Rank 5 to Legend climb frustrations

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

So I have been playing Hearthstone since the beta, and since launch I have always played enough ranked games each month to earn the season ranked card back; it’s something I’ve always been satisfied with doing, and I’m always proud knowing there’s no months that I ever missed getting it. While playing for all that time though, I’ve always thought it would be nice to one day pursue getting to Legend and earning that card back. Normally my ranked play would be just enough to earn the seasonal card back, usually never going past rank 20, with a few months here and there climbing a bit more when I felt like it, with my highest for the longest time being rank 13, and that was likely the result of luck more than skill at the time.

At the end of May of this year, something gave me the the unbreakable urge to want to finally pursue that goal of getting to Legend, and almost two months later, unfortunately I’m still not there, and I’m starting to ask myself why I’m even still trying, yet I can’t shake the desire to continue pursuing it.

As one might expect, when I got serious about going for this goal, getting to Rank 5 wasn’t very hard, and in June got there on the Wild ladder within the first week, and was able to get as high as Rank 2 (2 stars) fairly easily playing a combination of Murloc Shaman and Odd Rogue. Unfortunately, at Rank 2 I felt I hit a wall, started losing more than I was winning (mostly to Odd Paladin and Jade Druid), and dropped back to Rank 4, and eventually back the Rank 5 floor. In light of that, I decided to try Standard ladder instead, and within a couple of days was able to get to Rank 5 on it as well, but then I stalled out.

Frustration and desperation stepped in, and over the course of the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve been trying all of the various Tier 1 decks on both ladders, have spent hundreds of dollars in buying card packs to acquire what I needed to create those decks, and my success rates sadly are largely unchanged. In fact, last month was the first time I’d ever spent any money in for any Hearthstone cards in all the years I’ve been playing; I’d always just earned and spent in-game gold for new packs. This was in conjunction with reading a lot on the Icy-Veins Hearthstone site, the Competitive HS and Wild Hearthstone subreddits, watching many YouTube videos from great players like Old_Guardian to look for guidance and tips to improve my play, and constantly reading the meta reports and seeking out new decks others are having success with on the ladder. I feel I’ve been spending easily 2-3 hours a day (and sometimes much longer) for almost the past 2 months playing Hearthstone, in addition to many hours outside of the game reading stuff to try to improve or find success with, and just getting grief and frustration instead.

This month I’m pretty much in the same place as I was last month, although slightly better in my best climb on the Wild ladder, which as been to Rank 2 (5 stars), before plummeting back over the next 2 days to Rank 4. I still struggle to break past Rank 5 in Standard, and I wish I could more effectively improve my play on that ladder. It just seems like the majority of opponents I face have multiple answers for everything I try to do, and my only wins happen when they have a bad opening hand and/or bad draws, and I can get a board that sticks early and then make a strong, surprise closing play to win, like playing Leeroy or having Doomhammer equipped and dropping Electra Stormsurge into a Lava Burst for 10+ face damage for lethal I also learned that while the Dr. Boom warrior hero card is OP, unless you have it in hand and can play it on curve every game, it’s by no means going to dramatically improve your ranked win rate and carry you to Legend.

I’m at the point where I’m asking myself, is all of this investment of time, money, and effort really worth that Legend card back? How is my enjoyment and satisfaction when playing Hearthstone in the future with that card back going to be anything different than what I’m able to do now without having it? In my mind, it’s a desire I can’t force myself to not want, and even after so many very frustrating losses (looking at you Quest mages with your lucky draw Frost Novas that enable you to get a whole row of Sorcerer’s Apprentices on board to cast 10+ 0-cost spell cards right up to the turn timer to just pound your “Extra Turn” lethal into my face, or the Dr. Boom warrior with 30+ armor on top of their 30 health that I have no chance of even getting a minion to stick on the board to challenge anything), I always seem to come back later or the next day thinking I might do better, and the play session still just goes south – I might get a satisfying streak of a few wins, just to be matched up with a few opponents that seem to get perfect opening hands and perfect draws, none of which I can answer to, and I get crushed effortlessly and it quickly undoes the progress those previous wins gave me.

I really wish I could just turn off this desire to for the Legend card back and go back to the mindset where collecting the monthly card backs was enough to satisfy me, and when playing Hearthstone was more fun & enjoyment than a source of frustration. I mean it’s only a card back; a lot of players I’m sure would argue that there’s probably more fun to be had in the game for me just being able play all of the decks I’ve been able to craft with the sizable collection of cards I’ve acquired and crafted in the past 2 months.

