Prior to the nerf the most popular DH list played priestess of fury. It was always a very strong play to get raging felscreamer into priestess of fury on turn 5 (and it still is a very strong play, but it is inconsistent). The deck enjoyed a favourable matchup against every other deck save for warrior. One issue with priestess of fury post nerf is that it dies to bloodboil brute now as well as rush minions like Rusteed Raider and Siamat. It can also die to some two card combos like skipper + korkron elite. People therefore started dropping it to run a much more aggro orientated list with cards like beaming sidekick but also we see frozen shadoweaver being teched in to help with the warrior matchup.
HsReplay refers to all DH decks as tempo DH but this is an aggro deck through and through. See the deck list and stats below for legend rankings:
This list was hit by the nerfs a small amount because of the nerf to crimson sigil runner. Despite this, vicious syndicate recommends to keep running it. Some people though replace it with cards such as blazing battlemage. The above is not the only viable list for aggro DH, but the important aspect is priestess of fury (and by extension raging felscreamer) is out and beaming sidekick is in. Let's now look at the win rate for this deck:
We can see this aggro deck beats everything quite easily except warrior decks. Where the priestess of fury version struggled a little bit vs face hunter, this more aggro version is definitely favoured. The nerfs just meant that more DHs are now running what was arguably always the higher win rate list and again it cements itself as the best deck in standard despite three rounds of nerfs.
There have been people on this forum complaining they struggle vs priest. This is a skill issue because aggro DH definitely does not struggle in the legend ranks. The matches you lose may feel frustrating when priest does priest things, but ultimately the deck is favoured. One thing you can take comfort in is that not only are frozen shadoweavers good vs warrior, they are 4 attack minions and so do well vs priest.
Don't be surprised if DH gets nerfed again because it's still well and truly the best deck for laddering. It's super fast, usually with game duration on average 7.5 turns. Its only counters are really hard to play and so arn't played very often and there are no really hard counters where you have almost no chance to win. Aggro DH therefore enjoys a meta where it has mostly free reign. That being said, aggro DH may be the only thing keeping quest warlock in check as otherwise quest warlock is nearing oppressively high win rates against a lot of decks. Further, it's literally the only deck challenging HL hunter to any significant degree.
A more balanced meta would in my opinion:
1. see DH having a viable highlander deck. Currently its legendaries arn't good enough in long games and it can't cheat mana like rogue and mage can - DH is just really awful going the long haul since cards like kayn are only good in aggro decks and Nethrandamus has to be in your hand to upgrade. It functions like a second dragonqueen alexstraza but with the disadvantage of being a bad top deck.
2. Aggro DH having a couple more counters in the meta (maybe if shaman and paladin were fixed so they had some viable decks their healing would be able to compete. Pure/Libram Paladin probably should beat aggro DH but it doesn't since it has no draw and too weak of an early game and call to adventure is too slow/bad).
3. HL Hunter having some more counters in the meta (again looking at you pure/libram paladin, you should be a thing here but just arn't!).
You’ve got to be absolutely joking if you’re calling for another round of nerfs. I ladder t500 legend, and demon hunter is far and away not represented there as much as warrior, quest lock, and priest right now. Stop trying to witch hunt a class out of existence because it was way to strong on launch, it had its nerfs, and is merely a l2p issue if you’re still getting rolled by it at this point.
You’ve got to be absolutely joking if you’re calling for another round of nerfs. I ladder t500 legend, and demon hunter is far and away not represented there as much as warrior, quest lock, and priest right now. Stop trying to witch hunt a class out of existence because it was way to strong on launch, it had its nerfs, and is merely a l2p issue if you’re still getting rolled by it at this point.
Further nerfs are up to blizzard. The stats just show it's the best deck in the game in legend ranks and there is just one counter. That being said, aggro DH is the only counter to HL Hunter (outside of maybe some fringe decks like murloc paladin or zoolock).
