Hearthpwn

The only valid way to get to Legend is to only play Priest, on an IPad whilst skydiving, anything else is just tryharding.

Quote from Sayuh >>

I pretty much agree with you: before when you faced a legendary cardback player, it was like "oh shiit I'm against a really good player, it's gonna be harder than usual !" because you knew he was good.. But that was like 2years ago, now it's pretty different, there are like 8k legend each month. Legendary cardback players are still pretty good ones, but it's not the same flavour anymore

The best players in the world hit legend every month multiple times, if you want to keep being good you hit legend every month, you learn new metas and decks while getting better at the game. If you are not challenging yourself it's hard to get better imo

As for card backs the most impressive ones (ones I see the least) obviously first comes that china gold one, then the tespa and maybe like tavern event one, blizzcon ones, first and second season card backs 

No matter the amount of 'easy' decks, getting to legend is still an achievement: http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/15955974/hearthside-chat-youre-better-than-you-think-9-18-2014.

Sure, it's more difficult to reach legend with a more difficult deck, or with a deck that is bad in the current meta, but that doesn't take away from the fact that you reached the top of the ladder while 75% of the people hang out between rank 25 and rank 15.

Furthermore, I think people underestimate the skill necassary to reach legend with say face hunter or shaman. You still have to mulligan correctly and play different versus aggro and control and calculate if you should control the board a bit or go for the race. There are still many ways to play these deck badly, and doing so will have a large impact on your winrate.

Even when using aggro shaman its hard to hit legend. If its so easy then why do I see tons of aggro shamans at ranks 5-25?

It'd be great if there was an indicator on the Legend card back itself which states in how many games you reached Legend and that gets updated if you reached Legend in fewer games a season after that. That way people that reached Legend still have something to strive for and to show off, namely in how many actual games they reached Legend.

If this would be implemented I think I'd be more afraid of someone with a "Legend 80" card back and less so from someone with a "Legend 480" card back.

Well, I have legend card back and don't give a damn what everyone thinks when I'm using it.

I don't think I'm better than anyone for having it as well.

If you want the card back, fight for it, climb the ladder with any deck you want and be proud of your achievement. Just stop thinking you are better or worst than anyone who don't have it or used miracle rogue or Yoggs casino mage to take it.

It still means at least something. If you reach legend you are still part of an extreme low playerbase that reached it. But the difference between a low legend player and a high legend player is still big. I had seen some terrible misplays of people with the legend cardback.

In my opinion the real good players no longer use the legend cardback. If you see it is mostly a player tryharding to legend one time. It still means he did something great. But it does not mean he is better than someone on rank 10 without the urge to play to legend.

Getting to legend requires a lot of effort no matter what people say. If you look at it statistically it takes about 150 games from rank 5 to legend even with a 60% win-rate. From my experience everyone saying "deck X makes it an easy task" or "I could get to legend if I had no life" have no clue what they are talking about.

When you reach the high ranks (3 through legend) your opponents are almost certainly net-decking and they make very few - if any - mistakes. This means you have to play flawlessly also; and believe me: If there was one OP deck to rule them all then all people would play that deck. As it is I meet tons of different variations of decks on those ranks so the single OP deck is a myth. All decks have counters and sometimes you just meet a lot of counter decks and draw horribly. If we go back to the 60% win-rate deck you will still encounter 5-6 or even 7 game lose streaks on your way to legend (statistically speaking - thankfully it is not guaranteed). Now try going from early rank 2 to late rank 4 over 10 games and keep your concentration. Now that is a task that takes focus - and it is a task you must endure to reach legend rank.

People can use whichever cardback they desire, but the whole "getting to legend is actually easy" thing I find is a load of BS. Put your cards where your mouth is :-)

My thinking is if you're playing a tier 1 deck and you can't reach top 100 you're not that good. Maybe half of it is salty thinking but when I see all those shamans at legend 1k I think they must be stupid.

As opposed to what people will often make you feel, something is only as valuable as you make it. You exist in the world of you. Everything is subjective and the comparison is always you. 

If it was very difficult for you to reach Legend, then it is valuable (if you value hard work of course). 

Quote from Grier78 >>

Quote from Sayuh >>

I pretty much agree with you: before when you faced a legendary cardback player, it was like "oh shiit I'm against a really good player, it's gonna be harder than usual !" because you knew he was good.. But that was like 2years ago, now it's pretty different, there are like 8k legend each month. Legendary cardback players are still pretty good ones, but it's not the same flavour anymore

 You do realise that 8,000 players out of the total player pool is a very small select group of people don't you?

