Team Hearth League
  • Home
  • Culture
  • New Player's Guide
  • Register
  • Current Season
    • Legacy Series >
      • Gold S30 Weeks
      • Red S30 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Class Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Legacy Teams
      • Legacy Schedule
      • Legacy Team Standings
      • Legacy Stats >
        • Legacy S30 Player Stats
        • Legacy S30 Lineup Stats
      • Legacy S30 Scouting
    • Hero Series >
      • Purple S27 Weeks
      • Teal S27 Weeks
      • Orange S27 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Class Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Hero Teams
      • Hero Schedule
      • Hero Team Standings
      • Hero Stats >
        • Hero S27 Player Stats
        • Hero S27 Lineup Stats
      • Hero S27 Scouting
    • Pro Series >
      • Black S18 Weeks
      • Pink S18 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Deck Submission
        • BAN Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Pro Teams
      • Pro Schedule
      • Pro Series Team Standings
      • Pro Stats >
        • Pro S18 Player Stats
        • Pro S18 Lineup Stats
      • Pro S18 Scouting
    • Wild Series >
      • Wild S15 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Deck Submission
        • BAN Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Wild Teams
      • Wild Schedule
      • Wild Team Standings
      • Wild Stats >
        • Wild S15 Player Stats
        • Wild S15 Lineup Stats
      • Wild S15 Scouting
    • Current Season Player Database
    • Crossover Stats
  • Resources
    • Rules >
      • Official THL Rules
      • In-match Process and Issue FAQ
      • Rules Appendix
      • Regular Season and Playoff Format
    • Captain Guide & Overview
    • Best Practices
    • PR Calculator
    • Legacy/Hero PR Database
    • Ban Process: Legacy & Hero
    • Twitch Standards
    • Time Zone Converter
    • Discord Timestamp Generator
  • THL Archives
    • Legacy Archives >
      • Legacy Historic Dashboard
      • Legacy Lifetime Stats
      • Legacy Season Champions
    • Hero Archives >
      • Hero Historic Dashboard
      • Hero Lifetime Stats
      • Hero Season Champions
    • Pro Archives >
      • Pro Historic Dashboard
      • Pro Lifetime Stats
      • Pro Season Champions
    • Wild Archives >
      • Wild Historic Dashboard
      • Wild Lifetime Stats
      • Wild Season Champions
    • Misc. Archives >
      • Miscellaneous Historic Dashboard
      • BGs Season Champions
      • BGs Lifetime Stats
      • Pro EU Season Champions
      • Pro EU Lifetime Stats
    • Lifetime Stat Dashboard
    • Crossover and Content Awards >
      • Season 29
      • Season 28
      • Season 27
      • Season 26
      • Season 25
      • Season 24
      • Season 23
      • Season 22
      • Season 21
      • Season 20
      • Season 19
      • Season 18
      • Season 17
      • Season 16
      • Season 15
      • Season 14
      • Season 13
      • Season 12
      • Season 11
      • Season 10
      • Season 9
      • Season 8
      • Season 7
      • Season 6
      • Season 5
      • Season 4
    • Hall of Fame
  • BLOG
  • Shop
  • Contact Us

Ragnaros X - Week 3 Lineup Trends

9/18/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
We’ve finally made it past the third week! Do you know why this is so important? Because when analysts attempt to identify a trend, they need at least three occurrences of something to say, “yep, that makes a trend.” If it happens once, it could be meaningless. If it happens twice, it could be coincidence, but if it happens a third time, then we probably have a trend! And now that we have three weeks worth of data, look for Blizzard to announce balance changes to throw an established meta into complete free-fall. But I digress.


Week 3 brings about no significant changes to the meta, but what is significant is the Druid-Warlock-Rogue-Hunter meta. We’ve had three weeks of those four classes dominating the meta, and unless we get balance changes, I don’t foresee that changing. While Week 2 saw a slight increase in lineup diversity, last week that diversity completely disappeared, and we ended up with an even less diverse set up lineups compared to week 1. Week 1 seemed like a “try what looks good” week, then week 2 was an “experimenting week”, and finally week 3 was a “return to what is good” week. I’ll be curious to see what happens next week! In Week 2 we only had 24 unique lineups, compared with 30 the week before and 26 the week before that. Week 3 was the least diverse meta we’ve had so far. What follows below is a breakdown of the six most popular lineups from Week 3.


