Hearthstone Arena Tier List: Best Arena Classes and Strategies (Festival of Legends + Audiopocalypse, June 2023)

The mini-set’s release, coupled with a set of adjustments, has led to some meaningful changes in the Arena, and as the format continued to track Constructed’s Standard-legal sets, the power level stayed extremely high, with many blowout cards to draft among the various classes, which, coupled with the low number of sets in the format, means that these ultra-powerful cards can be very consistently drafted. Unsurprisingly, this means that some classes start with a huge built-in advantage in the drafting stage – and knowing what to go for after the first round of microadjustments can make all the difference between a middling result and an infinite run.

Arena in June 2023: Rules and Strategies

Here’s what you need to know about the current format of the Arena: the old system of “buckets”, cards of roughly similar power levels offered against one another are gone, which means the drafting is once again based around card rarities. This means that many of the picks are straightforward as the power level difference between something like a Flamestrike and a Murloc Tinyfin is pretty easy to grasp.

Cards from the following sets can be drafted in the Arena right now:

  • Core
  • Voyage to the Sunken City
  • Murder at Castle Nathria
  • March of the Lich King
  • Path of Arthas
  • Festival of Legends
  • Audiopocalypse

Notable Neutral Arena Cards in the Festival of Legends (26.4.2) Metagame

Though this metagame is defined by certain specific class cards with ultra-high offering rates, the best-performing neutral cards remain the same as they were around the time of the launch of the main Festival of Legends set.

Nerubian Vizier, Hipster, Sketchy Stranger and Ghost Writer: The more things change, the more they stay the same. High-value Discover effects from curated pools featuring Standard cards remain ultra-valuable, and even though some of these tools have rotated to Wild, new ones came in to guarantee the continuation of the RNG fiesta. Thankfully, at least seems to have been adjusted down after a few days of clown fiesta. It’s useless to try to play around anything specific: stocking up on power and value is your best bet, trying to find the big class-specific bombs that define the format.

The Diver minions (Gangplank Diver, Slimescale Diver and Pelican Diver): Practically speaking, “Dormant for 1 turn” coupled with Rush is just a better version of summoning sickness unless you play Aggro, rendering the minions invulnerable until they gain initiative is a net positive. Pelican Diver is the weakest of the three but is still a vastly superior version of Worgen Infiltrator: the other two are broken removal tools, with Gangplank Diver guaranteeing at least a two-for-one. The best way to deal with them is to play one yourself.

Silvermoon Armorer and Silvermoon Sentinel: These two Manathirst cards were the strongest neutral minions added in the March of the Lich king set from an Arena perspective, and they can still play a part in the Standard rotation, though their effectiveness has been somewhat lessened. Right now, greeding it out for the bonus effects is almost always the better play.

Darkfallen Shadow: This unassuming little card often turns out to be a cheaper Restless Mummy, making it a super-strong neutral tool to clear up problematic boards. Its cousin, Remixed Musician, fulfills the same role in a deck.

Umbral Geist: A bit like Sneaky Delinquent, this is a two-drop that replaces itself while also bringing Undead synergies to exploit. No matter how fragile it is, it’s still a very good card in its category.

Party Animal: A surprisingly relevant two-drop even in this metagame, as the extra Health and Attack added to your hand really make a significant difference in terms of the minion’s overall stat output.

Concert Promo-Drake: An effective if expensive neutral hard removal tool: keep it in mind at all times in the later turns of the game. The Tradeable keyword makes it a reasonable draft even in faster metagames, just be sure to let it go when you need a bit more tempo.

Festival of Legends (26.4.2) Arena Class Tier List

The Ones to Beat – Mage (53.1%) and Shaman (52.7%)

Even after a significant adjustment to some of their previous power cards, Shamans continue their Arena domination even after the mini-set’s release. Thankfully, the oppressive Pack the House is now only in a quarter of the decks, but the mini-set’s given the class three excellent cards.