I don’t know what I’m looking for by posting my story here on the forums, but I don’t have anyone to share my frustrations in pursuing this goal with, so I wanted to use this as a way to get some of it out because it’s been pent up for too long. Maybe someone out there has been in the same boat I am before, and either managed to convince themselves to just abandon their Legend pursuit, or found a way to success with it that I certainly have not yet.

Thanks.

9 Likes
2

Hi,
I am a F2P and also had been playing for a long time casually until I felt like it was time I challenge myself on ladder.

For 1st time Legend climber, I think it is very common to suffer setback and feel discourage. The feeling of self-doubt and negative thoughts are much like as you described.

For me, It took me 4 attempts across several months with some breaks in between. The lesson I learnt from my attempts are,

  • Stay calm. I was just 1 win away from Legend on my 1-2 attempt, and dropped ranks to never see R1 thereafter. By my 3rd attempt, I had acclimatized to the “stress” of legend climb and had learnt to pace myself, taking frequent breaks to cool off and reevaluate myself. (FYI, I took a few months “rest” to recover my mental state before my next attempt)
  • Learn from past experience. Learnt the reason why you are winning, as well as losing. Look back at your game data (using trackers) and analyze your games. Are there match-ups you need more practice playing against, is some changes to deck required to better suit your pocket meta, etc
  • Seek advise Watch pro plays and readup can be helpful (as you have done) However, there might be some aspect you failed to realized/understand fully. A friend that watches you play might be of help to identify such problems.
  • Pace yourself Sprinting in a marathon is not good. Thus, if it cannot be done in one month than set a longer time frame to achieve your goal. During each month set mini-targets towards your objectives. e.g. 1st week achieve R5, Wk2-3 achieve R2, last week attempt R1. During the week, make sure you have a balanced lifestyle to maintain adequate rest, reset emotional state, etc, etc
  • Stay Focus. Try to stay on your strongest WR deck. The more you switch deck, the less proficient you are with each deck. Remove distractions for the climb. One distraction can spoil your win, and thereafter your mood, resulting in tilting and losing more games. (Tilt management)
  • Have a Plan. With all the points above, Find out what works for you and works towards areas that can help you with your climb.

My advise to players in the same situation is always BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. Since you can win from R5 - R2 (20wins), what is another 5 - 6wins? Surely, you can win a few matches more!

Also, the Prize is not the cardback, but the satisfaction of challenging yourself to your limits.

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
― Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

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don’t be so proud, they’ll all come back through brawls LOL
another advice is to understand the meta, sometimes, t4-t5 decks can rekt the pocket meta (nomi priest for example), it’s not always the best idea to play bomb hunter or bomb warrior

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My advice is to get better at the game, OP.

Legend card back is overrated.

I was really happy when I first got it, used it for a few hours and then never used it ever again.

5

my advice is that you play instead of dumping walls of text into the forums.

if you can reach rank 2 you will reach legend. if your winrate is just a little bit over 50% you will reach legend.
just quit talking and spam games. only stop if you tilt.

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Correct, Big Shaman is ALWAYS the right answer =p

@OP
I’d individually quote sections but I’m on my cell so sorry I can’t directly quote my responses

  1. Murloc Shaman is more than strong enough to get you there is Wild. I have a 72% WR (May and July) with the deck, up to r158. It is a very strong deck but, like most decks, you need to understand your outs and not just lay down cards to maximize damage… It isn’t Mech Hunter in aggressiveness.

  2. Odd Paladin, for me, is a good matchup. I personally run 2x Maelstorm, 2x Finishers, and 1x Devolve. I don’t have the stats in front of me but I checked awhile ago and I was sitting near 65%. Jade Druid is going to be a relatively bad matchup until Jade Druid removes (if ever) the Poison Seed combo board clear.

  3. Is Legend “worth it”? Honestly, probably not. If you’re having fun then try for it but if it is causing you nothing but frustration don’t… that simple. The card back is mediocre imho. I tend to hit Legend o CE an expansion, usually the first month or two when I’m having fun. The rewards between r5 and Legend are minimal in quality (1 extra golden rare, right?)

If you want post your Murloc Shaman list and I’d be happy to critique it or I can watch some games if you’d like.

