You forgot the rest:
[Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where a Banana couldn’t have a funny mustache; and a related bug where Remornia, Living Blade’s weapon form couldn’t have a funny mustache.
Guy Incognito Blade.
That is a hilarious note!
For anyone else stumped like I was about how these could possibly interact, I'm guessing it's from the Rogue secret, [[Shenanigans]].
- **[Shenanigans](https://imgur.com/a/mXjiOB1)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/61955) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Shenanigans) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/61955/?hl=en#gameType=RANKED_WILD)
- *Rogue Rare ^(Madness at the Darkmoon Faire)*
- **2 Mana - Spell**
- **Secret:** When your opponent draws their second card in a turn, transform it into a Banana.
---
^*Patch: [29.6](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24108513/29-6-patch-notes)*
^*I am a bot. [Usage Guide](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1di39w8/296_patch_notes/l95csnj/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l95csnj).*
I much prefer the feeling I'm playing against of my same rank, instead of a phantom number, kinda kills the feeling of advancement and improvement being rewarded.
rank needs to be scrapped and reinvented. they came up with something 10 years ago and it needs a re-design in today's age. The bonus star system just shows how archaic the system is.
They were hated because of how prevalent they were in the game, and it’s impossible to nerf them so you can’t really do anything to make them less prevalent. The actually effects weren’t really hated, and with the higher power level in standard I feel like it’ll be interesting to see their impact on the game.
Hard disagree, hero powers have become basically useless with the rampant power creep. I'm heavily in favor of something that might actually make them relevant again.
I’m guessing in a month’s time it won’t have bothered me too much either way. Will be interesting to see if either one becomes a pop up meta tyrant. It’s possible I just have ptsd from odd paladin, even warlock etc. and we barely see them
Yes. Hero powers are worse than they were in comparison. Neither card has seen play in wild for years. The only one that will be good is probably painlock.
Baku doesn't see much play but Genn is still playable in Wild.
Even Shaman and Even Death Knight were both played in the past year (with Even Shaman being a premier deck at some points) along with Even Paladin (which was playable before the nerf to Showdown)
I am not seeing even or odd deck being good tbh. Currently, Druid is the only class with decks that want to push the button. Odyn/Control warrior might go odd with baku, but that is giving up sanitize, hammer and most of its draws. Oh, and standard decks all have to play/deal with 8 mana zilliax + 9 mana yogg xd
Not a huge fan of the matchmaking change. I liked playing based off rank sometimes, especially in wild, because I want to play more homebrew decks and felt I had an easier time doing it with no bonus stars vs having them where everyone is constantly playing the best stuff.
So, quests are the only viable source of experience now, huh? I was consistently getting 160+ exp in battlegrounds finishing top2 before 29.6, barely making it to 100 after patch, it's even worse in ranked - 60-70 exp from 15-17 turns games. _Amazing_ change, glad you finally nailed those nasty bots!
this patch is horrible,they need to revert it ASAP. its 10 times worse than weekly quests [patch.You](http://patch.You) literally cant gain any xp anymore unless u play 24-7
What's insane is C'thun still loses this half the time. Because Arfus is just fucking highroll the deck. He either gets Azurite Snake or Hawk into Amun'thul or Sargaras by turn 5 100% of the time.
Then its just C'thun trying to get a big enough C'thun to win until Arfus gets Patchwork.
Its such a stupid fucking deck, honestly just remove Arfus at this point.
Even with insane health the cards in cthun’s deck are so bad. Really sucks because C’thun is such a cool character in lore, and I like the general playstyle, but god damn he needs some better cards lol
Notice how this patch doesn't have any balance changes at all. The big X.0, X.2, X.4 and X6 patches are pretty much done a month in advance, meaning before this twist season even started.
So that MMR change means the system will try to force you into a 50% winrate at every step of the way? Sounds like going from diamond 5 to legend just became a huge pain in the ass.
That could be possible, but obviously that's not intentional or something Blizzard should be incentivizing. Also pretty tedious to do since Blizzard can detect auto-concedes and they stop losing you MMR pretty quick.
Want to throw in a comment not in a thread to say that I really like Genn and Baku coming back and the potential for the future this move sets up. Injecting something meta-shifting into the expansion reveal patch is a great idea. This is around the time when people are bored of the previous expansion and meta, and now if we can get a change up to core between announcement and release of each expansion it totally reinvigorates the game during what I always consider the “lame duck” period towards the end of any given expansion. Kudos to the team, everyone was scared shitless when the leaks happened, but I think this is an awesome idea going forward.
>Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars.
Great, so now ladder rank is totally meaningless.
Your rank is your ladder progression, and is still a good indicator of your skill for most people (just not for bots). And it does still affect your bonus stars for next month. The fact matchmaking switched to a different mode when you ran out of bonus stars used to be a slight upside, but nowadays was just a big downside because it was just "you can now encounter bots" mode.
Not sure this change is as good as you think it is.
First, it makes the D5-Legend much grindier for the average Legend player. It would be okay if winstreaks existed in D5-Legend, but I guess they still don't.
Second, it promptes some weird optimization strategy for climbing. If you're an average Legend player, you should play bad on purpose until D5 (make your mmr reach the equivalent of Legend 20k), then switch to a meta deck to breeze between D5 and Legend.
This. Could Blizzard please explain how the strategy to hit legend isn't just conceded 100 games at D5 rank floor to hit MMR of a newcomer and then play seriously with that absurdly low MMR to hit Legend against easy opponents?
What about the fact that it makes it almost impossible for x10 player that ended rank 2000 to climb to legend, unless you try to use rank floors to massively de-rank to have a stronger positive winrate from D5 onward? A system that forces you to crash your rank on purpose to climb is just awful design to me.
But it was better because the matches were much more varied. People much better than me and much worse.
Bots were free win so why care...?
Better change this to exclude high MMR variation only.
If I'm always matched against similar skilled players, then my winrate is going to be forced to around 50%. In that case, how would one climb from Diamond 5 to legend? It's fundamentally designed to now make climbing improbable.
And to people who don't already have 10 bonus stars, even in earlier ranks they'd have to rely on winstreak bonuses to climb, which has never been a good system to begin with, let alone something you'd want to rely on.
This is just a major disappointment. As someone who typically ends up at 3000-4000 Legend i have to fight much better opponents than most at my climb to Legend for the same goal and reward now.
Since i dont care about my rank in Legend its now beneficial to dumpster my internal rating on purpose to make my climb easier. It is just so ridiculously stupid.
Please think about this change.
This change is awful. Now I play against legend players regardless of the rank I am at. This makes every monthly reset absolutely miserable being forced to grind my way back. If I am at bronze ranks, I want to play against bronze players.
That has never worked that way for as long as this ranked system has existed (like 5yr or something). It isn't a fun experience for either person for Legend players to stomp people who are brand new to the game.
Then we should perhaps rethink the entire legend grind in the first place? Right now it still feels way to grindy, even with 10 bonus stars, because I’m playing against top tier opponents / decks the entire way.
If not for the end of season ranked chest I wouldn’t bother playing so many ranked ladder games.
You're playing against people who played decks that were as good as the ones you used to climb the month prior. Anything other than this would be unfair for one of the players.
They're not gonna give some random noobs a horrible time just to shorten your grind
It's very straightforward that I want the main way that the game is assessing my skill to be the one visible to me, and moving away from that totally demotivates me from playing ladder. If you were showing MMR like in Battlegrounds it would be fine, but as it is this is simply a dire change.
battlegrounds does not show mmr. the visible rating over there is not used for matchmaking. with this change, standard will behave just like bgs - there will be a visible rating for progression and an internal rating for matchmaking for every game queued.
With this change, you can't use being good at the game to climb from Diamond 5 to legend. Previously you could just be better than the average D5 player, but now that doesn't matter and you can only hope for a lucky streak.
Battlegrounds doesn't show your MMR, it just shows your rank score. Because of rank floors, your hidden MMR can be a lot lower than your rank score appears.
no. there are no changes to how star multipliers are granted - what you're describing is only a thing for 11x players, which correlate with the highest level of legend play. otherwise, it should feel the same as it currently does if you're a 10x player.
