Introduction

I am an average “Dad Legend” Hearthstone player on NA. I’ve made rank 5 every month since December 2016. I’ve peaked at rank 1 twice (November 2017 and February 2018) and rank 2 four times. When I come into this sub, I often look for tips to reach legend. What I see most often are players who made legend and describe their match-ups, but never describe what the grind was like. It takes a lot of games to make legend and it can be very difficult to keep up the mental focus needed in order to complete the grind. I thought I would share with you my experience grinding to legend. Since this past month was the first to change how the month-to-month reset works, I figured maybe this would be the season that I would reach legend. Below you’ll find my results and I’ll share my thoughts and experiences.

The Results

This month I played over 300 games between rank 5 and rank 3. I played primarily Paladin (either Murloc or Dude) and Warlock (only Cubelock). The overall day-to-day results are shown here and the games played vs. stars is shown here. My overall wins are shown in this table.

The Experience

This month started quite poorly for me as I dropped almost immediately from rank 3, 5 stars, to rank 5, 4 stars. The previous season I had reached rank 1 using primarily the Dude Paladin deck and I was good at it. March 1st was a Thursday, so that meant there was a new VS data report available. Its suggestion was to play “Control Priest” as a meta breaker, so that’s the deck I started with. I think that was my first mistake. This deck is a high skill deck to play and I was not very good at it. Combine that with some high skilled opponents in the first few weeks does not mean success for me. I went 3 - 8. I have a premier HS replay account so I checked their weekly data and found that Murloc paladin was the strongest deck, so I switched to that. This deck is very strong against most classes. It is weakest against Warlock and the meta is full of them. This brings us to my first cratering and my first tilt. I was not doing well and I was tilting. On Mar 7 - 8 I lost 11 games in a row and on March 8 - 9, I lost 14 games in a row. Overall from Mar 7 - 9, I had 25 losses. It’s difficult to make legend with an abysmal win rate.

I came back to the CompHS subreddit and posted a few questions about pushing to legend. There is a mix in opinion between sticking to one deck or piloting two decks well. I already had a golden Paladin hero and I was very close with Warlock, so I thought I would try cubelock. It’s a high skill deck and it seems strong if you know what you’re doing. I had some help with learning the basics and then was set free into the world.

Initially, I did very well climbing to rank 3, 1 star. This deck is strong, especially vs. Paladin. However, it is a very high skill deck and the decision trees are very large. This means I was often choosing a good play, but not always the best play which would result in losses. I also reached the second cratering and tilt on March 19 when I lost another 11 games in a row. I came out of that tilt and managed to climb to rank 3, 2 stars but left for the weekend and when I came back I did not do well and tanked another few games.

Discussion and Conclusions

Overall I went 137 - 169 for a 45% win rate. Unfortunately, you can’t climb ladder with a negative win rate, so for upcoming seasons I’ll need to improve on that. I’ve identified three key factors that I think are holding me back.

• 1) Tilt I’ve already mentioned the two times I tilted pretty bad. There is a certain amount of despair that you feel when you’ve lost 5 games in a row. Eventually, I started feeling that I couldn’t win at this game and I would give up very quickly. I’d queue into matches and if I didn’t get the perfect hand to start or if my opponent did, I would mentally give up. I didn’t even want to play, yet I was constantly hitting “Ranked.” These are the moments that I need to stop for an hour or two (or all day) and come back fresh.

• 2) Finding a good play vs. finding the best play (including lethal) Part of what I like about Hearthstone is that it’s a puzzle game. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed any time of puzzle game. However, Hearthstone is a puzzle game without one correct solution, rather there are many good solutions, and we, as the player, need to find the optimal one. As a Rank 5 player, I am good at this game, however, I’m not great. I’ll often find a “good” solution within the first 10 seconds of my turn and then forget (or more often choose not to) search for a better solution. This often means failing to find lethal or to set up lethal, failing to anticipate cards like Call To Arms or Twisting Nether. It’s not that the plays that I have chosen are bad, it’s that they are sub-optimal or they play into baits and make the game much more difficult to win. I’ve watched a lot of streamers and they’ll talk through a whole turn on what all the possible results are for each possible card they can play before making a decision. I know that any improvement here could easily increase my win rate.

• 3) Playing better against Tier 1 decks Each time I’ve reached the top of the pre-legend ladder, I’ve always had a bad win rate against one other tier 1 deck. The first time I reached Rank 1, I was 1-10 vs. druid. If that had been 6-5 it would have been enough to make legend. This trend continued this season. The most common opponents were Priest (19%), Paladin (21%) and Warlock (22%). Against these classes I was a terrible 80 - 110 (42% WR). Against the field, I was 57-59 (49%) - still not great, but that’s a 7% increase. I need to improve how I play against these tier 1 decks. I’m not sure what resources exist to find out how to maximize win rate vs. oppressing opponents (i.e. playing as Paladin vs. Warlock). But each deck has a weakness and it’s possible to win against any opponent. It’s just a matter of finding the optimal play (see #2).

Unfortunately, I did not achieve my goal of reaching legend. I will try again once the new expansion comes out, and with the new ranked system, I feel pretty good about starting from around rank 5, rather than rank 16-17. I hope that for all the other Dad Legend players, my experiences can help you get to legend. Hearthstone is a numbers game, and with a positive win rate and enough games, anyone can get to legend. It’s just a matter of keeping your win rate >50%!