A New Beginning to this Madness

Synopsis of my Aims with the Meta Analysis

With this, my aim is to help players with basic knowledge on the game to learn how to read the meta, adapt to the meta and even predict the meta in the future, because there is a pattern to all of this – power creeping, blatantly obvious imbalance in individual cards/entire archetypes and more. Starting from the daunting and ambiguous Cygames ranked match statistics releases, to their final nerf/buff decisions, people often question their decision-making and I am willing to shed some light on that as well.

What is a “Meta”?

Since this is the first ever meta analysis for my new blog, I believe that I should set the base properly with the meaning of the content being highlighted. So to start, let’s answer the question in the header.

The “meta” indicates what is the most effective class, hero, champion, deck to use in the game’s current environment. Regardless of what game you’re playing, this definition applies universally. The effectiveness is usually gauged by its utility and most importantly win rate, but there are exceptions to this rule, which I will expand on later.

A common misconception is that “meta” stuff should be avoided, that people should essentially be hipsters and invent their own “thing” (whatever this thing may be). It is something that is despised by a relatively small group of vocal people that may discourage others from doing what the meta would logically want you to. People who are lost about what to do and had no direction, are further led astray by this ideal, as it prevents them from taking the one straightforward tool that gives most people the direction/push required. While this had negative consequences, it gave rise to innovation within various communities and therefore the creation of non-meta things, which in turn became……meta. It’s a vicious cycle, meaning that in the end, the hipsters and innovators lose out in most cases, since they run out of tools to use and things to play with quickly, even after a new viable method was created (this is not to say that you shouldn’t be an innovator, but be aware that going against the crowd won’t do any good either).

So tl;dr – don’t avoid playing meta stuff for the sake of it, accept it and move on if you want to improve.

Now finally, let’s get back on track with the meta analysis.

Cygames Data Analysis, The Nerfs/Buffs and their Effect on the Meta

Most of the time, Cygames make sure to add statistics obtained from “high-ranking matches” along with their balance patches. The pre-nerf win rate data is shown below:

The win rate is one of the best indicators for identifying powerful decks within the meta. However, it comes with various downsides, the main one being the possibility of misinterpretation. Any form of data in general needs to be handled with care and to show one of the reasons why, I will explain a fundamental rule in ranked matchmaking that people who are aspiring to get Grandmaster and more should follow : When selecting a deck to grind with, make sure that it is either – slow and has a high win rate of around 60%+, or fast and has a respectable win rate that is above 50% (it’s a bit of a stretch expecting to gain a lot of points with 51% though).

“Time is your biggest enemy, the season’s clock is ticking, your personal life is at risk and us NEETs cannot afford to spend countless hours pointlessly on this weeb card game when we could be disappointing our families in other ways.” – Asu 2018

Now, given that you play a deck that has its win condition at 9 (Spellboost rune with giant chimera being the best example), assuming it takes you an average of 10 minutes for one match, imagine you have a low win rate of 53%~ with it. More often than not, you’ll win some, lose some, win some..so on so forth. You may end up spending well over hours to get below 1000 points, which is definitely not what you want with the aforementioned time factors ticking. Contrasting this, imagine a fast deck with a “low” win rate of 53%, assuming it takes you an average of 2-5 minutes for one match (infamous Darkfeast bat blood with potential for Flauros high roll turn 2 etc. or normal 7th turn finish), you can easily brute force your way up the ladder with easily over 1000 points in a few hours time, depending on your luck with the rolls etc. So choose your deck wisely with enough play testing. Building up from this, we can see in the ranked match data that Darkfeast surprisingly had the lowest win rate of 54%, when it was considered the be all end all tier 0 monster. How could this be? Was it maybe not the best deck after all? As suggested above, we can clearly tell that a deck as fast as Darkfeast can deal with a relatively low win rate, but looking at more data, we can see that it had the highest usage rate out of all of the classes, with an insane 17.9%. Its user-friendliness opened it up to even the lower skill players, which further pushed down the overall win rate of the deck and created noise in the data (now the question of why something can be meta with a relatively low win rate is also answered).

The rest of them should now be self-explanatory! Using this data and many more factors that we as outsiders are unaware of, Cygames would make the calls to nerf/buff certain cards.

It’s honestly surprising how responsive Cygames were with the nerfs and buffs, which to me, seemed on-point. Let’s take a look at each nerf/buff :

Arthur Nerf

I’ve always expressed my concern with this card and its imbalance, while many people argued that this is a win condition in and of itself, justifying its immense power. To illustrate the pre-nerf imbalance – it was effectively a 7 cost follower with a total of 2/6 + 2/2 + 2/1 + 1/1 (servant effectively being 2/2 or more with its clash effect) + 2/2, adding up to a whopping total of 9/12 stats distributed on 5 followers (making it even harder to deal with in most cases), each of them coming with their own utility points (ward, rush, servant’s clash). It got away untouched in numerous updates, but it was the final straw for Cygames when Swordcraft had the highest win rate of 56.6%.

