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
dont think Armagedillo is a save craft yet, IF they nerf warrior heavily. this might not see play anymore.
i think reno suprised me : everyone was like THAT reno is so bad compared to the older one... but in this format its like flame strike for 6 mana sometimes
he is bad, but deck is strong and Zephrys makes viable singleton deck, Reno just good card in the right deck. Everyone said it's good effect, but not worth creating singleton deck just for him and then Zephrys changed all, like Kazakus and Anduin maked Raza great card.
I beg to differ ; I DO think Armagedillo is a safe craft, if only to enhance - the already heavily played in all warrior's decklist -Zilliax