Hearthpwn

Anything to replace Leeroy? now that he has moved into the hall of fame.

I have to disagree with some parts of this primary with the use of hsreplay as a primary point of statistical analysis.

Of course HSreplay is a large source of hearthstone information however it uses an aggregate system based on user input and usage of apps that help with deck building and tracking (mainly tracking apps). Overall statistics can be divided among ranked/casual/all. The top decks in any meta (for the most part) are heavy dust based decks (or in the past adventure based (irl money based ftmp)) these decks usually see a higher % of winrate overall because they are not used by the majority of the playerbase. These decks are used by players from (before rank 20ish) now around bronze to silver for quick ranked gain. The usage of these decks in the lower ranks wherein the majority of the community is present in sees a all around higher winnrate. The higher rank you get the more diverse the decks get (which is then not tracked by hsreplay or other sites because technically its a different deck). Even a single card change registers that decks as a different deck. In the higher ranks (me being around diamond 5-legend) most seasons i can definitely say that the diversity of decks decreases when going up BUT the uniqueness of said decks rapidly increases. This is because most "meta" decks are built for mass usage while the 'skill' aspect of the game is how you can manipulate the deck to your advantage. Lets be real here, most players who have a 45% or less win rate doesn't necessarily have a bad deck.

Budget decks/FTP decks in higher ranks are very rare (unless its cheap but has a VERy high skill gap (of which there have been very very few in the history of hearthstone). Most players to hearthstone don't/can't/won't spend money on the game, not because they don't support it but because of their own financial reasons. Budget/FTP decks can certainly get you out of bronze, probably silver, unlikely gold (but good luck), and then it gets considerably worse.

Forgot to say this before but remember that the majority of hearthstone players don't use deck trackers or a service that adds to HSreplay. Look at statistics of mobile players for example.

Also remember this entire post forgets hearthstone rng system. You could have the best deck in the world, but even that loses to a basic deck if u get a horrific draw. What people don't like is that unlike back in the day the meta feels more and more like you are either being forced into playing extremely high cost ptw decks or into simply 40-55% win rate cheap decks. Despite how OP the cards from naxx were seen i can clearly remember that there were so many extremely cheap versions of decks making high ranks that didn't need these op adventure cards. The amount of smorc hunters between rank 20-10 that were 80% common cards, the basic card tempo rogue, meme priest and so so so much more. What im seeing in a lot of these discussions is the dislike of being forced into a certain meta. A meta that is dominated by epics and legendaries; keep in mind if hearthstone's dust system were a little better designed then you would see a greater variance in ranked. Now all you have is people trying to get to legend and majoritvely a 16-23k+ dust decks will help you get there over a cheap deck. Hearthstone has been notorious for poor balancing judgement. Why is demon hunter seen as so op? because the value that they have in their BASIC CARDS is insane vs other classes.