I would definitely agree that time is a big factor. I've played HS now since it was released and usually attain around an 80-90% win rate.
But that said, I only really get to play about half an hour a night or so, so the chances of grinding my way up to Legendary ranks is pretty low for the most part. (Mostly as I tend to get bored after a while - or have to quit if the games get a bit too intense (I'm pretty competitive! Heh!))
If you consistently have an 80-90% winrate, you're higher than the top pros in Hearthstone. Sorry, but I don't believe you.
I would definitely agree that time is a big factor. I've played HS now since it was released and usually attain around an 80-90% win rate.
But that said, I only really get to play about half an hour a night or so, so the chances of grinding my way up to Legendary ranks is pretty low for the most part. (Mostly as I tend to get bored after a while - or have to quit if the games get a bit too intense (I'm pretty competitive! Heh!))
If you consistently have an 80-90% winrate, you're higher than the top pros in Hearthstone. Sorry, but I don't believe you.
combine: 80% win rate with : 'play for only a half an hour'
result: he plays at a skill/deck quality above his current rank but never actually plays long enough to actually rank up.
I'm in a similar boat. When I actually TRY to rank up, I hit rank 5 without too much difficulty (never actually tried to push for legend) and win just about all of my games. Thus my skill level is at least rank 5. However, I almost never get any real time to play more than a few games at a time and I tend to goof around with silly decks and quickly leave alone decks that 'work so I'm almost always sitting at rank 20-15. Thus when I play a deck that's not absolute garbate I get around 70%+ win rates but never move much past rank 15 due to the sheer lack of games.
The pros boast about a 55-60% rate.. in upper legend. At rank 15 it's pretty much 90%+ given whenever I see one of them actually trying to climb.
No, skill is the main difference between rank 15 and legend, not time. When I play against rank 5+ players they make a lot of misplays. 5-legend, thats where you never supposed to misplay, unless you play some OP cancer deck. I played with handlock mostly before I reached legend. And I remember I was stuck at rank 10, and I played quite a lot, while many players were reaching legend with the same decklist. Every month my top rank was higher and higher, then I reached rank 5 and understood if you want to reach legend with handlock (which was tier 3 deck at that time) you need to go on another level. Every month i climbed higher and higher and reached legend with handlock. That happened not because of time, but because of understanding the deck and understanding the game as a whole, knowledge of meta, decks, cards that are played in those decks, how to play around them, when not to overcommit, knowledge of how to trade right.
I would say 90% of it is time and the other 10% skill. For example I've started tracking on a daily basis my win/loss ratio and find that I'm hit 56-57% winrate almost every day. Well above what's considered necessary to reach legend. However I end up between ranks 8-11 because most days I have only about 8-9 games played or so because of long work days (and I watch a lotta tv lol).
So yes time is THE most import factor as right now on hitting legend under the current ladder system. We'll see when they revamp the ladder to see if the weight of skill comes into factor more than that 10% it is now.
I would say 90% of it is time and the other 10% skill. For example I've started tracking on a daily basis my win/loss ratio and find that I'm hit 56-57% winrate almost every day. Well above what's considered necessary to reach legend. However I end up between ranks 8-11 because most days I have only about 8-9 games played or so because of long work days (and I watch a lotta tv lol).
So yes time is THE most import factor as right now on hitting legend under the current ladder system. We'll see when they revamp the ladder to see if the weight of skill comes into factor more than that 10% it is now.
I don't think you understand how the ladder works. You think having a 56% winrate in the garbage ranks with winstreak will be enough for you to reach legend? The higher is your rank, the better your opponents are, the better your opponents are, the lower your winrate is. With 56% winrate from rank 5 to legend it will take you around 150 games to reach legend. But if you think you will maintain the winrate that you have on rank 10 in 5-legend, you are delusional. Stick a rank 10 player into legend and he will have probably 40% winrate, maybe even less.
I would definitely agree that time is a big factor. I've played HS now since it was released and usually attain around an 80-90% win rate.
