Winners & Losers of the Balance Patch

Introduction

Balance patch has just rolled out yesterday. I’ve meant to write this a few days ago, because I hoped that the balance patch will be out on 25th or 26th of February, but well, better late than never. In the patch, two cards were nerfed: Small-Time Buccaneer has 1 less health and Spirit Claws cost 1 more mana. While it doesn’t seem like much, Small-Time Buccaneer was played in about 40% of the meta decks, like Spirit Claws were played in every Aggro and Midrange Shaman deck – ~25% of the meta. They were both very powerful cards in their respective decks. Removing them from the stage had a significant impact on the meta. Not on the decks that were playing them, but also everyone else.

Let me give you an example. If there is a deck that has a nice win rate across the board, but gets completely countered by Aggro Shaman. In case Aggro Shaman disappears from the meta, now that deck becomes much more powerful and might even start to dominate it. Of course, this time around we didn’t have such drastic shifts, but we can notice some decks getting more and some decks getting less popular. Which is exactly what Blizzard has hoped to see with the nerfs. But are the shifts really good enough? And will the new, more popular decks stick around for longer?

I’ll go through most of the decks that got affected by the change and talk about them a bit. How the changes affected them, will they be strongest or weaker after the nerf and if they are – exactly – winners or losers in the new patch.

Aggro Shaman

Aggro Shaman is, without any doubts, #1 loser of the nerfs. So-called “Pirate package” was one of the main reasons why the deck was so powerful – the deck already had access to a lot of burn, but it lacked the early game punch. Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem are amazing, but two small cards isn’t enough to consistently curve out in the early game. With 3-4 extra 1-drops – Small-Time Buccaneer and Southsea Deckhand – the deck had more consistent early game. Now, Small-Time Buccaneer is out of the picture. It means that Shaman can still theoretically run Southsea Deckhand and Patches the Pirate, but it might not be enough. STB was the main “activator” of Patches – Deckhand is better on turn 3-4 when you already have a weapon equipped and potentially something to run into, to get a good trade (or even Flametongue Totem on the board). Small-Time Buccaneer was a much better turn 1 play.

Then, the Spirit Claws is another big hit. While the weapon might still be used in Midrange versions of the deck (it likely won’t be, but there’s a possibility), it’s too slow for Aggro. The weapon was so powerful only because it costed 1 mana. 1 mana means that you could have played it on turn 1 and then follow by Totem Golem. 1 mana meant that you can squeeze it into a turn into you wouldn’t be able to do it now. Turn 1 Spirit Claws meant that you can follow it with Thalnos if you needed to kill some 2-3 health minion early. The card was so much more flexible and powerful. After all, 1 mana cost increase is 100% cost increase in that case.

Aggro Shaman lost a lot in this patch. I’ll be honest that I feel like I can breathe again when playing the ladder. I know that it’s still early in the season and early after the patch, so it’s hard to tell, but I have faced way less Aggro Shaman than I did before. Out of the ~60 games I’ve played on the ladder so far, I’ve only played against 7 Aggro Shamans. Before the patch, I’d probably play against at least 15 in the same time.

Does it mean that Aggro Shaman is dead? No, it’s not. The deck still has tons of other broken cards. But it’s no longer way over the board. Aggro Shamans’ win percentage was peaking up at 54-55% across the board, which is A LOT, considering that the second best deck had 52-53% and majority of the meta decks were below 50%. Now Aggro Shaman should be more in line with the other decks. You should expect to still see Aggro Shaman on the ladder, no doubt about that. But it might not even be the strongest Aggro deck right now, later about that.

Verdict: Aggro Shaman is a clear loser in every aspect.

Midrange Jade Shaman

I’ll focus on the Jade version of the Midrange Shaman, because the classic one is almost nonexistent in the current meta. That might change a bit, however I don’t really see many reasons to play it over the Jade counterpart.

