Low Tier Letdown / Shadowverse

• With the establishment of the Rotation format, several archetypes can slip in and out of the bad side of this trope in Rotation if the replacements in the new set cannot make up for whatever's rotating out. In some cases, an entire playstyle can be next to unplayable when certain key cards rotated out (for example, aggro decks during the Chronogenesis, Omen of the Ten, and Altersphere expansions).
• Aggro decks in the Rotation format during the Chronogenesis meta suffered this, mainly because many of the powerful aggro tools that were available in the Classic and Darkness Evolved sets are not available in the Rotation format (for example, Dance of Death, a spell that mostly used to deal with giant Wards or big threats that also help push face damage, is not available in Rotation, meaning it is significantly harder to deal with giant threats or Wards unless using a follower with a Bane effect). More specifically, two popular classes for playing aggro decks, Swordcraft and Bloodcraft, lost a significant amount of their Storm followers and burn effects respectively, meaning it is much harder to deal constant face damage to your opponent and aggro Blood and Sword have to rely on neutral decks that have little to no synergy with aggro decks. This is turn makes the Rotaiton format more favorable towards control and midrange decks over aggro decks (or Tempo Daria and Tilting of Windmills decks in the later half of the Chronogenesis Rotaiton meta, which even aggro decks have a hard time beating) thus it is significantly harder to climb in the Rotation ladder than in the Unlimited ladder where aggro decks are more favored. That being said, not all is lost for aggro in Rotation, as aggro Forest and Dragon have some moderate success in the Rotation format (mainly because their core cards in their aggro decks comes in the later sets rather than from the Classic and Darkness Evolved sets) and Cygames mentioned that they want to give support for aggro decks in Rotation with the Dawnbreak Nightedge expansion without negatively impacting the Unlimited meta.
  Naoyuki Miyashita: The selection of Bloodcraft cards introduced by the previous expansion, available in Rotation, tended towards the control deck archetype. At the same time, the availability of cards from early card sets helped to increase the popularity of aggro decks in Unlimited. With that in mind, we have tried to increase the support for aggro decks in Rotation without undermining the balance of Unlimited.
• Control decks, however, get this treatment when it comes to the Unlimited format. This can mainly be attributed how fast games end in the Unlimited format, as most games usually end around turn 7-8 the latest thanks to the abundance of options OTK Roach and D-Shift has to drop the enemy leader's health from 20 to 0. Not helping the matter that many of the late-game win conditions that control decks often rely on, such as Heavenly Aegis and Seraph, as considered too slow to get out, as the player will most likely be dead by the aforementioned combo decks. As such, the Unlimited format favors that decks that either apply heavy aggression, or focuses on more proactive plays (to put this into comparison, Ramp Dragon, a deck archetype that was once dominant in Tempest of the Gods expansion, is actually considered too slow in the Unlimited format). The Rotation format is more favored for control decks, than in the Unlimited format, as there aren't a lot of aggressive options and most combo decks usually activate their combo around turn 9/10 at most, giving control decks more time to react appropriately. Even so, many control decks in Shadowverse tend to have more proactive plays when compared to other collectible card games such as Hearthstone (for example, Tenko Haven, a control deck, utilize a lot more proactive plays thanks to their utilization of amulets and followers that synergize with them).
• After the Ultimate Colosseum expansion, the entirety of aggro decks in Unlimited slipped out of favor. While aggro decks were on a decline due to Elana Haven getting new options (such as Kel, Holy Marksman combined with numerous Wards and followers that bestows a cheap healing spell) and OTK Roach having defensive options to keep them in check, the introduction of the Shikigami package for Dimension Shift effectively put a nail in the coffin for aggro decks. The Shikigami package addresses Dimension Shift's lack of early-game presence, and some of their Spellboost followers give Ward or Rush to assist with board control. Even Amataz aggro Forest would need a very good draw to outpace Shikigami Rune. Aggro decks would later break out of this trope again when World Uprooted introduced new cards to let them outpace the opposition, though this also would turn the Unlimited format into Rocket-Tag Gameplay as decks could win as fast as turn 6 or 7.

