The truth is something will always be the most powerful, and very infrequently is that thing so powerful we feel it's necessary to step in. One of the biggest reasons we don't step in and make a bunch of changes all the time is that it's important when people think something is powerful that the answer be 'what deck can I play/make to stop it' and not 'I'll just wait for Blizzard to nerf it'.
Please balance constructed before adjusting things with arena. 'Shamanstone' is making me actively dislike playing HS for the first time since the Hunter-taker meta.
MSG comes out soon. I think cards like Felfire and Dragonfire potion will be quite strong vs Shaman. Lots of existing decks are getting further support and totally new archetypes are also being introduced. This is all happening while the existing mid-range Shaman gets very little. The hope is that constructed Shaman goes down in play-rate a bit post launch, but we're likely to make a change if one strategy is dominant across multiple content updates.
Might be worth keeping in mind that Mage being perceived as the number one class so widely is a two-way street. You're considering the bias it builds against other classes, but the pro-Mage selection bias also means that lower skill-level Arena players are more likely to insta-pick Mage and bring it's winrate below the optimal level of the cardpool. It's very possible that a statistically significant portion of the people selecting shaman are players skilled enough at Arena to understand the strengths of the class (and the benefits it saw from the patch), skewing the winrate closer to the optimal level of play for the available cards.
I am very grateful to you and the entire HS team for taking such a hard look at Arena balance. But as someone who has played (and loved) majority Arena since beta, I find it highly unlikely that another class is actually better than mage at the moment.
You might be right. I think one of the best ways to check is to look at the records of all individual players and seeing what their personal best class is. I would guess that a smaller number of players 'best class' is Mage than you would think. We currently don't track these statistics, but I've been curious. I think there is a spreadsheet for streamer stats somewhere I'd like to check out.
bullshit. most of the actual best players play every class and would quickly see if Mage was suffering in winrate. People noticed quickly when Paladin fell behind Shaman in Karazhan, because they track winrates. also, sites like Heartharena do give comment on statistics such as "good player winrates" (6.5+ average), not just global stats.
I think when the numbers actually do say one class has a > win rate than another people catch on very quickly, but I think my point is that even if Mage in a perfectly matchmade by skill world was a 50% class, statistics still don't show that. It's more of a 'this is an interesting hypothesis' than 'we aren't going to do anything about it because it's all in your heads!'. It's something we have to address regardless if it's a problem due to perception or a problem due to actual imbalance.
Have you ever considered removing rarity as a factor of what cards show up for the non-legendaries? That instead of getting 3 commons, you could end up getting an epic and 2 commons to choose from for example? I think if all non-legendary cards had equal odds of showing up, it would also make it easier to pinpoint which cards are actually too strong and which ones are total junk too.
Yes, this is something we've talked about at length and will continue to debate. In some ways I like that rares and epics show up less often because it makes them feel more special when they do show up. Also when commons show up at a very high rate, it's easier for experienced players to predict what kind of cards they are up against. On the flip side, there are a lot of rares and epics we would like to show up in arena more often because they are fun or give people opportunities to draft a particular style of deck. Right now it's hard to do that when rares and epics show up so infrequently. We're undecided on this, but I don't think it will change in the near future.
I don't know how i feel about creatures being removed, but i do like the idea /u/gammalantern had. Because he posted it in a separate thread i thought i'd mention it.
Give players a choice like Raven Idol, you either get to pick between 3 spells or 3 creatures. Or maybe only 10 picks give you this choice, so we don't have to face freeze mage in arena.
This would of course bring its own problems, namely classes with strong spells becoming too strong, but it can be tweaked. How about removing Spider Tank for only mage to balance out their stronger spells?
And you could really just run some experiments with this to see if it's feasible. Give us some form of Raven Idol arena for a week and see how it goes.
Things like this are on the table, but probably for a much later date. The general idea of 'special arena cards' is pretty cool. Things that only show up or make sense in the arena. Cards you can draft that affect your future drafts, cards you can draft that allow you to have 4 losses instead of 3, cards that allow you to re-draft your deck, cards that are face-down? Lots of cool ideas, but our focus is more directed at balance and overall arena gameplay for the moment.
In general, the highest played classes are also the highest in win rate
Absolutely false statement. With more number of games being played - the lower the win rate become. It only decreases overtime.
Don't invent the wheel - if sample size of variables tends to infinity - numbers only get normalised and not increased.
