Hearthpwn

Yeah, it's true that you can reach Legend with a 51% winrate, but that means you gain one star per 50 games, meaning it'll take 1250 games to get from rank 5 to legend, which is more or less impossible unless you play full-time. You'd ideally want at least a 55% winrate, which would let you gain an average of one star per 10 games, meaning you could climb from 5 to legend in 250 games. Getting a 55% winrate at rank 5 is pretty tough and requires both a lot of skill/knowledge about the game and meta, and a good collection. So, no, not everyone can hit legend.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from Tze >>

 

 Yes, as a spectator I have an easier job, but as someone who played in tournaments, a few times even long ones, which was the case for this tournament he participated, I guess I was always lucky to maintain focus during games. I also admit, I have no idea what other sort of variable he may have experienced that day, which can always influence his state. Something as trivial as sleep deprivation does affect performances among other possible conditions.

 

I judged him on something I kind of consider ... it's not muscle memory, but it's just something you always check when you have a frozen board. I can't speak for the presence of Spellbreaker in the previous expansion meta, since I skipped Mean Streets, but I can say that Spellbreaker has returned to action since Old Gods. Particularly in decks like Reno Lock. But the mechanic of Silence has been around since the start of the game, and Ironbeak Owl silenced minions for lethal is something I'm sure he has done before, assuming he has been playing for long. It's not a that rare of an interaction, and from the view of an experienced played, it's the kind of interaction the played is expected to know. At least I expect a player at legend rank to be familiar with it. Maybe it's an unreasonable expectation, but I do have that expectation... As for Freeze Mage being relatively rare... I mean are you sure? I personally am always playing it, I run into others sometimes, but I haven't been playing enough to be able to get a good grip on the frequency of the matchup. I do find many Reno Locks, which are easy matchups for the Freeze Mage, so I kind of expect other players to be taking advantage aswell.

 

I'm not sure it's about feeling superior as much as it is about having expectations, at least for me. I have my expectations for what players should know and be able to do if they manage to reach Legend, and I have over time seen that expectation be completely shattered and replaced by disappointment at how low the "standard" can reach. Which I guess can make it seem like in a high horse, and obviously I'm not perfect, no one is. I just feel like too much randomness has ruined what once had more "prestige"...

Legend is not purely a time sink nor it is all skill. It used to be more about skill, but over time, randomness has allowed time sink to be a great factor. Yes, skilled players tend to have an easier time climbing the ranks and require less games to reach legend, but then, after a few more hundred games, so too do other less players, as they play long enough. It might seem to much, but it just takes a 25 lucky win streak to get there. Maybe with a few interruptions and a couple of bumps, but when the luck switch turns on again, the rest is achieved.

 

I would say the arguments are not flawed. This thread was a question on whether anyone can reach legend. Those "intentionally" narrowed examples are not a basis to determine Legend as all skill or all purely time sink, as much as it is to provide proof that anyone can achieve the rank, regardless of their experience and such. Even if you want to theorize that majority of legend is achieved by "skill", you have to concede that there are people who achieve it by other means, and those, as few as they may be, are proof of my point when I posted here, which was anyone could get there.

I started late last season and ended up being 1 star short of legend. Decided to start early this season and got legend 2 days ago :D.

Every month a lot of players try hard and get stuck at ranks 1-4, so I believe the answer is no.

Regarding the rng aspect, I think it makes the variance bigger, in a way that sometimes less skilled players make into legend and sometimes more skilled players get stuck, but it still requires skill to make it, and specially to make it easily.

The short answer is no. A lot of people just net deck and don't understand the meta. They don't understand how to tech in cards. They just play what they feel like at random and not thinking turns head and not understanding how their opponent might have answers to their board. They call ever deck they lose to cancer which has lost all meaning. Most people don't even understand what a cancer deck is and just throw it out to the wind like a used tampon. These people will never get to rank 5 and get salty because they don't the game. They think everything is RNG and they not have the ability to truly grasp a CCGs. They fail to realize how to understand the meta, what decks to play etc. Rank over sorry I get tired of people posting here, reddit, and the face book group is the worst. Rant Over!

