State of the Metagame: 04/27/2014

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

#1: Hunter
#2: Warlock
#3: Rogue
#4: Druid
#5: Warrior
#6: Shaman
#7: Mage
#8: Priest
#9: Paladin

Hunter

Hunter, quite simply, has it all right now. From one of the best six drops in the game, the Savannah Highmane, to the best card draw combo mechanic in the game (Starving Buzzard Unleash the Hounds), as well as it's class card having some of the best synergy in the game (such as Houndmaster) it's easy to see why Hunter has risen above the rest of the classes. With both of Test Season 4's #1 Legends (Lifecoach and BlazingGlory) having employed the midrange Hunter deck to reach their respective rank (the former making it well known and currently being the deck of choice for professionals and casual players alike), Hunter is currently unstoppable. Every major tournament within the last few weeks has seen nearly every player bring a Hunter deck to play - only two of the Hearth2P's EU vs CN Top 16 players didn't bring hunter decks, Dreamhack Bucharest has seen constant use of the midrange hunter deck by nearly every player and even at the TakeTV Invitational we saw a crapload of Hunter. With Blizzard having no plans to nerf Unleash the Hounds, which many consider the card causing the rise of Hunter, Rexxar's strangehold on the #1 class in the current metagame doesn't look set to change.

Featured Deck: Kolento's Hunter

Warlock

Warlock, again, ranks within the top 3 classes in the game currently. A lot of the reason for that is due to how strong it's hero power, Life Tap, is. The ability to draw an extra card once per turn allows Warlocks to turn into the prime aggro deck in the current metagame, as well as having an extremely strong control deck in the Handlock. However, Handlock has fallen off somewhat recently due to the popularity of Hunter (which is a matchup heavily favoured in the Hunter's favour) leaving Zoo as the only real "popular" Warlock deck. Zoo against Hunter is somewhat of a race, as it all depends on whether he draws the Buzzard Unleash combo early on, making the matchup a real coinflip. Zoo is still incredibly powerful on it's own though, and not just faring well in the matchup against Hunter, and with good draws it can almost destroy any deck. Again, Zoo is a deck we see brought to almost every tournament by almost every player just due to it's ability to fare well in almost every matchup - for Warlock, nothing much has changed. Their hero power catapults them to the top of the rankings list nearly every month and is often the hot topic for balance discussion over whether Life Tap is too strong. Maybe we will see Warlock changes in the next balance patch, but I highly doubt it.

Featured Deck: Reynad's Zoo

Rogue

Valeera is a prominent addition the top 3 for the first time in months. Her ability to fare extremely well against the two most popular decks in the metagame currently, the Warlock Zoo and the Midrange Hunter are the main reason for this. The sheer amount of removal many Rogues run as well as the tempo swings that you can make in just one turn make them obscenely good against these board controlling decks - coining out an SI:7 agent on turn two as well as Backstab and SI:7 agent on turn 3 are two of the plays I can think of that swing the board dramatically in your favour. In addition to the standard Miracle and Tempo Rogues that we are used to seeing though, the weird and wonderful "Malygod" rogue seems to be exceptionally popular recently - we saw Forsen use it to great effect in the IHEARTHU King of the Hill. With more and more effective Rogue lists popping up, it remains to be seen whether Valeera can hold her spot in the top 3 past the current metagame, or whether she is just a currently trending counterpick to the popular decks.

Featured Deck: Malygod Rogue

Druid

Druid will always be milling around the top three or four ranks, regardless of the current metagame. The overall individual value of each Druid card makes them viable enough to form a good constructed deck regardless of what's popular at the time. Cards such as Swipe, Keeper of the Grove, Innervate, Wild Growth and more are just so good individually, causing Druid to be known as the most consistent class in the game. The currently popular Ramp Druid has usurped the classic Watcher-style Druid that was "the" deck a few months ago as the leading Druid deck, as the Ramp one has an extremely good matchup against Hunter; the large amount of big taunts you can throw out on the field as well as having very few minions out on the field at once leads to Unleash usually being poor value, as well as the Hunter not having enough removal to deal with all of your big minions. Gaara's main deck which he won Dreamhack Bucharest with was Ramp Druid, and in a Hunter metagame, that may have been the ace in his sleeve he needed to go on and win the tournament.

