On the last day of ladder, the elements destroyed every other class by a mile in appearance.
Yesterday, the final day of the January season, was no ordinary season ending. It also marked the last day to accumulate HCT points for the Winter Championship, so finishing high on ladder was more important to most than in any other season. A top 100 spot or not could make the difference between making the top 64 (which is the cut-off) in one's region, and just falling short.
Unless you've been living under a rock you will have noticed: Shaman is, by far, the strongest class at the moment. Though using different methods, both the vS Data Reaper Report and Tempo Storm's Meta Snapshot have been reporting on Thrall and Morgl's strength and increasing appearance for weeks, with Aggro Shaman taking the crown. Most people who played on ladder yesterday will have experienced it, but Shaman appeared to be more prevalent yesterday than on any other day. Frustrated by this, some Hearthtsone pros shared their stats.
Paul "Zalae" Nemeth posted a small table, in which his games in Legend rank are recorded. As it turns out, more than 40% of the decks played in Legend are a Shaman. To compare it with Hearthtsone's current weakest classes, Zalae notes that you're 20 times more likely to queue into a Shaman player than into someone who's either playing Paladin or Hunter. Taking Shaman-dominated statistics to a higher level was the Mayor of Value Town, Jeffrey "Trump" Shih. Fighting for HCT points, he found a Shaman on his path in 44 of the 63 matches he played on the final day: almost 70%.
To round it up, Warrior aficionado Fibonacci shared the statistics of his online endeavours this month. Playing a Control Warrior deck for almost 300 games, 108 of those games Fibonacci played against a Shaman. A quick maths equation finds that's over 35% of the games played.
The question now is: how to fix it? [card]Tunnel Trogg[/card] and [card]Totem Golem[/card] will leave Standard mode as soon as the new Hearthstone year begins. However, if last year's moment of rotation is any indication, the new year of Standard is almost three months away. In terms of changing cards, [card]Small-Time Buccaneer[/card] is a card on Blizzard's infamous "radar", though some Aggro Shaman decks don't even play the card. Whichever cards Blizzard wants to target with changes, the urgency to address them seems to become higher with every passing day.
