Meta after the nerf?

How do you think the Meta will evolve after the nerf? It seems Elemental Shaman was the less affected among the tier 1/2 decks ...

Personally, I think that Shaman will be the top contender. I am hoping that we can get a few control decks that are viable. I've been enjoying Quest Priest with decent success. Warlock seems to be my hardest matchup with everything else being 50/50 or slightly in my favor.

Mage will die out. I've just beaten one as Shadow Control Priest (Flightmaster Dungar is pretty good when he nukes for 12). They're just not fast enough anymore when they have to coin out Flow on 2.

Warlock is basically unaffected if you play the Soul Rend build, meaning there will always be a huge roadblock for any control deck, especially since the Battlemaster and Flesh Giant nerfs don't affect that deck nearly as much so it can still scam wins with them.

OTK DH should at least be gone for good so as long as you dodge the Warlock matchups control decks are playable at least.

Also Hunter should be much weaker against tempo decks now at the very least.

Nightmare, can you DM your shadow control priest? I've got a variant I'm working on and want to compare notes on the decklist your using...

Questline Shaman might be able to beat the Handlock version of Questline Warlock. Hex and Torrent both offer meaningful answers to single big enemies, and the slightly slower Flesh Giant and Battleground Battlemaster might make those tools easier to put together. Also, the double cast for your spells is a powerful finisher that might outpace the secondary win condition Quest Handlock has from Blightborn Tamsin.

Haven't seen mage at all so far, but Flesh Giants and Battleground Battlemaster is still good enough to see play.

I am considering 2x bb as way too inefficient now. You can't just drop bb on 6, that's just asking for death, and if you can't draw then having 2 of them in the deck is just 1 dead card in hand most of the time.

Will be trying quest paladin again, it might be that the meta is slow enough to support it now. We'll see.

Still considering wether to dust the epics or not (except Darkglare which I don't own). It seems like all of them should still be good or playable, right? I feel like Kolkar Pack Runner maybe took the greatest hit but I can hardly imagine any non-SMORC Hunter deck without them.

I don't use my Flesh Giants ATM but I will probably craft The Demon Seed for the Soul Rend build and they should still be good there.

Quote From allthehype

Still considering wether to dust the epics or not (except Darkglare which I don't own). It seems like all of them should still be good or playable, right? I feel like Kolkar Pack Runner maybe took the greatest hit but I can hardly imagine any non-SMORC Hunter deck without them.

I don't use my Flesh Giants ATM but I will probably craft The Demon Seed for the Soul Rend build and they should still be good there.

Just dust them, it really doesn't matter because if you need it you can always just craft it back for the same cost. Better now than never.

Well, to go back to the topic, I face a lot of Warlock lately, Diamond 9. Shaman Elemental too, but mostly Quest Darkglare SoS Warlock.

Well so far i've only met 1 Mage since the nerfs and he coined Incanters on 2 and got the whole Questline Done by 6 - so i guess if you have the nuts draw it is still pretty fast/good otherwise i guess decent enough to try.

Mostly i ran into Warlocks right now (different builds) but all of them Quest - im playing Elemental Shaman right now and so far i've won against every single Warlock i faced. 

Met some Paladins - all of them Handbuff except one which was Quest. If i would make a Percentage List about every class and how much of them i've encountered i guess it would kinda look like this:

Warlock - 35 %

Paladin - 25 %

Shaman - 10 %

Druid - 10 %

Hunter 8 %

Demon Hunter - 5 %

Rogue - 4 %

Mage - 2 %

Warrior - 1% 

Priest - 0 % (havent met a single Priest on the Ladder this Week so far)

That`s kinda what i face this week so far - not exact numbers but i kinda rounded up and tried to memorize which decks i've met. And thats only my personal experience - im not saying that is the official list on Which class gets played who often :) 

Quote From h0lysatan

Well, to go back to the topic, I face a lot of Warlock lately, Diamond 9. Shaman Elemental too, but mostly Quest Darkglare SoS Warlock.

Can confirm. WL playrate went up. Maybe because the Buff-Paladin as counter has been nerfed? 

I've faced zero Mages so far, I think the class died or people just don't want to try it anymore. Personally, I'm happy about this because the spell-only archetypes of Mage are getting boring to play against. 

Because of this, Warlock has become incredibly powerful. I've seen a couple of variations with the questline, from the handlock version to the more combo one (Stealer of Souls + Darkglare). I'm personally playing the handlock version, and I think it's a lot of fun to play. Not so much for my opponent, though. That 9-mana "nerf" to Flesh Giant did absolutely nothing; I can still drop them down on turn 4 or 5 sometimes. 

Elemental Shaman and Questline Shaman are the other prevalent decks I see on ladder. The questline version looks strong but is held in check by Warlock. Elemental Shaman remains solid as ever. 

There are a handful of Paladins here and there, but overall, it's a Warlock-dominated meta. 

Quote From anchorm4n

Is Shadow Priest still any good at higher ranks? I'm at gold 5 because I'm a Wild main and haven't touched Standard in a while, but it works well enough for me there. 

Yeah, shadow priest works fine in both formats. It's around tier 2 in standard I'd imagine.