I dont know if anyone else has this issue, but I do really like playing hearthstone.
I also have like super bad anxiety, which keeps me from playing ladder, even though I have great decks. I can play maybe two or three games, and even if i win all of them i get too nervous to keep playing for some reason.
When it comes to battlegrounds or non heroic duels, i can play fine. It's just arena and ranked play that make my anxiety go through the roof.
This used to happen to me when I first started playing ladder, so I totally know where you're coming from. It's gone away for me, but sometimes it does creep back up, especially when I'm only a few wins away from a new rank. At least you recognize it! That's the most important thing.
This used to be a huge thing for me. When it comes to competitive games, I have really bad performance anxiety. It's sort of loosened up for me recently, since I've become more confident in my skills and deck knowledge.
I think what really got me comfortable in Ranked was really wanting that Golden Hero Portrait for Hunter (and later on, the 1k wins portrait), at that point I'd just play whatever I wanted in Ranked and take whatever W's I could, eventually I'd get to my goal. Every game I play may as well be in Ranked if that's what I want, right?
Of course I do play in Casual queue when I'm playing purely fun decks, with the hope that I match up against the same. However, this doesn't always happen lol.
Thanks all. I've mostly been playing casual, which I have no problem with. Every once in awhile ill que into a ranked game, and it seems every win i get in ranked it gets harder and harder to click the play button lol.
Occasionally it happens to me when I feel like I can win a difficult game, for no reason at all my heart starts racing and I'm terrified to lose the game or make misplays. Sometimes I breathe and calm down, sometimes I just concede to punish myself because I don't play video games to feel stress or anxiety, I do it to actively escape from it. Like most people I think, but we tend to forget that in the middle of the game.
Rank floors have been helpful too, I experiment much more than I used to and it's less painful to be on a losing streak.
Only under certain circumstances - like when the opponent plays a Sorcerer's Apprentice. Other than that, I sometimes feel slightly anxious when playing the first game of the day, but after it's over the anxiety goes away. For me, it's the thought of wasting my time that does it, that's why I gave the Apprentice example, I usually lost the turn one gets played.
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I love you Dreadsteed, I will never disenchant you!
Whenever I start playing a new game ''competitively'', at first there's some nerves, but after 2-3 days that's all gone for me. Whether it's HS, Apex, Arena in WoW, HotS, CS, you name it. Just keep grinding and it'll disappear.
It's common, competitive anxiety has been a thing forever. It happens to a lot of people, even if you're doing great you start feeling like you can't play anymore and that ends up doing worse for your climbing than actually losing. I get anxiety as well but I just understood that the worst thing that can happen is losing one game. I've never tried reaching legend cause my anxiety could get pretty bad but I kinda decided to go for it next month. I usually only got to diamond 10 and then before not caring and being afraid to ladder I would just stop playing for that month. But this time around I started laddering with a friend and yesterday I got from D10 to D4 pretty quick. I even got denied at rank 6 3 stars like 3 times. I was playing Heal Priest cause I was finding nothing but Rush Warrior and Face Hunter and then the first game at D6 3 stars I got Controlock, so insta-loss pretty much. Then after I think 2 more games I was back on 3 stars and boom, fricking Control Shaman with C'thun, I literally haven't played a single Shammy in like a month. The last one was against OTK DH and it was almost another defeat but I actually teched in Illucia before that last game, just cause if I kept losing the last game to some stupid slow win condition I was gonna rip my eyes off. I stole the DH combo and got to D5.
Next time around I'll get to D5 on the first couple days, with the help of the stars bonus and then from there I'll probably play with my friend again to gain some confidence and then push all the way to legend. The best advice I can give you is just to not care that much about losing. I know it's not easy but really, if you lose a game then you just lose one star, don't let it get to you, don't get tilted, just breath and try to be a better player next game. Even games where you literally can't do anything to win (Like control priest vs controlock) are not as bad. Yes, it sucks to lose a game from turn 0 but whatever it's just one star, you win next game and nothing happened. Also just stick to a good deck, don't switch around every loss, you get better at a certain deck the more you play it, so just keep going, if the deck is tier 1-2 then you can get to legend with it.
