#### Matchmaking Update
Previously, matchmaking on the ranked ladder was based on your internal rating (commonly called “MMR”) while you had bonus stars and based on ladder rank after you ran out of bonus stars. Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. This change should reduce matchmaking complexity and result in more consistent and fairer matches throughout the ladder
this means well be able to climb ranks without using a top tier deck right ?
2 Likes
This just means that the noob bad at the game will never face another human opponent again. They will forever be at the low MMR bot rank.
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Hey, bots can be difficult for humans to defeat. We have a whole genre of literature and movies and other media that deep dives into it. Just because you dont think they are difficult for you, (subjective) doesnt mean that they are all (objective) not difficult to beat.
I know some people that can run a mile no issue. I know other people that require a walker in order to go from the couch to the bathroom. I dont consider one group superior to the other.
what i understood is now we can play with tier 3 or tier 4 and still be able to climb
no idea how fast our mmr increases but it may mean we can play a bad deck and get to rank (plat or diamond )5 or 10 then switch to a way better deck making the climb to the next rank floor easier ?
2 Likes
I don’t think it means that at all. People are still going to match into tier 0 and 1 decks most of the time and hit the same walls they were hitting before. Only thing that will change is that more people will cry rigged.
2 Likes
I think the main reasoning here is that if you run out of bonus stars, you get matched against skill level after that instead of facing whoever is at that rank.
This is a positive change for bad players and negative change for good players.
For example:
Bad player: Gets bonus stars and plays against other bad players based on MMR. Runs out of bonus stars and no longer has to face high MMR players also in their rank star area but now has to play against other bad players consistently. Will never play against a player who is really good and above them in MMR.
Good player: Gets bonus stars and plays against other good players based on MMR. Runs out of bonus stars and must continually face high MMR players also in their rank star area and continually play against other good players consistently. Will never play against a player who is really bad and below them in MMR like they would at rank star with no bonus stars.
So all in all, closer to 50% win ratio because bad players always play bad players and good players always play good players.
This makes it so bad players can rank up easier in all reality. But it’s not a huge change, just will end up with more people sitting at 50% win rate which will do exactly as Shuyin is saying: more “it’s rigged!” people certainly coming soon.
1 Like
I wonder if they have something planned out for the starless d5-legend ranks.
Because if it’s blizzarded to needing a 55% wr to reasonably climb in reasonable life friendly games, and you get rubberbanded to 50% wr in a mode you need positive wr to climb.
You might end up in pretty stupid situations where the better you are, the more fruitless trying hard could become, being autobalanced to the same 50% wr. XD.
No. Why should you expect to climb with a bad deck?
Amen to that. 
It is really time to let other decks climb the ladder too… not just the most OP broken ones…
Skill difference now matters even more
I think this update was mainly done to fix the exploit where people try to qualify for MT via fresh accounts because it used to give them easy games until legend and place them in top 50 because of unrealistically high win rate.
Now when they run out of 2-3 bonus stars they started with, they’re gonna start playing against players with their own MMR instead of more bots or platinum/diamond players, which is gonna fix that exploit and make the qualifications fair for the first time ever.
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I wonder why they dont just pair players based on the MMR as well as same current Rank (bronze/silver/etc) AND remaining Bonus stars. making it as close as possible to pair people together in terms of their internal and external values. Last couple months its gotten nearly impossible for me to get the card backs from the 5 wins conditions let alone get any of the ladder climbed out of bronze anymore. But thats a me issue i suppose.
100% a you issue.
Idk what deck you’re using, but it sucks if you can’t win five games in a month. Like, five people would be afk in a month and you would luck into enough wins doing nothing.
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I dont use premade decks. I just put together decks while browsing my collection. if there is a theme to it its usually something like odd because Ive got Baku, or highlander because ive got Reno, or C’thun and its minions because of c’thun… aside from that there isnt anything else to it besides picking out my one or two board wipes, one or two removals, a few tech cards like the anti weapon ooze, silence owl, anti secret minion, etc and usually 2 of each mana cost minions (2x 1-cost, 2x 2-cost, 2x 3-cost, etc).
Yup, MMR diving was always a thing, not just in this competition. Win trading, related to MMR diving is another form of rigging and happens all the time in professional sports, although some more than other’s.
For example, there’s a study that claims an estimated 75 percent of all tennis matches beyond a certain skill level are rigged or predetermined.
Any competition that has a reward other than bragging rights/being the best at what you do is liable to fall prey to this issue, it’s probably more prevalent than doping in the Olympics or tour de France.
I remember MMR diving myself back in the heyday of wow arena to get Gladiator title in 2s, basically impossible to achieve if you didn’t know how to dive.
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I do not mind the change at all, but can Blizzard just show this value to all people ?
Make it transparent, not shady.
Maybe you should because reading the rest of your post, you have zero deck building ability.
The fact that you call the bots difficult backs this up.
Playing with a better list will help you learn more about the game and deck building so you can start making better decks of your own.
If I was you, I would start with paladin because they are rather easy to understand.
Edit: You don’t need all the legendaries. The excavate package, plushies, and hand buffs with virtue would be enough to destroy bot ranks and up to platinum. If you’re interested I can make a basic deck list for you.
i dont have hardly any excavate cards. I barely went outside of bgs when that set released. I hated it every bit. Never in my life had I seen someone play multiple cards every round from turn 1 and have a huge hand at the end… so 1 sided.
I have heard both sides of this argument, both here and on reddit.
Is this good or bad for average players? What is the consensus here?
Based on the response the blizzard employee gave on reddit, it seems they’ve tried to implement a form of the “bot jail” I described here. Seems like no one agreed with me, except blizzard 
Post from Celestial_HS (senior game dev):
No. This is purely to fight bots, and should have no impact on real players, apart from not running into many bots. Apart from bots, Peak Rank and MMR are highly correlated (which is why it was fine to work this way for so long).
People already ranked up all the time against equal-skill opponents, even in D5-1 where there were very few bots and no winstreaks.