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Hearthstone TITANS Meta A Week Later, Best Decks to Play In Standard

By: Stonekeep - - Updated:

Note: This article was written BEFORE today’s nerf patch. While the changes aren’t major, they will most likely impact Rainbow Mage’s and Mech Rogue’s performance, so they might no longer be as good as painted in this article. I think that both decks should still be viable, but we’ll probably need a few more days to find out.

It’s been a week since TITANS expansion was released. Subjectively, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Even though it’s not perfectly balanced (far from it), it excelled at creating completely new archetypes. Many expansions, especially middle sets of the year, don’t change the meta enough. In the case of TITANS, most of the strongest decks so far are brand-new builds that weren’t playable in any shape or form before it. That makes the expansion feel fresh and varied instead of being simply iterative.

In this article, I will take a closer look at the TITANS meta so far – both on the decks that perform well and on the not-so-successful (or straight-up failed) experiments.

But first, we need to address an elephant in the room. One class has been dominating the meta before the expansion and it’s still performing probably better than it should…

Hunter is Still on The Top

XL Hound Hunter – #48 Legend (Lee1k) – TITANS

Deck Import

It wasn’t really a big surprise. Hound Hunter was the strongest deck before TITANS release, by a pretty significant margin. Even if the class didn’t get a single strong card, it would still probably be viable. But it did get strong cards, a few of them in fact. Maybe most importantly, Hunter’s Titan (Aggramar, the Avenger is performing very well). Many people called it the weakest one before release, and I never understood why. For Hunter, more face damage = more better, and Aggramas can deal tons of face damage (on top of some utility). Other than the Titan, Awakening Tremors has turned out to be a solid card (1 mana 4/1’s are squishy, but if your opponent can’t deal with them, they pack a real punch) and Always a Bigger Jormungar has insane combo with Hollow Hound. Buffing it to 5 attack and dealing trample damage on cleave is a really solid combo. Imagine hitting 3x 2/2 minion – that’s a 9 extra face damage on top of clearing them and healing for 15. Yes, it’s very good.

Secret Arcane Hunter – Top 100 Legend (JimmyPepz) – TITANS

Deck Import

But the other Hunter deck that popped up is a much bigger surprise than the already established Hound version. As it turns out, Hunter has reached the critical amount of Secrets and Secret synergies in Standard for the deck to finally be good after a long break. That’s mostly thanks to Titanforged Traps as an easy way to put extra Secrets on the board and Starstrung Bow as an insane pay-off. While you will rarely make it cost 0, even paying 2-3 mana for a 6/2 weapon is quite insane. You can deal a lot of extra face damage this way. Interestingly enough, the deck is often mixed with Arcane package, and… it works? We still need more testing, of course, but the best builds are running the Arcane package with Halduron Brightwing, Eversong Portal, and so on. Somehow the deck is performing very well – who would have thought?

And yet, it’s still not the biggest surprise…

Biggest Surprise of The Expansion?

Most of the pro players weren’t really happy with Rogue’s toolkit for this expansion. It won’t work, cards are too slow, not impactful enough and so on. But as it turned out, Mech Rogue is one of the strongest decks in the game right now. The deck can get some insane early game tempo and it can keep up in the mid/late game thanks to Lab Constructor shenanigans. We have two basic Mech Rogue variants, and I’ll start with the better one.

Mech Rogue – #121 Legend (Ike) – TITANS

Deck Import

The first version of Mech Rogue goes all-in on Mech synergies and is extremely tempo-oriented. You have a few ways of winning. The most simple one is sticking a Mech and then Magnetizing into it multiple times (preferably with Invent-o-matic on the board). If your opponent has no way to answer your big threat, you pretty much win – yo can keep Magnetizing and adding extra effects/more damage to your minion. The second option is through Mimiron, the Mastermind. The card works extremely well with cheap Mechs. The inventions you gain are quite powerful for their mana cost and can give you more tempo, burn damage, or let you deal with your opponent’s big threats. There’s also a Stealth invention that is particularly useful. If you stick it to Mimiron himself, you’re nearly guaranteed that he will live and you can keep getting more inventions. And finally, there’s Lab Constructor. You have two choices here – you can Forge it and stick it to a big minion you’re already forging, or play it without Forge and just Magnetize stuff onto it. Stealth part is especially useful here – your opponent needs to clear it ASAP.

