IntroductionAs we continue our weekly tracking of the top players and teams in each series, we are starting to see the inklings of some patterns across the divisions. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Feedback is welcome as we continue to iron out the kinks in the format and stylizing of this blog series. legacy
Another week of Legacy gone by and we see a lot of shake-up in our top 10 teams and players, with the latter containing 50% new players. Two evenly matched matches, McMarin’s vs The Dog Ate Our Team Name and Lethally Blind vs Anotharrr Patches Meta, provided our biggest shake-ups of the week with the latter of both matches falling by five spots each in the top 10. The top 10 players saw an influx of new players as the standings start to even out. With it being this early in the season, one loss can drop you from the top 10 and we saw that this week. It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues or if the top 10 starts to settle with a consistent group of players in the coming weeks. -Mako Hero
Hero saw many new players coming into the spotlight this week with 4 brand new players on the top 10 list! Neverland also took a large leap straight into first place with their teammate Fsorace1 right on their tail. Our top teams for the week mostly stayed the same with teams 1-4 all jumping up or down a spot. It seems these teams are all trying extra hard to remain up on the top! F2L Black was just able to slip themselves into the top 5 with a close 12-11 win against (yet) Another Premium Mountain who were our top team from last week. Everyone and every team seems to be in a close race for those top spots and I am sure we will see the top players and teams continue to shuffle as the season goes on. -Amazingoo pro
Pro Series saw a leader swap this week as BrushyTuna continued their win streak and the previously undefeated F2L fell to the up and coming Cheese Mongers United. The top three spots all share a 3-1 record. And the last two spots in the Top Five are rounded out by the undefeated Staff of Five Dubs and The Terrible Tourists who traded 4th and 5th this week. No new teams broke into the Top Five this week, but there was lots of movement with the teams at the top of the list. In Top Players, there are six players still undefeated. At 4-0, Fsorace1 (BrushyTuna), AgentPWE (F2L), Dagda (A Possible Miscalculation), and nVision (Opportunistic Pro Players). At 3-0, Dragonrider (Hearthstone Queens) and RonMexico (BrushyTuna). With three weeks left in the season, there's a good chance at least one of those will still stand undefeated - WHO WILL IT BE? -Whodack wild
The wild team power rankings see little change. After getting upset by the Worgen Greasers, my own team, WTF, sees itself fall to the fourth slot, while F2L: Viridian has done its customary “lose the first week and start winning again” strategy. It climbs to third place exiting its bye week. As for the players, there are still four undefeated players remaining: in first place is, as usual, Lorthos, with Sinferno, THL’s resident shaman specialist and brewer beyond compare (bompare?) sitting in second. Kvlt, a man who needs little introduction to those who have the misfortune of being his opponent in top legend, is 5th, and Copa, a consistently strong-but-not-elite player has taken a BIG jump up, along with his teams, in all five series. He is undefeated, his team is ranked second in the power rankings, and the Staff could well be on their way to picking up their first crown! Lorthos is joined by TigerEye, OTZ, and Seth, probably better known as ForChrist, in the top ten. The Shakers were upset in the quarterfinals last season and swore to end this ignominy: the team is undefeated and four of their five players are in our top ten! Entering the bye week, this is the team to beat, Wild players. Copa and Sinferno are joined by Gummbii, a man who took revenge for Even Shaman falling out of the meta by entering into the top 10. However, he faces his hardest test yet in week five: can he cling on to his spot? We shall see… (no this isn’t arrogance on my part I have absolutely no idea who his opponent could possibly be, why do you ask?) My own 1 seed, NeonHeron of WTF, has been performing exceptionally well, only losing one match in four weeks despite bringing the exact same lineup each time. That’s some skill! With a five-game victory over last week’s top player, OTZ, our final new entrant into the power rankings, placing at sixth place, is none other than THL’s resident Superman (Superteen?), maxiebon1234! He is well on his way to yet another excellent season, and it should come as no surprise for those who know him. It feels like every season he reaches new heights. Thanks everyone for tuning in, sorry for the e-sub last week (I was on vacation to Poland, thankfully MartyB is an absolute madlad and stepped in with only a couple hours to go, writing an AMAZING roundup, I owe him a lot of thanks), and I’ll be back with another one next week. As always, happy hunting, lions! Oh and a Master’s Tour win is nice too I guess… -Devalion duos Duos is the perennial underdog when it comes to excitement levels compared to other series. We have three teams sitting comfortably above the rest while everyone else fights for a top spot. It’s a week-by-week battle to see if any of these three powerhouses tumble and fall. I think if it is going to happen, it could happen this week. The 4-0 Death Hunters take on the 0-4 Abusement Park. The kicker here being that our underdog team happens to also feature our current #1 Legacy player in the likes of LLCoolRay. We could see a massive upset in the making.
