The big balance patch is here! Hearthstone patch 27.4.2 arrived on Thursday, and it brought with it lots of balance changes. Control Warrior was hit, Control Warlock lost its access to early Sargeras, the Destroyer, Naga Mage was killed, Miracle Druid was removed from the game alongside Gadgetzan Auctioneer, and there were also some minor nerfs to Arcane Hunter and Mech Rogue. Meanwhile, Plague Death Knight was buffed through increased rune flexibility that allows the deck to go for a UUU or UUB build in addition to the traditional UUF.
What has all of this meant for the meta? A lot has changed, so let’s go through it piece by piece.
There is a New Warrior King
The Control Warrior nerfs might not look like all that much. Craftsman's Hammer lost one point of armor and Sanitize became one mana more expensive. And yet, Control Warrior’s performance has fallen by around four percentage points, from approximately 57% win rate to a 53% win rate. Mind you, a 53% win rate over a sample size of almost ten thousand games is still a respectable accomplishment, but this was quite a major fall from two minor nerfs.
There are two explaining factors. First, the nerfs were somewhat effective. Some of the more aggressive decks are now able to challenge Control Warrior better than before. Paladin, for example, has just enough additional time at the start to push in some serious damage. However, these only explain around one percentage point of the fall.
The more important explanation is that there are new decks in the meta that are very hostile to Control Warrior. The first of these decks is Tony Druid. Blizzard actually attempted to address Tony Druid in the patch with a last-second nerf to Contaminated Lasher, but that nerf proved to be ineffective. The Tony Druid matchup is nigh impossible for Warrior: the latest stats show it as a 25-75 affair. For a while, it looked even worse, and it may still become worse as Tony Druid lists become more refined. The patch arrived quite quickly after the mini-set, and Tony Druid only appeared on the ladder on the final days before the patch. The mini-set meta had not fully developed yet, and the big Warrior counter was still finding its shape.
Even more important than Tony Druid is all the experimentation going on with Plague Death Knight. The new Plague Death Knight lists are popular and also slightly favored against Warrior. When you suddenly meet a tough newcomer, even if it is not worse than 48-52, in 20% of your games, that tends to push your win rate towards 50%.
Those are the factors that explain Control Warrior’s performance up to this point. But what about the future? Plague Death Knight is viable, but it is not a top-tier deck. It is unlikely that Plague Death Knight numbers will hold. Great news for Warrior! However, Tony Druid looks like a very real contender, and it is even worse for Warrior. A Tony Druid nerf may be in the cards for the near future, but unless one arrives, Control Warrior may struggle in the future and keep falling even below its current performance.
However, as one door closes, another one opens. Enrage Warrior has now fully embraced Battleworn Faceless that it received in the mini-set, and it has suddenly become the best Warrior deck and one of the top decks in the entire game. Enrage Warrior has a pretty good matchup against Tony Druid, which makes it one of the top candidates to be the best deck in the game.
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Enrage Warrior is searching for the final pieces to the puzzle. Even with Battleworn Faceless, Grommash Hellscream struggles to remain relevant. Some lists have opted to run Instrument Tech instead, trusting the power of Crazed Wretch for Charge damage. It’s a close call. Remornia, Living Blade, is another card that may not belong in the deck. Then again, replacing it with Pozzik, Audio Engineer has not been a success either. Some card in the deck just has to be the weakest one, but there is some potential room for improvement in Enrage Warrior lists still.
A Plague Upon Thee!
I already mentioned that Plague Death Knight is giving Control Warrior some headaches. Plague Death Knight is without a doubt the most interesting archetype after the balance patch. With the Frost rune requirement removed from Down with the Ship and Tomb Traitor, the entire Plague package is now available for two Unholy runes.
Consequently, there are now three different Plague Death Knight decks on the ladder: triple Unholy, double Unholy and one Blood, and the old double Unholy and one Frost. So far, it is not at all obvious which one of these is the best. To further complicate matters, triple Unholy Death Knight without any Plagues is also a competitive deck and could be the strongest Death Knight deck of them all.
