Welcome to the 277th edition of the Data Reaper Report!
Contributing to the Data Reaper project through Hearthstone Deck Tracker or Firestone allows us to perform our analyses and to issue the weekly reports, so we want to wholeheartedly thank our contributors. Without the community’s contributions, there would be no project. Contributing data is very easy, so if you enjoy our content and would like to make sure it remains consistent and free – Sign up!
Quick Links
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 | 946,000 |
| Top 1K Legend | 34,000 |
| Legend (Excluding Top 1k) | 114,000 |
| Diamond 4 to 1 | 201,000 |
| Diamond 10 to 5 | 217,000 |
| Platinum | 154,000 |
| Bronze/Silver/Gold | 226,000 |
Class/Archetype Distribution
-
All Ranks
-
D1 to D4
-
Legend
-
Top 1K Legend
Class Frequency
-
Weekly
-
Daily
Class Frequency Discussion
The expected rise of Ramp Druid has continued this week. Although Ramp Druid is growing in popularity throughout ladder, its overbearing presence is mostly contained at top legend.
We observe a notable spike in Secret Rogue, especially at higher levels of play. The archetype has been gaining traction thanks to its recent success. Miracle and Mech Rogue remain present in modest numbers.
Rainbow Mage has risen in play, though we can’t say that this is caused by the particularly notable success of the archetype. Overall, the archetype has enjoyed a relatively better position in the format since the Jailer ban. Whenever the deck looks competitive, it tends to be very popular.
The secret-less build of Arcane Hunter has spiked in play. The archetype is quite popular on the climb to legend, but isn’t too prevalent anywhere on ladder despite its very strong performance. At top legend, it drops off slightly due to the presence of Ramp Druid.
Pure Paladin has maintained a steady presence on ladder and remains very visible at top legend, where its Buff variant has been established as a Druid counter. Other archetypes of the class haven’t done anything noteworthy.
Warrior has declined. The class is still quite popular on ladder, but its presence shrinks significantly at top legend, with both Control and Enrage Warrior known to struggle against Ramp Druid.
Death Knight has also declined, especially at higher levels of play, with Plague DK losing traction after failing to produce strong results or proving to be a reliable Ramp Druid counter.
Some stagnation in Priest is also noticeable. Both Control and Undead Priest are uncomfortable facing Ramp Druid, so it’s not too surprising to see them decline.
Warlock is still fairly common outside of legend ranks, but the class falls off hard at legend, before almost completely disappearing at top legend.
Shaman is similarly irrelevant at the highest competitive level on ladder. Only Totem Shaman boasts a noticeable play rate at lower rank brackets.
Demon Hunter is almost completely gone everywhere on ladder.
-
All Ranks
-
D4 to Legend
-
Legend
-
Top 1K Legend
-
Legend
-
D1 to D4
vS Meta Score
-
Top 1K Legend
-
Legend
-
D1 to D4
vS Power Rankings Discussion
Druid
- Ramp Druid maintains its dominance at top legend, but it’s found serious competition for the top performing spot. Its matchup spread remains extremely resilient, with very few decks able to reliably answer it. After evaluating its data this week, it’s become clear that the archetype is not even refined particularly well. Outside of top legend, where the field is more diverse, the deck would look far more dominant if players embraced the incredible power and impact of Prison Breaker.
- Drum Druid is doing well in general, but its performance at top legend nosedives due to its struggles against Ramp Druid. Yogg-Saron is huge here. Aggro Druid remains a fringe counter to Ramp Druid. Moonbeam Druid, not so good.
Rogue
- Secret Rogue looks like the real deal. Based on its performance level and matchup spread, it’s arguably just as busted as Ramp Druid. In fact, it’s currently even harder to counter. While some counters to Ramp Druid do exist, there is no meta deck at top legend that exhibits a significant edge against Secret Rogue. Ramp Druid exhibits a minimal edge (52-48) that is within the standard deviation, influenced by certain card choices (Yes, it’s Prison Breaker).
