Legend ranks penalize you for playing more games

I’ve been playing the last few weeks around the legend 2000 - 3000 range on the Americas server. With most Elo-type rating systems, if you play people near your rating and maintain a 50% win rate, you will stay at the same rating. That’s kind of the whole point, that you are matched against people with the same skill as yourself.

But in Hearthstone, if I have a 50% win rate, I actually lose rating! It looks like I have to maintain about a 55% win rate against other legend 2000 players to stay at the same rank, which essentially means that I am more skilled than the people who are equally as skilled as me, a paradox!

It’s actually better for my standing to not play than to play with a 50% win rate. If I don’t play for an hour, I lose about 5-10 ranks (I assume because of the new people entering legend). But if I play for an hour and have three wins and three losses, I lose a couple hundred ranks.

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I think there is a small misconception. The Legend rank is not a rating, it is actually your… well… rank. If someone who is behind you in the ranks but does better than you, they will overtake you. There can be only one person at rank 1. Or 2072. Or 100003 (I saw a screenshot of someone with that rank on the China server : -) In a ratings system, multiple people can have the same rating number, so in that sense the number is probably more stable after a while, especially with Elo where a rating difference of 100 means a significant advantage for the higher-rated player.

So, if you do exactly 50%, all good, but you have to rely as well on the average player with better rank than you to do a bit worse and those behind you to not do too much better for your rank to stay exactly there. Not playing at all in that case can be worse, people ranked behind could overtake you if you do nothing.

This part is just not true, though. I’ve kept track, and I lose more ranking after playing for an hour where I win 50% of my games than I do when not playing for an hour. If I keep around a 55% win rate, then my rank stays roughly the same.

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55% sounds about right to keep your rank, many top ranked players talk about winrates above 56% to make the climb to the highest ranks

I agree. I have a friend who stream and constantly hit and plays in top 50 EU, and he like others players recognized the system in legend has problems. You win, earn few ranks, you lose you drop a lot, even if the rankings between the 2 players is close or far.
All this compared like it was before this month and always been, like in March, he easily hit #1 Legend, and the ratio earn/lose ranking it wasn’t like it’s now.
I ask to someone in Blizzard to check it, cause is a joke to see some people who entered in high legend 14days ago, play nothing or less than the others who are ranking, and staying there to camper the position for the top16. Before it wasn’t like this, and it seems really right now that you lose less with the decay, so is fair (it isn’t absolutely, for me is to exploit a bug) to not play for not risking to lose ranks, cause the ones who are behind needs so much games to reach those positions that is really a joke in terms of time and efforts.
Again please check the legend ladder system, cause right now is broken.

its impossible to camp for top 16 for 2 weeks without playing. high ranked players do so for the last 2h of a season, and thats about it. the thing about staying at 50% win rate is that you arent competing against a set system like when you climb the ladder to legend, you are competing against other players who all try to get win rates higher than 50%, and those will move past you in the rankings.

That makes sense, but I’m not really trying for top 16. I don’t think I’m nearly that good. At this point, I’m trying to go from something like rank 2500 to rank 1500. It seems like a 55% win rate against other top 2000 players would be good enough to do that.

Of course it’s impossible, cause you have to play some games or you will drop, but is not even near the samples of games that the people behind play trying to enter in top16. Just look XIXO, entered mid april in legend, ranked up to #1, playing now and then and even said he will camp for mantain the position cause playing is a risk for losing positions, compared to do nothing. Is public on his twitter.
Never heard such things before in the previous seasons, cause the system worked fine, or at any cases was better. Maybe someone in the past got himself the luxury the final day/days to not playing, for being too much forward in the positions, and that’s okay. But not almost 10days at the end of the month.
Btw is even broken at the others parts of Legend, but i think the poor ones who are trying to enter in top16, that will waste time and health.

the issue is rather that there are so many more players in legend with the new ladder system that gives you bonus stars and win streak way further than the old system, and with more players competing there will ofc be more difficult to climb

Legend always worked differently, and the earn of positions in high ladder even last month was entirely another system compared to the actual one. Now is pretty broken and wrong.
Hope someone who work at Blizzard can enlight me on the situation.
Or maybe some GMs or big players is required to cry and at least check and do something about it.
I will laugh if in the next days they will announce an hotfix.

you complain that legend is broken, but you havent offered any insight so far in how its broken more than that you arent happy with your rank.

