Blizzard has announced smalls but rather important changes will be made to how the Hearthstone Ranked play mode will operate.

Hearthstone’s Ranked mode is the game’s competitive mode where players attempt to climb 20 ranks in order to reach the Legend rank. From there players compete within legend to be among the top players in a region.

The problem up until now was that no matter where you ended up in Ranked play you were reset at the end of the month. For many Legend players (the folks that hit the rank comfortably each month) this represented an arduous grind each month.

For new players this meant having to face opponents that probably had more cards and experience than them at the beginning of the month.

Starting from the March season however, a player’s rank will only be reset four ranks from the rank they reached at the end of the previous month.

That means that if you reached Rank 16 in February you will be bumped back to Rank 20 but if you reached Legend you’ll be bumped back to Rank 4.

This should, theoretically create a buffer between experienced players and those that have less experience.

Game director Ben Brode also announced that each Rank will now contain five stars that will need to be earned before you progress to the next rank.

Due to these changes players will now only need to win five ranked games a month to earn that season’s card back.

Blizzard has asked players to provide it with feedback in the coming months so that it can tweak these changes in necessary.

As a player that often feels like I’m hitting a wall after passing Rank 20 this change has been a long time coming and I’m excited for the March season.