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.
Comments
Anyone else noticing that Reno seems to target specific minions until they're dead and not just do random targets across the board? That's very different than other effects with similar wording.
I think the term you are looking for is "bad luck".
Wow, might be, I'm pretty good at having bad luck. The other day, I had 10 health over 4 minions and also a Blackhowl Gunspire on board, Reno killed all other minions, in order, dealing no damage against the latter.
And I hope you clipped it and sent it to Trolden!
And confirmation bias
Very interesting to see how different the stats are to an individual's experience. I've won a lot with quest druid, priest and rogue. Haven't seen many warriors. This is ranks 14-10, by the way.
"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."
I feel like this is less that the cards are performing really well and more the fact control decks have a high win rate for pretty much all cards played. This is because typically the longer the game goes on the more cards you play and with things like Tomb Warden in particular, it's just a large wall that can act as a nail in the coffin for some other types of decks. You can probably replace it with some other big taunt or big mech have a similar result occur.
That being said, I do think the cards are good, but their strength doesn't come from them being strong on their own and instead of slotting into an already tried and true deck that is shaping the meta.
The power of Armagedilo and Tomb Warden can be illustrated in this hypothetical line of play:
Turn 6: Armagedilo
Turn 7: Dr. Boom Mad Genius
Turn 8: Tomb Warden, as two 5/8 taunts (or 7/10 taunts) with rush
Probably the strongest thing about Tomb Warden is the fact its a mech, so you can discover it again.
The statistics don't even mean that they are in the deck. They could just be discovered, so crafting might not be a great idea.
I'm under the impression that HSReplay doesn't include discovered stuff in their winrates. Could be wrong though.
You could be right with that.
I'm confused that Zeph isn't on the list.
Maybe because he requires some skill and knowledge about what card you want in which situation and what is available at which amount of mana.
Armagedillo was my only legendary craft so far. It is really fun to play and it is even more fun when you pull it from Frightened Flunky. I know there is a lot of hate on warrior but it is a fun deck to play even when you don't pull the Dr. (I have had several games where I won mirror matches despite not pulling the Dr. but my opponents do).
I might have to craft Brann though as I really enjoy Hunter and have a good set of cards to support that deck.
When you're tuning a quest deck and finally get it working, there is that moment when you wonder "wouldn't this deck be better without the quest?" And too often, the answer is "yes".
I also thought the Quest Rogue was better. Maybe not top tier but viable.
Tbh, the meta includes so much insane power for Midrange and Control, that it may be just a contextual weakness. Maybe one extra Thief synergy card could fix it... But that's it for now.
If anything, it triggered more support to Thief Rogue in the form of Bazaar Mugger and Clever Disguise. Those cards are pretty cool in any Thief package, independently of the Quest.
Adding random cards to your hand from a large pool is never going to be consistent, I think. Stonehill Defender was consistent in Odd Paladin because there were two great class cards it could discover, but in Wild I now count 6 options and while most are decent, they're not at the same level as Tarim and Tirion. Mana Cyclone is somewhat consistent, but it operates on a relatively small pool of only class cards of reasonable quality; if Glacial Mysteries were still in Standard, I think Cyclone would be less popular.
Ethereal Peddler. If they started printing more cards like this, Thief Rogue would become scary even in Wild.
Efficient generators and efficient synergies.
The problem so far is that most generators and most synergies have been value-oriented, without enough Tempo.
But interesting cards are slowly stacking up...
Peddler is a bit slow though: first you have two gather cards to discount, then you have to play a 5-mana minion that doesn't immediately impact the board. While it has decent stats for its cost, it doesn't have rush or taunt, so the opponent is free to ignore it and go face, or to value-trade. Leyline Manipulator had the same issue. I think for a card like this to be good, it needs to be cheaper (so you can play discounted cards in the same turn) or have taunt (so you won't be dead the next turn or forced to make awkward plays to stay alive).
I think Vendetta is the kind of card that makes the archetype work: a powerful pay-off that's cheap to use.
Yeah sure.
What i meant was strong cards that generate Tempo upon already efficient Value generators.
Thief Rogue is not hopeless. It just needs to get strongly supported in the Tempo stats (instead of sheer Value).