Now that it became 8 cost, even the +1/+1 stat increase did not save it from its inevitable demise. This is not only because this power move was seriously delayed, but mainly due to the fact that Swordcraft has countless high utility 8 cost cards that could be played instead, making this one of the biggest opportunity costs ever. Latham, Octrice (enhanced), Dragon Knights (Enhanced) are the most notable ones. As of writing, it seems that Arthur has died completely with no sign of recovery (F and rest in pieces).

Before Arthur’s nerf was even announced, people were playing around with the idea of an “Arthurless” Swordcraft, making use of Jiraiya, or even Ironfist Beast Warrior. Although those options are still available and used by some, people are starting to build an overall more aggressive variant based around Latham, making use of previously unused cards such as Rapier Master.

One of the more popular Japanese personalities Mororin, who was the center of attention with his 32 win streak Midrange Sword deck previously, has come up with a new solution for the meta :

Overall, how does Swordcraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – It’s alright, the Arthur nerf hurt a lot but players have found a way to work around it pretty well. However, its potential and strength is still unclear, as it does not seem to be greatly favored against anything yet. But a somewhat solid win rate can definitely be achieved, along with a few win streaks here and there. Don’t expect too much though. I wouldn’t stop others from using it but I wouldn’t recommend others to use it for ladder grinding purposes.

Alexiel Buff

Aside from being an occasional one-off in most Tenko decks previously, it hasn’t seen much use, due to its painfully low stat to cost ratio (8 cost for 5/5, seriously?) that was barely staying afloat thanks to its ward effect. Alexiel’s utility is based entirely around what the other classes are playing, because its main effect is to reduce the maximum amount of damage dealt in one instance to 4, this means that her usage rates would easily fluctuate depending on the meta.

This buff was desperately needed, especially given the fact that she used to overlap in cost with the newly reprinted Seraph. Now a textbook curve of Alexiel on 7 into Seraph on 8 can be performed.

However, the question is – Is the meta suited for Alexiel? It is, but only to a very limited extent, as the only obvious counter is to Darkfeast Bat and Giant Chimera, which have both been seeing less use in the current meta – Darkfeast because of its nerf, Giant Chimera because of the mere existence of cards such as nilpotent, alexiel (now increased frequency thanks to her buff) etc. in this overall slowed down meta. Any board flood archetype that deals at most 4 damage with followers in each instance, such as Midrange Shadow and Midrange Forest running rampant hurt Havencraft’s potential to make a comeback with this change.

Decks are starting to use 2 copies of Alexiel instead of the usual 0-1, which is the only big change in most of the decks, as the rest is very much standard. An interest point to note is that Haven decks are starting to fuse Seraph and Tenko more frequently now, with an Alexiel in the mix to deal with anti-control burst/otk.

A Japanese player named Reno has posted a Tenko Seraph deck using 2 Alexiels that is gaining traction, thanks to the remarkable 17 win streak record achieved with it :

Overall, how does Havencraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – This change did not contribute much to Haven’s viability, even if, only by half a tier. All it did was change what decks the other classes were playing and the frequency of said decks, which is still a large impact that cannot be disregarded if you want to find out the meta. Haven is still in need of more tools to work with or some changes in order for them to become high ranking. I would not recommend this too highly for ladder grinding purposes, because of its nature to drag games for too long, whether you win or lose, with lacking potential to have an exceptional win rate to make up for its slow speed. It is very difficult to recommend such an innately slow archetype for ladder without it having an insane win rate, which is why I am being so critical about it.

Darkfeast Bat Nerf and Flauros Nerf

It is the long-awaited nerf everybody has been crying for (well.. maybe). There were countless suggestions from the community, but the one that stood out to me the most was nerfing Restless Parish from 0 cost to 1 cost – this would drastically reduce the potential for Flauros high rolls, self-harm per turn and much more. While I would have been more than happy with that change, the change they made by nerfing bat directly was also very solid. It is blatantly obvious what their intention was, looking at the interactions between the nerfed/buffed cards alone, because Alexiel’s curve is right before Darkfeast Bat’s, to stomp on its head while it’s on the ground after this nerf.

The Flauros nerf effectively removed the potential for the most ridiculous high roll in Shadowverse history – the infamous 2nd turn Flauros that had us all instinctively moving our cursors to the top left position as we cursed the world and everything in it, vowing to quit this game if this issue wasn’t handled by Cygames in the next update.. and it was! So no more quitting guys!

Disregarding the Darkfeast nerf, Flauros’ change only really prevents beginners from being able to high roll and beat grandmasters, as in – unfair games decided entirely by how hard you high roll are more or less gone, significantly reducing the chances of unwinnable games for people that aren’t playing this deck.