Forestcraft

• Control Forestcraft is deemed to be one of the weaker Forestcraft archetypes. This is largely due to a lot of Forest's better cards relying on combos with cheaper cards to execute, and thus their individual card quality is pretty weak without the synergy from other cards to back them up. While they do have decent healing and have earned reasonably strong Ward followers and good non-Roach win conditions in the later sets, they are still missing effective ways to remove multiple threats, with their best board clear — Will of the Forest — being generally unreliable and requiring tedious hand management to work, on top of unreliable card draw to fuel the large hands demanded by some of their stronger cards. Cue Starforged Legends, which introduced an excellent removal spell, a version of Will of the Forest that can be reused, and a nigh-unstoppable win condition, and control Forest got Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Forestcraft in general fell into this after the nerf to Goblin Mage, which effectively killed off many of the aggressive OTK Roach decks. This is mainly because of Forestcraft's reliance of Combos with Roach puts Forestcraft into the Difficult, but Awesome category. Not only that, Forestcraft's main weakness with the Roach combos is its infamously bad early game and very awkward midgame plays and Forestcraft lacked effective and powerful board clears across from Will of the Forest, which is heavily dependent on how many cards in your hand. Tempo Forestcraft decks are susceptible to powerful board wipes, while Path to Purgatory and White Wolf/Silver Bolts decks are too slow to set up in a faster meta. In addition, several cards in Tempest of the Gods have introduced cards to counter OTK Roach combo. Combined with 1/1 Fairies that tend to trade poorly, and the strong presence of Ramp Dragon and midrange Shadow in the Tempest of the Gods meta, it placed Forestcraft in a very bad spot in ranked ladder. Not helping matters was Forestcraft receiving various unusual additions over the past expansions that did little to salvage its strongest archetypes. The nerf to Alice in Wonderland Dreams and the addition of new tools in Starforged Legends eventually broke Forest out of this end of this trope and become a force to be reckoned with (see above).
• After several expansions of being one of the top classes in Rotation, Forestcraft has dropped from being one of the top tier classes to being in the bottom tier in the Omen of the Ten Rotation format akin to the Tempest of the Gods format. The loss of Wood of Brambles means Forestcraft's understatted followers will have a significantly harder time in contesting the board and the loss of Fairy Driver erased their access to game-ending burst damage. Omen of the Ten offered the Unkilling archetype based on weakening the enemy and controlling the game, but that deck ends up being slower than even Mysteria Rune or OTK Darkfeast, on top of Forest generally losing a lot of good healing. Forest plummeted to the least-played craft in the first week after the expansion's launch, although players are discovering that Aggro Forest isn't completely dead due to access to tools like Tia, Crystalian Noble and Luxglaive Bayle, and a reprint of Fairy Circle to keep the early threats coming. Due to Forestcraft's underperformance in the Rotation format, Cygames buffed Yggdrasil's play point cost by reducing it's cost from 7 to 6 to help promote the control playstyle of the Unkilling archetype, although the buff actually helped midrange and tempo Forestcraft decks which pushed them into Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • With the launch the Altersphere expansion, Forestcraft will lose several important cards from Starforged Legends. Elf Song was given a more fair replacement with Lily, Crystalian Conductor, but there are no suitable replacements for Insect Lord and Airbound Barrage. Combined with Forestcraft's understatted followers and the increased amount of 3pp followers with at least 3 defense, it makes contesting and controlling the early game board harder for Forestcraft without Airbound Barrage. On December 2018, Godhunter Selwyn's Accelerate effect was buffed that deals 3 damage to an enemy follower, allowing Forestcraft to deal with sturdier followers on board while Selwyn himself is still a solid defensive Ward when played as a follower.
  • Forestcraft during the Altersphere expansion initially suffered this end of the stick again. Not due to the loss of Elf Song and Airbound Barrage (though their loss erased aggro Forest from the Rotation scene), but due to the dominance of ramp Dragoncraft and Mysteria Rune. Forestcraft has a terrible matchup against those two decks — Ramp Dragon can easily erase Forest's board at a moment's notice and has endgame threats too big for Forest to handle, while Mysteria Rune has plenty of burn damage, wards, and free value that Forest cannot keep up with. This has caused Tempo Forestcraft to fall out in the meta in favor of a more control/combo centric Korwa deck (thanks to the introduction Forest Defender) with White Vanara or Sky Devouring Horror as their top end finisher. Even so, Forestcraft still struggles against most of the top tier decks. To help boost Forestcraft's performance in the Rotation, Greenglen Axeman's play point cost was decreased from 7 to 6, a card that didn't see much play in most Forestcraft lists ever since Fairy Driver was rotated out in the Omen expansion.
  • Again, Forestcraft languished as one of the least-played classes in the Steel Rebellion format, as they had lost several tempo tools from Chronogenesis like Insect Lord and Rayne. The Machina synergy they gained in the process was also not very good, the best being their ability to push damage with Mechalance Elf over and over again. The then-dominant Ceres also severely punished Forest's token-reliant strategies, and also proved to be very difficult for Forest to overcome. To compensate, on May 20, their most prominent combo engine Korwa would be buffed from a 4/4 to a 5/5, giving her just enough stats to survive a trade with Ceres and defeat any 7-defense evolved followers by herself.
• The Greenwood Guardian set in Ultimate Colosseum proved to be too average to contend with the more notorious archetypes. A lot of issues stem from the long charging time from playing very average 2pp followers, on top of the fact that they take too long to gain Ward for defense and are largely dependent on Lymaga's Storm to close a game. They essentially get unfavorably compared to Holy Lion Crystal, which makes tokens that eventually gain Storm themselves to close a game on their own. To rub salt in the wound, Greenwood Guardian would eventually return to relevance in the Fortune's Hand meta... as fusion fodder for Terrorformer.

