THL Meta Reports: S8/5, Week 8!

Come one, come all, to another installment in THL Meta Reports! This week, as Sylvanas League's main season has come to a close, BitBeaker has a lot less to talk about, idling his time by by going over what happened in the past week's playoff action. Meanwhile, rebobson has stood his ground, ready to walk you through the same shit he does every week. Enjoy!

Last week, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Warlock accounted for 84.5% of the entire League; this week, it's down to 82.2%! In a week where a bumper 6 players’ class information was unavailable due to a lack of submissions from either themselves or their opponents, the big 4 were never looking like losing a great deal of ground to the lesser classes. N’Zoth Mage has seen something of a rise in competitive play due to the fact it can actually fight for the board in the early game as opposed to other Control Mages, while Secret Mage is obviously still one of the best decks in the format. Exodia Paladin is a fantastic deck against slower decks which has seen a rise in popularity recently as well; in a pocket meta where every deck is an aggressive Midrange deck, probably safe to assume those 70% Paladins are still either Dudes or Murlocs. Priest and Warlock have seen literally no advancement in weeks, so there’s absolutely nothing to say about either of those besides: they’re still good. Highrolling Barnes into Y’Shaarj on turn 4 on ladder appears to have convinced 24% of Ragnaros League that Spell Hunter was actually a viable deck to bring (and maybe that it’s quite good against Paladins and Mages, but shh), while Druid is just looking sad and pointless, without a favourable matchup to call upon, unless you hit the jackpot and manage to queue a slow Druid into a Dude Paladin and hit Spreading Plague. Good luck with that, chum. Warrior has officially overtaken Rogue in popularity, though the fact that 6 of the 10 brings were from Project Mayhem/Prep Coin Concede while bringing the Hunter/Mage/Warlock/Warrior lineup affectionately dubbed ‘the Itachi’ may have warped the stats ever so slightly. Meanwhile, Shaman was banned in a match it wasn’t even brought, in probably the most interesting thing to happen to the class in Ragnaros League this season (yes, HockeyBoyz3, I know, I said Ragnaros League), and Rogue is just honestly fucking terrible. The next expansion announcement should hopefully be arriving soon, and who knows? Maybe next season we’ll reach the promised land of 9 playable classes. We can dream. Until next week!

-rebobson

The Sylvanas League playoffs are upon us, so what do the top teams in the league have to say about the meta? As it turns out they really don’t like Warrior and Rogue, and don’t really seem to keen on playing Shaman either despite Thrall’s 100% post nerf win rate. The most popular lineup is M, Pr, Wlk with a flex spot. That spot has been filled mostly with Paladin or Druid but we have also seen the occasional Hunter. The most common class in the flex spot was Paladin. Garrosh continues to weep in to his cup of tea while Valeera has finally gotten settled in. Seems like she’s gonna be hanging around with the outcasts for the long haul. Thrall continues to try and find a way out. He’s seen the daylight. Can he make it? Come back next week to find out.

​-BitBeaker