THL Meta Reports: S8/5, Week 5!

Welcome back to rebobson and BitBeaker's take on the THL meta right now, read on to hear their thoughts on what people brought to another eventful week!

It has happened! The nerfs went live just a few short hours ago, so the question remains: how will that affect the meta? Let’s have a look at what happened in Ragnaros League last week and try and find out! An important thing to remember: Blizzard refused to rule out nerfs hitting last Thursday, so some of the changes we see this week may be indicative of what is to come. And boy, was one change noticeable: Rogue’s bring rate dropped by almost half, from 77% to 45%, making it the new 5th most popular class. This, while it has occupied a solid third place for almost the entire expansion duration. Could this be an indicator that people don’t fancy Rogue’s chances with the imminent destruction of Tempo Rogue, losing Patches the Pirate, Corridor Creeper and Bonemare to the nerf-hammer? Paladin reclaimed a good chunk (12%) of Rogue’s loss, suggesting that just as the class was plummeting downwards, the removal of Patches from the metagame may signal Murloc Paladin’s return as the dominant Aggro deck of choice. One Aggro deck which doesn’t appear to be sticking around: Face Hunter. Losing Patches and Corridor Creeper will hit that deck hard, and with that being the single playable Hunter archetype, Rexxar’s paltry 2% bring-rate (and 0% win-rate) may be here to stay. Warlock is as popular as ever, and remains unaffected by the nerfs: could we see a sixth straight week where Warlock increases in popularity? Druid and Mage, the other two classes completely unaffected by the nerfs, both take brings off Rogue (10% and 16% respectively); their versatility means we are likely to see plenty more of them as well. Shaman and Warrior report complete no-shows once more, with a single Shaman bring between them, and the Shaman ​in question DQing. Now, onto our final question mark: Will Priest stick around? With Spiteful Summoner builds being able to shake off the nerfs with some ease, and losing a lot of their difficult fast aggro matchups, it will be interesting to see how well the class survives the loss of Razakus Priest as a dominant force. Until next week!

​-rebobson

Pr, R, Wlk with a flex spot remains the go to lineup, but the speculation of an early balance patch led some to experimentation. This week we can expect the patch to actually be implemented and this could have a significant impact on the classes we see from our opponents. Warlock is poised to replace Priest as the most played class, but that doesn’t leave Priest out in the cold. There are still plenty of potential builds including Big, Dragon Combo, and potentially an adapted version of Spiteful. The Raza change kills the OTK build of Razakus Priest but we could still see some strong variants emerge to take its place. Only time will tell of any of them are more viable than current alternatives. Aggro Druid gets severely weakened by the changes, but Jade Druid remains untouched and just as good as always. Rogue gets hit hard as the changes almost entirely kill Tempo Rogue as we know it. With all of the changes hitting Aggro so hard, Quest Rogue could end up being the go to archetype for the foreseeable future. Secret Mage will be another deck to keep an eye on as well as Exodia Mage. Both of these archetypes will benefit from the changes as it will be tougher to run them down early. Paladin doesn’t lose much for the Murloc build but a slowing of the meta could lead to the emergence of more Midrange or Control builds. The loss of Patches and Corridor Creeper is a big hit to Hunters but they now may have some time to set up a board allowing a more Midrange build. We could even see a return of Lonely Hunter. With Priest’s inability to OTK, Warrior could see a high value control build appear to battle the meta. This fear could have explained the single Warrior ban we saw this week, even though Warrior wasn’t even in the lineup. Unfortunately for Thrall, Shaman will remain trash tier until rotation. Prove me wrong.

-BitBeaker