Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks - The Great Dark Beyond (Week 4) - December 2024

Before I start, I want to say that issues with deck codes are sadly still present. Any deck with Zilliax Deluxe 3000 (and let's be real, that's a lot of decks) won't have its code working. The issue turned out to be more difficult to solve and the dev bandwidth I have access to is very limited. Believe me when I say it that I try to solve it as quickly as possible but it might take some more time. As a workaround, I always try to post a working deck code whenever I can. This post will be no different - for every deck running Zilliax, I will paste a working deck code BELOW the deck itself. Use it instead of the usual deck code box. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

As usual, I had to skip last week because of the balance update on Thursday (I didn't have enough decks to share by Sunday), but here we are again. We're after the first round of nerfs and buffs in The Great Dark Beyond. And to be honest, I have some mixed feelings about them. Overall, I think the meta is in a better state than it was before the patch. But my biggest issue is that some decks that should get major buffs either got minor tweaks or didn't get anything (more about it later).

When it comes to Diamond-Legend climb, the meta is absolutely dominated by Shaman. Mostly different variants of Aggro, but also Asteroid Shaman (and Big Shaman is on the rise over the last couple of days, but it's too early to say whether it will take off). Then we have Druid, Dungar Druid in particular. The class has been mostly known for the absurd amount of mana cheating and this build one is no different. You pretty much skip the entire early game, ramp up to 8+ mana, and then ideally drop either Thunderbringer or Travelmaster Dungar to get a bunch of big minions on the board (including Unkilliax which you can keep reviving). Elemental Mage is now quite significantly weaker than pre-patch, but it's still a really solid deck. Plus it's very cheap so it remains quite popular. Then we have Libram Paladin, which is probably the biggest "winner" of the patch when it comes to The Great Dark Beyond stuff. It's still not Tier 1, but it was one of the weakest decks of the expansion after launch, so its current performance is still a huge jump. And that sums up the most popular builds in those ranks - we have some Rogues, some Priests, some Hunters, some Demon Hunters, but none of those classes really stand out in terms of popularity (most of them hover around 3-5% play rate).

Things change when we get to the higher Legend ranks. As usual, Rogue suddenly shifts from "mediocre/weak class" to "one of the meta tyrants". The class has a lot of flavors now - different Sonya combos, Starship Rogue, Shaffar Rogue, Weapon Rogue. And all of them seem to be doing really well in Top 1k Legend (as you can probably see below). Higher ranks also see some more Hunters (mostly Discover, but also some Jormungar builds) and Warriors (some flavors of Control like Odyn, Taunt, or even infinite Fizzle, which is a nightmare to face). But they mostly stay in Rogue's shadow. As you can imagine, straightforward, aggressive decks that dominate in Diamond are no longer that good/popular in Legend (play rate of builds like Aggro Shaman or Elemental Mage drop heavily once we get to high Legend).

The reason why I'm still not a big fan of the patch is because I don't think it accomplished enough. New decks/mechanics still feel mostly underwhelming. Starships, while more viable, honestly still aren't what I imagined. Most of the Starship decks right now focus on getting insane amounts of Armor with Arkonite Defense Crystal. Heck, we have multiple decks that use it as their only Starship Piece, copying it multiple times and ignoring everything else. I don't think that was the original intent behind this mechanic. Rogue is doing more than just Arkonite (copying Starship Pieces from other classes and then replaying them with Tess), but they are actually one of the worst-performing Rogue decks. I don't feel like Starship strategies are where they are supposed to be.

Then we have Draenei, which was the other main focus of the set. And it's way worse than Starships. Draenei decks are still as dead as they were at launch. We got a few small buffs but they clearly weren't enough. For example, Draenei Warrior was a ~40% win rate deck before the patch and right now it's a ~45% win rate deck. Same thing for Draenei Priest - Askara buff didn't really accomplish much, the deck is completely unplayable. Somehow it's doing even worse than Warrior. It feels like Draenei decks got straight-up teleported from a few years ago when the power level was way lower.

On the other hand, Shaman clearly should have been nerfed harder (yes, it's not a big deal in high Legend, but it's getting out of control in Diamond and lower ranks). I also can't wait until Sonya finally gets deleted. I know that it's a "problem" that only affects a small part of the playerbase, but ever since the patch about 35-40% of my matches were against Rogue, and facing another Sonya makes me want to ragequit. The competitive meta is also completely dominated by the class (for example, in the recent Chinese World qualifiers, Sonya Rogue was the #1 deck in terms of popularity and win rate despite also being commonly banned). And while I focus this analysis on Standard, I really hope that Questline Warlock gets nerfed in Wild. The deck was popular and solid, but mostly manageable, but the introduction of Healthstone really pushed it over the edge.

I don't think that the upcoming patch (31.2, releasing on Tuesday) will come with any Constructed balance changes, but we'll definitely get some before Christmas break. Now the question is whether they will manage to squeeze it in before the Worlds (December 13-15). On the one hand, I would hope so, it would be interesting to see some fresh decks. But on the other hand, I'm not sure if there's enough time. Keep in mind that competitors have to submit their lineups a couple of days prior to the tournament, and they also need time to playtest them, so Blizzard would have to rush out the balance patch very quickly. We'll see how it goes, but either way, I'm looking forward to the Worlds.

Below is 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!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week

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Hearthstone Wild Legend Decks of the Week

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