Am I lucky or unlucky?

So I've noticed some kind of jo-jo effect when playing ladder. It starts by climbing from diamont 5 diamont to diamont 3/2 without any major problems and then I suddenly start going back to diamont 4.

Does that mean that I'm unlucky or that the deck is actually bad and I was just lucky to get that far?

ps: I've already hit legend a few months ago,

In the days of 25 stars from rank 5 to legend, I often found an inflection point at the bottom of rank 2. I found it pretty easy to get to rank 2, but often got knocked back from there. HSReplay had stats on each of the ranks from 5 to legend as well, and you could see the breakdown would show both the popularity of most decks and their winrates vary quite a lot, especially at the top 2 ranks. This was ages ago but one example I can remember was Even Shaman after the nerf to cube warlock. The deck had a great winrate up to rank 2, but then it went to sub-50%, and that was reflected exactly in my success.

Sometimes the meta shifts day by day, even hour by hour. If you're winning more than half your games, you can eventually push through. I don't think it's necessarily luck (although that's obviously a huge part of everything in HS). And your deck may not be bad, just maybe need to tune it for the local meta you're facing.

Had a bit of the same, playing highlander mage: started at bronze 10, cruised my way upward towards diamond 2 but now swinging between 2 and 5 for a couple of days.

Getting to Legend is a grind.  Seems like it's much faster now with the multi-star system, but if you aren't someone with the 11 star multiplier, when you run out it still feels like the old ladder.  I only had 9 and ran out at Diamond 10.  I'm still sitting around Diamond 6, but after the Outland launch I have been playing with a few experimental decks rather than just the most powerful DH deck.

I feel the same. I went from 5D to 3D 2* pretty quickly, now I´m back to 4 and can´t seem to get back to 3D again. But I guess it just needs some patience, consistency and lots and lots of time. I´ve never been to legend before, so this is my first real try. Good luck!

Just made Diamond 5 (which I assume is the equivalent of old Rank 5) and it wasn't really difficult getting there. Last season I finished on rank 7 or something, so I had my multiplier going until diamond 10. The last ranks were somewhat easy with a winstreak bonus.

Since the winstreak bonus now carries on until Legend I'd assume it would be easier to get there, no?

I'm personally just going to aim for Diamond 5 every season (which should be easy enough with the star multiplier) whille trying to hit Legend at least once so I get the maximum multiplier (and the first-time reward)

Also, I believe in order to hit Legend it'S now much more important to play a top-tier deck that can make use of winstreak bonuses instead of just picking the fastest deck. So if you got to Diamon 5 (can we just call it Reno-Rank?) with something like Face Hunter it might be better to just switch to something more consistent like Galakrond Warlock or Demon Hunter for the final push.

It's the same for me at Diamond 10-8. I have a good Streak and then mess it up with playing terribly for some Reason (and because of DH's Imprisoned Antaen and Priestess of Fury).

But then again I'm playing some funky Versions of Control-Quest-Shaman and Res-Priest. 

Okay so apparently I was wrong and you still don't get winstreak bonuses from diamond 5 to Legend. It only counted the one time when I hopped from 6 to 5.

So yeah, hitting legend is still as much of a grind as it always was