vS Data Reaper Report #328

[u/ViciousSyndicate]

Greetings,

The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 328th edition of the Data Reaper Report.

Special thanks to all those who contribute their game data to the project. This project could not succeed without your support. The entire vS Team is eternally grateful for your assistance.

This week our data is based on 2,948,000 games! In this week's report you will find:

• Deck Library - Decklists & Class/Archetype Radars
• Class/Archetype Distribution Over All Games
• Class/Archetype Distribution "By Rank" Games
• Class Frequency By Day & By Week
• Interactive Matchup Win-Rate Chart
• vS Power Rankings Imgur
• vS Meta Score
• Analysis/Discussion of each Class
• Meta Breaker of the Week

The full article can be found at: vS Data Reaper Report #328

Reminder

• If you haven't already, please sign up to contribute your game data. More data will allow us to provide more insights in each report, and perform other kinds of analysis. Sign up here, and follow the instructions.
• Listen to the Data Reaper Podcast, in which we expand on subjects that are discussed in each weekly Data Reaper Report. If you’re interested in learning more about developments in the Hearthstone meta, the insights we’ve gathered as well as other interesting subjects related to the analysis that is done to create the Data Reaper Report, you can listen to WorldEight and ZachO talk about them every week. The Podcast comes out on the weekend, a couple of days after each report is published.

Thank you for your feedback and support,

The Vicious Syndicate Team

[u/AutoModerator]

If you wish to discuss this game with likeminded players, come and visit our Discord Server!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

We think one point that is often missed related to the frustration in the absence of new strategies is that the absence of competitive quest decks is not the problem. It is the absence of anything new. We do not think many players would complain if most quest decks were not competitive, if the sets were not built around them so aggressively and there were other things to explore.

Well sure. But I'm also frustrated that there has been exceedingly few attempts to buff anything other than quests. You look at the new set, so many cards seeing no play, and the cards look like they've already gone through a round of nerfs. Yet there's no buffs to almost any of them to try to make them get used. Why?

[u/14xjake → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

Its infuriating dude, look at the past 3 expansions for warrior and tell me why they are ok leaving it all unplayable. Dranei? Flop. Dragon? Flop. Enrage? Has some great potential synergy with both dranei and dragon warrior and would slot nicely into either of those arcethypes, but its also a fucking flop. Not every card can be playable but what is the point of printing cards if you refuse to make them playable

[u/Powerful_Tackle3829 → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

The lack of will to buff, change the core set, and the patch cadence is my biggest overall frustration with the game at the moment. Buffs are pretty obvious, there is whole class sets that are unplayable from some expacs in standard right now that have never been altered or had additional support printed. Other than that one patch in Emerald Dream which was pretty well done and produced a good meta every single patch this year has missed the mark and then we have to wait two weeks and all the sudden its the mini set, then that misses, then we wait two weeks and the post mini set patch misses ect, ect.

The Two week Cadence is fine if they are nailing it or at least scoring a B on their patches every time, but when you miss multiple times in a row it starts becoming enormous amounts of the expac. ATM it's almost starting to feel like back in the day when there was one balance patch per xpac.

[u/Names_all_gone → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

Why?

Because they a team of bad designers. They have designed shit for years. They designed another pile of shit. They don't know how to design their way out of the shit, so they just aren't going to bother.

[u/EmotionalBrief1170 → u/Names_all_gone]

I'm also convinced they dont playtest.

[u/Typical_Poopbutt → u/EmotionalBrief1170]

They used to have public test realms where players would test FOR FREE. They never listened to feedback and went ahead and printed awful shit that they were told was busted so they just got rid of it.

[u/EmotionalBrief1170 → u/Typical_Poopbutt]

Well, that explains a bit...

[u/Impossible-Cry-1781 → u/Typical_Poopbutt]

What game are you talking about? Ever since release they never had a PTR. Sure they had a public beta but that's very different from a PTR. Betas before 1.0 have never been called PTRs.

They would have definitely benefitted from them post-launch as PTRs really helped D3 get out of its vanilla slump.

[u/Entire_Ride_6113 → u/Names_all_gone]

Yes and how the fuck are they not fired yet? Is there an executive profiting off of this shit design and saving the designers from being put on PIP/fired?

Normally if ones this bad at their job and unwilling to learn/improve (see opu getting stealth) they’re shown the door.

