As we are diving deeper into 2022, the qualifiers for the first Masters Tour are slowly coming to an end, and we are finally going to start the more significant part of the Hearthstone competitive scene. While many of us are excited for the HS Master 2022 Tour One to start, many of us already know how most matches will play out, as the meta is quite stale, even after the Rogue nerfs.

Where is the Hearthstone meta right now?

If you tried climbing the ladder earlier this month, you probably noticed that you mostly play only a few different classes. Of course, before the Rogue nerfs, you had a 50% chance to encounter the class, which is an improvement, but the ladder meta is very stale, and the tournament meta is not far from it.

For starters, Rogue is almost completely gone. There might be a few players here and there who are still trying to pull off the combos possible before the nerfs but considering that Maestra of the Masquerade is banned from tournaments, you should not expect any Rogue decks at the Masters 2022 Tour One.

Other than that, aggro decks are not that common, especially on ladder, which is where most people tend to practice their decks if they do not happen to have a practice partner. This is mainly due to the decks that dominate the meta, as they either have great sustain or board domination over the aggro decks that have been stomping the ladder in the past few months before the rogue nerfs.

The hunter deck, for instance, is still relatively good, but the new popular decks that were getting beaten by Rogue almost every time now have more time to shine against it. The same could be said about the pirate Warrior decks, which would probably get outclassed by most meta decks even without the extra nerfs they received the last patch.

What are the most popular deck variations?

Three decks are the core build for most players even in a competitive environment. You fill find almost all players qualified for Tour One have one of these three decks, either identical of with minor tweaks.

1. Aggro Druid

One of the few aggro decks that is actually viable, even in competitive play, is the aggro Druid. The main reason behind that is that they can high-roll such a good start that many control decks cannot deal with. This is especially the case if the Oracle of Elune manages to swarm the board that gets hit by Arbor Up on turn 5.

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2. Libram Paladin

Buffing minions in hand, buffing minions on the board, drawing tons of cards, and playing them for 0 mana, that is the state of Paladin at the moment. Playing against this deck can either be a breeze, as they draw dead in the early game since the deck packs a lot of big drops, or the deck snowballs by playing on curve, making it almost impossible to beat.

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3. Questline Shaman

Finally, the Questline Shaman is probably the most substantial deck in the game that we expect everyone to bring to the tournament. This deck just has answers to pretty much everything, even the huge minions Paladin slams on the board, as Charged Call can let the Shaman discover a Darkmoon Rabbit, and sometimes even two of them.

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It would be exciting if Blizzard would drop a patch before the event, which starts on February 17^th and lasts until February 20^th. However, the odds of that are very low, and even if there is no patch before the tournament, tuning into the event will undoubtedly be exciting because it is the first one of the year.