Blizzard has adjusted the way win and loss streaks will impact your MMR, reducing their impact.
Blizzard has changed the way your MMR will be calculated in Competitive Play, by reducing the impact of win/loss streaks. Before patch 1.10, which added lots of changes, when you won (or lost) several matches in a row your skill rating would change more per match than if you won 2 and lost 1. So winning 5 and losing the 6th would get you farther than if the loss came in your 3rd game.
A rating multiplier is added to games in streaks, which has been the case since the game's release. This multiplier helps get a player to their true MMR ranking faster; it was designed partially to get smurfs to their real MMR faster. The idea was that if you got to your real MMR faster then there would be fewer unfair matches and it would improve the experience for everyone. But this mechanic also caused too large a variance in skill ratings at times, which is why they have changed the system.
The developers have decided to increase the games in a row that you need to win/lose to activate the multiplier. Once the multiplier activates it will scale up at a slower pace as well. This will reduce the effectiveness of the smurfers, but it might increase the amount of games that are unbalanced when people smurf to play with their friends.
This should make matchmaking more effective and keep players at their MMR more consistently. More information can be found in the official post here.
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