What We Learned (Patron Warrior) 1,200 Games from Zalae, Strifecro, Sjow, Dog and more…

Instead of the usual Meta Check this week (so close to The Grand Tournament release and we all know what the top decks are already), here’s a post of a different kind – analyzing over 1,200 games from some of the best Hearthstone players like Zalae, Sjow, StrifeCro and Dog, we share with you what we found out about the Patron Warrior. No opinions, no speculations, just summaries from the data we collected.

Why Patron Warrior

We decided to focus on the Patron Warrior because almost 1/3rd of the games observed was the Patron Warrior! These games were taken from their Twitch Videos from middle of July to early August.

Matchups

Before going further…let’s do a little exercise (if you’re a Patron Warrior player), jot down each match up versus the Patron Warrior. And list them in the order of highly favorable (for the Patron Warrior) to the least favorable.

Here’re the stats (matchups with less than 15 games were not used):

• Total of 385 games with a 66% win rate overall
• 93% vs Aggro Paladin
• 89% vs Hybrid Hunter
• 85% vs Midrange Hunter
• 70% vs Druid Midrange/Combo
• 70% vs Aggro Hunter
• 67% vs Tempo Mage
• 67% vs Midrange/Zoo Warlock
• 65% vs Handlocks
• 56% vs Oil Rogue
• 41% vs Control Warrior
• 59% vs other Patron Warriors
  • 64% if going first
  • 56% if going second

Before you start flipping tables or muttering ‘what a crock of bull’, remember these are simply data we gathered observing the games played by these players. Your experience may vary, the sample size may not be large enough (how many games have you played as Patron Warrior compared to these guys?) to take these as statistically valid, but it’s here for your reference.

Who’s the best Pilot?

Zalae has the highest win rate of 68.6% while piloting the Patron Warrior compared to other Patron pilots.

Mulligans

Another big part of the data we collected was observing the mulligans of these players and they’re as follows: (remember your playstyle may vary)

Keep No Matter What

• Fiery War Axe, deaths-bite

Never Keep

• warsong-commander, execute, battle-rage, shield-block, inner-rage

Keep if

• grim-patron if on curve

Matchup Specific

• Vs Warrior – Keep inner-rage and grim-patron together
• Keep acolyte-of-pain except vs Hunters
• Keep harrison-jones vs Rogue and Warriors
• Keep gnomish-inventor vs Druids, Priests and Warriors
• Keep armorsmith except vs Rogues, Warlocks and Warriors
• Keep emperor-thaurissan vs Rogues, Warlocks and Warriors
• Keep Frothing Berserker vs Hunters and only if you are on curve
• Keep Unstable Ghoul vs Druids, Hunters, Paladins, Mages, Shamans and Warlocks
• Keep Slam vs Hunters, Mages, Paladins, Shamans and Warlocks

Variance and Streaks

We hear a lot of stories and complaints from players about how they spent hours playing just to go up the ladder and come right back down by the end. StrifeCro had a 1.5 hour session (11 games) where he won 1 game (6 wins 5 losses) overall and managed to be 34 ranks lower than he started (started as Legend Rank 50 and ended up as Legend Rank 84).

Variance is a big part of card games, including Hearthstone. Everyone experiences it and it isn’t something made up just to comfort your bad streaks or luck. (However, if you’re having a bad day, we can’t say if it’s due to variance or skill/tilt.) When that friend of yours start going on about bad luck/variance, or they’re just having a horrible day,  you can point them to the example above and make them realize it happens to all of us, including one of the best players – StrifeCro – and to take it in stride. Be in control of your emotions and not feel like you just wasted hours of your time when that downswing hits you.

Top Winning Streaks

Highest Streak was from Dog – 11 game streak as Midrange/Zoo Warlock from Legend Rank 248 to 7.

Honorable Mentions

Streak was from Dog – 9 games as Ramp Druid which took him from Legend Rank 110 to 11.

Sjow also had a 9 game streak as Patron Warrior, taking him from Legend Rank 256 to 17.

The 3rd 9 game streak is from Zalae, taking him all the way to Legend Rank 2 on the back of Patron Warrior. (For those curious, he went from 5 to 32 to 2 to 16 to 1 over a 4.5 hour session. In the same session, he took a 4 game loss streak.)

Hope you found this report interesting! If you have any specific questions or want to know about numbers of other matchups from the other 800+ games recorded, just ask below and I try to look it up for you.

Don’t forget the Grand Tournament Reveal stream at 10 AM PST today (Friday)! Tune in here.

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