I'm with you, it's like "I'm going to lose and going back to bronze" and I play 1 match every two hours or so, right now I'm gold 8 and it's pretty scary for me another match, funny enougj, I got the On a roll 9/10 achievement today
This used to happen to me back when there were no ranked floors and you could downspiral all to the lowest rank and before every big milestone when they git introduced. Tiday it would probably only happen when i reach diamond 1, since i still didn‘t manage to reach legend. But since it‘s way too much of a grind for my taste to get to that point i don‘t have any ladder anxiety anymore.
I used to get anxiety about ranked mode before they implemented the new rewards track. For years I only played for the 5 ranked wins a month to get the card back and then it was back to casual for fun games. But once achievements were tied to ranked games it became my focus and I have hit legend every month since then. I don’t feel anxious anymore except at diamond 1 or when I am like 11-2 in arena.
Yep, me too. Just like you, i play max 2-3 (ranked) games a day. It's usually more at the beginnig of an expansion, but after the meta has settled i can't play more than that.
I just finish the daily/weekly quests and even that can be hard sometimes. It sucks tbh.
Ok, I'm gonna write one of my patented walls of text here, but I think this one might be worth a look. Definitely worth a laugh or two if nothing else.
I used to have extreme performance anxiety. It manifested in all sorts of ways, some of which were incredibly embarassing, and I'm not gonna lie, the first time I was expected to perform sexually, I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack.
A series of events happened in life that completely and utterly cured me of all anxiety, so much so that I have been accused of going too far in the other direction, particularly by judges who get ticked off by how rude I am to opposing counsel at times. I can't in good conscience recommend anyone go out and make any of these events happen to you, but at the end of this I'll recommend ways you can have similar but less dangerous cures to anxiety.
So, first I got in a car wreck in which I was thrown 40 feet away from a vehicle. When the bystanders got to me, I was laughing hysterically and they thought I was in shock. I was NOT in shock. I was laughing because I knew the absurdity of the whole thing, that I had been chastised by my family for driving a Firebird because it was a gas guzzler and not practical, and yet if I had bought any of the cars everyone had recommended, I would have died or been a vegetable after breaking my neck on the hardtop roof of those vehicles. Instead, I got up and walked away from an 80 mph car accident.
Second, I got shot in the head. Literally, I walked up on a car jack in progress, the guy turned with a pistol and attempted to blow my brains out. It was a small caliber weapon and I caught the bullet at a shallow enough angle that it ricocheted off my skull leaving me bleeding profusely and concussed, but also leaving me one of the few folks that can say they survived a bullet to the head.
Third . . . I can't talk about. It was really bad and all I can say is if I live the rest of my life and all the normal bad shit of a life comes my way, this will in all likelihood remain the top of the list of horrible shit to happen.
If all of that sounded like a weird flex, I guess you could take it that way, but the point was not to brag. The point was, anxiety CAN be cured by changes in perspective, and it usually takes highs and lows in life to change perspective.
I wouldn't recommend hitting a tree at 80mph or taking a bullet to the skull to cure ladder anxiety, but I WOULD suggest you take a look at the best and worst times of life and see if they can derive some perspective as to how utterly, insanely irrelevant a game on the internet is.
Hope it helps.
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Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
100% yes. I'm extremely scared of playing something that is not tier 1 to not drop ranks, even tho I am already Legend. I keep feeling that I need to fulfill some sort of standard, so have a >50% winrate with everything I play. Also, whenever I queue into a game, I already assume I'm gonna lose and sometimes predict like 6+ turns forward how that loss is gonna happen, and I get really annoyed when it happens anyway. I very often feel extreme pressure when I play.
I used to play Casual for like 2,5 years before I finally decided to go ranked... And I did this only because they are forcing it with golden/1k win heroes and now achievements. I'd love them to add Casual wins to the portrait counts, but unfortunately I doubt it's gonna happen.
I remember I used to play casual when I started to play Hearthstone. Now, I wish I had started playing ladder before because casual victories don't count to the 500 wins goal haha. A game ranking doesn't validate you as a person and, like many things in live, your fear will reduce with each game you play.
I don't want to sound like a psychiatrist but if you have fear to the ladder, it's quite possible you have anxiety problems in other things, so I'd say you you could use hearthstone as a way to overcome your fear to the fear.
I dont know if anyone else has this issue, but I do really like playing hearthstone.
I also have like super bad anxiety, which keeps me from playing ladder, even though I have great decks. I can play maybe two or three games, and even if i win all of them i get too nervous to keep playing for some reason.
