Grinding The Ladder Without Grinding Your Sanity
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Grinding the ladder can be a daunting task. Which deck should I play? Does the time of day I play make a difference? What if I just lose and it ruins my experience? All of these questions are valid, and are things you should take into consideration. But there’s a lot more to it than just deck choice and re-queuing when you’re consistently facing favorable matchups. You should be having FUN! That’s right — my number one point in advice when grinding the ladder is that you should be having fun.
Six years ago, I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival for the first time in my life. I had no idea what to expect: my friends had told me there was good food and good fun, and that they’d be camping out at the grounds there. It sounded like a dandy ol’ time to me, so I committed to going by pitching in for the discounted rate on group tickets. I didn’t think much about it — it’s just one night at a festival; fun, right? WRONG! It was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. Everything cost about six times as much as I’d imagined. It got insanely cold overnight, and I hadn’t checked a weather report, so I was not dressed for the 33 degree (Fahrenheit) temperature. The group’s tent didn’t have a floor, and I’d brought my personal bedding, leaving it to be soiled by dirt, worms, ants, you name it. The Festival itself closed around 10 PM, and no one had bothered to bring enough food to share with anyone. Having not brought any for myself, I was starving the entire time because the nearest place to get food was so far away that it didn’t make any financial sense to leave the grounds in my friend’s car and come back less hungry, but still miserable. I hadn’t planned for anything, and something that would have otherwise been an awesome weekend surrounded by my friends turned out to be one of the most stressful and least gratifying experiences I’ve ever had.
A lot of players tend to take this style of planning and head to the Hearthstone ladder. Much like my first Renaissance Festival experience, ill-preparedness is usually met with abundant frustration, and the unwillingness to continue leaves you regretting your decision to play and ruining something that should be relaxing and enjoyable.
Two years ago, I decided I’d go to back to the Texas Renaissance Festival again and camp out; this time I made sure I was much more prepared. I went with a friend of mine, and we decided to make plans and get everything we needed — we bought a real tent, we brought a cooler with us, we brought enough food for the first and second night of camping, as well as breakfast, lunch, and a snack. Coming back with food after the Festival closed was something we’d planned for, and in the event that we’d meet some nice folks with whom we’d like to share, it wouldn’t be an issue. We had more than enough drinks; I even bought a pumpkin, hollowed it out, attached a spigot, and used it as a keg, because why not? I had chairs with me, tools, the works…
I was prepared this time around and it ended up being a wonderful experience. That weekend filled with pirate costumes, flowing drinks, lovely company is one of the most enriching and rewarding memories I have to date; and it wasn’t because things went so right, but because there were no unaccounted for circumstances to destroy my expectations.
To preserve your sanity, that is how you should prepare for the ladder! So I’ve come up with a few steps you can take to help increase the enjoyment you can get from playing, which will help your mind stay fresh, allowing you to climb the ranks for longer periods of time (and have fun to boot!).
Learn what you expect to play against
This part is rather easy — read the forums and check out some streams. Be it Warlock control or Mage aggro or Rogue mid-range good stuff, understanding what you expect to face will help you not only decide what you want to play, but how you should build a deck once you’ve made that decision.
Practice the matchups you expect to face
Understanding your plan going into a matchup will help you mulligan, open your development, and plan for the mid and later stages of the game fluidly, often leaving your opponent wondering if their deck is the wrong choice! Imagine going to a chess tournament without practicing your plans, and find yourself opening with A4 to develop your rook. You’ll likely end up embarrassed, and it might even ruin your experience with chess. Practicing your matchups will help you know exactly what to do when you face it — take notes during your practice! Keeping track of anything you discover can immensely help your memory.
Be prepared to change one or two cards if you’re facing the same decks
Let’s say that you’ve decided to play Warlock control because you’ve been seeing so many Druid decks floating around. You decide on a removal package of Shadow Bolts, Siphon Soul, Drain Life, and The Black Knight. As you play a few games, you notice you’re playing against a few more aggressive decks than you’d expected — two Mage, two Druid, and a Murloc Warlock. In this instance, I would exchange a few cards in my deck and include some copies of Soulfire (to help accelerate my potential to remove high profile threats) and Mortal Coil (to punish my opponent’s small minions and help supplement the loss from Soulfire). I may even consider adding some Wild Pyromancers to help sweep the board. I’m still playing Warlock control, but my build and focus has drastically shifted, with just a few cards.
Stay focused, and remember that some things are out of your control!
I seem to stress this issue constantly, particularly when coaching others, but it honestly can’t be emphasized enough — variance happens! You will lose games to your opponent ripping Leeroy Jenkins off the top with two Shadowstep in their hand. Their Ragnaros will bypass your board of three minions twice in a row and kill you. Your Tinkmaster Overspark will turn their Sylvanas Windrunner into a 5/5 and their Tinkmaster will turn your Sylvanas into a 1/1. You can’t control that! Don’t let those kinds of losses shake you; you can still take something away from those games. Could you have prepared for Tinkmaster without sacrificing too much? Could you have baited out their removal effects prior? Could you have saved your silver bullets and used other utility effects (such as your life total!) to sway the game in your favor? Many times, the answer will be no. But that shouldn’t stop you from thinking about it.