Big Mech Rogue – TITANS

Deck Import

The other version is worse in terms of win rate, but it “feels” way more powerful when you actually pull off the combo (which isn’t THAT hard). The idea here is that you run Scourge Illusionist with Containment Unit being your only Deathrattle minion, so you can draw a 4 mana version of it. Then you can play an 8 mana Lab Constructor + Containment Unit combo and keep duplicating it. Just a single copy is often enough to win the game through tempo, but then it can just keep duplicating if not fully dealt with. Of course, 8 mana is still a lot, but you rarely play the combo for that much. You have Preparation + Serrated Bone Spike combo to shave off 2 mana cost, and potentially Coins from Coppertail Snoop or 1 extra mana discount from Frequency Oscillator you set up a turn earlier. So in practice, you can often pull the combo off around Turn 5-6. Of course, while that combo is the biggest difference between the builds, this one can also go for the tempo route and win this way. In many games you just draw the right hand and win that way.

As you can see, Mech Rogue has a lot of different win conditions and it’s stronger than it might look at first glance.

OTK Duo – Mage & Shaman

I don’t remember the last Hearthstone expansion that was so combo-focused. Nature Overload Shaman and Rainbow Mage are some of the best and most popular decks in the game right now at higher ranks (at lower ranks Mage is still present, but Shaman pretty much isn’t). And both aim to win the game by stalling the game and then OTKing the opponent.

Rainbow Mage – #1 Legend (PocketTrain) – TITANS

Deck Import

Let’s start with Mage, which is probably the stronger deck of the two. The goal here is to utilize the new Spell School package with Sif. She starts with +1 Spell Damage and gains extra point for each Spell School you played this game. You only realistically play 3-4 Spell Schools in the deck itself, which is already pretty decent, but rarely enough to OTK given her mana cost. However, thanks to Discovery of Magic and Prismatic Elemental, you can easily fill the gaps. While you rarely end up with ALL of the Spell Schools, getting to 6 should be quite easy. Let’s say that you cast 6 – now you have a 6 mana minion with +7 Spell Damage. Arcane Bolts deal 10 damage each. Flame Geyser is 9 damage. Forged Molten Rune is 20. In most of the matchups, you don’t need any discounts to pull off the OTK, but in case you do – you can always run Lady Naz'jar and cast an Arcane Spell before playing her. This reduces the cost of all spells in your hand by 1. So you could – for example – play Sif + Reverberations for +14 Spell Damage and follow it up with a couple of burn spells. That’s overkill, sure, but you might need that against Warriors or Priests. Many builds also run the second Spell School pay-off card – Elemental Inspiration. While not as useful against Control decks (they deal with it quite easily since you rarely have big boards they need to remove earlier), summoning a few 4/5’s with extra effects is often enough to win against a faster deck.

Nature Overload Shaman – #1 Legend (PocketTrain) – TITANS

Deck Import

And now Shaman – the basic idea behind the deck is actually quite similar. Your goal is to get a lot of extra Spell Damage and then throw burn spells at your opponent. However, the way you get to that is different. For Shaman, what you want is Bioluminescence. In order for it to be useful, you want a wide board. There’s still not a single “best” way to do it, players are testing different options. So far the most prominent ones include Totemic Evidence (4 minions for 1 mana), Schooling (worse for your OTK turn, but can come in handy earlier and save your skin vs faster decks) and Tour Guide. Early builds also used Champion of Storms which – don’t get me wrong – is a great card in Nature Shaman, just a bit too expensive if you’re going for the OTK. Then the idea is to set up your combo a turn earlier with Flash of Lightning (or two) and go all in. Fill the board, play Bioluminescence (or two) and start flinging damage spells – Lightning Bolt, Overdraft and Crash of Thunder. You also have Lightning Reflexes which is very likely to get you even more damage spells.

As you can see, both of those decks have quite similar play styles. I’d say that Shaman is more volatile – it doesn’t need as much of a setup and can often pull the combo off earlier, but it’s also more susceptible to getting rushed down. One big advantage is that Shaman’s combo is resistant to Dirty Rat because it doesn’t involve any minions. But a big advantage of Mage is that the deck can win without OTK – an early Cosmic Keyboard into a few spells into Elemental Inspiration to summon 4/5’s can be enough to win with tempo. We’ll see which deck turns out to be more powerful in the long run (if either), but so far both are promising.

