It's pretty surprising that open cups made a return this year after being almost universally disliked in the past and completely irrelevant to competitive Hearthstone last year. I used to be a solid cup grinder in 2016-2017 and was getting most of my precious HCT points that way. Back then I preferred cups to ladder since it was better preparation for the highest stakes Hearthstone I could play: the Prelims / Champs / Worlds trilogy. I actually had a tough time adapting to grinding ladder last year and that cost me very valuable points in the beginning of the year (I would have made it into GM easily with about 10-20 more points, which is 1-2 top 25 finishes).
In a weird way it actually makes more sense to use Specialist Bo3 tournaments to qualify for Masters Tour since that is the actual format we compete in afterwards. Unfortunately, it comes with a significant drawback. While I could easily qualify for Playoffs every time through accumulating HCT points, consistency is now a thing of the past. Since I won a lot of open cups back then, I never imagined that I would not manage to qualify for Seoul, but it is indeed what happened (sorry for spoiling it so early). One reason I identified is that the player cap is much higher now: instead of mostly 128 player tournaments, we now have 224 and 256 player events that are always full, and therefore much harder to win. The other main reason is that the better player is a lot less favored in best of 3 than in best of 5. Battling through hoping to dodge bad matchups, bad luck and other good players seemed hopeless.
I started pretty slowly. I initially hoped to get good practice for Vegas so I let some qualifiers go by waiting for buffs to be live. Then, I missed out on some events as I failed to register in advance as they popped up on Battlefy. We seem to be going with a patented first come first serve system when it comes to registration in these qualifiers, and while I completely disagree with this situation, it's a battle I will fight another day. I became an expert Battlefy camper and registered for all events as they became available, whether I planned to play in them or not, since this is what Blizzard implied I should do if I wanted to play. My preferred solution was to complain on twitter and get them to change the system but they were abundantly clear that it was not an option.
I got 2 top 8's in a row right before Vegas and was feeling good about my preparation. It didn't make a lot of sense to expend tons of energy grinding qualifiers since those efforts would get invalidated if I did well in Vegas, which would qualify me for both Seoul and Bucharest. I therefore prioritized being well rested and working on my lineup. It soon became apparent that after missing out on 2 week-ends of qualifiers due to travel it would be almost impossible to make up for lost time and get those missing 4 top 8's, but I was determined not to miss out and tried my best anyway. I ended up getting 2 more, losing every time in quarters or semis.
The last week-ends of qualifiers, I was getting desperate and decided to play in all the events I had time for. Unfortunately, there is significant overlap between events so it is difficult to play a lot of them without sacrificing sleep. It also means frequently dropping at 2-1 or 3-1 to start another event was the correct play, since it is more likely to go 5-0 or 7-1 from the start than it is to win the last 4-5 rounds of a swiss event. I started with the 9 PM on Asia, then the Midnight Special, then skipped the 4 AM on Europe so I could get 2-4 hours of sleep and wake up in time for the 8 AM on Europe, the NA Noon and finally the 4 PM on NA. Do that for 3 days every weekend, from Thursday night to Sunday, and I believe if you are a good enough player you can get the 6 top 8's required through sheer force of will. Is that worth it though, when the reward is to pay your own travel to a 300 player event with a 500k prize pool?
The course of action that makes the most sense for most players is likely to play a qualifier every now and then and hope to highroll one. The system is pretty rewarding to players who happen to qualify on one of their first few tries, and to extreme outliers who manage to get the required 6 top 8's. However, for players in the middle, who play a lot, win a lot, and end up with 3-5 top 8's through a consistent 60-70% winrate, well, it is extremely frustrating to say the least. I have a difficult time imagining that many players will grind, fail to qualify through no fault of their own, and keep investing most of their weekends for 2 months again.
Let's conclude with a few numbers that illustrate just how difficult it is to win these qualifiers (for more statistics and analysis check out MegaManMusic's twitter).
Odds to top 8 and top 2 (threshold for qualifying) a single elimination qualifier:
Win rate Top 8 Qualify
50% 3.13 % 0.78%
55% 5.03 % 1.52%
60% 7.78 % 2.80%
65% 11.6 % 4.90%
70% 16.8 % 8.23%
This doesn't take into account that win rate will naturally drop as opponents are tougher on average in the later rounds, so odds to qualify are even lower than shown in reality. Should it be this unlikely to qualify for the very best players with 65-70% winrate? I definitely will carefully consider the opportunity cost when deciding to play in qualifiers for Bucharest and hope for a better system next year...