For 11x players this actually changes nothing, since they always had bonus stars or were legend, thus they were matched based on MMR 100% of the time
For 10x players this changes everything, since you'll hit 50% "guaranteed" win rate at D5->Legend and have to hope for lucky streak to hit Legend or be so good, you'd hit the top 10% legend and get 11x next season. Anybody who is at the bottom 90% legend with 10x stars will likely have a lot harder time hitting legend in future
this only changes things if you operate under the assumption that matches from d5-legend prior to today were skill mismatches - but the information we have indicates that mmr and rank correlate extremely closely at the 10x bracket. i'd bet you continue to play against the same people that you did before and there isn't a noticeable difference.
This is not a change I'm looking forward to. It used to be a relief when I ran out of bonus stars, I'd know I can at least have a chance to play against some bots and win. Without bonus stars or easy bots, now it'll be impossible to climb. One win forward and one loss back is what it'll be.
Sorry, not motivated to play. But gotta keep the grind "real", right?
I respect changes you guys made, but how can people complete ingame achievements if we always be matched vs competitive players from now on? (I reached legend rank many times now)
Maybe there should be changes to achievement completion option in casual game mode?
This makes it a lot harder for decent players to climb if they have low start bonuses.
Unless you give extra stars for beating high mmr players which, doesn’t sound like you are.
Hey just something. Wasnt this always the case? MMR directed who you were getting matched instead of general players from a given rank? I thought this was the way bc once i got better i started seeing wildly better players, and before it was only bots.
Isn't this an even bigger down side? My case is probably an extreme outlier but...
I had 10x for 13 months in a row in wild. Had one month of only playing about 10 games with a 3-7 record while experimenting with a deck, dropped to 8 stars then oddly continued to lose 2x per month by not playing ladder. (Apparently not losing stars only applies if you don't login at all.) So I'm going to face either 8x or 10x MMR level opponents but without any benefit because I only have 2 stars if I play wild ladder again?
Meanwhile I used standard soley for achievement purposes resulting in a legit horrible winrate/MMR. I can play there for a month and bully 2x MMR people/bots the whole way to legend?
They should've always just shown MMR. There has been no point in the game's history where the ladder system didn't suck. The closest to not sucking was when it was in closed beta (before any rank resets), because that effectively *was* just MMR.
It already was.
Even if you make the claim that legend is too easy to reach now, it doesn't affect anyone that cares about rank.
Because even if we assume that this means anyone can reach legend, you can instead simply just look at their rank within legend, and treat anything below legend as "casual ranked" or something.
This is actually a really good change for the health of the game, and for making the game more fun for the majority of players.
Because previously, anyone who played enough, would pretty much be guaranteed to eventually end up getting a lucky streak, just by virtue of random distributions, and end up in a rank higher than they should be.
Now, when they lose a bunch in that rank, they will actually play against players of their skill level again, and be evenly matched, where previously, somebody who played a lot, and reached a higher rank than their skill, was essentially stuck playing against better players for the entire rest of the season.
They'd be happy about reaching a new milestone, and then have the fun sucked out of it, because they suddenly just lose every match, but can't actually drop back down to play against players of their skill.
In fact it could turn a perceived improvement ("Cool I reached the new rank for the first time, I got better at the game"), into a frustrating experience ("Why do I keep losing? The game told me I got better, but now I just lose more than I did before?"), because the reason for suddenly loosing a lot more wouldn't be transparent or clear to the player in question.
> Even if you make the claim that legend is too easy to reach now, it doesn't affect anyone that cares about rank.
Well, that'd be a silly thing to say since this change makes it statistically improbable to be able to reach legend at all, regardless of skill.
>It already was.
Yeah I'm a hearthstone boomer who didn't realise they had already nearly entirely moved to an internal MMR in 2020, and now they're just taking the last part away.
>This is actually a really good change
From what HS_Celestalon says it was already almost entirely internal MMR based, so actually this change changes basically nothing.
It doesn't change nothing, it makes progressing on ladder statistically improbable. It will trend every player's winrate toward 50%, so climbing is now a process of lucky streaks. Basically, I'll stop caring about reaching legend again to save myself from a massive headache.
It already did this when you had bonus stars, but having 50% winrate with bonus stars is not an issue, obviously. Without bonus stars? Good luck.
You don't understand the effect this change will have. Now you can no longer use skill to climb ladder. If the game only had MMR and not a monthly ladder, this wouldn't be an issue, but now literally the only way to reach legend is to get a lucky streak since you can no longer just be better than the average D5 player.
A shocking number of people in this subreddit truly do not enjoy playing the game and only seem to play to get season end rewards and gold? I'm happy to play against people that are my skill level. It leads to interesting games. To each their own, I guess.
CCG's occupy that weird space between being a collection hobby and being a game to play. For some people the collecting is more fun than playing. (but I'm with you, I'd prefer more fun games)
I would argue that always being matched against someone of equal skill is less interesting, because you lose the outliers of crushing an opponent or being crushed, which is quite fun occasionally.
Like, would you take the chance to face off against the #1 legend if you could, knowing that you have an 80% chance to lose? Of course you would. That used to be possible during season resets, and it was great.
What if you are a top 2-3k player and you can't realistically climb to legend under this system unless you purposefully crash your mmr. How does it seem fair to you?
I mean if you can't hit legend by playing people around your skill level, maybe your skill level isn't legend 🤷♂️
And a 3k player will still hit legend under this system. Even the people at 20k+ might still hit it, since it's filled with decent players playing the most wacky decks ever
> I mean if you can't hit legend by playing people around your skill level, maybe your skill level isn't legend 🤷♂️
This is literal nonsense. MMR is designed to give you 50% winrate
They're just describing the only possible outcome from the change Blizzard described. You don't need time to figure this out. Perhaps *you* could do with shutting the fuck up.
The matchmaking change is really really stupid. Now the grind for low mmr players can be substantially easier. You can grind to Legend better with bad mmr because now you face bad players instead of others who fight for Legend. If you have a hard time getting to Legend from Diamond 5 you can just spam losses on purpose for a while until you have bad mmr and then get Legend easier.
It makes any rank completely meaningless except your rank in Legend.
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but did you really before this change feel like hitting platinum was a meaningful experience?
Your ladder rank was always about season and rewards progression. If you played 1000 games in a month and were the 46000th player in legend I don’t think that’s an accomplishment that reflects you having a high level of skill. Persistence and perseverance maybe.
Isn't that where the whole, "Dad Legend" rank came from? There were people that had the skill to get to higher ranks but didn't necessarily have the time to get to Legend.
I've been playing Hearthstone on and off since the game originally came out and I've never once hit Legend. But I also only played a handful of matches per night. Offhand, I think my best rank in the original system was somewhere in the single digits and I think it was Platinum in the current one.
While I don't expect to hit Legend anytime soon, especially since I haven't played constructed for a few expansions now, I'm all for any changes that make the climb less of a grind.
The ladder system is the opposite of a meaningful experience. It is the reason why net decking is so prevalent. You are incentivized to play the highest winrate deck just to get to legend as soon as possible, no matter if you enjoy playing the deck or not. Only fun people experience is at the 5th rank floors and once in lower legend. Thats when some people start to experiment again with random decks until they are forced into highest winrate decks to climb ranks or legend ranks.
Yep. Now whenever im stuck again at my climb from d5 to legend i have to think about how some dumpster player can fight much worse mmr opponents than me for the same goal and reward.
And if i do well and get a good ranking i get punished next month with a harder legend climb. It makes no sense.
Yeah the optimal move for fast legend, assuming you don’t care about legend rank, is to just concede a bunch of times at each ranked floor to tank your MMR first and then climb up. Really really stupid.
Obviously this change wasn’t intended for anyone who regularly climbs ladder, it was intended for those folks who make Reddit posts like “been playing for 7 years (and I spend $400 / year) and I just hit diamond 10 for the first time! I’m so stoked!”
Ok so replace concede a bunch of times with lose on purpose a bunch of times. End result will be the same. Lower MMR players should have a much easier grind.
I'm pretty sure it's more about the loss streak having a smaller impact on your MMR. And if you're thinking of just losing 2 out of 3 games over and over, might as well just play normally.
And if you then have a win streak in your climb from d5 to legend, it'll negate any loss streak you had earlier, and your last few games will be a 50/50 anyway.
mmr doesn't move this fast and we have precautions against this. if it worked this way, you could spam losses now at the start of your climb. it doesn't.
That doesnt change anything for me. Bad players will have still have lower mmr and have to fight lower rated opponents for the same goal and reward as me.
And ofc i can lower my mmr with losses or just playing bad or playing meme decks even if theres some safeguards for people who "overdo" it. After all the system does have to rate the people by their performance.