-Mako
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IntroductionThis week kicks off our weekly tracking of the top players and teams in each series. We use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. For each series, you will find the top 5 or 10 players and teams in that series ranked using their PAR score, while including their record and game win rate percentage. Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Legacy
With only three weeks into the season, Legacy holds only two undefeated teams and one of these teams is putting on a clinic. I’m not your Bouldering Buddy, Friend is currently dominating Legacy Red with a 64.52% game win rate and three players remaining undefeated. Notably, we have an even split of teams in the Red and Gold divisions in our top 10 this week, showing the competitiveness of the series. On the players side, we have a total of 12 players remaining undefeated entering week 4. How many of these players will remain undefeated? History shows at most one, but with Legacy being as competitive as it is we could see zero by the time it is all said and done. We also have two teams that hold more than one player in this week’s top 10: I’m not your Bouldering Buddy, Friend and McMarin’s. AgentPWE, Freshmastafunk, and moonkie are all three representing the former, while Niemz and aharmlessdog represent the latter. -Mako Hero
Three weeks into the season and one team for Hero is pulling ahead. (yet) Another Premium Mountain remains undefeated with a 2-0 score and an impressive game win rate of 65.85%. This season appears rather competitive with only a 4 point gap between the top 5 teams ranging from 37-41 points. It really could be any team's game this season! Our current top 5 players all remain undefeated within this season so far, but it is likely this number will decrease as time goes on. This series has the potential to flip on its head at any moment as a sweep in week 4 could boot any team straight into first place. -Amazingoo Pro
With three weeks in the books we are passing the midpoint of the season with this week's games. There is a top half and bottom half of teams forming, but still plenty of room for any team to make a hard run to the top or a sharp fall to the bottom. A deep dive shows that there are five teams who jumped out in front over the pack. | With Staff of the Five Dubs, we welcome back a group of THL veterans. Will this be the season that Copa and crew take down Pro? We'll see. Weeks one and two Staff had back to back 4-1 series to start the season. Watch out that your team isn't the one to give them the Five Dub sweep they're after. | The Terrible Tourists have a bye this week after catching a beatdown last week from fellow Top 5 team, BrushyTuna. The tourists keep their spot in the Top 5 because they took down another perennial Pro team in Cheese Mongers United in Week One. The Tourists have shown they can hang, look for them to bounce back after the bye. | Cheese Mongers lost a 14-15 squeaker in Week One, and since then they've let the rest of their opponents know how they feel about that. They put up 20 and 24 points in the past two weeks to put themselves back in the Top 3. This week will have huge Top 5 implications as CMU faces off against the top team in the Pro Series (see below). | BrushyTuna's only loss this season is a week one loss to the Pro Series top team (keep seeing below). Since then BT has dispatched teams, including other Top 5 contenders. Expect BrushyTuna to ride into the playoffs like their strange lightsaber wielding avatar. | Death. Taxes. And F2L being a top contender. Currently the last remaining undefeated team. They've had a few tests as they've knocked off other top teams. Can they carry this momentum to an undefeated season? We'll see who else wants to take a shot and try to get themselves in the Top 5! -Whodack Wild
The Sunburnt Shakers have started Season 13 as expected, boasting the top spot on our power rankings. The series favorites are led by their top seed and #1 player in our Power Rankings, OTZaixia. The biggest surprise of the season so far, meanwhile, is Staff of the Five Dubs. Although the team is 1-1, their by-game performance has shot them up to the second spot of the power rankings. Will their captain Copa lead them to a playoff berth this season? There are still a lot of matches to play, but their prospects are looking good right now. - MartyB Duos The first season of Duos is here and we’re off to a fast start. The top half of our top 10 is noticeably ahead of the bottom half when it comes to game win rate and record. Comparatively, the Maroon conference holds a whopping 80% of their members in the top 10. Is Maroon that much more challenging of a conference? We’ll have to wait and see how the coming weeks affect Maroon’s stance in the top 10. -Mako
