Rank, Prestige, and Leaderboard

This guide attempts to explain the ranking system, prestige function, and leaderboard within the Hero Realms digital app.  It is not exhaustive or official.

Rank is the measure of wins and losses for a specific character.  See the gold and silver rings around the heroes in the image above?  That is the Rank indicator.

All heroes begin at Bronze 1.  When you win a non-challenge PvP match, your hero is awarded at a minimum 1 star.  The floor for any character is Bronze 1, 0 stars.  Once you receive enough stars, your hero’s Rank increases by 1.  After increasing Rank 4 times, you increase to the next Ranking tier.  In the screenshot above, the characters are Diamond 1, Silver 3, and Gold 1.  Once a hero is in the Diamond Rank, there’s nowhere else to go, so a numeric indicator increases at the top for every set of 6 stars you complete.

The tiers are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond.  The maximum Rank for any character is theoretically Diamond 999.

A hero can also lose Rank and drop down once they are in the Silver Rank.  It’s much harder to stay in the Diamond Rank than, say, the Silver, due to the current matchmaking and star system.

Typically the matchmaker will attempt to pair players of relative rank.  However, in order to decrease long queues (as experienced in the Beta), the search expands over time.  This means that a Bronze hero can pair with a Diamond hero.  If the Bronze hero wins the match, they will be awarded 5 stars, while the Diamond hero will lose 5 stars.  This example illustrates the current maximum a hero can earn or lose.  A closer matchup, such as a Silver 3 vs a Silver 4, will only result in 1 star being earned and lost.  The greater the difference in Rank, the greater the potential star earnings/losses, though 5 (I believe) is the maximum per game.

A hero can level up throughout Hero Realms.  There are numerous strategy guides on this site to help you out there.  But once a character gets to level 14, that’s it.  (WWG has indicated that eventually the level cap will increase to 24, but the current timeline of that is unknown.). You have a few options now.

1. Play with the character you’ve maxed out.  Level 14 play is completely different than Level 3 play.  Your characters are fully equipped and the Market choices rank differently than at lower levels.  You will continue to earn stars and increase your Rank or lose stars and decrease for every match you play.
2. Prestige your character and restart the cycle.

Ka is a wheel, if you ken what I’m saying.  At least in Thandar.  To prestige a hero, open the info screen of the desired character.  At the bottom-right is a “Gain Prestige” button.  If you click it you will be prompted to confirm you want to Prestige.  If you say yes, your character will reset back to Level 4.  (Technically they go to Lvl1, but the game thankfully doesn’t make you play those dreadful low levels again.  You simply auto-level up to Lvl4 after a prestige.)

Once this happens, note that your Rank has not changed.  If you prestige a Silver 3, you drop back to Level 1 as a Silver 3.  However, note that you now have a new medal badge icon on your character.  For the three heroes up above, there is a Prestige 1 Ranger, a non-Prestiged Cleric, and a Prestige 2 Cleric.

The medals also increase every time you Prestige, meaning that my Prestige 2 Cleric has hit Level 12 twice and I’ve reset it twice.  After 10 Prestiges your medal changes color.  As with rank, the color goes from Bronze to Silver to Gold to Platinum to Diamond.

Why would you want to Prestige?  This ability gives the opportunity to re-spec a character for one.  If you’ve decided that you don’t like a certain choice you made, you can reset to make different choices.  (The digital app also has a paid feature where you can bypass prestige and go straight to re-spec.  This does not give you a prestige badge, but only allows you to make different choices for your hero.). Prestige will also give you some bragging rights, if you’re into that thing. You can also play more at the lower levels if you are constantly prestige-cycling, since the game doesn’t have a random queue for low levels.

One final note about prestige.  You can prestige a character beginning at Level12.  You don’t have to get to 14, or whatever the current max level is, in order to prestige.

The Leaderboard, like Rank and Prestige, is divided into metals.  There are multiple Bronze, Silver, and Gold Leaderboards, but there is only one Platinum one.  Currently there is no Diamond board.

Leaderboards do not care about specific heroes or the choices you made.  The Leaderboard is simply an aggregate of your wins and losses.  For every win, you will receive 5 points.  For every loss, you will receive 1 point.  Leaderboards reset every week.  The top 3 players on the board will move up to the next Leaderboard.  The bottom 10% of a board will drop to a lower board.

There are currently no in-app advantages to your position on any Leaderboard.  They were introduced by WWG for unknown reasons, though hopefully one day there will be something to come of them.

What does all of this mean?  It’s pretty clear that WWG likes metal.  Besides that, understanding these basics can help you with understanding the way the game works, especially when it comes to matchmaking.

One final important reminder: do not confuse Rank, Prestige, and Leaderboard.  Matchmaking currently only considers Rank and Level.

Here’s a controversial example: You can dominate the Platinum Leaderboard by playing only a Silver 2, Level 12 Wizard without any Prestige medals.  What does this say about your character?  What does this say about you as the Player?  On average, it says that your still learning how to pilot the Wizard.  You’re not the noob you once were, but you’re not at an average level skill yet, either.  (Or you’ve got a new character and you’re climbing the ranks!).  It doesn’t say that you’re the GOAT.  It doesn’t say that you suck either.  At the end of the day it says that you’ve played a lot of games as the Wizard, enough to be at the top of the Platinum Board.  It also says that you’ve probably won a lot of games and you’ve probably lost a lot of games.

And another note on matchmaking: there are a few different queues in the app.  You can queue up for Realtime games or 48-hr asynch games.  You can play at Standard (which means at +/- 2 Levels) or at Downlevel (which matches you at whatever Level below you is queueing).  Your Gold 2 Thief in a Realtime queue cannot match with a Gold 3 Fighter in a 48-hr queue.

Hopefully this guide is helpful.  And more, hopefully WWG will provide clearer (and more accurate) explanations in the app itself some day.