The World Championship is a crucial tournament for Hearthstone. Not just for the obvious reason – crowning the world champion and, in this year’s case, awarding him a quarter million dollars – but also for establishing the definitive tournament metagame: Which decks are the strongest, which are the most popular, which ones are niche or counter picks. This year’s Best of 7 format guaranteed, at least on paper, a great variety of classes, as each player had to bring five different ones to Blizzcon.

In addition, there’s the scheduling of the event itself. The World Championship always comes at the tail end of an established meta. In the case of the most recent one, One Night in Karazhan – Hearthstone’s latest adventure expansion – had been fully released for two months, more than enough time for pros to figure out what’s what. The established metagame status quo is, however, spiced up by the last balance patch of the year, allowing for modifications on the dominant decks. In this case, changes affected the volatile and swing Yogg-Saron, oppressive archetypes such as Aggro Shaman and killed the combo deck known as Worgen Warrior.

What’s more, Blizzcon is the one tournament of the year where all four major regions come together, gathering every playstyle variety in existence, guaranteeing a diverse deck experience. It welcomes both the traditional value/control preferences of Europe and North America which are seen as the trend-setters of the modern metagame, and the aggressive and innovative deckbuilding world of Asia represented by China and APAC.

It’s the perfect sample group.  

The expectations

Even with the balance changes coming a month before Blizzcon, pro players and pundits had clear expectations of the metagame at the World Championship. Midrange Shaman, a deck with barely any hard counters, was going to be the prime candidate for the bans. To take his place as the most dominant Tier 1 deck was going to be Malygos Druid, the complex and solitaire-like combo deck which became the primary archetype for Malfurion after his core kit of Force of Nature, Ancient of Lore and Keeper of the Grove was severely nerfed and after the last two expansions gave the world the wonderful Fandral Staghelm and Arcane Giant.

Warrior was expected to be a major presence, too. The class was, by far, the most diverse in current Hearthstone, with several control and couple of aggressive builds being viable. The “Fantastic Four” of non-Shamans was probably going to be completed with Tempo Mages and Secrets Hunters: Both great decks to fight the power of Malygos Druid and gun it down into Conquest defeat.

Still, with Bo7 and 16 players from four different regions, there were bound to have niche picks as well. Zoolock and Miracle Rogue were in many eyes the dominant Tier 2 classes.

The Reality, Part I: The Struggles of Malfurion

The group stage of Blizzcon saw surprises left and right. The major ones were in the players scores: The underrated North America rose to seize the day and the Europe hype-train almost derailed before it made a 50 percent recovery. But that’s another story. Here, we talk decks and numbers, so let’s get on with it.

The first major shock when the decklists were released was the presence of Priest and Paladin, the two weakest classes at the moment. Zhuo “Hamster” Wang emerged as the people’s champion, bringing both of the classes and making the bravest statement of all, that he is good enough to be in at least the top half of the tournament, playing an underestimated line-up (and as we would later see, he was correct).

An even bigger surprise was just how much Malygos Druid struggled. The supposed king of the meta was down to mere 33 percent win rate by the group stage mid-point, becoming a major talking point on the casting desk.

There were a couple of factors behind the struggles of Malygos Druid. First was the complexity of the deck. Every turn playing Maly Druid means finding the most optimal of many options in order to survive until the win condition and such passive decks which rely on navigating rich-on-decision turns often spell doom for less proficient players. Despite all the talent gathered at Blizzcon, the misplays on Malygos Druid were aplenty, causing the win rate to plummet.

A lot of competitors also made their mission to snipe down the deck. As mentioned, Tempo Mage and Secrets Hunter and their beat-down mechanics caused significant troubles for Malygos Druid. Zoolock, albeit not nearly as popular as the latter two, also reminded Druids who their natural predator is. Lastly, the lack of Mulch – Druid’s go-to hard removal – in most of the decks led to losses from fat minions, notably the defeat of Artem “DrHippi” Kravets to Pavel “Pavel” Beltukov’s 10/10 Edwin VanCleef in the final match of the tournament.

Eventually, Malygos Druid recovered over the course of the tournament but still couldn’t beat the 50 percent win rate.

And yes, Midrange Shaman was the most banned deck of the tournament with 33 bans. The second most hated decks were Malygos Druid and Control Warrior with… four.

The full archetype stats from the groups and playoffs combined can be viewed here.

The Reality, Part II: Aggression Ascending  

A look at the archetype popularity rates show a clear tendency: People were expecting a slow meta. Malygos Druid played in 13 of the 16 line-ups and recorded a total of 63 games. The different versions of control Warrior were featured in 11 line-ups and recorded 42 games.

Such a heavy preference leaves room for counter-attacks, however, and another glimpse at win rates showcases just how easily exploitable this preference was. Remember: In Conquest format, a deck is played until it scores a win. If large number of games played means success in Last Hero Standing, where the winning deck stays until it loses, it’s sometimes the exact opposite in Conquest.

In just 28 games on record, Zoolock emerged as the ultimate win-rate king among the decks that played at least 15 games at 60.71 percent. A swingy deck with durable minions, Zoo (also known as Discardlock) feasted on the slower decks. No other archetype of the popular ones even came close, but its runner-ups Tempo Mage (55.56 percent) and Midrange Secrets Hunter (55.00) percent made it crystal clear: In Conquest, it’s easy to exploit a weakness.

Closing metagame thoughts  

Blizzard has always been clear on their goal for deck balance. In the ideal world and the ideal format, the archetypes will all gravitate around 50 percent. Looking at Blizzcon, they’ve more or less secured that.

Zoolock is, frankly, the one of the two outstanding decks of the 19 total that were brought to the two stages of the tournament. The other one is the Aggro Secrets Hunter which won only 41 percent of its 17 games, followed by the Yogg Control Warrior with 43 percent in 14 games.

Every other popular deck has been close to the middle line. The dreaded Midrange Shaman finished with a score of 13-12; Malygos Druid ended with 31-32; Midrange Secrets at 11-9; Tempo Mage at 25-20. C’Thun Warrior at 11-10 and Dragon Warrior at 10-9; and the two Rogue Miracle archetypes together at 10-11.

Whether this is a good meta to have for Hearthstone is up for debate. Some pro players have spoken in fondness about the days where match-ups are more polarized and line-ups can more easily be set-up to counter a specific player or style. With the way Conquest works, however, opting for such match-up gaps could be a bad idea, seeing how queuing decks is mostly random and mind games do not play a major part of the series.

Regardless of how one feels about the issues, however, it seems that Blizzard at least are on the path they want to be.

Nydra is a veteran of esports and Hearthstone Leader stationed at GosuGamers. Give him a follow at @GGNydrA.

Photo: Carlton Beener / Blizzard