Following Dreamhack Summer, Eubin had a chance to catch up with Reynad and ask him his thoughts on the event and the state of the game. Thanks again for taking the time to do this short interview with us. We'd like to hear your overall thoughts on the meta with the recent nerfs to hunter and the rise of less popular classes like Shaman.

The hunter nerfs put the metagame into a spot that I'm much more comfortable with. It opened up room for more midrange decks to see play such as Druid and Shaman, as well as decks that just couldn't exist in a world with that much hunter (handlock). The shift in the meta affected our deck choices a lot for Dreamhack Summer, because it made us look at those midrange decks such as shaman a lot more.



How did you feel about going into DreamHack as the last seed; did you feel like you went in with a slight disadvantage because of the lesser amount of preparation time, or were you confident about you chances?

I was pretty confident going into Dreamhack. Only being seeded because another player dropped out felt a bit insulting, but I hope I proved that I deserved to be there. I was pretty happy with my play the entire tournament except for the Druid game versus Savjz. It didn't really affect my preparation time at all since I was going to play the BYOC either way and was already preparing for it.



Were there any specific players that you thought had an advantage coming into Dreamhack, whether because of momentum or the meta favoring that person? Was there any one player that you really thought would take the entire tournament?

The meta heavily favored Tidesoftime in my opinion, but with a best of 3 structure it's all a crap shoot and skill is almost irrelevant. Looking at the players that prepared solid decks and made the smallest percentage of mistakes in the tournament, I feel like Savjz Gaara and Tides performed the best. The fact that none of them made it out of the group stage really shows why anything shorter than a bo5 structure is not suitable for tournament play. Speaking to the other pros at the event, I'm far from alone in this opinion.



Did you have any game plans geared towards those players specifically? If so, did those games go how you wanted them to?

Tides and I never played, but my gameplan would have been to just cheese him with burn as usual.



How did you feel seeing RDU play his Frost Mage deck? Do you think that it fits well into the meta or was it used more to catch opponents off guard?

The freeze mage deck was a terrible choice for the tournament, that RDU played terribly. Daniel played RDU's same list better, and lost every game with it to my knowledge. Like I said, anything can happen in a best of 3, but if you look at the actual win percentages of decks played throughout that tournament, mage was far from strong.



If you could start the tournament over again, or even a single match, what would you do differently and why?

If I could play the tournament again, I would sleep for more than 3 hours throughout the weekend, and hopefully play better in the Druid game against Savjz. I wouldn't have played Rogue in the group stage either. Those were the two areas I could have definitely improved on. There are a lot of behind the scenes things I would have tried to bring to the organizers' attention as well, and these things would have impacted the outcome of Dreamhack a lot more than anything involving gameplay in my opinion, but they aren't worth publicly venting about. Props to the organizers and crew for putting together a fantastic production though- so many huge problems were avoided and they adapted to every situation as it came along. Competitive Hearthstone is still in its infancy, so it's great to see a team that considers input from the players while keeping things running as smoothly as they did.



How has the competitive scene evolved since DreamHack Bucharest?

The audience of Hearthstone's competitive scene has continued to grow, and the production of events is only getting better. I'm excited to see the game showcased more often in huge esport events. Hopefully Dreamhack Summer will showcase Hearthstone's value to the organizations with the resources to make events happen. Dreamhack Summer was a huge success and I hope it leads to bigger and more frequent tournaments. In terms of DH's impact on Tempo Storm as a brand, I would be lying if I said I was entirely satisfied. I really expected one of us to win, but a million factors outside of our control made it feel more like rolling dice than competing at a professional level. I wish the entire event was open rather than having seeded players for example, but time constraints make that extremely difficult to run in the Bo5 double elimination format that I would have preferred. It was great to have the team together, and I'm proud of how my teammates played. Hopefully we will get back to serving up the 1st place finishes that I know we're capable of. There are plenty of events coming up in the short term that we're hard at work preparing for!



Are you excited for the new expansion? How do you think the release will affect the competitive scene? Do you think that certain classes will become more viable/balanced?

I'm really excited for the expansion. Whenever new card releases happen, the best players and deckbuilders have a massive edge early on. After a month or two, everyone starts to copy their lists while claiming that they aren't anything special and that they were always playing Doomguard in things. But the first few weeks after the expansion should be very exciting. Priest and hunter look much, much stronger with the new set. Zoo as well. Prepare for the meta of Nerubian Egg.



Lastly, what do you think needs to be changed in order to help the community grow even more? How can we help encourage the average viewer to come play in community/tournament cups?

In order for the community to grow, the #1 thing to do is continue running huge events for Hearthstone. It's great marketing and showcases the game to players that would not have otherwise tried it. As for getting more players to participate in tournaments, it also comes down to marketing. The trick is convincing the casual player to want to participate, and for him to have fun in doing so.



Thanks once again for your time, and congratulations on your performance at DreamHack! It was awesome watching your matches and getting to watch you perform things that most of us don't even think about, Before we go is there any shoutouts you’d like to give?

Shoutout to my team Tempo Storm, who is now back and hard at work making content on tempostorm.com. Thanks to the crew behind the scenes that made Dreamhack Summer everything that it was. I also want to give a big thank you to Hyperx for helping us with so many things big and small while we were at Dreamhack. They've always been incredibly supportive. And of course thanks to everyone at home for watching the event and supporting Hearthstone!





by Eubin “asianmagikman” Jin 8196851 , Sunday, 22/06/14 09:35