How do the five new airdrop cards stack up against the other Chaos Legion legendary cards? There has been a lot of hype around some of them, and around Grum Flameblade in particular. Do the cards actually live up to their expectations?
In this post we will go over win rates in silver and gold for the airdropped cards, and compare them to the other Chaos Legion legendaries. The stats in this post are based on matches sampled after the airdrops occured. We do not include matches earlier than that in order to have a meaningful comparison of the play rates of the airdrops and the other legendaries.
We will comment primarily on how the airdrop cards perform, but the data is shown for all Chaos Legion legendaries. Feel free to post your own observations in the comments.
This dataset consists of 1.5 million matches in Silver League, and 200.000 matches in Gold. However, the play rates of legendary cards are much higher in gold, so for this post, the Silver and Gold data are comparable.
A quick look at the airdrops
The five new cards are are very different from each other. Baajkira is a non-attacking anti-magic tank who comes with a team buff and an enemy debuff. Uriel the Purifier is a huge flying tank with self-heal and a very powerful (but risky) melee attack. Grum Flameblade is an enormous tank who is currently the only card outside the Gladius set that has bloodlust. Iza the Fanged is a ranged(!) sneak monster with scavenger, who can be played in Little League matches. Finally, Lira the Dark is a ranged attacker with Opportunity, who can also access Swiftness at level 3 and 4. She is the only ranged attacker with Opportunity at the moment.
So how do these cards perform so far? Lets look at the data.
Overall silver legendary stats
The figure below shows the overall win rates (level 1 and 2 cards combined) in silver league. The cards are sorted by win rate (which is also indicated by the number above the blue bars), and the bar heights give the play rates in winning (blue) and losing (red) teams.
In silver league, Baajkira is great. It rivals the best of the Chaos Legion cards, only really outclassed by River Hellondale. The next on the list is actually Uriel the Purifier. Uriel has a strong niche by beeing a huge flying tank, which makes him great for Earthquake matches.
Iza, Grum and Lira are not far behind Uriel, but neither are particularly good compared to the other legendaries in Silver.
Below we separate the stats based on the level of the cards, to see if there are any important changes as they level up.
Silver level 1 legendaries
The chart above shows the stats of the level 1 legendaries. The airdrops mostly keep their spot from the overall stats, but Baakjira drops a few places in the ranking, while still remaining at very high winrate.
Silver level 2 legendaries
At level two, Baakjira takes first place, and we can crown him the king of Chaos Legion Silver league. 1 more health is nice for him, but gaining Strengthen is the important factor, bringing his whole team's health up one point. Iza the fanged takes a massive leap up the ranking, coming in at an insane 67% win rate. Going from 1 to 2 damage is massive for her, as she gets much higher chance to start stacking up health with Scavenger.
Grum Flameblade follows up the ranking, but not quite as far as Iza. Gaining void strengthens his role as an anti-magic tank for the fire team, and it synergizes very well with Void Armor and Bloodlust.
Uriel gains heal, but actually drops in power relative to the other legendaries (his overall win rate of course increases from level 1 to 2). Poor Lira also drops one spot, which is not that surprising as her change from level 1 to 2 is only a single damage point.
Overall gold legendary stats
The chart below shows the overall stats in gold league (level 1, 2, and 3 legendaries combined).
Baakjira holds his place and is in fact even better (relative to the other legendaries) in Gold league than in Silver. But overall, he is the only airdrop that does well in Gold. The other four are stuck at less than 50% win rate. Perhaps they will improve over time, but the stats are not very promising for them at the moment.
Below we split out the cards based on level, as we did for silver league above.
Gold level 1 legendaries
In gold league, level 1 legendary cards do not hold up well in general. In fact, apart from the fiends, there is only two cards that remain good at level 1. These are River Hellondale and Void Dragon. Baakjira is still the best of the airdrops, but is also at less than 50% win rate.
Gold level 2 legendaries
Level two legendaries are sufficient to achieve a positive win rate in Gold league. Baakjira is great, Uriel and Grum are slightly bad, and Iza and Lira are not at all good enough. The two latter do not provide enough damage for their team slot at this level, and apart from some niche rulesets, they should likely not be used that much. In contrast, Grum and Uriel do provide enough stats to deserve a slot in high-mana matches, and see average results at level two.
Gold level 3 legendaries
At level three, Baakjira again takes the throne. We can crown him king of Chaos Legion Gold league. Heal on a monster with void and 13(+1) health is monstrous, and the stats confirm that. If there ever was a monster to shut down high magic damage teams, Baakjira is it. Among the new airdrop cards, the second best one at level three is Iza the Fanged. She gains Stun at level three, and thus she becomes a great utility card. Backline stun in an Earth card is a good way to shut down a certain bearded centaur.
Lira the Dark gains Swiftness at level three, and this propels her up the ranking list. Swiftness is a very powerful team buff, and with it Lira herself has 7 speed. Thus she can also be used as an anti-sneak card, as she will have pretty good dodge chances against many cards.
Uriel and Grum do not improve from level 2 to 3 in this dataset. In fact they drop slightly in win rate. Obviously this is not actually because the cards get worse. One possibility is that the players with access to level 3 legendaries might be higher on the ladder than many of those with level 2 versions, and therefore face different and more challenging teams.
Closing Remarks
This post has documented the initial performance of the five recent airdrop cards, and compared them to the previously released legendary cards. In summary, we find that Baakjira is an amazing card that performs well across Silver and Gold league. It is great at level 1 in silver, but for gold league it is a good improvement to aquire a level 2 version. The other airdropped cards are not at the same level as Baakjira, but have their uses. In particular, Iza the Fanged and Lira the Dark become very useful once they get their level 3 ability (Stun and Swiftness, respectively). For Uriel and Grum however, the trend tends to be opposite, where they appear to be less useful in the higher leagues.
Let us know if this post has helped you, and if you have any other comments or suggestions please let us know.
Please also check out our other content:
Beginner Guides
Beginners guide - Choosing the right Chaos summoner for your match
Beginners guide - Kelya Frendul
Beginners guide - Obsidian
Beginners guide - Thaddius Brood
Beginners guide - Tarsa
Beginners guide - General Sloan
Summoner and Card statistics
Best Legendary Cards of Chaos Legion - Week 1 statistics
Chaos summoners - Week 1 statistics
Rule set strategies
We are also creating guides for specific rules. You can find them here:
Strategycorner with Mammuter #5: How to WIN in Reverse Speed
Strategycorner with Mammuter #4: How to WIN in Melee Mayhem
Strategycorner with Mammuter #3: Noxious Fumes
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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus
