A monkumental release

Greetings readers. Welcome to the second edition of the Monthly Meta Mashup. This time we will be focusing on the data following the release of the monk class. So to recap what happened in the month that is covered by this data: monk was released, necromancer was kicked to the curb, bard got some decent buffs, and barbarian and alchemist got small buffs. In addition, the thief, cleric, and ranger ancestries have now been out long enough that we can start to see how good they are. Finally, there were no changes to the public environment, however an accidental sneak peak to ancestries (which was quickly removed) to regular account holders suggests ancestry is close.

Todays data will be twofold, we are going to look at everyone’s performance on the monk release patch, and then we’re going to look back in time a little to see how the ancestries for thief, cleric, and ranger are shaping up in the broader picture.

Data Disclaimers

• The data has been captured from all level 13 and 14 games on the monk release patch that were concluded by 12:00pm GMT 4th November 2023 (rules version 145)
• All mirrors have been removed from win rates (ie all human wizard vs human wizard games)
• All beta win rates reflect games where one player involved was playing either a non-human ancestry or a dungeons class
• All public win rates reflect games where both players were playing human classes from the original five
• Ranked online games (RT and async), and pvp challenge games are included in the data set
• This report is late due to things in my personal life not giving me enough time to sit down and finish it. There will likely be a quick turnaround for the next release.

Meta Snapshot

Public Meta

We’ve had a bit of a shift in win rates over the last month. While wizard stands out above the pack, thief players have figured out how to start beating fighters and wizards more consistently and its win rate has risen at the expense of the other two. Furthermore, the wizard fighter matchup in the last month flipped in the wizards favour

Quick disclaimer on the numbers:

• Play rate is based on ranked games only. Last report I didn’t do play rate including mirrors and excluding challenges so the numbers are closer to 20% for every class than reality suggests.
• Win rate is based on ranked and challenge games excluding mirrors

Wizard

Play rate: 37.57%
Win rate: 56.50%

Compared to the three months beforehand, the play rate of wizard has continued to climb and one in three games on ladder will now be played against them. Over that same data period, that matchup into fighter has flipped to 52% in the wizards favour (was 44%) and the win rate against thief and ranger has declined but still remains wizard favoured. In this patch, wizard had a >50% winrate against every class.

Thief

Play rate: 40.71%
Win rate: 52.60%

Thief has seen some significant improvements over the last month. Community sentiment has had this class as the second best by a long margin and now the stats reflected. Similarly to wizard, 1 in 3 games will now be played against thief on ladder.

Fighter

Play rate: 10.00%
Win rate: 47.68%

How good is that play rate? Unfortunately for fighter it seems like thieves and wizards figured out how to win the matchup a bit more consistently so its win rate has suffered as a result. This class still has the best win rate against wizard and stomps ranger so its meta niche remains somewhat.

Cleric

Play rate: 6.41%
Win rate: 34.29%

Ranger

Play rate: 5.33%
Win rate: 35.66%

No text, these two classes don’t exist. Everything I could say about them was said in the last meta mashup. Actually thief got a higher win rate against cleric this month. Also rangers win rate is the same against every class. If ranger was a 50% win rate it might actually be the most well rounded and balanced class.

Beta Meta

Monk

Win rate: 75.38%

Monk was truly overpowered. Unlike previous beta classes, this class released with ancestries in full swing. Furthermore, it has hit the highest win rate we have ever seen. Quite frankly, it deserved the massive nerf it received, and only time will tell if it was enough.

In terms of its matchup spreads, monk’s win rate was less than 75% against bard (65%), thief (67%), and cleric (54%). It had a 75% win rate against wizard, and >90% against barbarian, necromancer, fighter, and druid. If we dive a little bit further into the numbers, human thief maintained a 75% win rate against monk, while the smallfolk, elf, and half demon ancestries did the heavy lifting towards lowering the monk matchup. The dwarf, ogre, and orc ancestries, which people are playing for reasons that can only be described as “I must play everything”, did not beat monk on the patch. Cleric exhibited the same trends as thief in terms of how ancestry changes the matchup, however no one is playing the “fighter ancestries”. Diving in to the wizard matchup against monk, smallfolk wizard improved the matchup to 63%, half demon was 72% and human was all the way down at 90%. All forms of fighters struggled to beat monk, and ranger play rate was too low to make any serious judgements but it doesn’t seem good for any versions.

