Welcome to the 348th 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 | 2,413,000 |
| Top 1K Legend | 90,000 |
| Legend (Excluding Top 1k) | 672,000 |
| Diamond 4 to 1 | 560,000 |
| Diamond 10 to 5 | 494,000 |
| Platinum | 272,000 |
| Bronze/Silver/Gold | 325,000 |
Class/Archetype Distribution
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All Ranks
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D1 to D4
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Legend
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Top 1K Legend
Class Frequency
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Weekly
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Daily
Class Frequency Discussion
Herald Rogue is experiencing two different trends. At top legend, it has significantly declined in play, from nearly 30% to slightly over 20% of the field. Elsewhere on ladder, it has risen in play, so the deck’s popularity is no longer skewed to high MMR’s. We have noted before that this deck’s attractiveness, rather than its performance, is the biggest factor in its popularity. Once its performance declined last week, some top legend players, who are more driven to win, dropped the deck.
Following its recent success, partly due to a strong matchup against Herald Rogue, Dragon Warrior has risen at all levels of play. Other Warrior decks remain niche.
Merithra Druid has spiked at top legend, but at other rank brackets, it has seen no movement. A small population of Token Druids is beginning to emerge too.
Spell Demon Hunter has declined across all levels for another week, though it remains popular at higher levels of play.
Quest Mage has expectedly risen at top legend. A more modest rise is seen elsewhere on ladder, which we suspect is the result of the relative difficulty of piloting the deck compared to other options.
Aura Paladin has declined, while Aggro Paladin has slightly risen in play, keeping its presence small.
Herald Shaman has declined, especially at Diamond ranks and below, where more players have taken up Herald Rogue.
Hunter has declined, as the class is relatively stagnant compared to other meta choices.
Control Priest and Herald Death Knight remain popular choices on ladder, despite their horrendous performance levels. Only their shrinking top legend play rates are a hint to their struggles to compete. Warlock attracts very little interest across ladder.
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All Ranks
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D4 to Legend
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Legend
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Top 1K Legend
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Legend
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D1 to D4
vS Meta Score
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Top 1K Legend
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Legend
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D1 to D4
vS Power Rankings Discussion
Rogue
- Herald Rogue continues to decline in its performance due to the further rise in Dragon Warrior. The Quest Mage matchup is also proving to be tougher at top legend, to the point some Rogues have even started running Rustrot Viper. Ultimately, Herald Rogue does not perform well against the top meta contenders. Its best matchups are against the worst classes in the game: Death Knight, Priest and Warlock.
Warrior
- Dragon Warrior remains an elite ladder performer, though the rise of Merithra Druid has curbed its performance at top legend, where it is no longer a clear outlier.
- Egg Warrior performs well despite not being favored by players. Its extremely polarizing matchup spread is likely the reason it is unattractive.
Druid
- Merithra Druid is in a balanced position in the format. It performs better at higher levels of play mostly because there are less Paladins, which represent its biggest counter.
- Token Druid, based on its small sample, looks like a promising deck. It is either a Tier 2 or Tier 1 deck, depending on the rank. It is the strongest counter in the format to Merithra Druid.
Demon Hunter
- The decline in play of Spell Demon Hunter does not match its performance. The deck has gotten stronger at most rank brackets over the past week. Ironically, its drop in play is smallest at top legend, where the rise of Merithra Druid has caused its win rate to decline.
Mage
- The rise of Dragon Warrior has halted Quest Mage’s rise in win rate. Quest Mage remains the most skill intensive deck in the format, by some distance. It outperforms in matchups from Diamond to Top Legend by around 6%. This means it would have a 44% top legend win rate if it had an average skill ceiling, but exhibits a 50% win rate instead.
