Its been a week since the second batch of nerfs in Rastakhan's Rumble expansion and it seems that Blizzard done a good job keeping couple of overpowered cards in check, but how did it reflect on the state of the ladder? Maybe it's a bit early to judge how it will turn out, although there is an obviuos shift in meta going on and it seems to favor Paladin and Warlock, with Hunter still staying on top.

Nerfs mostly targeted Hunter since it was undeniably the strongest class in the latest expansion before the nerfs and it looks like it will remain so even with nerfs on the Hunter's Mark and Emerald Spellstone, but at least there is now some room for other classes to shine.

The only deck that wasn't affected by recent adjustments and is a tier 1 deck is Odd Paladin. This resulted in making this deck even stronger, but since Hunter is weaker there are more Warlock decks in the meta and they are usually favored against Odd Paladin because of their ability to easily deal with many 1/1s that Paladin constantly pushes on the board.

Mage, Shaman, and Druid (especially after the first nerf wave) are pretty much under-represented with a couple of exceptions in tier 2 Odd Mage and Even Shaman look a bit promising but Druid barely in tier 3 because other classes are able to put constant pressure on the board and Wild Growth on 3 mana and Nourish on 6 are really hard to play and survive after that, but if somehow Druid stabilizes there are great chances, though rarely possible.

Of course, after any changes in the game, new decks will pop up more often. The one that is having really good successes right now is Wall Priest:

The most common decklist for Wall Priest

Current Meta is aggro/midrange heavy and many decks depend on the chip damage from board advantage they slip to the face with extra minions. This deck is suitable to defend against this, firstly because of board clears like Mass Hysteria and Psychic Scream and also with every minion in the deck being taunt. Also, this deck has an OTK potential since all minions have high base health and with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire/Topsy Turvy that can reach around 40HP on average one turn damage. This is also easily enabled with Master Oakheart which will pull from your deck 3 big taunts (Tar Creeper, Mosh'ogg Enforcer and Witchwood Grizzly) and this is the reason why this deck is called Wall Priest because there is no easy way around that one. Not only is this deck good in defending against minion heavy decks but can also one-shot control decks with that OTK combo mentioned.

With that said, still, my pick for this week is Heal Zoo Warlock. Although this is a minion heavy deck and yes I really struggled versus Wall Priests, but against other popular choices, various Hunters and Odd Paladins.

Stats only from rank 3 to legend (Forgot to use this earlier...)

This deck is considered Tier 2-3 but still really good. There are many ways to get "The Nuts" draw with a hard mulligan for Happy Ghouls and Prince Keleseth and tempo out the opponent in turns 3-4 which can mostly win games on the spot. Biggest weakness is that once you completely lose board control you either need to finish the game in the following turns or it's over. Good thing is that you have 14 damage that can bypass taunts and 2 silences to go over some taunts with Leeeeroy!! to finish off the opponent so most of the time when you start losing the board it is better to start going face rather than trying to stabilize. I changed a few cards from the original decklist, a most notable one is The Soularium. This card is soo good at finishing the game and finding solutions to difficult situations in the late game when often I have like 10 cards in the deck it gives me a high chance to draw the card I need and even sometimes when out of steam I can just slam 3 cards on the board and return to the face chasing plan.

I gotta say, this week was really interesting on the ladder, I hope Blizzard makes changes as frequent as they are doing it now with this expansion because the game always feels fresh.

What decks did you guys play this week?
Was it successful?
Would you like to see these frequent changes or rather want a long term balance?

Thank you for reading!

,z3ll