It's finally time to prove yourself, brave hero. Show us you've got what it takes to survive the throes of the Deathmatch Arena, and gold and glory shall be yours for the taking! Road to Nationals events are taking place from February 17th to March 10th all over the world, rewarding players with promos, Gold Foils, and most importantly - invites to the upcoming National Championships!
Featuring a mix of Classic Constructed and Heavy Hitters Booster Draft, there are many ways to score an invite and receive a little performance bonus while you're at it! Throughout the season we'll be keeping track of which heroes claim wins in Heavy Hitters limited events, with the highest placed hero declared Deathmatch Arena Champion! Those players who contributed to the winning hero's point total will receive a special promo shipped to their home!
Keep up to date with weekly recaps and our new Metagame Minute series, which delves into highlights, trends, and spicy decklists from Road to Nationals around the world! If you're looking to dive into the arena yourself, check out our Dev Download series to learn how to play the latest heroes from Heavy Hitters!
ELO (Overall)
Today we are launching ELO (Overall) ratings, changing from the previous use of separate Constructed and Limited ELO ratings. We’re excited to make this update to unite our main competitive ratings into a single metric for allocating ratings-based event invitations, as well as bragging rights!
We wanted to highlight that this calculation has been applied going all the way back through the history of FAB ranked competitive play, and as such it results in a number of player rankings shifting place. The nature of ELO is such that it’s not simply just the case that a player’s rating will necessarily be the average of their prior ratings.
In some cases, a player’s rating may be quite a bit higher when their results are consolidated, as their wins across both format types cumulate on each other. For example, here is a (real life) example of a player starting out in a hybrid format tournament. The first four columns show how their ELO evolved over the course of the tournament when separated into Constructed and Limited scores, while the final two columns show how their ELO (Overall) evolved, and how it ended up much higher than either of the two separate scores.
| Constructed ELO | ELO Change | Limited ELO | ELO Change | ELO (Overall) | ELO Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CC | 1500 | 16 | 1500 | 16 | ||
| CC | 1516 | -16 | 1516 | -16 | ||
| CC | 1500 | 16 | 1500 | 16 | ||
| Draft | 1500 | 16 | 1516 | 18 | ||
| Draft | 1516 | 16 | 1534 | 16 | ||
| Draft | 1532 | 16 | 1550 | 16 | ||
| CC | 1516 | -16 | 1566 | -16 | ||
| CC | 1500 | 19 | 1550 | 16 | ||
| CC | 1519 | -17 | 1566 | -16 | ||
| Draft | 1548 | 15 | 1550 | 16 | ||
| Draft | 1563 | 16 | 1566 | 20 | ||
| Draft | 1579 | 14 | 1586 | 16 | ||
| CC | 1502 | 26 | 1602 | 22 | ||
| CC | 1529 | 18 | 1624 | 16 | ||
| CC | 1547 | 19 | 1640 | 21 | ||
| Final ELO | 1567 | 1592 | 1660 |
On the other hand, players with a long play history will have a different ELO rating from their prior ratings for reasons that can be hard to predict. ELO is path-dependent, and it is affected by what the ELO rating of your opponent was in any given match that you played. Here is an example of a player winning a match, comparing how their Constructed ELO was affected vs their ELO (Overall). You can see that even though the winner’s Constructed ELO and ELO (Overall) were pretty similar, their opponent had a much lower ELO (Overall) compared to their Constructed ELO. As such, winning the match resulted in a 21-point Constructed ELO gain, but only a 15-point ELO (Overall) gain.
| Constructed ELO | ELO Change | ELO (Overall) | ELO Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | 1709 | 21 | 1726 | 15 |
| Loser | 1816 | -21 | 1708 | -15 |
We wanted to highlight these changes so that you could understand the context for the shifts in the leaderboards. Many players stay in similar positions, but some players have shifted quite a bit. We’ve thoroughly checked the data and are comfortable that the calculations are accurate, and that these changes are a result of the way ELO works and its path-dependent nature.
Please note that while we realise interest in this is high, our customer service and organized play teams are not able to facilitate or answer individual requests or questions from players with regards to their ELO (Overall) ranking.
Alongside these ELO changes you will also find a number of updates to the upcoming National Championships linked below.
