I know all the attention right now is on artifact balancing (and rightly so), but I'd like to quickly address how matchmaking at Rank 7 on the normal ladder is god awful right now.

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I watch many streamers who complain about matchmaking at pro rank, but rank 7 to 1 on normal ladder is even worse (consistently 5 minutes), because the matchmaking algorithm for some reason seems to always try and match me with another player of the same rank (instead of FMMR i guess?), and not only that, but losing the winstreak bonus dramatically slows down progress.

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And there aren't that many players at rank 5 , so I keep running into the same 2-3 players at any given time (after a 5 minute long queue, I'm assuming the matchmaking also tries to not pair you up against the same player unless it has to).

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There are a couple of ways I can think of to hotfix this issue, mainly broaden the matchmaking algorithm after 1-2 minutes, or base it off of MMR/FMMR, or bring back winstreak bonus (maybe 3 in a row for bonus).

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TLDR; Rank 7-1 climb is insanely slow, due to long matchmaking times, no winstreak bonus, and every loss sets you back. Need a QoL improvement here.