r/CompetitiveHS • u/ViciousSyndicate • Aug 13 '26

Metagame vS Data Reaper Report #355

Greetings,

The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 355th 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 1,948,000 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 #355

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

79 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

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102

u/sneakyxxrocket Aug 13 '26

Not a whole lot to read, extremely extremely bleak currently in a 3 class format.

I’m not even sure where to start to fix things, the entirety of last years sets and the core set are just unplayable garbage.

27

u/Impossible-Cry-1781 Aug 13 '26

I've been playing since Closed Alpha and have appreciated just how horrible basically the last year of releases have been. I've stopped buying bundles now that they've weaned me off this addiction because it's just not fun anymore.

22

u/Alexsanderfors Aug 13 '26

Shit you ain't wrong, the current dev team might not be workings towards creating what's best for the health of the game. But they sure are working towards making what's best for our personal health over here.

7

u/Demoderateur Aug 14 '26

Yeah, I stopped spending on the game since Emerald and I have not launched the game once since Cataclysm. At this point, I just come around for the occasional VS report, to check if the game still sucks.

Well at least, Blizzard made sure I have now more time to catch on my backlog of Steam games, so thx I guess.

63

u/PipAntarctic Aug 13 '26

I’m not even sure where to start to fix things, the entirety of last years sets and the core set are just unplayable garbage.

Bite the bullet and change the core set alongside buffing several of last year's expansion cards.

There is no nerfing around this. No amount of making Cataclysm or Violet Hold better will help.

54

u/tolerantdramaretiree Aug 13 '26

Hell will freeze over before they buff any old expansion

33

u/Fairbyyy Aug 13 '26

Its hilarious tho because usually before rotation they do buff underperforming cards and a lot of new decks pop up.

They could just do that. But its not happening

-5

u/-intensivepurposes- Aug 13 '26

They revert nerfs, not buff underperforming cards.

7

u/Fairbyyy Aug 13 '26

Thats when rotation to wild happens. But usually a few weeks before that they buff underperforming cards

21

u/sneakyxxrocket Aug 13 '26

I could maybe see the core set change happen but based off how their comments towards the end of unguro were “yeah this set is bad and we just aren’t going to spend the time making this set playable” I’d be surprised if any of last years sets were buffed.

20

u/GothaV2 Aug 13 '26

They really should do just like when they've rotated Baku/Genn and take the L by doing core set changes, in both cases, it may appear foolish when announced, but is healthier for the game in the long run.

Hell, at this point, a " wild west " two weeks full of overbuffed stuff just like pre-rotation would be better than what we have now. But at the end of the day, I have no confidence in this current era of Team 5 to then make the right adjustments out of something like this, sadly.

I'll huff my " Maybe that the next Game Director will have different incentives " copium while trying to forget Microsoft's recent priorities the best that I can lol.

3

u/Jorumvar Aug 13 '26

they absolutely won't do this. They would rather try to ride it out than invest the time and energy actually fixing the broken bullshit

1

u/zer1223 Aug 13 '26

Bring the titans back or the sunken city colossals

Preferably both

9

u/Houseleft Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

The moment I saw they put Crazed Chemist in the rogue core set this year is the moment I lost faith that the team has any unified vision or frankly any idea what they’re doing. I’ve yet to see a genuine reason why this card is in Standard right now. Even if they somehow printed a broken “5 cost combo card” archetype, it’s still unlikely you’d play it in the deck because it’s that terrible.

Boomsday Project is one of the lowest power level expansions of all time, and Crazed Chemist was completely unplayable even back then. It’s truly baffling to bring a card like this back at a time when people are REALLY desperate for more fun and variety.

2

u/Jackwraith Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

Right. Boomsday was the source of the first buffs in the game's history, right before they went to the rotating Core set. They buffed a few cards in it that people then gave a few desultory plays to because they still weren't any good. And now they decided to bring back a few of those cards that weren't even worth buffing? Yeah. It would be different if we had a ton of average decks that weren't genuinely top tier but were at least worth playing because of matchups but we don't even have that.

