Finally got to test this and proven what this does. This account ranked diamond 3. I did not play for 6 months and go rank decayed all the way down to plat 1 where rank decay is removed, even then I did not play.
I log into this season, win all 3 of my placement games and placed back at rank diamond 3. What is the point of rank decay if it is not gonna affect the next season?
There is “soft” rank decay in the ranks below Diamond. The longer you don’t play, the more MMR confidence is lost, but rank is lost very slowly. It’s always been this way.
I didnt touch the game for 6months and it did not affect me, it shows if you play your 3 placement games and never touch the game til next season, you may rank decay but the next season will just put you back where you originally ranked.
Then these same players go make smurfs to ruin the MMR and yeah.
That’s where what I said about MMR confidence becoming more loose when you haven’t played for a long time comes into play. If you take an extended break your first 10 games or so award more points than usual. So if you win them, yes, it doesn’t surprise me to read you made it back to Diamond.
If you had lost many of your first games you would have dropped lower than Plat 1. I agree it’s a funny system, but it’s pretty much always been this way.
Nah even all 3 losses would ahve put you at diamond 4 at best. The system only does your rank 1-2 ranks at best, it doesnt effect anything
Not true, you can lose over 500 points for a loss after you’ve taken a long break and you can be awarded over 500 for a win. I know this from my own experience and friends.
The system is surprisingly effective.
Rank and mmr are tied close together but there are cases when they can disyncronize like with leaver penalty and rank decay.
Now if those things take effect, mmr loosens, and you can seal yourself at the decayed rank, or you can climb back. It’s all on your ability to win.
So if you’re good enough, you can keep your rank, because rank decay was never for those who belong where they are. It’s there to seed out those who shouldn’t or no longer should be there.
I decayed many times by now and I never magically got back what I lost to decay. It would be amazing if it didn’t work, but sadly it does.
P.S. Why is decay bad? Platinum is the wild wild west because of this nonsense. Will you get 2 decayed masters or will you get 2 real platinums (well there’s intentional smurfs too, but system-made smurfs are actually more common)? I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for some1 who’s not even a decayed master themselves (I at least get to be part of the problem myself)…
6 months is not a long time in HotS timeframes.
I only decayed significantly after not playing for 1+ year in 2017. And as you yourself noted, d5+ decay stops at d5 0 points once you have no more banked Storm League days available (each day reduces 200 pts).
After that the decay is extremely slow. If I had to guess, maybe something like 500 points a month for each month of inactivity?
6 months is enough to decay from top GM to plat1. Even if you had full 30 day immunity stacked, you would still decay 30k points over the next 5 months. So basically Grandmaster with 25k points (nobody ever had that) would still decay to plat1 in 6 months.
Decay is absolutely atrociously crazy high in hots.
You don’t need to guess. It very clearly states it’s 200 per day in the tooltip. And that’s how it actually works.
If you think there’s no decay then you’re probably lower than plat1 (there is no decay below plat1).
The point is i lost ranks but when i played the new season. I am back where I was before the ranks were lost and btw i am getting 200 a win and 200 a loss cause i lost 1 yesterday i played after this post.
Maybe you didn’t read the post fully, but I did say it’s 200 pts per day until you go to D5 0 points.
And each banked day above D5 prevents the decay.
And there is decay below it - I decayed from platinum 5 to silver after a very long inactivity period.