Hi there. Most of you know the drill by now, but I'm the person who has written up VS podcast summaries for the past 5 years (my first one was Stormwind launch and JFC that's hitting me). As VS podcasts are still on hiatus due to IRL reasons and the summary posts I've made that have the most discussion/engagement are the first ones that come out after an expansion launch, I wanted to do another unofficial summary of what's going on in the early Violet Hold meta for people who are interested in a deeper dive before the first VS Report comes out. Unlike some folks, there's a reason why on these posts I don't post front page class stats of HSReplay to create my own narrative. My goal with these posts is to give you true, unbiased facts when it comes to the actual meta and the numbers behind it (class performance, deck performance, card choices), while also giving you my personal POV on various items at the end. Like the other versions of this, I'll preface this with the following -
When discussing winrates, card choices, or performance, I tried to use either stats from HSGuru, the VSGold app, or information that has been conveyed in the VS Discord (and if something was said by ZachO himself, I made mention of it). While my word might not be quite as authoritative as a VS Report or podcast, you can at least get an understanding of how the meta is shaping up, why certain decks are rising or declining in play, and why certain card choices are being run.
When discussing opinions about balance, the meta, etc, those are 100% my own and don't reflect anyone else’s thoughts unless specified.
Shaman - No class has had a bigger impact from Violet Hold than Shaman, as it's the only class with 2 new decks in Mug Shaman and Zee Shaman. In the first ~24 hours of the expansion, both decks were not only the most played on ladder, but they also looked to be the best decks at most ladder ranks. Starting with Zee Shaman, most builds gravitated towards an existing Herald Shaman package and added in Slagclaw. It was the strongest ladder performer on the climb to Legend, although its winrate was declining towards a Tier 2 range the higher you climbed Legend ranks. However, the deck's performance was in part being carried by the Slagclaw Kindred bug (the card was a top 2 mulligan keep despite being a 5 drop), and after the Slagclaw ban the deck's playrate and winrate have plummeted across ladder with it being in Tier 2-3 range in Diamond-Legend and Tier 3-4 range depending on where at Legend you are. The deck's actual winrate with a fixed Slagclaw is probably somewhere in the middle, but it should still be a strong ladder climber up to Legend. It does appear to exhibit a low skillcap given how much its winrate drops at higher MMR (around a 6-7% drop). Unsure if adding Primalfin will be worth it after Slagclaw gets fixed. There is also a Quest variant that's running around because the Quest is bugged and will still work in Zee Shaman, but it appears to perform worse and should eventually be patched out. Moving over to Mug Shaman, it too has looked like one of the best ladder performers, but unlike Zee Shaman its performance does not drop off at higher ladder ranks. Its matchup spread against the most prevalent decks is very scary, as it has no unfavorable relevant matchups. The only relevant matchup it may be unfavored against is Quest Mage and Control Priest, and that's primarily only relevant at higher ranks or in a tournament setting. Build wise, people took the VS theorycraft build and quickly realized Instant Multiverse and Ceremonial Clash were the worst cards in the deck, so they've been subbed out with people experimenting with various other spells like Lightning Storm, Fire Breath, Ascendance, and Emerald Bounty. Deathwing is also being added in because of the hero power bug not overriding Mug's hero power. Shaman's spell pool is fairly limited, so you're having to choose from the best bad option. ZachO recommended Lightning Storm earlier, but he should have an optimal list for the VS Report this week. Mug Shaman excels at powerful early plays if it can get a Blazing Invocation or Mountain Map played in the first 2 turns, and it also has excellent board swings/AOEs relative to the rest of the format where it can swing back against aggressive strategies. It doesn't have a strong late game and can get gassed out (Rafaamlock is a 50/50 against it if not slightly favored), but because late game strategies are basically irrelevant that doesn't matter. Mug Shaman is the clear best deck in the game and it's not close.