As most of you know if you played Darkfeast Bat, in many games it was often necessary to use 2 of them in succession to get lethal, meaning that the change to 8 cost would extend the lethal turn to 9. At that point, most other decks would have already beaten you with their own win conditions, further reducing the viability of this deck that is based entirely around this one card.

Because this archetype was shut down by the nerfs, in a similar fashion to Swordcraft, people are desperately trying to find alternatives, which is why we can now see a comeback of Jormungand/Nacht, Vengeance and more old archetypes. However, the result of this attempt is completely unlike Swordcraft’s case (it’s bad..).

Overall, how does Bloodcraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – The changes to these two cards forced players to move onto other Blood archetypes, or even completely move over to another class, which I believe most people did, given the overall low viability of other archetypes in the meta. This means that it is currently near unusable and you should look elsewhere. The whole class is in a messy state right now and would require a lot of workarounds with other archetypes to do anything. Strongly advised to not play this right now for ladder, but feel free to go ham experimenting, because there is still a lot of hidden potential in this class with the new cards.

Galmieux Nerf

The potential to deal 9 damage to the enemy leader, while dealing 3 damage to a random follower 3 times, or the easily exploited last words effects from Belenus and most importantly Cerberus evolve to fully clear the enemy’s board, edging their health into lethal range for the Apostle of Disdain or Azi Dahaka.. as indicated by the long single sentence to describe what it could do before, the reason for the nerf was obvious. It is overstatted, but not by a large amount and its evolve does not provide any more stats, which makes the clear target for the nerf her persistent effect that seemingly had no downside and a limiter, other than her own health as a masochist.

A nerf that was completely justified and put Dragon in its place. Galmieux is not extremely overpowered now, but she is still powerful enough to justify her usage in decks, since the utility of her enhance (free evolve, 1 damage to all followers and the 1 off 3 damage to a follower and the leader) is still there.

At times, she was used with only 5 play points by Dragon players and manually evolved, which was still a strong move in many cases and there was no change in this. However, a 6 play point manual evo and one follower harm into 6 damage on the board and leader power play is now impossible.

Board-centric classes such as Shadowcraft and Forestcraft are able to fully take advantage of this change, which is why we can now see them at the top tiers of ladder.

The usage rate of Dragon decks was significantly reduced due to this change and many other factors, such as Haven’s slow rise with Alexiel, which directly counters Dragon’s high burst storm. The one answer they had to such a damage limiter was Galmieux, as each of her damage instances are 3, allowing for the most ridiculous lethals against all kinds of decks. Now that that’s gone, it is only natural for Dragon to fade from the meta.

To counter the current meta decks, mainly Shadowcraft and Forestcraft, Dragoncraft should capitalize on their lack of removal for PDK. It is a hard counter to board-oriented decks, so a pre-evolve on PDK to get her up to 5 defense should prevent most clearing methods against Shadowcraft, which has a maximum of 4 damage for most of their spells/followers (Fran and Orthrus), while making sure to bait out the Insect Lords and Cassiopeias from Forestcraft.

..But wait? A popular Dragoncraft main figured out a more effective way to deal with Haven, which is Jerva, since he deals 5 damage consistently and Alexiel can only block 1 damage for each instance. A more storm-oriented Disdain Dragon with no PDK to quickly take out the control-oriented decks, with 3 Frenzied Drakes to counter the board-oriented decks, shown below :

Overall, how does Dragoncraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – The basic deck used for this should still on a base level be the same, with 3 copies of Galmieux still being the norm. The only thing that changed is its effectiveness in the meta against certain match-ups. Haven was known to be a Dragon killer, but now that their counter was buffed and the expansion had already set up the necessary resources to deal with storm-oriented decks such as Disdain Dragon, life as a Dragon player became very difficult. Spellboost Rune, Lishenna Portal and other heavily control-oriented decks are becoming popular, due to the shutdown of Darkfeast Bat, which was the cause of an artificially sped up meta previously. The aforementioned decks can easily handle Dragon as it is now, with enough big removals, wards and damage limiters. This is why I have difficulty recommending using Dragon for ladder as of writing this. But because it hasn’t been too long since the changes and Dragon’s playstyle/deck hasn’t changed much overall, it would be a good idea to keep a close look on the meta and take advantage of any shifts in it. Until then, it would be a better idea to stay on the low with it.

Gremory Nerf

Not many people were vocal about it, but we all knew it was coming, especially after the introduction of a Cerberus reprint that was perfectly placed right before Gremory’s enhance curve. Gremory really became Rotation’s Eachtar, now that she comes down on the same curve as the infamous Unlimited destroyer. This is to say, her nerf did not do much to Shadow, she was too powerful before and now she’s just.. powerful. This +1 on the enhance cost seems to be a direct solution to the aforementioned Cerberus on 5 into enhanced Gremory on 6.

