A History of Official Meta Snapshots - Every Expansion Since Old Gods - With Pie Charts!
Blizzard, by way of Dean "Iksar" Ayala, posted a whole thread full of pie charts about every Constructed Meta since the Old Gods expansion. We posted them here for you in easy to digest form, check it out!
Quote from BlizzardBeen doing some research on how diversity/balance affect player population over time and had some fun reminiscing over past metas.
All data represents 1-2 months post-launch of relevant set. Generally, the meta that lasted the longest during that expansion.
Summary
- Biggest Class representation: Druid 45.97% in Knights of the Frozen Throne
- Smallest Class representation: Hunter 0.68% in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan
- Biggest Deck representation: Tempo Rogue 24.18% in Rise of Shadows
I'm a bit confused by their absence too. I recall Odd paladin being extremely prominent and Iksar talking about how overrated/overplayed it was compared to even-paladin. Odd warrior saw plenty of play in boomsday, but maybe the names written are pseudo random :)
Probably because the snapshot of the data was taken when the meta had settled. Certain decks are just blips (especially around release) because they are only good until the meta adapts to them.
Their data looks super sketchy. Like Paladin was "15%" during Rastakhan during the Even/Odd heyday, but in the deck breakdown they only list "Holy Wrath Paladin" as 4%. Where is the other 11%?
I think they had a severe problem classifying decks, and their data for the deck breakdown can't be trusted.
Where were all those shamans when I was playing doing Gadgetzan? I just faced Warrior all the time XD
btw: The Darkmoon faire chart only represents 2 weeks in between nerfs.
Fractured in Alterac Valley, Priest 2,77%
Do something!
Okay, I really need a answer.
I am playing quest priest in this expansion and just today I fighted quest priest opponent 3 times in a row (different oopponents) . If priest representation is %2,77 how can I find that much mirror.
Can anybody explane to me this nonsense plz?
I agree with your observation - at high ranks (Diamond and above), I also encounter quite a lot of priests from various flavors and archetypes. But maybe it's just at high ranks and at the lower ones nobody plays them, therefore the statistics are as shown. Nevertheless I always take Blizzard's "official statistics" with a grain of salt.
I still cannot understand why after 8-9-10 years since Hearthstone has been released, Blizzard does not allow us and does not want us to be able to view any kind of statistics.
Climbed from B10 to D10 so far this season. Priest is with 17% the highest represented class i played against. Followed by Mage, then Druid.
Im surprised Warrior was only 11% on my chart. Since fuck that shit. Dont understand how they always take forever to fix broken shit.
Knights of the Frozen Throne, 46% druid haha...well done.
Blizzard hates Priest. Enough said.
So its true. Priest is OP and needs a nerf ASAP! (just for the case: *sarcasm*)
It's amazing ppl still either wanna meme deletepriest and/or don't understand sarcasm even when you explain it to them.
If these pie charts were for Wild, Warrior & Hunter should rep the meta like 30-40% each for the UiS and FAV meta....
Is this based on Standard once it was introduced?
I'd still like to think that Mean Streets was overall the worst expansion ever in terms of card quality. Most of the cards in the set were really bad and the cards that were good were absurdly good for the time. The power scaling was really skewed for some cards. Like handbuff not being a good mechanic until years later and pirates and jades being an unexpectedly broken archetype. Rastakhan's Rumble was also a bad expansion, but it also had relatively low impact on the game at the time. The difference between a good and bad expansion is this; In a bad expansion, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. In a good expansion, everyone gets richer.
Really surprised Warrior only rep 1.26% during UiS meta….
Warrior gained popularity after the UiS mini set came out. The charts only go 1-2 months after an expansion launches. So that is probably why it is so low.
This is before the buffs to pirates and the miniset, undoubtedly, which is where quest Warrior became broken.
Fascinating. Though, it definitely does sort of support my feeling that we haven't really had a "balanced" meta in a while.
There's always been a problem of "haha, [9th/10th class] in [year]", but its surprising to see just how lopsided some of these really are.
My 2 general rules of thumb for class balance are that 1) if 50% of meta is 3 classes (out of 9 or 10) or 2) if the gap between the second most played and the second least played is over 10%: something is wrong.
And the last time *both* were satisfied was Ungoro, which definitely lines up with my general opinion of the overall balance.
A good visual representation to the phrase "'Journey to Un'goro' was the healthiest meta!"
one thing is visual representation and other thing is actually playing it. It's still best meta in history of HS, if you play it you know.