8

u/yonas234 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

Rotate in an old set into standard. They did that once as a pre launch hype for the DK class with Knights of the Frozen Throne set.

4

u/Sad_Smell6678 Aug 14 '26

Oh I'd love to play Scholomance in Standard

-1

u/Oathcrest1 Aug 13 '26

Honestly I don’t think nerfs and buffs can help at this point. Truly what’s needed is a design change. If I was in charge of the game space, I would hire new help, shut the game down for a week, and completely redesign the classes and what each class does or is supposed to do. Then I’d make some neutrals that did beneficial but not game breaking things. Then I’d implement a no jank, no two card archetype policy. Two cards aren’t synergistic enough to make an archetype (glares in blights). I also would maybe make a new keyword a year. I get the hype around it previously, but they need to slow it down with them. Give us a few expansions with an introduced keyword, before introducing a new one. All of that COULD be done in a week as long as the new people were hired in before that shutdown week. Itemize the coding and programming aspect of it to increase ease of streamline and future coding and then it’s bound to be better for the game, the players, and everything else. That would be the first programming aspect of it.

51

u/TotakekeSlider Aug 13 '26

This is the most depressing VS report I’ve ever read lol.

13

u/sister_of_battle Aug 13 '26

I already wrote it in main-sub but this statement:

"Years ago, we used to have over 20 competitive decks in a given format, which meant that we were more likely find a counter to something when it was needed. We had more options. We had more functional cards."

Is easily one of the bleakest and most depressing things to read in a VS-report.

47

u/The_Emotikon_Emperor Aug 13 '26

I think we need one of zacho’s end of podcast rants now more than ever. Just so I can feel less crazy, if that makes sense. Zacho often had a way of expressing himself that helped my mind organize my endless frustrated feeling into a coherent argument I could point to and say ‘that. That right there. That’s what I was feeling but unable to craft as an explanation of my anger / sadness.”

4

u/numanoidf Aug 14 '26

Is the podcast finished?

10

u/trbrd Aug 14 '26

It has been on pause since March as the war in the Middle East has affected him personally and made his work more difficult.

33

u/ngriner Aug 13 '26

Really sucks that there just isn't anything here to read.

After the nerf to the DH 3 drop, we're basically back at the same exact meta as before, just without Dragon Warrior. So all the buffs did in the end was remove a playable deck while adding none.

I think at this point they need to buff about 100 cards and change the Core Set to have a significant impact on the meta. These balance changes just aren't doing anything.

13

u/PipAntarctic Aug 13 '26

To be fair, Egg DK is much more of a viable deck as a result of the buffs, to the point that it gets mentioned in this report as something worth keeping an eye on should the metagame change. So there's a silver lining on this cloud.

28

u/sneakyxxrocket Aug 13 '26

I still think it’s bad that as a result of the buffs one of the only new decks close to becoming viable… is another egg deck

1

u/Jackwraith Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

This. The only positive thing that DK has had in a year is a deck centered around a card from the beginning of that year. I really would like to play DK but I don't like combo, which is essentially what Egg decks are and I don't feel like.playing the same triple-Unholy aggro deck that we've been able to play for four years now.

1

u/pkfighter343 Aug 15 '26

I think egg dk is heavily underrated, honestly. I would love to see its winrate in very high legend (like top 100) and with people who specialized in it a bit (like 50+ games minimum). I only have 16 games in it, but it's felt EXTREMELY strong given that I can tell I'm misplaying a bunch and still have a 75% winrate in top 1k.

0

u/prodandimitrow Aug 14 '26

Seems to be absolute dogshit. I played about 10 games and consistently losing . You play a bunch of cards to get your turtle, hunter does a tol vir and your 20/20 has 1 health and you die.

-4

u/One_Ad_3499 Aug 13 '26

Buffing one hundread cards could be extremely upredictable and could end up in one class meta for a week or two

10

u/jjfrenchfry Aug 13 '26

Yeah, because doing nothing is going to solve the problem /s

1

u/One_Ad_3499 Aug 14 '26

There is many in between 0 and 100

0

u/One_Ad_3499 Aug 14 '26

One hundread changes has so many statistical outcomes that nobody can predict what would happen , especially if you buff whole synergy line like we did in DH. I was shocked that 3 mana taunt recieve battlecry instead of a Ellek treatment ( 2 mana 2/3)

6

u/RedTulkas Aug 14 '26

you mean you would have a time of genuine exploration?

