Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks - Festival of Legends Week 4 - May 2023

By Stonekeep - May 7, 2023

I skipped last week because with the patch releasing on Thursday, there weren't enough decks to post on Sunday. But this week between players playing more after the update and a new season, we have plenty!

Looking at the currently playable (Tier 1-3) decks, we have the most diverse meta we had in quite a long time. It's not necessarily the most balanced one, as there are still a couple of dominating classes, but you easily have 20+ decks to pick from and you can climb ladder with all of them. Some of them will be much easier than others, but it's still cool that there's so much to pick from. And it actually took a while to get there. The first few days after the patch were quite boring to be honest, not that much has changed. But then as people playtested more and more, new viable decks were discovered, which pushed away some of the previously dominating builds.

The patch has ALMOST solved the Death Knight problem. Almost, because while the patch has hurt both Frost and Blood builds and they're now at pretty balanced win rates, Unholy Death Knight took the #1 spot now. Since it doesn't discover as many cards as the other builds (especially Blood), not being able to get 3 rune cards is not a big deal + it wasn't directly nerfed like Frost. Interestingly enough, Blood Death Knight is still the most played deck in the whole game - it's not really overpowered by any means (solid Tier 2), but I think that people just want to play some Control and it's the best Control deck we have. Similarly, Control Priest despite not performing that well has like 4-5% play rate, which is high for a Tier 3 deck.

However, the biggest winner of the patch is Demon Hunter. The class was already good early into the expansion, and while the patch didn't buff it at all, the shift in the meta allowed for new Demon Hunter experimentation. And it turned out that the class is really strong. The best part is that it has four viable decks. Yes, four decks, and each one has quite a different play style. They obviously share some similarities, but Big, Spell, Outcast and Relic ultimately all play differently. It's rare for a class to have so many options, and ones that aren't different by 2-3 cards only.

Since it was mainly a buff patch, the goal was to bring the worst classes into the spotlight. And how that worked out? Well, not bad, but also not great. For example, Warrior's win rate jumped by ~4-5%, but since it was so low before (~40%), it's still not great. At least the deck has some semi-viable options - Enrage Warrior almost reached 50% WR (with Menagerie close behind at ~48%) so it should be possible to take it to Legend with enough patience. Same for Mage - Naga Mage was a cool experiment, but ultimately it doesn't look to be good enough for a general playerbase. Some Mage experts can take it to higher ranks, but it takes A LOT of skill for the deck to reach the same results as some Tier 1 deck can reach when piloted by an unexperienced player. Buth Aggro Mage is still an okay pick and

Ultimately, the discrepancy between the top and bottom classes was so big that those buffs weren't enough. But it's much better now. Instead of ~55% to ~40% range we had before the patch, it's now closer to ~53% to ~45%. Yes, the spread is still big, but I think that another well-targeted balance update could solve it. Will Blizzard decide to pull the trigger, though?

Below, you will find a full list of the Legend decks from last week, sorted by the highest placement.

If you want to see all of the current top meta decks, go to our Hearthstone Meta Tier List post!
If you're looking for the best Wild Format decks, check out our Wild Meta Tier List!