Hearthstone Data Scientist Tian Ding has shared some interesting statistics once again. This time he pulled four most popular decks (Questline Warlock, Shadow Priest, Garrote Rogue and Questline Shaman) and all their matchups – including the good, the average and absolute counters
But wait, four most popular? So what is Garrote Rogue doing here instead of Questline Mage? The thing is that Questline Mage is by far the most popular deck at lower ranks, but it’s a quite rare sight in Legend – even more so in high Legend. So I would assume that data comes from higher ranks. The last time Tian shared some data, it came from Top 1% of the playerbase – it’s hard to say how much that is exactly, but it definitely lines up with Legend (probably cutting off “dumpster” ranks).
This particular data is interesting because it comes straight from the source – different websites gathering their own data/matchup stats have different biases and never really have a full picture. But why is it iseful? Well, for one, if you hate one of those decks in particular you might pick one of its counters and play it. Or vice versa – if you play one of those four decks, you might want to know which decks counter you or maybe try to tech to improve those matchups. Sadly, we’re missing stats on matchup popularity which is just as important. For example, we know that Control Warrior counters Shadow Priest really hard, but we don’t know how often this matchup happens – is it 10% or 0.1%? Okay, technically we all know that nearly no one plays Control Warrior, but it’s from our own experience and not this chart.
Still, I find it quite interesting and I’m happy that Blizzard is more willing to share official data way more often than they did in the past. You can find the full chart below (click on it to bring up the full version):
Want to find the meta counter? Here are some strengths and weaknesses of some most popular clusters(decks) in the current ranked standard meta. 😛 pic.twitter.com/6b2Bkpgfgq
— Tian Ding (@sky_tding) September 15, 2021
Yep, this confirms it, warlock is broken as hell… has a 3/4 chance of being favored against ALL “viable” decks. Im happy that it’s getting nerfed, makes it possible to play any deck that isen’t aggro or solitaire garrote rogue… in other words, FUN decks!
WTF is combo hunter??? The old deck with kcrush?
Man I sure can’t ever remember a time when a single deck has both 85% and 20% winrates before–I sure hope this meta changes.