United in Stormwind, the second expansion of Year of the Gryphon, has been released yesterday. The set did not come with a rotation, but its power level looks pretty high, not to mention that Questlines have turned out to be stronger than many players suspected. So it’s only natural that it completely shuffled the meta (at least the early one). Just after Day 1, we’ve already seen a bunch of new, interesting builds. But are they any good? And did we already see any huge surprises, or maybe the new Tier 1 decks are yet to be discovered?
Check out our United in Stormwind early meta decks for every class!
I’ve spent most of the day and a half watching pro player streams and social media, adding their decks to the site (as well as playing some matches with the most promising builds myself), so I have a quite good idea of what’s commonly played, which decks get solid results and which builds have a chance to become a part of the meta. Below, I’ll list some of the lists that caught my attention. Just like every new expansion, remember that the early meta is very chaotic and it might look completely different in a few days. Decks are chosen based on my ladder experience, watching the steamers & pros, talking with other high ranked players and early statistics from sites like HSReplay.net.
These decks are only example lists – meta is adjusting very quickly and more optimized builds might be out at the time you’re reading it! The order of decks below is not indicative of their strength. Also, keep in mind that there might be bias against builds that were already good before Stormwind, because players usually try to test new stuff first (but then it turns out that many older builds still work).
Questline Warlock
4,840
Questline Warlock took ladder by the storm. It was probably the most popular deck of Day 1, at least during the early hours – then it got overtaken by the second deck on this list. Deck has proven itself successful against both Aggro (due to a massive amount of healing) and Control (because of basically an OTK after Quest is done).
The goal is to finish the Quest as soon as possible and then keep using self-damage effects and drawing cards to get into fatigue in order to quickly kill your opponent. It sounds easy, but in reality, there’s a ton of decision-making involved. One of the most important aspects is finding the right balance of self-damage and healing. If you fall too low on health, then opponents can easily kill you before you get the Quest done. But if you play too safe, it might take you too long to finish the Quest and – once again – that might cost you the game because you give your opponent more time to do their own thing. Then, most of the builds run some way to “combo” yourself – draw as far into fatigue as possible and basically OTK opponent that way. It can be Gadgetzan Auctioneer – especially when combined with Tamsin Roame and Runed Mithril Rod discounts. You can also throw in Stealer of Souls to make the cards you draw cost health (so damage the opponent) and keep drawing as much has you can. Or maybe run Cornelius Roame and drop him once you reach fatigue. There’s a lot of options but it boils down to one thing – trying to deal as much damage to yourself as possible. It’s a Suicide Warlock you use to complete Quests when you don’t feel like it, but one that actually works.
However, one thing to keep in mind is that the early stats don’t pain the deck as strong as it might seem. Most of the popular builds are below the 50% WR mark. There’s a couple of explanations for it – maybe players haven’t found the best build yet (because let’s be honest – there are at least 4-5 different, popular builds floating around), maybe they haven’t learned how to play the deck optimally yet… or maybe it’s just not as good. Only time will tell.
Questline Spell Mage
Another massive hit of the first day has to be Questline Spell Mage. It’s a variation on the Spell Mage we all know (and not necessarily love) from the previous expansion. However, instead of relying on the high cost burn in a form of Mask of C'Thun or Deck of Lunacy shenanigans, it asks you to finish the new Mage’s Questline and get a Spell Damage +3 permanent boost. Because of that, it needs to include a fair amount of each of three spell schools – Arcane, Fire and Frost. The first two isn’t a problem, but the difficulty comes from the third one. Frost spells are not only less common, less useful, but also mostly reactive, making it a difficult task in some matchups (like mirrors) – to the point of players having to e.g. Brain Freeze their own minions.
However, after you manage to finish the Quest, oh my, things really get interesting. +3 Spell Damage means that your burn gameplan becomes much easier to perform. A simple Runed Orb deals 5 damage now, and Fireball can shave 9 health from the opponent. It’s quite easy to kill them in the next turn after you finish the Quest. But even if you play against a slower deck with a lot of health gain – don’t worry, you can still do it. Unlike old Spell Mages, which played with a limited amount of burn, this one is different. Thanks to Ignite, which gets shuffled into your deck over and over again (and it’s more powerful each time), you can easily deal 100+ damage in a single match – as long as you have enough time, that is.
And the best thing about extra spell damage is that your board control also becomes superior. You can easily clear mid-sized minions with your 1 mana (or even 0 mana after Flow) removals like First Flame and Brain Freeze (5 & 6 damage respectively). A simple Combustion can easily clear all three targets. So even if you don’t have enough burn in your hand, you should be able to easily stall long enough to actually draw it.
Overall, Mage’s Questline looks really strong in this kind of deck. It’s not like there are no counters, but even then I think that it has a chance to survive.
P.S. Looking at this specific build, I have one recommendation – if you’re facing a lot of mirror matchups, then I would heavily suggest replacing Devolving Missiles with something else, since (from my experience) the card is nearly useless in the matchup.