Jam Session is a flexible buff/removal tool that is almost always useful in the battle for board control, Backstage Bouncer is an unfair amount of stats, especially with the class’ built-in token generation, and Horn of the Windlord, mercifully only seen once in every two decks, does way too much in a single card from an Arena perspective.

Couple this with strong midrange tools in the form of Fire Elemental, Harkener of Dread and Command of Neptulon, plus a seasoning of Evolve shenanigans, and you’ve got a winner.

Meanwhile, Mages have slipped back to the top by doing Mage things. Fiddlefire Imp and Audio Splitter, plus the buff to Infinitize the Maxitude, a card you can fairly consistently discover in the format, give them more than enough resources, including burn spells, to drown lesser classes in value. If Mage gets Maxitude, they’re the kind of long game and it’s very, very hard to outvalue them – you have to go fast and hope that they don’t discover the right answers.

The Strong Contenders – Death Knight (51.8%), Warrior (51.2%), Hunter (50.5%), and Paladin (49.4%)

Death Knights are also back, back again. The class continues to pose a problem in the format, as it is often too strong if its Discover cards are reliably draftable, while falling behind otherwise. This time, courtesy of the mini-set’s two strong tempo cards, Hollow Hound and Cool Ghoul, they can more than keep up with the proceedings.

Double Unholy and single Frost still remain your primary goal: this way, you gain access to Hardcore Cultist without missing out on staple cards like Army of the Dead and Battlefield Necromancer. However, the presence of Hollow Hound makes Blood a lot more attractive alternative, especially if you get to combine the card with either Screaming Banshee or Arcanite Ripper.

Warriors’ strategies have not changed since the mini-set, though it has become much harder to draft multiple Riff cards to chain together. They can still put their feet down early on with Anima Extractor and Imbued Axe before getting into Riff stuff in the mid-game, capping things off with Tidal Revenants – or, in the case of emergency, cast The Fires of Zin-Azshari. The heavily discounted Abyssal Bassists are also a great addition, and much like Shamans, Warriors can also make great use of both Jam Session and Backstage Bouncer – the latter also an excellent Discover option from Frightened Flunky.

Hunters are still a weird mishmash of ideas. Marked Shot is the class’ best-performing card, which doesn’t give you a direction. Mages and Shamans will wipe you off the board at some point, so burn damage is essential, most likely in the form of Otherwise, it’s a collection of midrange high-value cards Stonebound Gargon, Keeneye Spotter, Savannah Highmane et al), early tempo plays Bunch of Bananas, Arrow Smith, Frenzied Fangs, and a lot of hoping and dreaming that your assault isn’t stopped. Of the mini-set cards, only Hollow Hound holds relevance.

A small technical note: if you’re looking to ramp up the Deathrattle on Jungle Jammer, you want to stop at six for a chance to roll Mister Mukla or Savannah Highmane. For specialized scenarios, Invincible is the only 8-cost Beast in the pool right now.

Paladins are still all about tempo plays and buffs, but it’s a real feast or famine affair for the class. Early pop-offs with Disco Maul heading into Horn of the Windlord, with drafted or discovered attack buffs, and a couple of infused Buffet Bigguns and Cool Ghouls along the way? Good luck stopping that. With a buffed Consecration and the flexibility of Muckborn Servant, there is a strong deck to be found. Deviate from this path, however, either in terms of strategy or card quality, and you are bound to fall woefully short.

The Lowrolls – Rogue (47.3%), Demon Hunter (45.4%) and Priest (44.6%)

Each of these classes is sort of playable but unspectacular, lacking the power spikes required to compete with the top dogs.

Rogues, much like Mages, lean heavily into the Discover fiesta (and Concoction shenanigans), but they are significantly worse at it, with the win rates to show for it.

Demon Hunters are still locked into an aggressive approach: Glaivesharks and weapons and Illidari Inquisitors still force the class to move fast and break things, hoping it will be enough without burn that reliably gets through taunts. At least Brutal Annihilan is an added way to push damage, but the strategy as a whole fails more often than succeeds.