It’s written up here. What else you want to know?ask any player in high legend how it’s the experience. I don’t work at Blizzard to know what are the issues, if there is any, or if is a remodeling of the legend system (wanted by the devs) or a collateral consequence by due the new ladder system. But it’s clear is not like it was. Players earn on average 2 ranks for win and lose a ton in the defeat.
I am just asking answers about it, the bug report section is for these kind of issues, or not?And can’t even do it in EU forum cause there isn’t a bug report section.

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i think you dont understand the issue: how can blizzard fix something when you dont offer any insight into what the BUG is. So far i have only heard your opinion how you think the legend system should be remade because you want to gain more ranks when winning. It might be true, but this isnt the forum for that. This is a bug report forum, for opinions on game design you are better of in the multiplayer forum where you can discuss it freely.

The bug is one of two possibilities:

  1. I am being matched, on average, with people who have a much lower rating than I do. In this case, it would make sense that I would lose more on a loss than I would gain on a win, but the bug is that I am being matched with these people at all. My queues for games are almost instantaneous; I would be willing to wait 30 seconds or a minute for more balanced matches.

  2. There is something internal in the Blizzard rating system that is causing me to lose more points on a loss than I gain on a win, despite being matched with people near my rating. This issue should either be fixed or, at the very least, be explained why it’s happening.

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Like Matt said and i stated in a previous post, compared to the Legend, let say in March, there is an abiss. I don’t have the time to rank up to, or i would literaly post all the deck tracker stats; but with a lot of players who are more dedicated than me, and got Legend this 2 last months, i talked about that issue. A lot are not even in high legend ranks (top200), but over 2000-3000 rank Legend, and are pretty frustrated on the fact that if they win earn nothing on ranks, on the losses instead they lose too much ranks. They asked themselves, why are we playing if we can’t even hope to reach and grind a better rank like 3 digits legend cause the system has something wrong?
Here i am just reporting a problem, a knowed well one. And like in my first post got a friend who is a pro and play for attend HTC events trough ladder like online qualifiers, and recognized the problem immediately.
Btw got #1 legend in March, and ended top 10 far more easily.
So of course for me is a BUG when till March it wasn’t like this, and i haven’t even see a single statement about it in a patch or else with the introduction of the new ladder system.
Like said the server i am referring is EU, that one could say is for “a lot more players in Legend than others servers” (April got 60k in EU, 30k NA), but i bet is in all server this issue.

That’s the all point, like said, how one can go up in legend if the system won’t let you?It’s like is decided when you enter in legend at the start of the month, and ends up there.

And like i asked, how can i get a check by a Blizzard worker?a check or even an answer would be appreciated.

After many more games, I’m inclined to leans towards the first explanation for the bug (opponents have a lower rating than I do).

When I got into the top 1000 Legend and stopped facing any Diamond opponents, I no longer needed a ridiculous win rate just to maintain my rank; 50% sufficed. This leads me to believe that the bug is that the Diamond players we get matched with do not have the same MMR as we do.

Coincidentally, Off Curve recently made a blog post about this very thing. He also believes that there is something wrong with the Legend-Diamond matchmaking.

Hopefully Blizzard can look into this bug and let us know what’s happening.

dont bump 2 month old threads unless you have somethig of substance to add…

I literally added something of substance: two different data sets (mine and Off Curve’s) showing that the problem most likely lies within the Legend-Diamond matchmaking. I wanted to post a link to his blog, since it’s a much more complete write-up, but apparently links aren’t allowed here.

Go away, troll.

Here is how to share links:

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http://offcurve.com/blog/2020/6/30/mmr-and-the-legend-climb

Thanks, it worked!