After over 150 runs by now with a slowly plummeting win rate at around 6.1 wins, this is what I'm observing in the meta.
If I were to re-assess the class tier list now, with MSG meta still in place, I'll probably put the classes in this order:
T1 - Warlock
T2 - Paladin / Mage
T3 - Rogue / Shaman / Priest / Warrior / Hunter
Bottom - Druid
The craziest decks you'll see on high wins will always be Paladins, Mages, and Warlocks. There are only rare occurrences of the T3 classes. I think I've seen Druid like once in the 7+ win games.
T2 and T3 are in fact very close. I only rate Paladin and Mage as T2 because of what I'm seeing in opponent decks, which are straight out broken. Yes, all classes can be broken (except Druid probably atm) but since everyone are picking Mages and Paladins the most, as well as being fairly easy classes to play, they're, perhaps, unjustifiably rated as T2.
However, I've had plenty of success with Hunter and Warrior (averaging 6.1 with Hunter and 8 with Warrior), which I might actually put as T2, but many people wouldn't know how to play them, so it wouldn't be a realistic depiction of a meta.
The Goons are especially great at overwhelming the Kabals with tempo. All of their handbuff cards can be played around turn 1-4, while Kabal cards really only take off after turn 4. All of these cards will maintain their classes tempo before turn 7 which is usually when Mages and Warlocks tempo swings the board.
Basically, the most broken decks right now has premium early removals + late game tempo swings OR early consistent board pressure to overwhelm the opponent. The former deck is usually the type of deck you'll see in high wins, since the guy probably lucked out on an insane deck that has an answer for everything. The latter deck type is what the Goons specialize in. Warriors in general have broken weapons, Hunters in general have a lot of face reach, and Paladins in general has a lot of tempo buff cards. I might as well put Rogue in this group too, however the Jade mechanic are typically subpar tempo plays which slows down the Rogue that was in previous expansions.
This brings up my final point, the Jades are the worst in this Arena meta. Rogue and Shamans are carried by the sheer superpower cards they received in previous expansions, while Druid weren't that good to begin with. If the MSG appearance rate was higher, Jades could've flourished. I'd say Lotus Agent is easily the worst of the Discover cards, since it's a 5 mana card which means it slows down Rogue and Shamans even further. You don't want to be slow in this meta unless you can afford to like the Kabal.
TL;DR: The meta seems pretty balanced while Warlock sits above the rest. The general playerbase still seem to love Mages, but Warlocks are already the most common opponent this month. I would've liked the Jade cards to be a bit more prevalent, but I also want the Abyssal Enforcer/Blastcrystal meta to end already.
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Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player. Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
Good analysis, I agree with the Jade's being kinda slow. Especially in the case of druid. In rogue/shaman decks you can select some cards with jade effects for utility but not necessarily building a deck around it, example Jade Claws. But Warlock definitely feels top tier these days, and somehow my opponent Paladins as well. Smuggler's Run and Grimestreet Outfitter can be crazy strong especially since a lot of arena decks are heavily minion based.
Not sure about warrior, never pick it. But top tier Warlock/Mage for me, Tier 2 Paladin / Rogue and Tier 3 Priest / Shaman. Can't judge about warrior / hunter since I rarely / never pick those classes.
Hunter is insane right now. Just create a smorc deck and you can smorc your way to 7+ wins easily. My smirc is real. I'm honestly doing fairly well with most classes though, just as long as you create a smorc deck, you get wins. I feel that in general players just don't have answers to crazy openings, so your 1 & 2 drops do so much damage that as long as you have some reach, you can close out games easily.
I've had 2 12-win runs with Paladin, and a 6.5 win rate with 28 runs. Basically it's just easy with the MSG bonus rate right now to make broken Paladin decks. Throw in a couple of weapons, hand buffs, and you just roll over your opponent before turn 7. Paladin's weakness of lack of a ping is typically cancelled by the handbuffs. Turn 1 smugglers run and turn 2 grimstreet outfitter essentially means you will be the aggressor for the next few turns before turn 7.
Like I said before, you should draft Grimestreet Goons with the only consideration being tempo and being the aggressor. You play more aggressively and you have to identify early when you're going face. I had a Paladin game where I Kooky Chemist my 3/6 Fen Creeper and going face rather than trading. This 3 damage was enough for lethal 2 turns down the line (this was at a high win game). Turn 5 and 6 are usually the best time for going face I think (unless you have to beat certain minions like Daring Reporter).
