Hearthstone’s ladder resets every calendar month, bringing a new ranked play season with unique rewards. That monthly reward keeps players coming back, and the game constantly rewards you just for playing a few games every season. You must win five ladder games each month to receive a seasonal reward. That was introduced in the March 2017 ladder revamp, and previously only players who reached rank 20 received a reward. With the Year of the Phoenix, which started on April 1, 2020, the ladder was reworked.
This system closely mirrors ranked ladders from other Blizzard games. To this day, it has remained in place to determine your skills and progression in Standard, Wild, and Classic Hearthstone, showing that players and developers alike are pleased with the changes made at the time.
New ranks
Every player will start the new season at the lowest rank, Bronze. Each rank has 10 tiers, with three stars in each tier. At its most basic level, you’ll earn a star per win, and you have to work your way up through the ranks: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, before finally reaching Legend. If you finished high in the standings in the previous season, you’d gain multipliers to make you climb faster back to your original ranking.
The best players will get up to an x11 star bonus, which means all wins at this rank give them 11 stars, boosting them right up the lower ranks with only a few wins. Losses still only count for one star, so you can boost your ranking even with a 50% win rate. Win streaks will double the number of stars gained, so if you have an x11 star bonus and are on a winning streak, you’ll get 22 stars.
This means that experienced players can get back to their previous rank at a pretty rapid pace instead of having to spend half of the month grinding their way to Legend and beyond.
MMR matchmaking instead of ranks
Since Hearthstone introduced the Year of the Phoenix updates, the matchmaking algorithm determines your matchups based on your hidden internal matchmaking rating (MMR) rather than just looking at your current rank. This means you’re more likely to come up against someone of your skill level instead of a newbie who reached platinum or diamond for the first time which is a better experience for everyone involved.
There is also an MMR cap for your rank, so if you want to try decks, feel free to do so since your MMR will not fall below that cap. Additionally, there are rank floors in place at every fifth rank (so Bronze 5, Diamond 10, etc.), allowing you to experiment and play meme decks without risking your ranked progression. This also dramatically eases “ladder anxiety,” a phenomenon where players would rather not play at all than risk their rating.
What are the ranked rewards?
As usual, you will get your card back after five wins in the season, and you will receive everything else once the season has concluded. However, as you progress through the ranks, you will constantly get reminders of your new goodies, with a nifty little animation showing how card packs and cards fly into your still-locked Ranked Rewards chest.
To make the most of your chest, you’ll need to reach Legend, but Diamond 5 is what you should aim for since the difference between the two is just one pack. The grind through the hardest portion of the ranked ladder for the equivalent of 100 gold is perhaps not worthwhile if you don’t plan to play on anyway.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of all the cumulative rewards you will get as you progress through the ranks (all card rewards are from Standard, and all card packs are from the latest (or upcoming) expansion):
- Five wins: seasonal card back
- Bronze 5: one Rare card
- Silver 10: one Rare card and one pack
- Silver 5: three Rare cards and one pack
- Gold 10: three Rare cards and two packs
- Gold 5: five Rare cards and two packs
- Platinum 10: five Rare cards and three packs
- Platinum 5: seven Rare cards and three packs
- Diamond 10: seven Rare cards and four packs
- Diamond 5: seven Rare cards, four packs, and one Epic card
- Legend: seven Rare cards, five packs, and one Epic card
You will earn rewards based on the highest rank you’ve achieved across the game modes for the season, meaning if you’ve reached Legend in Wild and Gold 5 in Standard, you’ll get the Legend rewards.
A final reminder, Ranked Rewards are not to be confused with the goodies you get from the Rewards Track. This is a seasonal bonus for your ladder performance, while the Rewards Track is a replacement for the old XP-based bonuses, and you earn them simply by playing throughout an expansion’s life cycle.