A while ago, Midrange Jade Shaman used to look way more closer to the old Midrange decks, just with a few Jade cards thrown in. But a month or so ago, it started evolving into what we see right now. Decks that have dropped the Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem and decided to go for the slow game plan with snowballing Jade cards. However, it still used the Pirate package, as it was just faster and less clunky than the Trogg & Golem. On top of that, the deck has obviously used Spirit Claws, which is much weaker right now.

The deck has took a big hit, but not as big as Aggro Shaman for one simple reason. It’s much easier for Midrange deck to adapt. Midrange doesn’t need to run so many small drops. The deck will switch out the Pirate package back to the Trogg + Totem Golem duo and it will still be doing fine. When it comes to Spirit Claws, the deck can theoretically still run it. It’s much worse at 2 mana, but it’s not unplayable in a slower deck. However, I suspect that Midrange Shamans won’t run the card anyway. In the current state, Shaman is the class with the most “broken” cards out of them all. If one of their broken cards is even slightly nerfed, they have plenty of cards to choose from.

I suspect the Midrange Jade Shaman will see a slight loss of power, but a really slight one. At the same time, since Aggro Shaman will be significantly weaker, it means that Midrange Jade Shaman might be go-to Shaman list right now. It means that, even though Mid-Jade Shaman is a loser of the nerfs, it’s a winner at the same time, because it became the best Shaman archetype.

Verdict: In terms of strength, Midrange Shaman is a loser. However, since it became the go-to Shaman list, at the same time it’s a winner in terms of popularity.

Pirate Warrior

While Pirate Warrior couldn’t play Shaman card (Spirit Claws), the nerf to Small-Time Buccaneer still hit it hard. But I’ll need to address a common misconception. A lot of people thought that Pirate Warrior will be gone, dead etc. Which is simply not true. It was the second or third strongest decks across the board in the last 2 months. And while its power level has gone down a bit, it’s not enough to stop it for a few reasons.

First of all, Pirate Warrior is still the fastest decks in the meta. Ladder system didn’t really change, even though ranked floors might help a bit, it’s still about how many more games you can win than lose per hour, not necessarily about your win rate. I remember Face Hunter being quite popular even when it was a very average deck. People will play Aggro, because the games are fast and thus progress on the ladder is faster too. But another, maybe even bigger reason, is that with Aggro nerfed people will try to play fast decks again.

For example, Jade Druid is a clear winner of the Aggro nerfs. The deck was struggling against Aggro and it should be stronger now. Pirate Warrior was one of the best counters and even after the nerf to STB it should still be a favorite. It means that Jade Druid should see more play right now (I’ll talk about it later), which means that even a weakened Pirate Warrior might see decent amount of play.

Verdict: The deck’s strength has gone down, but it will only slightly drop in popularity, because of the favorite matchups being more common. It’s a slight loser, but only slight.

Miracle Rogue

Another deck that has played the Pirate package – Miracle Rogue. It might seem that nerf to the deck’s early game might decrease its performance on the ladder. But I beg to differ. It’s only Small-Time Buccaneer that got hit. Of course, it was the strongest Pirate, but not the only one.

Nerfs hit Shaman so hard, because the class has no class Pirate cards at all. Warrior still has N’Zoth’s First Mate and Rogue still has Swashburglar. 2 Swashburglars in the deck mean that Miracle can still use Patches the Pirate, which is insane. Small-Time is no longer good, but the gap can easily be filled. Southsea Deckhand is great in Rogue, the only class which can create a weapon on demand. At the same time, Rogue has access to a Buccaneer (and it’s not even small-time) – another Pirate 1-drop that can be played in Miracle. It’s very easy to get three or four 1-drop Pirates in the Rogue class, and that’s the number necessary to run Patches.

So, nerfs didn’t impact Miracle Rogue that much. But the fact that they did impact other Aggro decks is important. Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman were one of the best Miracle counters. With Aggro Shaman significantly nerfed and Pirate Warrior slightly nerfed, Miracle Rogue has got stronger than it was before.

