Matt London, Modes Design Lead for Hearthstone, talked about Arena game mode earlier today on Twitter.
Apparently, the team has already decided on the micro-adjustments they wanted to make for Arena, but they couldn’t push them in 23.2 since the patch was already locked by the time they landed on the exact cards they want to change. The good news, however, is that the changes will go live in a hotfix shortly after Patch 23.2 releases. The goal of those changes is to boost win rate of the few worst classes while reducing the appearance of overperforming cards. They will also remove some build-around cards without any support in the format (keep in mind that those cards are usually designed with Standard in mind, but Arena might not have the correct expansions to support all of the cards in a given rotation).
You can read the whole Twitter chain here:
It’s not ideal to post this on Sunday night from a personal Twitter, but I want Arena players to know that there will be no changes to Arena with the upcoming patch, 23.2.
However, changes have been implemented internally and are coming soon.
Quick thread:
Hearthstone content is released in patches, as well as hotfixes. You may have noticed a round of balance changes for Standard and Wild in the last hotfix, 23.0.3, the current HS version. This hotfix had a measurable impact on Arena, but not enough.
Content releases are on a different pipeline from hotfixes, and are locked farther ahead. By the time we decided on the adjustments we wanted to make, the deadline for 23.2 had passed.
The implemented Arena changes include micro-adjustments to boost several low win rate classes, a reduction in appearance rate of overperforming cards, and the removal of several build-around cards that lack support in the format.
The results of these changes have been positive in internal testing; that doesn’t mean everything will be perfect. The Modes team is new to this job, and we are committed to keeping at it until we get it right.
Arena changes will go live in a hotfix shortly after the release of 23.2.
Arena players are some of the most engaged, passionate, and longest tenured Hearthstone players we have. We want to provide them with a best in class experience. Thanks for sticking with us.