Introduction Hello! Welcome to the THL Meta Analysis brought to you by Sprinkle, Amazingoo, and Chewie. We have analyzed the Week 2 match data from both Pro and Duos (decks brought, lineups, deck win rates) and are summarizing it with some added commentary and observations. This will be an ongoing series of blogs as the meta develops and shifts throughout the season. Data Charts
 Death Knight Death Knight was the most popular bring in Pro and Duos with Rainbow Death Knight being the most popular archetype. There is not a set list for Rainbow DK yet, with some lists using the recently buffed Buttons along with Razzle-Dazzler to great effect. Rainbow Death Knight was 19-9 (a WR of 68%), while also being the most brought deck and most banned deck.  Demon Hunter Demon Hunter was not seen very much this week. Pirate Demon hunter is the current popular choice for Demon Hunter. This deck is able to get a very aggressive start with cards like Patches the Pilot, Sock Puppet Slitherspear, and Treasure Distributor with all the fast pirates it can get out. The deck has an amazing early game start, but can quickly fall off once it gets to the late game. With a VERY small sample size, Pirate Demon Hunter had a 100% winrate going 1-0. The class was not banned at all this week. Demon Hunter seems like it has been mostly solved with what it wants to do with the only ongoing question being whether or not to run the pain package in the deck.  Druid Druid is another very popular class currently and is split into 2 main archetypes, Dragon/Tempo Druid and Concierge Druid. Tempo Druid focuses on ramp with the dragon package, Doomkin, and New Heights allowing them to get up to a maximum of 16 mana. This allows for a huge payoff with Trogg Gemtosser. This ramping allows them to quickly get to huge payoffs with cards such as Eonar, Zilliax, Marin, and more. An uncontested Dorian on 4 can also end games with the right draws. Concierge Druid remains a great deck as the nerfs did not hit it too hard. The deck is able to do massive bursts of damage with spell damage from Chia Drake, Magical Dollhouse, and Go with the Flow. It can then output massive loads of damage with Swipes and Seabreeze Chalices. The dragon package also allows them to have a great amount of tempo in the early game. Both lists maintained a positive win rate this week with Tempo Druid going 10-8 (55.56%) and Concierge Druid going 7-5 (58.33%). In total Druid was banned 12 times. The class is in a great spot and will likely continue to be brought in future weeks.  Hunter Not much to say here. Hunter was brought a total of 2 times in both Pro and Duos. The class does not bring much to the table currently and it does not seem like it will unless it sees some buffs. Sorry hunter players, you’ll have to wait.  Mage Mage has not been looking the best since the patch. The big spell synergies it received simply have not paid off very much. While spell mage may very much still be viable, the main deck we saw brought this week for mage was Elemental Mage. This deck focuses on playing an elemental each turn to cash in on effects from cards such as Lamplighter and Overflow Surger. With the recent nerf to lamplighter it is not surprising to see that this decks win rate has significantly tanked going 2-8 (20%) This deck was banned a total of 0 times. We will have to see if any new mage lists pop up within the coming weeks, but overall the class does not have the most exciting options.  Paladin Untouched by nerfs, Paladin has been a popular bring for many players. The class is mainly split into two different decks, Aggro Paladin and Handbuff Paladin. Aggro paladin focuses on an aggressive rush to get the opponent to die while handbuff focuses more on its late game with large stats and otk potential. Surprisingly, aggro Paladin's win rate remains negative going 12-16 (42.86%) and handbuff also goes slightly negative going 7-8 (46.67%). Despite the negative win rate, Paladin is a very popular ban being banned a total of 19 times between aggro and handbuff. It will be interesting to see if this negative win rate encourages people to take a different approach with their bans.  