vS Data Reaper Report #308

December 5, 2024

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Welcome to the 308th 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 985,000
Top 1K Legend 72,000
Legend (Excluding Top 1k) 324,000
Diamond 4 to 1 84,000
Diamond 10 to 5 110,000
Platinum 98,000
Bronze/Silver/Gold 297,000

Class/Archetype Distribution

Class Frequency

Class Frequency Discussion

It was entirely expected that Cycle Rogue’s play rate would explode at top legend this week. Whenever this archetype is strong, this is the end result. With Starship Rogue remaining very popular,  despite not looking anywhere near as impressive, the class is highly influential at high MMR’s and noticeable across ladder. Weapon Rogue has declined in play.

Swarm Shaman’s popularity has nearly doubled compared to last week, but it doesn’t appear to take over the format with a dramatically high play rate. We suspect it mostly comes down to the deck not being highly attractive. In contrast, Asteroid Shaman is a vastly inferior deck that’s only been eclipsed in its popularity outside of legend ranks recently. The deck is barely noticeable at top legend. Big Shaman has started to reappear and seems to be gaining some traction.

Discover Hunter is establishing itself as the dominant strategy in its class. The deck has become quite popular at top legend, with its play rate starting to trickle down. Other Hunter decks are not too common.

Dungar Druid has not moved, remaining a solidly popular deck across ladder. Station and Reno Druid have declined.

Death Knight remains fractured into many different archetypes, but Rainbow DK seems to have gained some momentum this week, attempting to establish itself as an effective answer to Swarm Shaman.

Libram Paladin has collapsed in play, with the bubble bursting about its competitive prowess. Not much enthusiasm is seen around Handbuff or Lynessa Paladin either.

Zarimi Priest seems to be suffering from Swarm Shaman’s dominance, as players are not seeing a reason to opt for the former over the latter. Other Priest players are coping with various, horrible Control Priest builds.

Pirate DH is similarly quiet. Crewmate DH is fading. Some interest exists for Attack DH at top legend.

Control Warrior is picking up more interest, with players trying to use the archetype to target Cycle Rogue and Swarm Shaman. The appetite for Control Warrior seems to have pushed Reno Warrior to the fringes.

Elemental Mage is modestly popular outside of legend, but loses interest at higher ranks. Nothing else in the class looks remotely competitive.

Diehard Wheel Warlock players exist, but the class is competitively dead at top legend. Pain Warlock has not picked up any interest.

Matchup Win Rates Header

Power Rankings Header

vS Meta Score

vS Power Rankings Discussion

Rogue

  • Cycle Rogue is being restrained by the top legend field as it grows in popularity. We’ve noticed that several key matchups, including Swarm Shaman, have slightly worsened for the Rogue, indicating that the field is optimizing more effectively than it can. The biggest issue, however, is Dungar Druid’s strength. This is one of the hardest counters to Cycle Rogue, and it is becoming more attractive as Rogue’s play rate continues to rise.
  • Starship Rogue has gotten slightly better at top legend, while continuing to look terrible outside of it. The weekly change is attributed to some progress in its refinement.
  • As we’ve alluded to last week, Weapon Rogue was on course to collapse in its win rate. It’s still okay on the climb to legend, but is now a questionable choice at top legend due to its atrocious matchups against Dungar Druid, Discover Hunter and Swarm Shaman.
  • Fringe Rogue archetypes (Pressure, Mech, Shaffar) are estimated to have declined in their performance this week too.

Shaman

  • Swarm Shaman continues to look very strong, even after the expected win rate decline that’s attributed to the field becoming more optimized and competitive. Its matchup spread has not relented, though three soft counters are being established: Control Warrior, Rainbow DK and Big Shaman. All three decks have risen in power this week, to a dramatic extent.
  • Big Shaman might be the best Swarm Shaman counter and performs at a Tier 1 level across ladder, only second to Swarm Shaman at top legend. Its matchup against Cycle Rogue is close. It is well positioned against most top meta contenders. Dungar Druid and Control Warrior are its biggest counters.
  • Asteroid Shaman continues to look underwhelming in comparison. It’s decent at lower rank brackets, which explains its popularity there, as it can be considered an attractive deck. However, its matchup spread against top meta contenders isn’t great.

