We do not deserve to be experimented on with severely underdeveloped ideas. Arena players deserve better.

With every new thing we add to the game, we learn from community feedback, and iterate. Community feedback is a critical part of the process, and the idea that we should only release perfect things that require no feedback is unrealistic.

We believe mixing the Arena experience up more frequently is better than leaving a single rule-set in place forever.

Regarding "synergy picks", one of the areas we think Arena is weak right now is the ability for players to feel really clever during the Arena drafting process. Often you pick cards that are individually powerful, but taking a card that is powerful given other cards you might see is very risky.

We've been experimenting with different prototypes to try and bring this level of gameplay to Arena, including paper printouts of Hearthstone cards so we can test without needing engineers to go in and change the whole system before we find out if a change is even fun.

It's been difficult to provide the ability for players to chase synergies (and to feel clever by doing so), while maintaining the "anything can happen" feel that makes Arena awesome. This was a first foray, and the community feedback will feed into our next iteration. We consider Arena, and hell, the entire game, to be a collaboration with the community.

I come to reddit every day. I love reading about and discussing Hearthstone, the development process, and how we can make things better together. I don't want our communities to have a "players vs developers" vibe. I want to work with players to make the game we all love to play even better.

Feedback is critical, but when it's delivered in a way that pits us against each other as factions, it is damaging. Let's work together!

Furthermore, we know for an absolute fact that they have historically consulted well known Constructed players on big changes to constructed, so why isn't this done for Arena /u/IksarHS ?

While I understand Constructed Standard is Hearthstone's flagship format, the introduction of the Arena leaderboard seemed to suggest you were granting Arena parity with Constructed. Changes like these though, without: A) Any announcement prior to the change (Can you imagine if Standard had just suddenly rolled in with the WOTOG patch? Or the mass of nerfs?) or; B) Consultation, suggests this strive for parity is going backwards.

We do. Adwcta and Merps both know they can contact us directly and talk through changes or issues, we have done so in the past. We also talk with Kripp, Hafu, and some of the people in the Chinese community who are also very passionate about arena. (Source - Dean Ayala)