So I decided to hop on one of my alts for some casual Blitz and managed to climb to around 1700 CR and about 2k MMR. No big deal—just vibing and having a good time.
Then one of my buddies wanted to queue up with me as a healer. Problem is, his MMR was low. Like… really low.
We queued anyway, figuring we’d just play a few games for fun. Fast forward a few rough matches and we ended the night 1-4. Nothing crazy, but enough to tank my MMR into the ground.
Today, I log back on, go on a five-game win streak… and guess how much rating I gain? +20 CR. That’s it.
Then I lose two games, and boom: -16 CR for the first, -16 CR for the second. So all that effort? Completely wiped out. This is not okay.
I know I’ve made a few posts already, but I really want to make this known—because this MMR system is seriously flawed. It should not be this easy to brick a character.
Luckily, I have other toons and I genuinely enjoy PvP. But imagine being a new player who’s trying Blitz for the first time. A few bad games? Boom—your character feels unrecoverable. That’s how you lose potential long-term PvPers.
The system currently punishes you for trying to help friends or queueing with lower-rated teammates. It doesn’t encourage improvement, it punishes experimentation. And for solo players in particular, it’s brutal.
Blizzard really needs to take a hard look at how MMR and CR gains/losses are being calculated. If this doesn’t get addressed, PvP is just going to keep bleeding players.
Fix it. Please.
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Playing below your skill level should always be a lose big or win small. If for instance they didnt punish people for losing games they should be winning it would defeat the purpose of MMR as a system. The same goes for the opposite if your riding high at 1700 CR but ur 2900 MMR you deserve every 25 to 30 points ur getting for playing above ur CR and until that MMR and CR start to get close its fine.
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I completely agree with this. I’m not mad I lost CR or MMR. I knew that I would when I played with him.
The biggest issue is how fast you lose MMR—and how insanely slow it is to recover. I recently went on a 5-game win streak and still couldn’t climb back to where I was. It’s ridiculous.
You can have a positive win/loss ratio and still end up losing CR because your MMR just refuses to catch up. The system feels like it punishes you long after you’ve bounced back.
It shouldn’t be this easy to tank your character—and this hard to recover—even when you’re consistently winning.
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I think MMR being punising is the point. Climbing rating is supposed to be absolutely brutal and something that most players will never be able to do.
The MMR system is designed so that you get occasional win streaks to hook you in and then absolutely crush your soul by ensuring that you lose all of your progress. It’s designed so that you’re constantly fighting your way back up after you get pounded into the ground.
Seriously though, it’s definitely normal to deal with having a lot of losses and to keep playing in order to start winning matches again.
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However if you group with someone with lower MMR, you shouldn’t be considered to be playing “below your skill level” because the game will still find you an equivalent team to fight against.
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I’d also like to add that the current system actively discourages playing with friends—which is wild, considering this is an MMO.
The moment you queue with someone at a lower MMR, you’re punished for it. Your matchmaking gets weird, your gains slow to a crawl, and one or two losses can tank your CR. It makes grouping with friends feel like a liability, not a core part of the experience.
In a genre built around social play, that should never be the case.
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Let’s say Blizzard allowed us to gain the same amount of CR in low MMR lobbies as in high MMR ones. What would happen? Players would exploit it. Why would I bother competing against R1 players for 20 CR in 3k MMR lobbies when I could just queue with a low-rated friend and farm CR in 2k MMR games?
The rules need to be designed in a way that prevents this kind of abuse.
I completely agree with this.
I’m not saying we should be rewarded with +20 CR for stomping low-MMR lobbies. That’s not the point.
What I am saying is that your MMR shouldn’t tank so fast from just a few losses—and it definitely shouldn’t take winning 8–10 games in a row just to get back to “normal.”
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If your character’s MMR dropped drastically because you duo queued with a low rating friend, you could do the exact opposite to recover quickly: queue with a high rating friend. It’s true the MMR system is not flawless and sometimes it’s actually very frustrating, but it is what it is.
Or, simply avoid duo queuing with low MMR players on a character whose rating you care about. Instead make a yolo toon. People even create fresh new healer toons to help friends stuck in really low MMR brackets (like 900 MMR).
That’s another problem, a new character getting a losing streak in their first games and then getting stuck in a MMR where they literally do not even get matches anymore.
Ah…but the thing is…WoW has been developed as a “solo player MMO” since at least as far back as Cataclysm.
I think the current system actively discourages you from playing at all. There’s literally NOTHING you can do when you get back-to-back unwinnable matches. You just have to accept the losses and the fact that you will have to regrind the same rating levels over and over and over again.
It’s outright impossible to intentionally climb rating in Blitz. All you can do is try to win, but you simply can’t aim for win streaks in Blitz.
I might add that it’s probably too late in the season to even seriously think about reaching 1800+ in Blitz. You basically have to start the second the PvP season starts or else you won’t have enough time to climb rating in Blitz.
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My only gripe with the MMR system is that it’s not character specific, when it should be.
Hunter does not play the same as Warrior, so why does my MMR carry over?
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Yup MMR is broken adn thats why imma swap to MOP on the 21st. Blizz just cannot fix retail pvp issues.
It def doesnt im literally two different MMRs on two different monks
I’m convinced that there’s bots farming Honor and Conquest in Blitz or something. It’s unreal just how many matches I get where teammates are literally all in one spot doing NOTHING to control the map.
For example, CTF maps are impossible to win when nearly every single player on the team is on one half of the map allowing the other flag base to be completely controlled by the enemy team.
About 60-70% of all Blitz matches I’ve done this week have been completely unwinnable.
Not bots, just bad players or players who don’t care.
People on these forums (and really any social media about games) really, really overestimate the average skill level of players.
Remember, “gold” and “platinum” rating is average in OW2. To translate that into WoW that’s, what, 1600 rating? 1500 rating? But if you read these forums anything below 2.4k rating is unacceptable.
Playing with friends is always kind of terrible in matchmaking games if you’re on different skill levels.
In theory it should be possible to avoid that if they stored MMR for duos separately. Like, treat each duo as a new character. Might become annoying to climb from scratch as a duo though, but at least your own solo rating is not going to be affected.
Had a Blitz game not long ago where our presvoker was about 1000cr higher than everyone else, lol. He said he was boosting his friend, which is fine. Just seems odd to see players with such large rating discrepancies placed together.
Goes for the opposite as well with people who cant fathom how good some people are and just think its hacks or cheating.