Wow! HSReplay.net dropped a stats bomb this evening looking at the current winrates and popularity of Hearthstone's classes in the Standard meta and the results may or may not surprise you.
If you've been laddering at all in Standard this expansion, you've seen your fair share of Mages and Paladins so it should be little surprise that these classes are at the top, but did you know together they are responsible for 50% of decks played at Diamond to Legend? Of course, these stats aren't official and they only look at the higher-end of the ladder, but HSReplay has enough data to make a solid conclusion that these classes are doing too well so far in Forged in the Barrens.
We don't know what Blizzard is thinking about it yet, or if nerfs are even needed yet since it is still very early in the meta and solutions could still be discovered by players, but we do think this is a bit on the crazy side. Here is the breakdown of popularity and winrates on the Standard ladder for each class.
What do you think about Standard's ladder so far in Forged in the Barrens? Have you been on the Mage and Paladin hype train? Let us know your thoughts on the current meta in the comments below including cards you think could be potential nerf targets.
Quote From @HSReplayNet Yes, you read that right.
Over 50% of decks played since Forged in the Barrens' release have been Paladin or Mage.(Delta is in comparison to the week previous to FitB's release)
Looking to Join the Club?
Well, we'd be silly to not include lists to further increase the popularity of Mage and Paladin so here are up-to-date lists for all the fun flavors that are worth playing.
Secret Paladin
Libram Paladin
Libram Broom Paladin
No Minion Mage
Comments
I'm not at very high ranks but I have been having success with Warrior. I use a handbuff Overlord Saurfang build. It's really quite fun. Scrap Golem helps a lot to slow down the opponent and keep your health up for C'Thun, the Shattered. Horde Operative is also hilarious. Of course it's not 100% but Warrior feels good in those matchups. Still refining what I'm using and debating crafting a few things. Overall though I find Mage and Paladin a positive matchup.
The core set did a lot to clear out the useless cards so now card generation and discovers effects are almost entirely positive. Deck of Lunacy and Jandice Barov are the two stand outs but I think all those effects are very pushed right now. If Blizz does nerf anything hopefully they can revert it next set when the card pool is a bit more cluttered. It's a shame Lunacy, a fun card, feels oppressive in a small than normal bubble.
I think it's worth noting that Paladin Play% + Rogue Play%, them being second and third most played classes, is still less than Mage on its own. Paladin's definitely really strong and really common at the moment, but it's certainly MUCH more annoying to play against the same Mage deck over and over in my opinion. Refreshing Spring Water is one of the most obnoxious cards I've had the displeasure of dealing with. A card that is very commonly "Draw 2 and gain 1/2 Mana" is pretty silly. Even without the mana gain, 0 mana Draw 2 is a bit much, considering they nerfed Druid's 2 mana draw 3. Font of Power's current powerful selection pool also makes sure that the "no minion" drawback is much less significant than it used to be.
Although I'll be the first to admit I'm biased considering Paladin is my favorite class, and Mage has always been at the bottom of my list of classes to play against, so take my whining with a grain of salt. Admittedly even I'm tired of Librams, though.
Just have a look at Paladin on hsreplay. Go to the part where it lists classes by winrate, click on Paladin.
Try to find ANY list that is below 50% winrate among the named archetypes.
Actually, I'll just save you the trouble. There aren't any - and the vast majority of ALL paladin decks right now are 60+% winrate. You have to go all the way to page 5 out of 6 before you get to a list that is less than 60% winrate.
I'm fairly sure this is unprecedented - a single class with 5 different named archetypes that are all successful ... it's almost like you can just open Paladin in your deck builder, throw in any 30 cards that are good, and win games (yes this is obviously exaggerating ... but by a LOT less than it should be).
*Edited a bit after original posting.
I'm having fun and doing quite well with Ping Mage. You can avoid every annoying card and you have a fair chance against either Mage or Paladin.
Unpopular opinion, but Lunacy Mage requires a bit more skill than Secret Paladin. An you don't even need to run C'thun, or even draw/ play Lunacy early.
You really need to play smart, test for secrets and play defensively until the board is yours, or they run out of cards to play trying to run you over.
The biggest offenders right now are Pen Flinger and Sword of the Mysterious Challenger.
The most worrying thing is that there’s a class with a worse win rate than Priest. That’s how you know things are unbalanced. The Priest’s core identity is being challenged!