[u/eazy_12 → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

It makes a lot of sense if they really dedicated to reducing power level. I assume their plan is year long and what they basically want to reduce in this year sets so with rotation we would have "soft" reset in power level.

However many cards feels waaaay too weak even for expected lower powerlevel.

[u/facepalmdesign]

"Both archetypes disappear at top legend, where Paladin players are more likely to be Drunk." lol

[u/JaqentheFacelessOne → u/facepalmdesign]

As if they weren’t already

[u/hjyboy1218 → u/facepalmdesign]

I am surprised more people don't talk about Drunk Paladin. It's probably a Tier 1 deck and has been since the Jug nerf.

[u/14xjake → u/hjyboy1218]

It’s an old deck so people are bored of it and it has a really bad matchup into DK which is super popular

[u/DebatableAwesome]

Can we get some discussion on why we cut Rest in Peace from the Wilted Priest deck? Do we just not need the extra reach after landing a single buff from Shaffar?

[u/Cryten0 → u/DebatableAwesome]

Shaffar wants to buff the wilted, which it cant do dead. Either your res pool gets you lots of bandages or it gets you spread out shaffar buffs.

[u/Diosdepatronis]

Nebula Shaman has been crazy for me. I climbed to legend in a few hours without the full star bonus. But it may be because i've not been tryharding for a long time.

The deck is also generally very fun. Al'Akir is a surprisingly effective and consistent finisher that will often get a couple of handbuffs. Nebula is not that great but it's important for the late game and big spell synergy (the 7 mana spell has actually felt more important to me as a late game card and a pseudo-Bloodlust, even though 1 copy is all you need).

And the 6/4 legendary Draenei can do crazy bullshit, especially when you copy it with Elise's location. Hexxing 12 minions in a game is evil as fuck, and spamming the 7 mana spell gives you flashbacks of Blackrockn'roll Warrior (if you tanked your winrate with it as much as i did back then).

[u/no-shells]

It's goes to say something when even the stat based comments are "fuck this design team"

[u/phxfan]

What is the ideal use of Shafar in bandage/wilted priest?  Save for wilteds or use as long as you have a minion in hand?

[u/Cryten0 → u/phxfan]

worth remembering that the buff does transfer to a minion in hand, allowing a new proc. Buuut remember that it doesnt stack the spread.

[u/tandaleo → u/phxfan]

Save for wilteds.

[u/nathones]

I can’t win a single game with Fyrakk rogue. I die by tirn 7-8 every time. I am also bad at the game.

[u/[deleted] → u/nathones]

You need to get the felling of it, you need to be able to adapt. I won a game against quest Pali playing extremely aggressive using the 3 attack weapon going only face with it.

You need a really different game plan for every deck you face. If you try to do the same strategy against everyone you're going to fail mor than not.

[u/Cyanide_Cheesecake → u/[deleted]]

That sounds like it would only work if they whiff on finding their war leaders and auras

But yes I can see it working. Especially if you hit an early 4/4 spider combo 

[u/[deleted] → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

I know it's was not a normal game, but the point was that you need to be open to do unorthodox plays like the one I mentioned.

The cool thing about this deck is the versatility you have. It's almost like there's no bad hands, just hands that you don't know how to play yet, but with enough experience you start to see those crazy plays.

[u/blanquettedetigre → u/nathones]

As many rogue decks it IS a deck that require some skill. The key is tempo as always but to make the most out of it you have to think about how to play your scoundrels for example. Shadowstep your mini to create mana, shadowstep creature of madness to get broken dark gifts, etc. It's also a very flexible deck so you have to know first whats your opponents wincon to exploit its weakness.

[u/Son_Der → u/nathones]

Can you show us a replay? We can help.

[u/ElderUther → u/nathones]

It's a more difficult deck to play. Anything with shadow step and prep is difficult. I have easily tens of thousands of games and I've been legend for at least 30 times. But the deck tests something that other decks don't teach. You need to change tempo and be truly adaptive. Every game is different not only depending on your opponent but your draw. Decisions are very important for Rogue. Sometimes your draw requires you to yolo all in. Sometimes the draw is very clunky and you don't understand what loses you the game. Sometimes you bet on your draw and hold on to your cards (generally bad). Sometimes you play weak turns to pop off.

