I was playing SL with my friend who hasn’t played in a couple of months. When we lost he said he lost about 700 points, now he is affraid to play SL until we get the 5 man back together.
Why is the points shift so huge if he has already placed and done 50 matches this season? He was previously gaining about 200 per match.
Blizzard moment. It’s probably some prevention, but it’s nonsense
MMR uncertainty is affected by time just like rank decay for Dia+.
I assume the MMR uncertainty starts at 30 days of unplayed games and goes up to ±300 rank pts in 3 months, which is highly possible since the season lasts fricking forever.
Ya for accounts under Diamond if you haven’t played for a long time the matchmaker is less certain of your skill so you can earn and lose a huge amount of points in your first 10 or so games.
Thanks. I knew Rank could Decay down to like diamond but I didn’t know there was uncertainty.
The Murky avatar’s are multiplying, I blame the endless Nexus summer. 
Sorry, I couldn’t resist, this thread is basically a sea of green.
I’m ok with this. Majority of the fish here are nice folk.
The Boys.
Murky is da best hero in the game. Seconds Cutest next to Aba.
Logical decision
I have seen that exact phenomena on my account.
If I didn’t play for a few months, I now gain and lose about 600 points for each Storm League win or loss.
After I play about 10 games, it reverts back to 200.
That means, if I want to climb I have to take a break to get this boost, if I am confident to be better than others obviously.
Yeah that was my thoughts. It’s a risk but if you take a small break and maybe group with people you have a better chance of actually breaking the cycle
The sad thing about this for me that it’s discouraging for players, who plays a lot. I would like to see more bonus points for win-streaks post 3 wins like in Hearthstone.
Do they get a penalty if they’re on a loss streak?
I read somewhere that Legends can’t even derank from a massive loss once they get there.
If I’m picturing this system correctly, it makes the climbing heavily addicting, much more than Hots. I hope that I don’t have to specify how terrible this is.
Oh, and this:
Ladder is built in a way where ranked early and mid season is pretty much irrelevant (reward / point wise) so players tend to give it their all in the end since the finishing rank is what matters the most. I’m personally not a huge fan of only rewarding the last 3 days of ladder
Yikers.
True they can’t, the only way legends will derank, when they stop playing and reach legend in the season again. You have to constantly climb to legend every season (season duration is a month) to hold your rank.
While this statement is true I don’t see the problem with this, because this gives different type of players the option to be competitve. Not everyone plays everytime. Good casual player, who also has other things to do exists.
Oh right, the rank reset, an other way to solidify the addiction of climbing. Thanks, but no thanks.
There is a thing called demotion protection or something like that. You can demote from gold 4 to silver 1, but it will take some games and not only one. It depends on your mmr as well, you could lose 5 games and demote, or 10 games and demote.
Edited: This is only for actual rank, bronze, gold, diamond etc. For divisions you just decay like you do in hots.
Actually you got it wrong, just because you have to climb to your rank doesn’t mean you face weaker opponents, because the system still puts you in the same ladder with other high players until you reached your true rank. That means true bronze players would never face you, when you’re legend. Except you stopped playing for multiple months.
So what’s the problem with this system for you? You still get challenging matches, it’s only a cosmetic thing that let it look like “you’re bronze”.