So, I recently played a game against a rank 5 player in a tournament, and decided that, minutes before the lock in, I wanted to play mage instead of warrior, because Mage was going to be different, and most people would play warrior. I threw together a cyclone-ish type of deck, and fought my hardest in a best of three.
Game one, I lose, fairly convincingly. Not enough minions, no targets for calling, he stomps.
Game two, is where it gets interesting. I run double research projects, and manage to burn a brawl, an Omega Devastator, and Doctor Boom, Mad Genius.
In game three, he BM’s left and right, and plays a control warrior deck, and ends up winning in the end.
I congratulate him on his win, and say he played well.
His response to me, a rank 15, is “Yea, I dont need praise by you. gg”
So, he played a netdeck, basically, against someone who threw a mishmash of cards together, in the third game he played like there were mines around him. Yet, it just seems to me that the only real difference between the two of us is cards crafted, and time spent playing the game.
Am I missing something? Because otherwise, I’ll gladly queue up in ranked and get rank 10 by the end of the season if I just play the right deck.
You really have to ask yourself what actually changes in a person when they jump from some initial rank to rank 5.
Getting to rank 5 involves understanding the basic mechanics, understanding how to build a deck with a purpose and a mana curve that enables efficient gameplay that helps to realize that purpose consistently and more powerfully than the opponent, understanding how to mulligan against certain matchups, and making play decisions against certain matchups using educated guesses based on what turn it is and what cards they’ve already played and are likely to play in the future, and having the will and persistence to keep playing even in the face of a string of losses and hoping that a little luck is experienced on the journey thanks to the nature of the game that contains random elements.
Fundamentally, their mental state and maturity can be independent of the above factors, making it a possibility that a rank 5 could behave like an immature child exhibiting poor sportsmanship. Also, rank 5 is one of several ranks floors, and once a person reaches that rank floor, they may feel they are no longer obligated to play perfectly and this could lead to them making mistakes or playing poorly on purpose because they have nothing at stake to lose.
As someone who solely plays rank 5 or better 80% of my matches… I don’t see BM that often. This was more about the person than an attitude at high rank. Personally I would have said “GG” and just gone about my way.
Correlation is not causation. Playing in rank 25-20 on Asia realms right now and almost every player I have vsed has spam emoted me. People can be sore losers and winners. Rank doesn’t change this.
At rank 4, people don’t have time for that. No more win streak stars, you play your games and move on quickly.
But once they sport the Legend card back, OMG do some of them become the biggest ropers, wasting your time so you have a harder time making enough time for enough games to get your own.
I dunno, man.
Mysterious Challenger does things to me…
When I look at those perfect curves…
1 into 2, into 3, into 4, into 5, into 6, enemy concedes.
“Dry” is the wrong word.
I think your mistake was after running into a rank 5 act like a jerk and you assumed that all rank 5+ players are like that instead of assuming you just happened to run into a jerk.
You can find them in all ranks and in all game modes. Go in arena and regardless of the wins you’re at it’s a 50-50 on whether for instance your opponents responds to a well played with a well played or a thanks. Ranked or even tavern brawl aren’t different either.
Also rank 5 shows some basic competence but more than that what it usually shows is that they have the ability to craft a decent deck and are willing to play it enough. If you watch any high legend streamers (Iike the GMs) you’ll see that when they are playing in dumpster legend (rank 1000+ legends) then many times their reads are off because their opponents play too suboptimally, holding cards they definitely should have played earlier. And that’s people who made it into legend and (on average) are better than the rank 5 players.
