Behind the Scenes: What Competing in HCT Playoffs Looks Like
Quote from BlizzardThe Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) Summer Playoff season has come to an end, and now we wait with bated breath to see who among the regional quartets will advance to the HCT World Championship, and who will be crowned the victor at the HCT Summer Championship.
We’ll start looking at the 16 players who qualified to the Summer Championship and their strategies in more detail as we draw closer to the event—this week, we wanted to reflect on some of the highlights from the Playoffs.
Pre-Game Studying
Ahead of their matches, players spend a tremendous amount of time trying to learn their opponent’s deck lists. Knowing what threats or tech cards you need to play around is crucial for success at this level, and while decks have been public for a couple of days at this point, players are only finding out who they’re playing against once they are on-site for the start of the tournament.
Time between individual rounds of play is more limited—but prior to the first match of the day, everyone is taking advantage of the opportunity to prepare as much as possible. Shown here, Anthony “Ant” Trevino is reviewing the deck lineup of his first-round opponent, Thiago “T4COTASTIC” Santana.
its even funnier when you realize smash gets bigger venues and better seating but gets less views but you have hct blizzard sponsored events with fold able chairs
Pretty interesting peek behind the curtain, not so much a full "behind-the-scenes" look imo, but very interesting nonetheless. I've never been to a tourney so this was enlightening
This is kinda funny, most ppl r upset, that the game is just "RNG BS" and you are upset, that they play the same refined decks :D Kinda ironic, but obviously different ppl have different tastes, which is ok :)
Lost interest after 2nd world championship.mostly bcz they rarely use unusual decks.and what decks they have why watch it if ive seen it 100 times on ladder...
Often hope one guy will bring some sort of a hidden gem deck.never happens
Welp, time to uninstall and let us plebs enjoy our rock-paper-scissors, then!
I always love when non top 100 legend rank plebs offer their ''insight'' on what is ''competitive''
3 developer insights in 1 day.. why doesn't Blizzard do this just once a week.. they don't communicate for ages.. but when they do it's all in one go..
This has to be the epitome of finding something to bitch about no matter what the topic is.
Want some real insight? Until you get on that stage you have to work your ass off. That means you need to travel to tour stops (and travelling is exhausting) and also grind your way to the top 25 legend which is especially harder now since the new ranked system was implemented. If you are a new competitor and choose to qualify to play-offs via challenger cups, you have to sacrifice many evenings until you luck out to win one only to get in another tournament that MAY qualify you to play-offs. Either way, it's a lot of grinding and the amount of fatigue that you get until you get on that stage is almost unbearable.
Well said, the best I've got in a challenger cup, at least for now, is 7th; might try again sometime but yeah, it's exhausting....so, I have to have respect for those players, not because they came on top in a 16 player final tournament, but because they earned their place there through quite a lot of work, no matter the path they went to get there.
Shut the fuck up retard. Do you wanna get smashed up cunt?