Welcome to the 304th 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 | 1,747,000 |
| Top 1K Legend | 94,000 |
| Legend (Excluding Top 1k) | 393,000 |
| Diamond 4 to 1 | 298,000 |
| Diamond 10 to 5 | 348,000 |
| Platinum | 234,000 |
| Bronze/Silver/Gold | 380,000 |
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
The main story of the first week of Traveling Travel Agency is the rise of Big-Spell Mage, fueled by the blowout potential of Portalmancer Skyla. The archetype has been extremely popular across ladder, but recent trends suggest its momentum has been halted. If we strictly look at the past couple of days, the deck’s play rate relaxes. Its greatest decline is seen at top legend, where it might settle at a 15% play rate.
Druid seems to have diversified. Reno Druid is still the most popular deck, but not by a significant margin. Dragon Druid is experimenting with Tsunami builds. Dungar Druid is a new Ramp Druid deck built around the neutral 9-mana legendary and resembles Witchwood-era Ramp Druid with Master Oakheart. Interest in Spell Damage Druid is relatively higher at top legend. The archetype started dropping Concierge before the mini-set.
One of the clearest answers to Big-Spell Mage’s popularity has been Pain Warlock. As the fastest deck in the format, Pain Warlock can rush down Mage before it can even drop Skyla. Insanity Warlock’s presence is smaller.
Reno Shaman has become significantly more popular following the addition of Turbulus and the tourist package. Big Shaman is close to its play rate at top legend. Most other Shaman decks have faded away due to an absence of interest.
Death Knight is seeing changes. While players at lower rank brackets are still stuck on Rainbow DK, players at top legend have largely pivoted to Blood-Ctrl DK’s ability to answer Tsunami boards through removal, as well as its strength in aggressive matchups. Frost DK has declined.
Pirate Demon Hunter is in a similar position to Pain Warlock. Due to its fast-paced nature, it’s capable of getting under Mage effectively, making it a relatively popular choice.
Players at lower MMR brackets are still obsessed with Reno Warrior. At top legend, Odyn Warrior is beginning to creep up, with a refinement process taking place.
Rogue is a mess, mostly fractured into an assortment of Thief-style archetypes (Excavate, Wishing, Cutlass). Top legend players have mostly given up on the class, save for one deck that’s rising in play: Weapon Rogue with Sharp Shipment and Swarthy Swordshiner.
Handbuff Paladin is not too appealing in the current meta due to its slow pace, which is ill-equipped to deal with Big-Spell Mage. Showdown Paladin is fringe as usual. Lynessa Paladin has picked up more interest in recent days at top legend.
There are multiple Hunter decks, but none of them have gained a lot of traction. There was initially some hype for Reno Hunter, but that quieted down. Token Hunter runs a list centered around Pet Parrot. Secret and Egg Hunter can also be found.
There is still a small, but stubborn population of Reno Priest players out there. At top legend, Overheal Priest is the main deck of choice.
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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
Mage
- Big-Spell Mage is a good deck, but it’s nowhere near being the dominant deck that its play rate implies it to be. It gets countered by several aggressive decks. It loses to some of the slower decks too, so it isn’t choking out late game strategies from being viable. Its win rate is relaxing across the board, while at top legend, it’s nearing 50%.
- We strongly suspect that the main reason Big-Spell Mage became so popular is that it’s the standout fresh deck coming out of a mini-set that didn’t add much else to the table. There is clearly a desire to play the deck that doesn’t strictly come from its power level.
- We still fully expect to see the deck nerfed due to the play pattern of Portalmancer Skyla, which is a huge power outlier compared to the rest of the deck. A nudge on Skyla might keep the deck competitive without outright killing it, but further nerfs do run the risk of deleting the strategy entirely, as the deck is very sensitive to mana breakpoints. A more reasonable presence of Big-Spell Mage might be beneficial to the format, as it tends to beat decks that possess a lot of burst from hand.
- Not much else is going on in the class. Elemental Mage tends to look good early on in a format but is likely to fall off as things settle down. Spell Mage is terribly positioned against the current field.
Druid
- Reno Druid is a decent deck with a good matchup against Mage, but it gets hard countered by the aggressive decks that try to target Big-Spell Mage. Pain Warlock and Pirate DH give it a very hard time.
- Dungar Druid looks competitively viable, with some potential to improve further through refinement. It has a good Mage matchup. However, we don’t expect the deck to become significantly more powerful in the current field due to the same issues facing Reno Druid. It also gets countered by Reno as a card.
