I see a ton of complaining about how matchmaking is rigged. What most people do not understand is that the system is made to pair you against someone who is as good as you. Many people think they are better at something than they are. No one wants to believe they are below average at something.
To successfully climb you need to be 1) Already better than the people you are playing. 2) Improve at a rate that is faster than the people you are matched with. If you really want to climb you need to understand that the player base improves at an average rate. Your goal is to improve faster than that.
If all you do after a game is immediately hit the button to start the next match, you are doing yourself a disservice. Take a couple minutes after the game to think about what happened. Did you misplay? Could a different line of play given a better outcome? Are certain cards underperforming? Are you seeing certain classes more than another? Can you tech against those decks?
Even if you do this small thing you are already doing more than I am guessing 1/2 the player base. If you are getting tilted, walk away from the game for a bit. Being tilted WILL cause you to make more misplays.
Stop running homebrews. Unless you have a history of bringing home brews to legend you are most likely not going to be able to. Net-decking a tier 1 deck and learning that deck backwards and forwards is one of your best chances of climbing. Learn the match ups and what cards you need to mulligan for. If there is a high rank streamer playing the deck, watch them. Preferably one that explains the plays they make.
There are many other things you can do to improve, but starting with these few things will put you leagues ahead of most.
Hearthstone presents an overwhelming number of variables to consider each turn, making the 75-second time limit insufficient for maximum efficiency play.
Moreover, even when I account for these variables, I can lose without having any real influence over the outcome. No matter how well I play, the game frequently undermines my agency. Opponents can inexpensively draw the perfect answer, randomly generate a counter from another class, or simply outdraw me. The randomness of card draw alone has made me lose numerous times.
There are many factors I can consider: best mana utilization based on the matchup, anticipating the opponent’s key turns, probabilities of drawing or discovering specific cards, potential disruptions to my strategy, predicting the opponent’s next moves, assessing potential lethal damage over several turns, managing hand size, and deciding when to disrupt the opponent or commit to a play. Each of these factors has its own subcategories, adding layers of complexity.
For example, just calculating potential lethal damage over multiple turns involves avoiding plays that might allow the opponent to heal, managing hand size to avoid specific disruptions, and so on.
The sheer number of variables is exhausting to consider thoroughly, especially when the reward is merely a higher rank in a game. What am I really striving for, putting so much mental effort into achieving a pixelated rank?
I play at a semi-decent level by my standards. Just reaching Legend is enough for me.
Then this honestly isn’t for you. But, some people do want to get better.
I will agree with you that RNG has gone way too far and makes it quite literally impossible to play around everything. You just have to accept that and play around what is common or most likely. The idea is playing towards your outs and making situations where the outs your opponent can have is as small as possible.
Those that do want it, but fail to get it are people that either lack the logical approach to effectively use their cards, or are aware of it but unwilling to apply it for… reasons.
The first bunch won’t understand what you are saying, and the other doesn’t care for it. Therefore, your thread lacks a specific target audience unless it goes beyond basic advice and addresses the deeper, more challenging aspects of improving and actually achieving rank 1.
In my view, reaching rank 1 involves grinding out games, relying on the fundamental skills necessary to maintain high ranks. If you can prove that Hearthstone isn’t a grind to reach the top, I’ll find this discussion valuable. Otherwise, I’m already familiar with everything mentioned here, and those you’re trying to reach likely won’t be interested.
Na. Take it from someone who has gotten top 500. You can understand that Reno is piss poor design and still get better. Getting to the point of understanding why certain cards warp the meta shows you have a better understanding of the game.
Also, actually good players never watch their replay back.
One, good players recognize their mistakes immediately. And, there is also the say “time is money,” which in HS is “time is ranks.”
If you are sitting and reviewing your games that are already probably long enough you are wasting your time. Good players play from instinct. They are naturally good at playing, and get better by just playing. Reviewing their games is a waste of time.
This is false, most of them do. Norwis does it every time he loses a game (when he’s in his tryhard mode, which is often, but not always), even when it’s obvious he just lowrolled
I belong to this category, but I think I’d do better if I had the patience to review my losses
You should’ve considered all your options already if the game is over. Maybe, if you want to be extreme and consider “what if I had played X” instead at that point of the game, but you weren’t aware the game would pan out the way it did in the replay. You didn’t know the opponent’s cards and should’ve probably played the best card appropriate for that turn based on your know then.
Winning in HS is 85% copy and pasting whatever OP deck the devs are dragging their feet to balance. 10% hoping you draw your I win card on time. Maybe the rest is skill.
It is not a personal attack at all. While there are some people who seem to be naturally gifted at things, at the pro level people are putting in work that you could not imagine. I have friends in MTG who win large tournaments and I know how much work behind the scenes they do playtesting decks over and over again. I was top 4 in the world and #1 with my character in a fighting game. I knew exactly how much practice the top 10 people were putting into the game. You have no understanding of what kind of work goes into the pro level of something. That is fine. Most people don’t.
a) some people don’t calculate scenarios as fast as others. I’m often shocked how players who are better than me, are 10 times slower than me in calculating dmg or different outcomes
b) some decks are much more complex. Apparently, nature shaman post-nerf is terribly hard to play correctly.
That’s it. That’s the crux of getting better. If you don’t ask yourself this question every game, won or lost, you’re not learning. I ask myself that every game, but I don’t have the patience to answer it every game.
You were the one classifying that work as replying footage. I believe rather than wasting your time doing that, you could be queueing another game to get more experience regarding certain matchups and learning your deck more.
In your examples you even strayed from the conversation which is replaying footage.
You can recognize a card is toxic, but you are wasting your time here addressing it instead of improving yourself—furthermore, you, like many others, are missing the point.
You can’t consider that on the replay with the context of what is to come later. You’ll see the replay, and think “I should’ve played that because he didn’t have Reno,” but your probably already accounted for the opposite based on the context you had. Or just had to risk it.
I am not wasting my time. I am WFH and had a few minutes to type something up. Some might find it useful and some not. The ones who walk away taking the advice will be better for it. Those who complain, “the good players are just good and the game is rigged” were never the ones this post was for.
No, you won’t do that. That’s the opposite of learning xD That’s gambling.
Ofc you take into account that you don’t know what he had in the hand. It’s not the actual outcome that matters, it’s the best possible move most of the times vs the move you made that matters.
You’re not gonna care what he had in hand. You should already have a decent picture of his hand and possible threats. All you need from replays is more time than you had in game to calculate the optimal move.
