I think there are a lot of problems with the arena. But I would like to start with the most basic ones.
I twice encountered opponents (this season) who had more than one legendary card in the starting deck. I don’t know how this is possible. One of them had a Chinese nickname (on the European server) and his second legendary card was Puzzlemaster Khadgar. His weapon launched three fireballs and one ice arrow at me in a row (there were a lot of my creatures on the field). I filed a fraud report. But I still don’t understand how this is possible.
Asian bots. There are a lot of them in the mode, they spoil the game, have unreadable nicknames and love to find lethal damage in dubious ways.
Absolutely dishonest cards. I would include the hero cards that returned to the Arena as one of them. How can you play against Hagatha? Yes, maybe you can win earlier on the hunter. But what card, in principle, can compete with it in strength? And if we also take into account the fact that the shaman with Hagatha is guaranteed to receive the 4th treasure?
Incredibly toxic cards. For example, Alexandros Mograine, Corrupt the Waters. Perhaps Jotun the Eternal, Deepminer Brann, Deathstalker Rexxar are also in the mode (I haven’t seen them yet). These are cards that have an effect until the end of the match, they cannot be canceled or dispelled in any way, and there are no technical cards against them. In some cases, you just know that you will lose, even though the card has just been played. It’s disgusting.
Please do something about the arena. This is the only mode I play and enjoyed playing. Arenas with two classes, arenas with multiple legendaries, everything was better than what we have now. Seeing Anomalus, Sayge Seer of Darkmoon and Aluneth when you first choose, realizing that after 3 victories you will meet the guys with Hagatha - this is very sad.
You probably just missed how one of their plays that generated an additional legendary—it’s unlikely to be from a hack.
There are several threads going, which discuss the plague of asian barcode bot accounts in Arena and the incoming plans for dealing with them:
Incredibly powerful cards in constructed tend to be a lot more broken in Arena, such as Pirate Admiral Hooktusk, who’s requirement to play seven pirates turns out to not be a difficult to accomplish for Rogue—nor is it difficult to synergize the card with a couple of Shadow steps or other forms of bounce.
I have often exploited the power of Mage’s Grand Finale (Summon an 8/8 Elemental. Repeat for each Elemental you played last turn), because it’s quite easy for Mage to play a lot of cheap elementals before turn 8.
https://imgur.com/a/qx1Yc82
Powerful quest cards, like Fire Plume’s Hearts (to get Sulfuras and Die,Insect) can easily become “I win” cards.
Other overly impactful cards in Arena include Dr. Holli’dae, Raid Boss Onyxia, Climatic Necrotic Explosion, Puzzlemaster Khadgar, Bloodreaver Gul’dan, Timewinder Zarimi (the fact that they continue to make cards like this or Wheel of Death demonstrates how little the devs have learned about making balanced cards), etc…
Hero Cards are overrated. I think they are fine in Modern day arena were you get other Powerful legendaries to pick from on you first pick. People get too focused on Hero Card adding value generation for the rest of the game they don’t even notice that there wasn’t much game left and a better Legendary would have ended the game much sooner.
I was destroying people with Hero Cards back in KFT and destroying them even easier now with my power crept commons.