Priests used to be the villain of the metagame not so long ago, courtesy of reliable Identity Theft drafts and super-consistent Partner in Crime plays (featuring combos with Cathedral of Atonement or Power Chord: Synchronize, among others) made them mind-numbing to play against. However, since what seems to be hefty nerf during a round of microadjustments, the class has been slipping in terms of win rate and it’s closer and closer to falling into the lowest tier. Their strategies are still the same, and both Plagiarizarrr and Fanboy turned out to be great additions, but it isn’t enough for consistent results.

The Garbage Pile –Warlock (39.2%) and Druid (36.1%)

Perhaps this steaming pile of junk on the bottom of this article is the best way to showcase just how little the addition of the mini-set has changed, big picture-wise. The same two classes are stuck on the bottom, exactly where they used to be a release and a full set of adjustments ago, with even lower win percentages, for the same reason as before.

Druids lack the consistent curve and the board buffs needed for a successful token build and can’t reliably compete in any similar manner with any of the late-game strategies. Meanwhile, not even Warlocks’ premium slate of removals can get you past the finish line against the third or fourth Pack the House and Bridge Riff, or the near-infinite resources generated by Mages and Death Knights. Avoid those classes at all cost, they’re basically unplayable right now.

Yellorambo

Luci Kelemen is an avid strategy gamer and writer who has been following Hearthstone ever since its inception. His content has previously appeared on HearthstonePlayers and Tempo/Storm's site.

Check out Yellorambo on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

35 Comments

  1. Nathair
    December 25, 2022 at 11:15 am

    This is the best update/iteration you’ve written. “Please ignore these.” Not once have I seen you actually say just ignore and retire the run, admittedly I’ve only read the last 5 or 6 updates but at least DK is doing well somewhere.

  2. Ryguy511
    June 10, 2022 at 1:34 pm

    i got 7 wins with priest not knowing what class to pick, I actually did draft an “I’m undead not dead dead,” but the main winner for me was Grave Rune, man! if you can hit any minion 6 cost or higher with “deathrattle: summon 2 copies of it,” you’re set.

    I think people might be afraid of using it, as I was, because of silence but I think you worry they have silence 99% of the time they actually dont and you just win so hard with this spell

    also, it is extremely likely to get Zerek’s Cloning Gallery from discover, and I found this strat of summoning a 1/1 version of a big minion, then silencing+copying it with Azharan Ritual, creating 10/10 in stats out of nowhere, basically making your opponent always afraid to leave minions up

    so Azharan Ritual and Grave Rune are S tier picks, Azharan Ritual is so good at worst its a 4 mana faceless manipulator

  3. JoyDivision
    May 2, 2022 at 1:32 am

    Can you please explain the ‘Mothership paragraph’? I don’t understand it tbh.

  4. PekkR
    March 11, 2022 at 10:51 am

    No deck codes ?

  5. DemianHS
    August 23, 2021 at 5:19 am

    That Hunter card… Man, it’s just hilarious in Arena. xD I’m playing now a Mage Run with First Flame and two Box of Yogg, broken cards indeed.

  6. Kukaloko
    August 22, 2021 at 4:16 am

    @Yellorambo, thanks for Arena Article! Very nice job!

  7. 9ameplay
    July 21, 2021 at 12:00 am

    how paladin tier 3.. doesn’t make any sense…

  8. Asperkraken
    June 25, 2021 at 1:39 pm

    Great info but it was a bit light around tier 2 (i understand tier 1 is optimal, but luck doesn’t always pan that way).

    I would love to see a drafting guide for Arena class-by-class – it’s a totally different ballgame than Standard/Wild and even Duels deckbuilding and would love to see more of that. I saw plenty of good suggestions in the article though – would just like more. Keep up the good work.

  9. Kukaloko
    June 24, 2021 at 2:22 pm

    Thanks for the article!! Its hard to find something for arena

  10. Skysolstice
    March 26, 2019 at 10:49 pm

    Does any of you guys participating the upcoming WCG event? If yes, from what region are you?