7

I don’t want to sound like a condescending dolt but the bottom line is that you are simply not experienced enough yet to climb that high. Obviously I can’t tell what mistakes you are making based your post but you are certainly making lots and lots of mistakes if you have tried numerous tier1 decks with all that time invested. So my suggestion is to abandon trying to grind your heart out for now and just focus on doing all of the things you have been doing to try and improve - eventually lots of small things will click into place and you will wonder how you never realized the simple play errors you were making.

The climb from 5 to legend is long & hard, no doubt (and it’s harder on the standard ladder since wild is just a mess…) but it’s not supposed to be a miserable-hope-you-get-lucky affair which is what it sounds like right now.

8

I’d say Wild is easier until around rank 2 (where he got). From r2 to Legend it is basically the same as the ‘craziness’ of Wild is all but gone. Only thing Wild does give you is the opportunity to either counterqueue or stop based on matchups because once you hit r2 (and especially at r1) the odds of getting the same opponents is quite high.

9

If you have anyone on your friends list that regularly hits Legend, shoot them a message. Ask if they can spectate a few of your games and give advice on your plays.

People are surprisingly willing to help out, if you take the chance on asking.

edit: and you’ll get there one day! Rank 2 is no joke… if you can make it there you can definitely hit Legend.

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I personally don’t play wild so I could be wrong but the common thoughts I’ve seen across the forums and elsewhere is that wild is very polarizing in its matchups, played by far less people, and people don’t take it as seriously so it’s just a totally different experience from standard and more of a fun mode. The two aren’t really comparable so ranking up in wild doesn’t mean you’ll rank up in standard which is what the OP seems to have run into.

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I think the OP has been playing Wild as he mentions Odd Paladin, Jade Druid, etc. Maybe towards the end he was debating switching to Stanard ( I might have missed).

If you were OP the meta in Standard ‘stabilizes’, for lack of a better term, MUCH earlier in Standard. While the quality of play steadily improves the matchup pool doesn’t really change after r8 or so in Standard whereas in Wild, as I mentioned earlier, the meta doesn’t stabilize to the same degree until r3/r2 so your games tend to include more off-meta decks.

  • Polarizing: Yes
  • Less People: Yes
  • Yeah, it is very ‘crazy’ until r10. Still fairly open until roughly r3/r2, and then the meta truck hits around there as people focus on finishing their climbs in my experience.
12

I reached Legend rank in the second month of Rise of Shadow.
I played my version of Bomb Warrior and only Bomb Warrior.

Was it frustrating? At rank 1 ,yeah. But it was a lot of fun to outplay so many different players with their decks.

I started playing hearthstone in Boomsday ( more of arena player since I am f2p ).

And with the dust received in Rashtakan I decided ,it’s time for some standard fun and here I am first month of RoS getting from rank 20 to rank 5 in two days thanks to win streak.
Then straight to legend around the middle of next month - it took me 3 days -
I played a lot of games

Maybe you paying a lot of money and getting frustrated for not getting desired results is a part of the reason of this frustration.
Another one is probably burnout.
Hope this helps clear your mind.

13

Getting to legend is not as easy as some folks say, it involves a fair amount of games and a decent knowledge of the game and the meta, coming up short in any of these areas can stop you.

  1. it’s going to take a decent amount of games to reach legend, no point in trying unless you can commit to playing atleast 300 games /season from R5. Also if you count the climb R20-Legend than R5 is less than half way.

  2. Choose one (at the most 2) Tier 1-2 deck you enjoy and learn it , you should know exactly what your wincon is against every meta deck, you should know your key cards vs every class and every combo and trick your deck can pull off.It’s important you enjoy the deck, because you’re going to be playing a lot of it.

  3. install a decktracker, enables you to replay games , look at your stats and find your weaknesses, accurately calculate your outs.

  4. The most important single change I ever made, and it makes a HUGE difference, learn to mulligan properly! I used to watch good players streaming and they always seemed to have a better hand than I had at the same time in the game, for ages I just thought “how do they get so lucky, I’d win if i had those cards”, and then I paid attention to what they were doing, and what they were doing differently was mulliganing correctly.
    The HS mulligan is a powerful hand sculpting mechanic, use it! You should know which cards you are looking for vs every class and deck, you should know when you’re favoured and can afford to keep a greedy opening hand, and you should know when you need to throw everything back because you NEED to find certain cards to win vs a particular deck.
    And I’m not just talking about those mini-guides with a few cards you should keep in every mulligan, read an in depth guide for your deck (competitivehs reddit), multiple if possible, watch a good streamer playing your deck, learn in-depth how to mulligan, it’s not always straightforward.

