Hearthstone To Remove A Lot Of Cards From Its Arena Mode

A huge number of changes are to be done to Hearthstone's Arena mode, starting with the removal of a bunch of cards.

Coming from a blog post that describes Arena as: "a fun environment that could use some overall balance tuning," Dean Ayala, Blizzard game designer, discusses that Blizzard sees the balancing problems and now they intend to begin resolving them batch by batch - no pun intended. To confirm with quote:

"One goal we have for Arena is that we want it to feel meaningfully different from any other way you might play Hearthstone," he said. "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 opening an Arena run, Blizzard doesn't allow you to pick cards from the most powerful classes. Ayala confirms Rogue, as well as Mage, have been observed to be the most powerful, Paladin becomes a runner-up, and then followed by what is left in some sense of order. As continuation of Ayala's discussion:

"So what are some ways we can address Arena balance?" Ayala continued. "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.

This is currently the thought process Blizzard will bring to Hearthstone with the next patch which requires removal of cards from 8 of the 9 classes; Paladin's set was spared. The complete list is listed at the bottom of this article, thanks to GameSpot's dedication of giving us reliable information.

Further, Blizzard plans to improve the game but no patch will come anytime soon after the upcoming one. Ayala expressed that they are developing additional solutions to balance the best as they could to Arena by adding the ability to adjust the rate that cards have. The designer also adds:

"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."

Another discussion angle to look at is drafting via card rarity. They are confident that the ability to adjust card 'weights' can help much on balancing the game. Ayala said Blizzard will keep an eye on the changes it's making in this update and wants fans to share their feedback with the company.

Below is the list of cards to be removed as of this writing, we've arranged it by class then by alphabetical order for your convenience:

Mage