The Meta Report #16

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Don’t Kick My Robot here with another Meta Report and boy are you in for some fun this week. With the beginning of the new season comes significant shake-ups on the ladder. Rogue has finished it’s coup de grace of Hunter, plummeting the former beast down the rankings. Is Rogue the new king (queen)? Is it here to stay? We’ll have to see what the meta decides!

Check out Team DKMR’s meta rankings below. Don’t forget, the name of the game is popularity, not power. While Hunter Midrange may be an incredibly powerful deck, its poor match-up against Miracle Rogue could be enough to keep the deck unpopular. That’s just how the meta works! Check out our other articles this week for more discussion of how the meta works.

Rogue - Rogue and its miracles have stormed to the top of the ladder. Sporting a strong Hunter Midrange match-up and a powerful game plan, Miracle Rogue dominated the top 16 Legend slots at the end of last season. Many of this season’s early Legend’s were also made under the deck’s strength. Whether its popularity will continue with the likely demise of Midrange Hunter post Unleash the Hounds nerf is yet to be determined. What is certain is that Miracle Rogue is enemy #1 for the time being in both tournament and ladder play.

Warrior - It seems the cost of Warrior Control hasn’t been enough to keep this deck’s popularity down. Not only has the class seen new life with Kitkatz’s most recent build, but variations of Warrior Aggro have reemerged to smash the slower control and combo decks. Warrior Control is one of the game’s most consistent decks and may sport the fewest poor match-ups. Warrior Aggro is blazingly fast, packing charge damage from both minions and weapons. The rise in both these decks brings Warrior to our second highest spot.

Warlock - Warlock has recently started creeping its way back toward the top. Warlock Aggro sports a reasonable match-up against Miracle Rogue and Warrior Control. Similar to Warrior Aggro, it can secure a win before Leeroy can show-off his signature Shadowstepping and before Warrior Control can bring its powerful Legendaries to bear. Warlock in general also sports strong consistency due to Life Tap. Not only is Warlock Aggro stronger with Hunter’s decline, but Handlock is now a reasonable pick against the meta. Handlock has reasonable to strong Druid, Warrior Control, and Miracle Rogue match-ups, putting it in a good spot in today’s meta.

Hunter - Don’t worry guys, the Unleash the Hounds nerf isn’t live quite yet. Hunter has returned to reasonable levels of popularity. Hunter Aggro remains a popular counter pick to Miracle Rogue and Warlock Aggro and can still contend with most of the game’s other end bosses. Hunter Midrange is still a premier deck in terms of quality, but has been suppressed by the dominance of Miracle Rogue.

Druid - Last week’s Druid popularity seems to have waned. While Gaara has made a strong case for Druid Ramp’s position as one of the top tournament decks, the deck does not seem to fare as well on the ladder, where match-ups are significantly harder to predict. Druid remains one of the more consistent classes, however, and is likely to hover higher in the rankings from week to week.

Mage - Mage has seen a surprising uptick in popularity on the ladder. This increase is most directly attributable to the incredibly aggressive, Ice Lance-packing Mage Aggro deck that’s cropped up recently as an answer to Rogue, Warlock, and Hunter. While it can run out of gas quickly, the deck packs a serious punch and provides quick games (for better or for worse) while laddering.

Shaman - While powerful, Shaman’s dichotic match-ups have kept it from gaining any sort of momentum on the ladder. Shaman is generally very powerful against other control decks like Warrior and Druid, but suffers in aggressive match-ups. While winnable, its games against Hunter, Mage, and Warlock tend to be an uphill battle. Look for Shaman to make a big comeback when Unleash the Hounds takes a hiatus.

Priest - Priest remains a powerful control deck for tournaments, but still struggles to produce consistent results on the ladder. Only the most dedicated of Priest fans battle the deck on the ladder. One can only hope Curse of Naxxramas brings the class some love.

 

Paladin - Paladin remains one of the least played classes on the ladder along with Priest. Fairly stock midrange and Sword of Justice builds crop up from time to time, but none have been able to resurrect this class’s ladder popularity.

 

Deck of the week: Miracle Rogue

Miracle Rogue with Leeroy Combo. We know Rogue seems to be popping up everywhere but we’ve had multiple requests for this deck so we felt like this was a good choice especially with the ladder climb starting back up. A miracle deck works by gathering up pieces of your deck in an effort to try to combo kill someone in one turn. There are a couple different variants, but we feel this one is strong in the current Metagame because it allows you to combo quicker than most other decks.