We are one week into Perils in Paradise, and the fight is on! Compared to day one of the expansion, some top contenders have solidified their place, some newcomers have risen, and some have proven to be insufficient for the new meta. But who are the winners and who are the losers? Let’s take a look at the best decks after the first week of Perils in Paradise! These decks are roughly in order of performance, from best to worst.
Pirate Shaman
Pirate Shaman has solidified its position on the ladder and now looks like the stronger of the two Pirate decks ahead of Demon Hunter. Strong matchups against both Combo Druid and Unkilliax Control Warrior elevate Shaman into a wonderful position in the meta. The top list is still one of the competing lists from the first day, the one focused on getting attack buffs from your Pirates and using Horn of the Windlord to smack your foes.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Posted By:
10,200
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
Legendary cards do a lot of work in this one. Zilliax Deluxe 3000 is perfect, as always. Gorgonzormu is a tremendous asset for F2P players as the free Legendary from the Rewards Track – perhaps the best free Legendary ever. Finally, Golganneth, the Thunderer brings incredible flexibility to the deck, countering enemy Pirates and adding more power to push through, depending on what is needed the most.
The Paladin Pair: Flood Paladin and Handbuff Paladin
OTK Paladin has failed. It is too vulnerable and the combo does not have enough power behind it. Therefore, Paladin turns its eyes back to its old archetypes and finds them extremely strong still. To their credit, Flood Paladin and Handbuff Paladin use one new card each. They have adapted to the new expansion!
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 9,240
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
The new card in Flood Paladin is none other than Gorgonzormu – yes, the strongest free Legendary making another appearance. The combination of Showdown! (or Gorgonzormu‘s Cheese), Zilliax Deluxe 3000, Sea Giant, and Prismatic Beam is still powerful, especially so with all the Pirates roaming the land. Flood Paladin is one of the few decks that can openly challenge Pirate Shaman. It is not quite as strong against Control Warrior, which keeps it in check.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 11,040
Zilliax: Power Module + Twin Module
Handbuff Paladin’s new card is Sanc'Azel. In its Location form, it gives a friendly minion as much attack as Sanc'Azel itself has. This is a wonderful fit for a handbuff deck, although the card is slow enough that it is not mandatory for the deck to function.
Handbuff Paladin is THE counter for Combo Druid, sporting win rates above 70% against the deck (in part thanks to the Customs Enforcer tech). However, its performance against Control Warrior is much weaker, as it has trouble going under the Warrior, and it has no good way to get through the wall of Zilliaxes in the late game.
Flood Paladin is more versatile, as it can always rely on speed if all else fails. Handbuff Paladin is more polarized, a precision weapon to take down Combo Druids. With Druid popularity speeding up recently, Handbuff Paladin is still a good deck to keep in mind.
Zarimi Priest
Zarimi Priest has been refined further since the day-one list I showcased at the start of the expansion. There are still weaker lists around, but the best list is downright scary. In addition to Pirate Shaman, Zarimi Priest is a rare deck that can take on both Combo Druid and Control Warrior. Pain Warlock and Pirate Demon Hunter are its weakest matchups, but this is a real hidden gem of the ladder.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Posted By:
- 13,500
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
The Druidic Duo: Combo Druid and Dragon Druid
Combo Druid is currently the most popular deck in Legend, and it is a strong deck. It did not look like much on the first day, but as the list has been refined and gained more survivability, it can now get to its damage turn more reliably. And what a damage turn it is! This list was built a couple of days into the expansion, and it has been growing in popularity ever since.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 6,160
Concierge makes Seabreeze Chalice and Go with the Flow cost 0, and when you can make more copies of Seabreeze Chalice and get a whole bunch of Spell Damage, you can blast away through vast quantities of Health.
Druid can also surprise you, though. While Dragon Druid is an old archetype, it has found some new life in Perils in Paradise with the addition of the unkilliax package of Virus/Perfect Zilliax and Hydration Station.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 12,100
Zilliax: Virus Module + Perfect Module
What makes this deck more dangerous is how it has matchups that are the complete opposite of Combo Druid. Handbuff Paladin, for example, is great against Combo Druid, but struggles against Dragon Druid’s Taunt minions.
Rainbow Death Knight
The closest you can get to a traditional midrange deck experience on the ladder right now Rainbow Death Knight. Ironically, most of the Rainbow Death Knight builds no longer run Climactic Necrotic Explosion, the card that started the entire archetype. At 10 mana, it is just too slow.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Posted By:
- 16,200
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Perfect Module
The deck has a new, faster opener thanks to Dreadhound Handler, and Gorgonzormu also makes another appearance with its strong board-flooding and corpse-generation capabilities. Corpsicle provides you with all the direct damage you need, while Threads of Despair help you to fight against Pirates, who could otherwise overwhelm you.
Control Warrior feat. Unkilliax
Warrior is the only control deck in the current meta. The most successful Warrior archetype is the Unkilliax Control Warrior, which can resummon Zilliax many, many times, forming an impassable wall that poisons anything it touches.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 14,400
Zilliax: Virus Module + Perfect Module
This version of the deck can go to infinity and beyond with the help of Photographer Fizzle and Zola the Gorgon. Any deck that wants to beat it in the slow game needs an answer to Zilliax that is resurrected over and over again. This is the ultimate control deck. The real answer is to not go for a long game and either end the game before Hydration Station can be played or end the game with big enough of a combo that goes through taunt minions.
