Hearthpwn

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

 I could explain it, but Zalae does it a lot better, so I'll paraphrase him . . .

In basically every healthy meta, there's at least one deck, and sometimes several, that are difficult enough to play correctly OR require a large enough amount of per game time to continually take the wins, such that the average person who chooses to netdeck it isn't getting anywhere near the potential win rate.

A simple example in the last meta (prior to shaman/paladin buffs, etc.) was Brian Kibler's Highlander Quest Shaman.  I ran into that deck several times climbing the ladder, and it was painfully obvious that the players who copied it from him had no idea what they were doing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what they didn't know, which is REALLY bad for trying to seriously climb the ladder.  I think that deck showed a 40%ish win rate, and was one of the few non-totem shamen out there.

But, we can simplify this easily.  The population of all priest players averaged together into one win rate will depress the potential win rate as compared to one expert-level Priest player far worse than say the population of all Aggro Hunters vs one expert-level Aggro Hunter player.  Different decks are harder to play than others, in a nutshell.  None of which necessarily validates my opinion regarding priest power, but I do know I hit #12 legend last month with it, so there's something to it.

 Now I understand. I still disagree with you phrasing it as Priest, as a class, being the strongest in the game, but I see your point.

Quote from SirJohn13 >>

The stats refer to Bronze-Gold only and are not really indicative of the true strength of each class. Not saying that Priest is the most powerful class, just that the HSReplay stats don't  mean much on their own

I'm quite sure that particular stat showcase is the only showcase left that looks at all ranks. I've limited the meta overview to legend (as I have premium), and the result is that the strongest Priest deck sits at a 15th place in tier two with a 51,32% winrate. Significantly lower than the decks above it with Highlander Hunter hitting 56,65% at #1.

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

I continue to believe Priest is the most powerful class at the moment, but the games tend to run into 20-25 turn range all the time, so if you're trying to actually climb in a timely fashion, that may not be the best call.

 ?? what am I missing?