In a recent developer update, Blizzard has detailed the HearthStone Arena changes scheduled for this month.
The Arena is HearthStone’s speciality deck-building mode in which players create a deck from a 30-card draft. After creating a deck, players challenge others and earn increasingly rewarding prizes with each win.
If a player manages to win 12 games they’ll earn significant rewards, but they’ll be knocked out of their run if they lose three games in total.
HearthStone Arena Changes
The HearthStone team is always working to improve Arena and so has recently announced changes to the mode.
In the draft phase, players will now be able to choose between three cards of similar power but differing rarities. What this change should achieve is that players will have three viable options for every pick. Based on the type of deck they’re building, the draft should provide a card for all situations.
Legendary picks will still occur during the draft, but they will be separate from the other picks. What’s more, the Legendaries will all be of approximately similar power.
When making the first, 10th, 20th and 30th picks of the draft, players will be guaranteed to see a Rare or higher among the three on offer. Finally, class cards, spells and weapons will appear with the same frequency as they already do, but below average value cards will appear less often.
HearthStone Arena Changes – New Cards
As part of BlizzCon 2017, the HearthStone team had attendees of a panel assist in the creation of nine cards specifically for use in the Arena.
As part of update 10.4, these nine cards will temporarily be added to the draft pool. You can see each of the new cards in the image above. The cards are all spells except for the Warrior card who receives a weapon. Each class receives one card as you can see below;
- Mages are getting the Polymorph: ??? spell.
- Warriors are getting the Blazing Longsword weapon.
- Paladins are getting the Hand of Salvation spell.
- Priests are getting the Generous Spirit spell.
- Rogues are getting the Smoke Bomb spell.
- Shamans are getting the Crackling Doom spell.
- Druids are getting the Nature’s Champion spell.
- Warlocks are getting the Bottled Madness spell.
The overall goal for the HearthStone Arena changes is to make drafting more interesting and enjoyable. When the changes to Arena go live, cards that are currently excluded from the draft will remain that way.
All existing Arena rules will remain in effect and the increased chance to see cards from the most recent expansion will be suspended temporarily.
HearthStone is available now.
