http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20271286/hearthside-chat-upcoming-arena-changes-with-dean-ayala-9-8-2016

Blizzard/Team 5 Statement

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!

A number of these just seem dumb and/or arbitrary; hell a lot of them have had cool arena moments in the past. Dunemaul Shaman is a totally fine card (not great but not dumpster tier), Sense Demons can work depending on the deck, Void Crusher is pretty legit if you're in the lead, Mark of Nature is just a pretty good, frequently seen card; every warrior card does suck on that list so good for warriors (apologies to bouncing blade), Buzzard is only playable in arena; it's never going to see any play anywhere ever now (okay it didn't see much arena play either), Snipe, Dart Trap, and Timber Wolf all have their place, Cobra Shot is occasionally pretty good; Convert is like a ghetto Faceless sometimes, fine card. Inner Fire, Confuse, and Lightwell can all be good in certain situations.

Snowchugger actually was really OP in GvG but has kind of become less so over time even with some weapon classes rising in prominence; I think the rise of Heartharena has led to the gradual downfall of Snowchugger to just pretty good status. Forgotten Torch is a good card but not an egregious one, it's no Firelands Portal. Faceless Summoner is obviously OP so I guess that's a good one to nuke. Twilight Flamecaller probably should have been removed.

The two Rogue Cards are good but not absurdly so, I think Auto Barber is one of the most technical cards Rogue has in terms of knowing exactly how and when to use it if it's in your hand. Now, rogue tends to require a tad more brain activity than Mage/Paladin in general so it's probably not that big of a deal, but eh I just like the card. Valiant is fine to toss I suppose.

I'm sad to see Faceless Summoner go. Blatantly OP but I guess that's why it was cool when you could end up stacking a few in your arena deck. Just changing the rarity seems like it may have been a better fix but I get that something needed to be done with it.

Yeah, Faceless Summoner is the one really obvious one to get cut from Arena entirely since it's SO good if you draft it, though moving its rarity from common up to rare or epic might have resolved the issue. I guess it would still be a bullshit, win-the-game card in Arena - you would just see it less often, and that fixes the balance on a macro level but on a micro level it would still be frustrating for the players who have to go up against it.

Glad some of the really underpowered cards are gonna be gone. If anything, I wouldn't mind if Totemic Might, Savagery, and Confuse were just removed from all modes of the game permanently. It's really frustrating when I get any of those cards randomly from a Nefarian or an Undercity Huckster or something. OK, maybe keep Confuse around because maybe in some Adventure boss battle Confuse could end up being hilariously good.

Other than that, yeah, lots of really arbitrary removal of thoroughly average cards. No idea what they thought was wrong with Dunemaul Shaman and Mark of Nature, but those cards are totally fine. But I guess arbitrary-seeming bans are a longstanding tradition in the CCG space.