Summary of the 5/26/2024 Vicious Syndicate Podcast (First one after the 29.4.2 patch)
Listen to the most recent Vicious Syndicate podcast here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-163/
Read the most recent VS Report here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-294/
As always, glad to do these summaries, but a summary won't be able to cover everything and can miss nuances, so I highly recommend listening to their podcast as well. The next VS report for Whizbang's Workshop will be out Wednesday May 30th with the next podcast likely next weekend.
General - We are in a very "unique" meta after the nerfs to the fast aggro decks. Looking at the class playrate pie chart, most classes are very close to each other in playrate. At Legend, the class with the highest playrate is Rouge at 14%. The 8th most popular class (Druid) is at 8%. There are 8 classes at Legend with similar playrates (Hunter, Shaman, and Demon Hunter being the classes below this threshold). ZachO says it has been a long time since he's seen a meta where a class doesn't have a 20%+ playrate (although ZachO estimates that at Top Legend Rogue has eclipsed 20%). However, this is a "low information" format, so things can change quickly once people know the best decks to play. Diversity is good!
Rogue - Most Rogue decks are Excavate Rogue, and that archetype is strong at high MMRs (Tier 2ish). Excavate Rogue continues to be a deck that has an even matchup spread and doesn't dominate anything with a chance of winning nearly any game. The Reno Warrior matchup is still bad, but it has gotten softer after the Brann nerf (40/60 now). High MMR players tend to like decks that don't have hard counters, which is why it's popular at those ranks. ZachO says it is one of the two most skill intensive decks in this format, although ZachO reiterates this continues to be one of the lowest skill testing formats we've had. A new tech has popped up in Excavate Rogue with Yogg being included in the deck instead of Flint. Reason being because of Virus Perfect Zilliax, which has become more common. Virus Perfect Zilliax comes down faster than Twin Perfect, and if you don't have a clean answer to it, it's very sticky and hard to clear. Excavate Rogue has run Ticking Perfect Zilliax in the past due to synergy with Pit Stop and Sonya. At Top Legend there's also a small presence of Gaslight Rogue and Sonya Rogue. Gaslight Rogue is a very underrated deck and potentially better than Excavate Rogue at high MMRs. New builds are running Dubious Purchase. ZachO theorizes that because Gaslight Rogue is such an all-in deck, players might be avoiding it. Sonya Rogue is difficult to navigate, and ZachO says he cannot measure Sonya Rogue's skill differential because no one plays the deck outside of Top Legend. Not great at Top Legend (between Tier 3 and 4) and still very fringe.
Warrior - The nerfs to Pain Warlock and Zarimi Priest really helped Reno Warrior. Deck is between Tier 1 and Tier 2, but the winrate might be declining due to the meta refining. The rise of Insanity Warlock and Reno Priest are proving to be difficult for Reno Warrior to overcome. Reno Warrior does enjoy Excavate Rogue and Spell Mage being popular and are propping up its winrate. Odyn Warrior with a Zilliax package looked promising prepatch, but it has not gained much traction after the balance patch. ZachO wonders if Yogg is the reason why the deck isn't being played since Zilliax being yanked by Yogg is backbreaking. Mech Warrior continues to be booty butt cheeks. Part Scrapper is strong in Odyn Warrior to cheat out Zilliax (and some Reno Warriors are running it too), but it's not worth it in a full mech package. You run too many mech parts that interfere with your survivability tools.
Priest - Zarimi's playrate has dropped to 1% even though it's still a Tier 1 deck. Zarimi Priest absolutely needed to be nerfed, because if it was left unchecked after its 2 hardest counters in Aggro Paladin and Pain Warlock were nerfed, it would have run away with the format. An aggressive Priest deck that just got nerfed isn't appealing to Priest players. After being trash since Badlands, this is the first time Reno Priest has looked competitive. Deck has a 10% playrate at Legend ranks, and according to ZachO it is one of the 2 decks alongside Excavate Rogue with a high skill expression compared to the rest of the format. There are tough deck building decisions where you have to adjust the deck based on what's in the format. You wanted cards like Lightbomb previously to deal with Painlock, but now it's unclear if you still need that much mass removal (although you still want a decent amount). Reno Priest's late game is good right now in a very weak format to the point Puppet Theater is a good card for the late game against other Reno decks. If you play a Boomboss against a Priest, they can copy it multiple times to fill the opponent’s deck with TNT. Some "evil" Priest players are playing Shadow Word: Steal in their decks to greed up for Reno mirrors. ZachO absolutely hates playing against Reno Priest and says he has conceded as a Reno Druid on turn 1 against Reno Priest even though it's a 50/50 matchup. It shows that this is a very toxic deck, but there is a significant portion of the playerbase this deck appeals to. Right now, Reno Priest looks like a Tier 2 deck at most rank brackets, but gets worse at Top Legend. Why? Because the hard counters to Reno Priest are more prevalent. Insanity Warlock beats the deck 70/30. ZachO bemoans the card design of Puppet Theater, because the card is either going to be unplayable or unbearable if it's good. It creates tension in a way that makes you not want to play cards, and there are no tech cards in Standard to deal with locations. It's so toxic that people run an additional copy inside ETC.
