Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – March of the Lich King (+Return to Naxxramas) Week 12 – February 2023

I thought that we’ll get a nerf patch this week given how unbalanced the game currently is. I was wrong. As I’ve suspected, Frost Death Knight completely dominates the meta right now. Evolve Shaman is still problematic and if Frost DK wasn’t here it would probably be on the top, so I think that it should get nerfed too, but it’s not the highest priority right now.

Frost Death Knight completely pushed out many other decks from the meta. The deck has no bad matchups and I mean it. If I look at the stats right now, it shows that its worst matchup is… Frost Death Knight. I haven’t seen that in a long time – the best counter to Frost DK is another Frost DK (in other words, 50/50). Some other decks get close to 50% win rate against it, but unless you heavily and I mean heavily tech against it (to the point of you losing winrate in other matchups)

Popularity-wise, the deck sits at ~25% at all ranks. That’s already incredibly high, but if we look at pocket metas such as high Diamond or high Legend, it’s over 40%. But what makes it even worse is that Blood Death Knight is now the second most popular deck, and thanks to Construct Quarter it shares many of the same game patterns with the Frost build (despite being a much slower deck overall). Then we have Evolve Shaman… and then a sharp drop-off. Other decks can barely scratch the 5% popularity mark, with many of the archetypes that would be perfectly viable sitting at 2-3% because they get completely crushed by Frost DK.

That’s why I thought that we’ll get a quick balance update – it doesn’t take a lot of stats to see that Construct Quarter and Blazing Transmutation are broken and really need a nerf. But we haven’t heard anything from the devs, not even a word about any potential date for the patch. I really wonder what’s going on.

Given that we’re entering March soon, we’re only a few weeks away from the new Standard year and expansion announcements. Even if we get a patch next week, it will only take a few more weeks for another major meta shakeup. I’ve been enjoying Death Knight class and March of the Lich King in general, but I hate the fact that we haven’t seen a longer period of balanced meta ever since the expansion’s release. Time after time, the meta is full of broken stuff and by the time it gets fixed, we’re due for another big release that breaks things again. Many players feel tired of that and I think it’s a serious problem. Not sure what can be done about it, but I feel like quicker balance updates would go a long way.

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!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week

Hearthstone Wild Legend Decks of the Week

Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

3 Comments

  1. Hardly
    February 28, 2023 at 4:43 am

    I could not agree more, the most miserable meta experienced yet.

  2. Minatoo
    February 26, 2023 at 10:26 am

    A complete counter to both Evolve Shaman and Frost DK is Quest Priest, you only ever lose if you get really, really bad luck with your draws (14-1 to Frost and 6-0 to Shaman in legend so far). Struggles a lot against Ramp/Armour druid and Blood dk, though. The rest feels like a fairly even matchup.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      February 27, 2023 at 9:53 am

      I’m not really sure about that “complete counter”. According to HSReplay stats, the deck has a 40/60 matchup vs Frost DK and 60/40 vs Evolve Shaman. So yes, it’s a solid deck against Evolve, but it still struggles to beat Frost DKs. And it has a lot of other bad matchups.

      Maybe you found some build that works, but I think that the deck would be more mainstream if it countered two most popular and powerful meta decks.