Popular Week 3 Lineups
Lineup #1 – Druid, Hunter, Rogue, and Warlock
Picture
Week 3 Stats
30 lineups, 16-14 record (53%)
Druid Bans: 6-9 (40%)
Hunter Bans: 1-1 (50%)
Rogue Bans: 5-1 (83%)
Warlock Bans: 4-3 (57%)


Season 10 Stats
88 lineups, 47-41 record (53%)
Druid Bans: 19-23, 45%
Hunter Bans: 4-4, 50%
Rogue Bans: 13-7, 65%
Warlock Bans: 11-7, 61%


This lineup continues to be the most popular lineup, and it’s never been close. We’re up to 88 appearances on the season, which is pretty remarkable. No single lineup even came close to that many appearances last season. We saw a bit of a dip from Week 1 to Week 2, but it’s popularity increased heading into Week 3. Overall, this lineup is barely hanging onto a winning record at 53% in matches, but if enough people start to figure out that banning Druid is the way to go to counter this lineup, we could see its performance drop a bit.


Lineup #2 – Druid, Hunter, Mage, Warlock
Picture
Week 3 Stats
15 lineups, 9-6 record (60%)
Druid Bans: 3-2 (60%)
Hunter Bans: 4-1 (80%)
Mage Bans: 0-3 (0%)
Rogue Bans??: (1-0) (100%)
Warlock Bans: 1-0 (100%)


Season 10 Stats
25 lineups, 16-9 (64%)
Druid Bans: 4-2 (67%)
Hunter Bans: 5-2 (71%)
Mage Bans: 1-4 (20%)
Warlock Bans: 5-1 (83%)


This was a new entry in Week 2 and had an excellent showing that week. Consequently, the popularity of the lineup exploded heading into Week 3, more than doubling its appearance rate. As its representation increased its performance did dip a little bit, but it still looks like a very strong option. Mage is an interesting addition to replace Rogue above, and it does provide some favorable matchups against Warlock and Rogue, but as I look through the ban data, it does present an interesting problem. When Mage is banned, this lineup has been abysmal, winning only 20% of its matches. When any other class is banned, the lineup does extremely well, perhaps pointing to how well Mage matches up against some of the most popular classes right now. Lastly, whoever banned Rogue…c’mon man.


Lineup #3 – Druid, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock
Picture
Week 3 Stats
7 Lineups, 3-4 record (43%)
Druid Bans: 2-3 (40%)
Rogue Bans: 1-0 (100%)
Shaman Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Warlock Bans: 0-1 (0%)


Season 10 Stats
10 Lineups, 4-6 record (40%)
Druid Bans: 3-4 (43%)
Rogue Bans: 1-0 (100%)
Shaman Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Warlock Bans: 0-1 (0%)


This is a brand-new entry for lineup trends, not having made an appearance as a popular lineup yet this season. Unfortunately, this experiment didn’t seem to pan out very well, with it going 3-4 last week. It wasn’t the first time the lineup has ever been brought though as it made two appearances in Week 1 and one appearance last week. But even when you add those other few lineups to the data from last week, on the season, the lineup still looks mediocre at best. Shaman would seem to be a decent option in our format as it’s a flexible class and difficult to predict, but unfortunately as you can see in the class tables below, the Shaman class has not been performing very well this season. And it certainly doesn’t look great in this lineup.


Lineup #4 – Druid, Mage, Rogue, and Warlock
Picture
Week 3 Stats
6 lineups, 3-3 record (50%)
Druid Bans: 2-2 (50%)
Mage Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Rogue Bans: 1-1 (50%)
Warlock Bans: 0-0 (0%)


Season 10 Stats
26 lineups, 12-14 record (46%)
Druid Bans: 6-10 (38%)
Mage Bans: 1-0 (100%)
Rogue Bans: 2-3 (40%)
Warlock Bans: 3-1 (75%)


I have spoken the past two weeks about how I didn’t believe in this lineup, and its representation rightly dropped in half in Week 3. But there are still some true believers playing this lineup, and would you look at that…it scored a 50% win rate! It wasn’t a losing lineup last week! Huzzah! Although, I hate to break it to you…but it wasn’t a winning lineup either. It fell into that awful pit of competitive despair called a “tie”. As a Minnesota Vikings fan, I still don’t know how to feel about last week’s tie game against the Packers in Lambeau. But I do know this: ties suck. And I still wouldn’t use this lineup.


