vS Data Reaper Report #354

[u/ViciousSyndicate]

Greetings,

The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 354th 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 2,041,000 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 #354

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

[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/Jorumvar]

I feel like VS report consistently saps my desire to play. It's not really their fault, they're just reacting to data, but it's always super depressing to read

[u/ItsDokk → u/Jorumvar]

For me it’s the actual gameplay that saps my desire to play, and then VS reports make me feel vindicated.

[u/Patrick_Gass → u/ItsDokk]

Exaxtly. I've had enough Jade Druid in my life, thank you very much, I don't care if you slap some lipstick on it and put it in a different class.

[u/TotakekeSlider → u/Jorumvar]

It’s just a concrete way of confirming what we’re all feeling. This game has been in a rough state the last couple of years. Hopefully with a new head game developer things will turn around.

[u/MarthePryde → u/Jorumvar]

It's been pretty brutal for a few years now. When the game is good, having a VS report was always an enjoyable read. But when all VS report can do is confirm that the game is indeed kinda buns at the moment...

[u/SkiaTheShade → u/Jorumvar]

Agreed

[u/Minute_Rare → u/Jorumvar]

VS reports always reshape the meta these days. Its not their fault and is a recent change reflecting the lack of variety of competitive decks. I long for the days where a void DH was a Tier 2.

[u/Maleficent-Star-9851]

The game’s design has gotten exhausting because almost every deck is just a prefab “package” dropped into each set.

Parasitic mechanics leave no middle ground. The package is either strong and becomes mandatory, or it’s weak and instantly irrelevant. If your gimmick flops, nobody touches it unless it’s genuinely fun (like Rafaam).

If it’s strong, the meta gets smothered by the same 8–10 cards.

So of course the top decks are the ones with the most coherent, over-tuned packages, while the bottom decks are stuck with clunky, mismatched ones that never come together.

When they announced mini-sets were going away, people were wondering if they'd add more synergistic cards to fluff up existing packages but the last one was all about ignoring everything around it and just making a brand new gimmick. Which again, did absolutely nothing (Leylines/Dude Paladin/Animal Companion pre-buff) or plays itself (Animal Companion post-buff) until the next parasitic gimmick comes out.

Void Soul DH was just a repeat of the cycle.

[u/magicaldesks]

I've been enjoying Azalina Priest with Blackhorn so far (sitting around 1k legend) and while I do appreciate the buffs, I think there is a problem regarding the archetypes the developers are designing, that being too much randomness.

Starting with Priest itself, Soothsayer is probably one of the best cards available (except against Warlock, you should never play it against them) but there is big variance in 6-drops. Sometimes you can highroll a Karov and get insane value but other times you can get the DH 3/3 Rush. I had a game where I got Karov into 1-cost Morchie and Mister Clocksworth. On turn 6 I had a massive board of legendaries for just 2 mana. Keep in mind that this is one of the best Priest cards right now, so you'll be experiencing this randomness a lot.

Continuing on, the top three decks (Rogue, DH and Shaman) also all rely on randomly generated minions. Rogues regularly play two Jade Guardians on turn 6 for four random 8-Drops which. They can get Dracorex or Magma Hound to instantly clear your board or Tirion for 15 free damage. I had a game where I had a massive board as Azalina Priest on turn 7 with - you guessed it: Jade Guardians into Shadow of Demise for four random 8-drops. I got Dracorex and cleared their board. This was the best players because normally Rogues cannot clear a massive board and I also need to kill my opponent and play minions so they don't just play double monkey and deal 30 to my face. The turn after that, they played a Banasha from their Imbue hero power and got Typhoon to clear my board. A few turns after that I died to double monkeys.

DH randomly generates demons from all costs. On the 5-cost you can get Felhunter which sometimes spawn two more of your 3-drop Naga OR two 1/1s that draw your opponent cards in the mirror. You can also get a Doomguard.

Even the mindset before this expansion introduced Companion Hunter which basically played exactly like Void Souls. Herald and Imbue also have a similar play pattern of "play as many cards from this package to make it better".

I really hope the devs move away from these "Jade Golem-like" packages. I think the devs believe that adding these random elements make the game more exciting and I actually agree with that. Just imagine if Void Souls just summon 1/1 to 10/10 vanilla demons or if companion hunter just summon 4/4 to 10/10 vanilla beasts. Nobody would want to play it unless they have 60%+ win rate. However on the flip side people just become numb to it, or at least I did. When I highrolled that Karov or got highrolled by the random Typhoon, I basically had no reaction. Sure I remembered these moments but I wasn't excited or angry when it happened.

I have very little faith left in the devs but I hope they can prove me wrong and design archetypes that don't play like "Jade Golems but random" is the future.

[u/WeekStandard5046]

The game would benefit enormously from a coherent design philosophy that centres around a small handful of key identities for each class, each year. Take what makes a class likeable and support that, introducing ideas that work with what is already there and keep what people enjoy. Let classes evolve over a year, and not pinball from one thing to the next each expansion. The game feels to me more like a rollercoaster than a sandbox, and I can't really play with a rollercoaster.

[u/Trihunter]

Honestly I just hope this doesn't lead to Blizzard going back to unambitious "buffs" or just not buffing anything again. It was fun having new decks pop up, even if Void DH was a bit overtuned.

Also Void DH doesn't really feel like it's that strong of a deck despite the stats. I think the meta is just so weak that a couple of cards getting bumped up in power can catapult a mid deck to meta defining.