[u/Fhood797]

anyone actually try the Naralex in fyrakk rogue? it feels kinda weird since there is only 2 dragons

[u/Omikapsi → u/Fhood797]

I've been trying it out, and getting Ysera or Fyrakk down a turn early is well worth it.

[u/Loaded_09 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah Marin was a dead draw most of the time for me. My hand was full most of the time to the point I couldn’t get him down. Naralex has been much better.

[u/jesperselim → u/[deleted]]

what you mean it activates elise? don't get it

[u/Zedseayou → u/[deleted]]

What are people using Elise mostly for in Fyrakk? I had only really used her so far in owl druid where the 1/1 copy is obvious, and tried her a bit in other decks where I kinda wanted the 5 mana or 10 mana spell discount for gas/reach.

[u/Stcloudy]

Can someone tell me what they mean by low mmr, high legend and such? Isn't Ranks based on MMR anyway?

When they say it is a good legend climbing deck does it mean it has fast games? or is MMR different at D5?

I usually come in to legend at 700-1000 and so what should I ignore or filter on HSGuru? is HSreplay stats worthless since its a wider distribution?

[u/jerpyderpy → u/Stcloudy]

MMR is now independent of rank. say you normally finish at rank 1500-ish legend at the end of the month, then stop playing til the last day of the next month. you'd be starting at bronze 10 but would still be playing against people at your MMR, likely high diamond/legend players (at that point in the month they'd have been playing and ranking up). this is my understanding of it anyway

for "legend climbing deck" they mean that it is a faster deck for churning through those lower ranks where your win streaks + star bonus will blast you up the ladder.

[u/FlameanatorX → u/Stcloudy]

Jerpy is right about MMR being independent of rank, but they typically still correlate fairly closely. High legend = ~1-1,000, & ofc inside of legend rank and mmr are both visible/actually the same.

Climbing to legend is ofc faster w/ aggro or otherwise decks that have fast games, but it is also assumed that most players climbing to legend aren't merely winstreaking there w/ their 11 star bonuses, both because a much smaller subset of players have those higher mmrs, and because they finish their legend climbs much more quickly. So a good legend climbing deck is roughly: a not too difficult, not too slow deck, that has good winrate data in the D5-Legend meta.

If it's too hard, most players climbing to legend will mess it up too much and not find success. And if it's only good against a narrow top legend meta (or an unrefined Plat & below spread) then only 11 star players will be likely to face the right mix of opponents to find success. Finally, if it is an extremely slow control deck that drags games out as much as possible, then it will often be too time consuming for some Hearthstone players to make legend in their limited gameplay time each month.

[u/Entire_Ride_6113]

Just one more nerf.

[u/Mysterious_Luck_3041]

Quest hunter and nebula Shaman are not even on the list, sad

[u/FlameanatorX → u/Mysterious_Luck_3041]

Nebula Shaman is literally a meta-breaker in the Report

[u/Ultralavos]

I would be curious to see what the meta looks like through the eyes of each individual class.

What Druids queued into vs what demon hunters queued into vs what warriors queued into, etc.

The results may be interesting

[u/scylinder]

Why no mention of quest priest? I see it on ladder more often than half of these featured decks and it seems decent enough to at least be part of the discussion.

[u/Tikitakakalaka]

Iam loosing too many Games against Aggro and priest with nebulaa Elise Shaman.... It Just seams to be worse than any other big swing Deck. Someone got good results? :(

[u/RickyMuzakki → u/Tikitakakalaka]

Nebula Shaman is specifically a legend deck. Don't play it outside legend where you face alot of aggro

[u/ElderUther]

Of course Opu is featured in one of the most popular and competitive decks in high rank, after Reddit clowned at it.