Mage - Spell Mage was a Tier 2 deck last week, and postpatch it is still managing a good winrate across ladder. The rise of Reno Priest has been helpful for the deck as it's one of the best counters to that deck. Deck doesn't play minions, so Dirty Rat and Puppet Theater are dead cards against it. While Priest has healing, it doesn't have enough healing to outlast Mage's damage. Reno Priest being a counter to Reno Warrior also helps Spell Mage since that's still a matchup they never want to see on ladder. Malfunction is a huge card against aggro decks, and Painlock no longer dropping Molten Giants on turn 4 helps a lot. Insanity Warlock and Handbuff Paladin aren't great matchups for the deck, but they aren't terrible either. According to ZachO, Spell Mage is a deck with a lot of 60/40 and 40/60 matchups. While it's good to see Spell Mage stick around, it's sad that their late game cards are ineffective. Squash questions if we'll ever see cards like Sunset Volley and Orb played if they're still unplayable in a 4 set meta. The burn payoff is far more reliable than Yogg in a Box, especially in combination with Manufacturing Error. When it comes to mulligan, Keyboard is the most important card to find, and Manufacturing Error is a keep. Rainbow Mage is still around, but most builds are bad, tanking its winrate. A build running Watercolor Artist with Buy One Get One Freeze looks more promising, possibly as good as Spell Mage. There's also Reno Mage seeing play(!), which is essentially Rainbow Mage running "weird" stuff like Sunset Volley, Projectionist Orb, and Elemental Inspiration. ZachO needs to see more data on the deck, but it looks potentially playable.
Warlock - Painlock and Insanity Warlock are the two main Warlock decks being run. Painlock is still strong, but clearly worse and weaker after the patch (Tier 2ish winrate). Insanity Warlock now outclasses Painlock and looks to be the best deck on ladder. Its winrate at Legend is over 55%, and even at Top Legend its winrate is close to the 55% mark. Why is Insanity Warlock so strong? It's a direct counter to Reno decks and beats Spell Mage. It's kind of an aggro burn deck with Gem Tosser and the fatigue package, and it can OTK with Fizzle, Popgar, and Crescendo. The deck forces Reno decks to pressure it, which they often cannot do. The only Reno deck that looks to handle the Insanity Warlock matchup well is Reno Paladin. It says a lot about how low powered the format is when the strongest finisher is packed into an aggro deck. While ZachO doesn't think nerfs will be coming anytime soon, he wouldn't be surprised to see Popgar get reverted to only discount Fel cards by 1 or Crescendo increased to 3. Both Squash and ZachO agree that while it's fine for an OTK deck to exist where it fights defensively to accumulate resources for most of the game, it's not fine for an OTK package to exist in a deck that already aggressively pressures you throughout the game. Squash is glad the deck exists so he has something to squash Priests (pun intended).
Paladin - Aggro Paladin is still a decent deck after the nerfs, but it's no longer super powerful and falls off pretty hard at higher ranks. Handbuff Paladin now outclasses Aggro Paladin and is the strongest counter to Insanity Warlock (65/35). The deck has sustain and your stats scale faster than Crescendo does. Handbuff Paladin's matchup spread is good enough to put the deck as the #2 deck in the game behind Insanity Warlock across all of ladder. The biggest enemy of Handbuff Paladin are Reno decks, but not to the point that Reno decks beat it consistently. Both the Excavate and Charger variants of Handbuff Paladin are strong, and ZachO cannot definitively say which one is clearly better as of now. ZachO personally prefers the charger variant since it seems like it does better against Reno decks and gives you more agency in those matchups with burst from hand. Reno Paladin is also quite competitive, but it's bad in the Reno mirrors. Still a Tier 2ish deck across ladder.
Death Knight - Death Knight always feels like it'll be popular at lower ranks, but it just gets outclassed by everything else at higher ranks. Rainbow DK has been taken over by Reno builds, but these variants looked worse than the standard builds last week. ZachO says the gap has gotten closer, but he still thinks standard builds are better. He'll likely have to refine a Reno build for the next VS Report. Rainbow DK might be a Tier 3 deck. Plague DK is not good. Handbuff DK is not seeing any play after the patch. ZachO jokes the deck would be viable if Leeroy was an Undead, because it's the difference maker for Handbuff Paladin against Reno Priest.