Your post includes pre-nerf stats, this is over a 30 days period, so in reality pretty meaningless when it spans a balance patch. Not just because of the actual cards changed, but meta and tech choices have changed a lot over the last 30 days, specifically teching against DH.
As someone also playing top1000 legend last season, I can attest to DH not being oppressive at this level. You see also a trend in Grand Masters, DH is NOT the go-to ban, warrior is 90% of the time. DH in Grand Masters across regions has about 50% win rate.
All that being said, it is still a fantastic deck to ladder with as it is fast. And if you’re experienced with the deck, you will feast on other DHs who are not familiar with the intricacies of the deck.
One thing you can take comfort in is that not only are frozen shadoweavers good vs warrior, they are 4 attack minions and so do well vs priest.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Priest at match-up at all. No one runs Shadow Word: Death nowadays and Ruin is sometimes teched (teched - not mandatory!) only in Rez variant, which is barely played nowadays.
What is more important is that it has 3 Health - so early Aoes can't kill it.
One thing you can take comfort in is that not only are frozen shadoweavers good vs warrior, they are 4 attack minions and so do well vs priest.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Priest at match-up at all. No one runs Shadow Word: Death nowadays and Ruin is sometimes teched (teched - not mandatory!) only in Rez variant, which is barely played nowadays.
What is more important is that it has 3 Health - so early Aoes can't kill it.
Shadow word:death is a two of in galakrond priest vicious syndicate list. It is also a two of in pretty much every list on hsreplay for priest (other than HL priest of course). I would have thought you meant shadow word:pain but then there was a reference to ruin there (which is a card which isn't played so often) which tends to suggest you did mean shadow word:death. If this is the case, we are playing different games.
One thing you can take comfort in is that not only are frozen shadoweavers good vs warrior, they are 4 attack minions and so do well vs priest.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Priest at match-up at all. No one runs Shadow Word: Death nowadays and Ruin is sometimes teched (teched - not mandatory!) only in Rez variant, which is barely played nowadays.
What is more important is that it has 3 Health - so early Aoes can't kill it.
Shadow word:death is a two of in galakrond priest vicious syndicate list. It is also a two of in pretty much every list on hsreplay for priest (other than HL priest of course). I would have thought you meant shadow word:pain but then there was a reference to ruin there (which is a card which isn't played so often) which tends to suggest you did mean shadow word:death. If this is the case, we are playing different games.
You are right, Death is played, Ruin and Pain are not. Still, the point remains - saying that having 4 attack is beneficial vs Priest is a leftover from a long ago. For few last formats they have an easy way to deal with almost everything and 4 attack hardly matters. Back ago they used to have to trade into such minions, now it's a piece of cake to remove almost anything. Also even though you are right Death is played, no one would rather waste it on such minion. Another thing is, since it's a 3-drop, you'd rather expect it to be a target for Pain - which is not played.
The latest stats from hsreplay and the vicious syndicate data also now seems to confirm that aggro DH is the best deck in standard and the nerfs had no effect. However, I don't think people are willing to engage with the statistics and rather rely on their own experience over non-signficant sample sizes. I do see people believing their deck beats DH but it's over 10 games. The data though would tend to indicate DH beats everything over 50% of the time except warrior. Because engrage/egg warrior has such a high skill cap it doesn't see much play, allowing DH to take over the meta. Vicious syndicate statistics also indicate DH is the most played class in legend (but druid is now the most second played and that deck basically beats everything but face hunter and aggro DH).
The trouble with this meta is there are stupidly powerful decks that beat almost anything (druid and highlander hunter for example) but they all lose to DH. DH does appear based on the statistics to be overpowered but if it were nerfed it would allow decks that do not lose to anything but aggro DH to be extremely oppressive. The only answer is a new expansion or to balance a large number of decks. Aggro DH is highlander hunter from being an insanely high win rate deck. If DH wasn't in the game highlander hunter would likely have a higher win rate than aggro DH does now because that deck just obliterates mage and priest and has a good matchup vs rogue.
