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!
You aren’t controlled externally; you control yourself internally
To be fair, if you truly "dream" to be a pro, you'll have every card you need given the amount of time you'll be spending simply playing the game. If you think you can be a pro without playing at least four or five hours every day, and gaining 20+ gold each hour from laddering, you aren't being very honest, or realistic.
If I'm wrong, and you qualify for GM next year simply by completing a few dailies every week - I hereby extend my apologies.
So Pavel, Pathra , and others that finished last get a free reset, or will they add the total wins from both seasons?
Think they should half the rope timer in tournaments as well. Whole thing is them roping every damn turn which makes the matches drag on. Best game last tournament was the mage getting 2 nozdormus from CC and the opponent couldn't take care of them.
That was quick.
The first thing that each tournament should include is a time limit of 15s per move.
Cutting graphic and artworks to be played with every deck, while boosting those who can think quickly and efficiently, etc.
Because the current formats are hopeless.
They sits and roping each other even with aggro deck.
Boring, bland, stupid.
Good to know you have no respect for the players thinking about their move at hand, and moves ahead, to the max.
The fact that You like to do the first (and probably only) thing that comes to your mind doesn't make it entertaining and/or fun to watch players do the same time after time (then chat fills with crap like 'misplay', 'missed lethal', 'omegalul' etc bs) only to have faster games.
You really should change to some other game to watch if can't appreciate players' thought processes and only want to see the results quickly.
I don’t hate the specialist format nearly as much as everyone else seems to. I would try changing the sideboard to 10 cards. That might make for more variety and class representation.
I also would like to see more relegation, I’m sure there are other deserving players out there.
Specialist was one of the worst decisions in HS esports. I’m pretty annoyed that nobody will be relegated though, based on their Season 1 performance. Players like Thijs and Pathra do not deserve GM status after coming last in their groups.
I guess Specialst could have been great at an end of year meta, with 6 expansions in Standard and dozens of decks in play. But after the first expansion it became a disaster.
Thijs deserves GM for all he's done in the game tho
Thijs is a top player.
thank fuck for that....it was the stupidest idea ever, i didn't even bother to watch that nonsense anyway
At least specialist is gone
Not sure this sounds like a great way to have competitive tournaments either. Specialist was an obvious disaster but since forever hearthstone has had a best deck so if you can shield it, a lot of matches will just go 1-1 as the best deck more often than not wins so it ends up being a best of 1 and we see hundreds of games with the same deck being played....i
I'm not sure what that means. You still have to win with 2 different decks
Dont forget there's 3 decks for a best of 3 now, not 2 as there were before
Well the shielded deck can only win 1 game. There would be 2 decks for each player to choose from in a game 3, a deck they lost with or a deck they didn't play. Think I got it correct now.
I'm glad they are listening to the feedback, this for sure is a very welcome change.