A Remixed Format and More for Grandmasters
Blizzard just posted about the Grandmasters Season 2 changes, the most important of which is doing away with the much maligned Specialist format, in favor of a Best-of-Three Conquest format with a Shield Phase. Clearly the feedback regarding the Specialist format was heard loud and clear! Read below to see how it will all work exactly and what other changes are being made.
Quote from BlizzardThe inaugural season of Hearthstone Grandmasters ended with a bang as Chris "Fenomeno" Tsakopoulos, Kim "Surrender" Jung-soo, and Francisco "PNC" Leimontas punched their ticket to the Global Finals at BlizzCon. Although it was an exciting season, we have certainly learned some things and will be changing some aspects of the program moving forward. We continue to listen and gather feedback from players worldwide, and we’re excited to share today some of the changes we’ll be implementing for Season 2.
For starters, we are retiring the Specialist format for Grandmasters Season 2 and will be replacing it with best-of-three Conquest featuring a Shield Phase.
How it Works
- The two battling players bring four decks, each from a unique class.
- The match starts with a Shield Phase where both players will choose one of their own decks to “protect” that cannot be banned.
- Each player will then ban one of their opponents’ decks, removing it from the pool.
- Each player then selects which of their eligible decks they would like to play first, then begin their first game of the match.
- After the first game has concluded, the winning deck is removed from the pool before both players pick which of their remaining decks they would like to play next.
- If after the second game one player is 2-0, then the match is over!
- If the score is 1-1, then the winning deck from the second game is removed from the pool and both players will choose their third and final deck to decide the series.
For Masters Qualifiers
We sent out a survey to all players who have participated in a Masters Qualifier (you can find a link to the survey in the #player_announcements channel of the Masters Qualifiers Discord) to help us gather feedback related to that program including the tournament format, schedule, event types, and the frequency of events. We will be using those responses to inform changes to the Masters Qualifiers and the Masters Tour after Season 2 of Grandmasters begins. We want to hear your thoughts!
Quality of Life Changes
We’re mixing up the Divisions in each region for Grandmasters Season 2, swapping the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th place finishers from Season 1 in each region. Beyond that, we’re implementing the following quality of life changes:
- Including the 4th place player from each division in the end-of-season playoffs.
- Changing the semifinals of both Grandmasters playoffs and Masters Tour events to best-of-five.
- Standardizing the deck submission times across all three regions.
- Setting the match schedule to 16 matches each day (instead of 15 Friday, 15 Saturday, 18 Sunday).
You can find more information about these changes on our Rules & Policies page.
Regarding Mobility
We have heard and appreciate the feedback regarding the desire for increased mobility into Hearthstone Grandmasters. With Grandmasters, we wanted to ensure that players and organizations could commit to the program knowing exactly what their chances of relegation were. We did not have relegation for Season 1 and set the maximum relegation to two players per region for Season 2. For Grandmasters in 2020, we will look to change relegation further to increase the maximum number of relegation/promotion spots per season.
We will have details on changes to relegation/promotion, changes to the tournament structure in 2020, and more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, keep it tuned right here to PlayHearthstone.com/esports for our coverage of Masters Tour Seoul!
Nice. I have missed this announce around everything else which happens to hearthstone, but it is nice to hear that they are back to old format. But even if specialist failed, trying something new is always welcome. Some ideas are bad and no one is save from them, but without trying anything new, we will never progress :).
Finally conquest is back yay!
They finally realised that losing so many viewers for their championship was not worth trying to force some shitty format.
Thank god. Watching the specialist format was like watching paint dry.
Even though it failed, I appreciate the attempt at Specialist format.
One issue with Tournament Hearthstone is that it has very little resemblance to how most players experience the game on Ladder. A best-of-number format with four different classes and bans--which allows deckbuilders to ignore hard-counters by banning them out--is a very different way to play Hearthstone. Players on Ladder bring one deck, maybe queue something different if they start to see their opponents start to change, but it's mostly one deck. Specialist attempted to capture some of that experience. One deck, blind queued. To be sure, it's a lot closer to the Ladder experience than conquest and such.
Didn't work, though. Lead to a poor viewing experience, and repetitive games. It's good that Bliz was willing to try something new, but better that they're willing to move on.
Specialist was doomed right away when they announced it, in my opinion...
So happy they removed the specialist format. I thought that was the most boring and unfair format to date.
Good thing they reacted^^.
The new format sounds fun , but also requires Blizzard to balance very well, otherwise we will see players shielding the best meta deck (lets say Bomb Warrior) and play Mirrormatches all over again....
lo mejor que han hecho... el otro formato estaba aburrido... regresare a jugar de nuevo hs
Specialist might be interesting for an occasional event but not for a format like Grandmasters.
I am curious about the shielding phase. Is it completely new, or did we see something alike previously?
Bye bye boring format, you won't be missed.
specialist is PURE trash idiot that decided that format all should be fired the views and player interest dropped so bad which might explain why activision is failing cuz of these shit ass stupid decisions
THIS IS GREAT THOUGH THROUGH FAILURES we LEARN TO DO BETTER is the slogan?
Corporations slogan THROUGH FAILURES we learn to fail and stuff up even harder EG EA games
Who hurt you?
At this point i'm genuinely curious if this idiom is used ironically by basically every brainlet or people just use it to mimic idiocy and are just trolls.
Let me clear that up. It’s used to ironically point out how the person's response is so aggrieved and harsh that the only justifiable cause would be that they personally were wronged by the issue.
I'm glad they're changing it, but cmon. They tried something new, got plenty of feedback, listened to it, and changed it within a year.
God dam u kwakdizzle u were the most rational personal honestly
the they tried something new got plenty of feedback listened to it and changed within a year
i've got a lot of hate for my comments but i thumbs up yours class act
Well kudos for not lashing back and being receptive to the criticism. That doesn't really happen online
bye bye speciaboringlist
and now there its gone my dreams to be a pro f2p, now i need to invest on 4 decks to play tournaments what a greedy move
Uh you can still make 4 competitive decks and be FTP.