Iksar Shares Current Meta Stats For Rank 3 – Legend, Talks About Possibly Reverting Nerfs for Wild Cards

Interesting! It’s the second time Game Designer Dean “Iksar” Ayala has shared some stats on the current meta. While previous ones was just a short Tweet, this one he went deeper into it and has showcased meta changes at the higher ranks from the last few days.

You can find the full post below, but here are a few of the main takeaways:

• Top 1% of the playerbase is roughly Rank 3 to Legend. While similar stats were shared a while ago, they were from the Doom in the Tomb meta, so might have been skewed a bit. Which means that if you’re at R3 or higher – congratulations, you’re in top 1%!
• Meta is changing daily. While it’s not like decks completely disappear overnight, like they often do around expansion launches, Galakrond’s Awakening was enough to shake up the meta.
• The meta is different at higher and lower ranks. This is nothing new – it’s usually the case to some extent, but most of the time after a while the higher rank meta gets adapted at lower ranks too.
• Embiggen Druid is “only” the fourth best deck at lower ranks, and just above average at the higher ranks, despite being one of the most popular builds.
• There are currently no balance updates planned, but they will go back to that in a few weeks (after Galakrond’s Awakening meta has fully stabilized).
• In Battlegrounds, Floating Watcher nerf goes out today, but there’s a larger scale update planned for the near future.
• They’re thinking about reverting some of the nerfs of the cards that rotate out to Wild – so Year of the Raven (2018) cards. Iksar didn’t specify WHICH cards they’re looking at, but Giggling Inventor, Dr. Boom, Mad Genius and Raiding Party are some of the most prominent examples of nerfs from that year. And Dr. Boom is the most likely candidate, since it was never too strong at 7 mana in Wild.

Check out the full post below.

Hey everyone! I spent some time today going through community feedback and interntal statistics for the Standard metagame. Wanted to share some thoughts on where we are now and where we might be headed in the near future.

Still seeing healthy fluctuation in terms of deck power levels every day. Here are some metrics for the best decks over the last four days. Data represents top 1% of players, which is approximately Rank 3 to Legend.

Feb 8

• Quest Hunter – 55.0%
• Aggro Warrior – 54.5%
• Galakrond Warrior – 54.0%
• Highlander Hunter – 53.7%
• Mech Paladin – 52.9%

Feb 9

• Quest Hunter – 54.2%
• Galakrond Warrior – 54.0%
• Highlander Hunter – 53.9%
• Rezz Priest – 53.6%
• Galakrond Rogue – 53.0%

Feb 10

• Galakrond Warrior – 55.0%
• Mech Paladin – 53.7%
• Rezz Priest – 53.3%
• Quest Hunter – 53.1%
• Highlander Hunter – 52.9%

Feb 11

• Combo Priest – 55.4%
• Galakrond Warrior – 54.3%
• Dragon Hunter – 54.1%
• Mech Paladin – 53.9%
• Quest Druid – 53.7%

Other Notes:

Aggro Shaman is performing very well, though the game sample sizes aren’t quite high enough to be able to say for sure. On 2/10, it was actually the highest win-rate deck at 55.9%. The deck has fluctuated between around 15th all the way to 1st so we imagine it’s true power level in the current meta lies somewhere in between.

Embiggen Druid continues to have a high population despite performing just above average. As far as individual card power goes, it might make more sense to start calling this deck ‘Strength in Numbers Druid’ :).

The meta for lower rank players looks quite a bit different in roughly the same time period.

Here are the current top 5 decks for Ranks 10-15.

• Mech Paladin
• Face Hunter
• Token Druid
• Embiggen Druid
• Highlander Hunter

It’s normal for metas to look differently at different levels of play, but over time we usually see a trickle down effect from the higher level of play. That is to say that the meta above will probably look closer to the top 1% meta today given enough time.

We don’t have any plans for changes on the immediate horizon, but we plan to circle back in a few weeks to see if there are any changes we want to make as a result of Galakrond’s Awakening cards or changes that might be necessary looking forward into the next expansion.

For Battlegrounds, we have a change for Floating Watcher that is planned to go out tomorrow and a larger scale update planned in the near future.

For Wild, we’re looking at some of the nerfs we made to cards that rotate into Wild with the next expansion and seeing if we want to revert any of them. Will have more updates on that soon ™. Good luck and have fun!

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