  11. GlosuuLang
    September 14, 2018 at 3:33 am

    I’ve been enjoying Arena quite a lot in Boomsday, except for one little thing: Giggling Inventor. The card is already too good in Constructed, and in Arena it’s bonkers good. And more annoying than MC Tech. By turn 5 you might have one or two minions on board. They drop the Giggling, and it’s a very annoying stall. What usually happens is you can take out one Annoy-o-Tron, and the opponent magnetizes the other Annoy-o-Tron (usually with Wargear) and swings the board in his favor, sealing the game. So either you have a Giggling Inventor of your own, or a hard-counter like Mossy (I’ve been prioritizing crafting it), or you probably lose. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem if classes still had plenty of AOE spells, but since we have less spells now, decks normally have one or two AOEs. Wasting it on a Giggling means you can’t swing the game back in the future, but you’re kind of forced to do so if you don’t want Annoy-o-trons to get magnetized. So yeah, card’s busted. Make it 6 mana already. And offer it less often, just like MCT was adjusted and we see it less often now.

  12. Stonekeep - Site Admin
    September 12, 2018 at 2:23 am

    Arena Tier List was updated for Boomsday Project. Comments below this one were made about one of the previous versions of this article.

  13. AnUn
    August 9, 2018 at 2:34 pm

    Already some insights regarding Boomsday? 🙂

  14. Heki
    June 24, 2018 at 2:44 am

    I gave a warrior a chance in arena and I have managed to get 8,6 average wins in 5 runs. The key is to draft 2 Spellstones plus 4-6 Weapons and some new 5/6 Dragons for value. Then add some heal and Warpath for reset and you are good to go.

  15. Quekjr
    June 13, 2018 at 7:31 pm

    I think pulling stats off hsreplay during the taverns of time event was a bad idea, it reduces the longevity of this articles accuracy to 2 weeks

  16. JoyDivision
    June 13, 2018 at 12:38 am

    Asides from once again requesting a change log for such articles, you should delete (or archive, or mark) comments that were posted to older versions of the article.

    It’s a litte … irritating to read through them, only to raise eyebrows, only to look at the date they were posted, only to find out they are referencing to an older version of the article. 😉

  17. Remieh
    June 12, 2018 at 10:46 am

    I just love how I got to choose between Priest, Druid and Warrior in my Taverns of Time arena, so classic! 😀 At least it was free…

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      June 12, 2018 at 10:58 am

      Don’t worry, the Arena’s balance is not that bad right now. Even the worst 3 classes can get an insane draft, they just lag behind a bit in terms of averages 🙂

  18. Cyrusbahraini
    December 30, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    x1 blizzard
    x1 cairne bloodhoof
    x1 kabal crystal runner
    x2 bog creeper
    x1 firelands portal
    x1 sleepy dragon

    How many of these are mage cards? 17/30. Just disagree mage is always going to be good in arena unless they get rid of blizzard and flame strike.

    I know this is just an article but I wanted to add to the debat saw another comment someone made and I totally agree with the guy. I was playing with mage as I was reading this in arena.

  19. Cyrusbahraini
    December 30, 2017 at 12:43 pm

    yeah I think mage should be higher. Massive board clear in general is good in arena to get board advantage/ Game advantage. I almost feel like this is talking about what cards are best in each class for arena ( just need a few good mage cards and natural/ Heck I can find good mage cards in classic set forget about new sets). Not what is the best arena class ATM. I have played pally and ran out of steam multi-able times but when I play mage I get stuff like flame strike and primal helps me get those as well for cheaper. other examples Blizzard. Arcane missile.

    your telling me if I have blizzard 2 arcane missile and primal in my deck that I cant beat an aggro pally. Im tier 3 I totally disagree. In most games the lowest tier means unplayable

