What I've learned from Legend

General Discussion
21

I really enjoyed this post and while I have the urge to add my own little bits to every talking point here I’m just going to respond to the points I disagree with. That being said overall great advice.

You kind of dispute this point yourself with points 5 and 6. Tilts and loss streaks still apply to the climb for legend. I think we’ve all experienced rank ping pong. Going from rank 2 to 3 to 2 to 3. Feels like you’re on a time loop and it gets super frustrating at times. I swear I nearly went mad with the first season of this expansion. Took me way longer than it usually does.

I dislike this mentality. One key point you’ve left out of your post is reading the meta. An important skill in TCG’s is understanding how decks work and understanding their weaknesses. Teching against a deck in ladder strengthens your odds against a deck you struggle with but weakens your odds against other decks which can make for a terrible laddering experience. If you are looking to push to legend then switching decks based on what is popular can do wonders.
The most important thing in a game is to enjoy yourself and telling players to “pick a deck and stick with it” is terrible advice in my opinion. Many players are actually quite capable of piloting a deck to legend having only just picked it up. You might lose a few extra games but if you are capable of getting legend then i’m confident learning a new deck isn’t that hard for you. Also if you don’t want to risk losing more than you normally would play around with it in casual play for a little bit before continuing your push.

This last point I considered not giving my opinion on since my response is quite antagonistic and has nothing to do with the overall topic of pushing to legend but hopefully it doesn’t offend or sour my previous points.
I agree with not needing legend to prove you are a good player. Legend resets every month. I disagree that most players above rank 20 are relatively good at the game. This might come across as elitist but having playing on all 3 regions doing a free to play climb on 2 of them the ranks 25-5 make so many ridiculous misplays that I quite often found myself bursting out in laughter at how weird my games were.

Really thank you for taking the time to lay out your thoughts on the climb to legend. Very well presented and almost everything you said in my opinion is good advice I would like to add one thing which i touched on in my response to point #10 and that is reading the meta.
Observing what you are vsing and also using statistics and data from websites like hsreplay and viscious syndicate to anticipate certain decks can be a great tool to help you decide what you will try to push with and hopefully increase your success in pushing.

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22

Hi, mate! Thank you for taking the time to read my post and provide feedback! I’m glad to hear you agree with most of what I have said. Moreover, many thanks for presenting your opinion in a precise and respectful way! That I can always appreciate!

You bring up a valid point! Your comment here actually reminds me of that one time a few months ago, when I was at rank 1 (3 stars) and thought I was about to get Legend, but then I was hit with an insane losing streak out of nowhere. I’m talking 20+ consecutive lost games, it was unbelievable. I couldn’t come back from that and never hit Legend that season. Sure, rank ping-pong and losing streaks happen, but if you have a large enough sample of games and are still far away from Legend, then it is most likely not rank ping-pong or losing streaks holding you back. Anecdotally, all the 9 times I’ve hit Legend, it took me 8 to 16 hours, even with some ping-pong.
In any case, you are right! I should’ve worded my post better, because point 4 kind of implies, that if you can’t hit Legend in 16 hours, then you are not good enough. I meant to say, that if you have played 200 games in 25 hours for example and have a winrate of 51%, then you could still theoretically hit Legend. But the amount of time needed would be so outrageous, that you’d better take the time to improve your game, rather than grind it out, because you are probably not ready.

I suppose it all boils down to personal experience and, again, to the way I worded my post. I have personally found teching to be more efficient than switching decks, as long as it is done properly. And I cannot stress this last part enough. If you don’t intend to monitor the effects of the tech, or if you are not sure of which card to tech, then you should either take a break and come back with the same deck to a different meta, or switch the deck to one you are comfortable with.
With point 10 I meant to say, that you should not switch to a deck you are absolutely clueless about. You could certainly learn Bomb Hunter in a few casual games, but if you have never played a Rogue before, I am pretty sceptical about learning the intricacies of Shark Rogue in a couple of games. There are too many decisions to make and too many card interactions to consider. Even after a few casual games you will still make small mistakes here and there, which will cost you the game at high ranks. Then again, this is only my opinion.
If you are interested, I have a short anecdote about a, in my opinion, proper tech: This season I was laddering up with Party Rogue and around R3 I got hit with a barrage of Warriors. According to the tracker, Warrior constituted 32% of my games on average and around 60% of my games on that Rank. So I exchanged a single Deadly Poison for Chef Nomi (I had Myra too, of course) and this brought up my win rate by 20% against Warrior, helping me push forward. I kind of liked hitting my opponents with Nomi out of nowhere, so I kept this version of my deck. Across the next 100 games, my win rate against Warrior remained +15% in comparison to before Nomi and my win rate against other classes remained the same. My point being: you should tech with the right card, at the right time and closely monitor the results.

