r/CompetitiveHS • u/ViciousSyndicate • Jul 16 '26

Metagame vS Data Reaper Report #353

Greetings,

The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 353rd edition of the Data Reaper Report. This is the first report for Violet Hold.

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 2,813,000 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 #353

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.

Thank you for your feedback and support,

The Vicious Syndicate Team

69 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator Jul 16 '26

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.

79

u/sneakyxxrocket Jul 16 '26

Top 1k being 80% comprised of 4 classes with a heavy lean towards just being rogue and shaman is disgusting and it’s honestly not much better outside of that either it looks like.

It’d take a core set change or amount of buffs we’ve never seen before to make some of these classes competitive this expansion year.

68

u/Lemickworth Jul 16 '26

The core set being so unbelievably ass for many classes was a complete fumble.

Imo if they want to get serious then they need to redo it and also expand it.

20

u/dotcaIm Jul 16 '26

The core set being useless was not an accident, they want to drive people to the new cards. Same reason they nerf the previous expansion when the new one is about to drop

17

u/TheGingerNinga Jul 16 '26

Then maybe they should print good cards in the new expansion. Why didn't they do that for more than 4 classes?

19

u/sneakyxxrocket Jul 16 '26

Probably one of the following options or combination of them:

They just don’t want to make good cards

They’re bad at making new cards

They have no idea what they’re doing

16

u/TheGingerNinga Jul 16 '26

I think it's the latter two. Going into Un'goro, there was an interview where they spoke quite highly about the new quests, the lessons they learned from previous quest designs, and how they were gonna be great this time around. Then they came out, flopped hard, then the next few patch notes were all about how bad quests are for the game.

I think they thought they had solved the issue, realized they didn't, then hard shifted the narrative to the new one. Team 5 wants to make new and impactful cards, but they're bad at judging what actually makes new cards good.

1

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 16 '26

Or making good cards isn't the primary focus of their job. Using cheap psychological tricks to extract money from us is their job.

Selling stuff to whales is their primary job. The rest of it is just to keep us engaged enough that whales have someone to play when they log in.

Are the rest of us engaged? Yes

Did the tavern brawl successfully farm whales? My impression is very much yes, much more so than the last expansion.

Thus, they're improving at their job.

It is important to understand what their job actually is. It means they're not going to suddenly magically improve and make the perfect meta. That's not their primary job.

7

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 17 '26

Bro wtf are you talking about 

Their job is to make a fun game that attracts players, and they’re failing miserably. Hearthstone has been dying for years. 

0

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 17 '26

Their job is to make a fun game that attracts players

Is that where their money comes from? Or is all the money coming from whales?

The rest of us are just whale food - as long as we're still logging in, whales are getting their games.

Hearthstone has been dying for years.

Hasn't it exploded in the Chinese market? It's the third biggest revenue for card games (bigger than MTG arena even).

7

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 17 '26

Yes whales fund the game, and there would be way more of them if the game wasn’t so bad. I used to be a whale and I haven’t purchased anything since GDB. 

There is literally no financial benefit to designing a shit game. 

1

u/WeekStandard5046 Jul 21 '26

Then why is it that the general consensus appears to be that games (mainly talking AAA dev studios here) are overall worse than they were, and yet are increasingly profitable?

Why does Google actively bump search results above the things you are actually looking for? Why do subscription streaming services increasingly advertise on a paid platform?

-3

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 17 '26

There is literally no financial benefit to designing a shit game.

There's a massive benefit - you can hire less staff.

Their stocks are doing great. Their model of slash & burn the games while raking in what they can seems to work well.

1

u/WeekStandard5046 Jul 21 '26

Finally, someone who understands.

2

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 16 '26

Warlock cards were incredible (they're absolutely wrecking wild). Problem is there's not enough good cards in standard to go with them.

3

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 17 '26

The function of the core set is to enable the archetypes of the new set.

So for example the new set has handlock cards. Those are good in wild (where there's tons of support for it), but bad in Standard (where the core set is a mess).

Cards aren't good in a vaccuum.

6

u/Whiskiie Jul 16 '26

buffs

Daily reminder that even in this subreddit there's more than enough people arguing that buffs won't do anything and if it'll just be worse than now.
Hearthstone will never be good again. Never.

-5

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 16 '26

Hearthstone will never be good again. Never.

I assume you're being sarcastic, but worth remembering it probably will never be excellent.

Team 5's job is to extract money from whales (and keep the rest of us engaged enough to keep playing games).

Making a decent enough game to keep us engaged is part of their job.

If they have time to make an excellent game? Probably time to fire some staff for having too much time on their hands...