Swordcraft

• Aggro Swordcraft also falls into this, mainly because of the Skill Gate Character nature of the deck. In lower ranks, Aggro Swordcraft is considered to be one of the easiest decks to play due to how easy it is to assemble with various cheap bronze and silver followers, followers that spawn multiple followers, and a large number of Storm followers in the deck. In particular, Royal Banner version teaches newer players about the Commander/Officer interaction with followers such as Ruthless Assassin, Centaur Vanguard, and Gelt, Vice Captain (as well as the amulet boosting the attack of any Officer followers). That being said, while Aggro Swordcraft is considered to be one of the easiest decks to play, it is also relatively easy to counter in higher ranks. This is because the biggest strength of Aggro Swordcraft is its ability to apply early game pressure, playing aggressively, and winning games early comes with numerous drawbacks. Aggro Swordcraft is known to have a super binary playstyle of constantly going face while not trading (mainly because Aggro Swordcraft is incredibly poor when it comes to making effective trades). The deck is also incredibly vulnerable to board wipes and Wards, and many of the popular meta decks utilize some form of board clear and Wards, which makes a lot of Aggro Sword's early game shenanigans null. Not only that, Aggro Swordcraft is known to lose a lot of steam relatively quickly as the game drags on due to the lack of good card draw, meaning that Aggro Sword needs to win around turn 5 or 6 before the deck starts to lose its early game pressure. On top of that, Swordcraft is a class that is known not to have any good board clears, meaning the deck can easily be overwhelmed with stronger and more valuable followers. In higher ranks, many Swordcraft players choose to opt for a midrange deck instead of an aggro deck, which while still have some of the same weaknesses as aAgro Sword, the midrange deck allows Swordcraft to still apply early game pressure, win more consistently, and allow more effective trading at the same time ^note midrange Sword allows more trading when compared to the aggro deck due to having good number of Storm and Rush followers as well as having Luminous Mage, which the free evolve point on a Commander is incredibly valuable during the midgame). All this changed with Starforged Legends giving Aggro Sword enough tools to become much faster than before.
  • With the release of Wonderland Dreams, even the Banner aggro deck got obsoleted by Neutral Sword, as detailed above. The only advantage Banner aggro has over Neutral Sword now is its incredibly low vial cost and beginner friendly nature of the deck.
  • Swordcraft's original theme of Commander-Officer interactions has been increasingly sidelined and overshadowed in the later expansions by efficient individual followers and the general strength of Neutral synergy. Tempest and Wonderland packs had very little in the way of new Commander-Officer synergies, leaving players with the overshadowed older cards if they tried to design a deck around this theme. It took Starforged Legends to revitalize Commander-Officer interactions and bring it back into viability; however, the Commander-Officer theme would get sidelined again further down the line, with Swordcraft juggling three more Traits (Levin, Machina, Natura) by the launch of Verdant Conflict.
• Control Swordcraft, a deck that used to be incredibly strong in the Darkness Evolved and Rise of Bahamut expansions when the meta was slower, has faced bad times in the Tempest format onward when more viable control decks began popping up. The gimmick with control Swordcraft is that it utilizes a large number of Wards to prevent aggro decks from trying to attack face. The problem with this type of deck was that it was dependent on combat for board dominance, and was rather predictable in holding out for Albert to come and finish the job. Swordcraft may have received good single-target removal spells but they lack board clears — not even Cyclone Blade was a good option as it depended on Sword holding the board with a strong follower first. Tempest and Wonderland gave Control Sword some useful tools, including excellent Wards, Rush followers to reduce Swordcraft's evolve dependence, and many more Bane cards to function as their "hard removal" that cared little for stat advantage, but the fact that Control Sword has terrible draw, board clear, and healing makes it stand out as one of the worst "control" decks which pales in comparison to its more viable cousins.
• Swordcraft in Rotation suffered in the format's debut, as it had lost a lot of aggressive options and cheap Storm followers, while not gaining much in the way of removal or strong boardwipes of their own. This left variants of Midrange Sword as its remaining viable options, but it is checked easily by boardwipes like Jeanne, Odile, and Israfil. The strength of Sword in any one Rotation environment is highly dependent on the prevalence of such boardwipes which determines how well it can close the game before running out of resources; the rotation of Sahaquiel in Dawnbreak Nightedge removed one very popular boardwipe combo and was one of the steps in allowing midrange Sword to flourish.
• After being a contender in the previous format, Sword plummeted to one of the least-played classes in World Uprooted. To no one's surprise, the main offenders were the opposition's ability to clear the board — the most infamous being Forest and Blood. Machina Sword also had a little issue with making the most of NAM discounts which was the most centralizing feature of the format. With the mini-expansion, two of its underperforming Machina cards were buffed — Johann went from a 3/5 to a 5/6, while Mechablade Soldier went down to 4pp to help Sword contest wide boards easily.
• Ever since Portalcraft's rise to being playable in Unlimited in Steel Rebellion and even after the Artifact Scan nerf in Storm Over Rivayle nerfing the Artifact strategy, Sword as a whole is usually considered the worst class to play in the format. This is because, while the class' main strength is being a Jack of All Trades in Rotation, Unlimited favors heavily synergistic Rocket-Tag Gameplay, something that Sword usually struggles with thanks to almost all of the cards that are being constantly introduced being directed towards midrange, which as a whole is considered too slow and disjointed to properly compete, making it a Master of None. While there have been exceptions, the general consensus is that even when Swordcraft can produce playable decks from time to time, there really is no reason to play them due to other classes specializing better in those very same strategies that Sword tries to pull off, leaving the class without a proper niche.