Blindly looking at stats of winrates is really too simplistic. Popularity comes into play, skill caps of decks, regions, timelines, ranks and many, many more factors. You can with the right filters and angles often get support for your agenda.
If I was to adopt your, albeit quite naive, approach, I could counter with something along the lines of:
Looking at the current meta, so stats from the past 7 days, and not 30, only top1000 legend (arguably best and most experienced pilots), DH has bad matchups against: Enrage and egg warrior, Pure Paladin, Bomb Warrior, Galakrond Secret Rogue and Malygos Druid. Looking at deck popularity, those 6 decks combined make up 29,8% of all decks played at legend, so almost 1/3 times, the DH queues into a decidedly bad matchup. Additionally, DH themselves account for 18% of decks played, where logic states 50% win rate assuming equal skill. So about 48% of the times in the current meta, DH does not queue into a favorable matchup.
No longer seems like a big issue, does it?
Like I said, blindly looking at stats like this is naive. It gives an indication, but that’s about it.
The latest stats from hsreplay and the vicious syndicate data also now seems to confirm that aggro DH is the best deck in standard and the nerfs had no effect. However, I don't think people are willing to engage with the statistics and rather rely on their own experience over non-signficant sample sizes. I do see people believing their deck beats DH but it's over 10 games. The data though would tend to indicate DH beats everything over 50% of the time except warrior. Because engrage/egg warrior has such a high skill cap it doesn't see much play, allowing DH to take over the meta. Vicious syndicate statistics also indicate DH is the most played class in legend (but druid is now the most second played and that deck basically beats everything but face hunter and aggro DH).
The trouble with this meta is there are stupidly powerful decks that beat almost anything (druid and highlander hunter for example) but they all lose to DH. DH does appear based on the statistics to be overpowered but if it were nerfed it would allow decks that do not lose to anything but aggro DH to be extremely oppressive. The only answer is a new expansion or to balance a large number of decks. Aggro DH is highlander hunter from being an insanely high win rate deck. If DH wasn't in the game highlander hunter would likely have a higher win rate than aggro DH does now because that deck just obliterates mage and priest and has a good matchup vs rogue.
The best =/ overpowered. It's about time for this forum to learn this distinction. If you prefer stats over players' experience, then DH as a whole has 53% WR - hardly oppressive. Also just because DH overall lost some popularity after the nerfs - and yeah, stats, support it - Enrage Warrior also went down. But it's still there - every single time DH's performance/popularity starts skyrocketing, so does Warrior's and the match up is very, very terrible for DH.
I welcome DH back on top. First thing people did post nerfs was abandoning DH and Warrior and switching to Hunter and Rogue. What made me basically quit laddering and wait for the shift (I ended up in Diamond and didn't even bother going for Legend anymore last month, simply because it was 6 Hunters and 4 Rogues for every 10 games - yes, I am exaggerating, but it most certainly felt that way). I prefer DH as the deck to beat much more than Hunter or Rogue.
trying to figure out how with on turn 4... demon hunter created a 5/5 3/2 2/2 burned 2 mana crystals removed a 3/3 and gained 3 health and removed a 2/2.
all on 4 mana, with the cards at their disposal.
nerf DH.
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Prior to the nerf the most popular DH list played priestess of fury. It was always a very strong play to get raging felscreamer into priestess of fury on turn 5 (and it still is a very strong play, but it is inconsistent). The deck enjoyed a favourable matchup against every other deck save for warrior. One issue with priestess of fury post nerf is that it dies to bloodboil brute now as well as rush minions like Rusteed Raider and Siamat. It can also die to some two card combos like skipper + korkron elite. People therefore started dropping it to run a much more aggro orientated list with cards like beaming sidekick but also we see frozen shadoweaver being teched in to help with the warrior matchup.
