Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – TITANS (Week 2) – August 2023

Welcome to the first deck roundup of TITANS expansion! It’s been out for nearly 2 weeks now, and we already had a minor balance patch, although I would expect another one soon. While I’m enjoying the current meta, some decks – Hunters in particular – are really out of control. Hound Hunter is now sitting at ~57% win rate in Diamond-Legend. Secret Hunter is just a bit below it, at 55.5%. Both of them are basically Tier 0 material. Then we have a few decks in the 52-54% range – Pure Paladin, Treant Druid, Mech Rogues, Control Warlock. I would put them in “Tier 1” if Hunters are Tier 0. Treant Druids in particular are gaining momentum – people caught onto the build just a few days ago and it’s one of the most popular and highest win rate decks in the game right now. I played it a bit and it feels really strong. While it crumbles under the early pressure, if it survive until Turn 6-7, combining both options of Drum Circle is incredibly powerful. Then we have the rest of the meta again a few % below – around 49-51%. That’s the current “Tier 2” (would be mostly Tier 3 if not for the fact that Hunters get their own Tier).

Of course, numbers aren’t everything – both Rainbow Mage and Nature Shaman technically sit around 50% win rate, but I would say that they have the potential to be higher than that. Oh, and they’re WAY more popular than their win rate suggests – maybe not at lower ranks, but in Legend they’re the 2nd and 3rd most popular decks right now after Hound Hunter (but Treant Druid might soon pass them over as it’s been steadily climbing). I wouldn’t put on the same level as Hunters, but they are pretty close in the right circumstances.

In fact, Mages were contending for the top spot before the nerfs, but… I don’t want to be all like “I told you so”, but I told A LOT of people on social media that Solid Alibi nerf from 2 to 3 is going to hurt the class quite a lot. The card is still strong, of course, but it’s way more awkward to use now, it’s harder to fit it into your turn while doing something else, and you sometimes encounter situations where you draw it but no longer have mana to play it (but you could play the pre-nerf version). Mage’s win rate has dropped by like 1.5% after the nerf, which is A LOT. It seems that Shamans might now be the stronger of the two – however,  a lot of the decks started teching in Speaker Stomper, which is a great card against the combo. When you see Shamans play Flash of Lightning, you just counter it with Speaker Stomper and their combo is ruined. It doesn’t mean that they can’t sometimes OTK past it, or stall for one more turn, but it’s a great counter. It also hurts Mages a bit, but probably not to the same extent (vs Mages you play it more like a tempo move, to disrupt their mid game, rather than trying to counter their combo as it’s not telegraphed as much as Shaman’s).

Anyway, it’s clear that this meta is not for everyone. We have a lot of explosive decks – either OTKs (Rainbow Mage, Nature Shaman) or massive midgame board swing combos (Treant Druid, Control Warlock). A lot of the games end prematurely, with one player not having a chance to do much. While I’m enjoying it (we didn’t have such meta in a long time), I see that a lot of players aren’t. And Blizzard has a tendendcy to nerf those polarizing, combo-oriented decks – most of those haven’t survived for longer than a few weeks before. That’s why I expect the biggest offenders to be nerfed soon.

We also have Masters Tour Summer Championship happening next weekend, so maybe competing players are keeping some spicy decks to themselves. I wonder how the tournament meta will look, given how rare official tournaments are after the esports downsizing. I also wonder if they will decide to push the nerfs before tournament. Probably not – they did some emergency nerfs before big tournaments before, but they usually tend to wait for the week after. So if I had to guess, I would say that the nerfs will be announced on August 22 and drop on August 24 (they’ve been doing this thing recently where they announced nerfs on Tuesday and then drop patch notes + update on Thursday).

Below is a full list of the Legend decks from last week, sorted by the highest placement.

If you want to see all of the current top meta decks, go to our Hearthstone Meta Tier List post!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week