Unholy Plague Death Knight is the most common of the three archetypes:
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Triple Unholy gives the deck access to Grave Strength and Lord Marrowgar. This is an aggressive, board-based take on the archetype that does not have much sustain in its game plan. It can swarm the board and win from tokens while the plagues deal some additional damage. This is generally a strong strategy, as it is often better to just win the game early than let it drag on.
Blood Plague Death Knight is the variant that is most comfortable going for a long game:
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The single Blood rune gives the deck access to Gnome Muncher and Patchwerk. Patchwerk, in particular, is a phenomenal card against Control Warriors and Tony Druids, even though finding it in time may prove to be a challenge. This deck plays more like a control deck with limited aggressive options but a good chunk of healing and removal.
If you want to see how this archetype can handle a long game, I played some games with my own version of the deck earlier this week.
Frost Plague Death Knight is somewhere between the other two. It has more ways to control a game than Unholy, but it lacks the overall healing and disruption potential of Blood.
About That Druid Tyrant
The deck that currently dominates top Legend and defined the race to get a high-Legend finish yesterday is Tony Druid. Top Legend decks are often irrelevant for the general ladder. The players there meet each other several times during a single day, so playing something that is good against specific opponents is important. Lower on the ladder, you meet a wide variety of players and it is much more difficult to predict what you may meet. Some archetypes being 15% of the meta actually means 15% in Diamond, but it can be 50% in the top 20. Another typical feature of the top-Legend tyrants is that they are difficult to play. While you may only be able to squeeze a couple of additional percentage points out of a deck even with high skill, those percentage points matter when pursuing a high finish. They may also make the deck unsuitable for climbing for the average player. The latest top-Legend tyrant was Naga Mage, which was not an issue for the vast majority of players at all.
Even with all those caveats, Tony Druid is quite scary. It does not require particularly high skill to play at a reasonable level, and it is a strong deck on all ranks.
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The combination of cheap spells, ramp, and card draw is always a strong one in Hearthstone. The deck has a strong finisher with Anub'Rekhan, The Jailer, and Tony, King of Piracy. Solar Eclipse into a Frost Lotus Blossom is draw 4 cards and gain 20 Armor. Aggressive decks need to work hard to push through, and there is always the threat of a 0-cost Yogg-Saron, Unleashed that can help the Druid stabilize in positions where they would have simply lost before.
Tony Druid was not built because of the balance patch. Quite the contrary, it is the final version of attempts to counter the pre-nerf Control Warrior, and it does so with remarkable ease. It arrived so late that Blizzard had hardly any chance to fully analyze it. The first recorded games with this kind of Tony Druid are from September 26, just two days before the balance patch launched.
As Tony Druid decks become more refined, they are getting stronger and stronger. The first versions still had weaknesses against most aggressive decks, but these current ones trust that they can take on aggro decks too. Plague Death Knight, Enrage Warrior, and aggressive Paladin variants are the main counters, and the best they can hope to aim for is a 60-40 matchup if even that.
The Comeback Kings
The balance patch has brought a pair of old archetypes back to the competition.
Demon Hunter has struggled recently, and it has not received anything too impressive lately. However, the new meta has enabled Demon Hunter to go back to its Outcast roots and succeed with the old Outcast Demon Hunter deck:
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Yeah, that is not an error. I really added a deck from the last expansion to this article. What can I say? It’s a good deck. Its big problems have been Control Warlock and Control Warrior, which were everywhere before the patch, leaving no room for Outcast Demon Hunter to shine. Now that Warrior and Warlock numbers are down, Outcast Demon Hunter has resurfaced and enjoys, if not exactly stellar success, at least a comfortable existence on the ladder.
Mage is another class that was pushed deep down in the ranks by Control Warrior. But no more!