Runecraft

• Earth Rite Runecraft had consistently been low on the tier lists. Reasons range from its Stone Wall playstyle being purely reactive, lacking game-ending burst damage that many popular decks possess, and its absurd dependence on evolves to trigger various Earth Rite effects. Not helping matters is that it is consistently overshadowed by Dimension Shift, which can crush Earth Rite in its combo despite the number of Ward followers they put up. The Tempest of the Gods expansion introduced cards and followers that allows the Earth Rite deck to play more aggressively (known as "Burn Earth Rite", which usually uses cards like Magic Illusionist, Mage of Nightfall, Halo Golem, and Mutagenic Bolt) and even so, the deck still suffered from consistency issues. Wonderland Dreams then proceeded to get Earth Rite Rescued from the Scrappy Heap after adding some very handy draw effects that negatively affect spells in hand, boosting the strength of Earth Rite without accidentally cranking the strength of Spellboost too far, and Starforged Legends gave even more tools to also bump up the strength of slower Earth Rite decks. Earth Rite would then go on to become one of the top contenders of Rotation (see above in Chronogenesis).
• Runecraft's over-reliance on synergy, whether it's for Spellboost or Earth Rite, made it very weak in Take Two due to the random selections often landing the player with an awkward mixture of both archetypes. Recent expansions and revisions to the card pool in Take Two, however, have influenced Runecraft's strengths in this game mode by giving the player access to better cards that are less reliant on synergy, or are already reasonably efficient without needing extensive investment in either archetype, closing the gap in power levels between Runecraft and the other crafts. The addition of the "under 20 cards" conditions on some cards made Runecraft exceptionally powerful if drafted in Take Two.
• In the Rotation format after the Verdant Conflict expansion, Runecraft ended up becoming one of the worst classes. The biggest factors are the class's lack of strong defensive tools against OTK Roach, and the loss of Fate's Hand significantly weakened most spellboost Runecraft decks. While Chaos Wielder serves as a replacement to the now rotated out Fate's Hand, him being a follower instead of a spell made a lot of difference as the missing free spellboost injured the archetype. The only saving grace Runecraft has is Natura Rune (focusing on Riley, Hydroshaman) and aggressive Dirt Rune decks which are designed to prey on slower control decks. Even so, Natura Dragon and Natura Shadow can get their win condition faster than Natura Rune; and OTK Roach has enough defensive tools to handle most aggressive Dirt Rune decks. Many players agree that Natura Rune needs one more card in order to become viable in Rotation akin to Machina Rune, as they saw potential with Runecraft's Natura synergy. True to form, the next expansion gave Natura Rune Aeroelementalist and Karyl, which proceeded to get this deck Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Machina Rune faced some difficulty finding a niche to fit into, especially when the other crafts' Machina and Natura archetypes were more consistent or had far better finishers. Cards like Regalore that tried to give Machina Rune its last shot in the arm before the rotation of Steel Rebellion ended up failing due to not giving a good payload to finish the game. To drive the nail in the coffin, the face of the archetype, Tetra, suffers from a more bland chracterization than her sisters Mono and Aenea, and she's the only one of the trio to not become an alternate leader skin.

Dragoncraft

• Prior to Tempest, Dragoncraft was one of the worst classes to play. It had very few tools to ramp up its play points and a generally poor midgame, while the discard strategy was overloaded with cards that discard as opposed to cards that give benefits when discarding. During the early days of the game, its access to Forte and a few other unattackable followers meant that aggro Dragon was the only viable archetype; Rise of Bahamut did bring it good ramp tools but also had a few too many cards focused on the discard strategy, putting ramp as a reasonable archetype but not too strong. When Tempest launched, though, see above; Dragon would slip back into middling territory (but never really leave its Memetic Loser status) as nerfs and new cards alter its surrounding environment.
• Discard Dragon is agreed by many to be one of the more poorly-designed archetypes. Its biggest problem is having too many cards that discard versus not enough cards that benefit off being discarded. Not helping matters is the lack of control over what you discard — you often discard low-cost cards that you'd prefer to actually play. Some crafty players either build "OTK Dragon", utilizing Wildfang Dragonewt and Altered Fate to deliver game-ending burst damage, or take an aggressive build to capitalize on the finer aspects of the discard mechanic^note You don't need to have a card to discard to enjoy the effect, but the rest of the discard mechanic simply gets looked down upon. Discard Dragon went on to languish in infamy until it received a significant boost in World Uprooted — which then proved to be a bit too much of a boost that it dominated Unlimited and necessitated a quick nerf to take it down a peg.
• After being one of the most formidable and powerful classes in the Rotation format, Dragoncraft ended up becoming the worst class in the Rotation format in the Rebirth of Glory expansion. This was facilitated by the loss of one card, Whitefrost Dragonewt Filene, who is a versatile unit that can handle wide weak boards or snipe big troublesome followers. Without her, Dragoncraft was starved of efficient hard removal to help deal with enemy Bloodcraft and Havencraft threats. Not even the dreaded Poseidon + Masamune combo can clear off Elana boards efficiently, especially if the Dragon player could not ramp fast enough for that combo. As such, Dragoncraft becomes an example of how the loss of one card from an expansion can cause the class to drop from being one of the top tier classes in Rotation to trash tier.
  • After the restriction of Dark Dragoon Forte, aggro Dragoncraft practically vanished from the Unlimited format. The loss of a strong and powerful midgame burst damage follower, combined with the nerf to Hippogryph Rider caused aggro Dragoncraft to lose a lot of their midgame burst damage potential, as they are now much more dependent on Phoenix Rider Aina who needs a wide board on both sides for maximum power. Not helping the matters is that many aggressive variants of Vengeance Bloodcraft can deliver similar mid-game burst with their own Storm followers, but with little to minimal effort thanks to the handbuff mechanic that was introduced in the Omen of the Ten and Steel Rebellion expansions on top of strong Vengeance options from Rebirth of Glory.
  • Dragoncraft's underperformance in both formats could be the reason why Cygames decided to buff the tokens of Dragon Empress Otohime in the July 2019 update, as the card is considered Awesome, but Impractical because the tokens she spawns isn't able to contest the board midgame and her Accelerate effect is non-impactful for most Dragoncraft decks.
• As of mid-2022 Dragoncraft suffers in both Rotation and Unlimited, having no consistent way to keep up with its contenders on both fronts. To aid its performance in Rotation, at least, Si Long would be changed from a 4pp 3/4 to a 3pp 3/3 and unconditionally creating her Tidal Tyranny spell (as opposed to needing Overflow) so that Si Long becomes very effective at stabilizing and breaking boards, especially during the evolve turns.
• Rotation Discard Dragon had a very brief Hour of Power at the end of the Dragonblade format, as the mini-expansion gave it Argente and Lumiore who served as a win condition to the strategy and a way to trigger Noir and Blanc between their discards, Ramp, board clear and Ward. The problem was when rotation to Azvaldt happened — the loss of Blazing Dragonewt and Orbed Cancer meant the deck lost two very good sources of Discard and Draw, and Azvaldt didn't give any good replacements. Rotation Discard Dragon was viable for all of one month before vanishing from the format, though the discard duo would be well-received in Unlimited, and the deck would also be leading contender in Custom Rotation GP.