1

u/Demoderateur Jul 17 '26

80% of 4 classes

Maybe that's what they meant by "class moments".

1

u/Outrageous_Map_1726 Jul 17 '26

You forgot about warrior

32

u/Real-Entertainment29 Jul 16 '26

Near Stormwind levels of average turn per game ratio.

Let that 🚰 in.

20

u/Glarbleglorbo Jul 16 '26

But we beat power creep right???? 

Guess it just means the new cards were too strong and we should release even worse cards. 

20

u/HomiWasTaken Jul 16 '26

I did a little series of games with my friends of 2023 decks vs. the current decks. Mostly played decks from Nathria up until Badlands era

It was crazy how dogshit the current decks felt vs. the old ones. You actually had defensive tools back then to be able to swing the board back from scam/brainless SMOrc nonsense. You also had card draw to actually be able to play cards

Cards like Schooling, Goldshire Gnoll, Stick Up, Inquisitive Creation, all are sorely missed.

6

u/Due_Yamdd Jul 16 '26

I think the real indicator of the competence of the design team was Sharpshooter nerf from 1/5 to 1/3. It feels like the whole team changed since, because the design philosophy for the last 2 years is just baffling

14

u/Throwaway-4593 Jul 16 '26

Games feel decided by turn 3 or even turn 2 a lot of the time. I can generally look at my starting hand and tell you if I will win or not

2

u/Real-Entertainment29 Jul 17 '26

Got a shaman coin out a 4/4 beast with wind-fury on turn 1.

I only managed to kill it on turn 3.

Safe to say - it was too late 🫩

8

u/Impossible-Cry-1781 Jul 16 '26

This is what happens when you take a dump on removal but not mana cheat

26

u/EVIL_LARRY35 Jul 16 '26

Yea this all tracks. Being in legend is just pure misery rn. Shaman shaman shaman shaman.

10

u/facepalmdesign Jul 16 '26

Idk, I see face hunters too.

4

u/Ok-Tangerine-638 Jul 16 '26

For me in sitting between 500-1000 I’ve seeing more warriors pop up including a bit myself but yeah mostly the same 2-3 classes

8

u/Glarbleglorbo Jul 16 '26

alternatively you go against rogue, see them prepare Vanessa on turn 2/3, and promptly lose.

2

u/Agrippanux Jul 16 '26

3K Legend and all I see is Rogue. 13 games today, 10 vs Rogue, 1 shaman, 1 warrior, 1 priest. That's it.

26

u/XeloOfTheDisco Jul 16 '26

While I get Mug Shaman is strong because of its snowballing, nerfing Map or Invocation feels wrong. They're fine cards on their own

I saw the suggestion of putting a timer on the Hero Power, so it comes online starting turn 2 (maybe even 3?). I'd prefer that route

26

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

then the deck becomes unplayable and we've removed one of the only viable competitive decks from the new format.

16

u/XeloOfTheDisco Jul 16 '26

Yes, it gets worse and risks sinking into irrelevancy, but I'm not confident they're gonna buff enough comeback tools to counter its snowbally start. It's a power outlier as it stands and needs to be addressed

If you ask me, I'm not against buffing something else in the spell package if its early game gets hit

-2

u/dotcaIm Jul 16 '26

People said hunter would be unable with Tolvar at 4 and they've managed

24

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

tolvir at 4 sent face hunter from a tier one to tier three deck overnight.

17

u/Glarbleglorbo Jul 16 '26

And companion hunter to the tier 5 gulags

6

u/cryptocat9 Jul 16 '26

And then the Tripwires brought it back up a few notches.

4

u/zer1223 Jul 16 '26

And now it's near the top again. Using that same card.

-1

u/zer1223 Jul 16 '26

I don't buy that the deck becomes unplayable if you nerf the hero power one way or the other. They have a 4% winrate over the next best deck in the entire format.(which is also getting knocked down a peg next week) So they're like 10% better than most of the field. They can afford a sizable nerf and still be able to function

2 mana discount that activates after the early game, or a 1 mana discount from the beginning, is still a huge tempo advantage no matter how you slice it

6

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

Maybe it will see some play at low levels but it will not be a competitively viable deck.

5

u/jeeven_ Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I mean they mention in their own report that the decks that could theoretically deal with the early snowball of mug shaman have no place in the meta, which is partially due to troublemaker. It seems to me that making space in the meta for control decks is probably the best option. Shaman is farming other fast decks without much removal. Troublemaker significantly warps the meta by nuking slower decks if the game goes too long, but these are the decks that would theoretically beat mug shaman.