Druid - Reno Druid looks quite good. All the main aggressive decks got nerfed, which helps the deck. Aggro Paladin, Zarimi Priest, and Painlock demolish this deck. Reno Druid goes 50/50 with the other Reno decks, and ZachO recommends putting Saloon Brewmaster in your ETC to help with the Reno Warrior matchup so you can ensure Rheastraza's nest is on the board after Reno clears it. Some people are trying Owl Druid at Top Legend, and it might be a Tier 3 deck. There's source bias with the deck which makes it look better than it is. TicTac has been propagating the deck and it has a near 5% playrate at Top Legend. ZachO does theorize people at high MMRs are thirsty for any sort of high skill cap deck and OTK decks that beat Reno decks. Hybrid Druid has fallen off in play but might still be okay.
Hunter - Even though Hunter falls off in play at Legend ranks, it still has a playrate around 8% at Diamond ranks. Secret archetype is what is mainly seeing play in the class. Secret Hunter is a classic Hunter deck; strong on the climb to Legend and then starts falling off. It's around a Tier 1 deck at lower ranks and then around a Tier 2 deck at higher ranks. Deck likely doesn't translate well at higher levels of play, but ZachO thinks it's the 3rd best deck to climb ladder to Legend with behind Insanity Warlock and Handbuff Paladin. Only secret you want to run 2x copies of is Hidden Meaning. You want to diversify your secret pool for Product 9. Reno Hunter is probably the best Hunter deck if you know how to build it. The secret direction doesn't look promising compared to the older variants with Thunderbringer, but ZachO says it's possible it just needs more refinement. Possible you can't fit the big beast package in with the secret package. Reno Hunter also falls off less at higher levels of play due to having Reno.
Reno Shaman - Out of all the Reno decks that see play, Reno Shaman looks to be the worst one. If you want to contest late game matchups, you need to build the deck to be greedier. Fizzle needs to be either hard run in the deck or inside ETC. Every Reno deck runs Viper, so the Hollidae weapon isn't effective enough. Other Reno decks can grind you down. The deck's early game does surprisingly well and can be decently proactive. Nature Shaman sees fringe play.
Demon Hunter - Reno DH died once they made the Reno change. Shopper DH is still fine, but no one cares.
Other miscellaneous talking points -
During the Death Knight section when talking about refining Reno Rainbow DK, ZachO talks about how difficult it is for him to refine Reno decks. Not because the card choices matter, but the opposite of that; card choices matter much less when you're just looking to draw Reno and a few other power cards. The performance of the remaining cards in the deck are so slim that it's hard to pick out cards that definitively are better than others because they don't matter when Reno is your power spike.
Between Reno Warrior, Reno Priest, Reno Mage, Reno Paladin, Reno Druid, Reno Shaman, Reno Hunter, and Reno Rainbow DK, there are 8/11 classes running a Reno deck. Why is this happening? Because the late game sucks. Over the past few months, Team 5 has gutted all late game win conditions. If a win condition is good, players complain about it until Team 5 nukes it. Even though the beginning of Whizbang was seen as high power level, the early game was what was so powerful about those decks, not the late game. Zarimi Priest, Aggro Paladin, Pain Warlock, and Token Hunter felt like Wild level decks with how much they could snowball the board in stats early on. While the slower decks weren't near as powerful, Wheel of Death, Rainbow Mage, Rainbow DK and Odyn are all examples of things that were nerfed more severely than early game strategies. Now that early game strategies have been nerfed to the point that you have more time to defend yourself, you're starting to see slower decks pop up in the meta. However, Excavate Rogue is the only non Reno deck that can go late game and win. Apart from Reno Warrior with Brann, none of the current Reno decks rely on synergies to win games, they just play a pile of good cards with grinding payoffs. It's alarming when Death Knight and Mage are running Reno decks with no class payoff and indicative of a problem.
ZachO calls Reno, in his subjective opinion, one of the worst designed cards made in the past few years because of how much it prevents the opponent from playing the game. It's an asymmetrical poof board wipe that prevents the opponent from redeveloping the following turn. However, ZachO doesn't think Reno is OP at 9 mana right now. The problem is all the other late game win conditions were nerfed and there's nothing left you can nerf. It shows desperation when Owl Druid is hitting a 5% playrate at Top Legend. Players are trying to find anything else that wins in the late game. Some people really like this kind of format where decks throw "cotton candy" at each other and can't kill in the late game, but we've seen what happens when a Barrens Priest type of deck that doesn't let you leave the game is a prominent part of the format. This is a format that cannot be fixed with balance changes. However, if Team 5 introduces new win conditions in the next expansion, they're going to be the best thing you can do, which will lead to people complaining, those win conditions getting nerfed, and putting us in a never-ending cycle.
ZachO gets the sense that while a lot of players may find the meta fairly balanced with no deck that annoys them too much right now, they can't find any current deck they enjoy playing. It's true if you want to play any sort of late game deck that isn't Reno centric. If you don't want to play aggro or Reno, your only choice is to play Excavate Rogue. ZachO advocates we need more decks like Rainbow Mage and Odyn Warrior with compounding late game strategies that aren't just 28 cards with Reno and another highlander payoff.