Is the new rank system in Hearthstone any better

Hearthstone’s rank system was reworked in April 2020 with the old 25 ranks being replaced with 50 new ranks. This change has more impact than people think, not only in terms of rank and star count, but it also affects plowing, per-season rewards and matchmaking. We’re now two months into the new rank system and it’s time to see how it works. Is the new system more balanced? More competitive? Better rewards or more fun?

Rank is more balanced? (Bronze is not the old Bronze anymore)

One of the confusing aspects of the new rank system is matchmaking. As long as there’s a star bonus, you’ll be matched based on your matchmaking rating (MMR) rather than your rank. Once the star bonus runs out, you begin to rank up until you meet a Legend, where matchmaking is sorted by MMR. Also, your MMR is never reset again, it will continue in the next season.

This means that for good players who have only played a few games, matchmaking will not be as bad near the end of the month as it was in the old system. If you play less than those of the same skill, you’ll previously be left behind in the ranks and have to face off against weaker players before the reset takes place. In the new system, you will constantly encounter worthy opponents, so your win rate will be closer to 50% but the games you play will become more quality. Players in Brzone who start playing late in the month can play every game against a Legend player if their MMR is high enough.

Almost, the new system is better than the old system at finding equal competitors.

Relaxing on the ‘rank floor’ (meaning you can’t drop to a lower rank once you reach a certain rank threshold) is no longer the same. Since MMR doesn’t reset, you can lose a lot if you experiment or play meme decks. After that, the process of plowing to get MMR back will be difficult and long if you want to play seriously again. The new season can no longer save the situation.

The problem is that you can’t see your MMR anymore. The closest thing you can see is your Legend rank, because in Legend, everyone is ranked according to MMR. What you don’t see is how big the MMR gap is. 1st place is 10 wins away from you or is it 100 wins? There is no way to know.

This system is also more efficient at matching players of equal strength than the old system (assuming everyone seriously wants to win). The minute you’re gone and try to discover a new archetype, the system will still think you’re playing at your best with your best deck, so if you lose, the system obviously believes you’re losing skill too. playability. This view of the new system inadvertently undermines the best part of a card game: building and testing new decks.

Is the new system more competitive? How hard is climbing the Legend and does it matter?

It can be hard to see the impact of Standard rotation with the new expansion in the new rank system, but overall, the game now has more Legends than ever. Efforts from the community recorded the number of Legend people in many regions gave the following estimates at the end of the month:

The number of gamers reaching Legend increased about 9 times in the first month in the new system compared to the old system of the previous month. In the second month, the number of gamers reaching Legend also increased 6 times in the new system compared to the last month of the old system. While the first month could have been due to the impact of the new expansion, the numbers for the second month still seem to indicate that the new system makes Legend grow even more.

However, for a mid-range Legend gamer from the old system, the difference is not huge, and any difference that exists is on the other side: Now, it takes a lot of games to get Legend from Bronze 10 with 10x. star bonus vs climbing Legend from the old system’s Rank. It costs more games, but your win rate is not as high as before: even 50% win rate still gives 10x star bonus gamers a comfortable climb to Diamond 5 (what you need to do is win 15 more games) compared to the number of games you lose). It is equivalent to climbing from Rank 5 to Rank 2 in the old system. With a smaller obstacle to climbing the rank at the end, more and more people are crossing the threshold to become a Legend.

Legend is no longer a VIP club in the new system. Even so, with a huge player base, tens of thousands of Legend gamers are still only a small part of the Hearthstone community at large.

The new point is that when you reach the Legend, you still have a whole new plowing process. With MMR not reset, these values ​​are stored even more, and your progress to the top will be greater when you get to Legend. The author lost thousands of ranks when trying new decks in about 200 games, dropping from 1000 to 6000. You probably think the author’s win rate is very low, right? Maybe, but it’s 52%. You need to have a high win rate in Legend or everyone will beat you. Get the rank climbing process in Legend Sidisi this season as an example: 91-47 (66% win rate) to climb from 3290 to 1090. To reach higher rank, the process of plowing and hoeing has to happen continuously, because you can’t know your route. because my MMR doesn’t show up. In contrast, players with high MMR don’t need to play as much as before. For example, Meati reached 2nd place in February with a record of 124-87 (59%) for the whole season after plowing non-stop in April with nearly 1000 matches, ranked 13th.

And yet, the game also has a mysterious 11x star bonus in Legend. With 11x star bonus, you will get bonus star when you win all matches until you reach Legend, which means you will reach Legend in about 100 games even if you lose more than win. Game director Ben Lee has this to say about this bonus: it is based on MMR (not a certain rank) and it is adjusted to only include about 10% of top Legend players. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing if you’re eligible for the 11x star bonus until the season ends. But this information also partly tells you what goals you need to strive for.

Overall, getting Legend is easier now than before, but it’s still a huge achievement. However, getting high ranks in Legend now requires more work than before unless you already have a high MMR (in which case you can play less as long as you keep your win rate high).

New system with more bonus? More packs and golden cards?

From a Dust perspective, the new system has slightly better rewards than the old system. If you disenchant all the gold cards you got in the old system and you disenchant all the cards you got from the pack in the new system, you’ll be slightly better off in the new system.

The new system also rewards you even more for reaching certain ranks for the first time, giving you more incentive to get to Legend for the first time than ever before.

The old system is better if you want the Golden cards and intend to keep them. Otherwise, the new system will be more profitable.

Is the new system more entertaining? Why do we play?

You will meet more worthy opponents in the new system and you will also get more bonus cards as you play. Both are good points.

On the other hand, the new rank system can be confusing now because MMR is separate from rank. What you earn each month is just a virtual number, designed for gamers to keep playing the game. The star bonus will slowly bring you back to where you were before, where the real climbing process begins. Do you feel annoyed when you are ‘tricked’ into playing? For now, people are still happy to continue playing, so the new system can be said to be more interesting than the old. Only time will tell how long this system will last.

So how is your experience with the new rank climbing system? Are you satisfied with it? Everyone, please share your thoughts.

According to hearthstonetopdecks