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.
Hell, it was about time.
In the "art" of the 50-26 ranks i see icons for Year of the Kraken and Mammoth, tho no Raven. At first i thought it might have been a ninja spoiler of what might come, but probably not.
I can`t see how this can make the experience better for the newer / less good players. Rank 20 to 16 will still be camped by ex legend players, who wants to farm the low ranks for easy wins and quick gold. What we need is a new mechanic that for example everybody who got legend at any point can`t drop below rank 10 or something like that.
Humans like rewards. A Rank up feels like a reward. Human feels better.
It's in the nature of humanity. If it happens faster they might play more. No matter if they hit a wall faster.
And tbh, there is no difference between rank 20 and 5 (and high legend if you only look at the decks played, but the skillevel is definetly different). If you can rank to 15 you could easily get rank 5 with time.
Nice change.
I'm a casual player and this is a huge reprieve. It's not that I'm a bad player or have a small collection (been playing since Naxx), but the time requirement to grind to even level 10 is exhaustive. Between my family and job, my gaming time is whatever I can eek out on the couch during the weekends, not much else. Hopefully this will make it so that my journey past rank 10 will be more consistent.
I've seen Meta decks at 20. Can't imagine being a new player in that rank.
"Seen meta decks" means nothing. People like to optimize, some newbies may choose to craft a meta deck from day 1 after reading the forums. You'll probably find meta decks even at rank 50 if your sample size is large enough. The difference is that at rank 20 (which you mention), you may see 10% of the decks being meta with some missing cards (i.e. only 1 copy of Corpsetaker). At rank 10, 90% of the decks you see will be meta and rest assured they'll have both Corseptakers.
well, they kept the 4 ranks drop only at the end of the season, is not a full revert.
Great change to motivate the noobs and people with less time on their hands.
So we switched from 3-4-5 star system to all 5 stars, only to go back to 3-4-5 star system... Neat!
But now we got 25 more levels! ... which you'll never see unless you're just starting out...
I started a new account when they implemented that 50-26 starting zone, just to check it out. I would have loved to climb through that with only 3 stars. By rank 44 I started seeing pretty consistent Zoo Locks, Odd Rogues, etc! Made it a little difficult as I was trying to do the climb without buying packs, and without disenchanting anything other than cards I had 3+ of.
Let's not forget that we keep the new "4 levels lower" ranked reset, rather than the old "one star per level above 25". This makes a huuuuuge difference compared to the original system
A pretty welcome change for all casual players. When you start seeing meta decks at rank 15, 5 stars per rank is simply too much.
You start seeing meta decks when you hit rank 20. There are a lot of people who are grinding for gold at that level.
Why not tell the truth? We are reverting back after making a bad change. Marketing language is really annoying sometimes.
How is this reverting back? They're keeping ranks 10 and above identical, and making a change to 11 and below that makes it different than it ever was (15 and above used to be 5 set stars, and before that, more stars were needed, a lot more than 5, for higher ranks)
Exactly my thought! They reverting back the change made... just not being sincere about it.
The_Quicksand, prior to the ladder update that made every rank 5 stars, this is exactly how things were, minus the "only dropping four ranks at reset" part. When they made made that change many people in the HS community spoke out about how giving more stars to lower ranks was a bad move. Now Blizzard is saying "Shit, they were right!" and reverting back to the 3-4-5 Star system while keeping the 4 rank drop, as it should have been from the start.