At the moment if you're not a Kabal there's no point playing for value. You will often lose the board at turn 7, so you squeeze in all the damage you can before that happens. The only terrible card for Warrior this expansion was Public Defender. Remember that Warriors still have access to 5 different common weapons that wins game by themselves. I know a guy and Grimy Gadgeteer are both possible win conditions and the Grimestreet Pawnbroker is surprisingly powerful.
The problem with Lotus Agents was briefly commented on by ADWCTA and Merps in one of their co-ops. Basically Druid/Shaman/Rogue cards are just kinda meh compared to the other trios. Ethereal Conjurer is in a league of its own, because not only does it have one more attack, Mage spells have answers for everything and you're more consistently to see them since the pool is smaller. Aside from that you typically want Discover cards to be more low costs, since you can immediately play it on the same turn. For example, a Grimstreet Informant into Truesilver on 6 is a big swing compared to playing Lotus Agent on 6 and maybe get a Lightning Bolt that overloads you next turn.
I mean, obviously the card isn't bad. It's just not as good as Informant or Courier.
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Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player. Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
After watching Kripp's video on Hunter yesterday as well as my experiences in arena personally, I have to put Hunter in the tier 2 category. I actually laughed out loud last night when I faced like 5 hunters in something like 12 matches which I attributed directly to Kripp's video. I don't agree with him that they are anywhere near the quality of Warlock. He's only played 4 or 5 runs which is still not a big enough sample size. I've played a similar number of runs with hunter and it's still quite easy to get a bad draft and go 2 or 3 wins which would wreck a good average, although more than 50% of my runs have gone over 7 wins. Its the combination of good cards in the current expansion, Ally cat and Zipgunner are both top tier. Think about this for a moment. When you drop Ally cat, especially going first on turn 1, they will often get 4 or 6 face damage before they get cleaned up, plus it's absolutely bananas with Glaive zooka. That sort of advantage at the start is enormous. Also zip gunner gives you an overstated minion that has a much higher chance of sticking around for 1 turn and getting a swing off on face. These types of advantages in the early and mid game are often all it takes to close out the game with the hunter's hero power. Combine that with the fact that the majority of the meta right now is mages and warlocks, both traditionally very good matchups for hunter and it's definitely in a great place overall.
Yeah I wouldn't put Hunter to T2 as well. It seems I didn't make my post last night so I'll shortly summarize.
Hunter, I agree, is the wild card in this meta. It's largely dependent on who you face, kind of like Priests. Hunters are easily the least consistent of the 3 Goons, and it will typically get screwed by Warriors and Paladins. Some of the matchups can be completely one-sided. This is also why I consider Paladins as T2. Not only do they have potential to make broken decks, they're simply the best Goon class out of the 3 and will dominate Warriors and Hunters since their handbuffs happen early and they still have potential for insane tempo board swings (the Protectors are so powerful you basically just hope they don't have it).
Last night I chose Warrior and had the unlucky privilege of facing 2 paladin decks which I both lost to and they didn't even play well. But they slam down handbuffs before turn 3 and an Enforcer on turn 5 and I'm pretty much fucked.
I definitely saw more Hunters after the Kripp video, so there's no doubt his videos has an impact on the meta itself. I just wished he actually played other classes more consistently than just the strongest classes. If you're boasting an infinite score, at least play the other classes more often.
I can confirm on Warlock as the clear T1 class: https://gyazo.com/7f467d76920016a93906781c35675c86 . It's really ridiculous, I'm averaging 9.6 wins with it (81% win rate) in this expansion. And overall, in went from being my second worst class in terms on win rate to being the best one.
And I agree in general with your rating, although I can't comment on Hunter and Druid since I haven't used them since Gadgetzan release. Mage is still very good (7.6 wins in 10 runs in this expansion for me) and although I haven't played too much with Paladin, it does get difficult to win when they have a good buff deck. But, unlike Mage, I find it much more polarised in regards of who goes first: In my last 10 Arenas I won my last 10 of 11 games being first against Paladin, while I only won 5 of 10 being second.
To differentiate a bit more the T3 classes, I would put them in this order: Rogue and Hunter (the latter from what I've heard) are the closest to T2; Shaman and Priest are in the middle; Warrior would be in the bottom of T3.
Overall, it would go as this in my opinion:
T1: Warlock
T1.5: Mage
T2: Paladin
T2.5: Rogue, Hunter
T3: Shaman, Priest
T3.5: Warrior
T4: Druid
So far this expansion worked well for me. It started kind of bad, but now I'm at 7.2 wins (73% win rate) which is a bit above my average 6.68 wins (70% win rate). And it is mainly because of Warlock, although I also hit 12 wins with Mage, Rogue and Warrior. My biggest dissapointment was Priest, as I thought it would have been at least T2, but I couldn't find success with it even with some high rated decks.