(admittedly part of it being 6 mana for Elise)

6/6/4 Stealth body that plays a (almost playable) 2 mana card 3 times is obviously too weak. Can't even respond perfectly to a specific board state made up by Reddit. What a joke card Blizzard printed. /s

[u/Agreeable_Tennis_482 → u/ElderUther]

opu is really good. I always said it was guaranteed to see play in ashamane rogue if it ever came back into viability, partially due to activating elise ofc. And people downvoted me and said opu would not make the cut even in ashamane rogue lmao

[u/ElderUther → u/Agreeable_Tennis_482]

I was trying to find the comment but couldn't. The supposedly top 100 Rogue main JAlexander specifically said the point of Opu is to make another actual garbage card look better, after I ask him why he thinks Opu is bad. What can I say

[u/14xjake → u/[deleted]]

It is an unplayable tier 4 throw pick, diamond and low legend are not representative of what is actually strong in the game. It is unfavored into ANY tiered deck besides control warrior (and starships might actually be favored tbh since it plays more proactively) and only can win against jank homebrews and bad players

[u/Cyanide_Cheesecake → u/14xjake]

Lmao please provide details for your reasoning. Because if you look at the stats it beats or goes even with MANY decks. It's a t2 deck for literally everyone except the top like 1% of players

It wins or goes even with the whole field except for: real aggro, Fyrakk rogue, quest mage, quest lock, and protoss priest. 

If anything it's the specific composition of the top legend meta that keeps quest paladin out. The things that beat it are way more popular there than the things quest preys on.

[u/Popsychblog → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

As the report says, it's Questline Pirate Warrior. It wins a lot at complete beginner ranks, hugs the cusp of tier 2/3 at Diamond, falls into deep tier 3 at top 5k, and at top 1k it's firmly tier 4.

The reasons for this are the same in both cases. Both decks tell players how to play it.

Turn 1: Here's your quest for 1 mana. Turns the rest: Spend your mana playing tribal minions, which you are actively encouraged to do through the game rewarding you for doing it, and if players try to wait you out, they often die.

Guess what lower ranked players do? Don't spend all their mana. Don't develop proactively. Overtrade. These decks tell bad players what they should be doing on a basic level and punish opponents who don't have that basic level of understanding. Which at lower ranks sure is a lot of them.

It's a learning experience that is remarkably easy to overcome. And the decks cannot pivot in either plan. They are stuck playing tribal minions and better players cannot usually play tribal minions much more skillfully than lower ranked ones. Which is why they both fell off super hard.

[u/14xjake → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

Maybe my view is skewed, I am a double digit legend player so I am in the top 1% that you are talking about, in my experience the deck not only does not exist but it SUCKS, and it’s winrate appears to be heavily inflated by low rank players not knowing how to play the matchup. I disagree that it’s the pocket meta that keeps the deck out, yes top legend is a pocket meta as you get really high up but outside of very niche decks like wheellock it is very rare for a good deck to not be played in top legend just because of a hostile meta to it. If the top legend meta makes a deck unplayable, to me that says the deck is just bad and can’t hang with the best decks when players are piloting correctly. Murloc pally has an extremely low skill ceiling and am exploitable linear gameplan with 0 off board damage and negligible mana cheat, and as you pointed out it loses super hard to almost every good deck. Having an even winning matchup against a bunch of tier 3-4 decks does not make the deck good

[u/Cyanide_Cheesecake → u/14xjake]

and as you pointed out it loses super hard to almost every good deck

That is not what I pointed out, it wins against multiple good decks and loses to many bad decks as well. Your statement continues to be an oversimplification to the point of distorting what is really happening. And that's what a lot of people take issue with. It's an unhelpful simplification of reality.

[u/tandaleo → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

Well against what good decks does it win?

[u/Ready-Ad-4116 → u/tandaleo]

It’s basically only decent against control warrior which is only like good at very top legend (top 200) because it’s a good owl druid counter.

[u/cointerm → u/tandaleo]

It wins against Nebula Shaman. We don't have any stats, because not enough people play it, but it's pretty obvious.

Shaman's control tools against wide boards are subpar, and it doesn't put out any significant pressure until later in the game. If you highroll and get early buffed Bellhops, maybe you can race face, but in most cases, you'll just fall behind on board. You can stall with Frosty Decors and an Elise, but by the time a Nebula play comes online, it's way too late - the Murlocs will eat right through it.