- Miracle Rogue is also looking quite powerful at higher levels of play, thanks to successful refinement. The addition of Cult Neophyte and Speaker Stomper helps the Ramp Druid matchup a lot. The matchup becomes a toss-up if you run these cards.
- Mech Rogue is strong, but its ability to counter Ramp Druid is still questioned. A possible edge can be gained with Neophyte/Stomper, but the deck has some issues running into its fellow Rogue rivals.
- Dagger Rogue is a terrible deck to queue into Ramp Druid, so we can’t recommend it.
Mage
- While Rainbow Mage is popular, its performance doesn’t look very impressive. The Ramp Druid/Secret Rogue duo limits its potential success.
Hunter
- Arcane Hunter is the strongest deck on ladder outside of top legend. The popularity of Ramp Druid at higher levels of play causes its performance to dip. This matchup also becomes significantly harder against stronger Druid players.
Paladin
- Pure Paladin remains competitive throughout ladder, with its Ramp Druid matchup keeping it relevant at higher levels of play. An increased presence of Secret Rogue is causing an issue though.
Warrior
- The rise of Secret Rogue is having a negative impact on the Warrior class. It’s bad enough that both Control and Enrage Warrior generally struggle against Ramp Druid, but the Rogue matchup is even more difficult. Control Warrior is suffering a particularly painful decline in performance at top legend because of Secret Rogue. Enrage’s matchup spread is better overall against other classes, so it’s still generally doing well, but there’s a limit on what it’s capable of doing if it constantly runs into the Ramp Druid/Secret Rogue duo.
Death Knight
- Plague Death Knight may have found a way to gain a reliable edge on Ramp Druid, but the deck’s matchup spread overall is still unimpressive. Its ceiling is never better than mediocre.
Priest
- Control Priest is crumbling. Two concerning trends have been identified for Priest players. The first is that Control Priest is losing ground in the Ramp Druid matchup. Despite its best effort to counter Druid’s game plan through tech cards, the ramping menace is becoming even more efficient through refinement. The other concerning trend is Secret Rogue, which is a noticeably more difficult matchup. With Ramp Druid and Secret Rogue looking so dominant, Control Priest shockingly sinks to Tier 4.
- Undead Priest is fine as long as the Ramp Druid population isn’t overbearing. Once it gets to that point, it’s borderline unplayable.
Warlock
- For Warlock, the play rate matches the win rate. The class holds up at lower rank brackets but crumbles at top legend. Chad Warlock becomes the only playable survivor, but still a questionable one. Control and Curse Warlock look like a waste of time past Diamond 5.
Shaman and Demon Hunter
- These classes look competitively irrelevant. Totem Shaman can do an adequate job at lower ranks, but that’s it.
Class Analysis & Decklists
Death Knight | Demon Hunter | Druid | Hunter | Mage | Paladin | Priest | Rogue | Shaman | Warlock | Warrior
After evaluating more Ramp Druid data this week, the evidence is quite damning. Prison Breaker is a very powerful card in the deck, making a massive impact in many key matchups. We do notice the card isn’t strong in the mirror, but considering how game-changing it is against so many other classes, it’s hard to make a case to cut it. Even at top legend, where the mirror matchup peaks in popularity, if you want to perform well against Secret Rogue, Prison Breaker is your most important card (!).
Outside of top legend, running Prison Breaker improves your performance drastically since the mirror isn’t even common. We strongly suspect that Ramp Druid doesn’t look as powerful outside of top legend due to this deck-building blunder. The archetype is nowhere near its final form.
In addition, Cutting Lifebinder’s Gift makes Embrace of Nature stronger while having no negative impact on the deck’s late game. The list we settled on last week looks very strong at every rank bracket.
Secret Rogue is emerging as a second meta tyrant alongside Ramp Druid. It might even prove to be the superior deck at top legend, especially if Ramp Druid players continue to disrespect Prison Breaker. Secret Rogue isn’t sitting around, and it’s actively trying to find adjustments to improve the Druid matchup. MC Blingtron has begun to pop up in lists, replacing Queen Azshara. Blingtron is an exceptional card against Druid, both due to its ability to leverage board pressure as well as its anti-Ignis utility.
