We've now had the chance to explore the wonders of Uldum for around two weeks and the new cards have definitely made an impact on the Standard meta. It's time to take a look at which cards outperformed the initial power level assessment and which fell far from expectations with the help of the data from our friends at HSReplay.
Don't forget that you can contribute to the data by downloading Hearthstone Deck Tracker.
Top 5 Cards
Whoaaa, legendary! The orange gems dominate the top spots of "played winrate" section. Dinotamer Brann has charged to a clear lead with the help of King Krush, breaking an outstanding 68 % winrate on both formats. If your collection is large enough to support highlander-style decks, he's certainly a safe craft. Similarly, both King Phaoris and Reno the Relicologist have made a splash on both formats with over 60% winrates.
It would be easy to put Armagedillo's success on the shoulders of the overall dominance of Warrior, but the stats seem to suggest a 4% increase in winrate in games where the happy armadillo got played compared to those where it didn't. Tomb Warden, the only non-legendary of top 5 also enjoys the existence of Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, but causes a 2.5% bump in winrate when played regardless.
Bottom 5 Cards
Gul'dan can't catch a break right now. First the players at Masters Tour showed their distrust in the Warlock's abilities and now he gets the honour of being the proud owner of three worst performing cards of the set so far, all failing to break 40% winrate. Impbalming probably isn't a surprise given it's relatively high cost with an apparent drawback, and Supreme Archaeology is hard to make work consistently enough. Expired Merchant held a lot of promise, but doesn't currently have a Standard deck where the effect would be impactful enough. The so far hidden potential of the card is proven by the clearly positive winrate of it in Wild.
Conjured Mirage always seemed a top-or-flop kind of a card to me, and so far it has been the latter. Earthquake's bad performance is possibly the most unexpected one, since it looks like a rather solid AoE on paper. Even though the played winrates of board clears suffer from the fact that they often get played when you're behind on board, a winrate of just over 40% doesn't give you an impression of a good card.
Quest...Failed
Questing in Uldum hasn't been easy so far. All but one quest, Making Mummies, fail to break the 50% line on played winrates. The Paladin quest dominates its peers with almost 5% higher winrate over the rest of the pack. We already witnessed the sad state of Warlock at previous section, but Raid the Sky Temple and Hack the System aren't that far away from it. The five remaining quests form a tight group with winrates within 2% of each other.
Interestingly, the deck winrates are couple of percents higher than the quest winrates for all nine classes, pushing Druid and Shaman decks above 50%. Does it really mean that mulliganing away the quest improves your winrate or is it a statistical anomaly of sorts? I can't tell.
Not the horse my money was on
This League's Gonna Save Uldum
A song that catchy can't possibly be wrong, right? We already saw that Brann and Reno have performed really well, but what do the stats say about the other two? Elise has a clearly positive played winrate (55+%), while the decks containing her aren't enjoying similar success (48+%). The combo-supporting nature of the card explains the difference: when you play her, you either got your gamewinning combo or end up getting so much extra value that your winrate bumps up. Sir Finley has the opposite situation with played winrate (47+%) far inferior to deck winrate (56%). As you probably guessed, this is due to Finley's inclusion in Murloc Paladin, where your aim isn't to play Finley but just pull out a bunch of Murlocs with Tip the Scales.
What has been your experience with the new cards so far? Has something surprised you or has everything been as you expected? Share your thoughts in comments below.
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Comments
I think we will see the quests more and more over the next year. As balance changes happening - opening the way for other types of decks and with new cards over the next year some of these quest will sneak up and become good.
Some quests, I think, are so low on this list because everyone got one for free and try to build decks with it. Even if they don't have the best cards to support the quest. And trying different ways to make the quests work.
Also, some of the quest decks are harder to play. This being said, some less experienced/competitive players are lowering the success rate.
Expired Merchant had found a perfect home in my Wild Discard Lock, thing is killing it in Comp.
Played winrate is a terrible metric to judge cards by. Of course Earthquake has a low played winrate, because you never play it when you're already winning. You only play it when trying to turn around a game in which you're far behind. This also explains why Dinotamer Brann is so far ahead of the other cards: It's very often played as a finisher, and played winrate doesn't account for all the times it's stuck in your hand. You see the same for cards like Pyroblast and Mind Blast.
I mean, you're right about the finishers, and partly right about the board clear. However, if you're trying to get back into a match with a board clear and you lose more often than not when you use it, it's probably not doing the job? I don't know, you probably need to compare lists that differ by only that card and look at their overall win rate differential?
Wow, very glad I got King Phaoris, Reno the Relicologist and Armagedillo from my preorder.
Btw I find it very weird that many streamers thought the paladin quest was gonna be very bad just because you "have to play 5 bad minions". You can easily complete the quest by turn 5 or 6 and start on coping eggs and whelps.
I think Zephrys the Great should have a place under the top cards ....
And i personaly would never have thought that King Phaoris would see that much play and become viable even for a ladder deck :) - this was quite a Surprise for me - but i also thought that Highlander Hunter would not be that great and as it turns out it is pretty darn good :)
And i said from the beginning that Making Mummies would be very good :)
These lists were based strictly off statistics, and I suspect [Hearthstone Card (Zephrys the Great) Not Found]'s overall statistics aren't as good BECAUSE he's so powerful. He's in 29% of decks right now, and a lot of them probably aren't utilizing his full potential. Murloc Paladin, for example, has an overall Win Rate of ~55%, but in that archetype Zeph only has a Played Win Rate of ~45%--presumably because if you're winning, you want to hold him back as a trump card and your opponent probably concedes before you ever play him, and if you're losing, you play him and maybe discover a card that can buy a turn or two but if your behind with that deck its really hard to turn the game around.
