The Boomsday patch, which arrived late Thursday/early Friday, has made a significant impact on the Hearthstone meta. The vS Data Reaper team has been closely following trends, attempting to envision the next month of Hearthstone ladder. Due to the timing of the patch, a full Data Reaper Report will only be published next week, on November 1st. By then, we will have full confidence when evaluating the power level of decks in the new meta. As of the first few days of the patch, many things are still up in the air.

However, from the data that we’ve gathered so far, we can glean several interesting insights that should provide you with an advantage and satisfy some of your net-decking needs. As a reminder, the data that we gather comes from you, the community, by signing up to contribute your games through either Track-o-bot or Hearthstone Deck Tracker. More data allows for more insights, more quickly, and signing up is very easy!

Cube Hunter: The best deck in the game

The change to Giggling Inventor has led to a significant decrease in the population of Quest Rogue, which was one of the most reliable counters to Cube Hunter in the pre-patch meta. In addition, the Druid population is rampant with several late game strategies (Malygos, Togwaggle, Mecha’thun, Taunt) seeing play. This has elevated Cube Hunter to another level, and the archetype is dominating in both prevalence and win rate, enjoying an extremely favorable field.

Cube Hunter was always quite difficult to counter, and even the aggressive decks that are supposed to counter it in theory (Zoo Warlock, Odd Rogue) don’t really beat it with the required consistency, especially when the Hunter list is built well. We believe that the first challenge for the post-patch Boomsday meta is to curb Cube Hunter’s current dominance and prevent it from taking over the game. The featured build was piloted by Xixo to top 50 legend on two servers. It includes two copies of Mind Control Tech and Defender of Argus to perform better in the deck’s worst matchups.

The Best Performing Counters

“Oh boy, vS is hyping up Cube Hunter, now all I’m going to see is that deck”.

This is where we provide the solutions, decks that do have an inherent advantage against Cube Hunter and are not currently seeing enough play.

Odd Paladin might be the hardest counter available to Cube Hunter because its ability to swarm the board is often too much for the Hunter to handle. This archetype has been relatively neglected before the patch, but has already established a significant presence in the field because of this matchup. Odd Paladin’s overall power level is also quite high at the moment, despite Druid’s popularity (Void Rippers help there).

Even Shaman looks like one of the strongest ladder decks in the game, and has a significantly favored matchup against Cube Hunter. Much like Odd Paladin, its early turns can snowball the game beyond the Hunter’s control, and if things get hairy, it has Hex to fall back on.

Druid: Not as strong as advertised

Many players expected Druid to dominate the post-patch Boomsday meta, but Druid might only be dominating perception. With Cube Hunter’s emergence as the meta defining deck, late game Druid strategies are struggling to keep up since they’re all unfavored against the Hunter deck to varying degrees. As a matter of fact, Druid looks like a weaker class than it was before the balance changes. This could change if Cube Hunter develops a target on its back, since Druid performs quite well against several Hunter counters.

Perhaps the most surprising discovery about Druid is its best performing archetype. Token Druid was hurt the most by the balance change to Giggling Inventor, yet it’s currently the class’ best performing deck. While its power level has dropped, we see potential for it to significantly improve in the near future. The Saronite/Scavenger build isn’t working very well, but the old Violet Teacher build is making a comeback. Should the Violet Teacher variant take over the archetype’s play rates, it could find itself in Tier 1 once again.

Underdogs raise their heads

The patch did open up possibilities for the emergence of new archetypes, and we’re already seeing signs of decks that have significantly improved in the last few days. We’re not sure they will all be able to last once the meta tightens up, but if you’re looking for a change of pace, you can give them a try.

Priest has greatly benefitted from the balance changes. Resurrect Priest’s strong matchup against Cube Hunter has elevated its win rate to a more competitive value that’s closer to Tier 2 than it is to Tier 4. Combo Priest is another archetype that might be a legitimate competitive option with its hybrid Resurrect variant.

Shudderwock Shaman was a tournament deck that hardly found ladder success before the patch, but with Quest Rogue’s reduced numbers (for now at least), there are more chances for it to shine these days.

In China, a Cube Mech Paladin deck centered on Mechano-Egg and Kangor’s Endless Army hit #1 legend, sparking a rise in Mech Paladins in the western servers. The archetype looks to be sitting around the Tier 3 slot alongside the aforementioned underdogs, which is quite an improvement considering Mech Paladins have been buried at Tier 4 since Boomsday launched.

The archetypes that we feel have the best chance of becoming strong meta players are Even Paladin and Cube Rogue. Even Paladin already looked like a Tier 1 deck before the patch, which we’ve mentioned in our last Data Reaper Report, and looks quite strong after the patch as well. We do think that current builds of Even Paladin can be improved on. Our theorycrafted suggestion is to run Bonemares, since they perform very well against Druids, allowing the deck to go tall against Spreading Plague with a heavy 8 mana slot.

Cube Rogue is seeing a lot of experiments. It was an abandoned archetype before the patch despite a decent power level, and it’s now receiving attention again. BoarControl has been tinkering with a Corpsetaker build at top legend, and here’s our take which is inspired by his experiments. If you’re wondering why Corpsetaker is such a valued build around card these days in multiple archetypes, it’s because of its strength against both Druids and Hunters.

We’ll see you next week with a full Data Reaper Report, and until then, we wish you happy hunting!

The Vicious Syndicate Team