I'd of thought control/corrupt priest would be at least doing decent
Hearthstone isn't fun right now. Between the insane power of the Paladins, the damn towers that kill all the decks that kill Mages, and the Lunacy of Mages, I can't find anything fun to play. I'm super salty about Paladin and have been for a while. Nuke them back to the stone age. Take their swords and core.
But, since I happen to have Lunacy and all the BS for that deck, here I go! I'll cast more Nagrand Slams as mage than I ever have as Hunter. I wish I could play that card as a Hunter.
Mage got propelled to insane levels due to the bad cards being rotated out. I will be honest I thought the problem card would have been Jandice Barov rather than Deck of Lunacy . And I am sure that Jandice will still be an issue if left untouched.
While I think this is one of the more disgusting early meta we have seen. Lets not forget that day 1 DH was so busted it needed multiple day 2 nerfs and more the following weeks. Then ofcourse there was Galakrond Shaman which was the best aggro, midrange and control deck when it just got released.
Like Yourprivatenightmare I too think people are focusing on mage too much and not on Paladin at all. The secrets are annoying but that is not the real reason why they are good right now. Sword of the Fallen is effectively a recruit card for cards you don't want to draw.
Another reason is, last year around this time Paladin was one of the worst classes of the game. They didn't add a lot of good cards to paladin in the year of the Dragon. (remember the year of the Dragon would normaly have had Genn and Baku Paladin was the only class with a good odd and even deck And because T5 works about 3 expansions ahead for a long time that was going to be what they had to work with)
So they got a few buffs on the libram set. Which was needed. However T5 kept adding really solid cards to paladin the last year to get Paladin up to par.
The last point is that Paladin got a way better core set. It lost a lot of bad cards. And the secrets are now playable aswell.
Which culminated to a point where paladin lost almost nothing from the year of the dragon, got very good cards in the year of the Pheonix and gained the single best card from this set with Sword of the Fallen .
The weird part about Lunacy mage is that when you leave out Lunacy (which I do because I don't like casino mage) it's still incredibly overpowered and easy to level with.
My other two cents, both mage and paladin are fun to play right now, so it's basicly all i did, just like most.
Mage dies to aggro, but aggro is currently unplayable because of watch posts.
So guess who has dusted his Deck of Lunacy when Barrens hit because the card is trash and the dust was needed for shiny new stuff?
The funniest part is that people are so preoccupied with trying to abuse Mage that they don't realise that Paladin is even stronger because it literally doesn't have a counter.
I really hope we get a hotfix this week or else I'll just complete my dailies in Tavern Brawl and not touch the game otherwise.
I don't think we ever had a first week meta that was so bad that basically any and all meme decks are completely unplayable because you can't actually win these matchups without going hard on the turn 1 tempo.
Come to think of it, there's so many cards that are bizarrely overtuned that this might end up one of the largest nerf patches for a specific class since the Demon Hunter debacle.
I think you're slightly exaggerating. Dhunters on week 1 was absolutely crushing everything, and so did galakrond shaman week 1. This may not be the healthiest week 1 for a while, but there's no denying its nothing compared to the two named above.
Also, paladin has counters. But since its also very weak to mage, its reasonably not explored much. Shadow Hunter Vol'jin is a good counter, to either remove the Libram of Wisdoms or get one of those pesky Pen Flingers out. Its not even strictly a bad card on its own to be honest.
Paladin is favored against Mage.
I mean cards that can or may counter paladin decks aren't very good against lunacy mage, hence why they're rarely seen.
Unfortunately, there's currently no real counter to Paladin. All matchups are green. Any possible counter is kept in check by something else (edit: for example: secret rogue). We just wait for nerfs next week.
Not the matches I've played, Paladins get greedy and over play their hand
That doesn't matter. Stats say it's 53%+ for Paladin across all ranks.
I'm not sure how you have forgotten about Galakrond Shaman and DH at the start of AoO so quickly. It's not just a recent thing either. When they added quests in Un'Goro? Say hello to a meta of Pirate Warrior vs Quest Rogue, where you want to play control to beat the warriors but then rogues beat you up.
When they added hero cards and decided death knights don't need to obey class identity in the Frozen Throne? Druid dominates. At least it was so powerful you could play meme druid decks to good success, I suppose.
Do I even need to mention Genn and Baku, who were only better because they were neutral and made several things problematic at once.
So no, this is not a uniquely bad start, but instead seems to be a common symptom of adding fancy new things without the capacity to test them fully. In this case the move from Classic to Core sets threw a lot of decks in the air, and I appreciate how hard it was to see where they'd all land. I'm still willing to point fingers where its obvious though (I'm looking at you Galakrond Shaman).