Another thing is that Miracle Rogue can be a really oppressive deck in some slower matchups. Right now it wasn’t AS BAD, because it had to focus the builds on surviving vs Aggro – much more early game, cutting many mid/late game cards. While I don’t think that will be the case, if Aggro decks would nearly disappear from the meta, Miracle Rogue might be unstoppable. And that’s one of the reasons why SOME Aggro is healthy in the meta – it can keep decks like Miracle Rogue in check.

Verdict: The deck is slightly weaker, but overall performance should heavily improve, because the worst matchups got nerfed. Miracle Rogue is a winner.

Aggro Rogue

Aggro Rogue was rising in popularity recently. And to be honest, it was severely underplayed for how powerful it was. I’ve played the deck a bit last season and it was great. Someone hit #1 Legend with the Water version of the deck too (it used both Pirate and Murloc package). Small-Time Buccaneer was obviously part of the list, but I’ll be honest – it wasn’t a vital part of the deck. Just like in the case of Miracle Rogue, Small-Time Buccaneer can be quite easily replaced in Aggro Rogue. I personally play the normal Buccaneer in his place, but even without it there are enough Pirates to justify using Patches. You can use other 1-drop like Argent Squire too and it should be alright.

Statistically, Aggro Rogue was shaping up to be the #2 Aggro deck in the meta (in terms of power), just after the Aggro Shaman. While Pirate Warrior was still slightly better, Aggro Rogue builds were constantly improved and the final deck list wasn’t “figured out” yet. Out of the 3 strongest Aggro decks, Shaman took the biggest hit, then the Warrior and, in the end, Rogue didn’t get nerfed that much. At the same time, Aggro Rogue was the weakest of the 3 in “Aggro mirrors” – if only the 3 Aggro decks existed in the meta, no one would play Rogue, as it was clearly losing to both Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman.

Which means that, in terms of power, Aggro Rogue might become the #1 Aggro deck in the meta. That’s quite a big shift for a deck that was relatively unknown just 2 or 3 weeks ago. But will the deck start dominating the meta when it comes to the popularity? I doubt that.

The thing about Aggro decks is that they’re generally very straightforward. You play stuff, you hit face, you trade only when you get a good trade. While there is, obviously, some decision making involved and you sometimes have to adjust your plan, you rarely stray off the “face” path. Aggro Rogue is different. The deck is much harder to play, or maybe I should say play correctly. I’ve played the Water version (with The Curator) quite a bit and I have to say that I have made tons of mistakes. I would need to play the deck much more to learn how to play it perfectly. That’s the reason why Aggro Rogue was nearly nonexistent in the lower ranks – it just wasn’t performing well enough there, because players couldn’t pilot it “right away”, without learning it, like they could do in the case of Warrior or Shaman.

This trend will most likely keep up. Aggro Rogue should gain some popularity in the lower ranks too, but in the end it should be the bane of high ranks (if you hate Aggro, of course). I think that we should give the deck 1 or 2 more weeks and it will be all over the Legend ladder, a #1 Aggro deck in the meta. And maybe, just maybe, even take the place of Aggro Shaman as the #1 deck in the meta in general.

Verdict: The deck is slightly weaker, but it shouldn’t affect the overall deck’s performance almost at all. At the same time, with its Aggro “competition” weaker it might take the Shaman’s place as #1 Aggro deck. Aggro Rogue should be a winner.

Jade Druid

Most of the things I say about Jade Druid can also be said about other slow Druid decks like Ramp/Astral Druid or Aviana/Kun Druid. So instead of making extra categories for them, I’ll just stick to Jade Druid. Jade Druid is an interesting case. It’s the first deck in history of Hearthstone that simply can’t lose late game. It can’t fatigue, it summons huge minions for 1 mana every turn etc. No deck can compare in terms of late game. But at the same time, it’s a “snowball” deck that has incredibly weak early game. If it’s not ramping up, it’s playing Jade cards which are very weak at the start. Only after you’ve played like 3 or 4 of them, they start to become meaningful. Which made the deck really powerful in slow matchups, but at the same time pretty weak against fast, high tempo decks. If they didn’t let you snowball, games were much harder.