Quote from Dudeman0311 >>

No.

There are 3 things a player needs to hit legend in this game, ill put them in order of least to most importance.

Time : You have to be able to play at least 200 games in the given month you are going for legend, i don't know what the least possible amount of games someone has hit legend in but id imagine somewhere in the ballpark of 150games, If you can't hit the minimum number of games, there isn't really a possibility of legend.

Skill : "skill" in this game really just translates to knowledge of the current meta and knowledge of how to play your deck in the current meta. If you have it, you can get legend. You also have to have knowledge of how the ladder works. Its much harder to grind high at the beginning of months after resets. The majority of those games should be mid-late month unless you're fortunate to not have any time constraints. 

Mindset : In my opinion this is the most important. The psychology of some people that play the game is the sole reason they will never hit legend. Many people get terrible anxiety even hitting the queue button on the ladder. Many people over analyze everything and switch decks constantly every 2-3 games never to aquire the skill level they will need with any one deck to get there. Many people make excuses of bad matchups, rng, bad draws, rigged matchmaking and anything to basically make themselves feel like its not them....its "the man" (blizzard) holding them back. The reality is all these things are equal for everyone and their mindset leads to them "giving up" and throwing out the "i don't care" line even though you know damn well they do. They are not mentally strong enough to break through these barriers. Usually to do it involves taking at hit to their pride, which some just can't do.

Quote from Dahrug >>

Every month a lot of players try hard and get stuck at ranks 1-4, so I believe the answer is no.

Regarding the rng aspect, I think it makes the variance bigger, in a way that sometimes less skilled players make into legend and sometimes more skilled players get stuck, but it still requires skill to make it, and specially to make it easily.

I think pretty much anyone can reach rank 5, and I don't even think it's that difficult. A few win streaks and you can climb very fast. The problem is that the meta changes from rank 4-1. That said, anyone that can win more than 50% above rank 5, and has the time to do so, can reach legend.

@DiamondDM13; I think that's the main point I'm trying to make, from my perspective (I don't play Freeze Mage, and even playing since beta I'm aware of the interaction with Silencing a Freeze Minion but it's not like it's second nature to me) something like the Auchenai fail was hilariously bad because I mained Priest up through TGT and at that point had already mentally attached Spell Damage calculations to Velen's Chosen. If you're piloting the deck someone fails with it's a lot easier to point at it and say "that was an easy thing to spot".

I think it's reasonable to have the expectation that Legend players know about something like Silence/Freeze mechanics or deathrattle order. I think it's also reasonable to expect Legend players to have an idea of how they win or lose in particular matchups, and be able to pilot their decks accordingly. I also think it's reasonable that even at high levels they make mistakes, because we're all human and very seldom do we see players with flawless technical play. You definitely do see players making those kind of mistakes and still hitting Legend (which I'd argue you always have), but the more important factor is what their play looks like over the course of the 200-600 games it took to get there. I don't know that there's objective proof one way or another that Legend is less impressive outside of Ranked Floors being a massive boost to players hitting Rank 1/2, but to me I think it's more to do with the fact that (as a community) we're putting less emphasis on Legend in general and more on Top 200.

Paveling Book is a polarizing discussion for sure, and I don't think I'd argue he wasn't getting lucky on pulling exactly what he needed. But the analysis on it showed that lucky events were actually more in Amnesiac's favor, and Babbling Book was not the only out that Pavel had (just the cheapest, and most optimal to play first). There were flashy RNG events certainly, but it was pretty far from him relying only on 1/15 every time to avoid losing. Obviously you're right, there wasn't skill in getting a random card; but realizing outs is exactly where the skill testing portion of that kind of play is. If getting cheated out of the game by randomness is unacceptable, I don't know if Hearthstone has ever really been a good game for that mindset. We've had Rag, we've had Boom, we've had Knife Juggler, we've had Sylv/MCT pulls, and all of them have been stealing wins since Beta.