    6-1 right now
    x1 shifting scroll
    x1 arcane missile
    x1 mana wyrm
    x1 wax elemental
    x1 archane explotion
    x1 arcanologist
    x1 faerie dragon
    x2 medivh valet
    x1 primordial glyph
    x1 emperor cobra
    x1 explosive runes
    x1 frozen clone
    x1hyldnir frostrider
    x1 kirin tor mage
    x1pterrordax
    x1 spellbender
    x1 viloet illusionist
    x1 water elemental
    x1 bittertide hydra
    x1 green jelly
    x1 nesting roc

  20. Cyrusbahraini
    December 30, 2017 at 12:42 pm

    yeah I think mage should be higher. Massive board clear in general is good in arena to get board advantage/ Game advantage. I almost feel like this is talking about what cards are best in each class for arena ( just need a few good mage cards and natural/ Heck I can find good mage cards in classic set forget about new sets). Not what is the best arena class ATM. I have played pally and ran out of steam multi-able times but when I play mage I get stuff like flame strike and primal helps me get those as well for cheaper. other examples Blizzard. Arcane missile.

    your telling me if I have blizzard 2 arcane missile and primal in my deck that I cant beat an aggro pally. Im tier 3 I totally disagree. In most games the lowest tier means unplayable

    6-1 right now
    x1 shifting scroll
    x1 arcane missile
    x1 mana wyrm
    x1 wax elemental
    x1 archane explotion
    x1 arcanologist
    x1 faerie dragon
    x2 medivh valet
    x1 primordial glyph
    x1 emperor cobra
    x1 explosive runes
    x1 frozen clone
    x1hyldnir frostrider
    x1 kirin tor mage
    x1pterrordax
    x1 spellbender
    x1 viloet illusionist
    x1 water elemental
    x1 bittertide hydra
    x1 green jelly

  21. Mattzilla
    December 26, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    Crushing hand is Shaman, not Hunter. I agree with this list. Arena has seen the most evolution from the new expansion with all he new OP cards like Voidlord, spellstones and such.

  22. BlueSpartan
    December 26, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    Looks reasonable, but I might swap Priest to tier 1 in place of Paladin, and Mage to tier 2 in place of Rogue, based on latest win rates on hsreplay.

  23. Chalupa
    December 14, 2017 at 2:35 am

    when i do 12 win arena all i ever see are priests/rogues/hunters and occasionally locks/pallys. mage/druid are like 1 every 10 games. and i never really see any shaman/warrior.

  24. Swuirrel
    December 5, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    I stopped reading when I saw Mage listed as tier 2…

    • Ian
      February 24, 2018 at 9:47 am

      Yeah I keep looking for somebody to justify this. Cause priest has so much removal…

  25. Drake
    November 1, 2017 at 3:38 pm

    Free arena tickets just remind me why I don’t arena. Run into decks with epics and legendaries and you don’t have any. Real fun lol.

    • TheCLoudDreamer
      December 2, 2017 at 11:12 am

      Probably the dumbest com I’ve read in years, thanks.

      • GnarlyRabbit
        December 25, 2017 at 7:18 pm

        I think he meant he hates free arena tickets for reminding him arena exists.

    • Wikinnes
      December 5, 2017 at 12:44 am

      So I guess you’d rather play in constructed against bullshit decks like Razakus priest and Exodia mage

      • Grease
        December 6, 2017 at 5:19 am

        Probably says Druid, with most boring (with or vs) and most easy to play deck ever (maybe with pirate warr).. wouldn’t play it even when I have all the cards for… would be ashamed

      • Cano
        December 6, 2017 at 8:59 pm

        1. Exodia mage isn’t very popular (or good) right now because of tempo rogue, and midrange huntee

        2. Razakus still takes skill to play

        I do hate exodia mage, but it isn’t seen on ladder that often, so quit your salt.

        • Jeanpeso
          December 27, 2017 at 5:12 am

          Razakus still takes skill to play. Its not even 2018 but you made my whole year. Thanks

        • Spyder9899
          December 28, 2017 at 5:32 pm

          Lol. Face hunter takes more skill to play than razakus priest.