A Review of Wild (after 625 games)

General Discussion
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Hello, everyone! It has been a while since my last post, but I figured now would be a great time to share my review of Wild with you all. I hope you enjoy it!

Introduction: I am mostly a Standard player, favoring Rogue and Warrior. However, after the introduction of Demon Hunter, I hopped on that train and played about 200 games. The class wasn’t really to my taste, so I just let it be.
One bright sunny quarantine day I decided that not having a level 60 Demon Hunter with a golden portrait was annoying me. So I dusted off my old boring, but reliable Baku, and went for a dive into Wild with Odd Demon Hunter for the first time in more than a year.
Today, after 625 games, I finally got my golden portrait, so I would like to share with you my thoughts on Wild after all that time.

The Meta: I was actually pleasantly surprised, that the meta was quite varied. Here are the classes I faced, along with my win rates, piloting Odd Demon Hunter.

  • Demon Hunter: 15% (62 wins - 30 losses) . These were mostly mirror matches, with slight variations in the build.

  • Druid: 5% (22 wins - 9 losses). Most of the druids seemed to be the Oaken Summons Control variant. There was also a decent amount of Spell / Combo druids. Kael’Thas has surely bolstered their power level, so they find play. I also faced a negligible amount of Token Druid.

  • Hunter: 3% (12 wins - 8 losses). The majority were Highlander. Nothing interesting here.

  • Mage: 18% (68 wins - 46 losses). These were almost equally divided between the Quest Mage and the Secret Aluneth Mage. I also faced a few Highlander Mages.

  • Paladin: 7% (27 wins - 16 losses). Most of these were aggressive Mech Paladins with the occasional Tip the Scales Murloc Paladin.

  • Priest: 12% (37 wins - 37 losses). Mostly Raza Highlander Priests with a Dragon Priest from time to time. Interestingly, the Resurrect Priest seems to be completely gone from the meta, at least in high ranks.

  • Rogue: 2% (7 wins - 7 losses). Odd Rogue. That is all.

  • Shaman: 8% (25 wins - 24 losses). Either Even Shaman or Big Shaman with a dash of Pure Totem Shaman.

  • Warlock: 16% (66 wins - 35 losses). The 3 main archetypes are Cube Lock, Discard Zoo Lock and Mecha’thun Lock. Quite an interesting variety.

  • Warrior: 14% (40 wins - 47 losses). Almost exclusively Pirate Warrior.

The Old: Some things never change. The power level of Wild is, as its name suggests, pretty wild. Reno continues to make Aggro players cry. Patches is still in charge and Pirate Warrior is running rampant. Quest and Secret Mage are as frustrating to play against as they were back in the day. Naturally, Ice Block is still as annoying as ever. Druids keep stacking armor and dropping Spreading Plagues.
In short, not much has changed in the way Wild feels, except maybe the complete disappearance of Resurrect Priest, at least according to my sample. Also, Demon Hunter has effectively replaced Odd Rogue as the go-to Odd Deck, but is still only 15% of my games, so it’s not that common.

The New: Many of the Wild decks are now even more powerful than they were before Descent of Dragons and Ashes of Outland.
The Discard Zoo Lock actually was a pleasant surprise. Hand of Gul’Dan has brought this deck back from the dead and it’s now a pretty strong contender in the aggro scene.
Cube Lock and the other Control Locks have had their power boosted by cards like Enhanced Dreadlord and Dark Skies, which really help their early-game survival. Playing around Defile is no longer enough to beat them.
Quest Mages now run Evocation. With a bit of luck, this spell can create insane combos.
Pirate Warrior has access to cards like Skybarge, which greatly increases its tempo potential. Ancharrr completely mitigates the old weakness of Pirate Warrior - the card draw. As if that is not enough, Sky Raider offers even more pirate generation. And, of course, Patches is still relevant.
Raza (Highlander) Priest is even more sturdy, because of cards like Zephrys, which help it stabilize against aggro decks. Its power has definitely grown in comparison to the pre-DoD era.