Hunter

  • Discover Hunter is strong, as long as it’s built well. The deck looks drastically stronger at top legend, but this is not due to a high skill ceiling. The archetype is simply mired by poorly optimized builds at lower MMR brackets. Its top legend win rate is more reflective of its power across ladder. Seems vulnerable to Shaman. Seems very good against most of the rest.
  • Other Hunter decks seems to perform well on the climb to legend before nosediving at higher MMR’s. This represents Grunter, Secret and the low sampled Token Hunter. Starship Hunter is generally weak everywhere.

Druid

  • We talked last week about how difficult it is to predict Dungar Druid’s future standing, as it’s a very polarizing deck that’s sensitive to the smallest changes in the field. Current meta trends heavily favor it. Shaman isn’t blowing up to an overbearing degree, while killing other aggressive decks in the process. Rogue is the class that’s blowing up. Even Warrior and slow Death Knight matchups are rising in play, looking to counter Shaman. This is a very good environment for Dungar Druid to exploit.
  • There is no reason to play Station Druid when Dungar Druid is so much better. This is why the deck is fading away. We don’t have much hope for Reno Druid either.

Death Knight

  • Rainbow DK is making a comeback, establishing itself as one of the few Swarm Shaman ‘counters’. It also completely dominates Control Warrior, which is another cooked up Shaman counter. The disparity in Rainbow DK’s performance across ladder brackets is more related to its refinement, or a kinder field, rather than an abnormally high skill ceiling.
  • Frost DK is stagnating, falling behind other contenders and not showing enough room for growth through refinement compared to other decks.
  • Other slow Death Knight decks do not show the same promise of Rainbow DK. Blood, Plague and Starship DK look nowhere near. Reno DK has expectedly fallen off.

Paladin

  • Libram Paladin is stagnating. There are some things it can do better when it comes to card choices, but not enough to move the needle and turn it into a genuinely powerful deck. It’s not too bad at lower rank brackets, so it can feel okay on the climb.
  • Lynessa Paladin is more of a case of players refusing to let go of some atrocious builds. There is an obsession with lists that top out at Lynessa, running Grillmaster and fully committing into an OTK route. It doesn’t work. A refined Lynessa Paladin is a Tier 2 deck, but we may never see it in the aggregated data.
  • Handbuff Paladin has drastically declined, which is expected considering its oppressive matchup against Swarm Shaman.

Priest

  • Zarimi Priest has taken an expected hit to its win rate due to its unfavorable matchups against Swarm Shaman and Cycle Rogue. However, the deck is a very dominant Dungar Druid counter, so if the wind blows in that direction, it might have a part to play. It is also effective against Discover Hunter.
  • All the cope in the world is not going to make Control Priest playable. Just forget it.

Demon Hunter

  • Pirate DH is suffering from the increasing Swarm Shaman tax. Not only does Swarm Shaman obliterate other aggressive decks, it also invites anti-aggro elements to the field, such as Control Warrior. It makes it hard to justify playing aggressive decks that are not specifically Swarm Shaman, even when they still perform at a decent level.
  • Attack DH, based on its low top legend sample, is similar in power level to Pirate DH.

Warrior

  • Control Warrior has made a shocking and drastic climb in power at top legend, reaching Tier 2. We did hint to this potentially happening last week, as a narrow Swarm Shaman/Cycle Rogue environment could contribute to this archetype’s success. Warrior counters the emerging Big Shaman and Discover Hunter, while displaying further scope for improvement, so it’s got some stuff going for it. However, the deck is incredibly polarizing, folding to several contending strategies. The biggest issue going forward is Dungar Druid, but Starship Rogue’s persisting popularity is just as annoying.
  • Mech Warrior is a playable, but mediocre deck that we don’t expect will gain much traction.

Mage

  • Elemental Mage has a surprisingly similar story to Zarimi Priest. It’s not good against Shaman and Cycle Rogue (the Rogue matchup flipped because of the Lamplighter nerf), so its performance is declining, but a Dungar Druid surge could keep it relevant at higher ranks.

