vS Data Reaper Report #331

September 25, 2025

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Welcome to the 331st edition of the Data Reaper Report!

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Class/Archetype Distribution | Class Frequency | Matchup Winrates | vS Power Rankings | vS Meta Score | Class Analysis & Decklists | Meta Breaker of the Week | How to Contribute | Credits

Number of Games

Overall 1,576,000
Top 1K Legend 42,000
Legend (Excluding Top 1k) 456,000
Diamond 4 to 1 336,000
Diamond 10 to 5 339,000
Platinum 189,000
Bronze/Silver/Gold 214,000

Class/Archetype Distribution

Class Frequency

Class Frequency Discussion

Warlock has been on a tear in the last couple of weeks, gaining significant traction across ladder, while usurping Rogue as the most popular class at top legend. Two decks have contributed to this trend. Quest Warlock has begun to earn more respect from players, who recognize it has been outperforming Death Knight and Rogue in the last few weeks. But the balance patch is also responsible, as the Egg of Khelos buff has led to the emergence of Egg Warlock. This archetype is completely built around copying and popping the legendary egg. While initial experimentations with this deck failed after the launch of the mini-set, these attempts have been revisited following the buff.

Fyrakk Rogue remains the most popular deck at top legend, but Warlock’s rise has tempered some of its momentum. No other Rogue deck sees a significant amount of play.

While Death Knight is still the most popular class in the format, it has been on a steady decline since the patch and is under threat of being overtaken by Warlock. Egg Warlock looks like the primary culprit of this development. At top legend, where the population of Egg Warlock peaks, Death Knight’s decline has been most drastic.

Priest’s popularity persists on the climb to legend, along with a non-trivial number of Control Priests. However, as with most other classes, Priest shrinks at higher levels of play when faced with an increasing number of the big three classes.

Warrior exhibits a noticeable decline in play that mirrors Death Knight to a smaller extent, which leads us to believe that Egg Warlock’s rise has a negative impact on its appeal.

Demon Hunter has introduced a new archetype centered around Spirit Peddler, adding to the three other strategies it already had. The class sees a decent amount of play but loses appeal at top legend.

Druid looks generally lost in the current format, until it hits top legend, where a solidified population of Spell-Damage Druid is found.

Spell Mage is in decline, while attempts to revitalize Protoss Mage are noticeable.

Quest Shaman has a small, dedicated number of players who are desperate to make it work. Experiments with Elemental Shaman can also be found. However, once we hit top legend, only Nebula Shaman survives.

Paladin has firmly established itself as the ‘noob’ class of Un’Goro, thanks to Quest Paladin’s characteristics. It is the most popular class at Bronze through Gold, steadily declines on the climb to legend, falls off at legend, and becomes completely non-existent at top legend.

Interest in Hunter is low. Beyond a modest presence of Beast Hunter outside of legend ranks, there is not much else going on.

Matchup Win Rates Header

Power Rankings Header

vS Meta Score

vS Power Rankings Discussion

Warlock

  • Egg Warlock is an elite top legend deck, driven by its matchups against the three most popular decks in the format. It is the only deck that exhibits positive matchups into all three of Blood-Ctrl DK, Fyrakk Rogue and Quest Warlock. Its performance outside of top legend is not as impressive, as the meta is more diverse and less focused on the “big 3” matchups, and it does have some poor matchups. It also has to do with players not optimizing the build and their play, so we expect an improvement in its performance over time.
  • Quest Warlock is strong at every level of play. It is comfortable facing Rogues and Death Knights, but it is also happy to queue into a more diverse field because its matchup spread is very balanced and well-rounded.
  • Starship Warlock is deep into refinement hell. Its best build is likely Tier 3 at top legend.

Rogue

  • The pressure at top legend coming from the Warlock class is being felt by Fyrakk Rogue players. Both Warlock decks have narrow advantages against Fyrakk Rogue, while the declining Blood-Ctrl DK represents a more comfortable opponent. High MMR players largely avoid decks that lose to Fyrakk Rogue, which means its powerful matchup spread against a large plethora of decks matters less.

