Ex legend player here; don’t really know why I’m posting this except for the amusing data that I was able to compute off some mass stats and boredom.
What is shown, at least, is that rank 11 is actually the hardest rank in the game, pushing most decks 6% lower than their expected winrates. Second hardest rank is 16, and 6 (Though almost equally as difficult). The pattern here is off course that these are the gatekeeper ranks (The last rank before the rank floor).
Unfortunately it also looks like you can be playing legend worthy decks but never get legend because of the pocket metas at the gatekeeper ranks 1, 6, 11, and 16 crippling the winrate of all viable decks. This looks to be due to people playing a lot of niche counter decks that aren’t successful in the larger scale meta, but do seem to find some advantage for these specific ranks.
The good news is however legend rank is actually effectively an easier rank than the average of difficulty of all ranks in total. And all the other mid ranks are fairly average. So it turns out, if you can reach rank 10 you’ve literally beaten the hardest ranks in the game and the climb to legend is nothing but easier from there.
Well players that reach legend tend to chill and play something to relax. Unless of course they re playing proffessionally which totally changes things. So yeah i agree…
I did at 3 20 to 10 run in both wild and srd in the last couple of months, the latest one is last month. All 3 times I got 5 loss for 1, 3 for the other and 2 for the last one I did. Don’t see any gatekeeper you metioned of.
My winrate collapse to 60+% from 10 to 5 though because the deck there are just better and the plays are better too.
Rank 20 to 10 with just 1, 3, and 5 losses respectively? Seems doubtful. I’ve only very recently got back into the game and it took me 21-15 just to get rank 15- let alone TEN; with a very respectable 60% winrate.
Doesn’t look like Hearhstone has any casuals or homebrew players on ladder anymore. Starting at rank 18 it’s just tier 1 or tier 2 netdecks exclusively and it’s already a hard grind starting from that point, even for a skilled player with a strong tier 2 deck.
Yep it’s true I track my own losses. The last 2 I rmb is secret mage in wild and token druid in std. The token druid only have 2 losses. Its really easy at 20 to 10 in my opinion. Maybe I am lucky but all my experience with these run have been easy.
Smurfing on NA for 2 days, got rank 13 right now with 69% win rate. 75-35 with the disgusting less expensive face hunterino.
Started at 50 btw, I think it’s just random. Sometimes I face a lot of Highlanders and occasionally a priest here and there which are the hardest match ups… I feel like Rank 5 to Legend is the worst, specially on EU with all the nerfs and that stuff.
Just cause people have optimized decks in the ladder doesn’t mean they can pilot them properly. I got to Rank 13 only using Whizbang–in a meta I have no background playing in (I play Wild only). Even with clearly suboptimal decks, I still was able to climb simply cause people made dumb moves and couldn’t pilot their decks properly. Only relying on busted synergy to actually win the game (4 8/8 rushes, 10 Scions of Ruins, etc). That’s the problem with this game. Skill is undermined because all people are relying on these days is a win condition that swings the game to your favor, or them relying on busted synergy that doesn’t call for counter play from the opponent.
The other thing is at rank floors is where people play weird decks. It’s why the best place to play is the rank 10 floor. You get to test anti meta tweaks and decks without undoing your grind work.
Perhaps legend is easier because people there play fun decks, so the meta decks there see higher winrates. In legend, nobody plays a counter deck unless they find it fun because the meta is actually more diverse. So individual counter decks do better in lower ranks.
I’m not going to question your having achieved legend rank. But some of what you said doesn’t really seem to make sense to me. You’re saying that there’s a bunch of players at rank 10 playing niche decks that are hyper teched-out to counter the meta at rank 10 and 11, but nothing else? What does that even mean? I’d like to see some examples.