- Dragon Druid is unfavored against Mage, while performing better against attrition decks. Beating Mage is currently the name of the game, so it isn’t doing too well, especially when its aggressive matchups are terrible.
- Spell Damage Druid doesn’t look good but has a lot of potential to improve through refinement. We think this deck could be more viable at top legend if it runs Owlonius.
Warlock
- Pain Warlock is thriving in the current format due to the heightened focus on rushing down Mages and Druids. No deck does it better than Pain Warlock, so it looks very powerful despite possessing a checkered matchup spread with plenty of weaknesses. The decline of Death Knight, for example, has been very beneficial to Pain.
- Insanity Warlock is worse due to an unfavored matchup against Big-Spell Mage. Its general position in the format is quite weak, mostly boosted by the player base’s infatuation with bad Reno decks.
Shaman
- Reno Shaman is the most popular Shaman deck, while also looking like the worst Shaman deck. Classic. While its late game has improved thanks to the Hunter tourist package, it still falls short in most late game matchups, while struggling against Mage.
- Big Shaman is supremely strong thanks to its good matchup against Big-Spell Mage, as well as the two main aggressive decks that target it (Pain Warlock, Pirate DH). As established before the mini-set, it’s not easy to counter. Ramp Druids do have an edge, but otherwise you need a very robust removal toolkit (Warrior) or extreme burst damage to circumvent Walking Mountain.
- Other Shaman decks have fallen to the wayside, but it’s not because of power reasons. Evolve Shaman is still very good. Rainbow and Pirate Shaman’s play rates are low, but based on our estimate, they’re in the same Tier 1 spot where Evolve Shaman is sitting.
Death Knight
- Blood-Ctrl DK’s recent rise in popularity is not a coincidence. It did get better thanks to its good Mage matchup, as well as its strong Warlock/Demon Hunter matchups. However, it’s still a sitting duck to late game strategies. It gets destroyed by any deck with a late game clock. Even the slower ones, such as Reno Shaman, slap it around.
- Rainbow DK is poorly positioned in the format because it doesn’t have Blood-Ctrl’s removal toolkit to handle Tsunami boards, while its pressure plan is far slower than Frost’s. We feel this archetype is currently redundant.
- Frost DK has fallen out of favor, as it’s not fast enough to kill Mages and Druids consistently. There is a solution we’ve found that helps the Mage matchup drastically, so it’s worth checking out.
Demon Hunter
- Pirate Demon Hunter benefits from the current format in the same way Pain Warlock does. It destroys Druids while being fast enough to rush down Mages before Skyla can even come down. Furthermore, it has a good matchup against Pain Warlock, so it surpasses it at top legend, where the matchup becomes more common. We have no concerns over its power level, as it gets countered easily if it ever becomes more popular (Death Knights and Shamans handle it well).
Warrior
- Things initially looked very grim for Warrior, but a very recent development has ignited Odyn Warrior to show a lot of promise at higher levels of play. Its win rate is spiking, a product of two factors: the decline of the tough Big-Spell Mage matchup from its initially ridiculous play rate in the early days of the patch, as well as its own refinement.
- Based on its current trajectory, Odyn Warrior should become a Tier 2 deck at top legend. It is sturdy enough against aggressive decks (when it’s refined, still some work to do there), while possessing late game lethality that can kill defensive decks.
- Reno Warrior is the biggest punching bag of the format. Free wins to almost everyone. Second most popular deck on ladder. It’s easier to hit legend thanks to Reno Warrior.
Rogue
- Almost every Rogue deck out there is complete garbage. Rogue is so bad that some of its decks are even worse than Reno Priest. This is a reminder that Maestra costs the same amount of mana as Skyla.
- Thankfully, it turns out that Rogue does have a Tier 1 deck called Weapon Rogue. It performs very well despite having a terrible Mage matchup because it obliterates slower decks with its damage output. One to watch out for, though we do wonder what kind of audience it’s able to attract. The deck is binary in its game plan. Alterac Poison Rogue without the Wildpaw Gnolls.
Hunter
- Token Hunter is a bit of a sleeper. You can think of it as another Pain Warlock/Pirate DH type of deck, which rushes down Mage and Druid with great effectiveness. It also has some room to improve through refinement, so it looks like a great deck to climb to legend with. Much like Demon Hunter, it counters Pain Warlock thanks to its damage output.