Akin to any measure of standard, the amount of time you’re able to invest will reflect your performance if you take it seriously. But doing so doesn’t mean sacrificing fun and enjoyment! Using these tips as a guideline and translating their meaning to your gameplay can be a useful for almost any situation where preparation is key. So sit down, grab a friend from the forums if you’re like me and don’t have any in real life (self-zing!), and play some games! You’ll be surprised how much you already know when you take the time to think about it.
Eat, drink, and be merry!
Oh, and play Hearthstone.
See you on the ladder!
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I mean it’s a good article for the people whose main issue is they lose and get frustrated.
grinding is a personal thing I simply cant fiend games the way a lot of people can even in the times when I could dedicate 4 hours to playing. Im going to play 3 or 4 games then be done, maybe for the whole day. the secret to the long haul is to not force yourself to play any more than you want and if you wanna skip a day just do it.
The easy reply is do you have the 3 legendaries must have? sylvanas ragnaros and tinkmaster? no? you can’t play ladder, just that easy, is really sad but that’s true, I’m trying to play with a shamy deck without legendaries and no way to go up of rank 12, even if your opponents lose lethals for 2 turns cause they are freaking bad they put any of those cards and is just gg on 90% of the games
That just really isn’t true - Razor in Season 1 hit Legendary with no Legendaries, as well as a few other people. They certainly help and make things a bit easier (They’re supposed to — that’s how powerful cards work!) but they aren’t a pre-requisite for queuing on the ladder.
get dirty and play a murloc deck without legendaries
Focus on a single hero and use your other hero specific cards for dust then save up until you get tinkmaster or sylvanasa. Most decks i play run leeroy and tinkmaster but they are by no means necessary to win the game. Skill and knowledge of your opponents decks is as important as the “Quality of your Legends”.
The deck i’ve been playing to “GRIND” the ladder has only two legendaries and they can be replaced in fact im playing with a Kobold Geomancer instead of a bloodmage thalnose and im starting to like the little Rat.
um Im pretty sure if someone gets to make exactly the deck they want and you get to make the deck you want minus a few cards in a game with a 30 card deck you’re gonna lose a lot of games.
a big part of doing well in a constructed card game is card selection and playing enough games to minimize variance. just being a decent player probably only gets you to mid 10s rank this seasons.
btw self confessed pay2win and netdeck player here Im not criticizing people for doing it at all, I just think that you are doing yourself a disservice if you tell yourself that the ONLY thing separating you from other players is what happens once it says “worthy opponent”.
A comprehensive card pool will certainly help achieve a greater win rate — but is that really a mystery to anyone?
Tools of the trade, so to speak!
I’d think the safest/most efficient way to climb the ladder (and by pure grinding) is to focus on two decks: One standard solid high-end deck that you enjoy and want to play the most, and a second deck that counters whatever counters your first deck without being total trash against all other decks. If you don’t have legendaries to support those decks, then just farm gold as much as you can, play arena to get enough dust to craft those legendaries and then start grinding. It’s rough and takes time but hey, that’s HS for ya.
I have been becoming more aware that Climbing the ladder is about understanding what decks are dominating the Ladder in your area and at what time a day they appear, Yes the composition of the Meta changes throughout the day. These past few days i have been noticing Rogue Miracle and Mid-range have been dominating the NA ladder with a high population of druid and warrior, shaman/priest/warlock pop up now again as well. All very effective heros with very versatile play styles.
I personally have been playing with an Ancient Watcher Druid deck to help stomp out Aggro warrior decks and Shamans to stomp out all other decks. It is difficult playing against anyone who gets the right cards at the right time (Obviously). But playing control decks help me influence the game with skill rather then Aggro decks where i feel like im praying for that final direct damage spell to kill them or that my opponent doesn’t have that taunt to stalll my attack. I urge all Hearthstone players to be aware of what is out there, take note of how your decks do, realize when a card is sitting in your hand doing nothing and realize how you win and lose.
Teach yoursleves how to fish and you will never go hungry
Grinding is the key word here… I keep a spreadsheet to mark which decks I play. I managed to get to rank 5 or so *relatively* easily this season (150 games or so). Since first hitting rank 5 I have played another 105 games… and I am rank 5 still - fluctuating between rank 4 and rank 6.
Does anyone else have similar experience? Rank 25 - 6 no problem, rank 5 wall?
at rank 5 you dont have winstreaks anymore so you need a consistent winrate >50% to climb further which differs from 25-6.
Left alone you also play against better players since you can be matched with players that have already reached legend.