My Deck: For those, that are interested, here is the deck code for my Odd Demon Hunter.

AAEBAea5AwavBPoOkbwCnvgCpaEDw7wDDNQFthOfzgKm7wL9pwOHugPEvAPHxgPUyAP3yAP5yAP+yAMA

The closest popular list is GetMeowth’s Odd Demon Hunter. Feel free to add your own flavor as you see fit. One possible change would be swapping out the Vulpera for a Mana Burn. It has its uses in shutting down your opponent’s swing turn, when played correctly. The stats seem to favor it, but it’s very skill-dependent. You have to play it at exactly the right time.
This is, in my opinion, the most efficient deck for farming the 500-win and 1000-win Demon Hunter portraits. Getting 366 wins took me 45 hours with an average game time of 4,4 minutes and 7,5 turns.

Conclusion: Playing Wild for the first time in over a year has been an interesting experience. It had its ups and downs, but was mostly enjoyable. I will, however, be going back to Standard now. In my opinion, the Wild meta is best enjoyed in moderation. The power level of some of the popular decks really does feel oppressive and the lack of balance is readily apparent. But don’t take my word for it. Queue up a few games in Wild and let me know what you think!
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and have a great day!

7 Likes
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Well that was a fascinating read :slightly_smiling_face:

The new ranking system has kinda changed the way I play wild. Where I used to spend the month memeing to rank 15, now I don’t wana waste my bonus stars, so I almost exclusively play casual until late in the month. Then I take my quest murloc deck (still a bit of a meme as I’ve played the deck enough to know it’d be stronger without the quest, but way less interesting) out for a spin until I get bored. These first few months it’s seen me cruise into those gold ranks and cause I only do it once a month it stops me getting burnt out. Don’t know how you handle grinding so much :laughing:

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Thank you for taking the time to read my post, Ixnay! I am glad you found it interesting!

I used to enjoy Quest Murloc a lot back in the day. I have around 150 games with it according to my deck tracker. It’s definitely a fun deck to play! Also, the quest really does make it more interesting.

I think you definitely have the right idea with the way you approach Wild. As I said in my post, it should be enjoyed in moderation. As to how I handle grinding so much: the secret is listening to good music and picking a deck which is easy to play. Odd Demon Hunter is only difficult in the mirror and versus Pirate Warrior. Apart from that it’s mostly about playing on curve and hoping your opponent doesn’t have Reno on turn 6. :smiley: Now I am back to my Control Warrior and the hard days of grinding have been quickly forgotten.

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Great post.
As you observed, wild is left to rot and die because look at each of those metadecks you faced, what do they have in common?

They all rely on cheating mana, the best way the class can, and that’s all those decks do, on repeat, and the powerlevel of mana cheat boxes out like alllll those other wild cards.

So its a very small format, under the illusion it’s this big card collection to experiment with.

Mage, plays quest, plays KTM, plays A Mysteries, plays lackey maybe, plays Dup, plays Crystal Run, see this mana cheat going on, on repeat?

Druid, plays Embiggen, Innervate, Avi Kun, and such.

Priest, plays Raza Anduin, and literallly anything else cheats mana after that, with varying degrees of speed.

Warlock, plays voidcaller, skull, discard-draw-package, which cheats mana in synergy, not individually, like many other wild mana-cheats. DK Guldan, Mecha is like not relevant its there and very dirty rattable.

Warrior, cheats mana it plays pirates and pirates are mana cheat.

Shaman, plays totem mana cheat, genn, TFB, and so on. It can try and battlecry out combo decks w rats and such, or jades, but it’s probs too slow.

Paladin, plays baku or like tries to cheat mana w Librams or i guess it can try to slam Anyfin into a voidlord or click on it’s dead hero portrait from like most wild spikes that are faster than healing (and not armor).

Rexxar? It’s not cheating mana it’s just playing animal companion or i guess going genn. Class is in big trouble.