Slow Warlock is Finally Viable?

This is something I’m personally incredibly happy about. Ever since the early days of Hearthstone, I had two favorite archetypes – Ramp Druid and slow Warlock decks (Control, Handlock). The latter haven’t been viable for a really, really long time, ever since Questline build was gutted (rightfully so I might add, but it still hurt me personally). Sure, we had the Abyssal Curse package, but it was only really viable when combined with Imps, and I don’t particularly like Imp Warlock. But things have finally changed in TITANS. Warlock has not one, but TWO slow builds that seem viable. Of course, not Tier 1 or anything, but they are both currently sitting comfortably above 50% win rate mark, in the middle of Tier 2. And that’s a win in my book.

Control Warlock – #75 Legend (Gaboumme) – TITANS

Deck Import

First let’s start with Control Warlock, Big Warlock, Thaddius Warlock, or however you might want to call it. It was one of the most popular decks on Day 1 of the expansion, but it pretty quickly fell out of favor. I’m honestly not sure why, since it’s still a solid option. The idea here is to stall the game during the first few turns, try to remove your opponent’s early threats, and then take off in the mid game. You have a few ways of doing so. The simplest one is Amorphous Slime discarding either Thaddius, Monstrosity or Flesh Behemoth and cheating it out on the board right after. Thaddius is especially powerful if you’re on the “odd” cost, since you can play a 1 mana Sargeras, the Destroyer and Dar'Khan Drathir. That often seals the game right away. But of course, it’s not always that easy. Your other option is Loken, Jailer of Yogg-Saron hitting one of the big minions (again, Thaddius is your best option, but Sargeras is also really good) and then you duplicating it with Forge of Wills. And – while this is more RNG – if you play Symphony of Sins on T5 and get “draw your highest cost minion and reduce its cost by 6” option, yeah. Drawing Thaddius that way guarantees that you will have enough mana to play him + take advantage of his effect immediately. That’s really strong. And ultimately – if those don’t work, you always have a long-term game plan with Sargeras. If you play him and take the +2 Health and Taunt option, for the rest of the game, you summon 2x 3/4 with Taunt every turn. Yes, that’s not A LOT at first, but it really adds up. If you play vs a faster deck they will have way harder time dealing any face damage to you and if you don’t die immediately, you probably won the game. And against other slow decks, you will eventually run them out of resources and clears… unless you run out of cards first yourself. It’s not a guaranteed win, but it gives you a fair fighting chance if your mid game swing plans don’t work out.

Abysal Curse Warlock – #106 Legend (NoHandsGamer) – TITANS

Deck Import

And then there’s Abyssal Curse Warlock. It’s not a new deck, but it finally feels viable with the new options. It doesn’t have the same crazy swings the previous one has, but instead it has consistency. Your Curses are a real win condition – they start slowly, but once they stack up to 6+ damage, you can really put your opponent in a lot of pain. The biggest difficulty of playing a full Curse Warlock deck previously was that your slower opponents could just play around it. If they didn’t play any cards and left their hand full, you couldn’t curse them. That’s why the deck was mostly played with Imp Package – you also put pressure on the board so they HAD to play cards. I feel like in the current build, Sargeras plays the same role. If you play him and constantly put threats on the board – if your opponent plays around curses by not doing anything, they will have a hard time removing your 3/4’s. And if they start removing them, they often won’t be able to keep their hand full again. I feel like there’s still some work to be done on this build, but it definitely has some potential.

Pure Paladin – Pretty Much The Same Old

Pure Dude Paladin – #41 Legend (WuLing) – TITANS

Deck Import

I’ll pretty much skip this section because if you played the game over the last few months, you probably know this deck. Pure Paladin was one of the strongest and most popular builds throughout Festival of Legend, and it’s still great now. The “best” part is that you can play a build from the last expansion, card for card, and it will still work fine. Is it optimal? Maybe not, but it works.

But even if you optimize it for the new expansion, it’s still pretty much the same deck. You just add Crusader Aura (technically not a new expansion card, but it was released in Patch 27.0) and Amitus, the Peacekeeper and you’re done. You could technically add one Astral Serpent – extra draw and it works nicely with The Purator too, but it’s not necessary. This version prefers the “Dude” package since it works very well with both Amitus and Crusader Aura. But other than that, your gameplay and gameplan remain the same. You just trade burst from Horn of the Windlord to a board-based burst from multiple small minions (including Silver Hand Recruits) combined with Aura and Amitus.