Handbuff Paladin
Handbuff Paladin is a deck that seems to be slipping under the radar for now. I don’t see many people talking about it or even playing it, but when I tested it, it seemed incredibly powerful. Like back to the previous expansion before most of the nerfs happened. It’s just so efficient and can actually come up with a surprise lethal out of nowhere.
The new handbuff cards work really well. They’re quite easy to trigger and are efficient. And the deck runs so many minions that are incredibly strong even with something as simple as +2/+2. Low cost Divine Shields (such as Righteous Protector), Catacomb Guard, Blademaster Samuro, First Blade of Wrynn – they are all insanely efficient even with a small buff. The deck has enough card draw that it doesn’t struggle with value (the new Cornelius Roame and Varian, King of Stormwind really do help, easily covering your late game card draw). And, maybe most importantly, it actually has a really nice finisher in a form of Battleground Battlemaster. The card is insane at times – especially if you combine it with Conviction. Let’s say that you have a 2 and 3 damage minion on board and opponent decides to not clear them – that’s fair, normal situation. But then you drop Conviction to buff them both + play Battlemaster and suddenly 5 damage becomes 22 damage. The card can really produce some surprise lethals. Lack of massive burst damage and ways to close out games were always some of Paladin’s biggest weaknesses.
Overall, the deck looks really promising and I would expect some kind of Handbuff Paladin to become a part of the upcoming meta.
Elemental Shaman
Elemental Shaman – honestly, it was quite obvious that the deck will be good. Why? Well, because it was already one of the best decks last expansion and it got a few more strong cards this time around. The meta would have to change in some really weird ways for the deck to not be viable. Since we all know how Elemental Shaman works, I’ll focus on the new inclusion – Granite Forgeborn and Canal Slogger. The first one is your ultimate Elemental synergy card – it makes most of your deck cheaper, and as we all know – cheaper = better. So what’s there not to like? The second one – Canal Slogger – is a bit like new version of Zilliax. But if you discount it even further with Forgeborn, it’s even better than Zilliax – yes, I’ve said that. Great tempo tool, 6 attack can remove nearly anything and it’s a solid threat, while 4 health often survives at 1-2 so opponent has to clear it. Healing for 6 is heaven-sent against Aggro, it basically wins the games.
This specific build also runs Auctionhouse Gavel, another new card. As we’ve already established above, cheaper = better and it applies here too. A big part of your Elementals are Battlecry minions, so it’s another way to discount them, while also dealing some damage. Two more weapons also mean that Cagematch Custodian is more consistent and much, much less likely to miss – but I’m not sure if 4 isn’t a bit of an overkill. We’ll have to see how it works in practice.
What’s worth noting is that Aggro Elemental builds, which were mostly pushed out of the meta by the regular Elemental version later in the previous set, are now back in action too. The thing is that Doomhammer works amazingly well against Spell Mages, which have no way to defend against it. No Taunt minions, no health gain outside of usually a single Ice Barrier and no weapon removal. Aggro decks are also generally better at punishing the new, slow, unoptimized builds. Because of that – Doomhammer version is performing similarly well right now. But I think that things will go back to “normal” and regular Elemental build will mostly take over again.
Face Hunter
Two words – Aimed Shot.
No, seriously, that’s it. It’s the same Face Hunter deck from last expansion with Aimed Shot, which – like everyone suspected – turned out to be an amazing inclusion. Not only the deck is very strong by itself, but it also prays on the early, unoptimized builds, making it one of the best choices in the early meta. Or – to be more specific – best choices if you want to win, not so much if you want to have fun with new cards.
While Questline Hunter (click here to find some builds) was popular over the first few hours, players have quickly realized that it’s just a worse version of the Face build. Sure – you get more late game power – but you have to sacrifice a significant amount of your early game. Maybe players will come up with a good build eventually, but for now it looks like Face is the king.
Questline (Guff) Druid
One of the lowest rated Questlines turned out to be… pretty good? At least for now? What is going on?
I’ll be honest – I haven’t expected that. Yes, the reward for this Questline is not nearly as strong as some of the other ones, but here’s the thing – it’s an actual, easy to pull off win condition. Completing the Questline also turned out to be not as hard as I suspected – Pounce, Feral Rage and Moontouched Amulet aren’t great cards by themselves, but they make the Questline relatively easy. And then we have Park Panther, which is frankly just insane and would probably see play even outside of the Questline builds (not that we have seen a Midrange Druid in years, but still).
Your main win condition is damage from Guff combined with damage from all the attack spells. Because here’s what some people didn’t think about. Guff by himself wouldn’t really close out many games. But here’s where Mark of the Spikeshell comes in hand. At 7+ mana, you play Guff + Buff. Guff is now an even scarier 10/10 Taunt, you gain +8 Attack and +8 Armor, and another copy of Guff in your hand. And then you can do the same thing next turn. That’s up to 3 big Taunt minions + 24 damage + 24 Armor in total. Aggro decks have basically no way to get through the wall combined with all the Armor you gain, so if you complete Quest before they kill you – it’s usually game over. And if for whatever reason you need even more Armor, you have multitude of ways to gain it.