But that said, I only really get to play about half an hour a night or so, so the chances of grinding my way up to Legendary ranks is pretty low for the most part. (Mostly as I tend to get bored after a while - or have to quit if the games get a bit too intense (I'm pretty competitive! Heh!))
If you consistently have an 80-90% winrate, you're higher than the top pros in Hearthstone. Sorry, but I don't believe you.
combine: 80% win rate with : 'play for only a half an hour'
result: he plays at a skill/deck quality above his current rank but never actually plays long enough to actually rank up.
I'm in a similar boat. When I actually TRY to rank up, I hit rank 5 without too much difficulty (never actually tried to push for legend) and win just about all of my games. Thus my skill level is at least rank 5. However, I almost never get any real time to play more than a few games at a time and I tend to goof around with silly decks and quickly leave alone decks that 'work so I'm almost always sitting at rank 20-15. Thus when I play a deck that's not absolute garbate I get around 70%+ win rates but never move much past rank 15 due to the sheer lack of games.
The pros boast about a 55-60% rate.. in upper legend. At rank 15 it's pretty much 90%+ given whenever I see one of them actually trying to climb.
Context is always key to numbers.
Even though the explanation is legit, it still doesn't hold any water. If you only play a few games, and have an 80% win rate at rank 20, it doesn't mean that you have an 80% win rate. You say when you TRY to rank up, you hit rank 5 without too much difficulty? I doubt it. The reality here is you don't do it because you hate losing, and when you lose you quit. And that explains why you don't play much is because you hate losing. If you TRIED to rank up, you'd probably be around 50-55% depending on RNG, luck, and some skill. If you are successful, you'll have a higher win percentage, not 80%. If you run into the wrong match ups, which the meta does shift from control to aggro all the way up the ladder, then you will need to re evaluate the cards you have in your deck and play accordingly. This post sounds like you have some classic cards and you made a miracle rogue that you play 1-2 games at rank 20 and usually win. So what, who cares. Not really much going on here. "I played 2 games this week and won both, I have 100% win rate."
I would definitely agree that time is a big factor. I've played HS now since it was released and usually attain around an 80-90% win rate.
But that said, I only really get to play about half an hour a night or so, so the chances of grinding my way up to Legendary ranks is pretty low for the most part. (Mostly as I tend to get bored after a while - or have to quit if the games get a bit too intense (I'm pretty competitive! Heh!))
If you consistently have an 80-90% winrate, you're higher than the top pros in Hearthstone. Sorry, but I don't believe you.
combine: 80% win rate with : 'play for only a half an hour'
result: he plays at a skill/deck quality above his current rank but never actually plays long enough to actually rank up.
I'm in a similar boat. When I actually TRY to rank up, I hit rank 5 without too much difficulty (never actually tried to push for legend) and win just about all of my games. Thus my skill level is at least rank 5. However, I almost never get any real time to play more than a few games at a time and I tend to goof around with silly decks and quickly leave alone decks that 'work so I'm almost always sitting at rank 20-15. Thus when I play a deck that's not absolute garbate I get around 70%+ win rates but never move much past rank 15 due to the sheer lack of games.
The pros boast about a 55-60% rate.. in upper legend. At rank 15 it's pretty much 90%+ given whenever I see one of them actually trying to climb.
Context is always key to numbers.
You're absolutely right, I should have added the disclaimer about barely playing at lower ranks. Then yes, you can have a high win rate. I was more speaking to the point that his numbers are BS, because he's exaggerating them or they're meaningless.
I've seen a large trend of people in threads like this and in general who use time as the primary excuse for not hitting Legend and ignore the skill aspect. "Oh I could absolutely hit Legend, I just don't play enough."
It sounds a lot like The Fox and the Grapes to me. Unless you've actually made it to Legend, you can't say that you could. People are just downplaying an achievement because they've never done it.
I would say 90% of it is time and the other 10% skill. For example I've started tracking on a daily basis my win/loss ratio and find that I'm hit 56-57% winrate almost every day. Well above what's considered necessary to reach legend. However I end up between ranks 8-11 because most days I have only about 8-9 games played or so because of long work days (and I watch a lotta tv lol).
