Yesterday I was looking at my stats for this month and noticed something interesting. If I’m playing competitive decks, I basically win streak up to Diamond 10. Before this rank, I only have losses with meme decks and the occasional lone loss here and there with competitive decks.
After Diamond 10 everything changes and the win rate goes down as rank goes up, but there’s a severe win rate drop starting at Diamond 10. According to my stats, this is true for Wild and Standard.
Another interesting point is that I tend to play decks that I want to learn in the ranks we can’t drop from. Before Diamond 10 my win rate with these decks is decent. After Diamond 10 I have atrocious win rates with these decks and meme decks. Some of them have 6% win rate as opposed to 50% before this rank.
So, here’s my question: why is there such a difference after Diamond 10? Why not Diamond 5 since that’s when win streaks don’t count anymore? Or is it a matter of player experience, meaning, I have enough experience to cruise the game until Diamond 10 and that is where players of my level start to compete against each other?
I don’t particularly care about this but I admit I’m intrigued and find it an interesting discussion. Any thoughts?
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It might just be a coincidence mixed in with strength of opponent increasing.
I’m not really experienced enough with try-harding on the ladder since the chance to mmr based match making, but it definitely used to be that the later in the month you tried, the easier it was. Wonder if that has changed.
I usually win streak up to gold/platinum (once diamond by accident 
) but I think the explanation for my streaks is that my poor wr for most of the month playing meme decks keeps my mmr down, so when I do try I get a bunch of weaker players in a row. Maybe you’ve got a similar effect going on but once you reach diamond the competition is to tough for it to work as easily.
You make a very good point, I didn’t account for the effect of MMR early on. Mine was likely trash because the last time I played I was only meme’ing. I’m guessing my MMR is a lot higher now since I mostly played competitive decks, so it will be interesting to see how this affects the start of the next season, especially because I only play on ladder, meaning, I won’t have the grace period of skipping the first week.
You kind of answered your own question with the meme decks also. A lot of people hit a bottleneck in diamond who only know how to netdeck and not actually understand how the deck should work. I’m not saying you’re one of them, but in reality you meet a lot of the same decks here that people have copied from the pros that have a high chance of winning because of the thought that has gone into that deck. As the previous post stated you’re going to meet people with higher skill and deckbuilding ability the higher up in the ranks you go.
I think you’re doing the right thing though in trying out new decks as deck building is like 80% of the skill in this game. Sometimes reading the meta and putting in cards people don’t expect in the current meta is the key to an easier climb.
Thanks for the feedback, Nidus.
To be honest, I always thought that people that netdeck but don’t know how to pilot correctly or tech their deck don’t even get to Diamond, but being honest, this is the first season I played with the new rank system (been away for more than a year) so I’m not sure where the population falls across the multiple leagues.
Regardless of my views and doubts, I think you make a very good point. In fact, through all the games I played this month I only saw two unusual tech cards being played against me and both were above Diamond 5.
Lastly, although I enjoy more the deck building Timmy side of Hearthstone, this month I was very competitive and netdeck’ed quite a bit, especially because I had no idea what cards existed since I left. However I changed the several decks I climbed with. None of them is recognized as a meta deck by deck tracker for instance and also changed decks according to the local meta. I actually expect most people to do this, but if I read you correctly, this is not the case, right?
In all my time playing Hearthstone, I have found it to be that case that 80% of the people I match against, from low ranks all the way through to legend, are carbon copies of whatever is in the top tier list at the time. Another 15% are the decks like you stated where they swap out 1-2 cards. The last 5% is the completely random decks you see that are either great or terrible. This is only my own experience though and others’ may differ.
They are powerful decks regardless so a lot of people can climb fairly high with them with just putting time into playing a lot of games. As you get higher, it mostly comes down to luck with card draw if you know the deck you’re against. This is because there will be a skill increase on the whole and less errors played.
I think that’s another thing to consider also… unless you’re playing/playing against a face deck the games can take a while and it’s then down to how much free time you have to play.
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I find getting to Diamond 5 very quick to do at the start of the month but getting to Legend quite a slog.
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Diamond 10 and it’s what 02/05/21
Getting to Legend might take a week or two though…
Yeah it very much depends on the deck type and where you finished last season also. Diamond 5-Legend can take a while even if you hit legend the season before, if you didn’t it just means it will take 2/3 times as long.
My advice with the new rank system is to just put your all into getting diamond 5 at least, as it will set you up nicely for hitting legend in the following season(s).
Hello vladimir putin,
Remember, hearthstone its skill ceiling is not that high and therefore at a certain ranking your deck overall winrate will mostly matter upon climbing the ranks.
Rng is always the deciding factor in winning a match up when both players know the hearthstone engine.
…your deck vs your opponents deck/match up
…aggressive/mid range/control/OTK-combo
…card draw
…opening hand
Standard mode is promoted by blizzard as far as i know to new players, so many people are still learning the mechanics and that will give you a advantage with meme decks.
At a certain rank most players have figured out the game and need to grind out the rest of the match ups to climb the remaining ranks.
This is quite a bold claim. There’s quite a bit of evidence that skill is more relevant than RNG, e.g. the hegemony of some players over years of playing at the highest level.
It is not a claim, there are limited options for your deck against any other deck.
Some match ups you are in favour and some less.
Just know your opponent its deck in the first turn or more, then you can adapt your odds to your solution and hope he makes mistakes or has some bad draws that can not answer your board.
And greetings 