Shadowcraft

• In the early days of the game, Shadowcraft had been one of the weaker crafts in the game, demanding careful Shadow management to make the most value of its plays, as opposed to Swordcraft's ability to land efficient followers each turn without needing much prior setup. The aggressive Shadow deck was typically the best deck to play due to a powerful burst damage combo using Cerberus and Phantom Howl, but trying to play a slower Shadowcraft game had its fair share of problems in the lack of impactful late-game effects. Not helping matters was the popularity of Havencraft and its banish effects denying shadows and Last Word effects. This fortunately is somewhat reversed by the launch of Rise of Bahamut which supplied Shadowcraft with many deadly Last Word effects that outright destroy enemy followers, paving the way for a deck focused on Nephthys to become the epitome of the style.
• In a similar vein with Bloodcraft in Rotation after the Chronogenesis expansion, Shadowcraft found itself from being very dominant to being trash tier in Rotation after the Dawnbreak Nightedge expansion. Shadowcraft lost their best non-targeted hard removals such as Lurching Corpse and Necroassassin along with Underworld Watchman Khawy. Not only that, Shadow has an incredibly hard time building up a wide board to reap the benefits of Prince Catacomb and three classes, Portal, Haven, and Rune, have tools to consistently counter Shadow's gameplan. Not only that, Sword and Portal have way better midrange decks than Shadow and midrange Shadow often lose to these two classes, because the former have followers that have higher value than Shadow's followers while the later have access to banishes and Rush followers that can constantly deny Shadow any form of board. The only saving grace Shadow has in Rotation is the Reanimate deck, where Dawnbreak Nightedge expansion gave Shadow various new tools to help promote the Reanimate mechanic, but even so, Reanimate Shadow in Rotation still struggles to score a few wins, as Reaniamte Shadow has a very awkward early game that prevents the deck from being super consistent (for example, not getting Zeus or any Burial Rite triggers such as Gloomy Necromancer and Everdark Stryx). In fact, Shadowcraft as a class is so lackluster that a Shadowlog report show their winrate in Rotation to be 35%, the lowest ever recorded winrate of a class in Shadowverse meta history.
  • In the April 2018 update, rather than taking steps to nerf several of the powerful cards, Cygames has taken steps to buff several underutilized cards and help promote classes that are under-preforming in Rotation. To help improve the performance of Shadowcraft as a class in Rotation and help improve the winrates for Shadowcraft, Cygames decided to buff Corpselord of Woe by increasing its attack from 4 to 5 while reducing it's Necromancy cost from 6 to 4. At the same time, Troth's Curse's play point cost is reduced to 2. The buff to Corpselord of Woe gives Shadowcraft a viable follower in more aggressive decks (on top of, well, making it actually playable) while the cost reduction to Troth's Curse can help serve as a replacement for the hard removals many midrange and Reanimate Shadow decks have lost.
  • The mini-expansion for Dawnbreak Nightedge gave Shadow a helping hand with Arcus, Ghostly Manager. Having an effect that kills off any followers that are 3pp or less that spawns Ghosts on basis on playpoint cost might fall into the Awesome, but Impractical category due to massive tempo loss of an effect that kills off your own low play point cost followers while spawning Ghosts without any form of board presence at the end your turn. However, Shadowcraft as a class does not have many Rush and Storm followers to contest the board and as a result, Arcus helped many Reanimate and midrange Shadow to actually contest the board in the lategame since it gives Shadow a way to get rid of their low play point cost followers and triggering Last Words effects which in turn spawn Ghosts to help clear the board or push face damage for Underworld Ruler Aisha (since a lot of Shadows will be generated with Arcus's effect due to many followers being destroyed by Arcus's effect). Since Shadow struggles to maintain some form of board presence or maintaining a wide board, and have too many tempo loss plays of destroying their own followers, having an effect that kills off any of your low play point followers to spawn Ghosts to either contest the board or deal chip damage against your opponent works anyways despite Shadow still remaining one of the worst classes in Rotation.
  • It is clear within the fandom that Cygames wanted to push Shadow away from midrange Shadow and into the Burial Rite/Reanimate playstyle in Rotation, as evidenced by numerous nerfs to curtail midrange Shadow's dominance in Rotation and Unlimited. However, because many of midrange Shadow's cards will be rotated out in Brigade of the Sky expansion (along with the nerf to Ceridwen in regards to Atomy and Reanimate decks in Unlimited), Cygames decided to revert the nerfs to Demonlord Eachtar, noting that subsequent expansions had made the Unlimited meta relatively balanced, and the reversion wouldn't cause any disruption to the gameplay balance in Unlimited.
• After the launch of Rebirth of Glory, Shadowcraft, much like Dragoncraft, plummeted to low play rates in Rotation. Without Arcus, Shadowcraft lost their best combo deck and had to rely on board presence again to win games, but their Last Word and Necromancy effects were very weak. The remaining competent Shadow decks are either evolve-dependent builds, or builds focused on Hades, Father of Purgatory, but the former is dependent on a good opening hand, while the later is overshadowed by Lishenna Portal due to the lack of an alternative win condition. Neither build could reliably deal with the dominant Elana Haven deck, either. This can more or less be explained why Tatarus's Accelerate cost is reduced to 1 and Crow and his amulet's play point costs were reduced by 1 in the July 2019 update, as it gives PtP Shadow an alternative win condition that isn't Hades.
  • Shadowcraft suffered similarly in Unlimited as it could not deal with Whirlwind Roach, Elana Haven, or Vengeance Blood, which were the three biggest threats at the time.
• Machina Shadowcraft was quickly overshadowed by its sister archetypes Natura Shadow and Yokai Shadow, and new additions to the archetype did little to help. A lot of other decks could deliver kills much faster than the midrange deck could manage. Thus, Aenea got improved to 4pp, while Colossal Skull Lord, which used to only deal 3 damage to non-Machina followers, got a more powerful and indiscriminate effect so that it does something in the Mirror Match.

