This is a post about my experience after taking a break and MMR Decay.
I played my first game July 9th 2024, last game Nov 17 2024, took a long break, and started playing again Feb 16 2026.
When I stopped playing, my MMR was ascendent, I peaked somewhere between ascII and 5 (can't remember exactly). I was pretty good.
Above are all my games that are recorded.
When I came back, I played a few games of street brawl, before playing some normal games. I was then placed in **seeker**, the second lowest rank in the game, and likely my first game or two were actually in initiate. I've since won the vast majority of my games(somewhere between 80-90%), and I'm up to phantom I at the moment.
I'm aware that I was rusty and my skills have decayed, and the game has changed *a lot* in the meantime. I completely understand there's some MMR decay, especially since I was gone for well over a year. However, this experience has been so frustrating that I feel the need to make a post. A top 1% player (which is about where I was), should **never** decay as much as I did. At my absolute worst, I should have been in Oracle after decay. Instead, I've spent the last month or so basically stomping every single lobby I was in with extreme prejeduce, and it took me a month of maintaining approx a 90% win rate to get up to phantom I. I'm still winning the vast majority of my games, especially on my main (Haze).
Devs need to take a look at the MMR decay algorithm - any player should never decay more than 2 ranks, no matter how long of a break they take. Yes, they'll be rusty when they come back. Yes, they'll likely lose a few games as they figure out the new meta, new lanes, new builds, and remember some of the mechanics. But... despite that, a returning player is going to "catch up" SIGNIFICANTLY faster than a new player. They will shake off the rust and start getting closer to the old skill level in a very short amount of time, especially if they are good mechanically. As a result, MMR decay needs to be significantly less, and the first 10-15 games (after the break) need to be given a much smaller impact on their MMR. I would wager most returning players will be able to play at (approx 1 rank below their peak) within 10-15 games, no matter how long their break was.
My experience w/ returning to deadlock was terrible, because I was effectively forced into smurfing for over a month, while winning the vast majority of my games, hard carrying. MOST of my losses were because of leavers, rage quitters, and occasionally the enemy team had a stack of obvious smurfs.
The MMR algorithm needs the following adjustments:
When taking a break, a player should not, under any circumstance, decay more than 2 ranks (ascendant to oracle). Even 2 ranks is really pushing it.
The first 10-15 games after returning should have minimal impact on MMR, unless the player is winning mostly every single game(which would potentially indicate that they've been decayed too much and can start playing against mechanically better players despite being rusty, or that they never actually took a break but had different accounts they were playing on).
Street brawl should have absolutely ZERO impact on MMR WHATSOEVER. I do not know if it does, but the only thing I can think of that would possibly cause such a ridiculous swing in MMR for my account(which has almost 1000 games on it) was playing street brawl a bunch before getting back into normal games after my break.
I played my first game July 9th 2024, last game Nov 17 2024, took a long break, and started playing again Feb 16 2026.
When I stopped playing, my MMR was ascendent, I peaked somewhere between ascII and 5 (can't remember exactly). I was pretty good.
Above are all my games that are recorded.
When I came back, I played a few games of street brawl, before playing some normal games. I was then placed in **seeker**, the second lowest rank in the game, and likely my first game or two were actually in initiate. I've since won the vast majority of my games(somewhere between 80-90%), and I'm up to phantom I at the moment.
I'm aware that I was rusty and my skills have decayed, and the game has changed *a lot* in the meantime. I completely understand there's some MMR decay, especially since I was gone for well over a year. However, this experience has been so frustrating that I feel the need to make a post. A top 1% player (which is about where I was), should **never** decay as much as I did. At my absolute worst, I should have been in Oracle after decay. Instead, I've spent the last month or so basically stomping every single lobby I was in with extreme prejeduce, and it took me a month of maintaining approx a 90% win rate to get up to phantom I. I'm still winning the vast majority of my games, especially on my main (Haze).
Devs need to take a look at the MMR decay algorithm - any player should never decay more than 2 ranks, no matter how long of a break they take. Yes, they'll be rusty when they come back. Yes, they'll likely lose a few games as they figure out the new meta, new lanes, new builds, and remember some of the mechanics. But... despite that, a returning player is going to "catch up" SIGNIFICANTLY faster than a new player. They will shake off the rust and start getting closer to the old skill level in a very short amount of time, especially if they are good mechanically. As a result, MMR decay needs to be significantly less, and the first 10-15 games (after the break) need to be given a much smaller impact on their MMR. I would wager most returning players will be able to play at (approx 1 rank below their peak) within 10-15 games, no matter how long their break was.
My experience w/ returning to deadlock was terrible, because I was effectively forced into smurfing for over a month, while winning the vast majority of my games, hard carrying. MOST of my losses were because of leavers, rage quitters, and occasionally the enemy team had a stack of obvious smurfs.
The MMR algorithm needs the following adjustments:
When taking a break, a player should not, under any circumstance, decay more than 2 ranks (ascendant to oracle). Even 2 ranks is really pushing it.
The first 10-15 games after returning should have minimal impact on MMR, unless the player is winning mostly every single game(which would potentially indicate that they've been decayed too much and can start playing against mechanically better players despite being rusty, or that they never actually took a break but had different accounts they were playing on).
Street brawl should have absolutely ZERO impact on MMR WHATSOEVER. I do not know if it does, but the only thing I can think of that would possibly cause such a ridiculous swing in MMR for my account(which has almost 1000 games on it) was playing street brawl a bunch before getting back into normal games after my break.