In terms of what players are using, I'm finding that the word has finally spread about Warlock being so insane, as my Warlock opponents went from 8% last season (Mage 27%, Paladin 20%, Rogue 13%) to 18% in this season (Mage 26%, Paladin 16%, Priest 13%, the latter went up from 7%). These are merely partial conclusions anyway, as I couldn't play as much as I wanted this season.
One thing I haven't mentioned is if the extremely high variance I've been facing. Discover cards are left and right, and perhaps even more so now than before it feels like decks are just on autopilot and how you win depends on your draw order and your opponent's draw order. They don't draw Abyssal or Skillstrike before turn 8? Proceed to win. You don't draw your weapons or curve? You lose. Curvestone and skillstrike has been common since the dawn of hearthstone, but at least back then you didn't have to play around so.so.so.many insanely value cards. Nowadays you get punished insanely hard for poor card draws.
The most obvious example is in paladins. A Paladin's smuggler's run on turn 1 with 3-4 hand minions are absolutely disgusting tempo gains. That's a 1 mana card providing +3/+3 or +4/+4. If he then lays down Grimstreet Enforcer (also likely to have been buffed), that'd be a 5/5 giving +3/+3 again and has an even more disgusting value of buffing EVERY TURN. These cards should not exist, or at least give them an activator like an inspire feature. However if the paladin doesn't draw these handbuffs early, then the value of these cards becomes absolutely shit.
Thus now draw order seems painfully the deciding factor in many games. I know skill still somewhat plays into a high consistent win rate, but it sure doesn't feel that way when I get a row of 3-4 wins and losing by top decks in most of these losses.
It seems that people do not complain about high number of overpowered AoE cards. "Deal 5 damage to all minions apart of dragons", "Deal 5 damage to all characters", etc. I lost so many arenas due to these cards. And due to Kabal Chemist, any class is capable now of doing such thing, so randomization seems prevailing.
After over 150 runs by now with a slowly plummeting win rate at around 6.1 wins, this is what I'm observing in the meta.
If I were to re-assess the class tier list now, with MSG meta still in place, I'll probably put the classes in this order:
T1 - Warlock
T2 - Paladin / Mage
T3 - Rogue / Shaman / Priest / Warrior / Hunter
Bottom - Druid
The craziest decks you'll see on high wins will always be Paladins, Mages, and Warlocks. There are only rare occurrences of the T3 classes. I think I've seen Druid like once in the 7+ win games.
T2 and T3 are in fact very close. I only rate Paladin and Mage as T2 because of what I'm seeing in opponent decks, which are straight out broken. Yes, all classes can be broken (except Druid probably atm) but since everyone are picking Mages and Paladins the most, as well as being fairly easy classes to play, they're, perhaps, unjustifiably rated as T2.
However, I've had plenty of success with Hunter and Warrior (averaging 6.1 with Hunter and 8 with Warrior), which I might actually put as T2, but many people wouldn't know how to play them, so it wouldn't be a realistic depiction of a meta.
The Goons are especially great at overwhelming the Kabals with tempo. All of their handbuff cards can be played around turn 1-4, while Kabal cards really only take off after turn 4. All of these cards will maintain their classes tempo before turn 7 which is usually when Mages and Warlocks tempo swings the board.
Basically, the most broken decks right now has premium early removals + late game tempo swings OR early consistent board pressure to overwhelm the opponent. The former deck is usually the type of deck you'll see in high wins, since the guy probably lucked out on an insane deck that has an answer for everything. The latter deck type is what the Goons specialize in. Warriors in general have broken weapons, Hunters in general have a lot of face reach, and Paladins in general has a lot of tempo buff cards. I might as well put Rogue in this group too, however the Jade mechanic are typically subpar tempo plays which slows down the Rogue that was in previous expansions.
This brings up my final point, the Jades are the worst in this Arena meta. Rogue and Shamans are carried by the sheer superpower cards they received in previous expansions, while Druid weren't that good to begin with. If the MSG appearance rate was higher, Jades could've flourished. I'd say Lotus Agent is easily the worst of the Discover cards, since it's a 5 mana card which means it slows down Rogue and Shamans even further. You don't want to be slow in this meta unless you can afford to like the Kabal.
