Hearthpwn

Others not mentioned for two ofs ran in every deck (except highlander obviously) are armorsmith, satyr overseer, innervate, consecration, shadow word death, mortal coil, ice barrier, thoughtsteal, farsight. Some metas will have other clear two ofs that may not be played in this meta. For example SI:7 Agent has been a staple in rogue for a long time but doesn't see much play in this meta. Eviscerate in some metas is also a 2 of. running miracle rogue without double eviscerate would be criminal. Of course, miracle rogue isn't much of a thing right now since galakrond is much better than auctioneer and preps were nerfed a while ago:(

Someone mentioned Truesilver Champion and that has been a traditional two of but because pure paladin doesn't run it because of the objectively better lightforged zealot, it's not currently seeing play. It will again in the future though when lightforged zealot rotates out and it sees play in non-pure lists.

I don't get this with shaman decks at all. Every one is reported to be good vs DH despite DH having 75% - 80% win rate vs shaman. I don't understand how you win unless you draw invocation of frost. If they play a one drop and you don't have invocation you likely lose the game (although earthshock can stop that getting out of hand.  If they play battlefiend+beaming sidekick you also likely lose unless you get earthshock. Maybe I am missing something though. Maybe there is good enough recovery + healing later on.

The hunter deck is more viable. Paladin may be cheaper to build but it doesn't have a viable highlander list. Your hunter deck can win games just by having dragons and lots of smorc.

Quote from pooberrypie >>

Not great for climbing through diamond unfortunately. Highlander mage just wrecks it and its a super popular deck right now.

 I think you are doing something very wrong here because highlander mage is this decks ONLY good matchup. It's like 80%+ in favour. You almost can't lose. What you have to do is get bombs into their deck ASAP so they can't use highlander cards and then you are looking to attack face with your weapon and invokes too and just kill them. The only way they can win is if they get like dragon caster into power of creation at turn 6 into khartut defender which is pretty rare. They may also be able to win if they can get deep freeze off with another minion so you can't bladestorm it. You can also draw very badly with no bombs then you might lose. Really though the matchup is fantastic.

Where this deck struggles with significantly is DH. Since you don't have the risky skipper amoursmith combo you tend to just die. 

Neither are very good. Acidic swamp ooze never wins games. It's only playable in heavy control decks/decks which don't play much stuff. If you have a board and your opponent plays warglaives they will usually use the weapon charges to kill that board. If you don't play any minions though since you're say highlander priest then weapon removal becomes better because there will be charges left over. 

The most played decks right now are spell druid and aggro DH and weapon removal is useless vs them both (acidic swamp ooze win rate vs aggro DH is just so low you can't even keep it in the mulligan so you may as well not play it). You can't beat either deck without being super aggressive and so a 3/2 that does nothing isn't good enough to win the game and the only exception may be highlander priest. You can play it in HL hunter but frozen shadoweaver is probably better. That can also freeze a big minion which is important.

Three of the cards are completely dead though vs aggro and midrange. I mean it feels pretty inescapable to say you should take that out and add the bomb cards and then you just have bomb warrior?

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.

It seems to tie the demons to the card itself. For example when you are priest and thought steal a galakrond from their hand you get a copy of the upgraded version. This is since the upgraded version is in your opponent's hand and that's the card you get. That's not a battecry though based on how many times the player has invoked, but rather the card text is dynamic. It's also the case when you copy cards which upgrade each turn. Those are dynamic text. But Kanrethad is a battlecry and its card text is not dynamic. If priest has no friendly demons then I wouldn't think it would work. However, in the case of soul mirror if the demons died first in the soul mirror attack chain then those are friendly demons and the priest would get those.

Quote from Geoff >>

Quote from Ravzar >>

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.

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

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). 

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!). 

Quote from KnightQC >>

Highlander Hunter, went 22-7 in 2 days, rank 5 diamond to legend. It wasn't even my intention to try to hit legends, but the deck is pretty strong in the meta, having super good match up and equal match up from what I experienced (no real bad match up).

 I am playing this deck in high legend. There are some bad matchups. Specifically tempo DH is a very bad matchup. It gets worse the higher you get since people play the deck better and are teching in cards against warrior which also destroy hunter pretty hard. You can still win but its very very hard on the coin. Easier on the play. Its the worst matchup though. Zoolock is tough too. If they get scrap imp they win and if they dont they lose. Just seems they always have it though lol

It seems to be highlander priest is a challenging match up compared to the normal aggro paladin. It doesn't matter how much healing you have in that matchup. You either kill them before they OTK you or you don't. It's unfortunate the meta is defined by that deck but that's the reality. It may be better to simply run the full aggro list do you can kill priests faster and get a better win rate. I am struggling to see the matchup where this works better than the full aggro list. Perhaps warlock but the full aggro list can hit the nuts and kill them before turn 5 or tech in spellbreaker too (some are now). The full aggro list has an unbelievably high win rate too.

 This deck has some very poor tempo plays e.g. removing a minion with the spellstone or siphon soul really doesn't develop your board. Rin and skull are both very poor tempo plays. Its win rate, while quite decent, seems to be comprised of some very good matchups and some really horrible matchups. I think hellfire is probably needed due to hunter's spellstone and aggro paladin.

Im trying rin but really thinking skulking is probably just better unless people are going to play dead man's warrior. Rin is too slow vs jade druid.