Ladder FAQ

We’ve noticed the community has had some questions about the ladder. Here are answers to some of the more common ones:

How do you earn stars on the ladder?



When you win a match of ranked play you earn a star. From there, you can earn bonus stars in two ways:

2-0 Match Win Bonus – If you won your match two games to zero, you earn an additional star. This star can only be earned in draft tournaments and Constructed Ladder because they’re the only formats that are currently best two games out of three.

Win Streak Bonus – If you won your previous match and then you win this match, you’ll earn a bonus star.

What happened to the second Win Streak Bonus Star?



There was originally a second Win Streak Bonus Star. If you had won your previous two matches, you would earn two bonus stars instead of one. This was designed with the intention of moving players to their “intended rank” more quickly. If you’re a Silver level player, you want to play against more Silver level players to test your skill. This was designed to get those players who were stronger than Silver level players and with a greater collection to the rank where they would also battle someone on their skill level more often. We found, however, through our tests on the PTR that players were accelerating through the ranks rather quickly. Thus, we removed this extra star after the PTR test because we found the 2-0 Match Win Bonus and the Single Win Streak Star Bonus helped serve the goal of accelerating players already.

How do you rise and fall through divisions?



Each ladder has different methods by which you can rise to a new division and fall to a previous division (designated by precious metals).

Constructed Ladder:

Constructed ladder allows you to rise through the ladder when you fill all the stars on tier 1 (the number portion of your rank) and then win your next match. You will also raise your division if you earn enough bonus stars to completely fill tier 1’s stars and earn at least one additional star. These additional stars carry over with you to your next rank.

Example: I’m Silver 1 with two out of three stars. I play a match and win my match 2-0 (I lost my previous match). I earn 2 stars! The first star completely fills my Silver 1 stars, the second star pushes me over the top of Silver 1. Therefore, I rank up from Silver 1 to Gold 5 with 1 star!

Constructed ladder also allows you to de-rank, or fall out of, divisions and tiers. If I’m Gold 4 with zero stars and I play a match and lose, I lose 1 star. I have no stars remaining in Gold 4. Therefore, I fall back into Gold 5 with my 4 stars. From there, I remove 1 of the stars I have in Gold 5. This reduces me to Gold 5 with 3 stars going into my next match.

Some special rules for falling out of divisions:

A player cannot de-rank from Silver into Bronze. This prevents people from intentionally losing and trying to ruin the experience for new players that are just getting into HEX.

A player cannot de-rank from Cosmic into Platinum. Reaching Cosmic is an achievement and an accomplishment. We want players who reach Cosmic to be both remembered and congratulated; we don’t want to take that away from you.



Limited Ladder:

Limited ladder follows the same rules as constructed ladder for rising up tiers and divisions. If you completely fill your stars on your current rank (the highest tier of your current division) and then win an additional match, you’ll rank up!

Opposite of the constructed ladder:

A player cannot de-rank from a division (precious metal) in limited ladder. You can still move between tiers (numbers within a division) normally. This ranking difference is because limited uses a separate pairing mechanism from constructed. Because of the nature of limited (where players enter tournaments and face random players in the same tournament queue) we felt this implementation provided a much better limited leveling experience.

Bonus Section

Extended Art Spectral Oaks:

Some players have brought up questions regarding their Extended Art Spectral Oaks. While we don’t have this fixed yet, we have decided that we are going to allow Extended Art Spectral Oaks to make Extended Art Spectral Acorns. From there, an Extended Art Spectral Acorn will make an Extended Art Mystic Squirrel. We hope this will really make the players who spent their promo star dust on their Spectral Oak feel special.