I recently made a second account (JimRaynor) to see what is new. I play (and post) on my main account, named Slim seen here. I play in legend on that account but I got frustrated because I play a hunter and couldn’t get beast hunter to do well in that bracket and face hunter is pretty boring to me at least.
Anyway, for those of you who haven’t tried to make a new account recently, there is an apprentice league comprised of 40 ranks. You can get a bonus of up to 2 stars but not more for win streaks. You also can’t lose rank.
I haven’t bought any cards and my experience was as I thought it would be for the first 5-7 or so ranks to about to rank 32 ish. However, in the twenties I started to play against almost full standard decks. I am around rank 15 now and I am playing high warlord ranked people somehow.
I am guessing that, based on the ranks I see, there are a bunch of people who have played in the apprentice league for a long time unless somehow I am getting matched up against actual ladder players. Or, in the alternative, there are apprentice players who buy a lot of cards.
The climb just to get to standard ranked is a lot more involved than I thought! It has been fun until recently when I am totally outgunned by players with complete or near complete standard meta decks. Can Anyone else chime in with your apprentice experience? Do they match apprentice players against actual standard ladder players?
Any info re: my question(s) is helpful and I appreciate it!
I think you ought to watch Trumps free to play series since he goes into great detail over his climb out of apprentice ranks.
The upshot I think is that a lot of the players in apprentice, maybe most of them, are people playing on secondary accounts. The competition is very fierce and the grind is very long. Good luck!
3 Likes
Thanks so much for the information! I honestly have no clue how new players are expected to enjoy the apprentice league ffs. I am at rank 8 now but I’ve had to pay attention and redo my deck a bunch to meet the meta.
If I were starting now and knew nothing about the game, and not paying money to buy cards, then I wouldn’t last long in Hearthstone. I am starting to suspect this shi* is rigged like this intentionally so new players feel like they have to buy a bunch of cards. UGH
2 Likes
Well when I started last year I just took a long long time to get out of Apprentice. I mostly played single player and only did ranked on weekends and failed my way out of there in about two months.
The funny thing is that bronze, silver, and I’d even say gold I found to be much easier than apprentice, lol
2 Likes
Glad you stuck with it! Way to go!
1 Like
The actual situation is that you are the rule. Not the exception.
The Apprentice Rank is full of smurfs such as yourself.
So actual new players have a horrible experience trying to win against legend players.
4 Likes
This is probably correct.
Unlike you, a new player will take more time to reach rank 20 and once there it will be stuck unless it can make a good deck.
It would be interesting to have some data about how much time a real new player spend to get out of the early 40 ranks; if I had to guess, I would say 1 expansion at least (so 4 months), unless they spend $ to get cards quickly
do we know this for sure?
1 Like
The percentage is unknown.
But it’s pretty much the same thing from every single “I made second account” thread.
Zeddy at one point held a contest encouraging people to get a second account. The winner was the fastest person to reach Legend.
2 Likes
A smurf lol. I didn’t intend to make anyone mad. I was just surprised at the competitiveness in apprentice mode. I don’t follow streams and didn’t see any posts about this. Anyway cheers, good luck and have fun in the new season!
1 Like
Does the apprentice league grant XP and gold? I’m asking because, maybe, you can try and optimize your deck.
It’s a shame that this ladder is infested with good decks and veteran players. I can see that completely turning new players off. Certainly that’s contrary to the actual goal of acquiring and retaining new players. This needs to be looked at.
2 Likes
When I created my EU account, I had no idea the slog it would be to get through apprentice mode. I cobbled together what cards I could but was constantly facing meta decks. Stick with one deck you enjoy, try to build around it with free packs and any dust you can get. Prepare for a long grind:)
2 Likes
Don’t worry about it. It’s not yours or anyone else’s fault but Blizzards. If they wanted to make it fairer for new players they could but I assume they calculated that it won’t pay off financially so they won’t.
2 Likes
How?
The only solution to the Smurfing I can imagine is to gate the apprentice Ranks with a very small fee.
The only solution I see to stop the meta decks is to limit the card rarity to the Core Set, and slowly upgrade it as the person moves through the Apprentice Ranks.
Well for one thing they could modify their matchmaking algorithms and parameters.
As far as I’m aware in the apprentice leagues you get matched by rank not MMR which is obviously the wrong way to do it if there’s lots of veteran players in there. If your MMR is high enough that you should be fighting legend players then it shouldn’t pit you against lower MMR apprentice players.
Another possibility would be to allow you to rank out of apprentice while playing against the AI. It might take some fiddling but I’m sure they could make an AI that is suitably challenging for the ranks. They should keep the xp gain the same as single player so there’s incentive to still play ranked mode.
New player to hearthstone just started playing around 2 weeks ago but yes, the apprentice ranks got to point of not being enjoyable. Came into the game thinking I would first try and build my own deck with what I had but after rank 30 got to point that deck I was using wasn’t cutting it to what I now know was budget builds of meta decks or surprising actual full built tiered decks I was going against. Kinda wish cards weren’t so expensive to make or you got back more than 1/4-1/8tth of a cards value for disenchanting I’ve spent about 30-40 dollars on the game just because it was free and figured that’s what I’d pay to play any other game so why not but for standard that still doesn’t cut it’s either spend more money or disenchanted all the other class legendary card’s just so you can make 1 deck to hold up in standard. But no, it didn’t take too long to get out of apprentice around 100 wins.
2 Likes
The Legend players are not on their normal accounts.
How exactly is the system going to know that Zeddy is the person playing the new account?
Because they’ll win a lot.
You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that in Apprentice leagues you only match against other people in the apprentice leagues. So no matter how good you are you’ll be stuck facing players of unequal skill to yours.
That system works pretty well in ranked because the best players rank out and the weaker players stagnate at a lower level. This doesn’t happen in Apprentice because you don’t ever lose stars.
1 Like
OK. That would help.
We should tell the devs. I will keep it in mind. This is a much better recommendation than most of the garbage people bring up with them.
1 Like