HsReplay refers to all DH decks as tempo DH but this is an aggro deck through and through. See the deck list and stats below for legend rankings:
This list was hit by the nerfs a small amount because of the nerf to crimson sigil runner. Despite this, vicious syndicate recommends to keep running it. Some people though replace it with cards such as blazing battlemage. The above is not the only viable list for aggro DH, but the important aspect is priestess of fury (and by extension raging felscreamer) is out and beaming sidekick is in. Let's now look at the win rate for this deck:
We can see this aggro deck beats everything quite easily except warrior decks. Where the priestess of fury version struggled a little bit vs face hunter, this more aggro version is definitely favoured. The nerfs just meant that more DHs are now running what was arguably always the higher win rate list and again it cements itself as the best deck in standard despite three rounds of nerfs.
There have been people on this forum complaining they struggle vs priest. This is a skill issue because aggro DH definitely does not struggle in the legend ranks. The matches you lose may feel frustrating when priest does priest things, but ultimately the deck is favoured. One thing you can take comfort in is that not only are frozen shadoweavers good vs warrior, they are 4 attack minions and so do well vs priest.
Don't be surprised if DH gets nerfed again because it's still well and truly the best deck for laddering. It's super fast, usually with game duration on average 7.5 turns. Its only counters are really hard to play and so arn't played very often and there are no really hard counters where you have almost no chance to win. Aggro DH therefore enjoys a meta where it has mostly free reign. That being said, aggro DH may be the only thing keeping quest warlock in check as otherwise quest warlock is nearing oppressively high win rates against a lot of decks. Further, it's literally the only deck challenging HL hunter to any significant degree.
A more balanced meta would in my opinion:
1. see DH having a viable highlander deck. Currently its legendaries arn't good enough in long games and it can't cheat mana like rogue and mage can - DH is just really awful going the long haul since cards like kayn are only good in aggro decks and Nethrandamus has to be in your hand to upgrade. It functions like a second dragonqueen alexstraza but with the disadvantage of being a bad top deck.
2. Aggro DH having a couple more counters in the meta (maybe if shaman and paladin were fixed so they had some viable decks their healing would be able to compete. Pure/Libram Paladin probably should beat aggro DH but it doesn't since it has no draw and too weak of an early game and call to adventure is too slow/bad).
3. HL Hunter having some more counters in the meta (again looking at you pure/libram paladin, you should be a thing here but just arn't!).
Good post.
Fight, maggot!
I haven't been watching Grandmasters, how is it performing there?
You’ve got to be absolutely joking if you’re calling for another round of nerfs. I ladder t500 legend, and demon hunter is far and away not represented there as much as warrior, quest lock, and priest right now. Stop trying to witch hunt a class out of existence because it was way to strong on launch, it had its nerfs, and is merely a l2p issue if you’re still getting rolled by it at this point.
Further nerfs are up to blizzard. The stats just show it's the best deck in the game in legend ranks and there is just one counter. That being said, aggro DH is the only counter to HL Hunter (outside of maybe some fringe decks like murloc paladin or zoolock).
Your post includes pre-nerf stats, this is over a 30 days period, so in reality pretty meaningless when it spans a balance patch. Not just because of the actual cards changed, but meta and tech choices have changed a lot over the last 30 days, specifically teching against DH.
As someone also playing top1000 legend last season, I can attest to DH not being oppressive at this level.
You see also a trend in Grand Masters, DH is NOT the go-to ban, warrior is 90% of the time. DH in Grand Masters across regions has about 50% win rate.
All that being said, it is still a fantastic deck to ladder with as it is fast. And if you’re experienced with the deck, you will feast on other DHs who are not familiar with the intricacies of the deck.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Priest at match-up at all. No one runs Shadow Word: Death nowadays and Ruin is sometimes teched (teched - not mandatory!) only in Rez variant, which is barely played nowadays.
What is more important is that it has 3 Health - so early Aoes can't kill it.