Rainbow Mage looks unchanged. The Renathal experiment has fallen flat. Disruption might help you against Druid, but the Renathal build lost far too many percentages against other decks.
As we said last week, the secret-less Arcane Hunter build is your best bet against Ramp Druid, while performing exceptionally well throughout ladder. Outside of top legend, this is the best-performing deck in the game.
A new card has caught our eye in Buff Pure Paladin: Shimmering Sunfish. It’s a solid body on turn 3 that’s almost always active due to the abundance of Holy spells in the deck. We replaced Blessing of Kings with the Pogfish. We like how the rest of the deck holds up as a Druid counter. It is the best-performing deck against Ramp Druid.
Control Warrior is experiencing Druid’s rise in efficiency, while Secret Rogue is also becoming a problem. This dominant duo is putting a hard ceiling on the archetype’s ability to succeed at higher rank brackets. There’s no great way to adjust to these matchups, too.
Copy/Paste these comments to Enrage Warrior, and they’d still hold true. The difference is that Enrage is stronger into other decks, so it performs better overall.
The Plague Death Knight build we floated last week looks like a genuine Druid counter, without sacking other matchups. The archetype is still quite flawed, but the list is competitive enough to not make you want to pull your hair while playing it. Cult Neophyte and Speaker Stomper carry a lot of weight against Druid and Rogue.
Control Priest is collapsing. Despite its best efforts to combat Ramp Druid, it’s losing the battle. Druid’s refinement is doing more to gain percentages against Priest than the tech cards Priest utilizes. In addition, Secret Rogue is a rising matchup that is quite miserable.
Undead Priest also wishes Druid would go away.
Warlock generally doesn’t hold up against the power classes. Chad Warlock is your best bet on ladder. The deck is quite successful outside of top legend.
Nothing interesting is happening in the Shaman class. It’s one new bad Shaman deck that pops up after another. Totem Shaman offers the only serious path for the class to compete, but it doesn’t do that well.
Demon Hunter is just over. Its Badlands set needs to be a game-changer and freshen up the class after the dud TITANS set.
Ramp Druid might be talked about more, but we are quite impressed by how powerful Secret Rogue is. There’s a case to be made that it’s the stronger deck in the current meta, though it obviously doesn’t get targeted nearly as much through tech cards. Secret Rogue’s success is another indicator that the biggest outlier in the format is not necessarily the Druid toolkit, but the neutral toolkit. Based on statistical evidence of certain play rate and win rate metrics, ‘Yogg-Saron, Unleashed’ is one of the strongest cards in Hearthstone’s history. It defines the format in ways that very few cards have done in the past.
And what better way to abuse it than play it five times a game? That’s what Secret Rogue is capable of doing.
Preparing our weekly article requires a significant amount of time and effort from many individuals. We would like to wholeheartedly thank our current Patreons, whose generous donations help us fund computing and server costs.
vS Gold is our membership plan aimed to support our efforts towards improving our content and data analysis while receiving some bonuses and extra features.
Tier 3+ Patrons
Special thanks to Leo, Jed M, Drew M, Alan J, Zolstar, Sean H, Steve F, Andrew N, Alonso P, Je-ho, William H, 1RiceBowl1, Alex S, PeejTreon, Josh G, Amir, amenbrotep, Karhu, Christopher N, Lime, Kaushal, Joshua B, Jeff C, Scott L, Mark P, The Big Dawg, nburst, Jess M, Peter, Lepton, Bob L, Charlah R, Chocobo, Chad K, Alex W, Ashton F, Swift, Logan, Fisherington, WorldEight, Jacob M, Timothy M, Darren J, Wyatt P, Kevin, Dillan M, Michael N, Noah E, Nezoomer, Dooshenbarf, mikey, detcarter, Dooshenbarf, Aaelle, Michael S, and Divock for supporting us this month.
Here are all the people that participated in bringing you this edition of the vS Data Reaper Report:
