Might be an old topic but I wanted to have some discussion. I have been tryharding ladder this month because I wanted to push myself a bit. I started the month at gold with no stars and went up to 2.5k legend on EU just a couple days ago (I pulled back to 5k now after a very unfortunate bump in the road). I am trying to get a top1000 finish before reset, and thinking about it I realized: isn’t top1000 much harder to reach in EU than US? Simply because there are significantly more players and competition is high.
I know some people here tryhard on both servers so what’s your experience. Would have I reached top1000 by now if I were in US? Is it significantly harder to rank up as people say? Never played on US and I ain’t about to start, so curious to know.
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My experience is that it’s almost exactly the same, I was always top 100-200 on both EU and NA, no matter how many players are in Legend that month, although that’s probably because those who were ranged better than me were all no-lifing the game as well, so there’s roughly equal number of those with better rank on any of the 3 servers
I don’t know when the effect starts to show on each of the servers, or in other words, how many people from top 1k DON’T play all the time, which is what you wanted an answer to, iirc.
My experience was only two-fold with those 3 servers:
- diamond gring to legend was the easiest on Asia back then because of the bots, BUT the grind to 11-stars was much harder and slower than on NA and EU, because of too many real players, as well
- Eu was always slightly harder than NA in top ranks (20-50 ranks difference)
However, the latter can at least partly be explained by the meta differences between the servers.
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Only Altair can answer this because whatever they experience is the only reality.
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From my own experience the meta and level of opponents are about the same. The only difference for me is that I have less resources on EU and thus that makes it harder. I also never bother grinding past Diamond 5 on EU as the difference in rewards from D5 to Legend is negligible after you already have the Legend card back.
I am really proud of you guys, I am happy if I reach Legend, don’t care about the number. Can’t play 12/24 hours a day and don’t even want, have a full time job and family. 
It is even a real challange for me because not playing meta decks and more easy for me to make mistakes because of unique deck… but have more answer for different decks than meta. The only problem is always the unbalance and the RNG which is turning it against me… and against most of ppl who is not playing the most broken deck always which is working like it shouldn’t and takes months for the developers to fix.
I have a full time job and family as well, the most I play is about 2-3 hours a day. I don’t think you need to play insane hours to reach top1000 but you do need to spam the ultra sweaty decks even if you don’t like them much.
I never rank shame though (in most situations). I have spent months this year playing sparsely and never going above platinum simply because I wasn’t happy with the game and wanted to play my junky homebrews in peace. I never thought myself a worse player for it.
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This will NEVER have one potential answer, because of the rank floors before Legend. If you have rank floors and the question is Legend only then it depends on the skill of the average player in the region (which is unclear to me by the way).
Basically difficulty for the rank inside Legend is a factor of the number of players AND the average skill of the players (because ranks are singular in there),
however difficulty for the rank before Legend and to only Legend is ONLY a factor of the average skill (approximately) because the ranks are not singular.
Once you have a 9-10 Star bonus making legend each month is absurdly easy. You basically have to do the run once and then return each month and knock it out. The first climb is always the hardest.
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Without 11 stars legend is still a waste of time under certain conditions. E.g. I may be busy but I may still want to optimize F2P pack collection. It might be more “profitable” to prioritize spending tickets on Arena; they give at least the extra pack of legend; or you can make achievements in the Format of constructed you don’t play to get XP for the next expansion.
The fact remains it is still easier once you get that first legend climb done. Nobody cares about YOUR specific experience or how you choose to play.
Technically it’s the same easiness unless they got to 11 stars. But I get it if you mean it’s a psychological problem.
The first time Diamond 1 is a very scary place.
I can objectively climb faster with 10 stars than you can with 0 stars. That’s just a fact.
Only for the time factor, because win streak bonuses make it too easy with low win rate grinding to go to diamond 5. Basically if they do something else at the same time and they halfarse a >40% win rate then diamond 5 is inevitable by just grinding.
But after that they have to pay more attention, because you need around 55% win rate to have an expected legend in ~200 games a month.
Time is a major factor. If you have less time the bonus eliminates a whole lot of the early grind to D5. The D5 grind is minimal once you hit D5. So the real grind is getting to D5.
I agree if the question is “most optimal rewards divided by time”. It returns us to what I said first today, legend is not that “profitable” for f2p compared to d5.
Especially if you can play arena well, or you can get some xp for the next expansion.
I’m pretty sure the above commentor was talking about not having enough time to get legend. I gave them a solution to cut off a significant amount of time to make legend each month. Whether they feel getting legend for the extra pack is important is irrelevant to this discussion because it’s their time to save or waste not ours.
Well, Legend climb is also depending on the amount of current broken decks the players are abuse in my opinion. I can reach Legend usually in every two month only yet, but never with the most OP broken deck like a lot of players do… I reach it with my own deck, and that is the biggest success I can imagine since I have returned only 3 years ago and started from 0 basically.
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There’s always going to be most of the good decks in D5-Legend. It’s just a matter of playing one and getting good with it. You can still get legend with a little more work playing your own decks. You will likely have more trouble. The question really is if getting through D5-Legend is worth the effort or just get to D5 and be happy?
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If I see a chance for Legend, then yes. 
A bit weird you consider that new. 2 rotations are enough to have netdecks from all classes, and you have more than that.
But I bet many think like you. It’s a veterans’ game at large.