Death Knight

  • Blood-Ctrl DK is feeling even more pressure, as Egg Warlock is a clear counter and an intimidating opponent. Should Egg Warlock gain further traction at higher levels of play, Blood-Ctrl DK may even fall to Tier 3 at top legend. In a more diverse environment, where Egg Warlock is not as successful, Blood-Ctrl DK should remain a Tier 1 performer.
  • Starship DK has a better matchup against Egg Warlock, which can explain why its top legend presence is relatively higher, but the deck’s overall matchup spread is not as dominant as Blood-Ctrl’s.
  • Herenn DK does not enjoy queuing into Egg Warlock either, though it is less refined than the other two DK decks. There is one new build that is significantly better than others and should take over the archetype. The persistence with the Frost build is hurting the archetype’s performance.

Priest

  • Protoss Priest has gotten stronger this patch. It is a hard counter to Egg Warlock and has enjoyed queuing into the more experimental decks that emerged from the patch. We expect its performance to deflate over time, as it shows no scope for improvement through refinement.
  • Wilted Priest is a sleeper strong deck that will remain underplayed as it performs best away from its target audience. Players at lower skill brackets are intimidated by its perceived difficulty, though the ones that get a handle on it, usually find success with it. At top legend, it is poorly positioned against the three popular decks, though it does have a dominant matchup against Egg Warlock that is worth keeping an eye on.

Warrior

  • Both Mech and Control Warrior have poor matchups against Egg Warlock. Control Warrior looks doomed at every level of play now. Mech Warrior is still fine on the climb to legend, but players care little to play it. If it is not outright dominant, it is unlikely to gain traction.

Demon Hunter

  • Aggro DH’s performance has spiked across ladder, establishing it as the best performing deck at every level of play, including top legend. The decline of Blood-Ctrl DK, its biggest counter, has catapulted Aggro DH to a position of quiet dominance. We know that Blood-Ctrl DK is still a popular deck, but it was enough for its numbers to decline to some extent for this to happen. Aggro DH is extremely difficult to counter otherwise and was purely balanced by the dominant presence of Death Knight. It soundly beats Egg Warlock and is favored against both Fyrakk Rogue and Quest Warlock, which means it does not fall off at higher levels of play anymore. Whether that causes players to pick up the deck is another story, but the ones that do are currently farming the field for free.
  • Peddler DH is a young deck with plenty of room to improve through refinement, so it seems competitive. However, its terrible matchup against Quest Warlock could prove to be an obstacle to its appeal.
  • Starship DH’s standing has not significantly changed from the patch. Even though it performs well against Egg Warlock, it has too many hard losing matchups to ever be consistent. Cliff Dive DH is performing well, but players do not seem to ever care about it.

Druid

  • Spell Damage Druid is flirting with a Tier 1 placement at top legend thanks to its dominant matchup against Egg Warlock. It benefits from the decline of Blood-Ctrl DK and rise of Warlock in general, as it counters Quest Warlock too.

Mage

  • The new build of Protoss Mage is significantly better than its old iteration, but it is still not a good deck in the current format. The rest of the Mage class continues to offer a large assortment of bad decks.

Shaman

  • Nebula Shaman is another strong Egg Warlock counter, but unlike Spell-Damage Druid, Shaman suffers from the rise of Quest Warlock, which means it has not gotten stronger as a result of the patch.
  • Quest Shaman remains complete garbage. Elemental Shaman joins Elemental Mage as another deck that performs okay at low skill brackets but has little appeal or competitive prowess beyond Diamond 5.

Paladin

  • Quest Paladin is a Tier 1 deck at Diamond 5 and below. It is a Tier 4 deck at top legend. Skill issue.
  • Aggro Paladin is superior to Quest Paladin in every way and looks like a great choice on the climb to legend, especially with Blood-Ctrl DK’s numbers declining, but the deck has far less appeal.
  • Terran Paladin might be playable following the Egg of Khelos buff, but the sample size is too low for us to make a confident statement.

Hunter

  • Beast Hunter is another benefactor of Death Knight’s decline. The climb to legend is easier with the deck now, but once again, aggressive decks seem to have very little appeal in this format regardless of how they perform.

Class Analysis & Decklists

Death Knight | Demon Hunter | Druid | Hunter | Mage | Paladin | Priest | Rogue | Shaman | Warlock | Warrior

 

Data Reaper Report - Warlock

Egg Warlock is the biggest story of the patch, with the archetype turning into one of the most influential decks at higher levels of play. Eliza Goreblade looks good. Kerrigan is bad and we can activate Elise without her. A second copy of Table Flip is unnecessary too. From 5 mana and upwards, we are just looking for cards that are not active liabilities and help us activate Elise.

