Hearthstone Dev Tracker

The December 2018 Ranked Play Season is now live—and we’re unveiling a new card back you can add to your collection!

The Frostwolf clan of orcs are renowned for their wisdom, honor, skill in battle—and their massive canine companions, the frost wolves! Theirs is a lineage of heroes, including their chieftain Durotan, and his famed son, Thrall among many others. When other orc clans fell prey to the machinations of the burning legion, the Frostwolf clan saw through the deception and stood firm. You could say that they choose their friends carefully. Prove that you are a friend of the Frostwolf: add the Frostwolf card back to your collection by playing Hearthstone during the month of December!

These card backs replace the art decorating the reverse side of your cards and are a great way to show off your Hearthstone accomplish...

Hi! I’m Tian, a Senior Data Scientist with the Hearthstone team, and today we’re talking about the math behind Arena balance.

Arena matches are played all the time, and they constantly generate data—A LOT of data—that we can use to help make sure that Arena is more balanced. If you had to place me in Boom Labs, I’d probably be in the Mathematical Science department!

The Balancing Game

Arena balance is done in two stages. First, we determine which bucket(s) each card goes into (a bucket is a subset of cards with similar performance quality). A card generally falls into two buckets, and we divide Legendary and non-Legendary cards into two different bucket systems. We decide which bucket each card falls into by its win-rate and pick-rate during games. That means each of the three cards you see during a pick are on similar power tiers.

Rastakhan’s Rumble is nigh! This Hearthstone update makes the final preparations and readies the Tavern for the arrival of Hearthstone’s newest expansion starting December 4! We’re also adding a Fireside Gatherings Pre-release event for Rastakhan’s Rumble, stocking up on Winter Veil decorations, and fixing some bugs.

Read on for details!

Rastakhan’s Rumble, is a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred expansion for Hearthstone featuring 135 new cards, starting December 4!

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