Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – Whizbang’s Workshop (Week 3) – April 2024

It’s been a long week full of Demon Hunters. I have some good news and bad news. Good news – Demon Hunter is getting nerfed. Bad news – it’s still over a week from now (April 16). Blizzard has decided to take some steps and nerf the strongest class in the upcoming patch 29.2 focused on Battlegrounds. And good, because right now if you want to climb you either need to play Demon Hunter, play a deck that works okay against it, or tech heavily against it. Sure, the situation is not AS BAD as it was many times in the past. The class is not as overpowered as it was at the release. But seeing Umpire's Grasp on Turn 3 nearly every game is just not a fun experience. The combo is so strong that even Reno Demon Hunters run two copies of both Grasp and Window Shopper. Reno version is obviously not as strong as the regular Aggro, but many people still play it simply because it’s fun (while still being a good, Tier 2 deck).

Anyway, the meta hasn’t really changed over the last week. What has changed are the techs. Glacial Shard‘s popularity is steadily rising (right now it’s already in ~25% of the decks in Legend and ~15% in Diamond), as it’s a really nice way to soft-counter Demon Hunters. Delaying their weapon hit means that they can’t destroy it and can’t get. For the same reason, Rainbow DK is one of the deck’s that doing pretty well in the current meta, thanks to Quartzite Crusher. Unless Demon Hunter coined out the weapon, if you have Crusher, you can delay the 3 mana Shopper by a few turns. Same for Mage – Rainbow Mage is not doing incredibly well right now, but it’s kind of playable mostly because it runs so many freezes now.

All those freeze cards are good vs Demon Hunter in general, since a lot of their damage comes from Hero attacks (Spirit of the Team, Burning Heart, Parched Desperado) so freezing them can prolong the game by a few turns. But as I’ve mentioned, those are still only soft counters. I played the matchup from both sides and while they do help, Demon Hunters can often recover from having their face frozen for 5 turns in a row.

Reno Warrior is also doing quite well – you guessed it – because it works okay vs Demon Hunter. It’s not a complete counter, but the matchup is slightly in Warrior’s favor, which is more than can be said about most of the other decks. Odyn, Prime Designate hasn’t been so hot after the nerfs (although it’s still kind of playable), so Reno Warrior mostly took its place. Against Demon Hunters, your goal is mostly to outarmor them and survive. And against other decks, you have to main routes – Boomboss Tho'grun (drawing all TNTs usually just destroys their board, hand, and often some key cards from their deck) or Chaotic Tendrils. The second one is kind of interesting, because there are only two 10 mana spells right now in Standard (Sunset Volley and Table Flip). So with double Battlecries from Deepminer Brann, you can get to 10 quite easily and then you spam more of them hoping to get Volleys. It’s an interesting strategy, although it’s can be pretty frustrating to face.

Then Wheel Warlock is also doing pretty well mostly because it doesn’t immediately lose to Demon Hunters (big Taunts) and because it’s a nice counter to Warrior… and the cycle continues. As you can see, the meta is a bit complex than “just Demon Hunters”. But the fact that Aggro Demon Hunters peak at over 30% popularity in Diamond really means that something needs to be done with them.

In other, non-Demon Hunter news – did you know that Zilliax Deluxe 3000 is probably the most popular Hearthstone card in history? Or at the very least since we had some stat tracking available. Right now it’s played in a staggering 68% of the decks in Diamond-Legend (and slightly over 70% in Legend). Of course, I think it would be unfair to treat it as a single card, because it’s really not. We have 4-5 popular module combinations and then at least a few more situational ones. And if we want to be fair, each one of the module combinations should be treated as its own card. Even then, I think that the most popular one could easily reach over 20%. It’s still a big design win in my opinion. And probably the single best way to spend your Dust.

Do you know what might not be the best way to spend your Dust? The new Splendiferous Whizbang. While the original Whizbang the Wonderful was beloved by the players, and the new one is also really cool, it sadly needs some buffs. Old Guardian covered it yesterday in this article and while it has a sort of decent 44% win rate, that’s only if you take lower ranks into account. If you look at Diamond-Legend only, it falls down to 30%. And while I’m not arguing that it should be competitive, 30% is just too low. And that’s the average – if you look at some individual decks, they have an abysmal, ~15% win rate. It’s THAT bad. You can read more details in the article I’ve linked, but I obviously hope

Other than that, there’s not much to talk about. Masters Tour is coming soon (April 12-14), and it will be played on the current patch. Then Patch 29.2 with Battlegrounds Season 7 and Demon Hunter nerfs drops on April 16. And then there’s a bigger balance patch window around 2 weeks after the patch. So that’s roughly when you should expect some meta shifts if you can’t stand the current one.

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