Arena Map Pools and Rotation in Dragonflight PvP Season 1

(Source)

With the introduction of Nokhudon Proving Grounds as a new Arena map in Dragonflight, we’ve hit 15 total Arena maps that are available when players queue up. We feel that this is a large number to have in the pool at once and waters down a map’s impact in an Arena experience. That being said, we think it will be interesting and fun to divide up the maps into a rotation to keep the pool dynamic for players.

We feel a weekly cadence ensures players will see their favorite maps frequently during a season. Additionally, the decision for 8-map pools was made to compact the rotation so players will be able to more easily refine strategy on certain maps with specific compositions within a week.

After working with a few combinations, the iteration we will be implementing for Dragonflight Season 1 will be a rotation of 3 buckets with 8 maps each, that captured all our current maps:

While discussing internally what the map pools should look like, there were various factors we looked at to divide the maps up to be as fair as possible. The factors we looked at within each pool included map size (large and small), map line of sight placement (symmetrical pillars, Z-axis, or other variants), and to keep the new map in each rotation, which in Season 1 of Dragonflight is Nokhudon Proving Grounds.

We look forward to hearing about your experiences with this rotation in Season 1.