To the Freeze Mages in casual: eat a bowl of rotten dicks.

Quote from Excellent20 >>

To the Freeze Mages in casual: eat a bowl of rotten dicks.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from kablooie00400589 >>

Since getting to legend means getting over 50% winrate against other players, no not everyone can get to legend. That would mean that everyone could get over 50% winrate and that is obviously not possible because for every win there must be a loss

 You are forgetting the fact that a good amount of your opponents at the rank 1 and 2 are actually Legend players already, you are not necessarily removing a win from another playing trying to reach legend, you remove a win from a player that already reached legend and can't be bumped down.

It is within most people's reach if they dedicate themselves to it. But so is running a marathon and most people don't do that because they don't want to do what they would need to do in order to do it.

So it is all about how you frame the question. Many are clearly not able to do it, but that is likely because they are not doing the things they would need to in order to do it, not because they are not capable of it if they made changes to how they play.

@Horkinger, well put. 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from Horkinger >>

Fact is that you play mostly against rank 1and 2 players and occasionally against legends, so that is negligible. But even if you  would only play against legend players you still need to get to rank 2 with an above 50% wr. Math says, not everyone can get there.

 Correct, but you play against a good amount of Legend players, not negligible, it is actually why in Theory, if every player has the same level of skill (or luck in certain cases) and time to play the games requires, they will all reach it. Not rank 2, you will get matched with Legend players even at lower ranks. The lowest I ever got matched with a Legend player was Rank 6, yes 6. It made no sense to me, but it happened :s... But those are really rare, mostly you face Legend players at Rank 1, 2, sometimes 3...

It's possible because lower amount of players you have at your rank, the more players you face from higher ranks. Once those players in Rank 1 and 2 all get Legend, and even if in theory, every rank 1 and 2 goes up to Legend, then you will get matched with Legend ranks instead of 1 and 2, so it's still possible to reach Legend, you just get to face more Legend players as there are less players at your rank.

That being said, the actual question the OP was asking was not if it's possible for all players to simultaneosly be Legend, but actually, if its possible for any player to reach Legend, or if there is some barrier to entry, so to say.

Quote from GMAlon >>

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from Horkinger >>

Fact is that you play mostly against rank 1and 2 players and occasionally against legends, so that is negligible. But even if you  would only play against legend players you still need to get to rank 2 with an above 50% wr. Math says, not everyone can get there.

 Correct, but you play against a good amount of Legend players, not negligible, it is actually why in Theory, if every player has the same level of skill (or luck in certain cases) and time to play the games requires, they will all reach it. Not rank 2, you will get matched with Legend players even at lower ranks. The lowest I ever got matched with a Legend player was Rank 6, yes 6. It made no sense to me, but it happened :s... But those are really rare, mostly you face Legend players at Rank 1, 2, sometimes 3...

It's possible because lower amount of players you have at your rank, the more players you face from higher ranks. Once those players in Rank 1 and 2 all get Legend, and even if in theory, every rank 1 and 2 goes up to Legend, then you will get matched with Legend ranks instead of 1 and 2, so it's still possible to reach Legend, you just get to face more Legend players as there are less players at your rank.

That being said, the actual question the OP was asking was not if it's possible for all players to simultaneosly be Legend, but actually, if its possible for any player to reach Legend, or if there is some barrier to entry, so to say.

 Actually, now it's even easier with the new rank 5 floor.

Anyone who lose a game at rank 5 and 0 stars (or win a legend player) inflate the number of stars in the system, so in theory if many people will play lots of matches at rank 5, we should see higher percentage of legend players.

In theory if EVERY player who gets to rank 5 and 0 stars will concede 25 times, we will have extremely high star inflation at the [legend - 5] range that everybody should be able to get to legend.