The cornerstones of Gadgetzan

The heart of Gadgetzan is the separation of the classes in three factions: The hand-buffing Grimy Goons, the highlanders from the Kabal, and the Golem factory of the Jade Lotus. Each class explored new design spaces such as Paladin’s return to the midrange army style and Priest’s Reno experiments. Or that was at least the developers’ intent.

In reality, the meta shaped up a bit differently. Snowballing 1-drops such as Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate took over the early game and gave board presence to archetypes which previously lacked it. The game swung right into the aggressive spectrum, where multiple decks could kill as early as Turn 5, making greedy control lists almost obsolete -- something we’ll examine in depth in the next paragraphs.

The whole tri-class experiment has thus far not taken off completely. The one faction that has really pushed its mechanic into the limelight is the Jade Lotus, with Shaman and Druid builds seeing popularity on ladder. The Grimy Goons are not yet playing to their hand-buffing style and the only class in the Kabal trifecta which is playing highlander decks is the Warlock – the class which already favorited Reno decks anyway.

ELC Superstars was really the first real look into competitive Gadgetzan metagame, as fans looked forward to see whether or not Hearthstone has grown more diverse after 130-odd new cards. At least for the time being, the answer we have is: Not at all.

Archetype breakdown

A big issue observed in late Karazhan tournaments was the complete absence of certain classes in competitive line-ups. Priest and Paladin were almost never considered for high-profile matches and often Hunter and Rogue would be in the same boat. A notably penurious metagame was evident at GameGune 2016, a tournament held not two weeks after Blizzcon, where only five of the nine classes were used in the playoffs, marking an all-time low for Hearthstone this year.

A solution was much needed and Gadgetzan was what the community turned around, but if ELC is any indication, the future ahead is anything but bride. Of the 16 sixteen invited players, nobody played Hunter or Mage, and only one played Paladin, essentially having a 6/9 class representation. Warrior, a class famous for its diversity in Karazhan and Old Gods, was reduced to just three archetypes, of which Control was brought just once and the other two were different variations of aggro, split between Dragons and Pirates.

To be fair, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Gadgetzan meta is inherently poor and will stay so until the set rotation next year. Such phenomenon is oftentimes present in fresh metagames where players gravitate towards the easiest to build and pilot archetypes, which are generally the aggressive or midrange lists. With thousands of dollars on the line, few would put their eggs in the unpolished control basket.

Furthermore, one tournament doesn’t provide enough time for a meta to be enriched. The expansion of archetype diversity is a natural process which happens over time and has an almost bell curve-esque progression. At the start, diversity is minimal because of the untested waters. Towards the middle of any given era, diversity expands as players start finding viable lists for other classes and experiment with them in tournament environment. The discovery of counter and counter-of-counter decks further buffs up this number. Towards the end of the era, the diversity starts shrinking again, as the circle of pros find narrow down the available options to the most optimal ones, cut out underperforming decks and find no more room for experimentation with the meta being fully figured out. It’s still absolutely possible that a mid-era growth diversity-wise is in Gadgetzan’s future.

That said, while Hearthstone lost in some areas, it gained in others. Druid has undergone yet another paradigm shift and is playing its fifth and sixth different archetypes of the year and has added more brinks to the chain which thus far includes Combo, Tokens, Yogg and Malygos Druids. The two new archetypes are namely the Jade Druid and a revamp to the Malygos builds now including the Aviana, Kun and Alexstrasza OTK combo.

Shaman has also experienced somewhat of an archetype change with Jade Golem cards having reinforced the old midrange lists and Pirates re-enabling the aggro decks which were burried with the nerf to Tuskarr Totemic. Next door, Warlocks have been flipped upside down with RenoLocks beating Zoo by a huge margin, much thanks to Kazakus.

Winners and losers

Perhaps the biggest change in terms of revitalization is felt in Priest and Rogue. Literally unplayable in the Karazhan meta, Priests have a newfound strength with Drakonid Operative and Kaval Talonpriest, pushing Dragon Midrange to the top of the chart. The class is still not playing its intended reactionary control style, but at this point Priest players will take whatever solace they are offered, really.

Nobody won as much as Rogues did with Gadgetzan. Miracle remained a niche pick in most of Karazhan, only occasionally being played by dedicated Valeera apologists -- but a new age has now come for the backstabbing class. Patches, Small-Time Buccaneer and Counterfeit Coin are arguably the three best cards in the new set and they all fit Rogue exceptionally. A weakness of Miracle has always been its vulnerability to fast decks but when you can put a 3/2, 1/1 and a 1-attack weapon on the board by T2, it’s a different early-game story altogether. Equally powerful is a 6/6 VanCleef by T2 with two coins in hand, a question no other class but Rogues themselves can answer efficiently. Miracle Rogues can now go on the offensive themselves, which only compliments their original win-condition. At ELC, this has resulted in a 70% win-rate for Rogue and 69% win-rate for Priest, numbers which haven’t been seen in a long time, if ever.

For all their popularity, Shaman and Druid might have to face the fact that their time of terror is temporarily over. Unable to efficiently deal with the blitzkrieg meta, Druids landed at 42% and Shamans are trailing even further behind, with mere 34% - a new low for the class since Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem became a thing. Just to put things into perspective, in the last two metagames Shaman and Druid were both in the top 3 best performing classes with 51%, while Priest was on the very bottom with 45% and Rogue struggled to pass the median at 49%.

To echo the remark from before: These are still earliest days of Gadgetzan and numbers and win-percentage gaps are likely to normalize. As the meta stands today, however, it’s a cause for celebration for some underdog classes. God knows they’ve earned it.

Nydra is stationed at GosuGamers as Lead of Hearthstone. Follow him on Twitter at @GGNydrA.