- However, it does seem to drop off more at higher levels of play. We’re a bit skeptical of further traction for the archetype. Aggressive decks struggle to see play when they’re deemed “redundant”, even when they are genuinely strong. See Pirate Shaman and Zarimi Priest as recent examples.
- Reno Hunter was overhyped initially but has come back to earth. It struggles against good decks. Secret Hunter is strong at lower ranks. Egg Hunter has stagnated after the launch of the mini-set.
Paladin
- Handbuff Paladin is in a weird spot. It loses to both Mage and Druid, so players are disinterested in the deck, yet it maintains a reasonable performance level thanks to the rest of its matchup spread, which is very solid. In a settled environment, it likely gets worse, so players have naturally picked up on the bad vibes.
- Lynessa Paladin started slow but is getting progressively better each day, thanks to refinement involving Robocaller. Initially, it looked unfavored against Mage, but the matchup has become completely even. Recent trends suggest Lynessa Paladin will continue to get better. This deck isn’t talked about enough but has potential to be one of the stronger decks in the format.
Priest
- Overheal Priest is very quietly the strongest deck at top legend, with an incredible matchup spread that shows very few weaknesses. Hilariously, its biggest counter is the hapless Reno Warrior. Obviously, Reno Warrior is not very common at top legend. Note that most of its improvement in performance at higher levels of play is down to its skill ceiling, not the lower number of Reno Warriors.
- Reno Priest is not the worst deck in the game. Progress.
Class Analysis & Decklists
Death Knight | Demon Hunter | Druid | Hunter | Mage | Paladin | Priest | Rogue | Shaman | Warlock | Warrior
The most important thing about building Big-Spell Mage is to accommodate enough 2-drops to activate Greedy Partner consistently. Cult Neophyte is strong in the mirror. Wandmaker offers Skyla fodder. Instrument Tech finds us Metal Detector.
Reno Druid seems to be moving away from Dorian and on to more reliable value. The tension in Reno mirrors when it comes to playing Rheastrasza has pushed players to run Fizzle, which can potentially give us two copies of our cornerstone legendary.
Dragon Druid has been experimenting with Tsunami builds, but the featured build is the one that performs best against Mage, as it is crucial to Crystal Cluster into Yogg or Zilliax in this matchup.
Dungar Druid seems viable, though not too strong. It seems that cutting Dorian leads to better results in the current meta. If you want to focus on not getting destroyed in aggressive matchups, adding the second copy of Oaken Summons is an option (over Ragnaros, for example), but if Demon Hunter and Warlocks are common in your rank, you probably want to avoid queueing this deck altogether.
Spell Damage Druid is generally weak, but running Owlonius yields better results. Burndown is a decent card in the deck.
Cult Neophyte has long been utilized in Pain Warlock to lukewarm results, but we’ve warmed up to the card in this format, as it is strong against Mage. Cursed Souvenir is a card we’ve been looking to cut for a while but haven’t found a clearly strong alternative until now.
Insanity Warlock has been trying Soul Searching. The card is decent in the deck, but not worth adding a 4 mana 4/4 to it.
Reno Shaman is clearly stronger running a Hunter tourist package with Turbulus. So far, Zephrys has only proven to be good enough in Reno decks such as this one. It’s an Elemental you can use with Trusty Companion, which gives it another small upside. Hagatha benefits massively from the Hunter spells that become available to it in this deck. Giant Tumbleweed is uncuttable though, because it’s our clean answer to Tsunami.
We haven’t found a reason to change any of the other Shaman decks.
- Shaman Class Radar
- Reno Shaman
- Big Shaman
- Rainbow Shaman
- Evolve Shaman
- Pirate Shaman
- Elemental Shaman
The only notable development in Death Knight is the return of Cold Feet to Frost Death Knight. The card is very strong against Big-Spell Mage, giving the Death Knight more time to pressure before getting blown out by Skyla or Surfalopod.
This game plan does not work in Rainbow Death Knight, as the deck is too slow to take advantage of Cold Feet.
Blood-Ctrl Death Knight can beat Mage by playing the removal game. We are not impressed with Zephrys in this deck, so we’ve stuck with the same build.
No changes for Pirate Demon Hunter. Infernal Stapler and Job Shadower are horrendous cards in the archetype.
Odyn Warrior is showing competitive promise, after a poor start in which it massively struggled against Mage. The key for this matchup is running Brawls, so you have 4 copies of the card to answer Tsunami. Brawl is also strong in the Druid matchup.
