Hard time reaching Legend rank

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Greetings,

I had been warned that focusing on time lost when losing rank while trying to reach Legend rank is not the right minding, as losing many games is possible and will most likely happen. Something that I do agree with.

I’d like to know, are the following something normal when trying to reach Legend rank or is it incredible bad luck?

  • Going from 2 stars Rank 1 to 2 stars Rank 3
  • Being matched 4 times in a row against your worst opponent deck archetype
  • Mostly being matched against decks archetype with an advantage towards yours
  • Not getting your winning’s combo-cards
  • Changing deck archetype and still being matched against decks with an advantage towards yours
  • Having 3 loses streak being more frequent than 3 wins streak

Thank you

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2

I have 3 attempt to try legend. 1 with a full top tier net deck and the other with a slight modified top tier deck + cheaper replacement. (as I don’t own some cards)
My best record is 1 win away from legend rank.

As what you state above, it is normal in my opinion. However, there is some take away from my experience.

Proficiency with your deck
If you are able to attain R5, it means you are quite good at piloting your deck. However, some signs below may indicates you have not fully master it at some aspect that can range from mulligan, value trade, etc (against EVERY different class)

  • Not getting your winning’s combo-cards
  • Having 3 loses streak being more frequent than 3 wins streak
  • Going from 2 stars Rank 1 to 2 stars Rank 3

Managing Matchup and pocket Meta
Due the game design, there are some matchup that your deck will be favoured against and vice versa. As such, for Legend climb, you need to win those that you are favoured against and reduce the losses to those you are not. If you find that you are losing matches that when you are favoured, then it can be a piloting problem.
Some times, the pocket meta shifts and you face alot of deck that counters your deck. Thus, may indicate a need to switch deck. However, you need to base the switch selection based on logical assumption. e.g. from the last 20 matchup, which deck is best fit to take advantage.
Tech card selection can be an alternative where can propel your winrate higher.

  • Being matched 4 times in a row against your worst opponent deck archetype
  • Mostly being matched against decks archetype with an advantage towards yours
  • Changing deck archetype and still being matched against decks with an advantage towards yours

In short, alot of information can be derived from the past match data to help in the Legend climb. From reviewing games to spot bad play and correcting them for future games, to understanding the meta and how to deal with it.

(I keep the above short, as it is hard to explain in full detail. Feel free to ask anything but focus on 1 point at a time is easier to manage)

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3

A small tip for climbing to legend (works for every game more or less).

After 2-3 losses in a row, take a break. This is where tilt kicks in. You will be less concentrated and more likely to make bad decisions when tilted.

A single win might not be enough to break it and every consecutive loss will feel even worse. You will go a downward spiral afterwards.

But if you take a break, you won’t have any harsh losestreaks and your rank will increase steadily, or at the worst it will stay still.

Hope it helped, good luck!

3 Likes
4

Thanks for the detailed answer Reaver.

I guess the meta already changed since Rogue’s nerf yesterday; the favourite match up of my deck is now gone… (Which might also explain the higher rate of match up against unfavoured decks).

Guess I learned it the hard way…!

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5

It’s about ti be shaken up against most likely once June rolls in as well. Unless you’re dead set on hitting legend by the end of this month, I’d avoid any unnecessary crafting until we start picking out the meta with the upcoming buffs in place.

6

I am also trying for that cardback and am still learning from my experiences.

I think the key thing is to understand what is stopping progress. I have seen players with very good luck and breeze to their legend rank, and also some that played at thier best to reach it.

After each run, I always tries to look back (into my data) on why I fail to achieve Legend and use it for my next run. The reasons can be many from amount of playtime available, deck quality, personal skill and attention, etc.

I also try to base my focus on the positives, e.g. I broke my previous best e.g. R5, etc, or I achieve R2 at 60% winrate, etc. Things that can consistently show you have improve from your former.