TL;DR: The meta seems pretty balanced while Warlock sits above the rest. The general playerbase still seem to love Mages, but Warlocks are already the most common opponent this month. I would've liked the Jade cards to be a bit more prevalent, but I also want the Abyssal Enforcer/Blastcrystal meta to end already.
Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player.
Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
Very good in-depth analysis!
Good analysis, I agree with the Jade's being kinda slow. Especially in the case of druid. In rogue/shaman decks you can select some cards with jade effects for utility but not necessarily building a deck around it, example Jade Claws. But Warlock definitely feels top tier these days, and somehow my opponent Paladins as well. Smuggler's Run and Grimestreet Outfitter can be crazy strong especially since a lot of arena decks are heavily minion based.
Not sure about warrior, never pick it. But top tier Warlock/Mage for me, Tier 2 Paladin / Rogue and Tier 3 Priest / Shaman. Can't judge about warrior / hunter since I rarely / never pick those classes.
Hunter is insane right now. Just create a smorc deck and you can smorc your way to 7+ wins easily. My smirc is real. I'm honestly doing fairly well with most classes though, just as long as you create a smorc deck, you get wins. I feel that in general players just don't have answers to crazy openings, so your 1 & 2 drops do so much damage that as long as you have some reach, you can close out games easily.
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I've had 2 12-win runs with Paladin, and a 6.5 win rate with 28 runs. Basically it's just easy with the MSG bonus rate right now to make broken Paladin decks. Throw in a couple of weapons, hand buffs, and you just roll over your opponent before turn 7. Paladin's weakness of lack of a ping is typically cancelled by the handbuffs. Turn 1 smugglers run and turn 2 grimstreet outfitter essentially means you will be the aggressor for the next few turns before turn 7.
Like I said before, you should draft Grimestreet Goons with the only consideration being tempo and being the aggressor. You play more aggressively and you have to identify early when you're going face. I had a Paladin game where I Kooky Chemist my 3/6 Fen Creeper and going face rather than trading. This 3 damage was enough for lethal 2 turns down the line (this was at a high win game). Turn 5 and 6 are usually the best time for going face I think (unless you have to beat certain minions like Daring Reporter).
At the moment if you're not a Kabal there's no point playing for value. You will often lose the board at turn 7, so you squeeze in all the damage you can before that happens. The only terrible card for Warrior this expansion was Public Defender. Remember that Warriors still have access to 5 different common weapons that wins game by themselves. I know a guy and Grimy Gadgeteer are both possible win conditions and the Grimestreet Pawnbroker is surprisingly powerful.
The problem with Lotus Agents was briefly commented on by ADWCTA and Merps in one of their co-ops. Basically Druid/Shaman/Rogue cards are just kinda meh compared to the other trios. Ethereal Conjurer is in a league of its own, because not only does it have one more attack, Mage spells have answers for everything and you're more consistently to see them since the pool is smaller. Aside from that you typically want Discover cards to be more low costs, since you can immediately play it on the same turn. For example, a Grimstreet Informant into Truesilver on 6 is a big swing compared to playing Lotus Agent on 6 and maybe get a Lightning Bolt that overloads you next turn.
I mean, obviously the card isn't bad. It's just not as good as Informant or Courier.
Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player.
Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
After watching Kripp's video on Hunter yesterday as well as my experiences in arena personally, I have to put Hunter in the tier 2 category. I actually laughed out loud last night when I faced like 5 hunters in something like 12 matches which I attributed directly to Kripp's video. I don't agree with him that they are anywhere near the quality of Warlock. He's only played 4 or 5 runs which is still not a big enough sample size. I've played a similar number of runs with hunter and it's still quite easy to get a bad draft and go 2 or 3 wins which would wreck a good average, although more than 50% of my runs have gone over 7 wins. Its the combination of good cards in the current expansion, Ally cat and Zipgunner are both top tier. Think about this for a moment. When you drop Ally cat, especially going first on turn 1, they will often get 4 or 6 face damage before they get cleaned up, plus it's absolutely bananas with Glaive zooka. That sort of advantage at the start is enormous. Also zip gunner gives you an overstated minion that has a much higher chance of sticking around for 1 turn and getting a swing off on face. These types of advantages in the early and mid game are often all it takes to close out the game with the hunter's hero power. Combine that with the fact that the majority of the meta right now is mages and warlocks, both traditionally very good matchups for hunter and it's definitely in a great place overall.
Yeah I wouldn't put Hunter to T2 as well. It seems I didn't make my post last night so I'll shortly summarize.