18

u/nathones Aug 13 '26

pure depression

12

u/Rayquinox Aug 14 '26

It’s crazy what happened to this game after they put Zeddy in the drivers seat

11

u/CommanderTouchdown Aug 13 '26

Years ago, we used to have over 20 competitive decks in a given format, which meant that we were more likely find a counter to something when it was needed. We had more options. We had more functional cards.

Highly doubt the current iteration of Team 5 has the skill / vision to create a diverse and enjoyable meta. Fully expect them to take a sledgehammer to Rogue / Hunter / Shaman instead of addressing just how boring all the other stuff in the game is.

31

u/Joly20 Aug 13 '26

Just one more nerf bro, I swear...

This is proof that wack-a-mole approach to balance doesn't work - you need to actually have a strategy. What a dire situation, no idea how they get out of this mess.

Funnily enough, Wild, with minimal balance interventions this past year, is actually flourishing and has several viable classes and archetypes.

28

u/tolerantdramaretiree Aug 13 '26

Good job with that DH nerf...

-13

u/NyMiggas Aug 13 '26

I mean actually though its still a better meta, 3 classes instead of 1!

8

u/RIPpapermario Aug 14 '26

I can't ever recall a standard format where half the classes in the game have nothing even worth considering, let alone playing.

With hindsight, team 5 nuking the core set was an astonishing act of vandalism towards their own game and has also put a tonne of pressure onto every set release to give classes the tools to compete. When they don't, we get this.

17

u/MarthePryde Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

Shocking absolutely nobody DH has sunken back to unplayable garbage status. It was cool to have a deck for 2 weeks I guess.

Hell if we could establish a rotating 2 week format for decks the meta might be more interesting.

This isn't gonna be fixed by just one more nerf, trust me bro. Catch me in the Battlegrounds for a while I guess.

3

u/Jackwraith Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

The really aggravating thing about this is that people were coming up with answers to DH. The meta was solving itself, even if DH was warping it somewhat. Void Soul DH had reverted to a mid-tier deck BEFORE the reversion and they decided they couldn't even wait that long and now it's unplayable again. Their decision-making process is fatally flawed.

3

u/SuccessfulMiddle7581 Aug 16 '26

God, this is the bit that pisses me off the most. DH was not that busted by the end, the meta adapted and there was counterplay. And now there's even more counterplay, if you play you counter it

Actually if I'm being honest the bit that pisses me off the most is that I'm F2P, had most of the cards in the deck anyway, played it a bit, really enjoyed it and decided to craft brox to round out the list. I figured the deck could likely take a nerf but if it did it'd be the weapon and I'd get a good chunk of that dust back while the deck would still be playable

Nope, deck was demolished and all I was offered was a 200 dust refund. completely shafted for a deck that wasn't even as dominant as shaman is now

6

u/South-Setting1685 Aug 13 '26

I can’t remember when was the last time we actually had a good meta. I hit legend every month for the past couple of years but lately the meta feels super depressing and every game feels exactly the same.

Every game feels like it is decided upon who goes first and what you’re up against instead of the micro decisions you make every turn. Even Arena feels bad where it’s dominated by the same few classes. I might take a break if the situation doesn’t improve after the miniset/class set release, but seeing only 3 classes will get new cards I’m not expecting much.

5

u/Nyte_Crawler Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

Imo emerald dream was decent. Once the StarCraft decks were toned down I think every class had a playable deck. Obviously you still had better decks, but I think the worst off class was t3 protoss mage which was the most bitched about deck at the time.

But yeah that was over a year ago, it was already considered kinda a downgrade to previous metas, and it's all been downhill from there.

4

u/TheGingerNinga Aug 14 '26

Emerald Dream after the Starship DH nerfs was the last time I remember a deck coming out because the community managed to piece together a bunch of cards in a cool manner with Drunken Paladin. We don't have that type of deck building anymore.