So yes time is THE most import factor as right now on hitting legend under the current ladder system. We'll see when they revamp the ladder to see if the weight of skill comes into factor more than that 10% it is now.
Yeah, except you're tracking your win rate at ranks 8-11. How do you know you'll maintain that once you hit rank 5 and your win streak goes away? You're another example of someone saying, "Oh I'm good enough to do it, I just don't have the time."
You have no idea if you can do it, because you never have or even tried.
I'm not saying there's a massive difference but it's definitely not just time. There is so many tiny misplays which can cost you the game which are easy to miss (eg minion placement) these misplays are a lot more common at rank 15 than legend rank.
Idk if 15 is as close to Legend as 5. At 15 there are still a ton of people that clearly do not understand finer workings of the game (they misplay, over-commit, etc a lot more). I personally have only hit as high as 7 I believe, but the difference from 15-7 is pretty significant, but I imagine 5 and up is likely all the same.
I agree with you that the biggest factor is time, but in my experience the skill an knowledge at 15 is significantly different than it is at 7.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Nature is the Day. Man is the Sun. Woman is the Moon. The Stone is the Sky. The Art is the Way.
I have friends in game who get to play MUCH more than I do that HAVE hit legend. And when I play against them...I STILL win over 50% of the time. So know your roll and shut your mouth troll.
Except that's irrelevant. You've never hit Legend. Nobody cares about what win rate you have against your friends.
You're saying you're readily capable of doing something that you've never done and never tried. Do you understand how ridiculous that is?
I agree mostly. The pros and legend players are definitely good, but I think the ability to play most of the day every day is what lets them reach those high ranks. It would be interesting to see statistics on how long it would take you to reach legend if you started with a base win rate of 55% and made the average game time ~7 mins.
Pretty rasy if the winrate is consistent. If you have 55% winrate you will advance 10 stars every 100 games you play wich is about 2 ranks. The real grind starts around rank 8-9 so if you winrate is consistent at 55%, you need 400 games. 400*7mins = 2800 minutes.
Only experience tells you the difference. For instance I play the same amount of game every month, I do the daily quest and one or two day of grinding around ~25th of the month. I play around 80 games a month. In january 2016 I was able to create a competitive meta deck, at that time I was able to reached around rank 14. During this year it steadily progressed until I started been able to rank 5 end of the month. I still play the same amount of game every month.
What changed is :
What do I play ? I play a competitive deck adapted the meta I am against which I may change when reaching higher rank
How do I play ? I do less missplay and I actually know if/how a tech can improve my winrate
When do I play ? I play at different time of the month, I am basically doing a win streak from beginning to end of the month. How do I do that ?
When I start to play to ranked I first play a few games and I feel the skill level of the opponents. "Do i win to obvious missplay for opponents ? Do I easily outplay them ?" If both answer are true then I take the time for a small grinding session until I gain 2/3 rank. After that I will reach people close to my skill level : I normally stop after two consecutive defeats. Them 3 to 4 days later I do the same, players I won against 3 days ago reached the same rank as me but still have the same skill level, I do another 2 to 3 rank winstreak then stop. Repeat until the end of the month.
I do a final grinding around 25 because a lot of skilled player who did not play during the month start to do a rank 5 climb in the last days.
It may feel cynical but it is the way I found to make the best use of my limited play time.
Starting from rank 5 is a different story all together. no win streak and skill gabs start to make smaller difference. Still, if you don't improve the way you play you will find a impassible skill wall at one point or another.
In my experience, the decks people play at rank 15 and at legend (well, high legend, people play random crap at low legend since they can't drop out) are very different. People at low ranks seem to quite frequently play slow and greedy decks with no regard for the faster decks in the meta, whereas at higher ranks people are either playing the meta decks or decks that have a chance of beating them.
I have tried playing control decks at low ranks and it is awful, I hate playing control mirrors when they are just greed-offs and my opponent has 5 8-drops. So I play some aggro to rank 5, and then I actually get to enjoy the game.
Low legend is very similar to rank 15-5. Not everyone who gets to legend will continue to push higher.