Priest Priest has two viable decks right now, the popular Zarimi Dragon Priest, and the skill-testing Overheal Priest. Zarimi Priest is capable of making extremely big boards, with the help of Gorgonzormu’s Cheese and Thirsty Drifters, and then taking an extra turn with Zarimi. This was tied for the second most popular bring, and the third most banned deck. It went 17-14 (55%). Overheal Priest appears to be a powerful deck, albeit harder to play than Zarimi Priest. The deck performed well, at 5-3 (62%).  Rogue Rogue currently has 2 popular archetypes, Excavate Rogue and Elemental Rogue. Excavate Rogue focuses on quickly getting the Azerite Scorpion and Velarok to get powerful discounted cards. It utilizes cards such as Sonya, Shadowstep, and Breakdance to repeat these powerful effects and find a way to finish off the opponent. Elemental Rogue has the same goal as all the other elemental decks. Play an elemental every turn to get to powerful effects such as Lamplighter. However, Rogue has access to bounce effects such as Shadowstep and Breakdance allowing you to replay Lamplighters for huge burst damage. Due to the nerf of Lamplighter, this deck has taken a bit of a backseat recently. One deck that has been showing up lately at high legend is Miracle Rogue. While it has not been seen much this season, I believe it has the potential to dominate if put in the right hands. We have likely not seen it much as it requires quick decisions and fast APM from the player. It will be interesting to see if it shows up in the following weeks and how it performs. Excavate Rogue fell short of a positive winrate this week going 6-7 (46.15%) and Elemental Rogue went positive with a shorter sample size going 2-1 (66.67%).The class was only banned a total of one time.  Shaman Shaman has several archetypes that performed to varying degrees; Evolve, Pirate, Highlander, and Rainbow. Evolve and Pirate were the two most popular by far, and each performed well. Pirate Shaman went 10-5 (67%) and Evolve Shaman went 13-9 (59%). The decks both utilize the early game aggression from the Demon Hunter Class with Carefree Cookie. Sigil of Skydiving and Patches the Pilot allow the decks to fight for board efficiently in the early game, and Carefree Cookie makes trading super favorable Highlander Shaman wasn’t played very much, but had a high winrate, 6-2 (75%). It is capable of beating Rainbow DK and some of the aggro decks in the meta. Bonk Shaman looks like bait.  Warlock Warlock has two viable decks right now, an Insanity Warlock that is one of the most popular decks in the format, and Pain Warlock. Insanity Warlock is extremely refined at this point, picking up new cards like Tidepool Pupil that give it extra utility in the hands of skilled players. The deck performed okay, 10-11 (48%) mostly losing to aggro or other combos like Concierge Druid. Pain Warlock was less played but nonetheless very effective. It went 4-2 (67%).  Warrior Warrior is in shambles. The popular Warrior deck was Unkilliax Warrior, which fared very poorly in this meta, between Yogg or Reska stealing the Zilliax, other classes being able to get under the deck with aggro, or having other answers, the class looks to be in a bad spot. Unkilliax Warrior in particular went 2-8 (20%). The only decks it was able to beat were off meta decks (Excavate Rogue and Elemental Shaman). Lineups
Sprinkle’s Meta Picks: Rainbow DK Zarimi Priest Pirate Shaman Dragon Druid Rainbow DK in it’s current form looks like a must-ban deck. At that point we’re just bringing the next best things. Solid combination of archetypes between a Aggro / “Combo” / and “Control” that doesn’t leave you open to getting swept. Dragon Druid could be swapped with a Warlock deck of your choice. Sprinkle’s Off Meta / Underrated: HL Shaman Pain Warlock Pirate DH Concierge Druid I think Highlander Shaman would perform well if more people brought it, specifically as a counter to Rainbow DK. Pain Warlock and Pirate DH also seem to perform but lack the sample size to know for sure. Your opponent doesn’t want to play against Concierge Druid and it’ll eat the ban for sure. |
AuthorThe THL blog is curated and edited by THL's Content Managers. All THL members are welcomed and encouraged to pitch ideas for articles they would like to see on the site. If you have an idea, please reach out to LotusKnight on Discord or via the THL Help email address: [email protected] Archives
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