Hearthstone Ranked Play Changes Coming February - A Faster Climb
Climbing Hearthstone's ladder is going to get easier for players below Rank 10! Details below.
- There is no change from rank 10 to rank 1.
- Between rank 50 and 16, ranks only require 3 stars to level up. (2 less!)
- Between rank 15 and 11, ranks only require 4 stars to level up. (1 less!)
Quote from DaxxarriWe’ve heard a lot of feedback about the long climb in Ranked play, so starting with the February Ranked Play season, we’re introducing a quality of life change by reducing the number of Stars required to advance in many of the Ranks!
Currently, every Rank has five Stars. When the February Ranked Play Season starts, each Rank will have the following number of Stars instead:
Rank Stars Rank 50 to Rank 16 3 Stars per Rank Rank 15 to Rank 11 4 Stars per Rank Rank 10 to Rank 1 5 Stars per Rank
This will make your Ranked Play climb faster in the lower ranks, while preserving the more competitive Star values for the higher Ranks.
When the February Ranked Play Season begins, you will still be reset four Ranks lower than the highest Rank you achieved in the previous season, but “excess” Stars will be shed to align with the new value for the Rank you are moving to. For example, if your highest Rank in January was Rank 10 with five Stars, then when the February Season begins, you will be set to Rank 14 with four Stars. The “fifth” Star is no longer there, but you would still be at the highest value for the Rank you were moved to.
so they are actually reverting to the previous star rank system, huh
i would've NEVER expect that to happend so early
yes i knew that 5 stars for each rank was going to fail - noone have that much time to try and rank up
The above logic doesn't follow at all. win multiple games in a row -> be pitted against stronger opponents -> gain more rank if you can beat them -> faster decks still do this more efficiently than slower decks with the same winrate. Therefore "Starcraft 2" -like system in Hearthstone would have no impact on the incentive to play slower decks.
Why are so many people freaking out over this? Lower ranks need to climb as well. If you want a much higher rank, you earn it. Which is why there are no changes to the higher ranks.
"The concept is alarmingly simple!"
This is good because everyone gets better end of season rewards.
Yeaah well, in the end it's just some numbers changing. Again.
Still the exact same & lame ranked system we've had for 5 years now.
Ranking to rank 5 was quite quick anyway thanks to the consecutive wins bonus. It's the rank 5 - legend climb that it's damn long.
What I really dislike in particular, however, is how this kind of ladder climb favors aggro decks, as there is no reason to play a much slower deck, unless its win chance is incredibly higher than the aggro decks. I would much prefer a ladder working like the Starcraft 2's one, where you can gain/lose more MMR (more "stars") depending on the current rank difference between you and your opponent: that would give slower decks a reason to be played: by winning multiple games in a row, you would be pitted against much stronger opponents (much higher than your current rank), and would gain more stars if you would be able to win against them.
but Hearthstone doesn'T really benefit from a complicated ranking system below Legend. Legend itself already has a similar system (which is why slower decks are favoured for reaching high Legend, and only the best aggro decks make it there)
Rank 25-1 are basically just the entry barrier for the real competitive scene (since Legend placement influences your qualification for tournaments and not just reaching LEgend by itself)
That's why winstreak bonuses are there in the firrst place. They're supposed to allow better players to get through lower ranks quicker, while the last push from 5 to Legend is supposed to weed out those players whi might have only gotten this far by sheer luck.
Not saying achieving legend is some sort of testament to your skill, but it requires a minimum of dedication and attempts to stop casuals from just flooding into legend and diluting the competitive aspect (which happens anyways, but whatever)
I agree with you except for the fact that reaching legend is actually very hard.
Not because laddering itself is hard, but simply because you have to spend so many hours to achieve it.
Not everybody is a pro who's only job is hearthstone.
Most people barely have time to play a couple of games per day at most, and in those conditions it's almost impossible to reach legend, no matter how well you play.
In theory you would be right, as what I've talked about is more ore less how the legend ladder works. However, as someones else has pointed out already, reaching Legend at the moment requires a LOT of time. I've reached legend a couple of times, but only when in that month I had a couple of weeks off work: unless you are a pro player, your average win chance won't be incredibly high, and a reasonable 55% win rate across the field would require around 250 games to reach legend. That's around 40 hours, just to do the rank 5 - legend climb alone!
Of course it's important that legend remains a pretty hard achievement, but what I feel bad about is that the wall to getting legend is just partially given by a player's ability, but instead mostly by a player's time, especially given the monthly reset, which is just a dirty trick from Blizzard to force us to play a lot the next month again: in Starcraft2, for instance, your rank, or rather your hidden MMR, doesn't reset from one season to the other, and that's a great thing IMHO, as it puts the time factor in a much lower regard
True that. I've lost interest even for dailies just a few weeks after release. There are too many decks I've seen a lot in past few expansions.
Yay improvements to ladder!!!
...…."There is no change from rank 10 to rank 1."
Oh. nvm.
remove the 100gold cap or give more dust/cards/packs. or improve droprate. this last expansion has the worst pack to legendary ratio ever
Right now I am wondering how the Hearthpwn staff doesn't suffer from asshole melissophobia from so many shitty posters here.
News is gewd. Easier ranks. HP community has Lou Stools.
*Shrugs* okay.
HS QoL restoration?
Feelsrandomman
No, that's terrible. Now I have to become an ugly Leper Gnome and can't stay an awesome Angry Chicken if I want the card back! Except you can get it with 5 combined wins in both Standard and Wild. I sure hope so, I don't want to have this ungodly portrait next to my username.
I don't think they are reverting that part. The 4 ranks down every season is staying the same.
I think you misunderstood. I want to stay at Chicken Rank. But if they don't change the requirement of 5 wins to unlock the card back and still have the "you can't lose stars at this rank" in place, I'm forced to "rank up" to ugly Leper Gnome to get the card back. And in my opinion Angry Chicken > Leper Gnome. Actually it's Angry Chicken > everything else. So yeah... that sucks (for me).
This is true. You would have to concede 2 matches to keep that beautiful chicken.
I wish. I do it already to prevent winstreaks, but "you can't lose stars at this rank".
They did that in the first place because they changed the requirement for acquiring the season card back from reaching rank 15 to just winning 5 games