The big differences are:
-Legend players make fewer misplays, particularly with difficult decks and against decks they are not familiar with.
-Legend players have more optimized decklists. Most low rank players do not use tech cards properly in netdecks, and do not have much success with experimental decks. For example, ask a random rank 15 and legend 500 player to build a control Shaman, guess who will make the better deck in general.
-Legend players think further ahead and have better risk assessment. Something like playing Lord Jaraxxus at the right moment is something legends are much better at.
This seems to be one of one of the best things I have read here for a while.
i have been playing for a few months, but this is the first month I have really made competitive decks and tried hard at the ladder, got tilted a few times but finally things started clicking and have been able to "sense" changes in metas at different states. These things and the ability to tech changes only come with expereience and learned skill.
im still learning and far from legend, but definitely think saying it's just time involved is not correct. (Though you do have to commit a ton of time unfortunately!)
edit: I meant to quote Alkoviaks comment but didn't insert it! I don't usually post replies- but thanks for the tip Alkoviak!
I would definitely agree that time is a big factor. I've played HS now since it was released and usually attain around an 80-90% win rate.
But that said, I only really get to play about half an hour a night or so, so the chances of grinding my way up to Legendary ranks is pretty low for the most part. (Mostly as I tend to get bored after a while - or have to quit if the games get a bit too intense (I'm pretty competitive! Heh!))
If you consistently have an 80-90% winrate, you're higher than the top pros in Hearthstone. Sorry, but I don't believe you.
combine: 80% win rate with : 'play for only a half an hour'
result: he plays at a skill/deck quality above his current rank but never actually plays long enough to actually rank up.
I'm in a similar boat. When I actually TRY to rank up, I hit rank 5 without too much difficulty (never actually tried to push for legend) and win just about all of my games. Thus my skill level is at least rank 5. However, I almost never get any real time to play more than a few games at a time and I tend to goof around with silly decks and quickly leave alone decks that 'work so I'm almost always sitting at rank 20-15. Thus when I play a deck that's not absolute garbate I get around 70%+ win rates but never move much past rank 15 due to the sheer lack of games.
The pros boast about a 55-60% rate.. in upper legend. At rank 15 it's pretty much 90%+ given whenever I see one of them actually trying to climb.
Context is always key to numbers.
This ^^
It's the unfortunate side effect of having kids and a job. :-D I don't get much time to play these days which is a bummer. That said, I do also do a lot of Arena too (so I can try and keep up with the expansions etc)
And as this chap pointed out, an 80% win rate against ranks 20-10 is hardly the same as a 5-60% win rate against 5 - Legendary! ;-)
Gosh, reading through some of the posts in this thread it would appear that some people sure don't like the idea of others having a good time in the game!
That's a little depressing really. I guess some folks don't like the idea that other people can be good at something perhaps?
Agree with the OP. The key to reaching Legend is playing an insane amount of games. Every day.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
No, skill is the main difference between rank 15 and legend, not time. When I play against rank 5+ players they make a lot of misplays. 5-legend, thats where you never supposed to misplay, unless you play some OP cancer deck. I played with handlock mostly before I reached legend. And I remember I was stuck at rank 10, and I played quite a lot, while many players were reaching legend with the same decklist. Every month my top rank was higher and higher, then I reached rank 5 and understood if you want to reach legend with handlock (which was tier 3 deck at that time) you need to go on another level. Every month i climbed higher and higher and reached legend with handlock. That happened not because of time, but because of understanding the deck and understanding the game as a whole, knowledge of meta, decks, cards that are played in those decks, how to play around them, when not to overcommit, knowledge of how to trade right.
I would say 90% of it is time and the other 10% skill. For example I've started tracking on a daily basis my win/loss ratio and find that I'm hit 56-57% winrate almost every day. Well above what's considered necessary to reach legend. However I end up between ranks 8-11 because most days I have only about 8-9 games played or so because of long work days (and I watch a lotta tv lol).
So yes time is THE most import factor as right now on hitting legend under the current ladder system. We'll see when they revamp the ladder to see if the weight of skill comes into factor more than that 10% it is now.
