Master tries Team League on new account

I wanted to try out the new Team League(TL) mode since there was a massive change in the HOTS Ranked system.
I have created a new account and played 100 TL games.

Hotslogs: https:// imgur. com/zdJrKCd
Ingame1-cover: https:// imgur. com/lOnlodF
Ingame2-stats: https:// imgur. com/89jL4b0
There are 2 extra spaces in the links. Delete them when you copy the URL into the browser.

3200MMR, 71wins-29losses record over 100 games.

Team League
Now you can play TL without any requirements and even solo queue.
Personally I dont see the reason behind this. For solo play there is Hero League. I think that removing the requirements is also a bad idea because anyone can create a new account and ruin the low MMR games. There should be a restriction like in HL (16 heroes at Lvl5).
Under 100 games i have met with some smurfs on both sides.
As a master I can easily solo vs 3silver/gold players in the laning phase and even get kills which seriously cripples their team.
My team just got free TL points without earning it and the enemy players lost the points in a not fair game.

Placement games
I felt that Placement games have no value at all.
I was expecting that after the placement games i will be ranked in bronze or silver since it is a new account but i was hoping for smth higher based on KDA, presence and playing mechanically good.
With 9wins and 1 lose i have ranked in Silver5 which i kinda expected.
Then i went through the patch notes again and it states that you can rank 1 league above your previous standing. I think that a new account sits on bronze 5 because no previous season record and the +1 league adjustment is exactly silver5. That is my thoughts about the placements and you can correct me if you have deeper information on how it works exactly.

Ladder games
If i have to describe low MMR games (bronze-plat) in one word then it would be UTTER CHAOS.
90% of them think that they belong to diamond/master league and that theyre playing flawlessly.
Have zero map awareness and presence on the map. Tunnel vision on constant brawling nothing else. Even 1v5 is a good fight from their point of view. 10+deaths under 20mins but im doing damage, bro.
Picking heroes that are not suitable for the current map or for the team
comp.
Smurf Zuljins, KTZs, Oprheas, Raynors, Fenixes, Rexxars.
Moving up on the ladder was kind of smooth experience when the team
cooperated to my calls.

Suggestions
Ban solo players from TL. For that there is HL.
TL needs a similar requirement like HL.
Or delete either HL or TL because they are too similar currently.
Placement games should work better.
If someones MMR drastically higher than their league then there should be a shortcut to promote to a higher league.
For example people with 3200MMR should not ruin bronze/silver/gold/plat games. It is a terrible experience if you get stomped and it is also waste of time.

As for your suggestion about HL/TL, you might want to look at the ptr patch notes. HL and TL will be merged together in something called ‘Storm league’.

  1. TL was a smurf MMR abuse and a joke of a league exept strong premades on Master/Grandmaster. TL had no requirements to play as far as i can remember.

  2. HL became a smurf MMR farm since they introduced many simmilar class heroes, free rotation and only lvl 5 farm to play.
    In the past to play HL you needed to have 10 heroes and with small heropool you had to have different types. Now one guy can have half his roster if same class heroes (squishy mages, or single target focused heroes) which results in no variation. Your team lacks AOE vs enemy comp and some players have no way to deliver, team is lacking in wave-clear/solo and nothing to deliver etc.etc.etc.

Now Stom League is forming, and with it - 16 heroes needed to play. We dont need to have them leveled, if someone has 16 heroes - he can play. The mark should be at 1/4 of roster available, so a player can take ANY type. And no i dont mean tank/assassin/support as we all know how balanced the game is, the counters, utility, comps make worst heroes into completely one sided game.

The bad things is I didint see any MMR reset, and this having history with HOTS and Blizzard, we will have the very same seeding and smurf abused MMR/ranks will pollute new system.

As for the idea, the ranked should work as leagues.
You are placed in a league and you play for a 25 days after which there is a 5days lock on ranked games. Those that had top performance are promoted to higher league, those that had lower performance are demoted. People close to promotion/demotion are put into qualifier games.
Qualifier games are open during the 5 day lock on ranked.

The ranked will take X games played per season for a player. Bronze arent expected to play many games, but diamonds and up are expected to play alot. If you dont meet required games per season a penalty. If you take a month break - expect to fall, if its just a week, you can make it up. There should be “holiday” per season, which is say a week of no games.

Teams - having a teammate of different league will mean, the higher league player will get nothing for winning (no rank points to grow, but a game player for season requirements). But a weaker team will get full points as if he had won his league game. But the losing is different. Higher ranked will lose regular points AND SO WILL THE WEAKER. These changes are increased by 10% for every premade starting with 3rd. So if you premade with weaker teammembers and lose, feel the pain.

