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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.
