Disclaimer
Given the recent Balance Update Announcement and its sweeping changes to the meta as we knew it, the Tier List is more-or-less in a volatile state. What you see here was by no means unnanimous and is an aggregation of the speculation going into the new meta. Expect drastic and refined changes in the upcoming week as the meta gets more and more solidified.
Tier 1
TPC Comments
Drizzels
After a few days post-banlist I can say that Darklords might've actually gotten stronger. The Beatdown nerf hit other decks a lot harder while Darklords are just going to The Tie that Binds and still get over 3000 ATK. While the Loading... semi-limitation was a good decision at first glace, it made Darklords a lot stronger. A lot of other decks used Clash against darklords and them losing it is a lot worse then Darklords losing it, with cards like Loading... attempting to replacing it. With only one Loading... you need to be careful of opponent's Loading... s and interesting tech cards like Loading... and Loading... . Overall Darklords are still very strong and might become even more dominant next week. More tournament wins are definitely expected.
Erikson
Darklords are the winners of this banlist. Their consistency is almost the same and the Beatdown nerf affected other decks more than Darklords themselves as there are many ways to play to play them - with The Tie that Binds being prefered for mirror matches. The deck is still very oppresive even with Loading... at 1 as it can be looped every turn. They also have great recursion and Draw Power and can even stall out other decks to deck out if needed. The rest of the meta relies heavily on tech cards to be able to combat their strategy vith dwidling degrees of success making it the deck to beat.
Luxdar
While Darklord players may feel more vulnerable with 4 hits (Loading... , Loading... ,Loading... , Beatdown ) from the latest list, the deck's prowess has not been observed to be damaged enough for other decks to overshadow it yet. The Tie that Binds , Destiny Draw , Posthumous Army , Compensation , and many other Skills line up to take Beatdown’s place in the Darklord deck. Meanwhile, other decks that relied on Beatdown to break through Darklord are scrambling to look for new ways to get around them, at the risk of falling out of relevance if they don’t. On the bright side, a niche that has opened up is the summoning of 3000+ Atk monsters (breakpoint for Darklord Ixchel’s 2900 Def) to challenge Darklords. With the aid of backrow for the likes of Darklord Desire, strong monsters such as Loading... with the threatening effect of wiping a Darklord player’s field (with Contact leaving Darklord monsters in DEF position) can find a favorable matchup. Only time will tell if players can take advantage of this, or if the Darklord players can easily adapt back in kind.
Negative1
Unequivocally the best deck. Despite the nerfs, Darklords still dominate the metagame because Beatdown was also nerfed. Even though Beatdown was the prefered skill for Darklords, it was also the main skill used to counter Darklords. Without Beatdown in the meta, many of the decks that could establish multiple large monsters no longer have the added benefit of swinging over Darklord monsters. The result is that non-Darklord decks need to run heavy backrow or in some form of floodgate to compete because no other deck can consistently match Darklords' aggression.
wayne kenoff
Darklords were finally hit by the ban list and hit heavily with Loading... to 2 and Loading... to 1. But reminiscent of Koa'ki Meiru after the addition of Loading... , Loading... being at 3 seems to be the key to “truly” nerf the deck. Being able to search your limited cards has resulted in the banlist doing very little to slow the deck down. Not being able to fully abuse Beatdown might have been the bigger nerf, but with their Life Point manipulation, Darklords continue to have access to any Skill they wish to abuse - solidifying the deck as the lone Tier 1.