Take a coin and flip it 200 times, write down results. Then see if ratio increases or normalises when you continue to flip it 500 times.
Or take Pavel with his current 73% win rate and compare to other pros for god's sake. The more he will play, the lower his win rate will be.
Which leads to conclusion that Mage's high win rate reason is definately not because it 'is most played class' in arena. It is because of it's strong classic cards. -Capt. Obv.
That statement doesn't come from opinion, but statistics. Mage has by far the highest play rate, and also has the highest win rate. Our lowest played class also has the lowest win rate. There are lots of factors involved but one of the driving ones is that if more people think a class is strong, more people will pick it.
matchmaking by skill would basically kill the format for f2p infinite players as doing well would PUNISH you for future runs.
That's why I think the entry/rewards scheme would have to be updated alongside a change like this. Matchmaking by record is always going to make the format relatively low population because it is so unfriendly to new or less skilled players. It's hard for me to justify that being correct, but as you said there are some complications with just changing the way we matchmake. It sounds like you would rather matchmake based on record like we are now?
I believe they really need to add in an algorithm to increase the number of spells offered. Its kinda ridiculous how I often have decks with 1 or 2 spells in them because I was only ever offered minions or extremely shitty spells.
If they could at least force a way to have 5 or 6 occurrence where you are given a choice between 3 spells, it would make the Arena experience better and would help improve this Tempo meta we are currently plagued with by favoring comeback mechanics inherent in spells.
Agree. The distribution between quality minions vs quality spells is a bit higher than we would like. Something we are looking to adjust.
Yong: I think there's sometimes a little bit of perception from the community that we don't think about Arena, that we don't care about it. That's just not true.
You know actions speak louder than words...
I agree. It will be a multi-stage approach. The first stage is MSG. We took arena into heavy consideration when choosing rarities so I hope that contributes to a more balanced format. The second stage is to make some changes to how often certain cards in certain classes are available, and how often certain types of cards are available to all classes. Right now we're leaning towards a more spell heavy environment where we make things like Yeti/Spider Tank less prevalent than they are now in the hopes that arena becomes less about getting ahead and snowballing to victory. The third stage and beyond is a bit more hazy, but is about looking at the whole of arena format. Drafting by rarity? Wild vs Standard? Entrance Fee? Matchmaking by record vs Matchmaking by skill (huge implications there)? Lots of questions to be answered, but all things in discussion currently. Looking forward to any feedback you all have :).
Mage has been a top 3 class since Alpha in Arena. At a time when people were calling for Arena Balance and Warriors to be viable, they printed, in consecutive expansions, Ethereal Conjurer, Faceless Summoner, and Firelands Portal for Mages. Conjurer was a top 3 card in LoE, and Summoner and Portal were for all intents the best cards from OG and Kara. There was purify-level outrage about Summoner the moment it was announced (and it was banned from Arena 4 months later, proving the community knew better than Blizzard), then they outdid themselves with Portal. The arena changes are nice, but if they didn't let themselves get into a bad spot to begin with using some common sense, they may not have been necessary to begin with.
Of note, only one Mage common has been revealed so far. I'm certain there's going to be a broken common in the final card dump.
There are no 'broken' mage commons in MSG. Can confirm :).
Yep circular logic. Really convenient reasoning by Blizzard.
It's mostly a theory. I honestly believe if we made a bunch of background changes to Mage that made them the 5th best class, they would still be the best in terms of win rate because the best players would still assume Mage is the best. There is a breaking point of course, but I'm not sure how low that breaking point would be before the general public would actually start picking Mage at a lower rate.
Mage isn't the best Arena class...lmfao, good one!
It probably is, but I have some doubts. I think Shaman is probably 1st-3rd in terms of ranking right now but shows up statistically as the 5th most played class and the 3rd highest in terms of win rate. In general, the highest played classes are also the highest in win rate because word spreads quickly.
Spells appearing more often is the direction we are leaning. Cards like Spider Tank (powerful vanillas) showing up less and cards like Shadow Madness, Lightbomb, Hellfire (power board swings) showing up more seems like a better experience to have. Too many games come to getting ahead early and snowballing a victory rather than evaluating the risk of expending all your resources into a board clear effect.
Iksar
The truth is something will always be the most powerful, and very infrequently is that thing so powerful we feel it's necessary to step in. One of the biggest reasons we don't step in and make a bunch of changes all the time is that it's important when people think something is powerful that the answer be 'what deck can I play/make to stop it' and not 'I'll just wait for Blizzard to nerf it'.