When it comes to battlegrounds or non heroic duels, i can play fine. It's just arena and ranked play that make my anxiety go through the roof.
I feel you brother...your not alone.
This used to happen to me when I first started playing ladder, so I totally know where you're coming from. It's gone away for me, but sometimes it does creep back up, especially when I'm only a few wins away from a new rank. At least you recognize it! That's the most important thing.
This used to be a huge thing for me. When it comes to competitive games, I have really bad performance anxiety. It's sort of loosened up for me recently, since I've become more confident in my skills and deck knowledge.
I think what really got me comfortable in Ranked was really wanting that Golden Hero Portrait for Hunter (and later on, the 1k wins portrait), at that point I'd just play whatever I wanted in Ranked and take whatever W's I could, eventually I'd get to my goal. Every game I play may as well be in Ranked if that's what I want, right?
Of course I do play in Casual queue when I'm playing purely fun decks, with the hope that I match up against the same. However, this doesn't always happen lol.
please don't bully my son
Thanks all. I've mostly been playing casual, which I have no problem with. Every once in awhile ill que into a ranked game, and it seems every win i get in ranked it gets harder and harder to click the play button lol.
Occasionally it happens to me when I feel like I can win a difficult game, for no reason at all my heart starts racing and I'm terrified to lose the game or make misplays. Sometimes I breathe and calm down, sometimes I just concede to punish myself because I don't play video games to feel stress or anxiety, I do it to actively escape from it. Like most people I think, but we tend to forget that in the middle of the game.
Rank floors have been helpful too, I experiment much more than I used to and it's less painful to be on a losing streak.
Only under certain circumstances - like when the opponent plays a Sorcerer's Apprentice. Other than that, I sometimes feel slightly anxious when playing the first game of the day, but after it's over the anxiety goes away. For me, it's the thought of wasting my time that does it, that's why I gave the Apprentice example, I usually lost the turn one gets played.
I love you Dreadsteed, I will never disenchant you!
And I thought that I was the only one!! Me too, I have this irrational behavior and I am trying to shake it off.
that's something new.... but I can give you a good advice, just play many games and it will gone (play 50 games per day).
Whenever I start playing a new game ''competitively'', at first there's some nerves, but after 2-3 days that's all gone for me. Whether it's HS, Apex, Arena in WoW, HotS, CS, you name it. Just keep grinding and it'll disappear.
It's common, competitive anxiety has been a thing forever. It happens to a lot of people, even if you're doing great you start feeling like you can't play anymore and that ends up doing worse for your climbing than actually losing. I get anxiety as well but I just understood that the worst thing that can happen is losing one game. I've never tried reaching legend cause my anxiety could get pretty bad but I kinda decided to go for it next month. I usually only got to diamond 10 and then before not caring and being afraid to ladder I would just stop playing for that month. But this time around I started laddering with a friend and yesterday I got from D10 to D4 pretty quick. I even got denied at rank 6 3 stars like 3 times. I was playing Heal Priest cause I was finding nothing but Rush Warrior and Face Hunter and then the first game at D6 3 stars I got Controlock, so insta-loss pretty much. Then after I think 2 more games I was back on 3 stars and boom, fricking Control Shaman with C'thun, I literally haven't played a single Shammy in like a month. The last one was against OTK DH and it was almost another defeat but I actually teched in Illucia before that last game, just cause if I kept losing the last game to some stupid slow win condition I was gonna rip my eyes off. I stole the DH combo and got to D5.
Next time around I'll get to D5 on the first couple days, with the help of the stars bonus and then from there I'll probably play with my friend again to gain some confidence and then push all the way to legend. The best advice I can give you is just to not care that much about losing. I know it's not easy but really, if you lose a game then you just lose one star, don't let it get to you, don't get tilted, just breath and try to be a better player next game. Even games where you literally can't do anything to win (Like control priest vs controlock) are not as bad. Yes, it sucks to lose a game from turn 0 but whatever it's just one star, you win next game and nothing happened. Also just stick to a good deck, don't switch around every loss, you get better at a certain deck the more you play it, so just keep going, if the deck is tier 1-2 then you can get to legend with it.