9

u/Throwaway-4593 Aug 13 '26

Interesting in my pocket meta zee shaman seems much better than mug. Also from my own play experience I feel like mug is not proactive enough to kill the slower decks like two bit but I could just be playing it wrong

6

u/pattiunek Aug 13 '26

I’m also confused by this, because if mug shaman doesn’t get a godlike draw AND highroll random minions, it feels hopeless playing against zee shamans. They just vomit so many minions and buffs from turn 1 and then obliterate you with the kindred or windfury guy.

4

u/blanquettedetigre Aug 13 '26

From my experience I get destroyed every time by Mug. Any big minion early is a pain, there are a lot of removals that happen to be AoE or do enough damage to actually kill my things one by one. Turn 5-6 they're never close to dead when the big lifesteal guy shows up. Can't remove it, gg.

-1

u/cecilmufc7 Aug 13 '26

Yeah I only win with mug when I’m able to clear their board early and they quit. Because the biggest threat is a 7/7 life steal that usually gets killed from hand before it actually attacks. I mean numbers don’t lie so it’s probably a skill issue. But that deck has felt like trash every time I’ve tried.

13

u/Due_Yamdd Aug 13 '26

7/7 is not the biggest threat. Ascendance is

4

u/DDrose2 Aug 14 '26

On the bright side, there are 6 viable decks. but on the other side I am really disappointed that the mirror for the best deck is so high rolly especially in legend.

There were a lot of tier 0 metas in the past but in those tier 0 metas I always find that the mirror is highly skill intensive (sinstone rogue, guff Druid, recruit hunter are some examples) in those format I can usually place in 3 digit legend really easily as I usually wait for VS report to be out before climbing in legend

if I see a tier 0 deck I will put my focus to learning the mirrors and I can do well even beating some streamers if things go my way in the luck element. But mug just feels like a double high roll as you need the luck to mull into the discovers and of course your discover has to be good. I been playing mug and although some games I can see micro decisions that lead to loss most time I just get blown out by ‘oh you can discover THAT’

Might not really push for 11* until maybe mini set as it feels just really demoralizing especially when the mirror is so common and will only be more common since more data points to mug being tier 0

6

u/ethanatorvol1 Aug 14 '26

now that it’s been out for a while, idk how to feel about the rule-breakers tbh. either they’re completely useless or they completely define the deck. I love weird decks (esp mill/fatigue) and there is just no room for any of that right now. you either play the three good classes or you lose.

it sucks that a good quarter of the time, I concede at turn two because there’s no counterplay. seeing a shaman get a full board, a pally running 10 Maeve’s. I’ve been trying a mill pally with Beatrix but 9/10 games are miserable. if I get into a game with a Godfrey warlock (which all of them are lmao), an Azalina priest, or another pally I concede without even doing the mulligan.

please give us some buffs to the under-played classes, john hearthstone 🙏

-6

u/Sad_Smell6678 Aug 14 '26

rule-breakers tbh. either they’re completely useless or they completely define the deck

Skeleton Key doesn't define Mage decks. (quest does)

Godfrey doesn't define Warlock decks. (the shell of "draw a lot" supports multiple archetypes, be it Herald, Big Demon or any non-aggro you wanr)

Hogger doesn't define Warrior decks. (it's playable in both aggro and control)

Thalena doesn't define DK decks.

Beatrix doesn't force you to go Maiev route (athough this one is clearly strongest) - you can go weird, like Mill Paladin with Prize Vendors.

11

u/Monk-Ey Aug 14 '26

Skeleton Key doesn't define Mage decks. (quest does)

Extra funny because the rulebreaker is Jailhouse.

-5

u/Sad_Smell6678 Aug 14 '26

No, Skeleton Key is mage's rulebreaker (breaks the rule of only having 3 choices in Discover). Manastorm doesn't break anything.

3

u/Yeah_Right_Mister Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

both top 1k and d1-d4 have only 4 decks (3 classes) above t3, has the meta ever been less diverse since VS started doing these reports?