Beta Classes

Alchemist

Win rate: 54.02%

Alchemist continues to perform well despite a terrible matchup against Monk. Community sentiment has this class as feeling balanced and fine, and the data shows that is only true because other classes are overpowered and ancestry is making wizard and thief seem more powerful than they really are compared to the beta classes.

Barbarian

Win rate: 30.05%

Barbarian really struggled on the monk patch. An increased play rate in ancestry thief and a terrible matchup against Monk are the main drivers for it. It is no surprise why WWG have now given it the largest buff of 2023.

Bard

Win rate: 56.46%

Despite a 30% win rate against monk, the most popular class on the patch, bard has the second highest win rate of all non-ancestry classes. It is a lot of fun to play, however it has unhealthy play patterns that often end the game on turn 1 in a way that smooth heist thieves can only dream of. Now that it has been out for a while, it seems to have an even matchup against wizard and alchemist and is beating everything else. Note that monk is beating everything so will re-examine this, and data from the next patch seems to suggest that barbarian is beating bard after its buffs.

Druid

Win rate: 41.67%

Druid continues to have the lowest play rate amongst all beta classes so these numbers are a little suspect. It had a poor matchup against monk and wizard on the patch, and seemed to perform decently into fighters. My personally thoughts is that the class seems to be lacking identity or obvious strengths, and its resulting in players not wanting to play with it anymore.

Necromancer

Win rate: 26.89%

The nerfs went HARD. Necromancer needs some love, there’s not really any reason to talk about it. I personally want to see necromancers ability to play the market increase so that its not totally reliant on the skeleton swarm game plan. That being said, despite its abysmal win rate people still seem keen to keep playing it suggesting its still got a bit of new toy syndrome.

Ancestries

Cleric

Half demon: 53.19%

Human: 24.32%

We can see the effect of ancestries in full swing with the cleric. Importantly one should note that small folk cleric is also very good, it just lacks play rate so I’ve excluded it from the data. It should be relatively unsurprising that half demon works well with cleric, given that the class is so slow it needs sacrifice to play the game. Furthermore, the inbuilt healing of cleric circumnavigates the penalty of half demon.

Fighter

Ogre: 41.27%

Human: 20%

Orc and dwarf don’t have enough play rate on this patch to be represented, however they look pretty similar in performance to ogre. Fighter’s win rate has taken a turn for the worse because of the increased play rate of ancestry thief and the release of monk. It seems all that the meta was missing to check the meta menace of ancestry fighter was ancestry thief.

Ranger

Elf: 34.88%

Human: 28.36%

Ranger is doing pretty poorly and ancestry isn’t really helping it the way it helps other classes. Ranger wants to be lean and mean, and the deck bloat provided by ancestry doesn’t help that game plan very much. There might be something in the half demon ranger, however having to sacrifice your early econ for that sacrifice effect to get the ball rolling might be a little too much for it. Elf seems to be working because it adds extra cycle, but its not working exceptionally because that starting game penalty really slows down the explosive starts that the human ranger gets.

Thief

Smallfolk: 66.18%

Half Demon: 56.41%

Elf: 50.75%

Dwarf: 32.5%

Human: 33.72%

Thief is seeing a lot of experimentation across the spectrum with its builds. Smallfolk thief in particular seems to be excelling above the rest. The smallfolk card Burgle can be used to decrease the cost of cards in the market by one and it enables smooth heist to get 4 cost cards into play on turn 1, and makes those cheap economy spells even cheaper for economy acceleration. As a result, smooth heist gets taken to the next level and enables some truly terrifying stuff. Half demon gives the thief access to in built sacrifice, which really helps it play late game scenarios in combination with lift, and potentially mask to accelerate that sacrifice engine. Elf adds a bit of cycle to thief which it is sorely lacking, and changing the cost of lift to 1 gold every now and again almost certainly helps those early turns if you get past turn 1. Dwarf almost certainly is a down grade and is probably only seeing play by certain thief die-hards who will play everything thief related

Wizard

Smallfolk: 59.39%

Half demon: 47.42%

Human: 36.11%

Wizard continues to perform well with ancestries, however it was struggling with the release of monk, especially the half demon wizard. Community sentiment continues to state that wizard is a menace on the meta, however the data suggests that is only true due to ancestries. It seems to be weaker than the stronger of the beta classes when ancestry is removed from the picture, including the ancestries who do not seem to be major nerf targets such as alchemist and bard. Elf win rate is similar to half demon, however play rate continues to be small as most players are jumping on the smallfolk bandwagon at this point.