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7

You will go on gigantic loss streaks. This is variance and it can be overcome, you have to just play more games. Choose a meta or anti-meta deck and play it calmly; remember, no need to rush. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at 5 stars rank 1 and went all the way down to rank 4 because I got inside my own head.

If you are in a strange pocket of running into the same type of decks, maybe take a little break. Wait an hour before hopping back in. It’ll clear your head. DO NOT try to switch decks while making the climb because that never worked for me, ever. Know your own deck and your win conditions inside and out to make the most value plays. Be a specialist.

8

Whenever someone try to go legend, for the 1st time, it’s like asking why you want Legend, for the “I am legend” or is there an other motive behind it, most people who get legend right away tender to agree it playing around what is ‘meta’ always 1st and most, but some people do get the odds of the wrong side of their deck if they have a stander/greedy deck, unlike agro, this is why Agro tender to be the 1st to hit legend every month.

cause they are abit more likely to play a thing each turn to win. While other decks need allot of support to do what they need. So depending on the type of deck your playing and vs it has a factor on reaching legend outside skills alone, but adept to the problem.

getting to rank 1 is basically the same reward at legend but some dust off, and if you aren’t trying to go pro/get seats in tourny’s Don’t stress the legend part as a normal player, but try to enjoy what you’re doing foremost.

As for the odd’s of going rank 1 to 5, is very common. 1 bad game that may upset you can still trigger you in the next match, or some games will take so long you’ll feel like it waste of time, like Warrior vs Warrior matches are generally, being 40 min to a hour most the time.

9

Here are some tips to help any rank five trying to get legend:

  1. Don’t be afraid to take a break - Tonusu is totally right, once you get tilted, thats when your stars drop. If you lose 3 or 5 matches in a row, you’ll subconsciously be playing significantly worse and you just need to take a break
    .
  2. Don’t push your luck - the goal is to always come out net positive (more wins than losses). To achieve this, quit while you’re ahead. If you’ve won 4 games in a row and just lost 1 or 2, STOP before you drop any lower. A bunch of small sessions like this add up quickly and can get you up a full tier in just few days
    .
  3. Find a good time to que matches - maybe this was just me, but on my climb to legend I was pretty consistently getting good match-ups when I qued at a certain time (for me this was between 12:00am and 2:00am EST)

The things your listing totally happen and I’m pretty sure every Hearthstone player has faced them in ranked mode at one time or another. The most important thing to focus on is this:

Hearthstone is a card game, a card game with a LOT of luck involved. And with that, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about a loss, you just get unlucky. What you need to focus on, as a player, is “did I play the best that I could?” If you focus on improving yourself and how you play you’ll be a lot more content with your losses and comfortable how you play the game

And don’t get in your own head. It’s only the top 0.5% of players :grin:

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10

If you’re going to play only 1 deck, then make sure it’s not a hard counter deck, or you will suffer really hard when you run into a patch of different meta. E.g., if you play mage that feeds on warriors, you can get really burned if you run into a zoo/murlock patch (you would have to switch decks at that point until you get back to warriors, or you would just lose the ranks again).
Different ranks on different days usually have their own mini-meta. E.g., when I did my climb on day 2 of this month, it was rogues/warriors in rank4-1 and then suddenly a ton of hunters surfaced at rank1 only. Well my aggro rogue was still good, but if I was playing a deck that’s hard countered by hunters, I would have gotten stuck on rank1. Btw, I still switched my deck - I noticed that ppl really don’t know how to play rogue vs bomb hunter matchup, while they’re comfortable in rogue vs rogue. So I switched to hunter myself (even though I had 7-0 vs hunters with my rogue) and, unsurprisingly had a very easy run through rogues and other hunters to the top (abusing the mistakes). Well it helped that hunter is also highly favored vs warrior. So the fact that I beat the natural counter (rogue) and dominated the mirror matches due to their misplays made it a very effortless run.
(I haven’t even played bomb hunter myself in this season before, I just grabbed a list I liked (that seemed to be best against what I was facing), played 2 casual games and off I went).