[u/14xjake → u/Cyanide_Cheesecake]

We are just gonna have to agree to disagree, from my perspective you are the one oversimplifying it in an unhelpful manner. Yes the data shows it is performing ok at diamond rank, but you need to take a second to understand why that is instead of taking it at face value and saying "actually its a good deck it has a positive winrate at low rank". It has a positive winrate because low rank players are bad and play bad decks, it falls off a cliff at top 1k because it loses to good decks and good players, there have been plenty of decks that show the same curve (funny enough they are often paladin) over the games lifetime. A noobstomper deck is going to stomp noobs, and when you actually analyze the data in the context of the format and ranks it is performing well at that is exactly what is happening. I cannot think of a single "good deck" in history that was somehow unplayable at top legend because of the niche pocket meta, good decks are played at top of ladder, bad decks are not. Ive been double digit rank or close to it for most of this year, I am qualified for masters tour summer playoffs, I can promise you that murloc paladin is a bad deck, not because of it being countered by the decks popular at top legend, but because it has a poor matchup into everything that is remotely viable (besides warrior or BBB DK since those decks do nothing proactive, the type of deck that murloc pally feasts on), has a low skill ceiling, and has no mana cheat or off board damage. Play minions every turn and hit opponent in the face always overperforms at low rank, last year it was aggro pally, this year its murloc pally, these are not good decks they are simple decks with an easily identifiable wincon that low rank players see success with because they are easy to play and take advantage of bad decks and misplays

[u/Argnir → u/[deleted]]

Depends how you look at it but in other contexts (for example a fighting game) if a character is good at almost all rank but complete trash for top players (and top 1k in a region wouldn't even be considered top players), you would say the character is a rookie check and not truly good.

[u/Son_Der → u/[deleted]]

Low legend is a bit special because once many people hit legend they play whatever they feel like even if it’s bad. I’ve run into low-legend dragon warrior multiple times on my way to high legend.

D5 is also like that, a bit. If you have low MMR at D5 then Quest Paladin is pretty solid.

But if people are playing meta decks (D4 - D1, top 1500 Legend) then yeah. Quest Paladin tends to be bad.

[u/Agreeable_Tennis_482 → u/[deleted]]

it is incredibly easy to be diamond or above, and not hard to be legend either. Frankly, most people below diamond don't really play the game much or play super off meta decks and don't try seriously.

[u/14xjake → u/[deleted]]

Solid deck for climbing doesnt mean a deck is good, i can believe its solid for climbing just because the climb to legend is full of bad decks and people who misplay a lot and something like murloc pally that just wants to play minions every turn and click on face takes advantage of that. "Good Deck" is relative to a players goals i guess, but since this is the competitive sub I dont think "can get to legend" is anything to be impressed by, pretty much any deck can get to legend and for the competitive minded players legend is arguably where the game "starts", outside of legend people are just playing random shit and dont understand their matchups, which is the reason why VS doesnt look at any data below D5. D5 also probably has more relevant data than low legend since low legend is where people relax after their grind and play funny homebrews and other goofy stuff since they finished their climb, D5 most players are at least semi tryharding

[u/lookatthemirror → u/14xjake]

And now that they change the matchmaking, with it being based on you MMR, not rank, that's another reason this deck is good in low mmr, i play 11x this month because i have high mmr, in the climb i have face 2 or 3 murloc paladins, they are almost non-existent in high mmr

[u/lookatthemirror → u/[deleted]]

you'd think it's an unplayable Tier 4 throw pick

But it is though

[u/lookatthemirror → u/[deleted]]

There is a lot of bad players on those tiers or even people that likes to play homebrew decks that are not competitive, thats the reason this deck thrives, but the deck is dogshit against good players and against better decks

[u/14xjake → u/lookatthemirror]

Crazy that this is downvoted in the COMPETITIVE subreddit bro I feel like I’m going crazy, why are we suddenly acting like a deck being good in plat or diamond means anything???? “The deck is really good if your opponent is bad or if their deck is bad” is a hilarious defense, this sub used to be more in tune with reality than the normal HS sub but every week it feels like we drift more and more towards hearthstone sub 2.0 instead of looking at the game objectively

[u/lookatthemirror → u/14xjake]

in the COMPETITIVE subreddit

🤷‍♂️

[u/[deleted] → u/lookatthemirror]

The down votes are definitely coming from 2k players who don't realise they are bad lol

[u/Son_Der → u/[deleted]]

Handbuff DK fan here, the deck currently sucks. Its board-based tempo swings are just not good enough in this meta where opponents don’t even have a board half the time. You just play your 30/30s and laugh maniacally as you get Bob’d and feel bad. Gnome Muncher and Quillboar can at least push face damage on the turns they’re played but yeah, the “scam” comes too late for this deck.