The Meta Report #27

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NAXX is out!!! Have you played through the new content yet? If not you need to if you want some new cards! We suggest you get on this immediately and start adding the new cards to your decks. We will be talking about one of our new decks at the end of the article. This week we have added in some of the new cards to the Meta Report. Good luck on the ladder!

Here’s Team DKMR’s weekly Meta ranking. Keep in mind, it’s about which classes and archetypes are played the most, not about which are the strongest. Most of the time, the strongest decks will also be the most frequently played, but that’s not always the case. That’s just part of how the Meta works.

Warlock: One thing to be said about this class: Nerubian Egg. Sure, when this card comes out by itself it is nothing special but when it dies it becomes a huge threat. This card especially shines in Zoo because the deck already has so many buff cards. A list of a few of these cards includes Abusive Sergeant, Dark Iron Dwarf, Defender of Argus, and Shattered Suncleric. Also, Hellfire has been seen more often in Zoo decks. Handlock hasn’t been popping up as much as it has in the past; the new cards don’t synergize with it too well. With the release of the new Warlock card in the near future, we believe there will be a new Midrange Warlock deck going around.

Rogue: In the near future Loatheb is going to be coming out. This card is a pretty strong card against Miracle Rogue which maybe why we’ve been seeing so many this week. When that card comes out, we believe it will be the start of the fall of Miracle Rogue which will directly impact the amount of players playing Backspace Rogue as well because it is a counter to Miracle Rogue. Tempo Rogue might become more popular in the near future. The new Rogue card, Anub’ar Ambusher, is kind of the opposite of Rogue decks go for, tempo. We are not a huge fan of this card but it definitely isn’t a bad one.

Druid: To no one’s surprise, Druid is still one of the most popular decks on the ladder. Druid got a new card added to it’s pool, Poison Seeds. Played quite a bit on the ladder, we’ve noticed a lot of players playing this card comboing it with Starfall. We don’t believe this card is very good. Druid decks are mostly about playing beefy minions each turn, and more spells just makes it less consistent in our opinion. Not to mention, Poison Seeds is an extremely situational card; against decks like Zoo, it usually just turns 3/2 minions into 2/2s which isn’t accomplishing much and against decks like Warrior or Handlock, it’s usually just best to spam the board with minions.

Shaman: There has been a good amount of players playing a Shaman deck with Bloodlust in it. The Nerubian Egg and Haunted Creeper synergize with the deck really well because, like Zoo, Shaman plays a lot of buff cards too. A few of these cards include Rockbiter Weapon, Flametongue Totem, and Defender of Argus. Both of these minions are sticky, like Harvest Golem, so they add quite a bit to Bloodlust. This deck isn’t only strong, it is also fun to play.

Priest: With the release of the new cards from Naxxramas, most of them have 2 or less attack, Cabal Shadowpriest an extremely strong card. This might be the uprise of Priest! The Dark Cultist is going to be an extremely useful card in Priest decks to make them even stronger. Although Priest deals with the new card fairly well, they still have an extremely hard time dealing with minions with 4 attack, which makes it still a weak deck but it is starting to take one step in the right direction.

Mage: Don’t Kick My Robot believes that Freeze Mage is a Strong Deck to climb with at the moment. Although this may be the case, there hasn’t been too much Mage going around on the ladder. We believe this is because not many of the Naxxramas cards that have been released this past Tuesday included cards that can be used in the decks. We all want a change and want to experiment with the new cards.

Warrior: Boring old Warrior. This deck doesn’t have much going for it at the moment. There are a few pretty fun and decent combos that you can use with the Warrior cards to make use of the new cards. Using a Cruel Taskmaster or Innerrage (as you seen the Naxxramas Heroes using) on a Nerubian Egg is a great way to activate the Nerubian. Other than this, the other cards don’t seem to do as good in Warrior as they do in other decks. The Haunted Creeper isn’t that annoying as it can be when playing Warrior because Whirlwind makes quick work of the 1/1 spiders. We are excited for the new Warrior weapon which will be coming out soon, Death’s Bite, it will add a lot to the Warrior class and make it much stronger.

Hunter: To our surprise, there hasn’t been much of any Hunters being played on the ladder this week. A few of the Naxxramas cards that were released are indeed Beasts, which we thought would contribute to the decks. The Maexxna doesn’t seem like it is that strong of a card but it is a Beast, none the less, and also has a pretty cool sound when it is played. We are hoping in the near future somebody will come up with a solid Mid-Range Hunter deck that does incorporate the new cards, it could be pretty fun and interesting to play.

Paladin: There hasn’t been much of any Paladin being played on the ladder as well. The Paladin cards don’t synergize too well with the Naxxramas cards. We were disappointed when we saw what the Naxxramas Paladin class card is going to be because it isn’t very good. We believe Paladin needs a small buff to allow it to compete with the other top decks in the game.

Deck of the week: DKMR Eggs For Days?

With Naxxramas finally being out we thought we would bring you one of DKMR’s first new variations of the old popular decks with the addition of the new cards you can receive by playing the new adventure mode. We will be looking at our new version of the typical “Handlock”. While the idea of the deck is very similar to the new additions to the deck means that it can be played quite differently than before.