  5. Play when fresh and alert, stop if you are tired,tilted,inebriated etc. half an hour of losing play can take hours to recover!

Provided you have the time, and the ability to learn from your mistakes you’ll get there, but once you’re above R5 things slow down a lot, no win streaks, no free games, everyone is playing a decent deck, don’t expect to get there quickly.

Good luck!

6 Likes
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Hi again,

Thanks for all of the feedback and suggestions. A lot of what has been said has been stuff I’ve read elsewhere too, but maybe hearing it directed specifically at my situation is more impactful. I do agree that with time and experience the likelihood of me getting to Legend will go up, and as much as I want it to happen quickly, I need to accept that it probably won’t. I do feel that I play better than I did when first starting this journey, and I’m sure that I will continue to improve going forward.

In regards to Standard vs. Wild, most of what has been said about Wild is true based upon my play there – especially about the likelihood of encountering the same players at rank 2. The reason I actually focused on Wild at first was because I had read elsewhere that it was generally an easier ladder to reach Legend in, but there’s also a lot of unpredictability to it, so you could get lucky or not. That probably has helped fuel my frustrations, so I think sticking to Standard is probably better.

I actually have had a bit of luck in Standard since yesterday, finally getting to Rank 4 and not (yet) falling back to Rank 5, but I have moved up & down within Rank 4 a lot. I suppose that is to be expected.

For those interested, the Standard deck I’ve settled on is an Aggro Overload Shaman build with a small murloc package in it – specifically this one:

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I’m sure a lot of you will say it’s a good deck, but not necessarily an easy one to pilot. I actually like that about it though, because it forces me to really think every play out, unlike something like Mech Hunter which I actually find very frustrating to play because I feel your opponent can predict your next play easily and counter it. Being able to start with some spells, then maybe a board of murlocs mid game, and then finish with more spells/weapon attacks gives some dynamic to the playstyle. I’m also not a fan of mirror matchups, so with this being a less common deck, those are minimal.

The deck feels like it just really catches other players off guard in the current meta, it has some silences to deal with all the magnetizations out there, and I love some of the explosive lethal plays you can do with it. Many of my winning turns are 10-15 face damage, usually as a combination of spells and weapon attacks, and I had a win yesterday to a Secret Hunter where I did 23 face damage for lethal in 1 turn!

Warrior is a tough matchup with it, but I did manage to beat one yesterday even with them getting to play Dr. Boom. Control Shaman is also kind of unfun with it (somehow I encountered 2 of them yesterday); most other matchups all feel within reach at the moment.

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I wouldn’t listen to this. This person doesn’t actually understand concepts such as fun, and games.

Do not grind the ladder. I repeat, do not grind the ladder.

You will reach legend in your own due time, on your own terms, when… this will sound totally crazy, but when you are playing for fun, and not actively going for legend.

Also, writing out your problems and working through them with help from others is actually a good idea, so not sure why anyone would try to deter you from doing that.

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are you saying nobody plays in wild? :stuck_out_tongue:

false, you’re discouraging him with that 300 games lie

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Unfortunately =*(. On the positive side I’ve faced most of the other forums posters for Wild at least once (who play it seriously)

18

Well I looked up the statistical analysis on Primedope (poker analysis site), playing from R5 to Legend with a 55% winrate will take on avg. 166 games, 70% of the time you will get to legend between 83-252 games, so 300 games doesn’t seem a ridiculous starting point as getting a 55% winrate is no mean feat on your first run.

It’s easy to underestimate the time commitment required to make a proper run to legend , and if you’re only giving yourself 150 games the chances of you making it without a crazy win% are not great and could be frustrating. Better to leave yourself enough time than be constantly falling short because you just can’t get the games in.

19

that’s what happens when you use a poker site (for a game which is not poker) instead of climbing yourself !

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I have done the climb myself, and yes , sometimes you can do it quicker, but often it can take a LOT of games, particularly if you hit tilt at any stage, it’s quite possible to tilt from R1 straight back down to R5 and have to start your climb again.

If you don’t give yourself enough games then one bad run can end your hopes for the season. Get plenty of games in is my genuine advice, it takes the pressure off, and at the very least gives you plenty of games to learn your deck inside out.