Post-Nerf January

Hi folks, 

Just wanted to chit chat a little about the impact of the nerfs in standard.
They are online for a couple days now and first statistics are rolling in.

A quick look on HS Replay shows a rather balanced playfield (i don't have access to diamond and legend data though).
The clear winners this time are paladin and hunter, followed by a majority of the classes pivoting around the 50% mark with only druids and priests at the bottom.

What amazes me the most is the huge decline of shamans. What a single attack point on a weapon can do is truly impressive.
This decline in winrate might be biaised though since many people disenchanted their bonespine knuckels and picked up more experimental shaman decks like aggro, highlander or OTK. 

However, this shows how cutthroat the fight for the top of the tierlist is and how little the differences in powerlevel can be.
A multitude of decks have popped up in diamond wich results in a surprisingly entertaining ladder experience (for me).
Different versions of warlocks, hunters, paladins, warriors ... A ton of decks seem viable. 

My prefered lists right now are OTK/deck of lunacy mage and ETC warrior.
It's been quit a while since some true OTK decks have been this viable! 

What are your first impressions and what decks work best for you? 
Do you think Hunters and/or Paladins will become as opressive as shamans were? 

I personally am shocked that the nerf to Boggspine Knuckles hurt as much as it did.  I didn't think that it would have had an impact so much that it would have reduced the number of those deck floating around, but I too have not encountered nearly as many.

I've been sticking to my Pure Paladin and Guardian Druid decks and having a lot of fun with the Standard ladder with them.  

Shockingly though, I am seeing more Rogue decks than I did before.  I don't know if it is because people are just trying out how much of an impact Edwin VanCleef's nerf is having, or what but I am seeing a lot of Aggro, Galakrond, and Secret Rogue wandering around the ladder AND I am still seeing VanCleef being used.  

It is a 5 mana weapon after all. Truth be told, that Dread Corsair swing was perhaps the one thing that kept evolve shaman relevant over the deluge of Kobold Stickyfingers everywhere. Basically its now 1 turn too slow, which is plenty considering how often the deck falters in the early game. There's also the fact, as you mentioned, that a full dust refund provided more than enough reason to stop playing evolve shaman and most players duly obliged.

Hunter and paladin can never truly be oppressive because the current iterations of both decks need board to win and cant bypass taunts as easily as say, soul dhunter. They also can't reload in the same way as shaman does, and generally not as unpredictable as rogues, priest or mage.

Playing priest isnt as bad as it used to be, so there's some plus.

Agreed! I didn’t mention rogue in the above post because I haven’t really figured out his place yet. The Aggro variant seems still very strong but on a healthy acceptable level imo. 

I just finished my climb with ETC warrior and had an astounding 15-3 winrate. Took me some time to figure it out though. With ETC, Rattlegore and Zephrys, there are lots of unintuitive ways to close out games. I had one mirror match, literal insanity. 

I didn’t face many paladins or hunters btw, these might be more powerfull in gold and platin now that I think of it. Solid curvestone decks.