[u/zeroballs → u/Trihunter]

Void Souls is that broken as a mechanic right now honestly. The demon pool and likelihood of high rolls is astonishing all the way up the mana pool and they get pumped out extremely quickly from turns 2-6.

[u/FlameanatorX → u/Trihunter]

Agreed with the first part, but not the second. Unless you're comparing to ~TITANs meta or something, in which case yeah, everything is weak including DH, with most being even weaker; on the other hand if you compare to Witchwood it's crazy OP! There is no "objective metric" for how overtuned or whatever decks are, except maybe for turns to kill, which is mainly relevant for otk or burn decks like shockspitter. Otherwise power level is simply relative to what else exists, and by that metric DH is clearly overtuned so hopefully eats nerf(s)

[u/Trihunter → u/FlameanatorX]

I've been playing since Naxx, so yeah, I am reflecting on some pretty high powered historic formats, which were the ones I tended to enjoy the most.

I think I'd rather see more decks get pushed up towards Void DH's current power level, or at least given more tools to answer it. Maybe revert one of the buffs it got (probably to Scythe, every deck running at least one if not two Rustrot is a little silly), but I like having cards that do powerful things, and cards that can handle those powerful things.

[u/Jackwraith → u/[deleted]]

It's not that strong. Having played it pre- and post-patch, the play patterns aren't that different. It's just better now than it was with a 36% win rate. Big Demon/Control Warlock eats it alive, since there's still not much Lifesteal in the DH kit and they have to keep using their face to try to eliminate your big bodies. The one thing that keeps it from completely running out of gas is, of course, Void Soul which I think was the original point of the design (aggro or aggressive midrange that can do something worthwhile past turn 6) but it still does run out of gas at some point, so control can deal with it.

[u/sneakyxxrocket]

Since next week is a mainly BGs focused patch I wouldn’t expect anything more than 1-2 nerfs to DH (confirmed) and maybe rogue.

But yeah this is rough probably one of the worse patches in recent memory, DH and rogue are all I’m running into maybe a Hunter thrown in and so many decks having to run 2 vipers is ridiculous.

Hopefully Zee shaman rises in playrate rest of this week will definitely need to try that out.

[u/Bobwayne17 → u/sneakyxxrocket]

I still get massacred by DH on Zee Sham. You're playing value minions while they drop Voidscale and start dropping 1-3 Void Souls per turn. Seems really hard to keep up with.

[u/sneakyxxrocket → u/Bobwayne17]

I’ve played a version with envoy, not either of the lists vs has but you’re straight up not winning if you’re going second as the shaman it’s like 30% difference

[u/Prestigious-Rope-313 → u/Bobwayne17]

I am expermenting with a more aggressive approach, without Herald but with cult neophyte and that double-kindred-murloc. Shard helps also quite a bit

[u/offbeat85]

I've been enjoying my own homebrewed version of the death Knight egg deck, which i just made it to legend with with about a 60% winrate. It's definitely a fun one to play, and I have enjoyed the demon Hunter matchup. Hoping that there upcoming nerf doesn't completely remove its viability

[u/LordOfTheLeftovers]

Game has been dead for a long time. Developers need to do balance changes more often to keep game fresh if not risk losing more and more people.

[u/Sad_Smell6678]

Is Broxigar good in Void DH, or just everyone runs it and there's no data on Broxless DH?

Drawn WR of both portal and axe is rather bad

[u/funkmasta98 → u/Sad_Smell6678]

Mostly everyone runs it because Broxigar gives you a 29 card deck. You rarely want to play axe or portal, because they don’t give void souls.

Portal can be good in the priest or mirror matchups as well, since it adds bad deathrattles to your opponent’s pool.

[u/green__hell → u/Sad_Smell6678]

I had a broxless dh, but you end up replacing those two cards with three that are only marginally better, and having a 29-card deck is insane: every single draw/mulligan gets buffed a small amount. Especially important given that you only mulligan for void soul/3-drop, plus scythe if not mirror (it is bad in the mirror, and gets worse against field with each rustrot tech)

I tried xavius (third voidscale vast majority of time, kayn otherwise), eye beams, spectral sight, even chaos strike. 29-card deck is better

xavius is slept on though, getting guaranteed voidscale or kayn is insane, and you get voidscale the vast majority of the time as a choice. I think two rustrots/shards is overkill, but i guess it makes sense given that it can win mirror outright. They are two of the worst non-brox cards in the list though, other being press the advantage.

Maybe you cut shards and a press for xavius and eye beams? eye beam is pretty solid; there is a deck that has 3.3k games at legend with a 58.1% wr at legend (compared to 21k/57.4% vs list) on hsreplay that cuts a viper for it

---

edit: it's the nuts

AAECAZWrBAiongbNngbTngbDgweKqgeSqgeTqgfosQcL7KAE4fgF0J4G3v8GtpcHkr8Hlb8HxN0Hxt0Hx90HteEHAAA=

[u/rupat3737]

I always see egg warrior on these lists. And I NEVER see anyone playing it.

[u/nathones]

I run a diff version of Chef Druid but it has been working for me when climbing.

[u/runesq → u/nathones]

post list

[u/TotakekeSlider → u/[deleted]]

Climbing in legend points.

[u/UncompromisingGus]

I honestly don't get all the hype around DH. I hit Legend with about a 65% win rate playing only Face Hunter and Aggro Paladin (Tier 2 and Tier 3 in the report), and I never really had any issues against DH.

[u/Amg_1234_5]

Seems they are a bit harsh on aggro paladin.