I mean you can definitely climb out of D5, it just means youāre going to have to play some meta decks if you canāt homebrew something that plays well against stuff youāre seeing on ladder and thereās not a lot of viable tier 2 stuff going on right now (although there are some).
Played with one of my friends yesterday who is top 1500 legend (both legend, heās a bit higher since heās on that Chinese grind and Iām just chilling), but we went 3-2 (in his favor) with him using tier 1 decks and with me using elemental shaman, Earthen paladin, and plague DK. Surprisingly it was plague DK that lost me the last game because he somehow avoided drawing plagues all game with 1 health remaining but it is what it is. Should have won with better luck, didnāt, thatās how it goes in the climb too.
My point being that even some strong tier 2 and homebrew decks are viable BUT I think thereās kind of a short list. Thereās a lot of decks that I think are pretty cool right now that just have too much variance to climb OR canāt close games in simplified game states. There are symptoms of mismanagement of tempo and deck construction. Unfortunately, there are strong cards in a vacuum that just donāt have spots in the current meta and if your decks are running these kinds of cards then itās a problem for climbing. SOMETIMES you can afford to tech in 1-3 depending on the deck list and what youāre playing, but people really underestimate how important every slot in a decklist is and how far behind you can get from drawing an unusable card on even just one turn. You need to evaluate if youāre running cards that are dead draws. I understand that there are some cards you just NEED to play but if youāre going to play those cards it means you need to make compromises somewhere and you need to adjust more than just the slot that card takes up since your deck is a system of cards working in tandem with each other. And sometimes tech choices can actually be the things that elevate your win-rate, but that is entirely ladder dependent and if you can make those adjustments in your decklist as you see trends happening game-to-game.
Most decks if built properly can survive early game unless youāre playing against buff paladin in which case good luck (probably the best deck right now IMO), but you need to really evaluate what cards youāre using and really thinking about what your decks do on every turn of the game and how you build around that. Some decks do specific things by turn 4, turn 5, some decks aim to stabilize through the midgame to win in a stretched out late game and if youāre not playing for your decksā win-con itās going to seem like anything thatās not tier 1 is so clearly worse. You also need to consider if your deck can clear certain expected board states, If it canāt then you need to establish your own board state that overwhelms your opponent to the point where they need to disrupt the progression of their own wincon to contest whatever youāre doing. THIS is what it means to be a tempo deck, itās not so short-sighted as just playing cards on curve. This also means that you need to evaluate things like when you lose tempo one turn and credit it to another turn, when you are willing to lose life (life is only a resource to a degree), when you should trade versus pushing damage, etc.
Onto that last point, I had a game recently where I needed to decide playing Scarr or Kalimos on turn 7. The choices were do I clear his board with Kalimos and lose the 6 damage but continue building my Scarr for a later turn or do I Scarr now, try to bank on dealing 7 damage next turn, play minions and save Kalimos for the 6 damage burn. If I use Kalimos to clear the board I potentially canāt end the game if he gets big lifesteal and I need to start pushing damage, so I used Scarr to deal 7 damage instead of waiting for a turn 14 Scarr dealing 14.
Anyway, I won that game within the next 2 turns because I had to think about how he could defend himself while I am looking for obvious lethal. Since I was putting down threats he needed to address (plague DK) he couldnāt establish his own wincon and I took it. If I played Kalimos on turn 7 I probably would have lost because there was a countdown on Azerite Rat + Reska.
Basically, start evaluating your plays, think about what your deck needs to do turn-to-turn, think about general strategies to play against common board states and if you can transition from trading to looking for lethal and if the cards youāre using are complimentary to actually winning. You can definitely play home brew right now (it is weaker for generally climbing), but you REALLY need to be considerate of how to actually win and what cards are going to help you get there.