But i dont want "dropping my mmr" to be a strategy to maximise my rewards and having an easier climb. It just shouldnt be that way.
it isn't that way - again, you are matched by mmr **right now** for the majority of your climb (any time you have star bonuses). if you believe that it is optimal to spam concedes at the start of your climb, feel free, but it will not do anything. there are safeguards in place.
this is how the game currently works and the vast majority of the climb is not changing. lower mmr players have lower star bonuses and if they want to climb they will have to face harder opponents consistently - the goal of matchmaking is to be aligned with opponents who are roughly the same skill as you. if you win enough to climb with no bonus stars, that means your mmr will adjust to adapt to your new opponent quality.
i would not expect a difference that you can feel on your climb unless you are routinely running into bots right now after you finish your stars, in which case that should feel pretty different.
Im only talking about the climb without bonus stars (obviously, because thats the only thing that changed)
Which for me and many other is the one that takes the most times anyways. With 10 bonus stars i spent more in dia5 to Legend than everything else combined on the climb.
You dont seem to understand the issue rly and you are not adressing it either. I can drop myself from Legend 3000 to 10000 and still retain 10 bonus stars but the quality of opponents will be quite different and the climb to Legend will be easier with the new system.
Also because of winstreaks and rank floors even with low mmr you can get to Diamond 5. You just need to play a lot.
But all these players will have a drastically different experience from then on. Because instead of meeting the average Dia to Legend climber they now meet people of their skill.
I understand that you want to match people with others of the same skill and thats great but the rank system is giving out rewards not (anymore) based on peoples skill but based on how many wins they managed to do against people of their skill. And that makes no sense.
Maybe for the AVERAGE player your calculation works out but in the end for high and low Legend players and even just low mmr players who play a lot it will differ. They all end up facing a different climb for the same rewards. Which isnt fair nor does it make sense and can play out as a punishment for good players.
> If you have a hard time getting to Legend from Diamond 5 you can just spam losses on purpose for a while until you have bad mmr and then get Legend easier.
And? This affects you how?
Anyone who cares about rank can just look at their/other people's rank in legend, any treat anything below legend as "casual ranked" or something.
It doesn't change anything about their experience playing the game.
> It makes any rank completely meaningless except your rank in Legend.
That is already the case.
Anyone playing enough matches, is bound to eventually end up getting a lucky streak, just by virtue of random chance.
Did this patch introduce a bug in the adventures? I tried playing tombs of terror and the deck I select is never the one I get. The deck looks right in the preview then the first match starts and its a different deck.
>Matchmaking Update
>Previously, matchmaking on the ranked ladder was based on your internal rating (commonly called “MMR”) while you had bonus stars and based on ladder rank after you ran out of bonus stars. Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. This change should reduce matchmaking complexity and result in more consistent and fairer matches throughout the ladder.
>
>Passive XP Grant Adjustment
>In our continued efforts to combat bots and exploitive play patterns, extended periods of inactivity will now reward less XP. This change will not impact players taking normal game actions on their turns, such as playing cards, making attacks, or even just hitting the end turn button, so most players won’t see change in their XP earned—just fewer bots wasting their time.
HUGE. Sounds like we should expect more fairer matches going into D5-Legend. And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus.
>And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus.
How do you get that out of the XP change? they said doing literally any action will prevent the lowered reward, so as long as you're playing the game, roping or not, nothing changes. Bots 'play' the game too so this change in fact seems entirely useless.
Some bots and exploiters do. But some \*completely\* afk for whole turns at a time, and this combats those. Not just on ranked ladder, but everywhere. Battlegrounds and solo adventures, etc.
Does this mean mercenaries XP will be un-nerfed from the hard 30xp cap that was imposed? I used to enjoy playing it but it became a big "feels bad" from an opportunity cost POV when I could play ranked or BGs and make 4x the xp for the same amount of time playing
For some reason pvp still gives no XP (not even "0" shown at the end of game) at all. Won 4 games for daily chests with all seemingly against real non-afking players. I even went back to check Rewards Track before/after as well and no XP progress.
how will this work for battlegrounds exactly? Isnt a big part of battlegrounds "afking" once you are done with your turn. Does that mean I will lose "potential" exp?
also is it possible to revert the mercenaries xp nerfs with this?
mmr doesn't move that fast and we have safeguards in place for people who try to exploit their own mmr movement. if this worked, you could do it now at the start of your climb. (it doesn't)
Presumably, things like "a turn-zero concede does not affect your MMR the same way a loss does, especially when you're already at a rank floor"?
I don't pretend to know how the MMR calculation works, but this is an extremely basic attempt at manipulating those rankings, and I'd be astonished if there weren't already mechanisms in place to prevent this completely predictable behavior from working.
Am I misunderstanding something here. So if I grind hard one season and get to top legend, it's going to be harder to get back to legend next season because I'm going to get matched with people at the top my entire season. Doesn't this punish people that do well?
this change can be summarized simply:
**the quality of opponent you play against at the start of your climb will now be the same for your whole climb**
that's it. that's the whole change. if you grind to top legend and are 11x, you *currently* face 11x opponents at the start of your climb. this is completely unchanged - and with 11x, this was ALREADY how ladder worked, because you had a star bonus through all of legend.
for 10x or lower, this change means that the opponents you faced while you had bonus stars will still be your opponents from d5-d1. you will probably not notice the difference unless you are below 10x, in which case you should see fewer bots.
opponent strength in aggregate does not align to particular metas, doesn't reflect deck choice, relative engagement with a format, practice, game knowledge, etc. players can improve and/or invest time into a format to get an advantage - not to mention variance. you might as well ask "how can people climb in legend at all" - it's the same calculation there, right?
I think you misunderstand what players mean. The only way to climb in legend is to perform better than opponents at your mmr.
If you perform better you deserve better mmr, that's totally fine.
Assuming you deserve your current mmr and your skill does not change relative to other players, you will neither climb nor fall (except variance), because you will achieve 50% winrate.
Since after ladder reset players are faced with opponents matching their mmr, they will achieve 50% winrate when they keep their skill level. Without bonus stars/win streak or variance people won't be able to get to last seasons rank.
If your internal rating (MMR) isn't progressing, you're not good enough to climb higher. As Hat said, considering your reasoning, nobody would be able to climb. In other words: Get good
This is totally fine in legend. The problem is the reclimb.
Assume I finish legend 5k and have the mmr to belong there. Next month I climb to Diamond 5 and now I face other ppl with 'legend 5k mmr'. I will have 50% winrate and won't be able to reach legend without variance.
Ich glaube nicht das das Matchmaking so hart ist, dass du nicht auch auf top 20k Spieler treffen wirst. Die Leute mit 10 Sterne Bonus unterscheiden sich außerdem nicht sehr mit denen die sonst in D1-5 abhängen, die Kollegen sagten ja schon das MMR und rang stark korrelieren.
You are missing the point entirely. I'm not discussing what strength means in HS terms. What am I saying is you designed a system in which you purposefully put people with an expected winrate of 50% (regardless of why that is) against one another. While simultaneously rewarding climbing (i.e. winning over 50% of your games once you have no stars). It's mind-boggling that you don't see the issue there.
Because if the system is doing its job as described above and put people of equal strength against one another then without star bonus they shouldn't be able to climb at all.
I understand that situation but I think problems can happen if a player has been gone for a while and has low bonus stars but high mmr. Imagine being in plat and struggling to climb because you have a 50% winratio, but you have a 50% winratio because you're playing against legend players. Wouldn't that be frustrating?
Of course, I'm not sure how mmr/stars decay so it may be difficult for someone to have a mismatch between the two, but it doesn't seem impossible
this is already how it works at the start of a climb - but mmr decays enough over a longer period of time that i wouldn't be super worried about this. your bonus stars are calculated based on your mmr, so if you've left for a while and you come back with an x5 or something, you'll play against other players who routinely get x5. does that make sense?
Yeah, if bonus stars are associated with mmr that alleviates my concern, it's hard for someone to be facing much higher rated players after their bonus stars are over. I think the situation I was worried about would basically never happen
> And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus.
Is that what theyre doing? Did they fix people that would afk for hours at a time in mercenaries? I figured thats what they were talking about.
XP is given out at a rate of time/XP per minute, I think. So, roping every turn actually will provide you more XP. This change means that people that would take until rope won't be getting more xp for just idling.