Paladin
- Paladin is extremely powerful on the climb to legend. Aura Paladin even outperforms Dragon Warrior at Diamond ranks now, but the deck significantly declines at top legend due to a low skill ceiling. In contrast to Quest Mage, it underperforms in matchups from Diamond to Top Legend by around 4%. Aura Paladin maintains a good win rate at top legend this week mostly due to the rise of Merithra Druid, which it counters.
- With Aggro Paladin, the drop off at higher levels of play is even more extreme, at a near 8%. It is a strong Druid counter that is hard countered by Demon Hunter.
Hunter
- The rise of Quest Mage is a positive development for Face Hunter, though the rise in Dragon Warrior is less ideal.
- Quest Hunter remains severely suboptimized, so continues to perform poorly.
Shaman
- Herald Shaman does well through most of ladder because players refuse to give up on Herald Death Knight and Control Priest, both of which Shaman hard stomps. Once these classes disappear, the competitive field is simply harsh for Shaman.
Death Knight, Priest and Warlock
- Still nothing.
Class Analysis & Decklists
Death Knight | Demon Hunter | Druid | Hunter | Mage | Paladin | Priest | Rogue | Shaman | Warlock | Warrior
More players piloting the Mistress variant in Herald Rogue are cutting Foxy Fraud and Flashback, early game tools, for Cultist Map and Glacial Shard. Since the variant does not have an infinite value button, Cultist Map is slightly better in this deck, though the main driver of this change is that this variant can be more passive early thanks to Mistress’ ability to reset the board later. Cutting Foxy Fraud also means cutting Opu, which allows us to fit in Mirrex.
The Imbue variant looks good and settled.
Dragon Warrior’s fire build has room for further tweaks. Adding back The Great Dracorex, replacing Shadow Informant, improves Precursory Strike’s performance, a card we marked as an underperformer last week. Dracorex was cut alongside the Herald package, but this might have been a premature change driven by the desire to lower the curve, as the legendary dragon performs well in the current format.
Living Flame is promising on a low sample size and is likely to be better than Twilight Egg. Egg is a weak card later in the game and not a great mulligan keep either, which can bait players.
Merithra Druid has 29 good cards. The 30th card is often Twilight Timereaver, but it has been consistently weak. In our search for a better 30th card, we encountered Forest Lord Cenarius. It has good synergy with Wickerfang and Shaladrassil. It is a standalone payoff for ramp. It can be used as a board buff to win games. The low sample is promising. It is likely better than Timereaver, so we are floating it.
Token Druid has recently reappeared and is likely to be competitive with a new iteration that runs Broodwatcher.
Since Herald Rogue declined a bit in favor of other decks, Solitude has improved its performance and is better than Hive Map in the ‘Vanilla’ Spell Demon Hunter build. This continues to be the best build at higher levels of play.
We are happy with the Nespirah variant’s card choices and consider it settled after evaluating it again this week.
The Quest Mage build looks relatively solidified. Xavius or Q’onzu can replace a copy of Smoldering Grove.
Aggro Paladin can make small improvements. It is possible to cut one Violet Treasuregill and one Dragonscale Armaments while maintaining optimal Flight Maneuvers tutoring. Ursine Maul and Nozdormu perform well in the deck, even though there is an incentive not to run expensive cards. Worgen Infiltrator is better than Murloc Tidecaller. We drop Tortollan Storyteller.
Sands of Time ended up equal in power to Glacial Shard in Face Hunter. Some players are experimenting with cutting Arrow Retriever, which is feasible, though we have not found a card that makes a big difference in its place.
No changes in Herald Shaman. Hex is now better than Lightning Storm by a larger gap compared to last week.
We are approaching the end of the second month for Cataclysm, which means the first batch of class sets for the year is likely around the corner. We will do our best to publish an article about the sets, discussing how they may impact each class, once they are revealed.
For now, the Hearthstone meta is relatively balanced, with healthy checks on the top meta contenders. Dragon Warrior best exploits the inflated play rate of Rogue, but other options are either in line with Warrior, or not far behind.
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Contributors
