I play HotS for its Heroes and I usually have a mood and desire for certain characters specifically. This approach is not fitted for Ranked, where you should cooperate and fill. Thus I was always QM focused.
The frustration and stress which ppl feel when they want to climb or starting to fall is a bonus on why I disliked it. Ppl there were toxic (even if they kept it civil). Now pair that with the fact, that unlike in QM, terrible comps is entirely my allies’ fault and a disadvantage we could’ve avoided, it was just not my cup of tea.
Yet I played it, because I wanted free stuff. I probably would’ve never played it without the Seasonal Rewards.
My climb from Gold to Masters was a natural process of me getting better and better in QM (mostly throughout my campaign to play everyone to lvl 15 at least, which I did to collect Portraits, so: to get more free stuff).
Bonus motivation was, that during that time when I reached Master (or was close to reach it again?) there was a troll who said that only Master+ should write guides (which is immensely dumb, because what works in Masters doesn’t necessary works in Bronze and vice-versa). So I reached Masters and wrote my Imperius guide. For me it was a joke, but it did feel super good to reach that high, since when I started the game I was a total noob who made even his friends lose against the AI.
During my noob period I also shared the same silly mentality that I thought certain Heroes were weak because I was bad with them, or others are op because they gave me trouble as opponents.
Rehgar, Sonya, and Thrall were the Heroes I thought were bad but then I became good with them during lvling and thus I learnt that there are no super weak Heroes just ppl who don’t know how to use them.
And Nova was my bane. This plus the fact that literally everyone had her in their 4 most played during Beta, I decided to never lvl up her, keeping her as my least played to “balance” things out (as a meme). Nova thought me that there are no op Heroes, just ppl who can’t play around them first and it’s a key to know what the enemy can do so you can counter them properly. I was really proud of myself when as Arthas, I could root her in the fog of war.
My climb also was supported by the fact that I started on a toaster where I had to play with 1-2 sec latency and cosntant lags, and I became better and better as I could get slightly better and better comps so I had less and less of latencies and lags.
Man, I got nostalgic 
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