If you see an opportunity, don’t be afraid to grab it.

Also, don’t do mistakes. If you do mistakes, you’ll never know if you’re only losing because of them or if there are external factors at hand too (like running into too many counters, which will be hard to determine when you lose due to mistakes). And you’ll also miss the opportunities, too.

And finally, even if you do play only 1 deck, don’t get stuck on it. I’ll give my rogue as an example. I facerolled my way to legend last season with my toggwaggle-nomi rogue. I started this season on day 1 and I kept getting destroyed (lost 3 or 4 games to them) by some new very aggressive lifedrinker rogue variation. So what did I do? I found the most aggressive (not the one that was mostly played - I like to have some surprises up my sleeve) list for that rogue and played it myself (at first just to find it’s weaknesses, but later I just realised it destroys the current meta and is the deck to play anyway).

11

For the pilgrimage to get your first legend card back, I sugest you some of this,

You need deck tracker

Beter focusing on winrate, so a lose streak wont lower you morale (much). If you get to rank 3 after just one more star to legend, check your winrate. If it still 60%, then you still good to go.

Recognize local metagame. To decide one deck to use for the climb.

Those two points can only be done with decktracker. So, use it.

Never swap deck, if the local meta are suddenly hostile for your deck, find beter hour to climbing.

Swap a tech card only when you get enough data from deck tracker.

Meager 56% winrate still need 200 match from rank 5 to legend. Thats why you need good WR decks.

Be focussed. Treat every star as your final star. Losing one star means, two more match just to break even (with 50% match)

Try to find your own missplay and error. Forget attacking with a token? Then you arent deserve the win. With this mentality, will reducing your tilt.

Tilting is dangerous. VERY DANGEROUS. Take a break when you lose. This will led you to hasty decision like deck/card swapping and more missplay.

Set a system to lower the tilt if you like. Example, everytime you lose, walk around the room, whistling with your mouth, or dont touch electronic for a full minute. This also lower the chance to rematching with your counter deck that just beat you. because in average, two player from a just finished match press the play button almost on the same time.

Try to listen slow paced song while climbing. Decision while having cool head usually better than the time you get agitated.

12

Best thing for climbing to legend is stop worrying about rank and concentrate on your play, pick a tier 1 or 2 deck and learn to play it really well , analyse your mistakes and avoid tilt.

Learn all your common match-ups back to front, and imo most important is learn how to mulligan properly. The mulligan in HS is extremely generous (MtG only gives you the option to throw your whole hand back and draw a new hand with 1 less card, Artifact had no mulligan, you played with what you got!), it’s an amazing opportunity to sculpt your hand and it’s crucial you know when to stick with what you got and when you need to look for certain cards, it made a huge difference to my winrate when I knew what to look for in different match-ups.

TL:DR stop worrying about getting to Legend and concentrate on playing better and the Legend rank will come to you.

1 Like
13

Dog, the first time I got legend, I hit R1 5-star a whopping seven times. One of those losses ended up in me going all the way back down to rank 2. Still made it.

There is a lot going on when making a serious legend push. Taking breaks to relax can save you from making avoidable mistakes or missing plays. Deck switching is also a skill, as there are mini-metas that show up in the ranks where you might face a lot of very few types of decks, but unless you spot it and understand it, you’ll be stuck thinking you got “auto-countered” (as if Blizz has either the ability or motivation to do that).

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14

Great advice here from people OP but I’ll add the top-3 things I always do when grinding… and don’t get it wrong climbing CCG ladders, whether HS or MtG:A is a grind:

  1. Have something to chill to: For me, and I assume msot, this is music. If you have a show or something that can ot be distratcing and can help you chill that’d work as well

  2. Something good to drink while climbing: Craft soda/beer or a Mountain Dew serve me well as just something good to relax and enjoy.

