Will someone please explain to me in layman’s terms what the changes mean for players?
Is this even a good thing for average players?
It means that there’s one system for matchmaking in all game modes and all levels, just with different ratings for the different modes.
Instead of going from MMR at the start of the month, to ranks, and then back to MMR if you hit Legend, everyone will just be matched with MMR at all times. And that MMR won’t have a monthly reset.
Most people will never notice a difference, because most people have a MMR corresponding to wherever they typically ended up in ranks. I’m sure it’ll be easier for them to test and maintain on the back end.
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It used to be when you make a fresh account and play on 2-3 bonus stars, when you run out of bonus stars, you keep playing against low-ranked people in your current rank (which includes bots and low diamond/plat players). With that system, you could have an unrealistically high winrate and get placed in top 50 too easily.
Now, when you run out of bonus stars, you’re gonna start playing against players with same MMR as yours, which, if your winrate is legend-high, will mean you play against legends, and will no more hit legend with an unrealistically high winrate.
The timing is right, since June/July are qualifications for the next MT, so I’d guess the change is primarily meant to target such exploits.
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I don’t see it having much impact on the top players who had 11 starts to begin with, actually. They’re still seeing the same match ups all through the process to legend.
I see it more about moving bots away from humans and targeting smurfing.
My honest guess is that the change is most intended to clean up the new player experience by putting smurfs into legend matches instead of against actual new players using free cards and loaner decks poorly.
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I did emphasize:
Some players try to screw up the system like that and I know that’s how it used to work because that’s how I hit my peak rating, too
I don’t think it’s aimed at qualifiers or top legend players, though. I don’t think they care about you making a new account and grinding a high legend finish.
I think the change is directed at the bot problem and players like you running off potential whales by spamming new accounts while having legend skill.
They really should, cuz it’s unfair advantage for people who do it
Yeah, well that’s 2 for 1, great idea, if it works like that (it won’t, not really, players who were consistently losing to bots will keep losing to bots because their mmr is equal)
No, I don’t “spam new accounts”, but I had to get my 11 stars for the first time on NA and APAC eventually, and it’s the same as making a new account
I don’t think there’s too many of those, but plenty of people are getting pushed up in the rankings because of bots. There are few human opponents before platinum when you don’t have bonus stars, and this is, imo, why the change was made.
I just don’t see it. At all.
You play how you play and you win or you lose. Over the hundreds of games it takes to climb with no stars, your MMR will go up enough that you are where you belong by the time you get to legend.
I could start a new account tomorrow, grind the rest of the month, and finish exactly where I will on this one because I didn’t suddenly get better at the game on a fresh account.
Yes, you could do that now because of the patch, but it wasn’t like that before
When I was still a 1-2k player I hit rank 50 on NA because of how it used to work, with a winrate around 90%
It took me hundreds of games for it to normalize
Doing it at the right time of the month, near the end, can net you an easy top 10 finish, which goes a long way to help you qualify
Then you just go do the same on another server on the same account the following month, and you qualified for the MT
I know players who’ve been doing it, it’s not really a secret
I’m not inclined to believe it’s this simple - that you can get top 10 MMR without playing top 10 players.
You could have also just known that deck so well that you played it that well. Didn’t you then complain after a nerf that your new decks didn’t work and lost for two weeks straight? I think the new account part is coincidental to your mastery of that meta.
Once you’re in top 2k range, you’re not much different than the players around you.
Overall, it just means that your star rank means nothing but tracks your wins of the month a bit for the purposes of end of month rewards. It is no longer ever used for determining who you play against.
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As flattering as that sounds, the answer is no xD In that same meta I kept losing to top 100 players and ended up where I belong the same month
But ever since then, I’m a top 200 player at the end of the month no matter the deck I play
It’s just my skill level at the moment, I’m lacking some key piece of knowledge to be a top 100, top 50 player
Yeah that’s true, but you’re still worse than top 100 players, or you’d end up there
It’s fascinating how exact the MMR is. I keep having the same finishes over and over again for 4 months across all the servers
No matter how much you lowroll or highroll in the middle of the month, no matter what your luck is at the end of the month, you’ll end up the same rank every time, unless you learned something
So how about some of these OP bots and their OP decks not get paired with humans of low mmr ranks either…? its hard enough to get the 5 wins to earn the cardback these days…
The bots are not op in any way, shape, or form.
They play the board and run out of cards easily. By the time you’re five turns in they are top decking and you should win easily.
If you are playing a deck that lacks early board pressure, that’s your issue.
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That sounds bad for average players.
If they are losing more often, then chances are higher that they will quit, I think.
Eh, now you are just based on your MMR, so as you lose a bunch you get paired up against worse players.
The game just no longer cares what star bracket you are currently at when it comes to matchmaking.
And what was the reason for this change?
Well, for players like myself, whom are far better than the star brackets, if I don’t get the 11 star bonus for whatever reason I no longer have a stretch where I’m stomping Diamond 4-1 players that have never made it to legend before.
It helps keep the best players out of the ranked matchups from worse ones.
It also helps to keep Smurf accounts from farming a chain of absurdly easy wins on their way up to legend and then having a crazy MMR due to their massively inflated win/loss record that puts them near the top of the leaderboards.
The only “downside” is that your visible rank is meaningless until legend (although honestly it already was).
Does this mean if you are climbing to legend and you ended top 100 last month your gonna be hitting the sweaty top 100 folk as you grind (as in you play a legend player in diamond)? Lol, that sucks. I don’t want to play sweaty people all the time, it stinks 
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Mall, for you, this just means that once you hit D5, you are no longer gonna have a chance to face high mmr People who are also at D5.
It also means you will not be facing newbie players at D5.
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