Other Contenders

In this category, I will put the rest of the decks that perform quite okay but don’t really stand out in any way (mostly low Tier 2 and high Tier 3 decks). Those can really go either way – they might drop down even further and be forgotten in a week, or maybe raise up after a balance patch and become one of the biggest forces in the meta. As of right now, they are within the ~49-50% win rate range of almost good enough, but not there yet.

XL Control Priest – #28 Legend (Zetalot) – TITANS

Deck Import

Control Priest is, well, Control Priest. You either love it or hate it. The deck has got some cool new cards (especially Aman'Thul), and it’s really good IN THEORY, but it’s simply not the best pick in the current meta. When Rainbow Mage and Nature Shaman are so popular at high ranks, and both are bad matchups, it’s hard for Priest to get a positive win rate. If you add the fact that it doesn’t deal with current Hunters that well… yeah. It dominates Mech Rogue and other, less popular matchups like Treant Druid. It’s also very solid vs Control Warlock and Plague/Blood DK. But that’s simply not enough right now. Meta needs to change for Control Priest to really dominate.

Relic Demon Hunter – #2 Legend (ProYun) – TITANS

Deck Import

Then we have Relic Demon Hunter – another mid deck. The new Legendaries – Jotun, the Eternal and Argus, the Emerald Star are both great. Especially Jotun, since it gives you free casts of your relic when you draw them. Not only it activates their effect, which is great, it also bumps the future Relics. For example, drawing Relic of Phantasms in the late game to summon 2x 10/10 your opponent has to deal with is great considering that you have another cast waiting in your hand. Other new additions are purely optional and I would actually advise against using Speaker Stomper from the deck list above unless you’re in Diamond or Legend (because that’s when the OTK Mage/Shaman really start showing up and this tech is against them). The deck is close to 50% win rate, but its biggest downside is the Hound Hunter matchup. It’s not an auto-loss by any means, but it’s just not good, sitting around 40/60 in favor of Hunter. If Relic DH was better into Hunter, I could see it getting into high Tier 2 range.

XL Blood Control Death Knight – #163 Legend (Vegetariamon) – TITANS

Deck Import

Unlike Control Priest, Blood DK doesn’t suffer from the OTK matchups as hard, probably due to the fact that it can play much more proactively and actually put pressure on those, as opposed to Priest who usually sits back and lets them do whatever they want. Death Knight can also potentially gain a lot of extra life with Vampiric Blood so it might be harder for those decks to kill them in one go (and if they don’t, DK heals back up). However, the deck has its own problems. Other than The Primus, DK didn’t really get anything. Some builds also run new Neutrals such as Ignis, the Eternal Flame or Watcher of the Sun – solid cards, but they don’t really push the deck into Tier 1 range. And sure, Primus is amazing, but it’s only one card. The deck is also pretty weak vs Hound Hunter (can’t keep up with the constant pressure) and slow Warlocks (Soulstealer deals with big boards but it’s Turn 8, before that DK might not have an answer to Thaddius or 11/11 Giant with Rush, curses also work pretty well vs DK). Ultimately, it’s not a bad deck, but you simply have better options.

Treant Druid – Feno – TITANS (Updated)

Deck Import

We haven’t had an aggressive/token-oriented Druid deck in a while, but things have changed in TITANS. Treants were one of the main focus of the expansion for Druid and they… work? Well, maybe not to the extent that some people hoped, but it’s a decent deck. The main idea is to either combine both Choose One effects of your strongest cards – Ancient of Growth and Drum Circle. The first one is 4x 5/5 minion for 7 mana (3 of which have Taunt), and the second one is 5x 4/6 minion with Taunt. They’re both very strong board refills. And to combine the effects, you use either a Forged Embrace of Nature or Disciple of Eonar. If, on top of the other plays, you add 0 mana Cultivation you can see how quickly things can get out of control. Of course, one of the biggest downsides is that Treant Druid requires board to function – it can’t do anything from behind. If your opponent has enough clears or stays ahead on board, the deck is quite useless.

