Source: Hearthpwn

Upcoming Changes to Hearthstone Arena - Standard Format, More Spells, & More

Changes are coming to Hearthstone's Arena Mode and things are being changed up quite a bit. Say goodbye to the Wild format as Arena takes on the Standard card pool, among other changes.

• Arena drafts will be using the Standard format.
• Common and Basic cards will show up less than before.
• We will see more spells in our drafts.
• Neutral Classic cards will show up less frequently.
• Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer specifically will show up 50% less.
• Golden cards will now appear in the Arena (Seems like you can get gold cards in the draft now)
  • If you own 1 golden copy of a card, the first copy of the card you get in the Arena will be Golden.
  • If you own 2 golden copies of a card, all copies of the card you get in the Arena will be golden.
  • Owning a golden legendary makes every copy of that legendary in Arena golden.

Dean "Iksar" Ayala provided some additional information.

• 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks.
• The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate.
• Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer being 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type.
  • Flamestrike's card type in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet.
  • Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet.
• Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs.
• They want realistic synergies in to draft in the Arena.
• They want drafting the set that just came out a fun way to discover the cards.
• He does not consider these changes to be forever ones.
• Dean could see rotating different sets in and out of the pool at some point. (Not exactly Standard, or Wild)
• If you have a draft that is currently using the Wild pool, you will keep that draft until you complete it.

When does this hit? I haven't played Hearthstone in about a year partly because I enjoyed Arena the most and found the ever-growing pool of cards daunting. I don't expect to do well because I don't know how most of the current cards work, but this is the kind of change that might bring me back in.

Not forever ones!? I doubt this will make arena less curve-stoney since there's still so many sets, but it should be interesting for a week or two.

Kabal Talonpriest laughs at your nerfs, 120 common or gtfo.

@dixavd: Soon (tm). I expect this will roll out when the next expansion releases (most likely April). That's when Whispers of the Old Gods was released last year and Blizzard likes to tease their cards for a month before releasing them.

I feel like card rarities as a concept are what has prevented me from ever really enjoying drafting in MtG, or Arena in Hearthstone. Because so many commons have modest effects, or are sometimes just vanilla minions, most of your draft/arena deck is just really boring cards. Rare and epics have the more interesting abilities, so it's nice that you might seem them more often in Arena (and see neutral cards less), but the format still isn't for me.