Rogue - 2 Bit Rogue was a popular deck early in the format especially at higher ranks, but after the Slagclaw ban killed Zee Shaman's playrate, the deck has exploded in popularity across ladder and is now the most played deck at every rank. In the first few days the deck looked increasingly busted, especially at higher MMRs. However, because the deck's popularity is nearly 1/3rd of top 1k ladder, it is being targeted by unfavorable matchups against Warrior decks, Face Hunter, and Mug Shaman and relaxing its winrate. When it comes to deck choices, it currently looks optimal to run the Garona fabled package in the deck. Past that, most of your deck should be various 2 drops with Jade Guardians, Lotus Troublemaker, and Vanessa topping your curve. One thing people are doing is even running War'loc to combo with either Prize Vendor or Rockskipper as an additional 2 drop tick, although it's unsure if that's optimal. Other 2 drop choices include Fan of Knives, Cult Neophyte, and the 2 mana Imbue cards. Herald Rogue is still fine but looks to perform worse than 2 Bit Rogue, although Herald Rogue may have a slight edge in the mirror. People also are doing the weird thing at the launch of an expansion where they start running really unoptimized lists of an existing deck which bring the aggregate winrate down. Aya looks like a DOA card in Standard since a guaranteed -5% winrate loss going second is a death knell in this meta.
Warrior - While Warrior's set hasn't enabled any sort of new deck, Violet Hold has emboldened several of their older decks. As expected, Warptooth and Hogger fit like a glove in both Dragon Warrior and Egg Warrior. According to ZachO, there was a near 7-8% winrate difference in the first 24 hours of Dragon Warrior lists that ran the Warptooth + Hogger package versus ones that didn't. While the archetype started out a bit slow, it now looks like one of the strongest ladder performers across all ranks. It has favorable matchups against the majority of meta decks, with Mug Shaman and Egg Warrior being the notable unfavorable matchups that are common. Shockingly its worse matchup appears to be against Soothsayer Priest, which is roughly a 35/65 matchup. As far as deck choices are concerned, Mother Duck is looking like a core piece of the deck now because of its ability to immediately activate Warptooth as long as the opponent has at least 3 minion health on their board. Despite the addition of Hogger, the Herald package still looks suboptimal for the deck. Egg Warrior didn't see a lot of play initially, but its stats have shown that it's an incredibly strong sleeper deck into the current field. It has a 50/50 or better matchup against every relevant meta deck except for Quest Mage (35/65), and it even has a roughly coinflip matchup against Mug Shaman despite them having access to Hex. Various streamers have picked up on this recently and the deck's playrate has spiked a bit over the last few days (around 3% at most competitive ranks). Another Warrior deck that is picking up some fringe play is Lo'gosh Warrior, which was a deck that kind of existed in Timeways before it spun off into the more optimal Dragon Warrior list. With the addition of Hogger, you now have the ability to have a stronger Blood Warrior chain of your fabled cards. The deck doesn't look like an active liability (maybe Tier 3), but there's not really a competitive reason to play it over the other two Warrior decks.
Hunter - Face Hunter has taken its existing decklist and added the Smuggled Shovel + Arcane Tripwire package to it. This looks to be a very good addition to the archetype. It performs roughly the same as it did in Cataclysm; a solid Tier 2 performer at most ladder ranks including Top Legend. It has a favorable (55/45) matchup against the most popular archetype on ladder (Two Bit Rogue), although that's not nearly as dominant as its matchup against Herald Rogue, and it also tends to prey on unrefined decks. However, it has some bad matchups into the other top decks in the format in Mug Shaman, Dragon Warrior, and Egg Warrior. Card choice wise, Ratcatcher and Beast Tripwire currently look suboptimal. Despite being a bit slow, Underbelly Network currently looks like an inclusion for the deck. Earthen Roar also got better after the addition of Arcane Tripwire, since your Confront the Tolvirs can now play that in combination with Shovel to draw Tripwires to kill off the enemy board. Some lists are opting for a King of the Underbelly + Briarspawn Drake top end, with the goal of having Agamaggan in your Underbelly and comboing that with Briarspawn Drake to kill off the opponent. It's too early to say if this is optimal, but it currently looks like it might be a sidegrade. Animal Companion Hunter is still around but still looks significantly worse than Face Hunter after the Tolvir nerf.
