The Arena mode of popular digital trading card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is about to get an overhaul in an upcoming patch, in an effort to make it more balanced.
For those who are unfamiliar, upon starting Hearthstone's Arena mode, players choose a hero from the three options presented, and then build their deck from random cards. Players are given three choices for every card slot in their deck, with cards of lower rarity showing up more often than those of higher rarity.
Players will play their deck against other Arena players who went through the same draft process. When either the player reaches 12 wins or three losses, the deck will be deleted, with players then receiving better rewards depending on how many wins they've accumulated.
With the current setup, classes with more powerful common cards have proven to be the best ones in Arena, with those two classes being Mage and Rogue.
According to Ayala, the Arena mode has room for improvement, with the first fix for the game mode to be on class balance. Ayala believes that players should not feel disadvantaged right away after choosing their class at the start of the draft process, which is currently not the case when the Mage or Rogue classes are not among the hero options at the start.
To help fix the balance issues, Blizzard said it will remove a total of 45 cards from the available draft pool in Arena mode. Strong weapons and spells, along with iconic cards, will remain, with the cards to be removed to join those with synergy to the legendary C'Thun from the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion and the controversial Purify from the One Night in Karazhan adventure as cards not available in Arena mode.
Here is a list of the cards that will be removed from the Arena draft pool per class.
Druid
• Astral Communion
• Mark of Nature
• Poison Seeds
• Savagery
• Soul of the Forest
• Tree of Life
Hunter
• Call Pet
• Cobra Shot
• Dart Trap
• Lock and Load
• Snipe
• Starving Buzzard
• Timber Wolf
Mage
• Faceless Summoner
• Forgotten Torch
• Snowchugger
Paladin
No cards removed
Priest
• Confuse
• Convert
• Inner Face
• Lightwell
• Mind Blast
• Power Word: Glory
• Shadowbomber
Rogue
• Goblin Auto Barber
• Undercity Valiant
Shaman
• Ancestral Healing
• Dunemaul Shaman
• Dust Devil
• Totemic Might
• Vitality Totem
• Windspeaker
Warlock
• Anima Golem
• Curse of Rafaam
• Reliquary Seeker
• Sacrificial Past
• Sense Demons
• Succubus
• Void Crusher
Warrior
• Axe Finger
• Bolster
• Bouncing Blade
• Charge
• Ogre Warmaul
• Rampage
• Warsong Commander
Ayala said that the development team will be looking for further balancing solutions for the Arena mode, including giving weight to the frequency at which cards are shown as options and drafts based on other factors aside from card rarity.