Profits -

  1. you cant move from Bronze to Diamon in 100 games played.
  2. Smurfing will not have a good effect
  3. MRR will get fixed as poor players wont get several tiers up due to winstreak, or good players demoted several tiers due to lose streak
  4. people when stuck in a league will eventualy start having good games as above their level will either promote or get qualified/demoted
  5. team rule will disencourage carrying/lifting

And a extra rule:
Gold - every round 2 random heroes are disabled for the game.
Platinum - every round 4 random heroes are disabled for the game.
Diamond - every round 6 random heroes are disabled for the game
Master and GM - 6 random heroes plus 1 for every premade teammate are disabled for the game (since you can have 4 teammates and so does the enemy) so a final fo 14 possible disabled heroes + 6 bans.

And yeah, disabled heroes are the requirement to play in a higher leagues.
You need 16 base heroes in roster + 14, which is 30 heroes minimum in roster to play Masters/Grand Masters. Since we have 84 heroes available, requiring MASTERS of the game to have only 30 is still very low requirement. But deleting one trick ponies is great, and it will force high rankers to adjust, which i believe they would like (i would)

I will try to answer in bulletpoints:

  • TL always had a requirement since beta. I remember for the beta ones because those were the important ones for myself. 12 heroes unlocked and had to form 2, 3, 5 premade.
    You had to play for while to unlock 12heroes because there were no lootboxes and free hero packages. Also you needed friends to queue up for TL.
  • In HL the requirement was 14heroes at lvl5 in beta. Currently it is 16 heroes at lvl5 while TL have no requirement at all.
  • Yes, Storm league is forming. It will be merged because of the player base i assume. For example the queue time in master league currently 20-40mins and that is one of the reason I occassionally played it in the past 6 months.
    16 heroes at lvl5 is a fine entry requirement. If someone want to smurf there they have to sacrafice alot of time to unlock and level up those chars. Atm they can just create an account and go.
  • MMR reset doesnt matter. Dont get me wrong but in the long shot you will end up around your current League/MMR. If you are a bronze-plat player for 3 years then you wont magically be a diamond-master player because of a reset. Vice versa -> Master players wont end up in silver because of a reset.
  • Currently we are in leagues and if youre performing above the average then you will move up.
  • About your idea to play more if youre higher ranked. Well, imho it is a total bullsht. For example I am 28 years old with a family also im working as an auditor for living. HotS is a hobby for me that im playing when i have some freetime. I can play a few games like an every third day maybe abit more on the weekend if my wife is going to visit her parents with the kid.
    HotS isnt a workplace or anything to have a “holiday” without penalty for not playing for a week or two. This would be OK for streamers, pro players and teenagers but not for adults who have a passion for the game.
  • I kinda dont understand your concept about teams and premades. It is acceptable if your friends arent on the same level. Lets say youre gold and your friends are silver - for winning you wouldnt get anything but for losing you would lose more because you have played with your lower ranked friends. Makes no sense at all to me.
    A system implemented since the beta named “Favored Rank Adjustment” and “Personal Rank Adjustment” to slighty adjust point gains/losses which works quite well i think.
  • Profit chapter
    -> There is no way to go from bronze to diamond in just 100games.
    -> Smurfs are not playing for MMR or rank or other. Theyre playing to stomp low mmr players. Thats their only motive. /When a lvl60 in WoW vanilla started killing 30s in STV. You dont get honor point or anything for it. Youre doing it stomp the other player who cant do anything about it./
    -> Again… silver players wont end up in master or masters in silver league. Even in master league you can have a lose streak because the other team is playing better, draft better, engage better, control the map better or someone DCs in your team etc… but in the long run you will end up in your league.
    -> Even if someone carried to higher league will eventually fall back to the starting point.
    It is kinda evident because that player is not mechanically on that level.
    Lets say that Ross Brawn from F1 calls me (boost) that i have spot in the F1 championship (master league). On the race day i finally sit into my “well deserved car” and start to race. What will happen? I can tell you that i will never have even a slight chance to win the race or overtake someone because the other drivers are so much more skilled. I hope you get the point that a casual car driver (low mmr) will never be as good as a race car driver (high mmr) even if you think youre the next schumacher. Eventually you will fall out from that league and go back to yours in the long run.
  • Master players arent master players because they have unlocked every champion. For example high mmr players tend to play with a small hero pool like 3-4 from each class but they excel on those heroes and playing generally mechanically good. (Faster reaction, map awareness, outplaying, presence etc)
    Like expecting from Messi or Ronaldo to be world class in volleyball/handball/etc in order to be effective in football because all of these sports are played with a ball.
    You just have to be excellent in 1-2 role (tank/dps/siege/support) and on 6-12 heroes to be effective.

You remember wrong.

  • The requirements in beta and pre-seasons was 10 bought heroes. Free rotations didnt count. Only currencies the game had was real money and gold.

  • You couldnt queue TL as 4 premade which is correct.

  • 12 hero requirements got introduced when bans were introduced and that was in live not beta.

