Hearthstone Mercenaries: Best Mercenaries Tier List in PvP - Official Blizzard List!
Players have speculated about the best mercenaries teams in Hearthstone Mercenaries PvP, and now Blizzard has weighed in with official data. They gave us a list of the best mercenaries in the Top 5% MMR, vs-AI games excluded!. So this is the list of the best mercenaries when played by humans against humans. We also added a section with the best Hearthstone Mercenaries Teams! Blizzard noted that the Meta is evolving and that this is for current reference only! Let's dive right in!
Mercenaries with a higher then 50% winrate
The main division is self explanatory. The sub division might need a little info however. These are the best hearthstone mercenaries in PvP ranked from S-Tier (usually indicated as Super Tier, the Mercenaries that are beyond even the usually good Mercenaries) down to C-Tier which we have to assume is the range slightly above 50%.
S-Tier
Only 1 Mercenary here and it might not be who you expected. It makes some sense however. There are a lot of Caster Mercenaries high in the Tiers, which means a good Fighter has plenty of opportunity. Combine this with his excellent skill set and you have a winning combination making Tavish Stormpike the best Mercenary in Hearthstone Mercenaries PvP at the moment.
A-Tier
A common thread for the Mercenaries in this Tier is Speed manipulation. Many of them influence Speed in some way, either speeding your Party up, or slowing the other Party down. You can put Freeze in that category too, since it makes opponents just skip their turn. The others are part of the Fire damage comp, which has proven very powerful.
B-Tier
This is a mish-mash of Mercenaries, some supporting Mercenaries for popular builds like Shadow comp (Natalie Seline & Lich King) and the top Mercenaries for other comps, like Nature comp (Malfurion) and just overal good Mercenaries in PvP.
C-Tier
These Mercenaries are the group slightly above 50% winrate. Just a group of good solid PvP Mercenaries.
Mercenaries with a lower then 50% winrate
The Tiers here go from just under 50% to low winrate. We do not know how low winrate because Blizzard gave no range on any of this. Just assume that Mercenaries in the G-tier have very low winrates in PvP.
D-Tier
None of these Mercenaries have a positive Winrate, which doesn't mean they are bad, just that they are currently not part of winning strategies. And that includes Blademaster Samuro, Xyrella and most of the Orc comp, who have simply been countered out of the winning Meta.
E-Tier
These Mercenaries are the bad Mercs of strategies that don't work at the moment. They also notably include 2 very slow but powerful Mercenaries in Tirion and Gul'dan. With Speed being the name of the game at the top of the Tiers, slow Mercs fall behind, no matter how powerful their abilities when they do manage to go off.
F-Tier and G-Tier
We are combining the last 2 Tiers, because they share a common thread: They are the starter Mercenaries, excluding Blademaster Samuro and Xyrella. Now, you can be cynical and say that Blizzard put the worst Mercs as the free ones, but there is a far more compelling case to be made. These Mercs are who everyone starts with, and likely who most people will play with and level first. They will be the first they head into PvP with, since they are the highest leveled and most familiar Mercs people have.
And then they get flattened at high MMR by synergistic comps.
So part of the reason these Mercs are low is because they are not great Mercs, but you can bet that the larger part of the equation is that these are the Mercs everyone starts with and loses with before switching to comps that work well together.
F-Tier
G-Tier
Data Source: Tian Ding, Hearthstone Scientist at Blizzard.
Best Hearthstone Mercenaries Team Comps
Tian Ding also tweeted about the best Hearthstone Mercenaries Team Comps in PvP.
I personally use Dawngrasp, Jaina, and Lich King as my openers, Tavish, Diablo, and Cairne as my Bench. Still working on fully maxing the openers, and haven't really focused on Cairne yet, but I digress. The Dawngrasp, Jaina, Lich King team is super strong because Jaina's middle Ability buffs Frost damage for Dawngrasp, herself, AND Lich King's Helm Equipment, making the Helm a BETTER choice than Frostmourne for a team running Jaina.
Additionally, most opponents will focus on Jaina or on Dawngrasp because they SEEM to be the real threats (while Lich King is one too because of the Helm), but Jaina has her Ice Block Talisman and Dawngrasp has his Deathrattle Equipment, making focusing them more difficult to handle.
Cairne is there for obvious Speed Buffs and moreso the AOE Speed Debuff, so that Diablo's middle ability triggers 4 times (between Dawngrasp, Cairne, and Lich King all slowing your opponent's abilities). Tavish is included for obvious anti-Caster value.
Do people really play Rag and antonidas? Not saying they're not good but...
I think War Master Voone is a good Fighter… he throws axes that damage neighbors so he doesn’t take attack damage when attacking, plus he summons strong dragons with rush and divine shield and has fire synergy magic.
Higher THAN a 50% win rate...
People shocked by blink fox being in upper tiers but why tf is GRUUL up there lol
The only reason I can think of is people are equipping him with the fire resistance item then using his ranged ability non-stop. He's a really bad merc overall since he's slow, if you ignore him he can't gain attack, and his summon is useless cause dragons are non-existent in the meta and overall.
The fire combo (Geddon, Anty, Tavish, etc.) team is the top meta group right now, so people are teching in Gruul using his fire resistance equipment as a counter.
Clear as mud, lol.
Guess I'll test it myself.
edit: the answer is "yes"
edit 2: ..except it -only- works with Explosive Trap. Rigged Wiring doesn't work with Bear Trap -at all-. I don't even mean banked, I mean it doesn't even work as advertised, lol
This mode has a major flaw in how the melee vs range thing works. Ranged abilities have no downside, fire and do damage. While melee attacks have to smacks the character, causing the melee attacker to take damage, and the heroes focused on melee don't have the stats to compensate for taking all the extra damage.
Also, melee abilities get blocked by taunts. You can tell that the tradeoff is mant to be squishier casters, but it doesn't quite work like that due to the extra dam taken by melee.
Blink Fox is arcane.
I know and all the other Arcane Mercenaries are at the bottem and I haven't seen ANYONE use Blink fox
Well, the cd reset thing is likely huge in high ranked pvp.. as well as the stealing of enemy abilities.
Think about how annoying it is to play against thievey priests in regular hearthstone. Same principle.
Probably fits into a nature damage comp and resetting cooldown abilities with faster activation. Fits the bill for what is good in PVP.
Why is Blink Fox so high?
so question about Tavish and Rigged Wiring.. can you have say, more than one Explosive Trap banked with it?
yes
no
Oh wow!
A few thoughts...
I wonder if Samuro + Xyrella are so low because everyone is countering them directly. All part of the meta though
Brightwing feels like it could be dangerous at some point with the bench buff
Lich King is one of my favorites for speed de-buffs. No one in the 5000s really plays around him so you can just slam that on the middle merc and have yourself a day. + his taunt is so good when you time it right.
Or it could be one of those things where something seems very powerful just because it's the first 'decent' thing most people learn to do. Just like when Battlegrounds first released everyone was going crazy about the 'OP' Mama Bear comps but after a few weeks people realised that beasts were actually pretty weak overall.