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Meta Decks after the first week of Saviors of Uldum
A week into the expansion some of the early meta has crystalized and we have a reasonable idea of the available strong decks.
Let's walk you through some of them, divided up into different categories.
The Control Decks
Control Warrior made it into Saviors of Uldum not just still on top, but possibly better than before. It's defining the meta.
Mage has several different deck list variants that all do well, but the most consistent of these decks seems to be the one that combines the Freeze control elements with several different damage packages.
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The Murloc Decks
Murlocs defining the meta? Yep. We saw it before the expansion with Murloc Shaman and that deck is still strong, but the surprisingly strong newcomer is Murloc Paladin.
The variant we post about here is one that has teched in 2x Shieldbreaker which should definitely be a big help in a meta defined by Control Warrior.
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The Highlander Decks
There were many differing opinions about if Highlander decks would be any good before the expansion, but seemingly 2 did make it into high ranked play after release: Highlander Hunter and Mage.
Ironically neither deck is the only good deck in it's class. Mage is mentioned above and Secret Hunter and unchanged Mech Hunter still do well too. This Hunter deck runs strong cards from both those decks: a healthy amount of secrets and some mechs too, as well as the Highlander staples, like Dinotamer Brann and Zephrys the Great.
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The Decks on a Budget
Not everyone has a ton of dust nor gold to buy packs and they are in need of a deck that is slightly friendlier to the budget. These decks clock in at 3820 (druid) and 4460 (hunter) dust TOTAL, including some commons you are likely to have.
These decks may give you a feeling of deja-vu though, as they have not changed much from how they looked before the expansion dropped. Hunter did add 2 of the new Secret Synergy Superstars Hyena Alpha.
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The Other Decks
Lastly we have 2 decks that have decent winrates too, but aren't quite as easy to put in a category. The first one is Zoolock, which got a nice boost from adding EVIL Recruiter and Dark Pharaoh Tekahn.
The other one is a Priest combo deck that uses High Priest Amet as it's only legendary and still managed to get people high Legendary rank. Check out it's great guide!
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Conclusion
It's still early in the Saviors of Uldum post release meta so who knows what developments we will still see in the future, and these are certainly not the only decks doing well, but these decks have all seen a lot of success already. Good luck laddering!
Cannot see any new quest among the meta decks... Not surprised...
Honestly, I liked the idea of quests back in the day, it was an interesting way to bring your deck around, the problem is that blizzard is not capable to make balanced quests. I consider the first bunch of quests (ungoro) a failure, there were the easy ones like warrior, rogue that was easy to build a deck around, not hard to compete and insane endgame value, and there were the bad quests, like warlock and druid that needed a very specific deck to play and the reward was mediocre or you sacrificed too much to actually enjoy the benefits.
Now my question is, why the hell did blizzard return to this failed archetype of legendaries? Again we have easy quests, like druid, warlock, shaman, that basically needs you to play the game and you complete it anyway, strong value and does not need very specific deckbuilding, and even these fail to compete with the top meta decks, the rest of the quests are too slow to complete, barely fit in strong archetype of decks like resurrect priest, mech paladin, etc. I opened two quests of my packs, priest and warrior, I honestly think both is a fun one, but the only thing i can do is to put them in some already proven deck, meta relevant deck, otherwise both aggro and control decks just outvalue me. It takes away all the fun.
Quests are just another type of cards, less than 50% of legendaries saw play in Classic (4/9 Un'goro quests saw competitive play and Priest Quest was very popular in fun decks like Talanji Priest, Benedictus Fatigue Priest, Deathrattle Priest etc), should Blizzard have stopped printing legendaries minions just because less than half of them saw play ?
One first and second of after the launch, there were lots of Quest Shamans, Druids and Rogues. Unfortunately they all either lose to Warrior or Mage, so they are getting phased out of the meta. That being said, it is still early in the meta, people are still experimenting with new decks and trying to refine them. Yesterday, I saw lots of people playing Quest Druid with Malygos, Elise, Floop and Moonfire as secondary OTK combo win condition against Warriors.
That being said, If Quests don't see play today, they probably will see after Warrior and Mage gets nerfed, remember Dr. Boom and majority of BDP mechs didn't see much play until DKs, Genn and Baku were rotated.
Thanks for featuring my deck! It's kinda funny because I didn't even try to make it a budget deck, it works well and just happens to be cheap :)
I like this kind of reports, just like the Mech Hunter. Keep up the good work. :)
Zeph is more powerful in any other stage of the game with the only exception the turn 2.
Zeph in turn 6 give you a 7 attack weapon for a finisher, or a secret removal or a life saver murlock tech in turn 3.
Indeed Zeph is more powerfull, however, restriction of no copies in the deck is harder to meet than no 2-drops
Hyena Alpha is probably one of the best hunter cards we got this expansion.Also thanks for the feature means a lot and hopefully will help a lot of people as well
Btw why does hearthpwn.com uses his own logo of expansion, while ingame expansion miniature is another?
Blizzard's miniature for expansion cards is "pick and hammer" while hearthpwn.com uses some sort anubis head.
There were reasons for that, but honestly none of them are particularly good reasons. Most of them had to do with the ownership change and lack of time. I'm as much to blame for this as anyone else probably, cause I told them to go ahead with this in the end.
I will bring this issue up with the devs and see if we can get a different logo, matching the official one. From a continuity and ease of use standpoint that makes sense.
I can't make any promises though, as there is still a lot left to do behind the scenes.
Thanks for the work anyways, someday i hope for a fix:D
Btw might be of help - i made transparent logo of expansion https://yadi.sk/d/OmoczU5HysPszA
take if needed, rescale, recolor to fit
Why only standard decks? Feels weird when I don’t see reno/kazakus.
My reno Hunter looks awesome now,for wild.
Added Zeph and the new Bran.In combination with old bran you get 18 dmg burst on round 10,which is amazing.
Zeph is probably the most op 2 drop in the game.
Prince Keleseth would like to have a talk with you.
I like these kind of topics, but tbh, when the first meta spotlight came out, 50% of the matchups turned into the Tier S decks, containing little to no new cards and the experimentation phase of the post-release game was over.
It took 3 days.
Of course it's not settled yet, but it's very disheartening when the first 3 days of games after the meta spotlight comes out are mainly against Murloc decks when I'm still messing around with all the new quests.