Hearthpwn

Props to Lionking for bringing Topsy Priest, I know I wouldn't be able to pull that off in a competitive scenario, let alone the Winter Playoffs!

I’m surprised by the lack of Zul’jin in the lineup.  

He is good only in secret hunter and spell hunter... And out of 4 only one has it... Deathrattle hunter and midrange hunter don't get much value from it...

I don't understand why people are complaining about the meta with the classes. Sure it looks bad that all 4 people picked hunter in their lineups, but there are THREE different hunter decks being played, and all of them have different play styles/patterns. Midrange being the fastest type of hunter deck, then a more midrangey/slower spell hunter deck and then deathrattle hunter which is really slow. I can understand the argument "Oh but once you play deathstalker rexxar they all become the same value game", but that requires them to play rexxar, and if the decks play rexxar when they are behind, it can be just out temped. (Not denying it's a strong card, but it doesn't make the decks play the same)

Same goes with priest and paladin. 3 and two decks respectively, but they are DIFFERENT decks. They are different play style and game wise. They all do different things.  Clone priest is a form of control priest that goes heavier on the win condition, while control priest goes all in the hope they have no healing/fatigue gameplan and then the OTK priest prays you aren't an aggressive deck. 

Sure there are a lot of similar classes, but they are all different decks that do different things. I would argue to have greater deck diversity than class diversity. When there's greater class diversity it tends to be one dominant type of deck for a class, so you know what you are probably going against. With greater deck diversity you have to change your plan throughout the game depending on the types of cards they play. 

Also quick note about druid. These nerfs were not that long ago, so of course it's risky to bring in a class got heavily nerfed, not to mention the nerfs alter the pace of druid so heavily (Can no longer wild growth into oaken summons), so with the class being drastically different, it's a no brainer to play it safe and not bother with druid. As for druid on the ladder, druid is not an easy class to play, even before the nerfs, it was still a game of using your resources correctly when needed. Druid still has some decent decks, but all of the other decks still need to be tested and people need to start learning how to play druid differently. I'm not saying druid is a great class, I'm just saying it's not dead and give it time for people to relearn the class and experiment more. 

It's not really the meta any more that is the problem. It's the horrible format that finally goes away next year rotation. All the format does is condense the game down to essentially the best 4 decks for a very niche tournament meta. they may not even be the top decks in the meta but because of how the format works they are powerful. I know most pro's are excited to see a different format and i myself hope it's one that encourages all classes to be at least represented in each players lineup. 

a lot of people seem to think there's another nerf coming down before the rotation. something is going to happen to topple hunter as blizzard aren't happy with the stats. 

basically what I heard was that like 90% of players in standard were playing hunter. less diversity means fewer cards played and fewer cards played means fewer packs bought.

The idea now is to make all classes playable, and have a diversity range that allows for maximum returns. (hiya activision) 

Now the druid and bane nerfs recently were also for this very same reason. But they left a power vacuum that was filled by hunter though. So more nerfs are coming down soon to try and level the playing field. be careful crafting those hunter legendaries. (although you will get full dust value if you dust them after a nerf)

I think the meta has been very diverse this year up until the epic nerf of druid, kingsbane rouge and shudderwock shaman. I don't know why mage is not being played, but we all know druid is not a cclass anymore. As for warrior, i feel like odd warrior is good against aggro but they lack win condition when they are facing other control decks and especially hunter DK, when value is the only weapon left for worrior.

How did the tie happen?

There is no tie... Top 4 guys (basically semifinalists) from each region go to winter championship... They didn't tie all 4 just always go...

Never knew that HS has 6 classes. Thanks for the shaman deck

Thanks a lot for this job!

It is worth mentioning, that identical archetypes are nearly absent. This speaks for the great versatility of the current meta, when most of the classes have various compatible decks.

They had to bring 4 decks and they all brought Hunters with DK, 13 decks out of 16 are of the same 4 classes (they had to pick 4, remember?). Meanwhile, 3 classes are completely absent. I wouldn't say this is a versatile meta.

Nevertheless, hunters, paladins, priests have minimum 3 various archetypes with different strategies (for example, deathrattle, spell, midrange with beast synergy for hunters, even, odd, OTK for paladins), rogues, warlocks - 2 or 3, and only shaman have 1 decent archetype. 6 classes from 9 is also very good result (remember situations with 4 absolutely similar decks in line-ups in the past). Having all  9 classes presented equally is utopian. However, in the ladder 7th class (mage) is also very popular.