Hunter, I agree, is the wild card in this meta. It's largely dependent on who you face, kind of like Priests. Hunters are easily the least consistent of the 3 Goons, and it will typically get screwed by Warriors and Paladins. Some of the matchups can be completely one-sided. This is also why I consider Paladins as T2. Not only do they have potential to make broken decks, they're simply the best Goon class out of the 3 and will dominate Warriors and Hunters since their handbuffs happen early and they still have potential for insane tempo board swings (the Protectors are so powerful you basically just hope they don't have it).
Last night I chose Warrior and had the unlucky privilege of facing 2 paladin decks which I both lost to and they didn't even play well. But they slam down handbuffs before turn 3 and an Enforcer on turn 5 and I'm pretty much fucked.
I definitely saw more Hunters after the Kripp video, so there's no doubt his videos has an impact on the meta itself. I just wished he actually played other classes more consistently than just the strongest classes. If you're boasting an infinite score, at least play the other classes more often.
Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player.
Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
I can confirm on Warlock as the clear T1 class: https://gyazo.com/7f467d76920016a93906781c35675c86 . It's really ridiculous, I'm averaging 9.6 wins with it (81% win rate) in this expansion. And overall, in went from being my second worst class in terms on win rate to being the best one.
And I agree in general with your rating, although I can't comment on Hunter and Druid since I haven't used them since Gadgetzan release. Mage is still very good (7.6 wins in 10 runs in this expansion for me) and although I haven't played too much with Paladin, it does get difficult to win when they have a good buff deck. But, unlike Mage, I find it much more polarised in regards of who goes first: In my last 10 Arenas I won my last 10 of 11 games being first against Paladin, while I only won 5 of 10 being second.
To differentiate a bit more the T3 classes, I would put them in this order: Rogue and Hunter (the latter from what I've heard) are the closest to T2; Shaman and Priest are in the middle; Warrior would be in the bottom of T3.
Overall, it would go as this in my opinion:
T1: Warlock
T1.5: Mage
T2: Paladin
T2.5: Rogue, Hunter
T3: Shaman, Priest
T3.5: Warrior
T4: Druid
So far this expansion worked well for me. It started kind of bad, but now I'm at 7.2 wins (73% win rate) which is a bit above my average 6.68 wins (70% win rate). And it is mainly because of Warlock, although I also hit 12 wins with Mage, Rogue and Warrior. My biggest dissapointment was Priest, as I thought it would have been at least T2, but I couldn't find success with it even with some high rated decks.
In terms of what players are using, I'm finding that the word has finally spread about Warlock being so insane, as my Warlock opponents went from 8% last season (Mage 27%, Paladin 20%, Rogue 13%) to 18% in this season (Mage 26%, Paladin 16%, Priest 13%, the latter went up from 7%). These are merely partial conclusions anyway, as I couldn't play as much as I wanted this season.
One thing I haven't mentioned is if the extremely high variance I've been facing. Discover cards are left and right, and perhaps even more so now than before it feels like decks are just on autopilot and how you win depends on your draw order and your opponent's draw order. They don't draw Abyssal or Skillstrike before turn 8? Proceed to win. You don't draw your weapons or curve? You lose. Curvestone and skillstrike has been common since the dawn of hearthstone, but at least back then you didn't have to play around so.so.so.many insanely value cards. Nowadays you get punished insanely hard for poor card draws.
The most obvious example is in paladins. A Paladin's smuggler's run on turn 1 with 3-4 hand minions are absolutely disgusting tempo gains. That's a 1 mana card providing +3/+3 or +4/+4. If he then lays down Grimstreet Enforcer (also likely to have been buffed), that'd be a 5/5 giving +3/+3 again and has an even more disgusting value of buffing EVERY TURN. These cards should not exist, or at least give them an activator like an inspire feature. However if the paladin doesn't draw these handbuffs early, then the value of these cards becomes absolutely shit.
Thus now draw order seems painfully the deciding factor in many games. I know skill still somewhat plays into a high consistent win rate, but it sure doesn't feel that way when I get a row of 3-4 wins and losing by top decks in most of these losses.
Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player.
Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!
It seems that people do not complain about high number of overpowered AoE cards. "Deal 5 damage to all minions apart of dragons", "Deal 5 damage to all characters", etc. I lost so many arenas due to these cards. And due to Kabal Chemist, any class is capable now of doing such thing, so randomization seems prevailing.
At least those are fairly symmetrical compared to skillstrike.
And none of them are common cards either. The mage problem was why I detested Karazhan and I hope they remove more mage cards soon.
Regular NA Arena Leaderboard player.
Reached #1 in NA arena leaderboard in May 2018 with a 9.07 average!