Iksar
MSG comes out soon. I think cards like Felfire and Dragonfire potion will be quite strong vs Shaman. Lots of existing decks are getting further support and totally new archetypes are also being introduced. This is all happening while the existing mid-range Shaman gets very little. The hope is that constructed Shaman goes down in play-rate a bit post launch, but we're likely to make a change if one strategy is dominant across multiple content updates.
Iksar
Kazakus/Reno Mage has been super fun :).
Iksar
You might be right. I think one of the best ways to check is to look at the records of all individual players and seeing what their personal best class is. I would guess that a smaller number of players 'best class' is Mage than you would think. We currently don't track these statistics, but I've been curious. I think there is a spreadsheet for streamer stats somewhere I'd like to check out.
Iksar
I think when the numbers actually do say one class has a > win rate than another people catch on very quickly, but I think my point is that even if Mage in a perfectly matchmade by skill world was a 50% class, statistics still don't show that. It's more of a 'this is an interesting hypothesis' than 'we aren't going to do anything about it because it's all in your heads!'. It's something we have to address regardless if it's a problem due to perception or a problem due to actual imbalance.
Iksar
Yes, this is something we've talked about at length and will continue to debate. In some ways I like that rares and epics show up less often because it makes them feel more special when they do show up. Also when commons show up at a very high rate, it's easier for experienced players to predict what kind of cards they are up against. On the flip side, there are a lot of rares and epics we would like to show up in arena more often because they are fun or give people opportunities to draft a particular style of deck. Right now it's hard to do that when rares and epics show up so infrequently. We're undecided on this, but I don't think it will change in the near future.
Iksar
Things like this are on the table, but probably for a much later date. The general idea of 'special arena cards' is pretty cool. Things that only show up or make sense in the arena. Cards you can draft that affect your future drafts, cards you can draft that allow you to have 4 losses instead of 3, cards that allow you to re-draft your deck, cards that are face-down? Lots of cool ideas, but our focus is more directed at balance and overall arena gameplay for the moment.
Iksar
That statement doesn't come from opinion, but statistics. Mage has by far the highest play rate, and also has the highest win rate. Our lowest played class also has the lowest win rate. There are lots of factors involved but one of the driving ones is that if more people think a class is strong, more people will pick it.
Iksar
That's why I think the entry/rewards scheme would have to be updated alongside a change like this. Matchmaking by record is always going to make the format relatively low population because it is so unfriendly to new or less skilled players. It's hard for me to justify that being correct, but as you said there are some complications with just changing the way we matchmake. It sounds like you would rather matchmake based on record like we are now?
Iksar
Agree. The distribution between quality minions vs quality spells is a bit higher than we would like. Something we are looking to adjust.
Iksar
I agree. It will be a multi-stage approach. The first stage is MSG. We took arena into heavy consideration when choosing rarities so I hope that contributes to a more balanced format. The second stage is to make some changes to how often certain cards in certain classes are available, and how often certain types of cards are available to all classes. Right now we're leaning towards a more spell heavy environment where we make things like Yeti/Spider Tank less prevalent than they are now in the hopes that arena becomes less about getting ahead and snowballing to victory. The third stage and beyond is a bit more hazy, but is about looking at the whole of arena format. Drafting by rarity? Wild vs Standard? Entrance Fee? Matchmaking by record vs Matchmaking by skill (huge implications there)? Lots of questions to be answered, but all things in discussion currently. Looking forward to any feedback you all have :).
Iksar
There are no 'broken' mage commons in MSG. Can confirm :).
Iksar
It's mostly a theory. I honestly believe if we made a bunch of background changes to Mage that made them the 5th best class, they would still be the best in terms of win rate because the best players would still assume Mage is the best. There is a breaking point of course, but I'm not sure how low that breaking point would be before the general public would actually start picking Mage at a lower rate.
Iksar
It probably is, but I have some doubts. I think Shaman is probably 1st-3rd in terms of ranking right now but shows up statistically as the 5th most played class and the 3rd highest in terms of win rate. In general, the highest played classes are also the highest in win rate because word spreads quickly.
Iksar
Spells appearing more often is the direction we are leaning. Cards like Spider Tank (powerful vanillas) showing up less and cards like Shadow Madness, Lightbomb, Hellfire (power board swings) showing up more seems like a better experience to have. Too many games come to getting ahead early and snowballing a victory rather than evaluating the risk of expending all your resources into a board clear effect.