Consider this compared to Dinotamer Brann, King Phaoris, and Reno the Relicologist, where A.) there's only a small population of decks that support them, all of which happen to be very good so nobody is "tainting" their overall statistics, and B.) they are all good tempo cards that you can (generally) feel great about slamming on-curve--even if you're ahead--so they collect spillover wins. Remember that good decks win more than they lose, and trackers like HsReplay just know which cards were played as part of that win, not how "clutch" they were or weren't.
Earthquake is a good card for Control Shaman, but sadly Control Shaman doesn't currently exist in the meta. It's also strange that a 7-mana AOE board clear was printed one set after Hagatha's Scheme, which is a 5-mana AOE board clear that is usually just a better card to fit into decks. Earthquake will have about 20 months before it rotates out of Standard, so there's some hope for the card.
I'm surprised by King Phaoris since I expected it to be too slow, and honestly, I dislike the card.
I am also shocked on Earthquake being listed as a loser card.
I can only think it's because of mage often having 8-health minions or paladin deathrattles being its flaw.
I recall Kripp saying on quests: You are sacrificing tempo, where a 1 drop might go, for quests.
Aside from Open the Waygate (now the terror of Wild, not Big Priest) and rogue (The Caverns Below, which streamers thought wouldn't work) ... let's look back at Un'Goro quests.
Warrior quest was one of the few of Un'Goro that worked because of the taunt build of the time. And warrior had nothing else at the time (pirate warrior began dying when the Death Knights appeared, and was pretty much DOA when Kobolds & Catacombs early control meta came about. Ah, that was a brief, but glorious time to see no aggro succeed, hitting a wall of 3/9 warlock taunts, Machine Gun Anduin and Frost Lich Jaina. But I digress ...)
Priest's Awaken the Makers only worked for meme/OTK shenanigans, and not strong ones. It found its uses late after a few expansions too.
Lakkari Sacrifice was hope springs eternal, finding only some viability too late in its life. And it still wasn't good enough no matter how hard Blizzard or streamers tried. And it didn't help there were good warlock decks as alternatives post-Un'Goro (Warlock during Un"Goro? Don't ask).
The Last Kaleidosaur was a Brian Kibler-only paladin playground, complete with music.
You were better off going to wild with Aviana Druid than doing Jungle Giants.
The Marsh Queen, Un'Goro's hunter quest, was hilariously bad to watch. An underpowered aggro deck. Yet it had the streamers buzzing, unlike Caverns (which to me, was obviously a danger after watching enough miracle and mill rogue shenanigans).
Unite the Murlocs was a build up of crappy shaman aggro that usually failed (like a murloc deck should).
PS I won two games with Conjured Mage, but I wouldn't recommend it in a deck.
You're not just losing tempo, or, better put, you're not always losing tempo. You're losing a card. You're literally starting the game with one less card than the opponent, and the reward is an extra powerful card in the late-game. Changing the reward to an automatic hero-power upgrade was an interesting way to bypass having to play the reward, but I would argue that it probably takes three turns/hero-powers to make up the card disadvantage across so many turns. That should theoretically work in a control deck, but the card disadvantage is just too huge. I have to think that after this expansion the Hearthstone team will be completely done with Quests. A noble experiment that just didn't work.
For some of the new quests, it is win-more too. Best example is priest, if you can survive aggro, you can tire down a Control Warrior if played smartly, and it's got strong enough removal to go against Conjurer's Mages. Same with Paladin; if you can weather a storm while dropping meager reborns, eventually you get a very sticky conundrum that only loses to polymorph or silence. But if you made it that far, you're likely already set to win against most decks. Priest repeatedly getting the reborn healing taunt or Sandhoof makes Shudderwock decks relying on THE BIG TURN fall flat.
Ironic that Making Mummies turned out to be the only viable quest when many expected it to be the worst during reveal season.
It's still the worst one flavorwise, since when paladins, or murlocs are necromancer?
A lot of the time in media, mummies aren’t just considered to always be evil. To me it makes sense flavor wise, paladins are waking up mummies so that they’ll help defend Uldum.
Kinda like The Caverns Below.
It's amazing how often this happens.
Personally, I'm running a "combo priest" with the quest, and it's definitely above 50% winrate. Not sure yet if it would better without the quest, but the quest DEFINITELY gives better endgame, and MUCH better options for playing around hunter secrets. Basically, without the quest, the combo priest is just a combo with no other way to win. With the quest, it has an alternate wincon.
I'm playing too a combo priest with the quest and have similar experience, quest being an alternative for buffing minions and have a wining condition. But I feel with the quest the deck is more controlish. Anyway there is some potential in my opinion in a more refined combo priest with quest.
I added an Earthquake to my Muckmorpher Shaman deck and I've been quite happy with it. That is a very top-heavy deck though, so having an additional board clear on top of two Hagatha's Schemes is useful there.
I'm not playing at high ranks though; I imagine that if the meta you're facing is mostly Control Warrior and Conjurer Mage, Earthquake is not so useful. So its poor performance in the stats might say more about the meta than about the card itself.