Low Ranked Matchmaking Pools early 2025

Ok this got longer than I expected but I kept writing a reply to a comment, and a lot of this is anecdotal/subjective but I do have timely experience on the question... so I'm just going to post this block of text...

I’ve been playing with 1-3 friends for the last few months and our little group has moved from Blue (Arcanist) to Green (Arcanist) to Rust/Orange (Ritualist), and now I'm starting to see Pink (Emissary) lobbies. I wanted to share how the experience has changed at each level during January-April 2025 and what I’ve noticed about the matchmaking pools.

Blue Tier (Alchemist): These lobbies are chaotic. Half the players are just fighting nonstop with zero regard for minions or objectives. The other half are basically PvEing the whole match, split-pushing and clearing camps 95% of the time. Some people are trying to play properly, but aiming is rough, macro doesn't exist, and nobody seems to know how to close out a game, I saw several matches over 60 minutes.

Green Tier (Arcanist): This is where a lot of people land, so the skill mix gets weirder. You’ve got newer players still learning the game and some more experienced ones who can lane decently but completely fall apart if they lose early. There seem to be a lot of players that played back in Fall 2024 and they come back to check out the new map but pretty rust. Overall though mostly what I saw was many Arcanist players will lose their lane but don't know how to play from behind (fall back, de-push walkers, take camps, until you get your early core build online). They’ll just keep repeating the same losing strategy, the enemy gets stronger until they can just enter your base and rollover your team with a 20-40k soul lead and the match ends in a stomp. I’ve seen a fair number of smurfs here, but not as many as many people think. Also worth saying: a Emissary smurf in Arcanist is barely noticeable, while an Eternus smurf in Arcanist will go 30-2 and still sometimes lose, which is kind of funny to see that they think they can 1v6 and then they die taking 1-3 with them but then your team can often rollover the rest of the relatively weak skill low soul count rest of the smurf's team and with the long deathtimers it's not uncommon to see big turnaround swings.

Rust Tier (Ritualist): This is where things start to level up. There's a sharp jump in overall match quality. You don’t see much spillover from Arcanist into these lobbies, and I think that's because Ritualist pulls from a higher-quality pool. (You do see a fair bit of Arcanist 5-* but I think matchmaking is testing if they deserve to rankup, but that is a bit presumptuous of me, seem right though.) At this level, most players understand the basics and are usually solid in one area, like aiming or hero mechanics, but weak in others, like objective play or game sense. Most players are good at one of the three core skill areas (Micro Macro and Gamesense) sometimes two.

Pink Tier (Emissary) and Up: Now that I’m seeing some Emissary lobbies, I’m regularly matched with Ritualist and Archon players. These games feel a lot like gold lobbies in other MOBAs like league. Players are usually decent at one or two areas of the game, maybe strong mechanics and some macro, but you still get a mix with a good splitpusher that can't shoot, or a strong carry that wins teamfights and then walks away from free walkers. Every so often, an Oracle player is in the lobby, and if they’re on a hero they’re really good at, they can carry hard. But if they get dropped into a lower-quality lobby, like a Ritualist average rank, they often get frustrated that nobody rotates or groups properly and sometimes tilt and sometimes throw from that.

I haven’t seen any Phantom or higher players yet, but I assume that’s where you start getting more consistent competence across all three core skills.

From what I can tell, there are three main skill pools that matchmaking tends to draw from, depending on how many players are queuing:

Seeker through Arcanist: Still learning the basics. Matches are chaotic, inconsistent, often PvE-heavy.

Ritualist through Oracle: Players know how the game is supposed to work and are usually good at one or two core areas (micro, macro, or game sense).

Phantom through Eternus: Haven’t played in these lobbies. I imagine this is where players start becoming consistently strong across all three key areas. If Ritualist is “you get it,” then Phantom is probably “you do it right.”

Getting to Ritualist or Emissary on your preferred heroes seems to place you in the general mid-tier of the player base, drawing up to Archon players, and I know there are many complaints about matchmaking here, but compared to Alchemist and below, this is where games are more even, skill expression starts to matter more, and things feel a bit more "real."

If you’re stuck in Arcanist, my advice is: pick one hero, get them to Arcanist 5, and keep playing. You need to worry about soul count not kills during the first 10 minutes, by 20 minutes you need to have been rotating, ganking, camping, pushing, and getting around 20k souls to have your early core online and start playing with your team a lot more to work together and win the game during the 20-50 minute period. Once you start hitting win streaks, the matchmaking will test you in higher-quality lobbies and you should be able to to get some better matches. Yes, there will still be stomps, but they’ll be the exception, not the rule. What we really need, though, is a massive influx of new players. The matchmaker can only do so much with the current pool.

Alternatively, if you keep playing and you lose a bunch, staying at that 40% winrate or below, you're going to start getting Alchemist matches, and when you derank you will probably start getting kill counts of 10+ regularly (presuming you know how to aim) but your team won't know how to close out games, so that can be frustrating but hey, it's still dumb fun and the movement feels so good in Deadlock.

Hope this breakdown helps people trying to make sense of where they’re at. Curious to hear if others are seeing the same thing.