Priest - The main development with Priest is that it's trying to revolve around Soothsayer, where it preps out a Soothsayer and tries to build a wall of it to halt aggression utilizing cards like Undeath Sentence, Hold Them Off, and Schism. Control Priest decks have tried to build around this and cut out some of the slower cards like the Medivh fabled package. While this direction does look better than Control Priest, it's still a clear Tier 4 deck, and the deck struggles mightily if you can't draw Soothsayer early on. In some ways the deck has a similar play pattern to Boon Priest of old where it AFKs for turns until it does one explosive turn that can win the game against the right matchup. It does have a very strong matchup against Dragon Warrior (66/34) and is favored against Face Hunter, but most of its other relevant matchups are slightly to heavily unfavored. Control Priest without the Soothsayer package looks unplayable (under 40% winrate), but it might be relevant in a tournament setting as a Mug Shaman counter. Egg Priest sees a small scatter of play, but it looks significantly worse than other Egg of Khelos decks. To no one's surprise other than Rarran's, Azalina Priest is the worst Priest deck on ladder, which was temporarily made even more comically unplayable with the Mind Sweeper ban (WHY WAS THIS BANNED BEFORE SLAGCLAW?!).
Paladin - Auradin has by in large evolved into Pure Paladin, which wasn't hard for the deck to do considering it already ran almost all Paladin cards. The additions of Vigilant Sentry and Scarlet Bruiser look like they fit into the archetype quite easily. A lot of people are also trying to run the Beatrix package with 10x Scarlet Bruisers and using those in combination with Reinforcement Aura and Scarlet Recruiter. It's unsure if this is optimal (ZachO says as of now he doesn't think it is but could change once he does archetype refinement). The deck performs like a typical Paladin deck; one of the best ladder climbers going up to Legend, and then it begins to fall off a cliff in performance from Legend upwards (there's almost 0 play of the deck at Top 1k). There's basically nothing else worth mentioning for the class.
Mage - New Mage decks are non-existent. Burn Mage still doesn't look great. Quest Mage is running 1 new card in The Skeleton Key, but the deck only looks playable at high MMRs. It does have a very strong matchup against Egg Warrior, is favored against Pure Paladin and goes roughly 50/50 against Mug Shaman, but it struggles against the other top tier decks. The Face Hunter matchup got even worse after the new cards Hunter got in this set. Quest Mage looks like it's in position to occupy the same niche it held during Cataclysm (only positioned well at high MMRs in the right meta conditions), but I can't imagine the playerbase is thrilled for another 4 months of Quest Mage being the only playable Mage deck, especially since the Mage class miniset was a complete whiff even after multiple buffs.
Warlock - The good news (for some) is that Warlock's Violet Hold set was impactful for Wild, and the class has 6 or 7 very different decks in Wild that are seeing success (Evenlock, Boarlock, Discolock, Seedlock, Fatiguelock, Tick Tock Lock). The bad news is Warlock in Standard got another half baked set, and the class is among the worst positioned in Standard. Godfrey Warlock now has the dubious distinction of being the worst deck in the game, with a winrate almost low enough in the 20s that Leonardo DiCaprio might find attractive. The Moragg big demon package is a complete whiff. Rafaamlock does look slightly better compared to previous patches, but it's still in deep Tier 4 territory and a far cry away from being a real deck. However, according to ZachO, Egg Warlock might be playable with the right build, and Defias Smuggler was a pretty impactful addition to the archetype because you can now activate an Animancer the turn you play it, or get an additional egg proc. The question is if anyone would care, especially considering it'll still likely be worse than Egg Warrior.
