOSE cards make mages or rogues overpowered?

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

Dunemaul Shaman
Windspeaker
Mark of Nature
Rampage
Snipe

These ones seem weird to remove, sure they're not 4 mana 7/7s, but they're hardly unplayably bad like the rest of that list.

[Twoddle]

I don't like the way they're doing this, just seems like a massive kludge.

[Pantalaimon]

I get the gist of why Blizzard is doing this, well in general not many of the specific cards, but why remove anything other than cards that would be completely unplayable without having a very niche specific card with that card? Isn't arena literally supposed to be the digital format equivalent of other card games' blind pack tournaments? In those games you don't get to ban the 'bad cards' just in case you happen to get them. If you win with bad cards your opponent either got really unlucky to lose to you, or you are showing your skill in the format.

[Blueobelisk]

Best way they should rate cards is to give each card a rating based on how strong it is in a "you're picking random cards" format and have like the total for all 30 cards chosen be between certain ranges.

So like, the goal for Arena RNG is to give the player a deck between 150 to 250 rating. Cards like Tirion are 10/10, cards like Wisp are 0.5/10. Each of the 30 rounds give the player at least 1 card that isn't complete garbage based on the rating. Overall, because of rating, try to only give players cards somewhat competitively. So if someone has a 290 rating on their deck, don't offer them Tirion as the 30th card. Or if someone has a 50 deck, don't offer them Wisp. Some players have 30 ~6 cards, some players have 10 ~8s and 20 ~4s, etc etc possibilities.

Or something like that. It's not random but it's balanced.

[DesoPL]

They should do something with bar brawls because lately is series of annoying ones and can't farm for two last wings of Karazhan adventure.