Lineup #5 – Druid, Hunter, Mage, Rogue
Picture
Week 3 Stats
5 Lineups, 0-5 record (0%)
Druid Bans: 0-4 (0%)
Hunter Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Mage Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Rogue Bans: 0-1 (0%)


Season 10 Stats
15 Lineups, 4-11 (27%)
Druid Bans: 3-9 (38%)
Hunter Bans: 0-1 (0%)
Mage Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Rogue Bans: 1-1 (50%)


In Week 2 this lineup went 25%. Last week, it didn’t win a single match. DO. NOT. USE. THIS. LINEUP. I may not have been doing Lineup Trends very long (really only 12 weeks worth of games going back to last season), but I have never seen a popular lineup go 0% in that amount of time. I can see why it might be tempting to use it, because when you look at the top four win-rates by class, these are the top four classes. But that doesn’t mean they complement each other in a lineup or have the ability to be flexible and target the same kinds of classes. Data on 15 lineups is enough to be able to say that a 27% win rate is simply not good enough. So, please, for all of THL’s sake, don’t use this lineup…unless your name is davpetm…then PLEASE use this lineup this week. :D


Lineup #6 – Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Rogue
Picture
Week 3 Stats
5 lineups, 4-1 record (80%)
Druid Bans: 2-0 (100%)
Hunter Bans: 0-0 (0%)
Paladin Bans: 1-0 (100%)
Rogue Bans: 1-1 (50%)


Season 10 Stats
16 Lineups, 12-4 record (75%)
Druid Bans: 6-3 (67%)
Hunter Bans: 2-0 (100%)
Paladin Bans: 2-0 (100%)
Rogue: 2-1 (67%)


The usage of this lineup has held pretty steady each week being brought five, six, and five times through the first three weeks respectively. It has performed very well each and every week. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to ban this lineup, as every choice results in a winning record. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Paladin looks targetable, and that the absence of Warlock would seem to be a hindrance, but conventional wisdom would be wrong in this case. This lineup is worth serious consideration going forward.


Week 3 Class Breakdown
We still have four very clear front-runners for “most popular classes”, and literally nothing has changed in the order of most popular classes. What has changed is the distribution of lineups that has used each class. Hunter has seen a bit of an increase, moving up to tie Rogue for the 3rd most popular class. Mage has been holding steady at #5 and after seeing a small spike in usage in Week 2, it dropped a bit in Week 3. Warlock has seen its usage drop for a 2nd straight week as we have a virtual 3-way tie between Warlock, Rogue and Hunter. Druid, remarkably, saw its usage INCREASE. 95 out of a possible 98 qualifying lineups used Druid last week. If only it were a targetable class! Druid is just too good and does everything well (drawing, health gain, burst, OTK combos, board clears, etc, etc). The rest of the classes all remained within a few lineup totals as last week.


1. Druid (95 Lineups)
2. Warlock (77 Lineups)
3. Rogue (72 Lineups)
4. Hunter (72 Lineups)
5. Mage (30 Lineups)
6. Paladin (15 Lineups)
7. Shaman (15 Lineups)
8. Warrior (12 Lineups)
9. Priest (4 Lineups)


The two tables below show class win rates in matches and overall games from Week 3 and the combined Season totals. Take Warrior for example, this table is showing how many matches and games every lineup that had Warrior in it won and lost. I have ranked them in order of match win rate. As you can see, Warrior comes out on top with the best match win rate in Week 3. But when you look for Warrior in the overall Season table below, it falls to the middle of the pack, because it hasn’t performed very well when you combine weeks one through three. We now have three weeks’ worth of data and th meta continues to look very unbalanced with low diversity. We’ll see if I’m right about Blizzard announcing balance changes…I’ve been calling for them every week.


Week 3 Class Win Rates
Picture
Season 10 Class Win Rates
Picture
Conclusion
Druid, Rogue and Hunter sit on top of the mountain of class win rates, and rightly so. They are also three of the four most popular classes for a reason. Warlock is the 2nd most popular class, but still sports an overall losing record in matches and games, thanks to a rough showing Week 1. It sits right on the cusp of breaking the 50% threshold and another strong week should push it back over the edge. Mage is holding steady at 50%. After that, we have the “rest of the classes” which pretty much look terrible in this meta, safe for a few isolated examples.