Fuck cubelock
Idk if 15 is as close to Legend as 5. At 15 there are still a ton of people that clearly do not understand finer workings of the game (they misplay, over-commit, etc a lot more). I personally have only hit as high as 7 I believe, but the difference from 15-7 is pretty significant, but I imagine 5 and up is likely all the same.
I agree with you that the biggest factor is time, but in my experience the skill an knowledge at 15 is significantly different than it is at 7.
Nature is the Day.
Man is the Sun.
Woman is the Moon.
The Stone is the Sky.
The Art is the Way.
Both time and skill count,
Only experience tells you the difference. For instance I play the same amount of game every month, I do the daily quest and one or two day of grinding around ~25th of the month. I play around 80 games a month. In january 2016 I was able to create a competitive meta deck, at that time I was able to reached around rank 14. During this year it steadily progressed until I started been able to rank 5 end of the month. I still play the same amount of game every month.
What changed is :
What do I play ? I play a competitive deck adapted the meta I am against which I may change when reaching higher rank
How do I play ? I do less missplay and I actually know if/how a tech can improve my winrate
When do I play ? I play at different time of the month, I am basically doing a win streak from beginning to end of the month. How do I do that ?
When I start to play to ranked I first play a few games and I feel the skill level of the opponents. "Do i win to obvious missplay for opponents ? Do I easily outplay them ?" If both answer are true then I take the time for a small grinding session until I gain 2/3 rank. After that I will reach people close to my skill level : I normally stop after two consecutive defeats. Them 3 to 4 days later I do the same, players I won against 3 days ago reached the same rank as me but still have the same skill level, I do another 2 to 3 rank winstreak then stop. Repeat until the end of the month.
I do a final grinding around 25 because a lot of skilled player who did not play during the month start to do a rank 5 climb in the last days.
It may feel cynical but it is the way I found to make the best use of my limited play time.
Starting from rank 5 is a different story all together. no win streak and skill gabs start to make smaller difference. Still, if you don't improve the way you play you will find a impassible skill wall at one point or another.
In my experience, the decks people play at rank 15 and at legend (well, high legend, people play random crap at low legend since they can't drop out) are very different. People at low ranks seem to quite frequently play slow and greedy decks with no regard for the faster decks in the meta, whereas at higher ranks people are either playing the meta decks or decks that have a chance of beating them.
I have tried playing control decks at low ranks and it is awful, I hate playing control mirrors when they are just greed-offs and my opponent has 5 8-drops. So I play some aggro to rank 5, and then I actually get to enjoy the game.
Low legend is very similar to rank 15-5. Not everyone who gets to legend will continue to push higher.
The big differences are:
-Legend players make fewer misplays, particularly with difficult decks and against decks they are not familiar with.
-Legend players have more optimized decklists. Most low rank players do not use tech cards properly in netdecks, and do not have much success with experimental decks. For example, ask a random rank 15 and legend 500 player to build a control Shaman, guess who will make the better deck in general.
-Legend players think further ahead and have better risk assessment. Something like playing Lord Jaraxxus at the right moment is something legends are much better at.
This seems to be one of one of the best things I have read here for a while.
i have been playing for a few months, but this is the first month I have really made competitive decks and tried hard at the ladder, got tilted a few times but finally things started clicking and have been able to "sense" changes in metas at different states. These things and the ability to tech changes only come with expereience and learned skill.
im still learning and far from legend, but definitely think saying it's just time involved is not correct. (Though you do have to commit a ton of time unfortunately!)
edit: I meant to quote Alkoviaks comment but didn't insert it! I don't usually post replies- but thanks for the tip Alkoviak!
I don't get much time to play these days which is a bummer. That said, I do also do a lot of Arena too (so I can try and keep up with the expansions etc)
Gosh, reading through some of the posts in this thread it would appear that some people sure don't like the idea of others having a good time in the game!
That's a little depressing really. I guess some folks don't like the idea that other people can be good at something perhaps?
Time is the only skill this game takes. You have time. You have legend.