However, this nerf did have a more significant impact on Arcus combos – Turn 10 Ferry into 2 cost into 6 enhance Gremory is not possible anymore, you’d have to use a 1 cost such as Mischievous Spirit or 8 enhanced Lyria to pull off something similar.

So what was the response from the players? Quite a few of them removed Arcus or only leave him as a value 1 off, with a maximum of 2 being used in some decks but rarely 3. Arcus is primarily used as a tech against Tenko Haven, as stated by Mororin in his most recent video on his deck. Going full Midrange has become the meta and it is entirely board-oriented even in the latest turns, fully utilizing the new overpowered card that is being used in nearly all board-centric decks now – Gilnelise. It does hurt that Gremory’s enhance effect overlaps with Gilnelise, but the empty 6 curve opened up potential for a sneaky Charon, although most of the competitive decks created by the top Japanese pro players do not use her, she is still a viable option that you could keep in mind.

Another deck by Mororin that was made for this meta:

Overall, how does Shadowcraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – It got nerfed, but the nerfs on the other classes were massive indirect buffs to Shadow that completely overshadowed the nerf on gremory. Mainly the nerf on Galmieux, which prevents an evolved Cerberus from being fully taken advantage of. This created an environment for Shadow to become a top contender for the highest tier, because its Midrange elements were already more than solid and its consistency is almost abnormal relative to other classes’ decks. It directly counters most of the meta decks with its board flood and burst damage potential. This is probably one of the best, if not the best deck in the meta as of writing. Absolutely recommended for ladder grinding purposes.

Yggdrasil Buff

Who would’ve though that this card would be buffed? I sure didn’t. Yggdrasil was always a ball of potential for combo plays, but was disregarded up until now because of her extremely high cost of 7 for such terribly low stats – 2/6 for 7 cost, 8 total stats and to illustrate further, redistribute the 8 total stats evenly and you get 4/4, which is the exact stat a card such as Korwa has for 5 cost. Now, the buff making her a 6 cost reduces the discrepancy in stats by 1 cost, which is totally fine, given her insanely high utility and of course, the likely cause for Cygames’ decision to have low stats on her – her drain effect.

What other problems did this card have when it was 7 cost? It directly overlapped in cost with Greenglen Axeman, although his usage rate drastically plummeted (even into the 0s) as his best friend Fairy Driver got sent into the shadow realm. Most importantly for the recent meta, it overlapped with Gilnelise, which is one of the main win conditions for Forestcraft now. All in all, it was a huge investment for a class that is generally focused on having a board, meaning that the 7 cost was a massive opportunity cost, as you could have built a strong and wide board with that instead.

The addition of Bayle and Sky Devouring Horror were a godsend for Yggdrasil combos. Whether it is choosing Blessings of Creation to use as a 2 enhanced 2 draw that adds a total of 3 played cards to start buffing up your Horror, or choosing Wrath of Nature to pull off the insane 0 cost Bayle spam into 4 enhance storm conversion OTK, she now has all of the parts to work with and they do as well. Ranging from 1 to 3 copies of Yggdrasil and surprisingly enough, 3 copies of Horror in many popular decks, Forestcraft experienced one of the most significant changes in terms of playstyle and deck making. Midrange Forest now extends into control, with Cassiopeia coming back into play, especially given the fact that Shadowcraft is running rampant. The flexibility of Forestcraft decks is astounding, because as long as you have the base cards there, you can really customize it in any way you want, if there is a direction of course.

A deck by the famous Japanese personality Otaku is shown below :

Overall, how does Forestcraft fare in the current meta?

Asu’s Rating – The amount of support this class received after the rotation of Wood of Brambles, Fairy Driver and other key cards that people thought the class couldn’t do without, made up for all of the losses and more. The insane flexibility adds an element of unpredictability when facing this class and the countless win conditions add to this. It has come to the point where there are so many options and ways to deal with other classes, that Forestcraft has established itself as a top tier class alongside Shadowcraft, as a fellow board-oriented deck that does not necessarily need to be played for board anymore, because of its OTK Bayle and Horror potential. This is definitely a must play for the current meta and I can see it extending beyond this meta. Although the difficulty level is extremely high and even the best netdecks may require some tweaking to suit one’s own style/tastes, it is well worth investing the time and vials into for mastery of it.

Final Words by Asu

Thank you so much for reading my first attempt at an article on my new blog! After writing my first meta analysis on pastebin to roughly give an idea of how I would do things to myself and others, I have received a lot of positive feedback and suggestions to create my very own blog, which I did! Hope you found this helpful and stay on the lookout for upcoming updates for the game, which I will write more on.

– Asu