Ask and you shall receive! Comments in our strongest Wild Barrens decks post mentioned wanting to see the strongest decks in all formats, Barrens or not, and we heard you! Today we'll take another glimpse into HSReplay's stats to see what are the best decks for each class in Standard.
DISCLAIMER: Yup, a lot of meta decks incoming, don't shoot the messenger. Data taken after nerfs from Diamond to Legend. All stats mentioned were correct at the time of writing.
Rush Warrior
This is the strongest list in Diamond to Legend with a healthy 1.2% margin, but it is followed by a TON of Paladins before the next Rush Warrior list. An outlier, or lack of players trying out the class that was deep in the dumpster before nerfs?
Secret Paladin
Paladins, Paladins everywhere! - Buzz Lightyear if he played Hearthstone
Even if Uther just missed the top spot, there's absolutely no reason to be sad - Paladin in all possible flavors is thriving, and there are dozens of lists comfortably breaking 60% winrate. Here are the current top two with Librams and not.
Face Hunter
The third member of the winrate breakaway trio. If you haven't seen this deck, you haven't been playing Standard. This particular list includes a copy of Voracious Reader, which is overall a rare tech in the top lists.
No Minion Mage
The only list capable of breaking the 60% winrate in addition to the aforementioned. Most lists seem to be running neither Deck of Lunacy nor C'Thun, the Shattered, and Evocation that this list includes also seems like a rare tech.
Control Warlock
Warlocks are very much in the meta as well despite the generally unfavorable matchups against Paladins and Hunters. Venomous Scorpids seem to be absent from most top lists, whereas Alexstrasza the Life-Binder and Envoy Rustwix are popular techs.
Secret Rogue
Miracle is still very much alive, but the top spot goes to the Secret variant. Jandice nerf had no impact on her popularity, whereas Pen Flingers have disappeared from almost all top lists.
I know I said "7 strongest" so I'll have to stop now, but I'm just going to mention that this Clown Druid and this spicy Deathrattle/OTK hybrid Demon Hunter are the top lists for the classes, both falling a bit short of 57% winrate (the latter was tied with a more conventional OTK build with Illidari Inquisitors but we all knew which one I'd post; how did it ever get the top spot is beyond me). Shaman and Priest are not doing too well.
Hungry for more decks? Take a look at what our community members have been building.
Comments
Got up to Rank 3 with No Minion Mage, back down to 4 with that rogue deck. It is not good at high ranks.
It's actually much better at high ranks because it beats control decks, but if you're trying to make the jump to Legend it's too weak against all the aggro decks there.
Vicious Syndicate's latest meta report is very down on C'Thun in general so I find it interesting that a No Minion Mage with that is rolling so well. I was within 20 wins of the 1000 portrait for mage when the Lunacy nerf hit and I had already made it to Diamond 5 for April so I've been stubbornly sticking with it even after the nerf. It's rough going. The May climb is going to involve a different deck for sure.
Spell Mage with C'thun is only really useful against long drawn out matches or the ones where you want the Aoe/single target destroy.
Usually it's just clogging up your deck with stuff you don't need because you'd rather find actual burn and just blow the opponent up.
Spell Mage is just rock paper scissors at this point. If you go against a slow deck, just turn off your brain and point all burn at face, if you go against aggro just concede. It somehow involves less decision making than Face hunter.
If you still want to play Mage you can try the Spell Damage version, or you can go full Hipster and try to play Secret Mage (which gets out-tempoed by most decks, but if you get a good start it's quite good actually)
That was my own experience with the C'thun variant on the Lunacy deck before the nerf. Those spells didn't help me much and just ended up making it harder to pull one of the cards that really made a difference. Maybe this was bad luck also, but it seemed like even the Lunacy-upgraded 8 drops often turned in to dead draws.
I gave in and switched to the VS suggested build last night in hopes they'd get me the final 6-7 wins and that worked out. Now I can start working on a different class. Too bad for me I've already hit 1000 on Warrior, Paladin, and Hunter and those are three of the best ones right now.
People are sleeping on Control Priest, that deck can deal with just about anything except Control Warlock (which is a garbage deck outside of the Priest matchup)
100% agreed, its very strong against Warrior, Hunter and Paladin
Unfortunately, since the matchup is so horrendous that that's reason enough to not want to play priest. Doesn't help that warlock is often enough 1/3 of all your matches, conspiracy theories when playing priest aside. I've seen many priest decks just double down on this and simply consider warlock just unwinnable, playing no tech cards against it whatsoever.
Also, there's a reason why warlock is a good portion of the meta right now, and that's because its very good vs both paladin and warrior. Start with Cascading Disaster in your hand, and its nearly impossible for them to ever win.
Warlock is only common at lower ranks though. Once you get into Legend (or just Diamond 5 really, Priest is pretty safe because you'll keep running into Hunters and Paladins which you can bully with ease.