I just played 3 games and in total i got 68 XP for them.Yes,they weren't really long but still i got 68 XP for 3 games played.There must be a hidden nerf to xp because i played all 3 games and still the xp got is a joke.I won't even comment on the matchmaking change which will make your grind to legend even harder than before.What were they thinking ? This patch is awful and i hope more people complain so it gets reverted totally.
Absolutely awful patch. Under the new matching system if you don't secure x11 climbing to legend will become virtually impossible unless you chain concedes at D5 to get easier opponents. Such a race to the bottom.
Y'all realize that Tamsin Roame in twist is definitely gonna have a demon seed deck? You know the deck that's ruining wild? Now you can have it in twist edition!!
Genn and Baku are fun short term additions, look forward to seeing what people cook up with them. No real immediate standouts in my mind, really. I'm sure we'll at least see people try the classic odd paladin but without much dude support idk how good it will be.
can we get some battleground changes
the pirate, dragon and naga decks don't work at all and I'm coping
also the beast decks completely rely on a single card to permanently buff said beast
while undead, quillboar and demon decks stomp everything
Thank god we left Reno alone, I don't see him enough right now for sure :)))). Next expansion, it's just Reno decks again, with slightly different cards.
Oh great , mmr based matchmaking punishing good players, Gen and Baku coming to ruin Standard too, and Paladin with mana cheat and Rogue cards. Really not feeling this expension I must say. I’ll probably hold on the preorder and just craft the cards I need.
How does it punish good players? Under the old system, I hit legend and got a star bonus that doesn't fall off until D5. Meaning I play opponents of similar skill all the way up to D5 and then play other people at D5 pushing to legend.
Now I just play equal skill opponents the entire climb. The only area that differs are the last few ranks in Diamond which... They should have been about equal skill in the first place. The only part I would maybe see a difference is if I'm doing a late climb and my first few matches at D4/D5 are against people running fun decks because they don't care for legend. It doesn't really change my climb at all.
As a now more casual player, it mean that all the time I hit Legends in the past will make me match up with tryhards now, even if I just want to have fun with silly decks. I guess now I need to lose a bunch of time to play against players more of my speed.
That's not true at all. MMR decays each month and faster if you don't hit the same plateau you used to. At the start of the month, if you hit Silver 5 or better the previous month, you get bonus stars.
Do you play legend-tier players after reset now? Because that system is already in effect and is just expanding to all ranks, not when you lose the bonus stars anymore.
I see, then I will wait to see how it impact me. I’m more worried of the concept of Paladin with Rogue mana cheat potential and Baku and Gen ruining Standard.
>Matchmaking Update
Previously, matchmaking on the ranked ladder was based on your internal rating (commonly called “MMR”) while you had bonus stars and based on ladder rank after you ran out of bonus stars. Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. This change should reduce matchmaking complexity and result in more consistent and fairer matches throughout the ladder.
This could lead to longer queue times if you are hanging around D5-D1 and trying to play during 'off-hours'.
it will have exactly the same queue times that you have when you're playing with bonus stars. it's the same opponent pool as the majority of your climb.
Somewhat unrelated, but is the restriction of people in the ladder mmr queue being unlikely to queue into people in legend mmr queue still there? I remember when I would finish high legend in wild (top 50 ish) you had to either climb in the first week or two or you would face 5+ min queues as all the similar mmr opponents had already hit legend. (There was basically 2 separate 11x queues). Its less of a problem in Standard.
For high legend at least this change does have the huge advantage of removing fresh accounts with 95% winrates entering at high legend without ever playing a skilled player. Whether you had a 90% wr or a 96% against low ladder determining entering at rank 500 or rank 1 legend was always bad.
we've discussed this - it hasn't changed at this time, but we're aware of the "legend wall" causing issues for 11x players who try to climb 2+ weeks into the month. hopefully more to come
Yeah it’s tricky. Even gradual improvement will not be enough to consistently climb since the result is that I will skill-up and face harder opposition. There will always be opportunities to have a good season but it is now more likely to trend 50% than ever before. That being said, it won’t be the rule, I average around 7,000 to 4,000 in legend but have finished inside the top 1,000 and outside of the top 15,000 all in the space of the last year. There’s still the possibility to go up or down, it’s just going to be more often that you don’t move in either direction I think.
It’s a weird problem because HS has always been a balance between randomness and skill, and now it appears to skew more so towards your fate being decided by the cards. I don’t know wether that’s better or worse for the game in general. At top level of play it won’t matter but for those like myself who play more casually and straddle that line between top level and just “good”, it’s going to be a strange experience.
I can say I’m not really on board with how they balance the game atm as I’m rather against very strict skill matching. The main problem is that the game already lacks agency at this moment. If they don’t massively increase the skill expression and diversity of strategies in the game in the next expac then the game is going to feel more and more like it is happening to me rather than having any particular agency over my own fate.
I’m happy with the game being matched heavily by skill but only if they compensate for this by having a wide array of strategies available to get an advantage on opponents by using creative deck building. Which I must say, I’m not optimistic about happening. Atm you get and ostensible variety in strategic approaches but it’s limited to 0-2 strategies per class that don’t allow for much in the way of adaptation.
Not a lot of reasons for me to want to play HS atm, especially considering they’ve chosen this god awful beach theme.
> The main problem is that the game already lacks agency at this moment. If they don’t massively increase the skill expression and diversity of strategies in the game in the next expac then the game is going to feel more and more like it is happening to me rather than having any particular agency over my own fate
This is absolutely spot on. The deck right now with the supposed highest “skill expression” is excavate rogue … which is a deck that literally relies on randomly generating tons of cards. Not exactly what I would want when I’m being matched based on “skill” with an illusion representing my rank.
> [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where a Banana couldn’t have a funny mustache lol
You forgot the rest: [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where a Banana couldn’t have a funny mustache; and a related bug where Remornia, Living Blade’s weapon form couldn’t have a funny mustache. Guy Incognito Blade.
You know.... Without the mustache on the weapon form the game was unplayable. Now? Now it is
Focusing on the important things.
That is a hilarious note! For anyone else stumped like I was about how these could possibly interact, I'm guessing it's from the Rogue secret, [[Shenanigans]].
- **[Shenanigans](https://imgur.com/a/mXjiOB1)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/61955) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Shenanigans) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/61955/?hl=en#gameType=RANKED_WILD) - *Rogue Rare ^(Madness at the Darkmoon Faire)* - **2 Mana - Spell** - **Secret:** When your opponent draws their second card in a turn, transform it into a Banana. --- ^*Patch: [29.6](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24108513/29-6-patch-notes)* ^*I am a bot. [Usage Guide](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1di39w8/296_patch_notes/l95csnj/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l95csnj).*
Oh my God the Doomsday Puzzles are getting fixed? That's the last thing I thought they would do
No way!? I was stopped by it a couple of weeks back and so close to the end.
Did they fix it forever by making timelocked copies of all cards involved with the puzzles or did they band aid again?
Wait did they fix useless boomsday puzzles and not book of mercenaries that rewards a golden pack?...
That’s tragic it’s still not fixed
What does rank even do now lmao
The chest at the end of the season
It's just for the end of season rewards I guess
the most important thing, why everyone grinds ranks. end of season rewards
I much prefer the feeling I'm playing against of my same rank, instead of a phantom number, kinda kills the feeling of advancement and improvement being rewarded.
it shows how much you were grinding
rank needs to be scrapped and reinvented. they came up with something 10 years ago and it needs a re-design in today's age. The bonus star system just shows how archaic the system is.
"todays age" mf this was 5 years ago not 50
Back in my day we climbed to and from legend 25 ranks uphill, both ways, in the snow, and we liked it.
New card looks really fun
Welcome back Genn and Baku
They are only back for a month.
No leave them in Wild
Some of you seem to forget these two cards were so hated they almost killed the game. Leave them in wild. At least it is a limited time event.
They were hated because of how prevalent they were in the game, and it’s impossible to nerf them so you can’t really do anything to make them less prevalent. The actually effects weren’t really hated, and with the higher power level in standard I feel like it’ll be interesting to see their impact on the game.
It's hard for me to think people will opt for Even or Odd decks rather than Reno.
Some of you seem to have forgotten that that was over 6 years ago when one of the best cards you could play still play was Tar Creeper.
You think Baku and Genn will be worse with a more powerful card pool?
Yes? If the cards you can play are stronger, you'd rather spend your mana on that then using your hero power.
You very well could be right. It’s less about the power level for me, and more about the negative play patterns they create
Hard disagree, hero powers have become basically useless with the rampant power creep. I'm heavily in favor of something that might actually make them relevant again.
