Hearthstone is planning a huge overhaul for ranked play plus balance nerfs

Have you been annoyed with Hearthstone’s ranked play for a reaaaallly long time? Good news: A big change-up is on the way. Over the weekend, Blizzard’s Ben Brode explained that ranked play currently gives a really different experience depending on where you sit. At the top ranks, there’s too much grinding, while at the bottom, “Some players feel like they’re hitting a wall” and never progress at all.

So Blizzard is working on a big fix. Come the beginning of the March season, everyone will be reset “exactly four ranks,” and all ranks will be flattened out to five stars. “That means that every player gets to feel the same amount of progression each month,” he says. Players also won’t have to make it to rank 20 to get their loot – just win five ranked games.

Additionally, Brode hopes, this’ll affect matchmatching overall, as the best players won’t be crammed into too-low tiers and lower-ranked players will be more spread out according to their actual abilities. The brief explainer video – plus the brand-new dev blog on balance changes coming in 10.2 (and yes that means card nerfs) – is down below.

A few changes are coming to Hearthstone next month in the 10.2 update. Get all of the details here: https://t.co/maY0q1sUJN pic.twitter.com/rqnkfPnlD5

— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) January 29, 2018