Bloodcraft

• Vengeance Bloodcraft was designed to be Difficult, but Awesome but universally accepted to be terrible, due to the low health totals and large possibility for burst damage. Against Vengeance builds, savvy players would keep the Blood player just outside Vengeance at 11 defense until they could rush them down. Not helping matters was the fact that a lot of Vengeance-reliant effects were Fanfares, meaning that if Blood wanted to get early plays down they were stuck with followers that cause self-damage or which are underwhelming outside of Vengeance, and self-damaging followers became risky to play once Vengeance had already been activated. Before Tempest, the best Bloodcraft decks to use generally did not care if the player was in Vengeance or not. It took Tempest granting competent Vengeance enablers, means to mitigate damage without cancelling Vengeance, and impactful plays within Vengeance, to get the deck Rescued from the Scrappy Heap big time.^note How much was it rescued? Soul Dealer went from "so useless you can liquefy him on sight" to a near-staple card!
• Control Bloodcraft was deemed by many to be one of the worst control archetypes. It lacked hard removal like Shadowcraft and Havencraft, with its best being Revelation or needing to rely on neutral control cards like Odin or Bahamut. It lacked reliable game-finishing combos, usually needing something like Bloody Mary or an Azazel-Laura combo to end games, and those needed to wait till turn 10 as opposed to things like Seraph ending the game at turn 9 earliest. Its defenses typically relied on Vampire Queen throwing up Bats with Ward to not get run over by aggro if it didn't already have Revelation to stabilize. Its one ace is the amount of healing it had between its Life Drain effects, and all this boiled down to a very expensive deck with a low winrate. The Wonderland Dreams expansion introduced Spawn of the Abyss as a burst damage win condition to try and encourage Control Bloodcraft without needing Vengeance or a combo, but Spawn instead got fitted into the aggressive Neutral Blood instead of its intended niche due to its old interaction with Baphomet, until the July nerf erased the interaction. Now, despite Baphomet-based combos being erased with the nerf, Control Blood has begun to step out of the bad end of this trope, due to Spawn being restricted to its intended role, midgame board contention through Big Knuckle Bodyguard, and Scarlet Sabreur and Emeralda serving as hard removal. In fact, Control Blood has been regaining popularity with the ability to cast Revelation as early as turn 4 to counter incredibly aggressive decks.
• In an amusingly similar way to Warlock, Bloodcraft as a whole suffered the most of all classes from the tools it lost from Standard (now renamed Classic) and Darkness Evolved in the introduction of the Rotation format in Chronogenesis, with its aggro deck losing most of the Forest Bat synergies effectively erasing the deck from the format, Vengeance losing Blood Wolf making the deck's pressure a lot less effective and having less capabilities of comeback, and Control losing most of its powerful healing cards and Revelation, making it even harder to stabilize. The craft received some replacements that were ultimately not as good as what it lost, and the one strategy being promoted for Rotation struggled with consistency, which all in all left Bloodcraft as the weakest craft in Rotation, relying on either the inconsistent Jormungand build or a greatly defanged Neutral Blood aggro to try and score wins.
• Jormungand Blood was an archetype developed in Starforged Legends, but despite the attempts to support it over the next few sets, the archetype has not been very strong. The whole deck revolves around setting up Jormungand's effect, but the fact that Jormungand costs a bit too much and is a bit too big to kill off intentionally leaves it very vulnerable to banish effects. Zodiac Demon does help with intentionally killing Jormungand in the later turns, though a 2-legendary combo would just needlessly inflate the deck's cost. Once Jormungand's effect is in place, the player then needs to do damage to themselves, but a number of Bloodcraft's self-damage effects either hit a bit too hard to be spammable or forcibly halt themselves the moment the player reaches Vengeance, which makes it difficult to continue to exploit Jormungand's effect as many times as possible. That, and it normally takes two Jormungands to deal respectable damage to the board and the enemy leader without endangering oneself with too many self-damage effects. The archetype was gradually Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with Darkfeast Bat and Evil Eye Demon served as a backup win condition and flexible removal respectively, but players discovered it's easier to build around Darkfeast Bat. And so, Jormungand was completely phased out of the deck in favor of Darkfeast Bat and the Lust archetype. It wouldn't be until April 2020 when Jormungand would return to relevance with the assistance of a buff at that time, though without spearheading a deck built around it.
• After a month of dominance in the Dawnbreak, Nightedge mini-expansion, Vengeance Blood in Rotation after the Brigade of the Sky suffered this trope after the loss of many of their power cards from Tempest of the Gods such as Dark Airjammer and Belphegor. The loss of Spiderweb Imp in Rotation makes it significantly harder to protect themselves from early game aggression (as well as making it harder to protect Waltz, King of Wolves for a strong tempo play with Blood Moon. Not helping the matter is that some of the replacements that Vengeance Blood were in the expansion are considered to be very lackluster or too situational (for example, Belphegor's replacement in Rotation is Narmaya, Ephemeral Blade, which has a powerful effect of destroying any enemy follower on board with an evolve, but in order to trigger the self-damaging part of it to put the player into Vengeance, the player must use the evolve point; which playing her on curve when going first is bad while using her evolve effect when going 2nd is incredibly risky. Not to mention, she doesn't draw cards like what Belphegor does). That being said, despite Vengeance losing many of their power cards in Rotation, the playstyle continues to be powerful in Unlimited with the addition to Vira, Knight Fanatic is a nice addition to Vengeance Blood (see the Unlimited section for Brigade of the Sky for details).
  • Aggro Blood, however, is one of the more consistent decks for Bloodcraft (even more consistent than Jormugand Blood) in the Rotation format during the Brigade of the Sky expansion with the utilization of Zerg Rush and board flood with Forest Bats. However, aggro Blood suffers the problem of utilizing 1/1 followers that has little impact on the board early game and is heavily dependent on using Oldblood King to finish the opponent off with Forest Bats with Storm, but playing him on curve is a huge tempo loss for an aggro deck, meaning your opponent can respond appropriately by playing Wards to prevent the Forest Bat's Storm damage. Not to mention, aggro Forest can do the same strategy that aggro Blood does, but better with the utilization of Wood of Brambles and Elf Song.
• In the Ultimate Colosseum format, Blood end up becoming the worst class in both Unlimited and Rotation. The introduction of the Shikigami package for many Spellboost Rune decks put a final nail to the coffin for aggro Blood in Rotation, as decks like D-Shift now have the early game tempo to deal with aggro Blood. Not helping the matter that a large number of healing tools that were introduced in previous formats effectively shuts down any burn oriented aggro blood decks. Rotation is much worse, as aggro Blood decks had limited tools for early aggression and struggled with trying to overwhelm the dominant Shikigami Rune and Yokai Shadow. Aggro Blood was also overshadowed by Amataz Forest, which proved to be more consistent. This is mainly why Diabolus Agito and Yuzuki, Righteous Demon got significant buffs in the January 26th, 2020 update, although these cards are meant for control Blood for Rotation (which is also a very weak deck in both Rotation and Unlimited).
• Vengeance Blood has had good enablers and synergies to theoretically perform well in Unlimited, but it hasn't seen play due to the World Uprooted format favoring aggression. Going to Vengeance against an aggressive deck was a very easy way to lose, and many decks in mid-2020 win in multiple medium hits as opposed to singular large ones — Azazel's Damage Reduction was not enough of a safety net in those matchups. The most damning part was that Vengeance Blood was weak to cards from its very own craft — decks built around Ravening Corruption put out so much chip damage that going into Vengeance was a death sentence against it, while the highly splashable Garnet Waltz meant that every Blood deck has 6 effective copies of Razory Claw to end games while sneaking under Azazel's Damage Reduction.
• Blood again finds itself on the wrong end of this trope in Renascent Rotation. Whatever it got in this set was not sufficient to replace its lost tools from World Uprooted, and it struggled to get the advantage on the dominant decks at the time. Even when the mini-expansion added Urias, a Purposely Overpowered card, it speaks volumes when he's more or less the a pillar that's trying and failing to keep the craft from falling apart.
• When rotating into the Azvaldt format, Wrath Blood lost a lot of good cards, primarily Sanguine Necklace and Dark Contracts which were important draw power that accelerated towards Wrath, and Bloodsucker of the Night who could further the Wrath condition, serve as a payoff, and even generate a Darkfest Bat to OTK if games go long. Its replacements were serviceable but Garodeth was a payoff that took too long to actually take off, leaving Wrath with a terrible midgame. The archetype was rescued in the mini-expansion, where they got Scorching Grandiosity to create and invoke Flauros for a crazy early-to-midgame tempo swing. The same update also reduced Valnareik, Lustful Desire from 3pp to 2pp, allowing for some potent burst damage combos once Wrath was achieved.