Everyone has, correctly to some extend, predicted that Jade Druid is going to be stronger in the current meta. I mean, Aggro decks getting weaker = Jade Druid getting stronger, right? It’s true, but it’s also not the whole truth. First of all – Jade Druid’s best matchups were anti-Aggro decks. Druid has preyed upon decks that were built specifically to be strong against Aggro – Reno decks and Control Warrior. But since Aggro will be less popular, it automatically means that those decks will also be less popular. That, or they will adjust their builds a bit, so the Jade Druid’s matchups won’t be that bad. On the other hand, some bad matchups should be getting more popular – for example the Miracle Rogue I was already talking about. Or Midrange Shaman, the deck also got a slight hit, but it still should be favorite against Jade Druid.

At the same time, it’s not like Aggro is just gone from the meta. Aggro decks will still counter Jade Druid. So the Jade Druid’s popularity will never, ever be able to go past the certain point. Let’s say that at 10% it’s still not worth to play Aggro in order to counter it. But if suddenly 20% of the meta were Jade Druids, even a nerfed Aggro would be a great choice, and once Aggro would get more popular again, Jade Druid would have to go. I can imagine that the meta game will make such circles, at least for a while. It seems like it’s already happening – Jade Druid is getting more common, right now it’s ~12% of the meta in the last 24h (which is almost twice more popular, compared to the ~6-7% it was before). If the number gets even higher, be sure that Aggro decks will be there to prey on Jade Druid.

Verdict: Even though the deck’s popularity will never raise above certain point, I still have to call Jade Druid a winner – it won’t dominate the meta, but it got stronger than it was before.

Reno Decks

I don’t have as much to say about each individual Reno deck, so I’ll make only one category for them.

RenoLock is in an interesting state. On the one hand, Aggro matchups were bad for RenoLock. Even though the deck was optimized to fight them, it still was slightly below 50% win rate against most of the Aggro decks. It means that them being weaker is a buff to RenoLock. Midrange Jade Shaman getting more traction is also good for RenoLock, as Midrange Shaman is generally a good matchup for the deck.

But at the same time, Jade Druid getting more popular is a bad sign. While RenoLock is not auto-lose against Jade Druid (I actually have like 60% win rate against Jade Druid, but that’s because most of them don’t really know how to play against RenoLock), the matchup is definitely not good for Warlock. Miracle Rogue getting stronger is also something that RenoLock player should have in mind – Miracle is one of the worst common matchups on the ladder. At the same time, I have started seeing more Tempo Mage on the ladder. I remember playing maybe against 2 or 3 Tempo Mages in total in the last 2 months and I’ve faced twice as many (5) in the last 24h. That trend is not good for RenoLock, because the Tempo Mage matchup is very hard and usually in the Mage’s favor. So while it’s hard to say, I think that RenoLock might actually be in a worse state than it was pre-patch.

Reno Mage is another hard case. On the one hand, the deck was made mostly to counter Aggro. That was the deck’s main plan. Of course, it doesn’t mean that it just lost in the slower matchups, but it was a high Tier 2 deck only because Aggro was so dominant. Reno Mage is a bad deck against Jade. It doesn’t really have the early game tempo, it’s hard to put pressure, you give enough time for snowballing and when you finally can drop big bombs it’s often too late. With Aggro less popular and Jade more popular, the deck would probably fall to Tier 3… or would it?

The thing about Reno decks in general, but mostly Reno Mage, is that the deck is very flexible. And I mean it – you can make the deck into a perfect Aggro counter that will lose vs any slow matchup or you can make it a greedy deck that will win every value war and grind the opponent down, but pretty much auto-lose to Aggro. Current builds are something in between, but closer to the “Aggro counter”. I’m very positive that Reno Mage, and probably other Reno decks too, will be optimized for the meta instead of falling out of favor. It might just take a while to figure out which build is the best right now. It was same at the start – Reno Mage was the “last” Reno deck to really gain popularity and it turned out to be the strongest one in the end (at least according to the stats). That’s because Reno Mage can be built in so many different ways and finding the best one takes some time.