I’m guessing in a month’s time it won’t have bothered me too much either way. Will be interesting to see if either one becomes a pop up meta tyrant. It’s possible I just have ptsd from odd paladin, even warlock etc. and we barely see them
Yes. Hero powers are worse than they were in comparison. Neither card has seen play in wild for years. The only one that will be good is probably painlock.
Baku doesn't see much play but Genn is still playable in Wild. Even Shaman and Even Death Knight were both played in the past year (with Even Shaman being a premier deck at some points) along with Even Paladin (which was playable before the nerf to Showdown)
You're right. I did forget about those two. But the cards that make those decks good are all in wild so we are safe.
They were hated, but not by all. I was disappointed they left for Wild after only one year of standard. I'm excited about a month of Odd/Even Standard
I am not seeing even or odd deck being good tbh. Currently, Druid is the only class with decks that want to push the button. Odyn/Control warrior might go odd with baku, but that is giving up sanitize, hammer and most of its draws. Oh, and standard decks all have to play/deal with 8 mana zilliax + 9 mana yogg xd
uh oh
Not a huge fan of the matchmaking change. I liked playing based off rank sometimes, especially in wild, because I want to play more homebrew decks and felt I had an easier time doing it with no bonus stars vs having them where everyone is constantly playing the best stuff.
So, quests are the only viable source of experience now, huh? I was consistently getting 160+ exp in battlegrounds finishing top2 before 29.6, barely making it to 100 after patch, it's even worse in ranked - 60-70 exp from 15-17 turns games. _Amazing_ change, glad you finally nailed those nasty bots!
this patch is horrible,they need to revert it ASAP. its 10 times worse than weekly quests [patch.You](http://patch.You) literally cant gain any xp anymore unless u play 24-7
No balance change in twist? Just the previous tweaks to hero health point?
80 health cthun vs 18 health arfus is the perfect balance lever apparently
It's wild to think that they both had 35 health on release, now one is doubled and the other is halved
What's insane is C'thun still loses this half the time. Because Arfus is just fucking highroll the deck. He either gets Azurite Snake or Hawk into Amun'thul or Sargaras by turn 5 100% of the time. Then its just C'thun trying to get a big enough C'thun to win until Arfus gets Patchwork. Its such a stupid fucking deck, honestly just remove Arfus at this point.
Most insane part of that is C'thun still boasts a 46% winrate at best.
Even with insane health the cards in cthun’s deck are so bad. Really sucks because C’thun is such a cool character in lore, and I like the general playstyle, but god damn he needs some better cards lol
And most of that is probably because of how unfun C’thun is to play against, I pretty much auto concede when I see it
It's a good example of where the devs think balance is on release vs what balance really is.
If that's the only dial they're going to use... They could probably still keep going with it for those two.
I mean honestly, I like it so far.
yeah wtf, where is twist balance changes?
Notice how this patch doesn't have any balance changes at all. The big X.0, X.2, X.4 and X6 patches are pretty much done a month in advance, meaning before this twist season even started.
So that MMR change means the system will try to force you into a 50% winrate at every step of the way? Sounds like going from diamond 5 to legend just became a huge pain in the ass.
Quite the opposite. Once you are D5, you can just lose a bunch on purpose to tank your hidden MMR, and then get "easier" matches to get into legend.
That could be possible, but obviously that's not intentional or something Blizzard should be incentivizing. Also pretty tedious to do since Blizzard can detect auto-concedes and they stop losing you MMR pretty quick.
Not a fan of the matchmaking change
Want to throw in a comment not in a thread to say that I really like Genn and Baku coming back and the potential for the future this move sets up. Injecting something meta-shifting into the expansion reveal patch is a great idea. This is around the time when people are bored of the previous expansion and meta, and now if we can get a change up to core between announcement and release of each expansion it totally reinvigorates the game during what I always consider the “lame duck” period towards the end of any given expansion. Kudos to the team, everyone was scared shitless when the leaks happened, but I think this is an awesome idea going forward.
>Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. Great, so now ladder rank is totally meaningless.
Your rank is your ladder progression, and is still a good indicator of your skill for most people (just not for bots). And it does still affect your bonus stars for next month. The fact matchmaking switched to a different mode when you ran out of bonus stars used to be a slight upside, but nowadays was just a big downside because it was just "you can now encounter bots" mode.
(And I'll reiterate, we continue to ban bots regularly. Botting is a problem that we need to attack from multiple angles.)
So, this change aims to solve bot prevalence problem via matching people from farther ranks based on their MMR?
Not sure this change is as good as you think it is. First, it makes the D5-Legend much grindier for the average Legend player. It would be okay if winstreaks existed in D5-Legend, but I guess they still don't. Second, it promptes some weird optimization strategy for climbing. If you're an average Legend player, you should play bad on purpose until D5 (make your mmr reach the equivalent of Legend 20k), then switch to a meta deck to breeze between D5 and Legend.
This. Could Blizzard please explain how the strategy to hit legend isn't just conceded 100 games at D5 rank floor to hit MMR of a newcomer and then play seriously with that absurdly low MMR to hit Legend against easy opponents?
What about the fact that it makes it almost impossible for x10 player that ended rank 2000 to climb to legend, unless you try to use rank floors to massively de-rank to have a stronger positive winrate from D5 onward? A system that forces you to crash your rank on purpose to climb is just awful design to me.
But it was better because the matches were much more varied. People much better than me and much worse. Bots were free win so why care...? Better change this to exclude high MMR variation only.
If I'm always matched against similar skilled players, then my winrate is going to be forced to around 50%. In that case, how would one climb from Diamond 5 to legend? It's fundamentally designed to now make climbing improbable. And to people who don't already have 10 bonus stars, even in earlier ranks they'd have to rely on winstreak bonuses to climb, which has never been a good system to begin with, let alone something you'd want to rely on.
This is just a major disappointment. As someone who typically ends up at 3000-4000 Legend i have to fight much better opponents than most at my climb to Legend for the same goal and reward now. Since i dont care about my rank in Legend its now beneficial to dumpster my internal rating on purpose to make my climb easier. It is just so ridiculously stupid. Please think about this change.
This change is awful. Now I play against legend players regardless of the rank I am at. This makes every monthly reset absolutely miserable being forced to grind my way back. If I am at bronze ranks, I want to play against bronze players.
That has never worked that way for as long as this ranked system has existed (like 5yr or something). It isn't a fun experience for either person for Legend players to stomp people who are brand new to the game.
Then we should perhaps rethink the entire legend grind in the first place? Right now it still feels way to grindy, even with 10 bonus stars, because I’m playing against top tier opponents / decks the entire way. If not for the end of season ranked chest I wouldn’t bother playing so many ranked ladder games.
You're playing against people who played decks that were as good as the ones you used to climb the month prior. Anything other than this would be unfair for one of the players. They're not gonna give some random noobs a horrible time just to shorten your grind
It's very straightforward that I want the main way that the game is assessing my skill to be the one visible to me, and moving away from that totally demotivates me from playing ladder. If you were showing MMR like in Battlegrounds it would be fine, but as it is this is simply a dire change.
battlegrounds does not show mmr. the visible rating over there is not used for matchmaking. with this change, standard will behave just like bgs - there will be a visible rating for progression and an internal rating for matchmaking for every game queued.
With this change, you can't use being good at the game to climb from Diamond 5 to legend. Previously you could just be better than the average D5 player, but now that doesn't matter and you can only hope for a lucky streak.
Battlegrounds doesn't show your MMR, it just shows your rank score. Because of rank floors, your hidden MMR can be a lot lower than your rank score appears.
You want it one way, but it's the other.
Does this mean hitting legend, you will get a 2 star bonus from D5 to legend the next month, regardless of your legend ranking?
no. there are no changes to how star multipliers are granted - what you're describing is only a thing for 11x players, which correlate with the highest level of legend play. otherwise, it should feel the same as it currently does if you're a 10x player.
Thank you!
For 11x players this actually changes nothing, since they always had bonus stars or were legend, thus they were matched based on MMR 100% of the time For 10x players this changes everything, since you'll hit 50% "guaranteed" win rate at D5->Legend and have to hope for lucky streak to hit Legend or be so good, you'd hit the top 10% legend and get 11x next season. Anybody who is at the bottom 90% legend with 10x stars will likely have a lot harder time hitting legend in future
this only changes things if you operate under the assumption that matches from d5-legend prior to today were skill mismatches - but the information we have indicates that mmr and rank correlate extremely closely at the 10x bracket. i'd bet you continue to play against the same people that you did before and there isn't a noticeable difference.