Shadow word:death is a two of in galakrond priest vicious syndicate list. It is also a two of in pretty much every list on hsreplay for priest (other than HL priest of course). I would have thought you meant shadow word:pain but then there was a reference to ruin there (which is a card which isn't played so often) which tends to suggest you did mean shadow word:death. If this is the case, we are playing different games.
You are right, Death is played, Ruin and Pain are not. Still, the point remains - saying that having 4 attack is beneficial vs Priest is a leftover from a long ago. For few last formats they have an easy way to deal with almost everything and 4 attack hardly matters. Back ago they used to have to trade into such minions, now it's a piece of cake to remove almost anything. Also even though you are right Death is played, no one would rather waste it on such minion. Another thing is, since it's a 3-drop, you'd rather expect it to be a target for Pain - which is not played.
The latest stats from hsreplay and the vicious syndicate data also now seems to confirm that aggro DH is the best deck in standard and the nerfs had no effect. However, I don't think people are willing to engage with the statistics and rather rely on their own experience over non-signficant sample sizes. I do see people believing their deck beats DH but it's over 10 games. The data though would tend to indicate DH beats everything over 50% of the time except warrior. Because engrage/egg warrior has such a high skill cap it doesn't see much play, allowing DH to take over the meta. Vicious syndicate statistics also indicate DH is the most played class in legend (but druid is now the most second played and that deck basically beats everything but face hunter and aggro DH).
The trouble with this meta is there are stupidly powerful decks that beat almost anything (druid and highlander hunter for example) but they all lose to DH. DH does appear based on the statistics to be overpowered but if it were nerfed it would allow decks that do not lose to anything but aggro DH to be extremely oppressive. The only answer is a new expansion or to balance a large number of decks. Aggro DH is highlander hunter from being an insanely high win rate deck. If DH wasn't in the game highlander hunter would likely have a higher win rate than aggro DH does now because that deck just obliterates mage and priest and has a good matchup vs rogue.
Here we go again :)
Blindly looking at stats of winrates is really too simplistic. Popularity comes into play, skill caps of decks, regions, timelines, ranks and many, many more factors. You can with the right filters and angles often get support for your agenda.
If I was to adopt your, albeit quite naive, approach, I could counter with something along the lines of:
Looking at the current meta, so stats from the past 7 days, and not 30, only top1000 legend (arguably best and most experienced pilots), DH has bad matchups against: Enrage and egg warrior, Pure Paladin, Bomb Warrior, Galakrond Secret Rogue and Malygos Druid.
Looking at deck popularity, those 6 decks combined make up 29,8% of all decks played at legend, so almost 1/3 times, the DH queues into a decidedly bad matchup. Additionally, DH themselves account for 18% of decks played, where logic states 50% win rate assuming equal skill. So about 48% of the times in the current meta, DH does not queue into a favorable matchup.
No longer seems like a big issue, does it?
Like I said, blindly looking at stats like this is naive. It gives an indication, but that’s about it.
The best =/ overpowered. It's about time for this forum to learn this distinction. If you prefer stats over players' experience, then DH as a whole has 53% WR - hardly oppressive. Also just because DH overall lost some popularity after the nerfs - and yeah, stats, support it - Enrage Warrior also went down. But it's still there - every single time DH's performance/popularity starts skyrocketing, so does Warrior's and the match up is very, very terrible for DH.
I welcome DH back on top. First thing people did post nerfs was abandoning DH and Warrior and switching to Hunter and Rogue. What made me basically quit laddering and wait for the shift (I ended up in Diamond and didn't even bother going for Legend anymore last month, simply because it was 6 Hunters and 4 Rogues for every 10 games - yes, I am exaggerating, but it most certainly felt that way). I prefer DH as the deck to beat much more than Hunter or Rogue.
trying to figure out how with on turn 4... demon hunter created a 5/5 3/2 2/2 burned 2 mana crystals removed a 3/3 and gained 3 health and removed a 2/2.
all on 4 mana, with the cards at their disposal.
nerf DH.