Class stats from tournament play pre-nerf: Warlock and Hunter are kings

Introduction

Welcome to the second episode of the Class Stats corner.

In the previous edition, we looked over an entire month of tournaments, parsing more than 20 events and 480 matches and putting it all on graphs to paint a picture of the competitive meta.

This time around, we're looking at an even broader range of games. Following community feedback, we've increased the sample size to include two months of competition - August and September - spanning over 37 tournaments and showmatch series and more than 1110 games.

Below, you will find a match-up spread sheet with win/loss breakdown, two graphs representing popularity rates and win-rates of all nine classes as well as nine more graphs featuring the match-up win-rates for each class.

Class stats - spread sheet and win rate/most played graphs


34	22-28	8-11	12-7	5-11	23-19	23-19	33-29	21-23
28-22	41	5-1	10-10	14-7	19-26	21-17	33-17	19-20
11-8	1-5	4	4-6	7-5	8-6	7-10	7-12	8-5
7-12	10-10	6-4	3	7-6	9-16	8-6	13-17	17-19
11-5	7-14	5-7	6-7	7	9-17	7-6	8-16	8-15
19-23	26-19	6-8	16-9	17-9	20	11-18	27-36	12-20
19-23	17-27	10-7	6-8	6-7	18-11	8	20-13	15-16
29-33	17-33	12-7	14-13	16-8	36-27	13-20	32	23-20
23-21	20-19	5-8	19-17	15-8	20-12	16-15	20-23	13

Note: The numbers in the blue cells represent the number of mirror matches that have been played

So what does the most played class graph tell us:

Compared to July's report, Warlock has overcome Druid on the top. Even though Hunters are a real threat to the class, tournament which employed class ban (i.e. most of the offline and online invitationals) allowed players to ban out Rexxar and use their Handlocks and Zoos to dominate a slow, control-oriented meta.
Druid dropped just one spot and is still one of the most played classes in the meta. Cards like [card]Haunted Creeper[/card], [card]Shade of Naxxramas[/card] and [card]Sludge Belcher[/card] reinforced both the aggressive and control builds of Druid, further contributing to class' well-roundedness.
Even though Hunter was hated on a lot in tournaments with bans, the class is still top three in popularity due to the amount of showmatches and team league games where players are usually allowed to bring any deck.
Rogue was second in games played in July but dropped quite a few spots in the last two months. The reason is the increased popularity of Handlocks which is, in turn, due to the massive Hunter bans, as we already pointed out, creating a mini butterfly effect.
Warrior is rounding up the top five just as it did in July. Although the class didn't go up or down in the charts, its percentage of games played compared to the big picture has almost doubled, to 25% in August and September up from 13% in July. Thank god to those [card]Sludge Belcher[/card]s and [card]Death's Bite[/card]s.
Paladin, Priest and Mage are once again the unwanted three. Like with Warrior, however, they are at least seeing a percentile increase in popularity.

Again, let's take a look at what this table tells us:

When Hunter is not banned, it crushes face. If we disregard the anomaly where Priest was #1 win-rate-wise in July, Hunter would be on top for three straight months.
Warrior is the big winner from the Curse of Naxxramas expansion. Between July 29 and August 12, the struggling Garrosh was rewarded with three cards that are now control Warrior staples, namely [card]Unstable Ghoul[/card], [card]Death's Bite[/card] and [card]Sludge Belcher[/card] which either synergize with his draw and armor engines (i.e. [card]Armorsmith[/card] and [card]Acolyte of Pain[/card] or added to his defense potential. This helped the class a ton, making him viable all across the board, fixing previously terrible match-ups like Zoo and giving it a positive win-rate in six of the eight match-ups.
Warlock is the other class that breaks the 50% barrier, a number that should've been higher had the ban format been spread across all forms of competition. Expect this number to go up in the days following the Hunter nerf. In fact, it has already begun to rise, as our BlizzCon EU report shows.
Druid continues to hover around the 50% but right below him we have Shaman which has its win-rate increased to almost 50% up from 43% in July. The reason is class' excellent record against Warlock and Rogue, two of the four most popular classes for the past month. With the meta expected to shift even more towards Handlock play, this number is also expected to rise.
Even before the [card]Leeroy Jenkins[/card] nerf, Rogues were already struggling. The win-rate breakdown displayed below shows Rogue's excellent numbers against Priest, Paladin and Hunter. With two of those classes not being what you'd call popularity queens, however, Valeera struggled to pull off an overall positive win record, especially with her negative stats against Warlock, Warrior and Druid.
Mage, Paladin and Priest are on the bottom three here as well, showing why they aren't picked in the first place. Looking at the post-nerf stats, however, we see Mage on the top with 64% and Paladin and Priest up at 48-49% win-rate. While the BlizzCon EU data sample is small (and the Mage thing is likely an anomaly), it's a wind of hope for the fans of these classes that they might see a resurgence.

Win rates per class

A few bullet points here as well, pointing out the critical numbers:

Hunter vs Mage is the most unbalanced match for the past two months, with Hunter winning 83% of the time.
The second most one-sided match-up is Priest vs Druid with 69% win-rate for the Priest.
Mage vs Warrior gives back a 62% win-rate for the Mage, which is opposite to the popular belief that the class is hard-countered by Garrosh due to the Armor Up mechanic. The reason lies mostly with the new-school Secret Mages with [card]Duplicate[/card] which often have an edge over other control decks in fatigue wars. This is also Mage's best matc-up, beating vs Paladin with 2%.
Although the build was designed to battle slow decks like Warlock and Warrior and outheal/out-taunt Hunter and Miracle, control Paladin has negative win-rates against all of them except Hunter where the class is at 50%.