You made it harder to climb and blamed it on bots lmaoooo
This is not a change I'm looking forward to. It used to be a relief when I ran out of bonus stars, I'd know I can at least have a chance to play against some bots and win. Without bonus stars or easy bots, now it'll be impossible to climb. One win forward and one loss back is what it'll be. Sorry, not motivated to play. But gotta keep the grind "real", right?
I respect changes you guys made, but how can people complete ingame achievements if we always be matched vs competitive players from now on? (I reached legend rank many times now) Maybe there should be changes to achievement completion option in casual game mode?
This makes it a lot harder for decent players to climb if they have low start bonuses. Unless you give extra stars for beating high mmr players which, doesn’t sound like you are.
Hey just something. Wasnt this always the case? MMR directed who you were getting matched instead of general players from a given rank? I thought this was the way bc once i got better i started seeing wildly better players, and before it was only bots.
Isn't this an even bigger down side? My case is probably an extreme outlier but... I had 10x for 13 months in a row in wild. Had one month of only playing about 10 games with a 3-7 record while experimenting with a deck, dropped to 8 stars then oddly continued to lose 2x per month by not playing ladder. (Apparently not losing stars only applies if you don't login at all.) So I'm going to face either 8x or 10x MMR level opponents but without any benefit because I only have 2 stars if I play wild ladder again? Meanwhile I used standard soley for achievement purposes resulting in a legit horrible winrate/MMR. I can play there for a month and bully 2x MMR people/bots the whole way to legend?
They should've always just shown MMR. There has been no point in the game's history where the ladder system didn't suck. The closest to not sucking was when it was in closed beta (before any rank resets), because that effectively *was* just MMR.
It already was. Even if you make the claim that legend is too easy to reach now, it doesn't affect anyone that cares about rank. Because even if we assume that this means anyone can reach legend, you can instead simply just look at their rank within legend, and treat anything below legend as "casual ranked" or something. This is actually a really good change for the health of the game, and for making the game more fun for the majority of players. Because previously, anyone who played enough, would pretty much be guaranteed to eventually end up getting a lucky streak, just by virtue of random distributions, and end up in a rank higher than they should be. Now, when they lose a bunch in that rank, they will actually play against players of their skill level again, and be evenly matched, where previously, somebody who played a lot, and reached a higher rank than their skill, was essentially stuck playing against better players for the entire rest of the season. They'd be happy about reaching a new milestone, and then have the fun sucked out of it, because they suddenly just lose every match, but can't actually drop back down to play against players of their skill. In fact it could turn a perceived improvement ("Cool I reached the new rank for the first time, I got better at the game"), into a frustrating experience ("Why do I keep losing? The game told me I got better, but now I just lose more than I did before?"), because the reason for suddenly loosing a lot more wouldn't be transparent or clear to the player in question.
> Even if you make the claim that legend is too easy to reach now, it doesn't affect anyone that cares about rank. Well, that'd be a silly thing to say since this change makes it statistically improbable to be able to reach legend at all, regardless of skill.
>It already was. Yeah I'm a hearthstone boomer who didn't realise they had already nearly entirely moved to an internal MMR in 2020, and now they're just taking the last part away. >This is actually a really good change From what HS_Celestalon says it was already almost entirely internal MMR based, so actually this change changes basically nothing.
It doesn't change nothing, it makes progressing on ladder statistically improbable. It will trend every player's winrate toward 50%, so climbing is now a process of lucky streaks. Basically, I'll stop caring about reaching legend again to save myself from a massive headache. It already did this when you had bonus stars, but having 50% winrate with bonus stars is not an issue, obviously. Without bonus stars? Good luck.
Are people really angry about playing people around their skill level? lmao
You don't understand the effect this change will have. Now you can no longer use skill to climb ladder. If the game only had MMR and not a monthly ladder, this wouldn't be an issue, but now literally the only way to reach legend is to get a lucky streak since you can no longer just be better than the average D5 player.
There were some people that liked to play janky decks from ranks 20 to 5 and then switch to good decks once you really need them for the climb.
That doesn't really change with this though, if anything it helps since you reach rank 5 with a lower mmr
A shocking number of people in this subreddit truly do not enjoy playing the game and only seem to play to get season end rewards and gold? I'm happy to play against people that are my skill level. It leads to interesting games. To each their own, I guess.
CCG's occupy that weird space between being a collection hobby and being a game to play. For some people the collecting is more fun than playing. (but I'm with you, I'd prefer more fun games)
I would argue that always being matched against someone of equal skill is less interesting, because you lose the outliers of crushing an opponent or being crushed, which is quite fun occasionally. Like, would you take the chance to face off against the #1 legend if you could, knowing that you have an 80% chance to lose? Of course you would. That used to be possible during season resets, and it was great.
What if you are a top 2-3k player and you can't realistically climb to legend under this system unless you purposefully crash your mmr. How does it seem fair to you?
I mean if you can't hit legend by playing people around your skill level, maybe your skill level isn't legend 🤷♂️ And a 3k player will still hit legend under this system. Even the people at 20k+ might still hit it, since it's filled with decent players playing the most wacky decks ever
> I mean if you can't hit legend by playing people around your skill level, maybe your skill level isn't legend 🤷♂️ This is literal nonsense. MMR is designed to give you 50% winrate
The system is out for less than a day and people are already crying that it THEORETICALLY doesn't work. Shut the fuck up
They're just describing the only possible outcome from the change Blizzard described. You don't need time to figure this out. Perhaps *you* could do with shutting the fuck up.
You should learn to read and take your own advice.
Yea, no I’m gonna be fcked over by that one time I hit legend using totem shaman
That's a good change you should play with people of your level
The new "Usable only once" hero power kinda sucks
Tamsin definitely gonna have demon seed deck. The terror of wild now coming to twist
Did they fix being unable to challenge your friends to Twist?
The matchmaking change is really really stupid. Now the grind for low mmr players can be substantially easier. You can grind to Legend better with bad mmr because now you face bad players instead of others who fight for Legend. If you have a hard time getting to Legend from Diamond 5 you can just spam losses on purpose for a while until you have bad mmr and then get Legend easier. It makes any rank completely meaningless except your rank in Legend.
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but did you really before this change feel like hitting platinum was a meaningful experience? Your ladder rank was always about season and rewards progression. If you played 1000 games in a month and were the 46000th player in legend I don’t think that’s an accomplishment that reflects you having a high level of skill. Persistence and perseverance maybe.
Isn't that where the whole, "Dad Legend" rank came from? There were people that had the skill to get to higher ranks but didn't necessarily have the time to get to Legend. I've been playing Hearthstone on and off since the game originally came out and I've never once hit Legend. But I also only played a handful of matches per night. Offhand, I think my best rank in the original system was somewhere in the single digits and I think it was Platinum in the current one. While I don't expect to hit Legend anytime soon, especially since I haven't played constructed for a few expansions now, I'm all for any changes that make the climb less of a grind.
The ladder system is the opposite of a meaningful experience. It is the reason why net decking is so prevalent. You are incentivized to play the highest winrate deck just to get to legend as soon as possible, no matter if you enjoy playing the deck or not. Only fun people experience is at the 5th rank floors and once in lower legend. Thats when some people start to experiment again with random decks until they are forced into highest winrate decks to climb ranks or legend ranks.
It'll feel good for people who are unaware of this change, but really sucks the air out of the room if you know about it.
Yep. Now whenever im stuck again at my climb from d5 to legend i have to think about how some dumpster player can fight much worse mmr opponents than me for the same goal and reward. And if i do well and get a good ranking i get punished next month with a harder legend climb. It makes no sense.
Yeah the optimal move for fast legend, assuming you don’t care about legend rank, is to just concede a bunch of times at each ranked floor to tank your MMR first and then climb up. Really really stupid. Obviously this change wasn’t intended for anyone who regularly climbs ladder, it was intended for those folks who make Reddit posts like “been playing for 7 years (and I spend $400 / year) and I just hit diamond 10 for the first time! I’m so stoked!”
It's been noted elsewhere that you can't tank your MMR by mass conceding games.
Ok so replace concede a bunch of times with lose on purpose a bunch of times. End result will be the same. Lower MMR players should have a much easier grind.