Warlock

  • Wheel Warlock is weak. The Swarm Shaman matchup is fine, but as we’ve said last week, the Rogue class just destroys this deck. Dungar Druid steals its lunch money too. Warlock is possibly the worst class in the game, considering that Pain Warlock is mediocre based on our low sample estimate. Whatever Deathrattle Warlock is, we’re not interested either.

Class Analysis & Decklists

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

 

Data Reaper Report - Rogue

Some decks have been trying to target Cycle Rogue by depleting it of threats. The deck’s answer has been to hone its late game lethality, to the point a Control Warrior cannot outlast its damage. This is why Cover Artist has become more common. It makes Sonya’s combo with Incindius and Scoundrel deal a ridiculous amount of damage. Glacial Shard and Speaker Stomper are not important for the deck, so it’s easy to make space for this greedier path.

Starship Rogue has experimented with Ethereal Oracle for a while, but the card has only started to impress this week, once players added Tar Slick and Fan of Knives alongside it. This package is very helpful in aggressive matchups, as evident by Cycle Rogue’s success. The anti-aggro shift we’re seeing in the format had made Tess stronger. We wanted to run both Griftah (mega core) and Tess, so we’ve opted to drop one copy of Dubious Purchase. This spell is mandatory in builds that don’t run Ethereal Oracle, but we’ve noticed its performance worsens with Oracle due to redundancy. One copy should be enough.

We’ve also added Fan of Knives to Weapon Rogue. Too good in the Shaman matchup.

Data Reaper Report - Shaman

The Swarm Shaman build we’ve settled on last week looks correct. This is the strongest list of 30 cards you can run in the format.

The meta is getting a bit greedier, so we’ve noticed that Shudderblock and The Ceaseless Expanse have risen up in power in Asteroid Shaman. Players are now cutting Murloc Growfin, with Miracle Salesman performing better even when Shudderblock is included. Just keep in mind that Snake Oil is better off being kept in hand to trigger Oracle. Trading it into the deck isn’t great for Triangulate.

Big Shaman is back, thanks to Jambre revisiting the archetype and proving its merit in faster matchups. The best performing build currently is the Razzle-Dazzler one. Dazzler gives the deck an easy-to-execute, secondary win condition. We focus on a smaller minion pool, as we’re more likely to pull Walking Mountain with Cliff Dive. A Triangulate build with Nobundo and Incindius can work well too, but this win condition is slower and harder to execute.

Data Reaper Report - Hunter

We’ve dropped Barrel of Monkeys from Discover Hunter, to add Mixologist. We’ve noticed the deck is suffering a bit from the absence of a solid turn 3 play, so it helps our curve. We recognize that Mixologist does not discount Alien Encounters, as it’s not a discover effect, but the card’s performance in this archetype is strong regardless. We don’t like Kill Command or Parallax Cannon, the latter seems redundant in the presence of Aggramar.

The rise of defensive decks that are happy to sit back and not develop minions means that Grunter Hunter is in a greater need of a workaround. The performance of variants running Catch of the Day has risen as a result. Food Fight is another card that can help us land an ABJ OTK.

Starship Hunter is bad, but what we do notice about the archetype is that it’s desperate for any effect that duplicates or regenerates Biopods or Starships. That means Kraken, Cubicle and Covert Artist are all strong performers. Not a single build out there runs all 6 cards, yet we get the impression it’s the correct path forward. It might seem like too much, but we want to see how these cards perform together and then decide whether redundancy hurts them.

Data Reaper Report - Druid

Not much is new in Druid. Dungar Druid performs extremely well in the current format with its established build. We added Gnomelia to Reno Druid due to the Shaman matchup.

Rainbow Death Knight has found its way back to a competitive level. Marin has gotten a little better due to the rise in Control Warrior, though it’s still one of the worst cards in the deck. Hematurge is similarly weak. These value cards seem to persist in the deck due to their perceived power in slower matchups. Chillfallen Baron isn’t popular, but looks very good (so much better than Acolyte of Death).

