So it’s not the first I hit legend. First time was… back in the days with Naxx DR hunter. Whatever. I had no card back then. Game changed in the meantime. Overall, it got better - But that’s another topig (Yes, guys, keep doing it this way and long life to HS !)
Now, I’ve been hitting legend quite easily for like 3 months in a row. AKA, I did achievements first, then played a… hmmm… Let’s label it a “good deck” (in this meta, handbuff pala is great if your goal is hitting Legend).
I never faced a single legend player in my entire life.
I know the August the 10th, but I hit legend way before.
How many games have you played WHILE at legend rank?
In an ideal situation, nobody non-legend would ever get paired up with a Legend. Same with Bronze, same with all the ranks. Though, it can happen if you’re in plat - but you won’t know it since the game doesn’t display opponent rankings until YOU hit Legend.
So, if you haven’t played many games in legend, you wouldn’t know who you’ve been facing.
And what makes you think of that? You can face Legend players from nearly any rank… last month, I hit Legend and got Silver 3 OTK druid once… it was broken like this… But atleast you will start to face Legend enemies from D5 easily… At Legend you can see the rank of the enemy too… below it… you can’t…
OP I doubt many of us know what you’re asking when there’s not even a question mark. Ask the question again simply and put a question mark at the end of it.
You can friend them and you’ll see the rank before you even talk to them.
Yes, you can try… but 90% of players are not accept friend request I think… and they have a reason for that… I accept it only after 1 day too… if I accept… The players usually forget until that what they wanted so I rarely get insults.
I have two pieces of advice for that, if you’d like:
1.) Don’t try to grind rank on opening weekend, or closing weekend. You’ll just hit waves of competition from people that are probably piloting top-tier netdecks.
2.) Construct an aggro oriented deck. Doesn’t mean you have to netdeck, though honestly if your only goal is to climb ranks you probably should netdeck. Regardless though, pick something fast. You don’t want every single game becoming a slog fest with a potential for you to win. You want to KNOW the game is decided by like, turn 5, either way. So you’re either winning very shortly, or conceding and moving on.
You pick a fast enough deck, and play when “most people” looking to hit legend already have hit legend, and you’ll get better results over time (especially if your deck also happens to be well constructed with good synergies and curve).
With the release of the Ashes of Outland expansion some years ago, Blizzard completely redesigned the Ranked experience. This made reaching Legend MUCH easier. From one month before this change to the next month after it, the number of players making Legend multiplied more than eightfold.
A lot of times in online discussion, people will pull old statistics, from before this change, to make it sound like Legend is difficult to reach (the most common being that only the top 0.5% of players reached it). It WAS difficult, but now it isn’t. Reaching Legend under the new system is roughly equivalent to reaching Rank 10 under the old system.
Additionally, statistics are inflated by counting players who barely play Ranked at all. Among players who are serious enough to install deck tracker software, about one third of them make Legend by the end of each month, currently. More than half finish in Diamond 5 or higher.
The primary purpose of ranks below Diamond is to give mediocre players the false impression that they are much better than they are — essentially, participation trophies. This artificial ego inflation then encourages them to buy packs.
So, while everything you said is actually true, I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing for anyone except those who care about skill within this game. And sure, it sucks for them - but why should the rest of us care?
Open question, I genuinely am asking the community at large here. Should we care whether or not HS is skill based? Why, or why not?
My personal take? I think skill in a CCG is largely determined by research, deck crafting, and adaptation. Knowing what your opponents are likely playing, making your deck + sideboard (in games that allow it) reasonably capable of teching answers to the most prevalent threats without watering your wincon down, and making judgment calls to shift your tactics mid-game to account for luck (on either side) or something else you otherwise hadn’t reasonably anticipated.
That’s where I think most of the skill is, and none of those factors apply heavily to Hearthstone as we have it now. I “research” which decks are meta according to replay trackers, mulligan what it tells me to until I get a feel for how to pilot the deck, and then the biggest decision I typically have to make from there on out is “am I dead next turn, and if not, are they playing Reno next turn?”
But, here’s the thing: I don’t play “for skill.” I have other CCG’s for that. I play for fun, and the allure to me is the weird, wild, wacky interactions. (That doesn’t mean I don’t “play to win” - but it does mean I both acknowledge and expect the “wins” to come with heavy RNG)