Alloy Advisor is strong in aggressive matchups, enough to justify its inclusion. We suspect that Verse Riff is overrated, as it doesn’t seem to perform well in the slow matchups it’s mostly intended for. We would like to see how the deck performs without it, as Rockstars/Sleep already provides massive amounts of burst post-Odyn. Ignis is terrible in the current format. Fizzle is also not great. Some of this deck’s card choices are very meta dependent.
Rogue is a very messy class filled with terrible decks that we’ve decided not to work to refine as it felt like a pointless task. Whether it’s Excavate, Wishing, Cutlass, or Gaslight, it’s all looking strictly non-viable. Spell-Damage Druid has some hope, so we featured a deck for it. Here, there’s no hope.
The one exception is Weapon Rogue with Swarthy Swordshiner and Sharp Shipment. Dig for Treasure always finds Swordshiner, so it’s a priority mulligan target alongside Quick Pick. You don’t care about any other card.
Token Hunter has made its return, focused on Pet Parrot replay value.
Monkey Business might be one of the worst cards the class has ever played in a competitive deck. Its performance is so poor that we think the deck’s win rate would go up if we swapped it for Chillwind Yeti. Get that thing out of here.
Pizza did hit #1 legend with this Reno Hunter build early in the patch. It looks clean, but the archetype isn’t particularly good.
Robocaller looks great in Lynessa Paladin alongside Prismatic Beam, giving us a way to answer aggressive matchups with greater consistency. The curve in the featured build makes Robocaller draw 3 cards almost every time after the first dialing. Robocaller is also strong with Living Horizon.
Overheal Priest is an elite deck at top legend, requiring no changes to its build. Reno Priest is dead. Zarimi Priest is likely fine, but no one cares.
The current format is so much more than just Skyla spam. There are many decks out there with great potential that you don’t hear about much. Hopefully, this report highlights some of those sleepers that are worth exploring further, such as Lynessa Paladin, Weapon Rogue and Odyn Warrior.
The crème de la crème of the current format is Overheal Priest, which has been around for a while, but its excellence is almost a secret amongst high level players. If you know how to play this deck, it might feel like there are no counters to it.
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Contributors
Fsorace the big spell mage abuser takes another L
One thing i have to say regarding Blood DK is that BBU cutting vampiric for Horseman + Helya is a much more appealing approach in the current meta, tackling both BSM (at least partially) by potentially interrupting Surfalopod, as well as bolstering its lategame against heavy control decks.
I have to agree with the other commenter; this report lacks any nuanced discussion about what makes Big Spell Mage such a problem.
First, it’s worth nothing that any deck with a 30+% playrate is going to be much closer to 50% than it would be otherwise.
The problem with BSM is Skyla, plain and simple. She is so good to draw, that she is rather rare in terms of how much better she is than the rest of the cards in her deck. She allows for miserably strong play patterns consistently early (turn 4 or 5) in any game where you draw her in time. When facing her that soon, it is already very hard to win. However, legendaries like her are only ever really balanced when they are expensive, because of what types of play patterns they enable: playing really powerful combos several turns before they would otherwise be possible. In this case, that comes in the form of Conniving Conman being a 4/4 body to repeat the spell that Skyla just allowed you to play several turns early. Drawing these two cards pretty much seals the fate of the opponent, every time.
High legend players are enjoying consistent success with this deck, currently. You can watch a few of them on Twitch, such as Mesmile or Fsorace. So it is arguably about as strong as any deck out there. And to be clear, the issue is not that it’s strong, per se. The issue is that it allows for play patterns that are basically unbeatable, as long as a couple cards are drawn.
This issue has been addressed in the past (e.g. Barnes + Y’shaarj on turn 4) but persists with Big Spell Mage in today’s format (and arguably Pop’gar + Crescendo, but I think we’ve all just learned to accept that Blizzard is ok with that combo carrying fatiguelock on its back forever). I just want Skyla to be nerfed to at least 6 mana, and probably 7. I’m really not too concerned with its winrate, and I don’t think Blizzard should be, either. Players buy more packs when they feel like better cards help them win games, but if they would lose to Skyla on curve with any combination of cards, they might as well not buy new ones. Nerf Skyla, and players will be much more willing to experiment with other mini-set cards because they won’t be facing Skyla on curve once every 7 or 8 games and getting blown out of the water, and they won’t be feeling the pressure to play Big Spell Mage so much because they’d rather be on the giving end then the receiving end of Skyla’s nonsense.
