The NA Preliminaries Meta

The NA Prelims were a blast to watch and enjoy, but more importantly, it contributed heavily to the development of the Meta and analyzing the success rates of each class.

                Clocking in at #1 is, unsurprisingly, the Warlock class. This class included 2 separate deck styles that were run, including Zoolock and a more control/handlock centered Reno Warlock. Zoo came out with the highest winrate of all decks at the tournament, and Reno came in 4^th. These decks proved very difficult to deal with either the fast aggro of or the late game control combined with a truly outrageous amount of healing for a class that revolves around taking damage.

                Next up, again unsurprisingly, was Shaman. Aggro took 3^rd place for highest winrate at 42.4%. Midrange took a backseat with 36.5%, although it out preformed a lot of decks as well. Both of these decks are, right now, incredibly difficult to deal with. The insane amount of tempo that cards like Totem Golem, Flamewreathed Faceless, and Tunnel Trogg can provide can actually pull off a win before turn 6 rolls around for a defensive Reno play.

                Coming in third is Warrior. Tempo Warrior was the best overall Warrior deck with a comfy 34.7% winrate. This deck has rather unexpectedly shown up to be a top tier deck in the Meta, as the amount of Tempo things like Bloodhoof Brave can provide along with the enrage proc using Inner Rage or Whirlwind. We also saw a few other decks that did not preform well but were interesting to watch, such as C’Thun, Control and even Pirate warrior.

                The last particularly noteworthy deck that preformed well was Freeze Mage, with a winrate of 31.8%. It outclassed just about all control decks aside from C’Thun, but fell short to Aggro decks, as it simply needs more time to amass a game ending combo, utilizing such cards as Alexstraza, Archmage Antonidas and a whole lot of Fireballs.

                Aside from those, a few other oddball decks were played, such as Aggro Priest, Beast Druid and Anyfin Paladin. Sadly, Druid, Hunter and Priest decks preformed very poorly. Priest finished with a winrate of under 10%, with Hunter in second to last at 11.8%, and finally Druid at 16.5%. This does not necessarily count them out of the Meta, but this serves to prove the point that the current top tier decks are certainly top tier for a reason, and should be utilized while they are allowed to be.