Frost Death Knight seems to be going back to a Razzle-Dazzler build. Another indicator that getting a little greedier this week is beneficial.

Data Reaper Report - Paladin

Libram Paladin wants Leeory Jenkins now, but it wants to add it without giving up a copy of Prismatic Beam, which is simply too important against Shaman. Another card that looks important is a single copy of Tigress Plushy, which gives the deck a ton of healing with Libram of Divinity. Divine Brew and ‘Oh, Manager!’ are the weakest cards in the deck, so we’ve dropped one copy of each.

The Excavate variant of Handbuff Paladin is making a comeback. It looks quite strong, possibly stronger than the vanilla variant if the format gets any slower.

We do not like how Greedy Partner and Gold Panner perform in the non-Pipsi Lynessa Paladin variant. We’ve added Prismatic Beams, Incindius and Zilliax in their place for more late game and stabilizing power. The Pipsi build looks clean. This archetype is better than it looks, due to underwhelming builds dominating its play rate.

Data Reaper Report - Priest

Zarimi Priest is the latest deck to jump on the Ethereal Oracle bandwagon. A new build leverages it with Fly Off the Shelves, which is an incredible AOE effect when boosted by spell damage. The additional drawing power makes The Ceaseless Expanse seem like a legitimate option for the deck. This build can still employ an aggressive game plan, but it also has the option to play more defensively in faster matchups, setting up an Expanse/Zarimi combo to obliterate the opponent with later.

It’s a bit unfortunate that players have no interest whatsoever in Crewmate Demon Hunter. It makes refining the deck difficult. Top legend players are more interested in Attack Demon Hunter, which looks decent. We’re now confident the latest featured build is the best one for the archetype.

Data Reaper Report - Warrior

Refining Control Warrior is probably the most complicated endeavor we had to take this week, as the archetype is very dependent on specific fields to optimize against. After an extensive scan of the archetype, we’ve curated two approaches that work best.

The first is similar to the build we settled on last week. Odyn is the primary win condition here, alongside Hydration Station. We dropped the Boomboss/Fizzle pairing from this deck, as Odyn and Boomboss do not match well together.

The second is the Boomboss/Fizzle build, turned up to 11, with Zola offering an infinite value chain that will grind out every other opponent when given time. This build is popular at high legend, though it’s not necessarily better than the Odyn build. Both lists perform at a similar level across ladder, with small matchup differences.

Data Reaper Report - Mage

There’s nothing new to report on Mage. Elemental Mage is the only viable archetype in the class and its build looks settled.

Data Reaper Report - Warlock

Defile is becoming a mandatory inclusion for Wheel Warlock, due to the increasing popularity of Swarm Shaman. Pain Warlock is okay, but significantly worse than other aggressive decks.



There’s a reluctance to fully embrace the swarming meta tyrant. Players would rather play their skill intensive Rogue decks, or attrition-based strategies, such as Control Warrior or Rainbow DK. While Swarm Shaman is an aggressive deck, it’s cannibalizing other aggressive decks, leading to the format slowing down, rather than speeding up. This is not a terrible development, as the format was quite fast last week.

This means that Dungar Druid’s position in the format has significantly strengthened, emerging as a Tier 1 contender across ladder, including top legend.

Big Shaman has emerged as Swarm Shaman’s best statistical counter. Its standing against the Cycle Rogue/Swarm Shaman pairing is one of the best available, which makes it a meta breaking choice at top legend, but a well-rounded deck everywhere on ladder.

Ultimately, nothing is going to shake down Swarm Shaman. Its best counters are being held back by oppressive matchups against other popular strategies. In fact, it might get stronger over the next week. Succeeding in this format, without playing Swarm Shaman yourself, is about navigating the relationships between all the other strategies that scramble for relevance and pretend they’re not significantly inferior to Swarm Shaman.

If a Ramp Druid deck, or a Thief Rogue deck, displayed the dominance in performance that Swarm Shaman is displaying, we would have a deck with a 30% play rate.

Thankfully, Swarm Shaman might just be… too boring?

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