The fourth Masters Tour event this year took place last weekend with over 320 hopeful players battling it out in an online tournament over three days for their share of the prize money and the enticing prospect of getting an invitation to Hearthstone Grandmasters. You can re-live the action with our spoiler-free post below.
Top 8 Decklists
These were the players that survived the nine rounds of Swiss and made it to the final day.
Alutemu's Decks
Bunnyhoppor's Decks
justsaiyan's Decks
Leaoh's Decks
Leta's Decks
OldBoy's Decks
Thijs's Decks
XHope's Decks
VoD
You can find the VoDs of the three days of competition below. Timestamps have been provided in spoilers below the video if you're only interested in certain matches.
Day 1:
As Blizzard failed to upload the entirety of Day 1 in the above video, links to individual matches/rounds have been included into the spoiler below.
Day 2:
- 27:41 - Eddie vs tomof - Swiss Round 6
- 1:29:54 - mint vs PeaceHawk - Swiss Round 6
- 2:05:32 - Bunnyhoppor vs levik - Swiss Round 7
- 3:41:19 - ChaboDennis vs Gaby - Swiss Round 7
- 4:20:01 - Thijs vs Zhym - Swiss Round 8
- 5:00:28 - iNS4NE vs muzzy - Swiss Round 8
- 5:48:20 - muzzy vs RNGLeaoh - Swiss Round 9
- 6:26:06 - LPXHope vs Juristis - Swiss Round 9
- 6:59:01 - Alutemu vs Leta - Swiss Round 9
- 7:27:02 - Eddie vs justsaiyan - Swiss Round 9
Day 3:
As Blizzard failed to upload the entirety of Day 3 in the above video, links to individual matches/rounds have been included into the spoiler below.
Results
You can find out how the Top 8 single-elimination bracket played out within the spoiler below. The preceding Swiss results can be found here in full.
Recap
It seems that the fifth time's the charm. Illidan's popularity finally took a hit after the latest nerf patch, making the class fall down to sixth in pick rate. The tournament also saw a move towards more control-oriented Demon Hunters instead of pure Tempo lineups. Dragonqueen Alexstrasza nerf was merely a setback for Hunters as the class emerged as the most popular pick of the tournament, followed by Warrior and Warlock. Druids and Rogues also saw a respectable amount of play, whereas the rest of the classes (especially Paladin) did not. According to Battlefy's stats, the only class of the aforementioned top 6 that failed to reach at least 50% winrate was Druid (46%), whereas all of the bottom 4 did so, with Priest and Shaman dropping all the way to rather horrible 44% and 42% winrates, respectively.
The Grandmasters seemed to have brought their A-game for this tournament as half of the top 8 players were already part of the elite competition, and another handful were left out by tiebreakers. While Europeans were again strongly represented in Sunday's matches, this was the first Masters Tour event ever (7th event in total) to not feature a French player in that top cut, with the serial winner xBlyzes narrowly missing out with 9th place. As an impressive display of consistency, Thijs became only the second player this year to reach the top 8 twice (after the aforementioned Frenchman). This achievement is further underlined by the fact that he has only participated in these two events so far, making his overall Swiss record 16-2 and top 8 success rate of 100%.
While the Grandmasters were triumphant in the first three quarterfinals, eliminating OldBoy and the Chinese players, Leta was able to overcome the American GM justsaiyan. He continued his strong performances by narrowly beating the European GM Bunnyhoppor in semifinals and becoming the second Italian in a row to reach the final in Masters Tours. In a rematch from Swiss Round 9, Leta completed the region treble by beating the APAC GM Alutemu and taking home the trophy. While this result meant that he took the pole position of the EU Grandmasters race for Season 2, he still has to wait at least one event before being able to safely claim the spot as his. In other regions, no non-GM reached the top 8, leaving the race wide open for the two upcoming events of Montreal in September and Madrid in December.
The esports year will continue with Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 2 in mid-August.
Comments
I'm really looking forward to the meta shifting away from Hunter...
no shock about Priest and Shaman being at the bottom rung. Those classes have been suffering.
I enjoyed watching quite a lot, too bad Bunnyhoppor lost in the semi-finals and we haven't seen any GM cross-region match, but Leta's achievement is not to be taken lightly.
Also saw quite a few people not even bringing DH at all (have I mentioned Bunnyhoppor? Or the other two GMs in the top8?) and Alutemu for the first time ever, at least since he beca,e a GM, not bringing druid which was shocking, but adjusting your line up just shows his great understanding of the meta.
Many were probably unsure after the nerfs on DH without enough time to playtest, but Leta bringing Aggro DH and winning proves the class is still VERY solid. It may not be overwhelming anymore, but still good.
I mean, we still have Odd DH carrying surprising results in Wild, despite what seemed to be backbreaking nerfs for the archetype (much more than in Standard).
Afterall, Illidan is a cockroach since WoW TBC (when everyone thought he had been killed in a duel by Arthas)...