The fourth Masters Tour event this year took place last weekend with almost 400 players battling it out in an online tournament. In addition to a share of the prize money, the enticing prospect of getting invited to Hearthstone Grandmasters was on the line. You can re-live the action with our spoiler-free post below.
Top 8 Decklists
These decks carried their respective pilots to the final eight.
VoD
You can find the VoDs of the three days of competition below.
Day 1:
Day 2:
Day 3:
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
Warlock was the unsurprising favorite of the weekend with a clear difference to Demon Hunters and Shamans. The trio also performed well based on Battlefy's stats with all of them reaching 50% winrate. Hunter was not the most common deck to bring and Warrior even less so, but the two were the best performing classes of the event with 55% and 53% winrates, respectively. The only classes not breaking the 50% line were the barely-brought Paladin (49%), Druid (47%), and Mage (45%).
For a more detailed deck distribution discussion, see Aesan's analysis post.
Another Masters Tour, another strong performance from the Chinese players. Timezones didn't matter as the Chinese took half of the top 8 spots to their name. With jiuqianyu's extremely narrow win over AyRoK in the final, four of the last five Masters Tours have been won by a different Chinese player, a streak only interrupted by Gaby in Masters Tour Orgrimmar.
As it stands, APAC is the new Americas in GM promotion points as outside current Grandmasters there are barely any that stand out from the rest. In Europe, despite higher point totals, the differences of between the promotion frontrunners are very small as well. AyRoK's runner-up placement lifted him straight to the top of the pack, giving him an excellent chance of becoming the first relegated GM to return to the elite competition after a season outside the format. In Americas the Brazilians are manning the top spots of the table behind Monsanto, eager to accompany their compatriot Fled in Grandmasters and shift the power balance of the competition more towards South America. With muzzy announcing his retirement from competitive Hearthstone after this season, Americas will also (yet again) have an extra spot up for grabs.
| APAC | Points | Europe | Points | Americas | Points |
| glory* | 27 | Gaby* | 34 | Monsanto* | 20 |
| okasinnsuke* | 22 | Floki* | 34 | LeandroLeal | 13 |
| trahison* | 16 | Maverick | 19 | Pascoa | 13 |
| grr* | 14 | Viper* | 19 | digo | 11 |
| lambyseries* | 13 | AyRoK | 19 | CaelesLuna* | 8 |
| blitzchung* | 13 | SuperFake | 19 | McBanterFace* | 8 |
| HSKeDaiBiao | 11 | Sidi | 18 | Fr0zen* | 8 |
| MegaGliscor | 8 | xBlyzes* | 16 | 8 players | 7 |
| 9 players | 7 | 4 players | 15 |
Grandmasters promotion standings (*Current Grandmaster)
You can follow the Race to Grandmasters on Blizzard's official esports page (not yet updated with Silvermoon results at the time of writing). For full and up-to-date data, visit d0nkey.top.
Hearthstone Grandmasters continues next week with the return of Conquest. Don't forget to tune in!
Comments
This really shows just how important it is to have a vibrant local scene. The top 8/16 time and time again consists of almost exclusively Chinese and European players, because of the vibrant HCT-like Chinese scene and loads of third party events in Europe (and France specifically) like the MAX Open and the ILH Open and League. If APAC and Americas want to catch up, local tournaments really are key. I just wish Blizzard would support them more, as now many players have to choose between competing in MTQs and competing in third-party events..
Well that's a bunch of new names for sure.