  • requirements for 14 heroes was made in live when 2nd ban round was introduced, now 16 with 3 bans.

  • lvl 5 requirement per hero was introduced in LIVE not beta and it was after cries that “first time new hero in ranked” excuses were made. Lvl 5 is easily smurf grindable even vs AI with 6 minute games.

  • They allowed solo queue for TL because TL queues were 500ms and longer. Once they noticed that HL is not played since they can solo queue TL, Storm League is made.

  • MMR is the worst i can remember. Super one sided games mostly because one team is totally counter picked. This is the idea of “unique heroes” that allows for such unbalanceness.

  • you cant perform above average, you can pick above average. Learn to play boring heroes like Raynor and Zuljin that free-spam damage, have like no cooldowns and always top in dps charts. And if you look at picks, the team that doesnt have sustained damage - preferably ranged is most often underdrafted.

  • Agree about the willing to play more if ranked higher. The MMR, ranked, balance, outdrfting, poor and high team comps is what makes the game turn out terribly unfun and unbalanced. And even if you are good, the comp you are in and enemy heroes you face, the counters that happen make the illusion that you are good and everyone else is bronze.

  • Tell me, why do you play RANKED with friends who are below your skill level ? I cant find any answer other than to get boosted. Now a lower skill level player wants to play higher level and or get better, but thats not what RANKED is for.

Favoured Rank Adjustment is bulls. I had games where it neared 40 points - thats 20% off the “balanced” game. Having such a game shows the FRA, MMR, RANKED and MM is broken.

Personal Rank Adjustemtn - this is even more of a tarded attempt at doing somehting Blizzard have no possible idea of understanding. My histroy:
Rank 1 Gold - lost a game - -6 PRA.
After that i had 10 games and got promoted.
Platinum 5 - won game - +4 PRA

The PRA can go 180 within just 10 games, which too me saturnday with a leg in cast. Its poorly implemented, broken idea based on Solo play Elo in teambased games. You cant even use it to shovel your buttcrack after heavy bombing.

As for profits:
Why ? 200 points per game, 5 games + promotion. After promotion game won you get 200 points + banked points, so you need 4 games + promotion for another promotion.
125 game winstreak and you moved from 0 point Bronze 5 to Diamond 5.
Add PRA, add different position than 0 point Bronze 5, include the point im making not the exact game requirements and the fact there are people who moved from Bronze to Diamond with ~200 games.

  • Smurf accounts are so that bad players can teamup and get points for winning and stomping low players, than they endup in Diamond/Masters and brag how unfair and MMR hell this game is.

  • and yet they do

  • its not that the boosted player falls back. Its the 4 others who lose points, demotions etc. are dragged down with them, all the while 5 others who should lose, actualy win and get PRA+FRA points

  • the hells is your argument ?
    Ow right i understand, picking Valla actualy turns your game into FPS VR game.
    You know that the players you assigned train defence play, creative play, hold up play, 1-2 passes, dribbles, centres, freekicks, freeball gathering, through balls, covering and marking ?

And to summerise, you want people to be one trick ponies ?
I guarantee you, master will wipe the flood and make you eat your own feces with literally any hero, not just their main and alt. And know they most likely have smurf accounts where they practice or try other heroes without damaging their main account MMR/rank.

Why am i playing with my friends?
Because they are my friends and I enjoy playing with them (it is a team game after all) furthermore 1 league difference doesn’t make a big anomaly. It is kinda usual that I queue up with my friend who is around D2±1 in seasons.

The MMR will be even or close to even due to the group MMR. For Example: 2600+2450+2700+2800+3000 equals 2710MMR as group and you will get a similar group MMR but ofc it can be like 3400+2200+2300+2750+2850 which equals 2700MMR as group. Or any other combination that is close to the group MMR.

I agree with you in the point that you can pick above average but you can also play above average. A gold/plat player on KTZ by far not as scary as a master/gm.
Like in any other games there are heros that are considered better than the other. For example you play a “boring one trick pony Diablo or Orphea” when it is available or you can play with “mega fun roleplay Chen or The Lost Vikings”.
Im not saying that these heroes are bad but have no place in the current meta.

Ladder is always two sided. 5 people gain points and the other 5 lose them.
I agree if a boosted player fall back the other 4 will lose points aswell at that time. Which they will gain back on the next games.

I dont think you understand my arguement at all. :slight_smile:

You can call higher tier heroes anyway you want but if you want to climb you have to pick a hero that is useful for the team. For fun you can play the rest in QM/Unranked/AI.
For example i would never pick a Probius over Azmodan/Nazeebo because the other two is performing way better than Probius therefore i have higher chance to win.
And again… I am not saying that Probius is a bad hero but the others are better.

You are right in that. There are games when a well played KTZ wipes the floor with me/team. :slight_smile:
Then I queue up for the next game.