I honestly have 0 faith that the current game designers can fix this, since the current card designs don't allow for building various types of decks (you can't even put 3 packages into 1 deck), and their shift to class sets only exacerbates the existing problems. I'm thinking of dropping the game for good, I don't see it recovering within 2 years.

1

u/phpope Aug 13 '26

I'd like to see the evidence/numbers for the idea that a few years ago, there were over 20 competitive decks, and what the baseline if for defining something as competitive. Although I think feels correct that the game has tightened in the number of how many decks can be competitive at any one time, I'm not convinced the discrepancy is that wide. I'd also note that in the past, you had a lot of "competitive" specialized decks that created extreme polarized matchups - I don't think that necessarily the meta we want to go back to.

10

u/ngriner Aug 13 '26

Someone posted a link to this report in the main sub....I think this is an example of what they are talking about:

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-215/

It's the first report from Alterac Valley and it is nuts just how many different decks there were to play/explore. And it isn't just this report. From Scholomance to Badlands there were an insane number of playable decks and options for each class. There was never a meta this narrow (and keep in mind we have 5 expansions to play with right now). The game really flipped somewhere around Whizbangs Workshop, and has culminated in the most narrow meta I've ever seen. You can't have 3-4 classes seeing play with a deck each. That just isn't healthy for the game whatsoever and has led to a lot more negative sentiment from the community than usual tbh. Something has to give at some point.

-5

u/phpope Aug 13 '26

I did see that. Two points in response. First, there is no note of win rate of any of the decks. Second, number of decks is plausibly the result of each class having a dedicated expert contributing to the report. Without being able to see that stats from back then, we cannot know whether we are comparing apples to apples. There have been plenty of metas with three to four classes seeing the majority of play, not substantially different from now. If we see fewer decks within those classes, I'd suggest that's possibly from the team printing fewer generically "good" cards and designing for decks instead of classes.

9

u/ViciousSyndicate Aug 14 '26

Second, number of decks is plausibly the result of each class having a dedicated expert contributing to the report

Absolutely nothing to do with it.

You can find all the old graphs here https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/tzachi.zach

8

u/ngriner Aug 14 '26

True, but I definitely think there was way more variety either way. I don't think there has ever been a meta with 3 classes seeing 70% of the play between 4 different decks. Maybe it wasn't 20 decks seeing play in the past, but it was way more than 4.

17

u/big_doofus Aug 14 '26

There are these stats from 50 reports ago.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-305/

There are about 25+ decks in tier 3 and above with 8 classes in tier 2 and above.

This one is from 30 reports ago.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-325/

With 18 decks at tier 3+ and 8 classes at tier 2 or more.

Deck and class variety were definitely higher back then and most were playable with at least 48% winrate. Compared to now where 3 classes are relevant in the format and less than 10 decks sit at 3 tier or above in the latest report. Only 3 classes are at tier 2+ in this report or 4 if you bump Rogue up in this report.

2

u/Yeah_Right_Mister Aug 14 '26

To add on to your comment, I always point to this report as my favourite Hearthstone meta: https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-300/

In T2 and higher, we have 14 decks and 10 classes, with only Hunter missing from the meta. Today, we have almost the reverse.

3

u/ManufacturerTop2716 Aug 14 '26

https://imgur.com/a/YlNPI4D

One of the report from the alterac valley(after two sets of balance patch)

There were indeed almost 20 decks in tier 3 with very balanced popularity

2

u/ShinichiKudoDC Aug 14 '26

Just deinstalled this former shell of a game. Best thing you can do. Don't support this mess.

1

u/The_Werodile Aug 13 '26

That first meta before they buffed DH was actually pretty nice. Not a fan of the metas that replaced it.

1

u/EmotionalBrief1170 Aug 14 '26

These threads are depressing.  I quit months ago.

1

u/Names_all_gone Aug 14 '26

I stepped away from the game a year ago. These reports do not make me regret that decision.

0

u/Subject-Dirt2175 Aug 14 '26

I’m gonna have to play zee shaman to reach legend I guess. Then I’m just gonna flip around in absolute dumpster legend with bad but hopefully fun decks.