Reno Priest seems to be in the worst spot after the patch, just like it was before. It already was falling behind, because it wasn’t as good against Aggro decks as Reno Mage was and wasn’t as good against Midrange decks as RenoLock was. It was in a weird spot and it’s still there. I don’t think the deck will gain much from those changes, but it also won’t lose much. It will sit somewhere in Tier 3, being a semi-viable deck, but not a great choice to ladder with.

Verdict: Reno decks should be able to adapt to the new meta. They might be slightly weaker than they were pre-patch, but they will still be a big force in the meta.

Other decks

And it’s time for the other decks category. Take it with a grain of salt, because the new meta is still shaping up. Some of those decks are starting to see play, because they will be genuinely strong enough, but others are just being tested and will disappear after a while.

First deck I want to talk about is Tempo Mage I’ve already brought before. The deck was pretty much never played in the Gadgetzan meta, besides some early experiments. Tempo Mage, with very swingy/high tempo mid turns and with tons of burn was powerful against many slower decks. But the “tempo” part of the deck usually didn’t show up before the mid game Flamewaker shenanigans. It was too slow against Aggro, which made it unplayable. But right now, with Aggro toned down a bit, I’m starting to see more Tempo Mages on the ladder. The deck is actually quite solid against Reno decks, it’s okay against Jade decks and works surprisingly well against Aggro Rogue (the deck doesn’t have enough burn to close up the games). Even if the current state keeps up, it won’t be a #1 deck, no, but it might be an okay Tier 3 deck instead of being somewhere on the bottom.

Another deck I’ve also started seeing after a long, long break is Zoo Warlock. Zoo Warlock was weak in the current meta for a few reasons. First of all, it’s a very board-centric deck, so if another deck could contest that board early (and early Pirates + weapons are just perfect for that), it had not enough power. Second thing is that it used Hero Power a lot to draw cards, it’s basis of the deck’s game plan. But using Life Tap when you play against a deck that wants to kill you by turn 5-6 is incredibly hard. And last, but not least, it wasn’t fast enough in closing up the games. Zoo rarely rushed the opponent down. It usually closes the game around turn 7-8 or even later, after fighting for the board all the time. It’s too slow against Aggro, because by that time the opponent usually got enough burn to kill you. On the other hand, Zoo Warlock is probably the best answer to the Jade decks. Especially the slow ones like Druid, but it’s solid even against Midrange Jade Shaman. The decks that need time to snowball and can’t contest the early board is exactly what Zoo preys on. With Aggro decks getting a hit, Zoo will definitely be more powerful. But we’ll need to see if it will be powerful enough to stay in the meta.

And last deck I’d like to mention is Anyfin Paladin. The deck had seen tons of tournaments play, while still being relatively weak on the ladder. The thing is that in tournaments you usually can just ban the worst matchups, especially Pirate Warrior, and just play against everything else. You couldn’t do that on the ladder. Anyfin Paladin would be a Tier 1 deck if not for one thing – it’s very weak against face rush decks. The decks that can pump out a lot of power early and finish the game quickly, before Paladin can stabilize and heal. Pirate Warrior was its worst enemy, but other Aggro decks weren’t good matchups too. I think that Anyfin Paladin can get stronger after the patch, because early, high damage Small-Time Buccaneer openers were usually countering the deck hard. I honestly don’t think that the deck will be popular even if for one simple reason – it’s really expensive and it rotates out in just a little bit over a month. Which basically means that those who don’t have all the expensive Paladin cards wouldn’t really want to craft them now.

Closing

That’s all folks. If I didn’t mention a deck it means that either the changes didn’t impact it one way or another, I don’t have enough data to talk about it or I just forgot (hey, it happens). If you’d like to read my thoughts about any other deck, let me know in the comments and I’ll try my best to deliver soon 🙂

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!

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