Hearthstone Specialist - The New Competitive Format for 2019
A new format has been announced for Competitive Hearthstone! The Conquest Format is being replaced by Specialist this year, and brings a form of side-board Hearthstone.
Blizzard says they are excited to see how it performs and that they are eager to implement community feedback as needed. Here's how it works.
- Players bring three 30 card decks to bring to the tournament.
- All decks must be from the same class.
- The decks are designated as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.
- The Primary is your main deck that you are bringing to the tournament.
- The Secondary and Tertiary decks must have 25 cards found in the Primary deck, with the remaining 5 being your choice.
- For the first game, both players must use their Primary deck.
- In following games you are free to choose your Secondary or Tertiary decks, or continue using the Primary.
- Your opponent will not know which you choose.
The format begins post-world championship.
I wish specialist was a gamemode in Hearthstone...
It seems to me some classes will never be represented in this format
I really dont like this format at all. This just breaks ban strategies and class counters since u only face one class in order to win. If you play against a deck you're unfavoured against., you're done! Plus not knowing your opponents other deck feels more of a ladder experience rather than a open deck list format type of tournament. Would love to see this rules cross other side events but not as the main events
I just don't understand who wins.
This format is so much more vulnerable to match up RNG
I fail to see how. Making it so that you only play one class isn't going to make tons of current players who do follow the old tourneys to suddenly want to watch these more, nor does it really sound that appealing imo to use it to draw new players into the game if they happen to watch it.
There's a reason why such HS streaming entertainment as Thijs, Kibler, even Toast get way more viewership and that is in part due to them playing a variety of decks & classes. Can't remember the last time I thought; "Wow! I get to see someone play the same class over and over again! That's so refreshing!" Plus, at least going by the small demographics of those of us on this site at least I usually see people voting for players who bring an underdog class, not picking the best single performing class.
EDIT: Basically this new format gives the illusion of more choices in tourney level play. Sure, you get a sideboard, but it is at the cost of playing a single class (and in some metas one class may only have one viable archtype, which in old tourneys could be alleviated by having other classes).
I do like to see a new tournament mode, but I am really worried this might reduce the number of classes played in tournaments a lot.
This is a move at least in right direction.
Can't say I like it at first glance and it seems to me like tournaments will be that less interesting now. But Unlike other people, I'm actually willing to wait and see before passing judgement.
With this format they're trying to mimic the tournament format of MTG: each player bring just one deck and after each match can side in a max of 15 cards that he had choosen before the start, while the first game must always be played with the original deck.
I don't really understand why they've made such a strange system like the 2nd and 3rd decks, instead of just a pool of 10 cards (of which you can swap only a max of 5) that you can pre-select before putting on queue. It seems overly complicated to me, while the effect is the same.
Is this a new game mode or it it just for official tournaments? Many players don't follow or care about the tournaments, so an announcement about new tournament rules is meaningless to them. If you want to bring more players back and keep a strong player base, you need features to attract non-tournament players.
+1 but I don't think the point of this announcement is to bring players back, this announcement is more to say competitive HS is still here. After what happened with Overwatch a lot of people were worried they would drop the ball on competitive HS as well. Unfortunately they are ignoring our pleas for new game modes, new features, etc. or they want to do it but are too incompetent. Either way you are correct this will affect only a tiny % of HS players, for the rest of us there is Autochess :)
Many players also do care and/or follow the tournaments. There's also a lot of very good players competing and there is a lot of money on the line.
I myself don't like the new format either, but saying they should not post it if they want a change is just ignoring the fact Blizzard should & does care a lot about the Esports aspect, and that's why there are people that their day job is "Hearthstone competitive player".
Obviously this announcement was meant for people playing in or watching the tournament and not people that don't care about either. More than that, I think you're even allowed to not care.
HS tournaments in 2k19 OMEGALUL
This is an awful idea :)
Odd Warrior will own this format :)
You're missing the point. Everyone will bring counters to the top meta class, so people are going to have to play around that by not playing the top meta class. This sounds like an exciting new format, at least to watch. Which is all I care about since I don't compete in tournaments.
Sigh, hating without thinking again. This is a great idea, it will make for more interesting tournaments to watch. It will be very easy to bring secondary and tertiary decks that counter the top of the meta, and thus this format will actually greatly discourage bringing the top deck. Thus the most OP decks on the ladder might see very little play in tournaments.
Also tournament meta will be very different from ladder meta, which again makes for more fun to watch tournaments.
This is probably the last straw for competitive hearthstone.
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Blizz shouldn`t post such news on Youtube. The plebs dislike it, because they are too confused about a change that doesn`t influence their game at all... Time to go back to 9 deck slots for sure!