Sometimes when I finish a game I realise that my heart is beating fast and my hands and feet are cold
I just feel like they are all AI and I dont care lmao
I'm with you, it's like "I'm going to lose and going back to bronze" and I play 1 match every two hours or so, right now I'm gold 8 and it's pretty scary for me another match, funny enougj, I got the On a roll 9/10 achievement today
This used to happen to me back when there were no ranked floors and you could downspiral all to the lowest rank and before every big milestone when they git introduced. Tiday it would probably only happen when i reach diamond 1, since i still didn‘t manage to reach legend. But since it‘s way too much of a grind for my taste to get to that point i don‘t have any ladder anxiety anymore.
I used to get anxiety about ranked mode before they implemented the new rewards track. For years I only played for the 5 ranked wins a month to get the card back and then it was back to casual for fun games. But once achievements were tied to ranked games it became my focus and I have hit legend every month since then. I don’t feel anxious anymore except at diamond 1 or when I am like 11-2 in arena.
Yep, me too. Just like you, i play max 2-3 (ranked) games a day. It's usually more at the beginnig of an expansion, but after the meta has settled i can't play more than that.
I just finish the daily/weekly quests and even that can be hard sometimes. It sucks tbh.
Ok, I'm gonna write one of my patented walls of text here, but I think this one might be worth a look. Definitely worth a laugh or two if nothing else.
I used to have extreme performance anxiety. It manifested in all sorts of ways, some of which were incredibly embarassing, and I'm not gonna lie, the first time I was expected to perform sexually, I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack.
A series of events happened in life that completely and utterly cured me of all anxiety, so much so that I have been accused of going too far in the other direction, particularly by judges who get ticked off by how rude I am to opposing counsel at times. I can't in good conscience recommend anyone go out and make any of these events happen to you, but at the end of this I'll recommend ways you can have similar but less dangerous cures to anxiety.
So, first I got in a car wreck in which I was thrown 40 feet away from a vehicle. When the bystanders got to me, I was laughing hysterically and they thought I was in shock. I was NOT in shock. I was laughing because I knew the absurdity of the whole thing, that I had been chastised by my family for driving a Firebird because it was a gas guzzler and not practical, and yet if I had bought any of the cars everyone had recommended, I would have died or been a vegetable after breaking my neck on the hardtop roof of those vehicles. Instead, I got up and walked away from an 80 mph car accident.
Second, I got shot in the head. Literally, I walked up on a car jack in progress, the guy turned with a pistol and attempted to blow my brains out. It was a small caliber weapon and I caught the bullet at a shallow enough angle that it ricocheted off my skull leaving me bleeding profusely and concussed, but also leaving me one of the few folks that can say they survived a bullet to the head.
Third . . . I can't talk about. It was really bad and all I can say is if I live the rest of my life and all the normal bad shit of a life comes my way, this will in all likelihood remain the top of the list of horrible shit to happen.
If all of that sounded like a weird flex, I guess you could take it that way, but the point was not to brag. The point was, anxiety CAN be cured by changes in perspective, and it usually takes highs and lows in life to change perspective.
I wouldn't recommend hitting a tree at 80mph or taking a bullet to the skull to cure ladder anxiety, but I WOULD suggest you take a look at the best and worst times of life and see if they can derive some perspective as to how utterly, insanely irrelevant a game on the internet is.
Hope it helps.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
100% yes. I'm extremely scared of playing something that is not tier 1 to not drop ranks, even tho I am already Legend. I keep feeling that I need to fulfill some sort of standard, so have a >50% winrate with everything I play. Also, whenever I queue into a game, I already assume I'm gonna lose and sometimes predict like 6+ turns forward how that loss is gonna happen, and I get really annoyed when it happens anyway. I very often feel extreme pressure when I play.
I used to play Casual for like 2,5 years before I finally decided to go ranked... And I did this only because they are forcing it with golden/1k win heroes and now achievements. I'd love them to add Casual wins to the portrait counts, but unfortunately I doubt it's gonna happen.
I remember I used to play casual when I started to play Hearthstone. Now, I wish I had started playing ladder before because casual victories don't count to the 500 wins goal haha. A game ranking doesn't validate you as a person and, like many things in live, your fear will reduce with each game you play.
I don't want to sound like a psychiatrist but if you have fear to the ladder, it's quite possible you have anxiety problems in other things, so I'd say you you could use hearthstone as a way to overcome your fear to the fear.
My custom expansion: Game of Thrones