Some players are beginning to cut Elise, seeing that the package of cards required to activate her are underwhelming. Instead, we run Abusive Sergeant and Archdruid of Thorns, furthering our egg synergy, to make up for the loss of Elise.

Currently, both builds look equal in power, though have some differences in matchups. The Thorns build is better against Death Knight, while the Elise build is better against other Warlocks.

Quest Warlock looks completely optimized.

Data Reaper Report - Rogue

No changes to Fyrakk Rogue. Customs Enforcer remains optimal due to the popularity of the mirror matchup. ‘Oh, Manager!’ still performs better than Nightmare Fuel.

Starship Death Knight currently has two equally strong builds. The BBB build is more defensive and better against aggressive decks, while the BBU build is better positioned against slower decks, as it has more tools to be proactive.

Herenn Death Knight shows more promise by adding Reanimated Pterrordax and Flesh Giant, exactly like Blood-Ctrl Death Knight has successfully done.

No changes to Blood-Ctrl Death Knight. Egg of Khelos looks significantly better than it used to, but it is still not a card we would run in the current format. If you ever want to improve your performance in grindy matchups, Kil’jaeden is superior to The Headless Horseman.

Data Reaper Report - Priest

We have not noticed any significant changes in the way the last few slots perform in Protoss Priest.

Wilted Priest’s build looks clean. Some players run Repackage instead of Hot Coals for Egg Warlock, but the card is not as important as it is perceived to be in this matchup. Wilted Priest can kill the Warlock regardless of the board state and the Warlock is too slow to pressure the Priest through its egg game plan. If Egg Warlock completely blows up, it might be a stronger consideration.

Data Reaper Report - Warrior

Warrior has generally worsened in this format because it struggles to deal with Egg of Khelos. There is not much the class can do to adjust, besides running very bad tech cards.

Peddler Demon Hunter looks competitive. The featured build is a prototype based on the first pass of how cards perform in the archetype. Felscreamer looks a little better than Dangerous Cliffside at the 4 mana slot. Players either run Wisp or Factory Assemblybot to activate Elise. Ferocious Felbat looks important. Climbing Hook does not seem that great. Naralex/Ysera are feasible but might be too greedy in a deck that already has a stronger mana cheating mechanic.

Data Reaper Report - Druid

No changes in Druid. Spell Damage Druid is the only competitive archetype in the class. Everything else is fake.

Data Reaper Report - Mage

A recent Protoss Mage build looks less terrible than what the archetype normally looks like. The original build runs Marin at the 7-mana slot, so naturally we decided to cut this terrible card for Naralex and the dragon slop package. The deck likes to run Ysera and Kalecgos anyway.

Data Reaper Report - Shaman

Dragon slop is the real deal in Nebula Shaman. We highly recommend after seeing data for it since the patch. Quest Shaman remains trash. Elemental Shaman is playable, though not great.

Data Reaper Report - Paladin

We are not confident about what exactly Terran Paladin’s win rate looks like after the patch, but we are confident the deck is drastically better than when it initially emerged to experiment with Egg of Khelos. Egg Warlock looked just as bad as Terran Paladin before the Egg buff, so there are reasons to believe Terran Paladin is at least Tier 3.

Data Reaper Report - Hunter

We had some hope for Quest Hunter early in the patch, but a recent nosedive in its performance has crushed our optimism. It is probably Beast Hunter or bust until the next expansion.



The buff to Egg of Khelos has made a significant impact on the format, with the emergence of a new deck that performs well against all three meta defining decks in the format. Egg is particularly effective against Death Knight, which has caused Blood-Ctrl DK to decline across ladder, especially at higher levels of play.

This has elevated the performance of aggressive decks, many of them greatly discouraged by the popularity of Blood-Ctrl DK and perhaps, their own appeal. Aggro DH stands above all as the best performing deck in the format, despite a miniscule play rate ranging from 1.5% to 2.5% across ladder.

Those looking for something new, can play Egg Warlock. Those looking for free wins, can play Aggro Demon Hunter.

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