A new segment?

Greetings readers. This is the start of a new segment I will be writing called the Monthly Meta Mashup. The aim is provide win rates and show insights of the Hero Realms meta, both in the public and beta environments.

For the first ever article, we are going to look at the win rates from the release of the ancestry and druid nerfs (28th July) to a few days after the release of the monk class to beta (8th October). All the data is collected from hero-helper.com so make sure to register if you want to track your stats and help contribute to the monthly write up!

Data Disclaimers

• The data has been captured from all level 13 and 14 games from the 28th July to the 8th October
• The data makes up all games started since the nerf to druid, elf, ogre, and orc, up until shortly after the release of monk
• All mirrors have been removed from winrates (ie all human wizard vs human wizard games)
• All games are from public and beta, as well as ranked and pvp challenges

Meta Snapshot

Public Meta

The main release of the game isn’t in the healthiest place in terms of meta balance right now. Currently wizard stands out from the crowd and its not even close. Thief and wizard are everywhere on the ladder and community sentiment definitely reflects that. Lets take a dive into the stats that most of the player base is experiencing.

Wizard

Play rate: 30.77%
Win rate: 61.89%

Wizard sits as the undisputed king of the meta. It has a 44% winrate against fighter, and beats everything else comfortably, especially cleric. If you are looking to climb ladder, this is the class to do it with. Given its matchup spread and power level, it is probably wise to run serene as this sures up the fighter matchup.

Thief

Play rate: 30.37%
Win rate: 48.77%

Thief is the second most played class on ladder and whenever queuing you should always consider it in your characters build. It has a losing matchup to wizard (39%), an even matchup against fighter, and comfortably beats ranger and cleric. The winrate against fighter suggests there are a lot of misdirection thieves running around, as lift and even distracted exchange should have a positive matchup against fighter.

Fighter

Play rate: 15.40%
Win rate: 50.79%

Fighter has received a lot of scorn from community, especially from elite players recently about its perceived lack of strengths. The stats however, do not back that sentiment up. Fighter is currently well situated in the meta essentially due to the power of wizard. Currently its worst matchup cleric is struggling due to the sheer prevalence of wizard, and a slightly favoured matchup into wizard is carrying this class to new heights in the current meta. Rounding out fighters matchups are a favoured game against ranger and the above mentioned average matchup against thief. Personally I suspect that if wizard gets nerfed, the play rate and win rate of fighter will go down as it is joyriding the pro-wizard and anti-cleric meta to find a niche for itself.

Cleric

Play rate: 13.26%
Win rate: 36.29%

Cleric is the first of the losers when it comes to the current wizard meta. With losing matchups into thief (35%) and wizard (21%) which account for over half the games you will play, its no wonder the cleric is struggling to find its footing at the moment. A winning matchup against fighter (69%) keeps it a niche for tournament play however you shouldn’t be queuing it for ladder. Fighter players rejoice.

Ranger

Play rate: 10.18%
Win rate: 36.56%

Oh how the mighty have fallen. When we were at level 12, ranger had dominance over the meta similar to what the wizard has now. However, with a nerf to quiver and a set of level 13 upgrades that arguably weaken your deck it is now at the bottom of the pack. It has no winning matchups and quite frankly I’m sad to see it as Ranger was the first character I really took to in Hero Realms.

Beta Meta – Ancestries

With the predicted incoming release of ancestries to the production environment, the nerfs to druid, and the release of necromancer and bard, this beta section has a lot to talk about.

First of all, we’ll start with the topic of ancestries. Currently, we do not have enough data to comfortably talk about any of the Thief, Cleric, or Ranger ancestries and how they affect the class performance. We do however have plenty of data for Fighter and Wizard and boy do they look good.

Ancestry Spotlight – Fighter

Fighter is doing some crazy things in the beta environment right now and all the ancestries we thought would be good are good, even after nerfs.

Ogre Fighter

Win rate: 72.27%

Can we take a moment to appreciate just how absurd this winrate is? Currently the ogre fighter is beating everything to the ground except potentially cleric and druid. However the sample on cleric and druid is so small we can’t actually know for sure (that being said it certainly has a losing matchup to cleric). Its smashing everything from old classes, to all combinations of ancestry, and every new class.

Orc Fighter

Win rate: 63.89%

The orc fighter is essentially ogre fighter, but not quite as good. Honestly there’s not much more to say on the matter, the orc upgrades help the fighter do damage to the face and ignore the market, but not quite effectively as ogre.

Dwarf Fighter

Win rate: 60.20%

The dwarf fighter, similarly to ogre and orc, is strictly better than the human fighter and maintains similar matchup spreads. Again, it seems to be a downgrade on the ogre fighter, however still powerful.

Ancestry Spotlight – Wizard

Similarly to fighter, ancestries are helping wizards take over the meta. However, this time all the other ancestries are involved.

