Thanks.

There are some things that are really hard to quantify, like the way FWA shapes your ability to build a Warrior deck vs the way Tirion affects Paladin's ability to build theirs.

I believe statistics should be used in your game design, cuz human sense are non-reliable. If your collected stats are not useful, it usually means that you don't have a reliable evaluation model.

In general it's pretty difficult to have statistics that give a realistic view of how powerful an individual card is.

I'd assume it's hard to lock down statistics around Fiery War Axe in constructed since every Warrior deck would probably have 2 copies, but in Arena a clearer picture starts to form if you compare say "how many wins do Warriors with access to Fiery War Axe go on average, vs those without?"

As long as you're not strongly considering specific synergies between multiple cards, comparing the win rates of decks that have access to a certain card vs those that don't (and more specifically: at the highest levels of play) is probably a good proxy.

Primary example? Arena tier lists. They've had Fiery War Axe pegged as one of the best Warrior commons for quite some time.

Now is it the best in the game? Maybe not as far as individual win rates will show, but if you weight its power by how early it can be played in the game, you'll probably see it as one of the top outliers.

I guess my main point is, I hope you guys are looking at all these metrics as closely for Arena as you are for Constructed, since a lot of the data is probably applicable and even easier to analyze in that framework.

The biggest problem with referencing statistics like that is it generally means you're ignoring the entire concept of meta-game. When players adapt decks and assess the viability of portions of the card-pool specifically to counter a couple of particular cards you can have a major balance issue that won't show up clearly in such statistics. You won't see things like, "chance to win goes up 50% when card X is drawn," but players may see, "minions that are vulnerable to card X are virtually unplayable."

Changes to things like Ironbeak Owl and Big Game Hunter, as far as I can tell, weren't driven by statics on win percentages. They were driven by the fact that they had an unbalancing / deforming effect on the card pool. Classic / Basic cards (which are "evergreen" in Hearthstone compared to all the other cards) have to be much more heavily scrutinized as to whether they help define an environment as opposed to deform it.

What if you looked at the winrate for warrior when FWA is drawn in the first few cards vs. when it's not? I feel like that could be interesting data for giving an idea of how powerful it is. Like you said though, it would more just be nice to have than actually do much.

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Statistics mean next to nothing in terms of balancing. The question is why you guys are so indirect about the glaring issues in Hearthstone, instead of admitting them and facing them head on. In overwatch they were quick to announce some mistakes, but you guys never directly approach them even though there are so many.

In general it's pretty difficult to have statistics that give a realistic view of how powerful an individual card is. I think our current stats try to do a good job but there are many variables. Win rate if you draw X card, win rate of X card weighted by how many cards were drawn in that game, and win rate of X card against the average win rate of that class are all things we consider.

Fiery War Axe is far from being the best card in the game. He mentioned Tirion as being above Fiery War Axe according to their statistics;

Statistics don't do a good job of showing how good Fiery War Axe is, because Fiery War Axe is in EVERY warrior deck. If Warrior has a 50% win rate, then FWA has a 50% win rate too. Doesn't mean the card isn't amazing.

Well, the other Mage card left better be like a Shatter. It's probably that crazy sheep card in the trailer.

The closest comparison for Babbling Book is Webspinner for Hunters. Both are 1 mana 1/1s that provide a random card. But, while Webspinner is a Deathrattle and gives beasts, BB is a Battlecry and gives mage spells. I think BB comes out on top here, both for how instant that effect is and for how strong the card pool it draws from is.

Webspinner's Tier Score is 75. It is the best 1-drop for hunters.
For mages Mana Wyrm is 76 and Zombie Chow is 79 as the two strongest 1-drops. Where do you think BB will fall into this?

Main points:

• They were afraid N'Zoth would be too powerful so they refrained from making good deathrattle minions in WOTOG. They feel they have a better understanding of his power now and thus feel more confortable about making future deathrattle cards;

• Fiery War Axe is not the best card in the game. He mentioned Tirion as being above Fiery War Axe according to their statistics;

• They are fine with warrior having so many viable decks because they like diversity and warriors don't have a higher winrate compared to other classes like shaman or warlock;

• He says there will always be a class in the bottom spot so he is not worried about the current priest state. He says that the important thing is to make sure the rankings get shuffled as new expansions are released so that it's not the same class in the bottom spot;

• He said mages had 2 good arena cards and 1 bad card in Karazhan so they made sure the bad one was in the common spot but at least one good one was bound to be common;

• For the weaker arena classes like warrior they made sure the good cards were in the common spot while the weaker one in the rare spot;

• Mike Donais' favourite Legendary card of the set has not been released so far but according to him this legendary fits in his priest and mage decks;

• They are considering lowering the % chance of people getting quests that require wins;

• They received positive feedback from the "play a friend week" but still haven't discussed or decided anything about making that permanent;

• They are satisfied with the variety in the meta and that the win rates of the best decks are closer together than they've ever been;