Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 2 sees the specialist format being dropped! The format was met with lots of criticism from the community, especially when we saw tournaments with primarily one class being played. The new format is best-of-three Conquest featuring a "Shield Phase".
Quote From Blizzard
- 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”, meaning it cannot be banned by their opponent.
- Each player will then ban one of their opponents’ decks (excluding the shielded deck), removing it from the pool.
- Each player then selects which of their three remaining 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, 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 a final deck to decide the series. Players may opt to re-play a deck that they lost with in a prior round.
There's some more details too, including quality of life changes and that we'll be getting more information in the future to explain how things will change in 2020.
Quote From Blizzard 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!
Comments
Maybe specialist might have been better if each week a different class would be featured or certain restrictions imposed. Would have still meant at least one week of warrior mirrors but that would have been acceptable in my book. Would have been fun to have seen one week of dead classes being played with three iterations of each; some unicorn deck might have even appeared.
Specialist was not special right away
Gone are the days where I could wake up and start watching a bo3 warrior v warrior match and then fall asleep for the night before a winner was decided lol.
I liked Specialist. I think it just wasn't the meta for it.
Anyway, the new Conquest sounds nice.
Lul didn't take that format to fail hard. Not like any of us saw it for the disaster that it was.
T5 there's good reason why many of the most popular streamers with the most views were so successful. They played a variety of decks instead of only hardcoring the single most played deck out there.
Variety makes or breaks games.
Nice, now maybe I can start watching some pro games again without being bored to death.
you'll still only see the same classes being played. Now you just won't get to see the fancy tech these decks could bring.
Disappointed. I like Specialist format a lot and tuned in to a lot of streams.
I'm probably going to get downvoted too. Specialist had a lot of unique variants of the same class as secondary and tertiary decks, like Mecha'thun warrior and mech rogues, infinite togwaggle rogues
In conquest, it's going to be the same perfectly well rounded rogues and mages still going at it. Maybe hunter will see a lot more play, but honestly, I rather watch people mill themselves with 0 mana togwaggles and treasure wands than plain old hunter
oh, finally, seeing only 3 classes being played is so boring, and the warrior mirror match.... ResidentSleeper
I remember, not too long ago, watching a full day of Warrior v Warrior mirrors. I remember seeing the commentators give one of those winners interviews to Dog after a long match and he just seemed so bored and disgusted. I felt the same way. After that, I never bothered to watch the rest of the season.
Great they removed the format people hated while still improving upon what old "Conquest" did wrong.
Shield + Ban is actually an interesting addition... Because relying on always banning one of the 2 best decks was a bit of a boring part of Conquest...
The experiment didn't took long to be declared a flop. Quick changes when needed are - and will always be - welcomed! Admitting it was dull takes balls, good job Blizz
Would like more info on what the minimum requirements for a "different deck" would be..I'm thinking they need a 6 card minimum change between them? If one deck is heads above the others, would bringing the same one with 1-2 different tech choices in each one still count as 4 different decks? I think specialists could have been better if they enforced a 6-10 card difference from your main deck. Just my opinion though.
Not sure what you mean - maybe you have missed this sentence:
"The two battling players bring four decks, each from a unique class."
Ah, yeah. i misread that. Still stand by my suggestion for improving Specialist though..
Thank god. Absolutely hated specialist format, glad to see it go.
What you don't like to watch 2 hour warrior mirrors? Sorry for sarcasm...
I mean it cured my insomnia. So maybe it wasn't all that bad...
I hope we will still get packs for watching in the future. ^^
I like Blizz decisions - first to try a new format and second to change the format again after they seen that the format didn`t do well.
I think it is overall good for HS when Blizz keeps being brave enough to experiment and takes risks and not always "plays save".