Mech Paladin – #93 Legend (Helve187) – TITANS

Deck Import

And finally – Mech Paladin. It’s another decent deck in the current meta. Or – if you played against it when it drew perfectly and popped off – INSANE DECK. Yes, Mech Paladin is one of the most polarizing decks. If they get an early Radar Detector for a hand full of Mechs, then play Inventor's Aura (or two) and flood the board, then follow it up with Bubblebot and Crusader Aura (or both)… yeah. I had some games against Mech Paladin where I lost on Turn 4-5 against a full board of buffed Mechs and I couldn’t do anything. On the other hand, the deck has some… less spectacular matches. If you don’t draw your Radar Detector or Inventor’s Aura, you’re really, really slow. So slow in fact that even Control decks can outtempo you, and that’s not good. The deck also shares one big downside of Treant Druid – it needs board to do anything. If your opponent is constantly clearing your Mechs (either with removals or by staying ahead on board and keeping yours in check), you can’t really do anything. Your Magnetize cards are bad, your Bubblebot is bad, your Crusader Aura is bad, your Ini is bad (if you play her) and so on. That’s why the deck sits close to 50% win rate – you can definitely make it work and it feels incredibly powerful in some games, but then you have games where you draw poorly or face a slow deck with the right removals and… you’re pretty much useless.

What About Others?

Simple – they aren’t viable right now. Two of the biggest letdowns of the expansion are Odyn Warrior and Plague Death Knight. Both of them have shown some promise during theorycrafting event and Day 1-2 of the expansion, but it has quickly turned out that they simply aren’t good enough. And while Plague DK is on the verge of being playable – a couple of buffs might get it there – I honestly don’t know what could be done to bring Warrior back. Don’t get me wrong, Odyn, Prime Designate is a GREAT win condition – but the rest of the deck simply isn’t on the same level. You need to survive until Turn 8 and then spend a whole turn developing an 8/8 with no immediate impact. That’s way too much for Warrior, whose Control toolkit is – frankly – quite weak right now. Bladestorm was a good card back in 2020, but against what faster decks are putting out right now, it simply won’t suffice. The new Trial by Fire is also great, but one mana too expensive. And so on, and so on. I honestly think that Blizzard would need to bring back Shield Shatter to Warrior’s Core in order to make the deck viable (that would make a big difference because you could realistically clear the board AND play Odyn on the same turn if you had some Armor from previous turns).

Other decks that did see some play during early days but ultimately failed include Ramp Druid, Automaton Priest and Earthen Paladin. They simply aren’t strong enough in the current meta and don’t think that buffing them would change anything. Maybe adding more support in the mini-set would, but I’m not sure about that.

Overall, the meta (high Diamond and Legend, can’t speak about lower ranks) is quite enjoyable in my opinion, but it heavily depends on your tolerance for combo decks. Since we didn’t have many of those in recent expansions, I’m not too annoyed by them yet, but it’s hard to say how it’s going to look in the long run. Because yes – sometimes winning on the board and having full health, then suddenly losing to OTK can feel bad, so those decks can get old pretty quickly. But so far, for me, TITANS has been the most enjoyable expansion launch in a while (I think since Voyage to the Sunken City).

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

4 Comments

  1. Vincent
    August 9, 2023 at 2:15 PM

    Easy Legend with XL Blood DK. I played last night & tonight, and went from Diamond 5 to Legend with a whopping 83% winrate (19-4). Except for Warlock (1-1), I had a positive matchup against all other classes. I’ll post the deck on this site.

  2. Drfury
    August 9, 2023 at 10:06 AM

    I have made an easy charge to Legend with just one card: Theotar the mad duke. Remove the bad combo piece from hand and watch your opponents resign. Combine it in a deck with lots of early removal (DK for instance).

    As long as people are completely focused on OTKs and pure combos, this works easy. Won’t for the entire meta, but take advantage now.

  3. JoyDivision
    August 9, 2023 at 12:19 AM

    Nice article, even though nerfs appeared.

    One thing: There isn’t a single copy of ‘Always a Bigger Jormungar’ in the Hound Hunter list!?

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      August 9, 2023 at 12:47 PM

      Interestingly enough, some of the best-performing builds on HSReplay only run a single copy or no copies of AABJ at all! I was also surprised. I thought that it’s going to be a staple.