It most certainly does not sour your previous points. And I do not find it elitist - it is a valid point, especially in the absence of concrete data. I, unfortunately, do not have solid data, but this picture from the HS Wiki might get my point across https: //tinyurl. com/y2q8mcg3 . 75% of the players are between R25 and R15. Hearthstone has a very large casual playerbase, which we can reasonably assume is condensed between the ranks ot 25 and 20. That would mean that probably 50% of people are between ranks 25 and 20. Which means that people above Rank 20 are better than half the people, who play Hearthstone. Again, these are my assumptions and I find them reasonable, but I do not have exact numbers.

You are quite welcome! I hope you don’t mind the wall of text I have hit you with here, but I do enjoy engaging in a discussion with other reasonable people, who have constructive criticism to offer!

I wholeheartedly agree on that. Even if teching works better for me, reading the meta and switching decks accordingly should at least be presented as a viable option. Moreover, resources like HSReplay and Vicious Syndicate are an excellent source of information and also deserve a mention.

In conclusion, I thank you for the contribution to the post and wish you a pleasant evening!

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I pretty much agree with everything posted in the OP, which is why I actually didn’t comment lol.

Your numbers are way out of date, those are from September 2014 and ranked has changed a bit since then (the rank floors at 20/15/10/5, only falling 4 ranks a month etc). I highly doubt 50% are between ranks 25 and 20, seeing as you can’t fall back below rank 20 any more if you’ve ever reached rank 15.

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in addition to that I’d be amazed if blizzard didn’t count the inactive accounts in this (I assume we’re talking about “you’re better than you think”), meaning that even back when it was published, less than 75% of the active player base was between ranks 25 and 15.

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Thank you for the clarity on points I took issue with.

In regards to tech vs deck swapping. I think a lot of it does indeed boil down to personal experience. I obviously prefer to swap but I also dabble in the occasional tech.

Not at all and again an interesting read. Thank you for the complement and back at you.

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My Legend experience so far is just that EVERYONE is sweaty and salty. I’ve literally fought against a guy called bmking69, some people just conceded instantly… it’s weird, I dunno.

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well i could imagine there are people in legend who think “hey i allready got to legend so i try out snowflakes or this and that deck in legend and see if its working in generel” and then theres odd rogue? well my deck cant beat that anyway and im allready legend so screw it.

no idea if thats the chase but i honestly wouldnt wonder at all

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28

Well you either do memes, try to get R1 Legend, or get top 200 at the end of the season so you can flex on people.

I actually wanna do that.

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@Ixnay Thanks, mate! I’m happy to hear you agree with the OP! Regarding the numbers, I knew they weren’t up to date, but I never suspected they were from before the rank changes. My bad!

@khisana They probably did count the inactive ones. Judging by the Hearthstone homepage and the “100 million players”, I suspect they still count inactive accounts in their stats. I suppose it does make some sense, because even serious players take long breaks sometimes, but yeah, 75% of the active player base couldn’t have been between 25 and 15 even then.

Fine details aside, point 12 still stands: “You don’t need Legend to prove you are a good player.”

@Spidery7

You’ve just picked a bad time to hit Legend imo - it’s the end of the expansion. Firstly, there are likely not that many people grinding Wild Legend. When I hit it this month I got bumped straight to No 34 and have barely moved since. I assume most of the people there now are also trying to get top 100/200 Legend for, as you said, some flex and are extra salty. Overall my Legend experience has been positive.

Good luck!

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this are my favorite points, some of them deserve their own thread, some already had, some by me, some others had thousands of mentions but not their own thread

Important edit: I despise some of those subjects with passion, it’s your take on them that made me forget about it and actually made me relax while reading, and think of what happened to me while reading like if I was afraid of dogs but you presented me your dog which somehow made me forget of my fear and I could finally feel the joy other people feel enough to get bored of, the impact is similar, that’s how I will congratulate you in my own way :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for the positive response, Sheercold! I’m glad to hear you’ve enjoyed my post, even though you dislike some of the subjects in it! I especially loved the dog analogy; made me smile! :slight_smile:

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