Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – Whizbang’s Workshop (Week 2) – March 2024

Whizbang’s Workshop expansion has been out for nearly two weeks now. We’re also after our first balance update meant to address a few outliers, mostly Paladin. And while it DID address them, it introduced a new king in the form of Aggro Demon Hunter. Sadly those early balance updates are always hard to nail because the meta is often changing daily. I imagine that at the moment the patch was decided upon and sent for approval, DH wasn’t an issue yet, but when the patch dropped it was already obvious that the deck is going to dominate. Old Guardian made a detailed analysis of the early post-patch meta in this article, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested.

Some of the decks I posted in this compilation are pre-patch, however I excluded all the ones that got hit the hardest by the patch (like Odyn Warrior or Charge Handbuff Paladin). I kept all of the ones that should still be viable (when looking at the stats).

The current meta is pretty hard to talk about, because Aggro DH dominates everything outside of high Legend. The deck is really powerful, and it already reached over 30% popularity in high Diamond. I suspect that things will only get worse . Of course, maybe someone will come up with a counter, but it’s quite doubtful. The deck has basically no bad matchups. The only “bad” matchup is Control Warrior (it’s around 45/55 for Warrior), but Control Warrior isn’t great against other decks after the nerf.

Rainbow Mage can actually also keep up now that the decks started teaching more freeze. 2x Frostbolt is a must (you can deny Demon Hunter from popping the weapon and later in the game it reduces the damage they can deal) and many builds also started running either Frost Lich Cross-Stitch (Water Elemental is a GOAT if it sticks) or Cryopreservation (more freeze). That’s the reason why I said that Aggro DH dominates everywhere OUTSIDE of high Legend – while it’s still a great deck in there, Mages are pretty much a 50/50, and if piloted by one of the best players they might even have a small advantage.

Small Beast/Token Hunter and Handbuff Paladin both got nerfed. Hunter plays the same deck, it’s just a bit weaker now, but still really good. Handbuff Paladin had to adapt and cut many cards that were nerfed. It’s still playable, but it dropped to low Tier 2/high Tier 3. Same thing for Control Warrior – it’s still playable, but it’s around Tier 2/3 now. However, its place was taken by the Reno/Brann builds – Highlander Warrior is not a bad deck at all and it both stands a chance against Demon Hunter (although not as good as the Odyn version) and has some other good matchups in the current meta.

Death Knight didn’t get nerfed in the patch, but it’s not doing that great. Plague DK is now pretty bad because its main advantage was countering Control Warrior, which is way less popular now. And Demon Hunter destroys Plague DK. Plague DK takes some time to get rolling (shuffling Plagues, playing Helya, Excavating, discounting Chained Guardians) and Aggro DH just doesn’t give the deck that time. Rainbow DK is still good, but not GREAT. It’s pretty much Tier 2.

Wheel Warlock is still surprisingly popular despite dropping down quite heavily in terms of win rate. I guess that people play it because it’s fun, but it’s way weaker now that Aggro DH is everywhere and Control Warrior got nerfed (it was a really good matchup before).

We also have a few less popular builds like Zarimi Priest or Draw Rogue that seems pretty solid (probably Tier 2) but they aren’t popular enough so it’s hard to say right now.

And that’s pretty much the quick analysis of the early post-patch meta. Keep in mind that the patch was released just a few days ago so the meta is still forming and power levels might shift around. There’s also always a chance that someone finds a great counter to Aggro DH and the whole meta flips around – I don’t think that it’s going to happen, but we’ve seen stuff like that in the past. As for what’s coming next – Patch 29.2 is the next big update, although it will be focused on Battlegrounds. A new season should launch, and we finally should get access to the Battlegrounds Duos announced at BlizzCon. I suspect that the patch should drop sometime mid-April so Blizzard should be sharing more info soon. As for Constructed, it’s hard to say. Those Battlegrounds updates usually don’t include any Constructed changes, but there were a few times in the past when they did. And I think that unless something changes about the current Demon Hunter situation, the Hearthstone team should really look into some Demon Hunter nerfs to add to that patch.

Below is 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!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week