Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – Whizbang’s Workshop (Week 16) – July 2024

We’re entering the final week of the reveal season – all of the cards will be shown by Friday. It means that there are only a bit over two weeks until the set launches. I’ll be honest – Whizbang’s Workshop meta had some cool stuff, but it was my least favorite in quite a while. Over the last two months, Standard was one of my least played modes (instead I mostly played Twist, Wild and Arena) and that rarely happens. One can’t judge the mety by cards alone, but I was always a fan of dual-class deck building so maybe Perils of Paradise will be more interesting.

Looking at the current meta, though, there’s no way to put it lightly – it’s horrendous. The same Druid deck seems to have reached its peak popularity and it’s sitting at around 30% play rate in Diamond-Legend (down to ~20% at some ranks and up to almost 40% in Diamond 1). Not only it’s the most popular deck, but it’s also the best one by most of the metrics. It has zero true counters, a couple of matchups are very slightly favorite (such as Pain Warlock and Shopper Aggro DH) but I really mean very slightly. That also explains the sudden rise in popularity of Aggro DH – the deck was sitting around 1-2% play rate for the longest time (ever since it was nerfed a few months back) and now it’s back up to 3-4%. Still not a lot, but it’s a big increase nonetheless.

Another deck that keeps gaining popularity is Rainbow Excavate Death Knight. It’s an interesting “good cards” build, it has no single clear win condition (like Plagues, Handbuffs, or Climactic Necrotic Explosion). Rather, it just combines all of the solid aspects of the class into one deck. And it’s doing… okay. It’s a solid Tier 2 build and it’s not even THAT bad against our Druid overlords. There’s also a new The Crystal Cove Mech Rogue build rising in popularity at higher ranks, but I’m gonna be honest, while pretty fun, it’s not looking too powerful. I suspect that there’s still some refinement that can be done, but I’m not convinced that it’s going to be good enough even after (not to mention that the expansion is dropping very soon anyway).

All in all, there has been way more “late expansion” innovation than I’ve expected. Usually, by this time most of the meta is already figured out and no new decks enter the meta. One thing I’m worried about is whether the new expansion decks will be good enough to beat Druid. If not, the early expansion experience might be quite horrendous. That’s the worst thing that can happen on expansion’s launch – an old, overpowered deck that you’re already tired of facing taking over the meta and making people want to quit on Day 1 when they should have fun testing new and wonky (but fun) stuff. And the worst thing is that the current balance patch windows are set for a bit later than usual, 2 weeks after the expansion’s launch. 2 more weeks with Druid in Tier 1 and all over the ladder might just be too much. But there’s always a chance they address the deck in Patch 30.0 or something, we’ll see.

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

Hearthstone Wild Legend Decks of the Week

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!

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