Per this link on the forums explaining how ranked match making works I think something is not working correctly:
“Q: How does matchmaking work for each season?
A: There are two matchmaking pools: matchmaking by rating (aka. MMR) and by rank.
When your star bonus multiplier is bigger than 1, or you are in Legend rank, you are (generally) in the first matchmaking pool; when your star bonus drops to 1, you are in the second pool.”
I am a legend rank player and I’ve been conceding about 75% of my matches (basically any bad matchups so I can get my 1000 wins as priest quicker) however I started facing players of rank Diamond 5-1 - now these players won’t have a star bonus anymore so they should not be in the MMR pool to be matched against me.
For what its worth I have now even started matching up against Diamond 7 and 6 players which seems a little unfair to them seeing as I’m legend and I’ve only got a bad MMR due to tanking it on purpose and I’m noticing their level of skill is much easier to beat, this makes it harder for them then to achieve their higher ranks as they are getting matched against more skilled players ideally.
I mean they theoretically could have a star multiplier right? I also thought they might match you outside your rank if they can’t find an appropriate match quickly enough.
Queue times are as fast as normal i.e. a second or two (much better than it used to be at dumpster legend before the re-work where you could get minute queues).
So far all the matches I’m going through against ranks Diamond 5-1 and getting more or less insta-pops there just wouldn’t possibly be enough players in Diamond 5 with a star bonus (meaning they had 11 star less season and are just for some reason hanging out in Diamond) to still match against.
I mean it’s good for me and speeds up my 1000 but sucks for those I go against I guess who aren’t as skilled and it blatantly isn’t working as described.
Although the way it is worded implies that this exception doesn’t exist. He says you are (generally) matched by MMR if you have a star bonus, otherwise you are matched by rank. The way I read that means that sometimes you’ll be matched by your rank even if you have a star bonus, but that if you don’t have one you are always matched by rank.
I think you’re right though, because otherwise the situation described in the original post shouldn’t be possible.
Exactly, the way they worded the guide implies if you have a star bonus or are legend you are in the MMR pool. No star bonus you get in a rank based pool.
Seems it’s not working and the rank pool may not even exist as there is ZERO way to prove it works since you can only see rank when you are legend.
HSReplay matchups on the main page demonstrate this is broken also, so many matches of people of varying ranks who should be out of the bonus star ranks facing each other.