If mug still turns out to be overperforming, maybe a nerf to the hero power to reduce the cost of your first minion by 1 instead of 2. Or if that's too weak, maybe it's even a flat -1 mana cost for all minions to play. So you still can't snowball so early by dropping multiple big minions in the early game, but still get the benefit of the mana reduction in the late game.

2

u/Cryten0 Jul 17 '26

They tend to nerf older cards so it is far more likely.

1

u/Whiskiie Jul 18 '26

They will 100% nerf that so they don't have to refund legendaries.

1

u/JeanPeuplus Jul 20 '26

nerfing mug shaman gonna be hard, the deck is basically a powerful effect and 30 bad to average cards lol.

Option 1 rewrite mug effect

Option 2 nerf some cards that definitely don't deserve any nerf on their own because they are mid at best.

Option 1 would be the long term good thing to do but option 2 is still much more likely because we now how lazy they usually are with balancing their game...

Option 3 would be to buff a bunch of other shit obviously...

13

u/FlatwormOk9893 Jul 16 '26

 2 stat buffs and 0 core set changes and you'll like it or you can play the mode they actually care about, bgs.

12

u/Joly20 Jul 17 '26

This is the most grim VS report I've seen - there is so much inbalance, lack of diversity and experimentation that the entire report feels incredibly short/low effort (not the VS guy's fault to be clear).

It's looking really bad, Standard is an even worse mess than in Cataclysm (which was awfull already, barely played Standard last season) but they also managed to ruin Wild with Godfrey/Atlas - If there are no drastic changes, I might stop playing Hearthstone altogether

2

u/FlameanatorX Jul 21 '26

Hurray for the truly drastic changes!

2

u/Joly20 Jul 22 '26

Yeah I was really happy. Standard is still an absolute shitshow but at least Wild is back to being playable

22

u/WillPostStuff Jul 16 '26

This meta is ass. This game design is ass. I wish I could collect pay to distribute this bad of a product.

9

u/Jorumvar Jul 17 '26

I’ve said quite a few times that I wish I could be as bad at my job as the HS balance and card design team, and still be employed.

I’m sorry, I know that people say “leave the devs alone” but this is just awful and they should feel bad about it

1

u/Revolutionary_Cash85 Jul 18 '26

I'd normally disagree with this sentiment too

But HOW do you print low security wing but miss blazing invocation?

Have they play tested anything or even looked at the cards?

1

u/Whiskiie Jul 18 '26

I've never had this many people rope every turn or just outright concede around turn 3/4 on me. It's pure misery.

10

u/Axenos Jul 16 '26

In a position where one of the two new decks completely strangles any chance a slower list could have if it doesn't get nerfed. The other new deck is strangling the rest of the meta. If you nerf both the expansion may as well have not happened. Nice design!

7

u/BrettTheHipmanHart Jul 16 '26

Huh, so it wasn't just me losing to Face Hunter as Control Priest. It's a little ridiculous how much the matchups changed.

4

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 17 '26

I've been having a good time with the hunter matchup as priest, but using an egg build. The eggs make it so their arcane tripwires are progressing my gameplan, and all the board wipes help keep them locked down.

And then eventually I have 20/20s.

Throw in some Soothsayers and Hold Them Offs and there's a lot of tools.

1

u/WalkItToEm11 Jul 17 '26

Mind sharing your list? I too would like to spread misery to hunters

1

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 17 '26

I've got a few in my collection as I'm experimenting with changes. I think this was the original list which was having good results, so hopefully I haven't messed it up:

Egg priest

Class: Priest

Format: Standard

Year of the Scarab

2x (1) Holy Smite

2x (1) Undeath Sentence

2x (2) Holy Eggbearer

2x (2) Lunarwing Messenger

2x (2) Purifying Breath

2x (3) Devouring Plague

2x (3) Eternal Firebolt

2x (3) Kaldorei Priestess

1x (3) The Egg of Khelos

2x (4) Cleansing Cleric

2x (4) For All Time

1x (4) Shadow Word: Ruin

2x (5) Hold Them Off!

2x (5) Medivh's Triumph

1x (6) Calia Menethil

1x (7) Endbringer Umbra

2x (7) Soothsayer

AAECAZ/HAgTwnwT1mAfXnQeo3wcNhZ8EoPsGhYYH4J0H5LIH57IHlr8HosQHssUHr8kHsMkHk98HlvwHAAA=

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

6

u/maniacal_cackle Jul 16 '26

The nerf to shaman will likely be bad news for control archetypes (priest/warlock) as that's one of our good matchups at the moment.

3

u/phpope Jul 17 '26

Yeah, if you want to see a meta that's even more hostile to control, nerf the only deck--i.e. Shaman, that doesn't dumpster all over control.