Only Spell Mage is a reoccuring problem because those trglodytes can beat you by just aiming face and drawing their entire deck by turn 4
Yeah Priest is nice right now. Good matchups. Few enough of the bad to weather it. And the Warlock matchup is so incredibly bad that you can just concede and not waste time on it.
Honestly, it's good that Warlock exists because I fear otherwise the only way to beat Priest would be bottom tier stuff like Rattlegore Warrior or spamming Coin Flip Spell Mage.
Also, I once got destroyed in the mirror by Yogg Saron, so I'm wondering if that guy might just be enough as a lategame bomb to possibly even scam the Warlock matchup.
Probably not because the only real good outcome from yogg against a warlock would be random spells or rod of roasting.
The only way to counter warlock in my opinion is to play either Plagued Protodrake or Cairne Bloodhoof, because without malicia they can never avoid taking damage to face without throwing everything they have into it. But of course, you're priest so getting those cards out of your deck are another thing entirely.
If there were more copy cards in priest you may just get away with it simply with cairne or some other midrange deathrattle that's not Burning Blade Acolyte. But sadly we'll likely have to wait until the next expansion to see if priest is given anything at all.
Also, I don't really think priest can ever really cut it big even without warlock existence. Its really dependent on its draws, and its control tools aren't necessarily good. If you play anything below 5 attack priest generally cant remove it, unlike warlock's bs number of removal options.
I'm not sure why you are this insistent on Priest being bad when the numbers are clearly on my side.
Priest is good
Warlock is really overrated
Once you make it to Legend Warlock is not an issue outside of being specifcally used to counter priest.
Something tells me you haven't actually played the deck because you are clearly underestimating how generally consistent Priest gets the cards they want.
Also, Hysteria is your go to for dealing with any small minions, there's not much else you even need. There is no single deck that wins by just using a single 4/4 for the entire game
And once again Private Nightmare comes to the 'rescue' insulting people because they disagree with his opinon.
Here, let me lend a machete to this intellectual thicket. I'm in legend (again) this season. I can assure you that warlocks are still very much there, just as much as they were in "lower ranks".
And then insinuating that they "haven't actually played the deck" is not only rude, but a stupid assumption at that.
Edit: if this came off a little stronger than necessary I apologize in advance. But it just annoys me to no end when people go "the deck I play is infallible, the deck you play sucks" or a summation of that point in their own words. And that's how your statements are coming across: "My deck with Kazakus is 100% grade A corn fed beef. Your deck with Xyrella/Samuro is downtown china-town ground chuck."
The truth is, both versions of the deck have clear strengths and weakness's. And while kazakus is a fun card, I've tested both variants myself. And I don't think one is a clear cut winner over the other.
Lol, Ive been trying every priest deck my mind can conjure up, from Ysharaaj priest (a real underrated archetype in my opinion) to miracle, to nzoth, to control priest. Im around diamond 3-4, if this matters, and Ive been seeing lots of warlock, from tickatus to that now surprisingly popular neeru warlock (probably because the season is ending). Maybe your experience in legend ranks is comfortably free from warlocks, but that has not been my experience.
As for 'insistent', well. If you played priest you'll quickly find that even one minion can trouble priest fairly well, and quite honestly if you opponent continues to put minions on board (you know, like any proper midrange deck) you'll swiftly run out of options, stranded with that samuro in your hand. To say nothing of the matchup when your opponent actually has a cthun (been seeing lots of warriors running this now, maybe because of priest). There will be times you get what you need and your opponent hasn't a wink of a chance of beating you, but when you flop you flop big.
Maybe in my previous post Ive been too hard on the subject because Im saltier than a salt & vinegar flavored chip having tried and lost to warlock so many times no matter whatever tech card Im jamming. I do think that hsreplay's stats is not representing the true power of priest, but to think that its ever going to take to tier 1 would be a mistake.
that's why I don't run Samuro or Xyrella because they're trap cards and Kazakus is much better in just about any situation.
Also, C'thun Warrior is even worse than Warlock, so I don't see why anyone would even bother.
My personal advice, grind to Legend, and try to get to somewhere around 6 or 4k and suddenly Warlock will show maybe every 10 games while you have a solid choice at beating anything else that isn't Spell MAge
Trust the Data Reaper Report and don't trust HsReplay because their stats are getting bogged down by people who have no clue how to play a Control deck that doesn't generate infinite value.
whats the list, isn't it just created by priest with rally?
no no, not Miracle Priest, genuine Control Priest.
It's in the latest VS report.
There's two version, one regular with Samuro and Xyrella and the one I'M using which cuts 4-drops for Kazakus to be more proactive, which is actually pretty nuts.
Rush warrior doesn't seem to be optimal, i run 4/5 pirates for some more card draw
Agreed. Anyone who wants to play this deck (and you should!) needs to check out VS’ recommended deck list. I don’t agree with it completely (especially their choice to cut Playmaker), but it’s a great starting point.