The circuit officially starts with DreamHack Winter today.
As HCT 2017 prepares to kickstart with the major at Jonkoping this week, Blizzard have revealed details in how points shall be earned for the upcoming season. In general, points distribution has received minor tweeks to balance point gains across different types of competition and are geared towards rewarding consistency more than just top finishes.
The points for finishing high on legend have been slightly reduced and the top player each season will receive 12 instead of 15 points. Each other tier below it will receive on average 2 points less than in 2016. This decrease, however, comes at the expense of bigger emphasis on community cups. Each cup will reward its top 8 players instead of the top 4 like last year with a points distribution of 5-3-2-1 in descending order compared to the 3-2-1 of 2016.
Majors – i.e. every tournament with $10,000 or more prize pool – have also been reworked to both award more points in total (75 compared to 43 in 2016) and to more players (top 16 instead of top 8) and will also automatically qualify its top 4 players to the HCT seasonal preliminaries. The Seasonal Championships themselves have been reworked to give points to all 16 players attending and have a closer total to the regular majors: In 2017, the championships to majors points total ratio will be 119:75, while in 2016 it stood at 145:43.
More details on the circuit, such as calendar and applications for community cups are yet to be announced and we’ve reached out to Blizzard for further information.