Havencraft

• Before the release of Darkness Evolved, Haven was considered to be one of the worst crafts to play. Its Countdown mechanic resulted in very little board presence early on, and although it had an excellent removal suite, its lategame was far from tangible. The followers coming out of the amulets also couldn't attack the turn they were summoned (barring one), making it difficult to contest the board once the Countdown expired. Not helping matters was that one of its legends, Skullfane was extremely Awesome, but Impractical due to its cumbersome cost and weak body. The only viable Haven deck in the Standard format was the Guardian Sun deck that focused not on Countdown, but a non-stop stream of Ward followers until it could play Prince of Darkness and his Apocalypse cards. Once Darkness Evolved launched, though, it not only gave Haven an Instant-Win Condition but opened up a few other playstyles, getting it Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • It is to be noted that Haven's performance from Darkness Evolved to Starforged Legends hinged largely on cards introduced with Darkness Evolved. When Chronogenesis was being previewed, players were predicting that Haven would join Blood on this side of the trope until the set launched and actual experimentation proved that Haven's new gold and legendary cards were good enough to keep it competent in Rotation. That said, these new cards being vital for Haven in Rotation also made a competitive Haven deck very expensive.
• Havencraft got the short end of the stick in Starforged Legends. While Haven gained a couple of utility cards, it didn't get anything particularly powerful, and combined with the nerf to Neutral Haven, it's forced to rely on mostly the same decks it's been using before. Before the November nerf, they had to contend with Aggro Swordcraft, who usually ended games too quickly for Haven decks to gain momentum despite the fact that Haven is the class that traditionally counters a lot of aggro decks in ladder. After the nerf however, Dimension Shift decks rose to prominence, threatening the control-heavy strategies Haven usually employed. Combined with the rise in Aggro decks formed in response to to D-shift decks, Havencraft finds itself one of the least played classes in the expansion. This actually went to the point where Havencraft players resort to playing Storm Haven in ladder ^note An aggressive Haven deck that utilizes amulets that summon Storm followers like Regal Falcon and Holy Falcon just to beat D-Shift since most Storm Haven decks utilizes certain followers where they cannot be targeted by spells such as Mainyu and White Tiger ^ExplanationD-Shift decks only spellboost their own followers or their other spells by utilizes spells that target followers or amulets, meaning followers with the "cannot be targeted by spells and effects" property are followers that D-Shift has hard time dealing with since most of the spells they use are targeted spells, meaning D-Shift would need to rely on wasting an evolve on a follower or wasting their combo pieces in order to get rid of such followers. . Even so, the Storm Haven matchup vs. D-Shift is more 50/50 matchup because D-Shift has ways to interrupt countdown amulet tempo such as Kaleidoscopic Glow.
• Throughout the Rotation meta, Havencraft remained one of the most dominant classes due to the slower overall pace of games and absence of strong Storm followers that run rampant in Unlimited. However, one of Havencraft's biggest weaknesses is dealing with combo decks. When OTK Darkfeast Bat became really dominant in the meta, Havencraft as a class fell off due to Darkfeast Bat being able to win around turn 7 (and even earlier with their early game aggressive tempo) and Arcus Shadow gaining a strong turn 5 to 7 curve in the form of Cerberus-Gremory-Gilnelise which Haven could not keep up with. To make things worse, Havencraft lost several of their early game cards such as Princess Snow White and March Hare's Teatime, which made their early- to midgame quite weak. To address the underpreformance of Havencraft in Rotation, Cygames decided to buff Godsworn Alexiel, a legendary follower that reduces damage taken to the leader to 4 when an allied amulet is in play, from 8 play point to 7 play point cost. Combined with various nerfs to Arcus Shadow and OTK Darkfeast Bat, this gives Havencraft a fighting chance against combo decks while maintaining powerful control tools to keep aggro decks in check.
• With the Azvaldt Rotation format, Crystallize Haven (built around repeatedly Crystallizing followers to empower its key cards) lost little... but gained little in exchange. Haven's Condemned cards offered very little to the deck, and the new cards themselves didn't really establish anything new that is strong enough to contend with the other decks. Haven languished in general unplayability for this format.