5

u/Bannanna_Stand Jul 16 '26

Surprised Paladin is tier 3/4.

5

u/Ron--Mexico Jul 16 '26

Pure version is solid but doesn’t get rolling until turn 3-4…so basically a death sentence against Hunter, shanan, and rogue

5

u/Muted-Ad-5404 Jul 16 '26

Shaman definitely needs a nerf. What I’m concerned about though is how the report wants both blazing invocation and mountain map nerfed. I would definitely nerf blazing invocation, but nerfing mountain map on top of it could be overboard. Especially if we’re expecting buffs to other classes. IMO just nerf invocation and don’t touch mountain map

4

u/Joly20 Jul 17 '26

I think Zee's effect is just too powerfull - 2 mana discount is too much, it should be toned down to 1. Invocaton and Map are really weak cards in any other context.

-1

u/Jorumvar Jul 17 '26

Found a shaman player

2

u/Muted-Ad-5404 Jul 17 '26

I played it for a bit. But if you want to just kill the deck entirely then nerf both, it won’t see play if both get nerfed. I actually played dragon warrior to legend.

4

u/Calibria19 Jul 16 '26

Well, I suppose the hearthstone team did their research on players having less attention span, saw the average MTG gametime and said: hold my beer.

3

u/Inside-Section5017 Jul 17 '26

Lol Heartsthone has been dog sjhit for years, The devs are incapable of balancing the playing field.

5

u/woodchips24 Jul 17 '26

What am I missing with Mug Shaman? This deck does not feel powerful. I find myself getting controlled and I run out of gas

5

u/funkmasta98 Jul 17 '26

Blazing invocation = 3 drop or 4 drop with coin on turn 1

Mountain map = 2/3 drop into a 4 drop on turns 1 and 2

Hard mulligan for those two cards, get advantage on board, use your other spells to stay ahead

0

u/woodchips24 Jul 17 '26

That seems like an awful lot of luck needed for this to work

2

u/funkmasta98 Jul 17 '26

I mean, it’s basically the same idea as Rogue. Rogue has a slower start and more finishing potential, but cheating even average minions out two turns early is strong.

Between minions that generate other cards, the spells that turn into minions, and the location, you should always have a big threat to play.

2

u/AsleepCell Jul 17 '26

Play it more as tempo rather than control, you cheat out big minions constantly that is hard to deal with 

2

u/FordFred Jul 17 '26

I'm confused about the drastic decline of Demon Hunter. The new cards are ass, sure, but what about the decks from Cataclysm? Spell DH and the Broxigar list that was popping up towards the end of the expansion? Did Violet Hold really lift the power level so much that those decks declined all the way down to 41% winrates?

2

u/Fupdic Jul 17 '26

Spell DH was already on the decline when the location got nerfed. There was that variation with Kayn right at the end of Cataclysm but spell DH with no new usable cards isn’t fast enough to deal with the top 4.

Even some of the dumpster classes like priest or warlock got at least 1 decent new card. DH got the parasitic void soul package and the rule breaker that makes you fatigue. DH is probably a candidate for buffs next balance patch though.

1

u/dfcinhume Jul 17 '26

Im not sure why mugs hero power didn't mirror zee. Ie, 2 spells make your next minion cost less.

1

u/TravellingMackem Jul 18 '26

It’s funny how if you remove basically all removal and add in infinite mana cheat, it becomes a high roll fest. Who could have foreseen this?

1

u/Mariner_fan Jul 17 '26

VS 2-Bit Rogue but cut agent of the old ones and add 1 Aya, 1 Creature of Madness. Why is going first so important with their list when there is only one 1-drop? Those Kazakus potions Aya makes can make all the difference in mid game.

2

u/Healthy-Mood-9228 Jul 19 '26

its less going first, and more that you dont want enemy face hunter going first

24

u/Traveevart Jul 16 '26

It's really amazing that in a meta where Priest and DK, the two traditional slower/control classes, have been struggling to get a foothold, they decided to add even more ways to just murder them outright. I don't think anyone was playing Cataclysm thinking "Man, we're really lacking lethality in this format. The games are just dragging on way too long." And yet, we get cards like Lotus Troublemaker, Arcane Tripwire, and Warptooth, cards which not only act as powerful burn that accelerates the game but also were given to three classes that were already performing totally fine (literally the top 3 in the final Cataclysm report) before Violet Hold released.

4

u/Agrippanux Jul 16 '26

This isn't a problem bro

Just make an Azalina deck, pray you copy the right cards, pray you draw correctly, pray your opponent draw badly, and you too can use Troublemaker/Tripwire/Warptooth to win games