Far less than 1% of players make it to Legend each month.

Quote from Maukiepaukie >>

Quote from szabozalan >>

Quote from Maukiepaukie >>

Quote from claeshj >>

People saying "he got easy legend for using deck X" don't really know how things work. Of course there are decks more competitive then others, but once you hit the high ranks, everyone plays fully compete tube decks, and any single deck won't carry you. 

At this point you have to adjust to get ahead. When a so called "OP deck" appears, lots of people play it. And if you are not better than the others playing the same deck, you will inherently not get above 50% win rate against them. 

 Well, you can easily reach legend with an aggro shaman without having to put too much thought into it. Every turn pretty much plays itself. It's pretty much a gamble because all you can do is play your minions on curve and make favorable trade; there really isn't that much of a thought process involved. And obviously, there is a point where you can't keep cheesing out wins with an aggro shaman by just playing your minions on curve and primarily going face, but I believe that point is already past the legend-mark.

 You are simply wrong on that.

 I don't think I am. I actually played aggro shaman for a short time back when I had this though process that I didn't care what I used to reach legend, as long as I got it. I got to rank 3 with it and then quit because it was too boring. I hadn't played aggro shaman before, but there was very little though. Seriously, the hardest calculations I had to make were the ones where I had to ''calculate'' how my next turn would play out and what my opponent had in his hand.

It's lost a fair amount of appeal.  Nowadays, it's just assumed someone had six hours a day for a month to spend playing Secret Paladin or Zoo which would inevitably get them there, and you crap your pants seeing someone trolling high ranks with the Classic back.  I'm most impressed by the Pandaria and Black Temple card backs, which are more rare these days and show how long someone's been at it.  I heard a suggestion that they change the Legend back for each Standard year, which would make the current back appealing, as well as the old one more rare and impressive with time, which seemed like a cool idea.

I do agree with the value of the card has decreased significantly over time, few days ago I was playing renoyogg mage on ladder to complete dailies and I lost to aggro hunter/shaman cant remember, right after the game he added me and first thing he asked was "did I get to legend by myself?" that made me giggle a bit.

It is definitely not a good indication to measure someone's skill especially in Arena, I realize most of the very good player in Arena don't bother about the card back.

Quote from crazyferrari >>

Even when using aggro shaman its hard to hit legend. If its so easy then why do I see tons of aggro shamans at ranks 5-25?

I think it still pretty impressive but it doesn't mean they are a good player overall, just that they are very good with one specific deck and have lot of free time to play it. I recently played someone in arena with a golden mage portrait and legend card back at 4-0 but they made some of the worst plays I've ever seen. They did things like frostbolt my face on turn 2 and ping face instead of pinging my divine shield minion. Most likely they've played a thousand games with freeze mage but don't really know how the mage class works outside of freeze mage. 

most of the people i know except 2-3 ( out of 30) stopped pushing for legend from gvg. personally i got to top 100's in naxx  with taunt druid while the meta was hunter cancer ... that undertaker and unleash drawing like crazy...and even arrived to high ranks in some open tournaments.

but for most people once you achieved once why even try it again... The value or de cardback is low.. for example before the expansion i did not played for 3 months... so when i came back tot he game i was quite bad because i forgot half of the cards and did not knew the meta.. i even know plenty legends players that barely  connect from gvg!

For me its the penultimate goal in this game.  In ranked there's really just 1) Gold Heroes 2) Legend.  No one cares about win rates or rankings.  Yes its a time sink, and yes there are easy decks to get there but no deck is guaranteed.   Even Shaman has counters.  

I don't think Secretdin and other decks have diluted the value of Legend.  The card back puts a target on your back and everything is scrutinized.

It's also a huge time investment.   I'll only go for legend if I hit rank 5 with 10 days left.   I've gotten close twice and grinding in last few hours is the most depressing thing ever.  The whole 'just use x deck for easy wins' isn't true either because ranks 5-1 is full of counters for T1 decks.  

The funny thing is, I could probably get it with Freeze Mage; but since I have my Gold Mage, I feel like I'm wasting games.

i would say nothing, there are so many people having it after secret paladin became a thing. They should have a card back for top 100 at the end of the season