It was a surprise to see a new lineup make an appearance this week, but it just goes to show you that the meta is ever-evolving, even while still having clearly established “top classes.” The last table below is a list of the other lineups (with total season stats), that were brought by at least 2 people in week 3, but that were not quite as popular as the lineups above. Perhaps there’s a diamond in the rough down there. Until next week, good luck and have fun!


-Altenberg


Week 3 – Other Lineups (Total Season Stats)
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    The 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

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    Categories

    All
    Board Items
    Data And Numbers
    Fiery War Primers
    FNF Team Articles
    Hero Series
    Interviews
    KnC Card Reviews
    More You Know
    Salty Storylines
    Stream Schedule
    Tales Of The Mighty
    Team Reveal
    THL Awards
    THL In The Outside World
    THL March Madness
    THL Meta Reports
    THL OctaTHLon
    THL Player Power Rankings
    THL Power Rankings
    THL Top 8s
    What Would You Do?
    Wild
    World Cup

    RSS Feed

This website is not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment.

Icons made by Freepik & Smashicons from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY
  • Home
  • Culture
  • New Player's Guide
  • Register
  • Current Season
    • Legacy Series >
      • Gold S30 Weeks
      • Red S30 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Class Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Legacy Teams
      • Legacy Schedule
      • Legacy Team Standings
      • Legacy Stats >
        • Legacy S30 Player Stats
        • Legacy S30 Lineup Stats
      • Legacy S30 Scouting
    • Hero Series >
      • Purple S27 Weeks
      • Teal S27 Weeks
      • Orange S27 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Class Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Hero Teams
      • Hero Schedule
      • Hero Team Standings
      • Hero Stats >
        • Hero S27 Player Stats
        • Hero S27 Lineup Stats
      • Hero S27 Scouting
    • Pro Series >
      • Black S18 Weeks
      • Pink S18 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Deck Submission
        • BAN Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Pro Teams
      • Pro Schedule
      • Pro Series Team Standings
      • Pro Stats >
        • Pro S18 Player Stats
        • Pro S18 Lineup Stats
      • Pro S18 Scouting
    • Wild Series >
      • Wild S15 Weeks
      • Forms >
        • Deck Submission
        • BAN Submission
        • Results Submission
      • Wild Teams
      • Wild Schedule
      • Wild Team Standings
      • Wild Stats >
        • Wild S15 Player Stats
        • Wild S15 Lineup Stats
      • Wild S15 Scouting
    • Current Season Player Database
    • Crossover Stats
  • Resources
    • Rules >
      • Official THL Rules
      • In-match Process and Issue FAQ
      • Rules Appendix
      • Regular Season and Playoff Format
    • Captain Guide & Overview
    • Best Practices
    • PR Calculator
    • Legacy/Hero PR Database
    • Ban Process: Legacy & Hero
    • Twitch Standards
    • Time Zone Converter
    • Discord Timestamp Generator
  • THL Archives
    • Legacy Archives >
      • Legacy Historic Dashboard
      • Legacy Lifetime Stats
      • Legacy Season Champions
    • Hero Archives >
      • Hero Historic Dashboard
      • Hero Lifetime Stats
      • Hero Season Champions
    • Pro Archives >
      • Pro Historic Dashboard
      • Pro Lifetime Stats
      • Pro Season Champions
    • Wild Archives >
      • Wild Historic Dashboard
      • Wild Lifetime Stats
      • Wild Season Champions
    • Misc. Archives >
      • Miscellaneous Historic Dashboard
      • BGs Season Champions
      • BGs Lifetime Stats
      • Pro EU Season Champions
      • Pro EU Lifetime Stats
    • Lifetime Stat Dashboard
    • Crossover and Content Awards >
      • Season 29
      • Season 28
      • Season 27
      • Season 26
      • Season 25
      • Season 24
      • Season 23
      • Season 22
      • Season 21
      • Season 20
      • Season 19
      • Season 18
      • Season 17
      • Season 16
      • Season 15
      • Season 14
      • Season 13
      • Season 12
      • Season 11
      • Season 10
      • Season 9
      • Season 8
      • Season 7
      • Season 6
      • Season 5
      • Season 4
    • Hall of Fame
  • BLOG
  • Shop
  • Contact Us