Starting with the February ranked season, ladder climbing should become faster between Ranks 50 and 11. After the big ranked update, which introduced rank floors every 5 ranks, as well as made players lose only 4 ranks at the end of season, each rank required 5 stars to climb.
Now, we’re back closer to the older system, where you need only 3 stars per rank from Rank 50 all the way to 16, and then only 4 stars between 15 and 11.
Ranks 10 to 1 remain unchanged – you still need 5 stars per rank.
Read more below.
We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the long climb in Ranked play, so starting with the February Ranked Play season, we’re introducing a quality of life change by reducing the number of Stars required to advance in many of the Ranks!
Currently, every Rank has five Stars. When the February Ranked Play Season starts, each Rank will have the following number of Stars instead:
Rank Stars Rank 50 to Rank 16 3 Stars per Rank Rank 15 to Rank 11 4 Stars per Rank Rank 10 to Rank 1 5 Stars per Rank This will make your Ranked Play climb faster in the lower ranks, while preserving the more competitive Star values for the higher Ranks.
When the February Ranked Play Season begins, you will still be reset four Ranks lower than the highest Rank you achieved in the previous season, but “excess” Stars will be shed to align with the new value for the Rank you are moving to. For example, if your highest Rank in January was Rank 10 with five Stars, then when the February Season begins, you will be set to Rank 14 with four Stars. The “fifth” Star is no longer there, but you would still be at the highest value for the Rank you were moved to.
We look forward to hearing what you think! Let us know in the comments, as well as on Twitter, and Facebook.
[…] really knows what it will look like a few weeks from now! On top of that, the recently announced ranked play changes go live. You will only need 3 stars (down from 5) to advance between Ranks 50 and 16, and 4 stars […]
I find almost no fun climbing the ladder. rank 20 farming is by far the best way to have fun and gold.
I am not interested in leeching, but given the fact that I am playing since 2014, with about 70 packs on average per expansion, not having key cards for a specific rank climbing decks, makes climbing frustrating, time consuming and less-rewarding.
A year ago, i started climbing and reached rank 4, after dozens of hours of gameplay. The reward chest at the end of the season in dust was a lot less rewarding then having fun at rank 20, gold/time wise.
Recently with the addition that you cannot fall bellow a certain floor, made ranked play even more frustrating, being basically forced to play at that floor level with old season cards, when the other players have gotten full meta decks with new cards. I struggled completing basic quests.
I learned my lesson, I will only play at rank 20.
A bit about me :
1. I do not play Arena, at all.
2. I keep 8000 gold for each expansion
3. I keep about 10000 dust for mandatory cards.
4. I play about 5-6 classes
5. Play about 1 hour a day on weekdays, and 2 hours on weekends.
Do not get me started on standard ranked and wild ranked. (I find wild to be OP, but you can use all the cards, I do not understand how some players delete entire collections each hearthstone year (mammoth, raven) to craft for the next year.
Are you nuts? with 8000 gold for each set + 10k dust for essentials, you should have more than enough to build tier 1 decks easily every set, so you’re a blatant liar, or just trolling.
I’m curious: with the current system, how long does it take other players to climb from Rank 20 to say 10 or 5?
I’ve never even tried to climb, because some basic math–say assume a 60% win rate and 5 games / hour, that’s a net of +1 star an hour (ignoring streak bonuses) = 5 hours / rank–implied it was an extremely joyless way to spend a week, all just to be awarded slightly more dust at the end of the month.
I haven’t climbed from R20 in ages, but it used to take me ~10 hours to get from R16 to R5 with the old system. And then another ~10 hours from R5 to Legend. Of course, it depends on how late into the season I did it – the climbs were much harder early (because all of the Legend players were reset back to R16) and easier later in the month (because most of the great players already climbed).
You can’t ignore streak bonuses, because that’s the main thing that drives you forward at lower ranks. Plus, assuming you’re good and you pick a solid deck, you should have a really high win rate until like rank 10, which means that you can get A LOT of extra stars from win streaks.
But yeah, there’s no point in grinding ranks just for the sake of grinding. The rewards aren’t worth it for the most part. I hit Legend every season simply because I enjoy competing and laddering, not for the rewards.
Stonekeep’s comment “assuming you’re good and you pick a solid deck, you should have a really high win rate until like rank 10, which means that you can get A LOT of extra stars from win streaks.” is what you should focus on. If you are decent with a decent deck, you’ll fly through at higher than 60% win rate and the bonus stars will help a ton. And with this new system it will get even easier. It’s be faster than you think.
I think it depends a lot on your “local meta” and how well you can adapt … from 20 – 15 this month I had around an 86% win-rate using a home-brewed OTK Paladin… hit rank 15 and suddenly hit a huge number of Mecha’thun Druids; in which case it’s entirely a race to see who can draw through their deck first – and if they drop auctioneer early enough, it’s game over.
Got to rank 13 and just under 60% win rate and, yeah, that’ll do 🙂
For me before they made it five stars for all ranks I could hit rank 10 or even 6-7 with meme decks but now I can barely hit rank 15 with good net decks. I think this is right for Blizzard to do