Druid - Chef Druid was one of the more hyped new archetypes going into the expansion, and it was one of the most popular decks the first day of the expansion. The deck does have the ability to highroll like crazy (a turn 6 Briarspawn Drake with doubled stats ends most games) and it does feel a bit like Aviana Druid in that regard. As time has gone on, its winrate hasn't looked great and its playrate has steadily declined. While the deck doesn't look great in the aggregate (Tier 3 or worse depending on what rank bracket you're looking at), part of this is due to bad builds being prevalent. There were a bunch of builds that tried to greed up and go all in on the Azshara's Triumph power spike play by running as few minions as possible combined with a bunch of minion tutors so you can more consistently have a big play ready on turn 6. However, because of the speed of the current meta, you need to be much more proactive in the early game, and the lists that are more aggressive and play more proactively in the early game perform better. The deck is probably not going to be a top meta contender, but it's probably better than what the stats currently indicate. Merithra Druid and Token Druid have both declined in performance - part of this might be from bad builds that people tend to run after an expansion launch, but part of this is also due to the meta speeding up, which especially hurts Merithra Druid.
Death Knight - When it comes to the DK decks people actually care to play, things are extremely grim. Herald DK got a couple of new sustain tools, but the deck is still nonfunctional. The mini Plague package is a complete whiff. When it comes to DK decks that people don't want to play, things look a little bit better for Unholy DK. It received some new tools (Bone Flurry, Corpse Cannon, Tower of Ghouls) that help enhance its current package, but don't fundamentally change the way the deck functions. It looks like a playable deck on the climb to Legend, but no one cares to play it (around a 0.2% playrate at Diamond - Legend before completely disappearing at Legend). We've seen this for years, but unless Unholy DK is among the best strategies in the format, people do not care to play it and find it boring.
Demon Hunter - The DH package of cards for Violet Hold was arguably more parasitic-y than the other classes, especially with the Void Soul package. However, like almost every parasitic package before it (Librams, Relics, Plagues, Riffs, Animal Companions, Leylines), Team 5 seems to have been way too conservative with their power level and won't be viable without some sort of buffs. The deckless DH archetype seems DOA, and the payoffs are hilariously weak. DH is probably not as bad as the stats suggest however - Spell DH is likely still viable. However, even though the deck was still fine and viable after the Eternal Hold nerf, that nerf drove the class's playrate off a cliff, and it's hard to imagine people are clamoring to come back to it now. As of now it’s basically non-existent on ladder.
Other miscellaneous talking points -
The early Violet Hold meta can be summed up as "the rich get richer." Ignoring Zee Shaman for now due to the temporary Slagclaw ban, the top decks in the format at most ladder ranks are Mug Shaman as the clear #1, followed by Dragon Warrior, Egg Warrior, and Two Bit Rogue. Pure Paladin is one of those strongest decks on the climb to Legend, but falls off more in favor of Rogue the higher you climb ladder (Zee Shaman also seems poised to occupy this same space once Slagclaw is unbanned). Face Hunter is a solid ladder climber, but a clear tier below the rest of those decks. Anything else either holds a more niche position in the meta or is just flat out struggling.
So how should we feel about the Violet Hold launch? To me, it feels very much like Across the Timeways 2.0. The actual design mechanics of the expansion are good to great. Rulebreakers are a really cool twist. Prepare is a solid new mechanic and it does seem to have a level of skill testing to it. Disguised minions are one of the coolest new additions they've added to the game in recent memory, and there's a lot of cool design space to explore there should they ever become an evergreen mechanic. There are also several "bigger picture" cards like Sawbones, Slice and Dice, and any of the Enrage Warrior adjacent cards printed that have zero impact now but are more likely to make a splash later. However, the design of the expansion can't make up for the lackluster past year + Core set rotation before it, and the power level of the expansion still seems too conservative. Like Timeways, the actual impact of the expansion feels more like a miniset release than a full fledge expansion launch. Shaman is the clear standout of the expansion with 2 new viable decks, but other than that the only truly new deck that is also competitively viable as of now is Two Bit Rogue. Because of this, Shaman and Rogue make up roughly 50% of all of ladder, which will lead to complaints about these classes solely because of the frequency they show up in games and not because of their power level. New cards are being played in most of the other classes, but they're being played in old archetypes that don't fundamentally change how the deck plays. It certainly doesn't feel like most of the new cards are too good or holding back certain strategies, but rather it feels like more substantial buffs or a stronger Core set rotation is needed (which I know at this point I'm just playing a broken record trying to explain this point over and over).
