Hearthstone Low Ladder Blues

I love Hearthstone, but I have a confession to make: even in a month where I tried pretty hard, I have never made it higher than rank 11.

For a long time, this had been bothering me. My win rate was alright, though not excellent. I was winning more than 50% of my matches. For reference, pro players on the ladder win 60%+ depending on their decks. If you win over 50%, then over the long run it is statistically probable that you will progress on the ladder. I just... don't progress as high as I would like.

I've thought of three major possibilities, one of which I have already eliminated:

1) My deck is not optimized for the meta (I used combo druid - as meta as you can get - when I was trying hard)

2) I don't play well enough

3) I didn't play enough games to progress far enough

Of the three, I have been agonizing for a long time about the second possibility. I do my best to take tempo and value into account, but I know I have made serious misplays in the past and am sure there are many more of which I am unaware.

The third possibility is currently my scapegoat excuse. I recently discovered that many players take a tremendous number of games in order to progress up to the legend rank. I don't have enough time to play Hearthstone as a full time job at the moment and therefore I can't play the (500+) number of games required to get high up in the rankings. This is my story now and I am sticking to it.

You can check me out for yourself on my occasional Hearthstone stream on Twitch

I'd love for you to follow, but I'd settle for you telling me the terribleness of my misplays in chat. I just might learn a thing or two.