I love Vicious Syndicate and the incredible amount of hard work put into each colossal contribution to our knowledge of the game is not lost on me. That being said, as someone who has played this game religiously for the entire decade it has existed I am baffled by the shallow written interpretation of the data. Genuinely any competent human being playing Standard right now has seen how completely and utterly broken Big Spell Mage is and this report consistently interprets the data without the slightest shred of nuance or consideration for the actual reasons why the numbers are the way they are or what they actually represent for the health of the meta.
The only reason there’s a fair number of decks with higher power scores relative to it is because decks that have bad matchups against it (e.g. Griftah/Gift Rogue, Rainbow DK, literally any deck that can’t win before Mage can consistently play Tsunami which almost always makes it impossible for them to lose) have now been pushed completely out of the meta. I cannot fathom how someone could possibly observe a deck popping into existence from a miniset alone, dominating the format to the point where any deck that can’t consistently beat four Water Elementals that attack instantly as early as turn 4 becomes nonexistent, and somehow come to the conclusion that because the numbers say BSM’s win rate has started to drop it’s balanced and doesn’t need more than a nudge to Skyla to make it more competitive. This completely disregards the fact that its win rate has only dropped due to the entire meta warping around it, further exacerbated by the fact that minions like Surfalopod and Skyla give the deck ways to bypass strong tech cards like Neophyte and Speaker Stomper in ways that other explosive decks (e.g. again Griftah/Gift Rogue) can’t.
One of the most egregiously overlooked factors in your interpretation of BSM’s place in the meta is the obscene level of power that can be derived from playing it with an iota of the effort of almost any other deck in the format. I can confidently say that the parts of my recent legend climb with Weapon Rogue where I had to sit and analyze the board to decide whether to play defensively or not or to try and find a way around a taunter etc. required significantly more effort, game knowledge and forethought than anything BSM does. I think Weapon Rogue, while more nuanced than it seems on the surface (as is the case with most burn decks), is one of the easiest decks in the format due to its ability to snowball weapon damage extremely quickly. Weapon Rogue’s momentum, however, can often be stopped entirely by one 3 mana neutral tech card that can be traded in matchups where it has no use (Rustrot Viper), and the decks chances are instantly much worse against any deck that can produce taunters, armor or self-healing, which is a fair number. BSM, on the other hand, can consistently produce a board state by turn 5-6 that makes it impossible to lose barring a complete lack of competency AND it’s harder to tech against AND it comes with the potential to high roll for even earlier activations.
Painlocks can fill their board with huge minions stupidly fast, but at the cost of almost always putting themselves at an incredibly risky health total, leaving them open to surprise burn losses and making them heavily depend on INFERNAL! for stability. These factors compound to make Painlock a riskier and less consistent deck as a whole, especially considering how many decks right now have the ability to deal enough consistent face damage to make Painlock sweat. Griftah Rogue can potentially win as early as turn 6 with spell damage directly to the face. However, it also requires an incredible level of execution and a fair amount of luck; you have to be able to survive against the insane level of aggression while simultaneously putting together your combo, know the right time to go off and then be able to react accordingly when Griftah inevitably doesn’t give you enough to kill, forcing you to choose between investing more resources into trying to find a kill, bouncing your resources so you can try again next turn or improvising with the flexibility of Sonya to try and find a different way to kill.
BSM can operate at the same or higher power level than Painlock with a fraction of the risk and creates board states that are infinitely easier to navigate than even the most basic aggro deck. BSM can win the game faster and more consistently than Griftah Rogue with the absolute opposite level of execution and luck required and can do so in ways that aren’t affected by the spell tax cards that completely shut down Rogue. On top of that, BSM is extremely cheap on dust compared to the majority of other decks in the format, being beaten on dust cost only by Fatiguelock and Frost DK and having by far it’s most important legendary come from the miniset. Meanwhile, most other lists are running with dust costs of around 15k and are running less miniset cards.
BSM is consistently able to keep up with the few decks in the format that can beat its speed while simultaneously being the cheapest, easiest and most consistent deck in the format. It has suffocated every deck that can’t compete with its ridiculously broken speed and unbelievably simple execution and as a result the format has been transformed from a relatively diverse meta into a whirlpool of repetitive, high variance, low execution slop and the level in which all of these issues are understated in this analysis is nothing short of astounding to me. Hopefully I’ve expressed my thoughts in a way that makes sense. If nothing else, I hope somebody reads this pile I spent way too much time on. I have an incredible amount of respect for the work you guys do and I appreciate it nonetheless.