Featured Deck: Gaara's Ramp Druid

Warrior

Warrior has somewhat dropped in the tierlist of classes due to it's poor matchup against Zoo as well as the midrange Hunter deck. Back when face Hunter was the usual Hunter archetype, Warrior was king of control due to it's excellent matchup against the face Hunter as well as a good matchup against a lot of other control decks; however, cards like Savannah Highmane are almost impossible for a Warrior to deal with due to old builds running no silence, and Warrior having no innate hard removal. There hasn't been a new cookie-cutter Warrior decklist since Kitkatz's Warrior list, however people are experimenting more with cards like Wild Pyromancer, Commanding Shout, Cleave and Inner Rage to find a way to deal with the more aggressive, minion spam type aggro decks that are currently the bane of Warriors' life.

Featured Decklist: Kitkatz's Warrior

Shaman

Shaman, to put it bluntly, is completely unviable outside of specific tournament situations. The dominance of Hunter, which hard counters Shaman, has lead to Thrall being an extremely rare sight on the ladder anymore. If you see a golden Shaman, you should probably add them and congratulate them for the two in three games they faced a Hunter and lost whilst grinding to get it. However, Shaman is still an awesome pick in tournaments as it performs so well against a lot of classes; Handlock, Warrior and Druid all have issues dealing with the Shaman's extremely efficient removal, large amounts of burst damage and constant flooding of the board. Still OK in tournaments, but not a class I would recommend laddering with.

Featured Deck: Standard Midrange Shaman (in this case Artosis')

Mage

Aggro mage has been cropping up a lot more on the ladder recently, mainly due to it's good matchup against midrange Hunter. The standard aggro mage deck runs about 28 points of burn damage, not including some of the tweaked variations that run Pyroblast, and it's very easy to get into a race with a Hunter and come out ahead with good draws. Mage is still one of the poorest tournament decks though, just due to the fact that if you're not on a budget lots of other classes just do what the Mage does but better. Mage is one of the classes, along with the other two I will talk about next, who in my opinion need a buff in the next patch. However, they have been somewhat more popular recently, but they're still a long shot away from being relevant.

Featured Deck: Otter's Aggro Mage

Priest

Priest is kind of in the same boat as Mage, in that it's a very good niche counterdeck, however unlike Mage it isn't a good counterdeck to one of the most popular decks in the current meta. Priest has an OK matchup against Zoo lock if they run combo and get good draws, however Priest really shines in matchups such as Control Warrior - which has fallen out of the meta somewhat. Priest is another class which needs buffing and possibly some more efficient removal in the future new cards which will be added - it will be interesting to see how the Curse of Naxxramas expansion affects these bottom three classes in how viable they are in the current metagame, as Priest isn't really very viable at the minute.

Featured Deck: DuckWingFACE's Priest

Paladin

Well... Paladin is at the bottom for a reason. Again, it's a very niche counterdeck against certain classes, however the special part about Paladin is that whatever Paladin does well, Warrior generally just does better. Apart from a few outstanding cards like Aldor Peacekeeper, which many classes would love to have, Paladin's class cards are just incredibly underwhelming as well as being massively handicapped by their 4 mana bottleneck; Hammer of Wrath, Truesilver Champion and more are all 4 mana, as well as stuff like Chillwind Yeti's which you want to fit into your deck. Paladin is simply too reactive and struggles massively against the best aggro decks (your dudes = one free card for Hunters). Even Koyuki is having trouble laddering with Paladin at the minute, and nobody REALLY plays Paladin in tournaments. Unless you count Darkwonyx and his surprise Paladin deck from the last Fight Night anyway. Paladin needs massively reworking in my opinion, otherwise it will be lost in the depths of the trench of the tierlist for the next months.

Featured Deck: Koyuki's Updated Paladin

Closing Statements

With (as I predicted last analysis) the last patch shifting the metagame massively towards an aggro meta, it will be interesting to see how the Curse of Naxxramas expansion affects the lower-ranking classes' in any way, hopefully making the meta game shift more towards an equilibrium between control and aggression. Some classes such as Priest and Paladin are simply unviable at the top level currently, and only on the rarest occasions do we see someone excel with them, and hopefully the new expansion will make this not the case.