Why has ranked gotten harder?

[Marcawesome 16]

Haven't posted in a while but I still play.  My main gold is to get to rank 5 every season and get my golden epic.  Last month I failed to achieve this goal in a long time.  I keep running into top decks played by good players who make no mistakes at ranks 8-12.  It uses to be if one waited towards the end of the month most of the good players would rise to the top and it was an easy path to get to rank five.  However, over the last couple of months I've been running into really good players playing cookie cutter decks.

 

What has changed?

-Did hearthstone change it match-matching?

-Are the overlays too good that players have an competitive advantage

-Am I past my prime

 

[Synesthesy 114]

I feel the same, for me the changing was when they put 5 stars to all rank. For a month I played very little for real world reason, and since the month after I was stucked to rank 18 while before I used to go easy to rank 10/5 every month. I'm not a worst player, my feeling was both that either at lower rank people run perfect high tier meta decks made with thousands of dust, and something that make me need more time to climb (and I don't play whole day!).

This month I'm happy because I'm rank 8 now ?

[Marcawesome 16]

I with you, dat real life will get in the way.

[Guest]

There was a time when I went to 5 every month (never bothered to go higher), but that was a year ago.

Now I reach 10 sometimes, sometimes not - because I am not realy interested in investing the necessary time.

And yes, it has become way more challenging and time consuming.

2-3 years ago reaching lvl 15 was quite a no brainer and extremly fast. Going to lvl 10 wasn't hard either.

With winningstreaks you stormed up the ladder.

But today you face Tier 1 (or at least Tier 2) decks no matter your rank.

There are chances even on rank 22 to play vs a Tier 1 deck.

And this way your chances of getting a high win streak is way smaller then before.

But the bonus star for 3-wins in a row is what made you climb the ladder fast.

If you have 60% winrate with no win-streak (and 60% is not that bad) you need to play 10 games to just get 2 stars.

That is 25 games to climb one single rank. Because you need 5 stars now compared to 3 (to lvl 15) / 4 (to get to 10) stars.

Sure, with win-streaks that lessens a little.

But 3 years ago you reached lvl 10 with 8 wins in a row and you had to play maybe 50 games to go from 20 to 10.

 

 

[Topblitzin 2]

I heard they add 25 ranks now and you basically work your way down to legend. Remember to read the Patch Notes. GLHF

[FanOfValeera 253]

1 hour ago, Topblitzin said:

I heard they add 25 ranks now and you basically work your way down to legend. Remember to read the Patch Notes. GLHF

Those are for newcomers, once youget past these ranks, you cannot go back there. These guys have been playing for a long time