HotS Ranked Play - When Will Season 1 Start?

Placement Matches, Rank 1, Grandmaster League, general ranked play changes and the oldest question, when will Season 1 start, finally answered, sort of.

FINAL UPDATE - HOTS SEASON 1 STARTS IN THE WEEK OF 14TH JUNE. READ MORE HERE

PLACEMENT MATCHES

You may have probably heard by now about the very much needed HotSPlacement Matches implementation. The game already has a Placement Matches feature but it's hidden, and not designed well, as usual by Blizzard. Luckily our HotS boost employees yelled hard, or was that you? They listened and they're bringing it!

First word from the devs is that there will be 20-25 placement matchesThere are 20 placement matches. That seems a lot since in League of Legends we have 10 placement matches, but remember games last almost as twice as short here so 20 games could be a good number. They will reset our ranks both Hero and Team League.

THEY WON'T RESET YOUR HIDDEN MATCHMAKING RATING! Meaning that you should still play Hero League and get as many wins as possible to get your hidden MMR high. In HotSplacement matches you will be playing matches versus players of similar MMR and ofcourse get placed higher in the ranks with less wins than you would with more wins and low MMR, makes sense. Developers say they will be much more careful with placements so there won't be many more Rank 1's playing like Rank 40, finally!

We already implemented an option for you to purchase help with your Heroes of the Storm Placement Matches, including the HotS duoQ boost option.

RANK 1

If you've been to Rank 1 you know you get a bunch of points and then win/lose from 0 to 25 points? This way you're able to lose about 8-15 games and not drop from Rank 1. That is also ridiculous and will be changed. This will also help the transition between Rank 1 and new Grandmaster League. Expect Sadly Grandmaster League won't be implemented in the next patch, even tho we have prepared our pricing calculators for boosting to Grandmaster League. So, take care in the next patch, do not lose games in Rank 1 recklessly or you're out.

TEAM LEAGUE

Hero League will only be playable with up to 4 players in the new patch. Meaning that a 5 man party is automatically going be queueing up for Team League in a way that there will be no more "teams", the ones where you pay 500 gold, name it and invite your buddies. This is a little weird because as you can see in the screenshot everyone will have their own Team League rating and hiden MMR.

The Hero League and Team League tabs are removed and now there is only Ranked tab that will feature both Solo Queue and Team League. We will be offering HotS boost services for Team League too.

WHEN WILL SEASON 1 START?

Blizzard is dodging this question very hard, I'm surprised and disappointed how hard, but this time we've got a semi-answer. More in a way that Season 1 IS NOT STARTING next patch which is scheduled in 1 or 2 weeks, not sure. Considering how they said Grandmaster isn't coming up in this patch, means it is in after this one, which is usually 3-4 weeks.

Meaning we will see Grandmaster in 5-7 weeks and then Season 1 in the patch after that, meaning that Season 1 is starting in 9 to 11 weeks. Which is in atleast 2-3 months. This is frankly ridiculous if you ask me. But well, atleast you know you still got plenty of time to Rank up in preseason and get your hidden MMR high and ready to get placed high in Season 1 via Placement Matches.

UPDATE 10TH SEPTEMBER - Season 1 is likely starting around Blizzcon in November.

UPDATE 7TH OCTOBER - Seeing as Grandmaster league still hasn't been implemented, Blizzard's trend of implementing changes ridiculously slow, we suspect Season 1 will start in December or January 2016.

UPDATE 22TH OCTOBER - Dustin Browder just tweeted that the season 1 isn't close, nor we see Grandmaster in sight either. We now believe the Season 1 WILL NOT start in 2015. Likely in early 2016.

UPDATE 2ND DECEMBER - Dustin Browder just tweeted that Grandmaster League (supposed to come a couple of weeks before Season 1 isn't coming in 2015. That means it's likely coming in January 2016 and Season 1 EARLIEST February 2016.

UPDATE 14TH DECEMBER - Dustin Browder just confirmed Season 1 isn't coming until later next year, we now suspect it won't be before March 2016, as Grandmaster is coming in January or February.

UPDATE 25TH JANUARY - Dustin Browder just said we're still months away from Season 1, very disappointing, but hey, atleast you can still grind for that Rank 1.



Update 18th March - Dustin Browder tweeted that the new season will feature Bronze-Grandmaster instead of usual 50-1.

Update 28th March - No news about the season, nor the new ranking system, we believe Season is coming earliest in late May 2016.

We're also hearing people spreading rumors that MMR will reset every 3 months, THIS IS NOT TRUE. Dustin Bowder stated that they will likely do some kind of reset every 3 months (likely a new season) and even that is not confirmed. What he probably meant was a SOFT MMR reset, normal for League of Legends and WoW, or only a rank reset. Meaning your MMR will NEVER reset completely so stop worrying about that.



Great changes coming up, hopefully the matchmaker will be much more conservative and we won't have Rank 1's and Rank 40's in the same game.

If you already haven't, check our discounted HotS boost services currently cheapest on the market, including the HotS duoQ boost service where you play your own account.

For players that only want mentoring, check out our HotS Coaching service.

We also have a free section in our Blog page, check out How To Get Better At HotS and Cursed Hollow 101 guide.

Feel free to check out our regular Heroes of the Storm Tier List.

Like us on Facebook to get your news ASAP.