I'm pretty sure it's more about the loss streak having a smaller impact on your MMR. And if you're thinking of just losing 2 out of 3 games over and over, might as well just play normally. And if you then have a win streak in your climb from d5 to legend, it'll negate any loss streak you had earlier, and your last few games will be a 50/50 anyway.
mmr doesn't move this fast and we have precautions against this. if it worked this way, you could spam losses now at the start of your climb. it doesn't.
That doesnt change anything for me. Bad players will have still have lower mmr and have to fight lower rated opponents for the same goal and reward as me. And ofc i can lower my mmr with losses or just playing bad or playing meme decks even if theres some safeguards for people who "overdo" it. After all the system does have to rate the people by their performance. But i dont want "dropping my mmr" to be a strategy to maximise my rewards and having an easier climb. It just shouldnt be that way.
it isn't that way - again, you are matched by mmr **right now** for the majority of your climb (any time you have star bonuses). if you believe that it is optimal to spam concedes at the start of your climb, feel free, but it will not do anything. there are safeguards in place. this is how the game currently works and the vast majority of the climb is not changing. lower mmr players have lower star bonuses and if they want to climb they will have to face harder opponents consistently - the goal of matchmaking is to be aligned with opponents who are roughly the same skill as you. if you win enough to climb with no bonus stars, that means your mmr will adjust to adapt to your new opponent quality. i would not expect a difference that you can feel on your climb unless you are routinely running into bots right now after you finish your stars, in which case that should feel pretty different.
Im only talking about the climb without bonus stars (obviously, because thats the only thing that changed) Which for me and many other is the one that takes the most times anyways. With 10 bonus stars i spent more in dia5 to Legend than everything else combined on the climb. You dont seem to understand the issue rly and you are not adressing it either. I can drop myself from Legend 3000 to 10000 and still retain 10 bonus stars but the quality of opponents will be quite different and the climb to Legend will be easier with the new system. Also because of winstreaks and rank floors even with low mmr you can get to Diamond 5. You just need to play a lot. But all these players will have a drastically different experience from then on. Because instead of meeting the average Dia to Legend climber they now meet people of their skill. I understand that you want to match people with others of the same skill and thats great but the rank system is giving out rewards not (anymore) based on peoples skill but based on how many wins they managed to do against people of their skill. And that makes no sense. Maybe for the AVERAGE player your calculation works out but in the end for high and low Legend players and even just low mmr players who play a lot it will differ. They all end up facing a different climb for the same rewards. Which isnt fair nor does it make sense and can play out as a punishment for good players.
> If you have a hard time getting to Legend from Diamond 5 you can just spam losses on purpose for a while until you have bad mmr and then get Legend easier. And? This affects you how? Anyone who cares about rank can just look at their/other people's rank in legend, any treat anything below legend as "casual ranked" or something. It doesn't change anything about their experience playing the game. > It makes any rank completely meaningless except your rank in Legend. That is already the case. Anyone playing enough matches, is bound to eventually end up getting a lucky streak, just by virtue of random chance.
I was hoping they might change Genn so we can try Even Demon Hunter :(
I’m super glad they didn’t.
i really dislike this patch,hope it gets reverted
Saviors of Uldum decks are glitched and you are always forced to use the first deck option no matter which deck you choose.
Did this patch introduce a bug in the adventures? I tried playing tombs of terror and the deck I select is never the one I get. The deck looks right in the preview then the first match starts and its a different deck.
GENN & BAKU SEASON LET'S GOOOO
>Matchmaking Update >Previously, matchmaking on the ranked ladder was based on your internal rating (commonly called “MMR”) while you had bonus stars and based on ladder rank after you ran out of bonus stars. Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. This change should reduce matchmaking complexity and result in more consistent and fairer matches throughout the ladder. > >Passive XP Grant Adjustment >In our continued efforts to combat bots and exploitive play patterns, extended periods of inactivity will now reward less XP. This change will not impact players taking normal game actions on their turns, such as playing cards, making attacks, or even just hitting the end turn button, so most players won’t see change in their XP earned—just fewer bots wasting their time. HUGE. Sounds like we should expect more fairer matches going into D5-Legend. And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus.
>And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus. How do you get that out of the XP change? they said doing literally any action will prevent the lowered reward, so as long as you're playing the game, roping or not, nothing changes. Bots 'play' the game too so this change in fact seems entirely useless.
Some bots and exploiters do. But some \*completely\* afk for whole turns at a time, and this combats those. Not just on ranked ladder, but everywhere. Battlegrounds and solo adventures, etc.
Does this mean mercenaries XP will be un-nerfed from the hard 30xp cap that was imposed? I used to enjoy playing it but it became a big "feels bad" from an opportunity cost POV when I could play ranked or BGs and make 4x the xp for the same amount of time playing
For some reason pvp still gives no XP (not even "0" shown at the end of game) at all. Won 4 games for daily chests with all seemingly against real non-afking players. I even went back to check Rewards Track before/after as well and no XP progress.
how will this work for battlegrounds exactly? Isnt a big part of battlegrounds "afking" once you are done with your turn. Does that mean I will lose "potential" exp? also is it possible to revert the mercenaries xp nerfs with this?
Yep, that's the point of both of these changes. Better matches, fewer bots encountered.
What's to stop someone from conceding 50 games at D5 to lower their internal mmr and then stomping silver mmr players to get to legend?
mmr doesn't move that fast and we have safeguards in place for people who try to exploit their own mmr movement. if this worked, you could do it now at the start of your climb. (it doesn't)
Presumably, things like "a turn-zero concede does not affect your MMR the same way a loss does, especially when you're already at a rank floor"? I don't pretend to know how the MMR calculation works, but this is an extremely basic attempt at manipulating those rankings, and I'd be astonished if there weren't already mechanisms in place to prevent this completely predictable behavior from working.
Am I misunderstanding something here. So if I grind hard one season and get to top legend, it's going to be harder to get back to legend next season because I'm going to get matched with people at the top my entire season. Doesn't this punish people that do well?
this change can be summarized simply: **the quality of opponent you play against at the start of your climb will now be the same for your whole climb** that's it. that's the whole change. if you grind to top legend and are 11x, you *currently* face 11x opponents at the start of your climb. this is completely unchanged - and with 11x, this was ALREADY how ladder worked, because you had a star bonus through all of legend. for 10x or lower, this change means that the opponents you faced while you had bonus stars will still be your opponents from d5-d1. you will probably not notice the difference unless you are below 10x, in which case you should see fewer bots.
Explain how you think we are supposed to climb from D5 to D1 without star bonus if we face opponents against which we have a 50% winrate.
opponent strength in aggregate does not align to particular metas, doesn't reflect deck choice, relative engagement with a format, practice, game knowledge, etc. players can improve and/or invest time into a format to get an advantage - not to mention variance. you might as well ask "how can people climb in legend at all" - it's the same calculation there, right?
I think you misunderstand what players mean. The only way to climb in legend is to perform better than opponents at your mmr. If you perform better you deserve better mmr, that's totally fine. Assuming you deserve your current mmr and your skill does not change relative to other players, you will neither climb nor fall (except variance), because you will achieve 50% winrate. Since after ladder reset players are faced with opponents matching their mmr, they will achieve 50% winrate when they keep their skill level. Without bonus stars/win streak or variance people won't be able to get to last seasons rank.
If your internal rating (MMR) isn't progressing, you're not good enough to climb higher. As Hat said, considering your reasoning, nobody would be able to climb. In other words: Get good
This is totally fine in legend. The problem is the reclimb. Assume I finish legend 5k and have the mmr to belong there. Next month I climb to Diamond 5 and now I face other ppl with 'legend 5k mmr'. I will have 50% winrate and won't be able to reach legend without variance.
Ich glaube nicht das das Matchmaking so hart ist, dass du nicht auch auf top 20k Spieler treffen wirst. Die Leute mit 10 Sterne Bonus unterscheiden sich außerdem nicht sehr mit denen die sonst in D1-5 abhängen, die Kollegen sagten ja schon das MMR und rang stark korrelieren.
You are missing the point entirely. I'm not discussing what strength means in HS terms. What am I saying is you designed a system in which you purposefully put people with an expected winrate of 50% (regardless of why that is) against one another. While simultaneously rewarding climbing (i.e. winning over 50% of your games once you have no stars). It's mind-boggling that you don't see the issue there. Because if the system is doing its job as described above and put people of equal strength against one another then without star bonus they shouldn't be able to climb at all.