You’ll notice the top-2 are just about doing stuff to help you relax. Playing anxious or excited is playing to lose imho. You need to be fully calm and ‘normal’ especially as you get closer to your goal.

  1. Set yourself smaller goals. So for instance this month in Wild my goal was 1 rank M-F and 1 rank Sat-Sun. Other months I’ll set the goal as something smaller so 1 rank per week, etc. The key is to try and focus on small victories just to keep your sanity a bit =)

Edit: My preference, usually, is to climb with two decks by the way. At times you can get frustrated when your deck fails a lot and having a second deck to swap to, even if for a short time, can be helpful. I didn’t to that this month but most months when I decide to climb I tend to have my main climb deck and then a secondary ‘take a break’ deck.

15

Can we stop pretending that Blizzard doesn’t have the ability to do this?

I acknowledge your ‘lack of motivation’ assertion as possibly true, but you are kidding yourself if you think they don’t have the ability to do this.

Blizzard has the following information from you every time you hit play:

  • The Deck Code you have selected, which contains your class, and all cards contained in your deck, expressed in a single line
  • The Deck Code of every other player who is queued for a match
  • A comprehensive list of every game you have ever played previously
  • A value of your overall win-rate with your current deck, including class-specific win-rate values (i.e. 65% vs. Warrior, but 30% vs. Druid, etc.)
  • A comprehensive list of every individual card’s counter / viability, expressed as a value, as documented here: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22788308/

What I’ve stated here probably only scratches the surface of the data they are capable of crunching. Just take a look at all the data available from HSReplay, and understand that it’s an insanely detailed statistical breakdown of matchups, win-rates, mulligan viability, etc… All of which has been aggregated purely from passively reading application memory.

Now imagine that data times a million, from a company who can ACTIVELY read data from both users AND the server, regardless of whether they are running a third-party application.

They have the ability.

16

I’m in the middle of my grind, too. I usually don’t push it, but all of a sudden this month found myself steadily climbing. I found what’s working…and has been mentioned by others…I play a couple games, then find something else to do. It’s a slow climb, but I seem to be playing better and rarely losing.

Sitting at r2/4 stars right now.

17

•Being matched 4 times in a row against your worst opponent deck archetype

This can happen but it doesn’t need to happen.
Simple ladder rule: (I don’t use this rule myself but if you want to win max the ladder then I think this rule should be followed)

-if you win or lose against a deck that you think you are favored against you insta recue.
-If you win or lose against a deck that you think you are unfavored again you don’t insta recue.

Thats really all there is to it. You can still get unfavorable matches in a row but it will at least prevent you from autocuing into your last unfavorable matchup with the same player.

On a side note:after having played lots of wild I do agree big priest is a problem lol. But barnes is not the core of the problem,even without barnes it would be an issue. The amount of resurrect effects and minions is simply to big once the train gets going.

18

Don’t really agree with this in all cases.
The last time I did it, I found a very different meta at rank 1 than I did at ranks 2-4. I bounced around for a while until I switched decks to counter what I was primarily seeing and promptly went on a win streak and made it.

I think your advice is good if you really only feel comfortable with your primary deck but if you are proficient with more than one deck and are constantly seeing decks that counter yours, it may work to switch things up.

19

Yes, definitely, especially if you go on tilt. You are facing the top 0.1% of the player base, all trying their hardest to win. If you aren’t bringing your a-game, you’re going to get dumpstered.

Yes, definitely. You play enough games that this is going to happen sometimes.

This ties in with the two points - going on tilt and swapping decks is often a bad idea, especially if you don’t know it as well as your current deck. Also, it’s worth noting that you should get pretty good in your bad match-ups if you want to play in legend.

Win streaks aren’t a thing past 5.

Mostly you just soundlike you’re tilting hard. Take a break, go for a walk, enjoy something else for a while and come back when you’re ready to play.