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Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – March of the Lich King (+Return to Naxxramas) Week 11 – February 2023

By: Stonekeep - - Updated:

Return to Naxxramas, the latest Hearthstone mini-set, has released earlier this week. I hoped for some meta shifts, and oh boy, I did get them. But maybe not exactly the ones I wanted.

For the first few days fo the mini-set, Evolve Shaman completely dominated. Blazing Transmutation combined with Goldshire Gnoll is just too much. Evolving Gnoll was always powerful, but at least it had a downside of low-rolling sometimes. Sure, getting an early 8/8 was great for Shaman, but often not enough to carry them. Now with Blazing Transmutation, they can simply pick the best option (something like Stoneborn General, Thaddius, Monstrosity or Deathwing the Destroyer). For the first few days, they could even pick Neptulon the Tidehunter, but luckily that bug was hotfixed pretty quickly (you should not be able to Evolve into Colossal minions). And yeah, Evolve Shaman is still incredibly strong, it’s still tier 1 (or maybe even tier 0), but it looks like we have a new contender.

If I had to name a single strongest card in the mini-set, it would definitely be Construct Quarter. While Transmutation is close, it has a more narrow use. You need to combo it with Gnoll to really take full advantage of it, otherwise it’s a bit weak. Now, with Construct Quarter, you get powerful early-mid game swings without any specific requirements. You just take a small minion and turn it into a 4/5 with Rush. Three times. Oh, and since you’re DESTROYING the minion (unlike Dark Transformation), you also get an extra Corpse and it triggers Deathrattles. It means that it’s finally Foul Egg‘s time to shine. This early game combo just shuts down many decks – play Egg on T1, then a 2-drop or two 1-drops, then Construct Quarter on T3, destroy Egg… and you have a 3/3, 4/5 and whatever you played on T2 on the board now. Plus Construct Quarter still has two more uses for later. It’s such a massive tempo swing that almost no deck can win against that.

First, the combo was played in Unholy Death Knight,  which was already a great deck before the patch. And – of course – it worked. However, the deck wasn’t as strong as Evolve Shaman. Everything changed when people put a similar early game package into Frost Death Knight. They removed some of the “combo” or “burn” aspects of it and replaced it with high-tempo early game, something the deck was missing before. And voila – we have the best meta deck right now. It beats basically everything – and most importantly, its Evolve Shaman matchup is basically a coin toss. So you’re 50/50 against the most popular deck in the meta and wipe the floor with many other builds.

Long story short, I expect a balance update next week, probably targeting Evolve Shaman and Death Knights. In case of Evolve Shaman, I feel like Goldshire Gnoll is the problematic card, because the deck was already quite “toxic” before Blazing Transmutation was released. And for Death Knight, the obvious culprit is Construct Quarter. I think that it needs to get the Dark Transformation treatment of TRANSFORMING a minion instead of destroying it (so the Egg combo will no longer be viable and it will produce no Corpses) + maybe reduce it from 3 to 2 uses. If we don’t get a balance update, well… that would really suck given how the meta looks like. Evolve Shaman + Frost & Unholy Death Knights form a tier of their own, and Shaman + Death Knight (including Blood, which is weaker, but still popular) make up for like 60% of Diamond meta.

I also want to address one more thing – the lack of Wild decks this week. Sadly, after the closing of Chinese servers, we’ve been seeing SIGNIFICANTLY less Wild decks posted online. The format is not that popular on the other servers, but it was close to Standard (and sometimes even beating it) in China. Thus, it’s much harder to find Wild decks now. Some Chinese players have moved to other servers, but they’ve been mostly playing Standard for now – assuming they’re on brand new accounts, it’s much easier to catch up in Standard than in Wild. I don’t know what the future will bring, but for now it looks a bit grim for the Wild format.

Below, you will find a full list of the Legend decks from last week, sorted by the highest placement.

If you want to see all of the current top meta decks, go to our Hearthstone Meta Tier List post!

If you’re looking for the best Wild Format decks, check out our Wild Meta Tier List!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week

Hero Power Mage – #3 Legend (TangYi) – Return to Naxxramas

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XL Questline Priest – #9 Legend (Youth) – Return to Naxxramas

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Unholy Token Death Knight – #10 Legend (Bunnyhoppor) – Return to Naxxramas

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Control Warrior – #16 Legend (Construct) – Return to Naxxramas

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Thief Rogue – #23 Legend (Firenoodle) – Return to Naxxramas

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Undead Shadow Priest – #25 Legend (DenimBlue7) – Return to Naxxramas

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Frost Burn Death Knight – #38 Legend (evanhansen) – Return to Naxxramas

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Frost Burn Death Knight – #39 Legend (Zhotan) – Return to Naxxramas

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Battlecry Evolve Shaman – #51 Legend (VirtuozZ) – Return to Naxxramas

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Evolve Shaman – #58 Legend (NoHandsGamer) – Return to Naxxramas

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Undead Shadow Priest – #96 Legend (Ant) – Return to Naxxramas

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Murloc Shaman – #125 Legend (Tars) – Return to Naxxramas

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Rainbow Aggro Death Knight – #131 Legend (xiaojungu) – Return to Naxxramas

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Fel Relic Demon Hunter – #140 Legend (Helve187) – Return to Naxxramas

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Blood Control Death Knight – #177 Legend (glory) – Return to Naxxramas

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Big Undead Warlock – #189 Legend (Tars) – Return to Naxxramas

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Burn Shaman – #196 Legend (THorougH) – Return to Naxxramas

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Big Undead Warlock – #301 Legend (Vegetariamon) – Return to Naxxramas

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XL Thief Rogue – #315 Legend (いろどり) – Return to Naxxramas

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Evolve Shaman – #359 Legend (Kranich) – Return to Naxxramas

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Pure Paladin – #360 Legend (Charon) – Return to Naxxramas

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Big Relic Demon Hunter – #373 Legend (Iscoman) – Return to Naxxramas

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XL Questline Priest – #375 Legend (TenNyf) – Return to Naxxramas

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Arcane Hunter – #467 Legend (FunkiMonki) – Return to Naxxramas

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XL Questline Hunter – #480 Legend (DeLaCash) – Return to Naxxramas

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Hearthstone Wild Legend Decks of the Week

Secret Mage – #20 Legend (silentbo) – Wild S107

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Pirate Rogue – #27 Legend (xiaojungu) – Wild S107

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Murloc Shudderwock Shaman – #100 Legend (SiNF3RN0) – Wild S107

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Questline Horsemen Hunter – #291 Legend (JambaJooze) – Wild S107

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Discard Warlock – #482 Legend (Wizardude) – Wild S107

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Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

One Comment

  1. JoyDivision
    February 22, 2023 at 1:39 AM

    Hey there!

    The link to the Wild Meta Tier List makes no sense; that post is super outdated. 😉