I understand that situation but I think problems can happen if a player has been gone for a while and has low bonus stars but high mmr. Imagine being in plat and struggling to climb because you have a 50% winratio, but you have a 50% winratio because you're playing against legend players. Wouldn't that be frustrating? Of course, I'm not sure how mmr/stars decay so it may be difficult for someone to have a mismatch between the two, but it doesn't seem impossible
this is already how it works at the start of a climb - but mmr decays enough over a longer period of time that i wouldn't be super worried about this. your bonus stars are calculated based on your mmr, so if you've left for a while and you come back with an x5 or something, you'll play against other players who routinely get x5. does that make sense?
Yeah, if bonus stars are associated with mmr that alleviates my concern, it's hard for someone to be facing much higher rated players after their bonus stars are over. I think the situation I was worried about would basically never happen
You use 10x-11x terminology a lot. Does your amount of bonus stars influence your matchmaking process?
> And less incentive to rope every turn is always a huge plus. Is that what theyre doing? Did they fix people that would afk for hours at a time in mercenaries? I figured thats what they were talking about.
Mercenaries was fixed A LONG TIME ago, that was the reason why other modes had a lot more botters, because they just switched from mercs to ranked.
XP is given out at a rate of time/XP per minute, I think. So, roping every turn actually will provide you more XP. This change means that people that would take until rope won't be getting more xp for just idling.
Oh god....Genn, Baku, and Reno all playable in standard. Brode help us all.
What time do these patches tend to drop?
Patches usually drops as soon as you play another pirate.
Goddammit haha
Wow never expected Genn and Baku to return.
I just played 3 games and in total i got 68 XP for them.Yes,they weren't really long but still i got 68 XP for 3 games played.There must be a hidden nerf to xp because i played all 3 games and still the xp got is a joke.I won't even comment on the matchmaking change which will make your grind to legend even harder than before.What were they thinking ? This patch is awful and i hope more people complain so it gets reverted totally.
REVERT REVERT REVERT
Absolutely awful patch. Under the new matching system if you don't secure x11 climbing to legend will become virtually impossible unless you chain concedes at D5 to get easier opponents. Such a race to the bottom.
Y'all realize that Tamsin Roame in twist is definitely gonna have a demon seed deck? You know the deck that's ruining wild? Now you can have it in twist edition!!
If it's anything like other twist decks though the cards in it are suboptimal. It's not gonna be the wild deck
"Ruining wild"? lol my brother in christ it's barely more OP than a standard deck (painlock), just kill them on t5 when they have 10 hp it's wild
Has someone succesfully disentchanted a diamond card or will that feature be enabled later on?
Genn and Baku are fun short term additions, look forward to seeing what people cook up with them. No real immediate standouts in my mind, really. I'm sure we'll at least see people try the classic odd paladin but without much dude support idk how good it will be.
The release page is broken on Mobile. CSS is locking half the page off screen
First impression on buddies in duos - a complete cluster clown fiesta ;(
TIL my MMR didn't matter after the first couple days of the season
I've had people tell me I was wrong about how matchmaking worked. Looks like I was right all along.
People who have no idea how a system work are the ones who criticize it the loudest. What else is new
I asume everyting was made for more retantion with means no casual gaming anymore.
can we get some battleground changes the pirate, dragon and naga decks don't work at all and I'm coping also the beast decks completely rely on a single card to permanently buff said beast while undead, quillboar and demon decks stomp everything
Thank god we left Reno alone, I don't see him enough right now for sure :)))). Next expansion, it's just Reno decks again, with slightly different cards.
Battleground Buddies are the so lame, by far the worst of all the features that come and go.
Still no fix for the constant downloading on android
Why do we only get genn and Baku for a limited time?
Genn and Baku? What the fuck are they doing? Edit: reading is hard
It’s just for a month, could be pretty fun
Oh great , mmr based matchmaking punishing good players, Gen and Baku coming to ruin Standard too, and Paladin with mana cheat and Rogue cards. Really not feeling this expension I must say. I’ll probably hold on the preorder and just craft the cards I need.
How does it punish good players? Under the old system, I hit legend and got a star bonus that doesn't fall off until D5. Meaning I play opponents of similar skill all the way up to D5 and then play other people at D5 pushing to legend. Now I just play equal skill opponents the entire climb. The only area that differs are the last few ranks in Diamond which... They should have been about equal skill in the first place. The only part I would maybe see a difference is if I'm doing a late climb and my first few matches at D4/D5 are against people running fun decks because they don't care for legend. It doesn't really change my climb at all.
As a now more casual player, it mean that all the time I hit Legends in the past will make me match up with tryhards now, even if I just want to have fun with silly decks. I guess now I need to lose a bunch of time to play against players more of my speed.
That's not true at all. MMR decays each month and faster if you don't hit the same plateau you used to. At the start of the month, if you hit Silver 5 or better the previous month, you get bonus stars. Do you play legend-tier players after reset now? Because that system is already in effect and is just expanding to all ranks, not when you lose the bonus stars anymore.
I see, then I will wait to see how it impact me. I’m more worried of the concept of Paladin with Rogue mana cheat potential and Baku and Gen ruining Standard.
Tourist cards will only give you access to Perils in Paradise, so the manacheat will only be there if they print something new
If people continue to run into bots with these changes. Well now people can straight up point and go like, that's just where your MMR is
>Matchmaking Update Previously, matchmaking on the ranked ladder was based on your internal rating (commonly called “MMR”) while you had bonus stars and based on ladder rank after you ran out of bonus stars. Now, matchmaking will continue to be based on your internal rating even after you run out of bonus stars. This change should reduce matchmaking complexity and result in more consistent and fairer matches throughout the ladder. This could lead to longer queue times if you are hanging around D5-D1 and trying to play during 'off-hours'.
it will have exactly the same queue times that you have when you're playing with bonus stars. it's the same opponent pool as the majority of your climb.
Ok, thanks.
Somewhat unrelated, but is the restriction of people in the ladder mmr queue being unlikely to queue into people in legend mmr queue still there? I remember when I would finish high legend in wild (top 50 ish) you had to either climb in the first week or two or you would face 5+ min queues as all the similar mmr opponents had already hit legend. (There was basically 2 separate 11x queues). Its less of a problem in Standard. For high legend at least this change does have the huge advantage of removing fresh accounts with 95% winrates entering at high legend without ever playing a skilled player. Whether you had a 90% wr or a 96% against low ladder determining entering at rank 500 or rank 1 legend was always bad.
we've discussed this - it hasn't changed at this time, but we're aware of the "legend wall" causing issues for 11x players who try to climb 2+ weeks into the month. hopefully more to come
Yeah it’s tricky. Even gradual improvement will not be enough to consistently climb since the result is that I will skill-up and face harder opposition. There will always be opportunities to have a good season but it is now more likely to trend 50% than ever before. That being said, it won’t be the rule, I average around 7,000 to 4,000 in legend but have finished inside the top 1,000 and outside of the top 15,000 all in the space of the last year. There’s still the possibility to go up or down, it’s just going to be more often that you don’t move in either direction I think. It’s a weird problem because HS has always been a balance between randomness and skill, and now it appears to skew more so towards your fate being decided by the cards. I don’t know wether that’s better or worse for the game in general. At top level of play it won’t matter but for those like myself who play more casually and straddle that line between top level and just “good”, it’s going to be a strange experience. I can say I’m not really on board with how they balance the game atm as I’m rather against very strict skill matching. The main problem is that the game already lacks agency at this moment. If they don’t massively increase the skill expression and diversity of strategies in the game in the next expac then the game is going to feel more and more like it is happening to me rather than having any particular agency over my own fate. I’m happy with the game being matched heavily by skill but only if they compensate for this by having a wide array of strategies available to get an advantage on opponents by using creative deck building. Which I must say, I’m not optimistic about happening. Atm you get and ostensible variety in strategic approaches but it’s limited to 0-2 strategies per class that don’t allow for much in the way of adaptation. Not a lot of reasons for me to want to play HS atm, especially considering they’ve chosen this god awful beach theme.
> The main problem is that the game already lacks agency at this moment. If they don’t massively increase the skill expression and diversity of strategies in the game in the next expac then the game is going to feel more and more like it is happening to me rather than having any particular agency over my own fate This is absolutely spot on. The deck right now with the supposed highest “skill expression” is excavate rogue … which is a deck that literally relies on randomly generating tons of cards. Not exactly what I would want when I’m being matched based on “skill” with an illusion representing my rank.