News Realms Remove Ads - Go Premium! Sign In or Register

Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

[Question] Has there ever been a true Tier 0 deck in Ranked competitive history?

Tier 0 defined as you play this deck or you lose; even decks designed specifically to counter the T0 deck has less than even MU vs said deck.

For example, MTG had one T0 deck in it's history, Ravager Affinity in Mirrodin Standard. It used synergies between Artifacts (a card type, like HS's Beast or Mech) to play things at a heavy discount (4-mana 7/7? Think 0-mana 4/4 on T1 or T2 instead with no drawback) very quickly. Decks which packed Artifact removal (16/60 cards) had less than 45% winrate vs Ravager Affinity (Elf & Nail). It took 7 9 bans to get the deck down to T1 (Skullclamp, Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, and the six Artifact lands).

So, any decks like that in Hearthstone's history? I've been asking friends and some suggested Beta Freeze Mage, Sunshine Hunter and Patron Warrior.

Thanks.

(There were other decks, like Dredge before hate cards were printed, G/W Survival, or Flash Hulk before Flash was banned, that were arguably T0 for a while, but their reign were relatively brief and more in contention. People argue over their place. Nearly everyone agrees on Affinity.)

Edits

Looks like the closest answer is Undertaker Hunter, right after Naxx. Thanks to /u/IksarHS for stats.

Not HS related. I apologize if this breaks the "Content Unrelated to Hearthstone" rule.
Some people pointed out Caw-Blade, Academy, and Necro are T0.
* Caw-Blade: I'm under the impression that it was even with RUG Control (see this Top8) right up until New Phyrexia, after which SFM and JtMS was banned very quickly.
* Academy: is T0, but it was hard countered by 200-Islands.dec, so it doesn't quite fit the definition.
* Necro: was slightly unfavored vs Turbo Stasis.

  • Iksar
    Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    Comparing Huntertaker to "the most popular Shaman archetype" doesn't really prove a point. Back in the days, Undertaker was indisputable the strongest archetype and anyone at decent ranks played the deck if they decided to roll with Hunter. Shaman on the other hand has a whole range of competitive decks at their disposal. Based on the stats I gathered at Legend for the last two months, Shaman is at least as popular now as Huntertaker was back then if you consider the class as a whole. The differences between the decks are marginal anyway. Shamans simply have that many amazing class cards at their disposal that they can decide whether they want to build a more aggressive (Doomhammers) or slower (Thunderbluff Valiants/Fire Eles) deck.

    The intention wasn't really to prove any point, but just to give perspective on Undertaker Hunter popularity for people playing on ladder now. However, all of Shaman (every Shaman deck) right now sits around 19-20% of games, which is still around 5% less than the Undertaker Hunter solo archetype was.

  • Iksar
    Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    My question is when.

    Druid had most of his toys since launch, but it was mostly Tier 2 except for a couple times where the meta turned favorable and druid got to Tier 1. In two years this scenario happened more than once. When was it at its strongest?

    Very early on. Just after people discovered FoN/SR. Around the time putting Wild Growth in Druid became a normal thing.

  • Iksar
    Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    Thanks! Can you also share the approximate average win rate of Undertaker Hunter when it was so popular?

    55-57% if I remember correctly.

  • Iksar
    Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    Number sharing time! As a single archetype, Undertaker Hunter was about 25% of the meta at one point. For perspective, the most popular archetype of Shaman is currently less than half that. Class win rate wise the highest overall number I've ever seen was Druid around 57%. The highest single player in Legend win rate (min 50-70 games single deck) was around 75%, it's usually about 70.

Tweet