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There are two contributing factors to Mage becoming playable again. Control Warrior numbers are down, which is sweet. Furthermore, Mage plays a lot of spells. And do you know what goes well with a lot of spells? Yogg-Saron, Unleashed. Turns out, having access to a 0-mana board clear or Mind Control is pretty good. Honestly, Yogg may be one of the most busted cards in the history of the game. It gives all spell-based decks a huge boost at the expense of board-based decks. Board-based decks may be favored by the base game rules, but Yogg really changes things.
Business as Usual
While some decks rise and others fall, a whole bunch of decks also just look at the balance patch and keep rolling as usual.
One of the winners of the balance patch hardly even noticed there was a patch. Paladin decks built around Silver Hand Recruits have been strong for some time now, and they are now some of the best decks on the ladder. You can play the Aggro version or the Pure version, both are fine.
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- 1Righteous Protector2
- 1Sanguine Soldier2
- 1Sinful Sous Chef2
- 2Blood Matriarch Liadrin1
- 2Class Action Lawyer2
- 2Grimestreet Outfitter2
- 3Muster for Battle2
- 3Warhorse Trainer2
- 4Boogie Down2
- 4Buffet Biggun2
- 4Crusader Aura2
- 5The Purator1
- 7Amitus, the Peacekeeper1
- 7Anachronos1
- 7The Countess1
- 7The Leviathan1
- 9Lightray2
While Hound Hunter has almost vanished from the ladder, Arcane Hunter keeps going strong. There are several variations of the deck, but they are all based on the same main core and perform very close to each other.
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The use of Yogg-Saron, Unleashed is completely optional in this archetype. You can play a faster list without Yogg or try to go for a slightly slower approach with Yogg and Prison Breakers, both approaches are fine at the moment.
Undead Priest is doing better than ever after the balance patch. It just received Soulburner Varia from the mini-set, and it is still riding that high.
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Mech Rogue was nerfed, but Mech Rogue players did not notice. The gentle tweak to Coppertail Snoop is not noticeable at all and the deck is perfectly fine. It is still trying to find a way to get rid of Scourge Illusionist and Mothership, but they are the most well-rounded options for the final slots. Once the meta stabilizes, the deck may find something better as tech cards.
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If there was an award for longevity in Hearthstone, Totem Shaman would be a contender. The deck has not changed for months, but it remains a viable option for climbing the ladder.
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Warlock has three playable archetypes: Control, Curse, and Thaddius are all viable decks. After the nerf to Symphony of Sins made an early Sargeras, the Destroyer much harder to pull off, Thaddius Warlock is back to being the best Warlock deck.
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Is This a Good Meta?
The balance patch timing was a little unfortunate. For Twist and Wild, the patch was delayed for weeks too long. For Standard, it arrived a few days early. We had not yet seen the full effects of the mini-set, and while I think all the changes in the patch were good, they left the new Druid deck largely untouched.
Tony Druid is now the gatekeeper. Are you too slow to challenge it? Too bad for you. The deck has not yet become common throughout the ladder, but as it spreads to all ranks, other slow decks may become completely unviable. Yogg-Saron means that Druid no longer automatically loses to aggression either, but it is mostly through aggression that Tony Druid can be kept in check.
If you enjoy aggressive gameplay, there are some sweet options, especially Enrage Warrior, Dude Paladin, Arcane Hunter, and Mech Rogue. If you have missed playing Death Knight, the more flexible Plague cards give some options for experimentation and they can also challenge Druid. You can also join other Tony Druid enjoyers and blast away with the latest brand-new archetype.
It is not a bad meta in the sense that there are options, and some of them are brand-new experiences. However, there are also threats looming on the horizon, and this meta could stop being fun in a matter of days if the worst outcomes happen. I am happy with the patch overall, but Blizzard did not get the timing right and there was not enough data for Standard yet. The consequences for the meta are difficult to predict. Hopefully, things will work out fine or Blizzard is ready to answer quickly if they don’t.
Old Guardian
Ville "Old Guardian" Kilkku is a writer and video creator focused on analytic, educational Hearthstone, and building innovative Standard format decks. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian
The title of this article got pretty old pretty quick eh lol