There is also a smaller contingent of Reno Warriors on the ladder, but they are struggling to win half of their games. While Reno Warrior can take on Zilliax with Deepminer Brann and Boomboss Tho'grun, it lacks the consistency in early defense to reliably beat aggro decks.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 17,340
Pain Warlock
Pain Warlock continues with its day-one build. The archetype is fairly balanced, but it has two nightmare matchups: Flood Paladin and Elemental Mage. Flood Paladin is not super popular yet, but it has been going up on daily basis, which bodes ill for Pain Warlock in the medium term.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 11,280
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
Pirate Demon Hunter
Pirate Demon Hunter was the tyrant of the pre-release and one of the top decks of the first day. Its performance fell for the first few days as other decks were getting refined, and has since stabilized at a fairly good level. It is by no means oppressive, maybe not even quite top-tier, but it can definitely climb the ladder and is here to stay. Much like Hearthstone, you know.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Posted By:
- 8,040
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
This day-one deck list still looks good. There is also an attempt to use the Priest Tourist in the deck by removing Battlefiend, Illidari Studies, and Going Down Swinging for Acupuncture, Brain Masseuse, and Aranna, Thrill Seeker, but that looks like a slightly weaker variant with no real gains. You can give it a try if you happen to have Aranna, but Aranna does not look worth crafting.
Elemental Power: Elemental Mage, Elemental Rogue, and Elemental Shaman
Elemental decks have long been fairly straightforward tribal decks. For the most part, this remains true in Perils in Paradise. You want to play an Elemental each turn for the tribal synergy, which greatly limits your options. Rogue is a bit more of a trickster than the others, but even Rogue cannot escape the need to play Elementals to power up Lamplighter. Lamplighter is largely the reason Elemental decks have been doing so well in Perils in Paradise, but we are already starting to see the limits of their performance.
All three main Elemental decks are still perfectly capable of climbing the ladder, but their performance has been in a slow decline throughout the week. Elemental Mage looks like the strongest one, followed by Elemental Rogue, with Elemental Shaman a bit more behind the other two.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 1,560
Mage is a very traditional, you-see-what-you-get type of Elemental deck, now just powered up by the presence of Lamplighter. Sadly, Perils in Paradise looks bleak for Mage, so this is pretty much the only competitive Mage deck on the ladder right now. That is not promising for the class, as the future viability of Elemental decks is in doubt as other decks get more refined.
Elemental Rogue, on the other hand, is not your typical Elemental deck. It still cannot escape the need to play Elementals, but all other Elementals are there just to support Lamplighter, which will be bounced as needed to win the game. The Perils in Paradise Rogue set also looks quite thin, and this is the best Rogue has for the ladder now.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Posted By:
- 7,440
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Perfect Module
Finally, there is Elemental Shaman. This is still the same list I showcased after the first day. With Pirate Shaman performing better and being a newer archetype, it is the Shaman deck that is mostly getting refined right now. Elemental decks also have limited upside for refinement as you need to play Elementals every turn.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 9,120
Beast Token Hunter
To be honest, Hunter sees so little play on the ladder right now that it is hard to determine whether it has any decks worth playing. Secret Hunter can still bring some results, and then there is this new Best Token Hunter deck that looks like the best Hunter deck so far in Perils in Paradise:
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-124
- Player:
- 9,400
Zilliax: Ticking Module + Pylon Module
You can try it out and add some more numbers to the Hunter stats, so we can see if it can perform or not. Even if it can, Hunter is one of the weakest classes in the game right now.
The Best Decks in Perils in Paradise
To sum up all of the above, a rough list of the top-10 decks right now would be:
- Pirate Shaman
- Flood Paladin
- Handbuff Paladin
- Zarimi Priest
- Combo Druid
- Rainbow Death Knight
- Dragon Druid
- Control Warrior
- Pain Warlock
- Pirate Demon Hunter
From a variety point of view, it has been a pretty good meta so far. Almost all classes have a deck that can reach a 50% win rate. Hunter, Rogue, and Mage are the most concerning ones, but there is some hope for all of them still. We have aggro decks, midrange decks, combo decks, and even a control deck in the form of Warrior, so all main deck archetypes are represented in the meta.
How strong is the new expansion? Out of the top-10 decks, four are defined by the new expansion, whereas the remaining six all use some cards from it. This is lower than average power level: more old decks survived with minor changes than usual. However, the new expansion clearly had an effect as it brought multiple completely new archetypes to the top and was able to contribute to all existing decks as well.
How fun is the new expansion? Now, that is the most difficult question. There are lots of explosive finishers in the current meta. Druid OTK, Pirates, Lamplighter… When the key turn arrives, there is not much you can do, you need to prevent the opponent from getting there. Or figure out a way to get there if you’re playing one of those decks yourself. A wall of Unkilliax can likewise end the game, even if it does not reduce your Health to zero at once. Such explosive turns are what Blizzard is trying to do with Hearthstone now, so from that perspective, they have succeeded. But whether players appreciate them is another story.
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
Remember the days when Savage Roar + Force of Nature was considered toxic… 14 damage in 1 turn across 2 cards and 8 mana…
Blizzard said the deck wasn’t good for the game because there was nothing you could do about it, it wasn’t interactive and was ruining the game…
Step forward to 2024… decks that do 30+ damage in one turn, that your opponent can’t interact with, is literally in the Hearthstone mission statement going forward.
Sad…
Facing turn 5 Unkilliax in 75% of my matches is the worst feeling I’ve ever had in Hearthstone in 9+ years
That’s because you aren’t playing the OTK decks.
Blizzard isn’t interested in YOU having fun, they want the people who cash out of expensive decks to have the fun
That’s not true. I have enough dust to craft any meta deck, but either way I am forced to play against Virus Warrior 3 out of every 4 games. I realize fun is subjective, but repetition is objectively boring.
The meta is pretty balanced. The ability to play with cards from 2 classes is cool. And yet I can’t say I’m having a good time. OTK druid, unkillax and Lamblighter, explosive rounds are not my cup of tea. But if you nerf those cards, we go back to the meta before the expansion.
tank i like perils,very useful analysis