Portalcraft

• In Unlimited, Portalcraft is considered the weakest class because Portalcraft has a smaller card pool from their class to work with when compared to the more established classes in Unlimited. Not helping the matter is that Portalcraft has a much slower midrange playstyle when compared to other classes, when the Unlimited meta is more favored towards aggressive and combo decks. Midrange Swordcraft is the only midrange deck capable of contending in the Unlimited format, and that's mostly due to its better access to Ward followers unlike Portalcraft. Additionally, that unlike most other classes, Portalcraft does not have an actual aggro deck that works well in both Unlimited and Rotation format, as Portalcraft is severely lacking in a good early game barring a very lucky opening hand. In an attempt to remedy this, the Steel Rebellion update involved pushing the craft's strength, leading to a key card, Deus Ex Machina, being buffed to cost 5pp instead of 6.
• While Portalcraft has its ups and downs in the Rotation format, Portalcraft took the dive of becoming the worst class in the Rotation in the Steel Rebellion expansion since many of their core cards from Chronogenesis rotated out and the class wasn't given servicable replacements. In fact, Portalcraft lost the most cards of all the classes (to put it into perspective, while most classes usually lose around 12-18 cards, Portalcraft lost a total of 43 cards from the Chronogenesis expansion). The loss of Deus Ex Machina makes it significantly harder for Portal to shuffle through their deck filled with Artifacts in the mid to lategame and the loss of Acceleratium makes it harder for Portalcraft to contest the board. Two of their replacements in Augmentation Renewal and Displacer Bot are meant to serve as "fair" replacements for Deus Ex Machina and Acceleratium, but they do not match the same power level of the cards they are supposed to replace (to put it in perspective, Augmentation Renewal effect is a temporary effect that only lasts for one turn). The loss of early game Puppet and Artifact generation tools makes it significantly harder for Portalcraft to push for their Lishenna and Maisha gameplan in the lategame. This makes Steel Rebellion expansion the first expansion where Portalcraft as a class is next to unplayable in the Rotation format. Despite all of this, all is not lost for Portalcraft, as the class ironically found its new home in the Unlimited format, and the buff to Deus Ex Machina, combined with the new arsenal introduced in the Steel Rebellion expansion, makes Artifact Portal a formidable force in the Unlimited format.
• While most classes can theoretically play an aggressive deck, Portalcraft is one of the few classes that cannot do so in a consistent manner. While Brigade of the Sky introduced Artifact Spark (a card that is considered Awesome, but Impractical) and the aforementioned Silva as means of promoting this playstyle, Aggro Portalcraft's main problem is it is too reliant on Artifact Spark for consistent face damage and it requires the player to have an Artifact in hand in order to activate it. Furthermore, Deus Ex Machina has incredibly poor synergy with Artifact Spark, since if Resonance is active, Deus will discard the spell, hence aggro Portal losing their main source of damage and needing to rely on Silva's chip damage for further face damage. At best, it can be described as "Artifact Portal with an aggressive curve" and some players have managed to score a few wins with Aggro Portal, but it is considered an off-meta deck. The introduction of several new tools in the Steel Rebellion expansion gives Portalcraft some proper aggressive tools that allows Portalcraft to thrive in a more faster and aggressive Unlimited format.
• In the Verdant Conflict format, Portal once again languishes as one of the worst classes to play. While its losses from the rotation of Brigade of the Sky weren't as crippling as that from the rotation of Chronogenesis, the new cards it received were not helpful in countering the burst damage potential from the dominant Natura Shadow and Natura Haven, and its own Natura package was severely underdeveloped and unfocused. It really goes to show that Cygames had no idea what to do with Natura Portalcraft when World Uprooted provided both Machina and Natura synergy for all classes, but Portal's archetype support was for Machina and Artifact.