Half Demon Wizard

Win rate: 68.05%

Half demon wizard right now is beating everything the light touches, except fighters. Its win rate is currently singlehandedly been kept in check by an almost unwinnable matchup against ancestry fighters, and furthermore it is also beating other ancestry wizards.

Smallfolk Wizard

Win rate: 59.80%

Similarly to half demon wizard, smallfolk wizard is almost certainly being kept in check by the presence of ancestry fighter. It however has a lower win rate into other wizards than half demon does, and additionally loses the matchup to half demon wizard.

Elf Wizard

Win rate: 53.14%

The elf wizard follows the trend above. It loses hard to ancestry fighter and half demon wizard, and can beat everything else. Its hard to say, but it might just be a side grade of the human wizard at this point.

Ancestries that might be good

With a small sample size, smallfolk thief might be the best way to play thief right now. We need more data to be sure but it’s looking good.

Ancestry Overall

Currently, the meta is warped around ancestry fighter and ancestry wizard. You can beat one, but not the other. Until something major happens with the other classes ancestries, we are currently trapped in a rock paper scissors meta where you have to pick your poison.

Beta Meta – Dungeons Classes

The dungeons classes are all in a very interesting state right now. At the time of righting this article, barbarian, alchemist, and bard have all just received buffs. Furthermore, necromancer has received some heavy nerfs, and druid has not recovered from the absolute kneecapping they received at the start of the data collecting period (spoilers). Finally, the monk has released and it looks like it could be the best thing since sliced bread, lets dive in!

Barbarian

Win rate: 49.45%

The barbarian is essentially the poor mans ancestry fighter at the moment. While it is an upgrade on the fighter itself, in a world of ancestry fighter there is very little reason to play it and that is reflected in its pick rate. It recently got a buff to its purchasing power, so lets see how that affects the class, as the way it wants to be differentiated from fighter is the ability to play the market in the process of killing you by turn 15.

Alchemist

Win rate: 51.04%

Remember when I said that everything is either beating ancestry fighter, beating ancestry wizard, or is one of them earlier? Well alchemist is actually slightly favoured into most wizards (with the exception of half demon), at the cost of being far worse into aggressive game styles such as fighter and barbarian. Furthermore, it still beats everything that the wizard beats. Does this make it the most powerful class in the game (with the exception of release monk)? Probably. I can’t wait to see how ancestry affects it.

Druid

Win rate: 38.30%

Druid is on life support right now. From the small sample size, we can see the wizard matchup looks unwinnable, and it has a good matchup into fighters. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the win rate against wizard sit below 20% with a bit more data, its doing terribly

Necromancer

Win rate: 52.90%

This report should act as a snapshot of what the Necromancer was. And unfortunately for it, the necromancer is the most polarised class in the game in terms of matchup spread. It has 80/20 matchups across the board which is terribly unhealthy. Special shoutout to the cleric necromancer matchup, which from 23 games, the cleric has won once. Quite frankly this class probably needs a fundamental rework, because before the nerfs you either could deal with a skeleton swarm or you couldn’t. We’ll have to see how the nerfs affect the class but this writer doesn’t think the future of the necromancer looks good.

Bard

Win rate: 41.88%

Similarly to the necromancer, bard has received some balance changes so this report should act as a retrospective. Luckily for the bard however, it has received buffs. Prior to the buffs, bard was struggling with wizard, fighter, and alchemist which is never a good place to be, however seemed to be performing decently against the other classes. While its very hard to test this with stats, bard often feels like it wins and loses based on the market rather than the opponent in a way that’s far more exaggerated than a smooth heist thief can ever hope to be. I’m excited to see how the balance affects the bard’s win rate. That being said, while I’m a fan of the bard gameplay because it makes me feel powerful when it works, I’m not overly happy about its play patterns.

Monk

At the time of recording stats, monk only had 27 games at level 13/14 so its not a large sample. However as global win rate data continues to pour into hero helper, we can see it painting a picture that it is incredibly overtuned and will certainly be nerfed. It looks like it has a losing matchup to cleric, and potentially bard, but beats everything else comfortably. How high will its win rate be and how quickly will it be nerfed? Only time will tell.

Roundup

The public environment is aching for change and balance at the moment. The ladder is full of wizards and thieves, and only one of them is consistently winning games. Ancestry will provide a nice shakeup to the meta and I’m sure players will love it. However, is more balancing needed for the ancestries before they go live?

The meta of beta in the last two months was dominated by ancestry fighters and wizards and only release of monk will likely do anything about it. With good winrates into both, how will the beta meta change over the next month? How bad are the necromancer nerfs? How good are the bard buffs? Will druid get buffed? Will alchemist continue to be flying under the radar and get broken in half if they release ancestry for it (the answer is yes)? Are there any hidden gems yet to come to light in the ancestries of thief, cleric, and ranger?

Hopefully, most of these questions will be answered as we move onwards. This has been the first Monthly Meta Mashup! Hopefully I’ll see you in November with some new insights into the hero realms meta.