You can even win in direct combat with Questline Mage, which is certainly a big advantage. Questline Warlock is not that easy because they can heal so much, but it’s still winnable.
Or, alternatively, you can also win some games in a good old fashion – drop Glowfly Swarm, buff them (or not) and kill the opponent. Or, alternatively alternatively, play Solar Eclipse + Best in Shell / Cenarion Ward in the late game.
It might just be the early meta, but for now the deck works really well.
Miracle Garrote Rogue
So this deck is either a stroke or genius or a complete meme – the thing is that I don’t know yet which one it is. On the one hand, high Legend players seem to have really good time with it. Especially experienced Rogue players that are used to those kind of weird combo decks with very high APM requirements. On the other hand, the deck is sitting at roughly ~42% win rate right now. Yes, that’s HORRIBLE. I know that a lot of those loses are from people that have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, but it’s still hard to tell whether the deck will be any good in the long run. The biggest issue that it’s relatively easy to counter – e.g. from my experience, Questline Druid just demolishes it, all you need to do is gain a bunch of Armor and you’re good to go. They won’t pack enough damage to finish you off.
But okay, first things first. The basic idea behind this deck is to draw cards and set up everything for the first few turns, then drop Gadgetzan Auctioneer and combo your opponent. Thanks to Efficient Octo-bot (which you can trigger multiple times thanks to Shadowstep), your entire hand full of cheap spells becomes a hand free or nearly free spells. Then with the help of extra Coins from Sketchy Information + Loan Shark, you can keep going and going. Now, how to kill your opponent? I don’t know if that’s a bug, but currently, the “Casts When Drawn” spells you shuffle into your deck from Garrote are affected by spell damage. So a single point of Spell Damage increases a total damage of Garrote by FOUR. If you drop two points of Spell Damage, each Garrote becomes 16 damage in total. And since you have two Garrotess, two Sinister Strikes and some builds even run Wicked Stab (Rank 1) for a good measure, that’s often way more than enough to just finish your opponent off. And with all of the discounts, it’s actually possible to pull the combo off as soon as Turn 5-6 – yes, that’s really, really early.
So here’s the thing – I’m posting the deck, but I’m warning that a) it’s really difficult to play optimally, especially during your Combo turn, where you can easily play 15+ cards in a single turn. And b) that its current win rate is very low. So play it at your own risk!
This face hunter deck certainly continues a long legacy of smashing face. But certainly susceptible to the druid and warlock QLs. I’ve had alot of success against the Mage QL.
So save me the test – does aimed shot stack on your hero power? I think the answer is yes but want to be sure.
gadgetzan is unplayable in standard///
confusing
also title is about best decks
but u post a 42% win rate deck
pfff
it’s only a 42% win rate deck for people who don’t understand how the Core Set works
pfff
when u copy deck its red idk why. u should add it manually
i mean gadgetzan
pff f
for god sake this is about wild or ..?
I honestly hope to see the meta evolve or even some adjustments from the devs soon.
Allmost all decks are very un fun to play against due to solitaire nature of majority of the decks. When playing card games, I want my decisions to matter.
In wild my favorite to play is odd questline hunter. Through together my own version and it works well. All you need is cheap damage spells a few cards that draws. Matches often end between 6-7 round, sometimes 5 or 8. Can easily take down warlock questline that is my third favorite (of the decks I have had a chance to try). My second favorite is boar deathrattle priest, but that one needs more luck on the draw to be good. I also seen a good shaman questline with aggressive damage spells, and a druid questline.
Wild has become way more aggressive now. Not had one game that has gone upp to 9 mana I think. Good bye all high cost cards. *sadface
I like it though many new and fun decks, but I hope it will become a bit more balanced so you at least can use 10 cost cards again in the future.
Needless to say that everyone has realized that Priest and Warrior quest can take very long to complete before any aggro deck ruins your game. How is it acceptable when every class other than Priest can easily finished their quest as early as turn 5 or 6.
I don’t know about Shaman, since I never even saw anyone playing a quest Shaman since release.
I had Quest Warrior, 0-5 losses. Quest Priest 1-7 losses. (Single win actually vs an even slow Priest Control).
Conclusion, Control deck still not gonna be popular for yet another expansion. (For me at least).
I am trying a control Priest and a control Warlock with the Watch Post package. The 4-mana Watch Post works pretty well against spell-heavy decks and Robes of Protection makes minions untargetable so if they can’t finish you with face damage you kill them on your turn with a buffed board. Still pretty inconsistent though, but at least is somewhat fun to play.
Honestly I’m also one of those (I think many people) who really underestimated basically all the quests. I thought that the Mage quest would be difficult to complete, but it’s really quite easy and the the deck is very strong.
But I think the most generally underated quest was Demon Hunter – you didn’t mention the deck here, but I think it is actually a thing – it won’t be the best deck in the meta, but it’s certainly much easier to complete the quest than many people thought and it really works