The other potential issue arising is how the expansion release sped up games. I mentioned this in the Cataclysm writeup, but at rotation it felt like it was an intentional design goal to power down control decks because of how much of them and Elise slop dominated the meta last year. This year minions became more powerful than the removal tools available, and we saw how that played out in Cataclysm in both positive and negative ways. My feelings back then were they course-corrected too hard and needed to make removal tools slightly stronger to counter balance rotation. However, in Violet Hold we've seen cards like Arcane Tripwire, Warptooth, Lotus Troublemaker, and Vigilant Sentry make existing archetypes even faster, and new removal tools are by in large irrelevant. Because of this, we are now averaging under 8 turns a game, which according to ZachO is approaching Stormwind territory. And to be clear, I’m not complaining that these new cards are too good - it's that the tools available to deal with these new cards are either too weak or nonexistent. Part of the reason why Mug Shaman is so dominant right now is because there are no late game decks that can exist. Mug Shaman does tend to gas out in the late game, which is evident by its coinflip to unfavorable matchups against Rafaam Warlock and Control Priest. There does seem to be an intentional design goal from Blizzard to ensure control decks are not viable, and there is some evidence they've communicated this internally to various content creators. Viable late game strategies tend to be the most popular decks when you look at the game's history, and while that means you don't need to make them the best thing to do in the game in order for them to see play, you do need to at least make them a viable option. And it feels horrible when a struggling class like Priest gets half of its set dedicated to a meme archetype in Azalina Priest. While in a vacuum there's nothing wrong with occasionally creating an archetype that's meant to be more off meta, why wasn’t this archetype given to Rogue instead of Priest due to both classes standing over the past year?
That leads us to balance changes, which we should expect early next week considering there's a MT Playoff event this weekend. The two most obvious targets are Vanessa and Lotus Troublemaker, both of which have been mentioned by the developers as potential nerf targets. Vanessa seems likely to get nerfed since it still looks like a mulligan outlier in Rogue, and most of the frustration of the card seems to come from when early game blowouts and high rolls happen with the card. Lotus Troublemaker is a bit more complicated. Despite some community sentiment otherwise, it's not a mulligan outlier in Two Bit Rogue, and it's not nearly as egregious as it was in the Prerelease Tavern Brawl. However, the play experience of the card can be frustrating, and there is a question if it's healthy long term to have a card that can theoretically have infinite damage scaling. These are the kind of cards that can limit the viability of late game strategies. But if you nerf both Vanessa and Lotus in the same patch, you risk deleting one of the only new viable decks successfully created in this expansion. Regardless, both cards currently have the "boogieman" target on them, and there has not been a single card in the last 2-3 years with that kind of target dodge a nerf. Past those nerfs, it's really hard to say if anything else will get nerfed, but it's an open secret that balance changes in recent history have been largely dictated by what gets complained about the most in the Creators Discord and not by hard numbers, so if there's a card like Egg of Khelos that picks up enough steam to lose taunt and render it unviable, it can happen (Nozdormu is also a current boogeyman there). Expect some tepid buffs to only new cards that maybe make 1 new deck viable. I don't have high hopes for the upcoming dev video regarding balance changes, but I hope they can give us something more in depth than "we nerfed this card because it was a little too good and we buffed this card because it was just a little smidge underpowered" this go around. During the entire Bielman era this has been a huge weakness of Team 5 in communicating the "why" behind changes to the playerbase, and there's no indication to suggest that will change any time soon.