I've been playing this game off and on since getting into the Alpha, I have every character unlocked and at least level 5. I watch HGC religiously because the team based potential in HotS is more intricate and fascinating than any other competitive game that I'm aware of. However, I have been in Silver league in HL since they added leagues to ranked play and I don't see that changing any time soon. This is not an "I deserve a higher rank" story, this is a story about HL from my POV. I'm sharing this so you might gain some perspective. I think there are probably lots of other Silvers out there in the same boat as me.



The amount of HGC that I watch makes playing HL almost unbearable. In a majority of my HL games in Silver I see at least one of the following:



- missing early game soak

- bad map awareness (like, exceptionally bad)

- 0 merc camps taken

- standing next to a healing globe and ignoring it

- trying to take a team fight with numbers AND talent tier disadvantages



The average game knowledge in ranked play needs to improve. It is also not MY responsibility to fix it. I am almost never toxic, and attempt to phrase my disagreements in constructive ways, but in the end I'm just another Silver, so the odds of the other players listening is already pretty low. Education needs to happen in game, and ideally be a requirement for ranked play.



"So, why not put in the effort and time to rank up?" Because playing HL with the lack of game knowledge in the average game is simply not fun. I have a full time job and a family, so any free time I have is a luxury. So if I queue up for HL, it is for the sole purpose of trying to either finish placement matches or rank up. But most of the time, that's not worth the aggravation.



Now, let's say I'm always playing to the best of my potential, and can maintain a 60% winrate. In the current system that means that across 10 games, I would gain 1200 rank points, and lose 800, for a net gain of 400 points or 40% what it takes to move one division without even taking the promotion match into account. This means it takes 25 games to move one division and 125 games to move a full rank on average (still disregarding promotion matches).



When I can only find time to play about 10-20 games per week, and for the above reasons do not even enjoy playing HL in my league, why would I want to do all of that? To make matters worse, whenever I talk about these things I see in Silver, I often hear "we see that in Diamond too."



TL:DR The lack of game knowledge makes ranked play unfun. I accept my rank, because I know what it would take to increase it, and I don't want to spend my time that way.