Rogue? Odd, it goess off Baku or it loses. It can try some stealth maiev thing and highroll sap/maiev for taunts.

That’s wild summed up, see how these mana cheat packages dominate all? And devs just let it happen like it’s what we want, staring at like 95 percent the cards being unplayable in the CM bc they wont balance the format bc they think we want the same old decks each expansion, read as, the same old mana-cheat packages and their supporting cards, each expansion. If a new card creates a new archetype, great! It just never happens, and, if it does, the rest of the field is still the same mana cheat packages.

Do devs think we enjoy playing the-same cores each expansion? That’s gross.
If you enjoy playing unpredictable self-thought-of ideas, and it’s cheating mana in any way but not on a tierlist, it will get exposed and heavily advertised by a streamer and their friends either other streamers or group chat.

Like, Genn Baku anything is always thought of.
Then, there’s the mana cheat packages each class has already, that are already the meta the strongest / fastest ones.

Absolutely zero room to be creative in wild, and zero room to play non-mana-cheat. Super stale format plan, so HS is quittable.

For example, i could quit right now, log in in June 2021 assuming the world is still like chill, and on que, see portrait, and call out these same mana cheat packages, and no question most matches will be about finding / playing the expected spikes.

For example, in June 2021 Warlocks will look for discard synergy package, voidcaller/skull, and when you que you can say this out load, and bam you’ll see the caller / skull or the discard spike. The only way this would change is if they balanced the format on the heavy, or intro’d such powercreep that it boxed these mana-cheating packages out of the game, which is insanely doubtful and would be very bad for the game.

1 Like
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A very interesting take on the state of Wild and also on mana-cheating. Thank you for the good read!

The days when mana used to mean something are long gone. Even if you look at Standard, cards like DQA, Dragoncaster, Puzzle Box, Dinotamer, Galakrond the Nightmare, Ysera Unleashed etc. are all about, as you put it, mana-cheating.

These cards dominated the entire DoD meta. Luckily for the current Standard meta none of these cards feel particularly oppressive, but I don’t expect any changes to be made to Wild in that regard. And so mana will continue to be meaningless.

Wild really has the potential to be fun, but, as you said, it’s currently very stale to the point where it’s really not a fun format. It’s only really good for farming portraits/quests or the occasional memes.

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I’m amazed that you can write about Wild without mentioning how much all the mill decks and Mecha C’thun decks, both cheap, gimmicky deck-types that require little skill to play, have ruined the game (at least for ordinary players that don’t have every single card). At the very least, MC and Coldlight Oracle should be banned to bring any interest at all back to this mode.

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Both those get destroyed by Odd DH which is the most popular and highest wr deck. Turns out giving a top aggro deck 2 Leeroy’s for 3 mana is pretty good :smile:

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I haven’t written about it, because the post is only based on my personal experience. In the short time period I played Wild, I did not encounter a single mill deck and played against relatively few Mecha’Thun decks.
As Ixnay also pointed out, Odd DH farms those 2 deck archetypes, so I doubt they will get any attention from Blizzard.
I will, however, agree with you, that mill decks and Mecha’Thun decks are terribly annoying to play against.

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Okay, that’s interesting. I don’t play Wild too much, since it’s not much fun anymore, but when I do I always encounter at least one of those almost immediately. Obviously I’m not talking about top level play (see my comment about not having all the cards, which Ixnay obviously missed, as he thinks my post is irrelevant because there is a deck that counters them.) To be clear, I’m not saying those two decks win all the time, but it creates a situation where if you don’t draw cards to beat the crap out of them very quickly, they usually win, which kind of screws control players.

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…I read that, but we were given most of the demon hunter cards for free.

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Well yes… controll players have it hard against the very very low amount (i mean like different kind and not the amount of players piloting them) of mill decks and combo decks to begin with.

You also should have an advantage against aggro which is arguebly a higher amount of players in wild.

Rock paper scissor

It was lije that as long as i remember