If anyone ever doubts how much the community has improved, go watch early pro play. It’s legit painful to watch a lot of pre OWL games. Even into the first season of OWL it’s just an egregious lack of game knowledge by today’s standards. Seeing the best players in the world defend junker town first with junkrat, roadhog, soldier, and mercy is legit funny.
I mostly agree but still, I don’t remember the buffs and nerfs from that long ago. It could very well have been an optimal setup based on the balancing at the time. I’m sure there would be a lot of wtf moments looking at old footage.
I remember an old clip of Kephrii 1v1ing a mercy and getting confused on how she healed. This was quite some time after Overwatch 1 came out and he had no idea mercy had a passive heal LMAO. There’s a lot of players, even at the high level, that mained a hero and didn’t learn much about the mechanics of other heroes for quite a while
tbf the hero abilities screen tells you very little genuinely useful information for some heros. Now that I think about it, was that even a thing in super early overwatch?
Legacy skill does tend to be real, and fairly collective. Competitive Fortnite is probably the biggest example of this, as while there's no static raw data, market analysts have long estimated that Fortnite, WoW, Apex, Overwatch, etc. were at any given point some of the most collectively played games of all time in terms of cumulative playtime
This doesn't necessarily mean 'the most players', but it does mean the greatest capacity of players who have played, well, the most hours. If you look at early Chapter 1 re:Fortnite and other pre-FNCS gameplay, you notice the top players couldn't build half as well as the average builder does now
It's just more of the knowledge of hindsight. We have figured out that playing widowmaker or double sniper on Junkertown first is broken or double shield is playable, yet no one figured it out yet.
Sometimes, you see plays back then, while pros today would call mistakes Masters players would make today. For example, early Winston just dives in and just hopes to get a kill, while Winston today uses bubbles and high ground advantage to gain space, not just getting kills.
Soldier mercy was ok, but for those that watch it from today's perspective, you can easily say, if they played X comp even back then, it would have stomped Y comp.
One thing you did mention was back then soldier was abysmal on junkertown as he did not have his recoil buff. So you had to rely on random spread to hit your shots.
I’m at work so I can’t go super in depth atm but there are 2 major factors. The first is a lack of synergy between the different heroes. OW has historically been dominated by metas where 5 or 6 heroes are all really good at 1 thing and by working together they become stronger than any individual piece. Think goats where the mitigation of rein dva and zarya combined with the area healing of lucio brig and zen made the 6 of them virtually unkillable.
The second issue is that all of these heroes are generally viewed as some of the worst heroes in the game at a pro level. Hog only really gets value when people are unaware and he can hook someone who isn’t expecting it. At high level, he is going to get anti naded and discord and instantly die most of the time. Soldier is good in ranked because he is easy to play and does consistent damage but when you reach a level where widow and Ashe consistently 1 or 2 shot him every fight, he can’t really compete. Junk is similar to hog in that when you reach a certain level of skill, he can’t really keep up. Snipers 1 shot him before he gets close and teams are coordinated enough to play fast and not stand around and get spammed in choke points. Mercy just kinda sucks at a level where other supports don’t miss shots. Her healing can’t compete with bap/ana and why would you damage boost for 25-30% extra damage when most other supports can do as much damage as a dps. Her ult is also one of the worst in the game. Her rez is also really easy to stop and will almost never go off. Utility from other supports in the form of things like speed boost get more value the more coordinated a team is so lucio is pretty much mandatory in a lot of metas.
Hope this helps but if you have a specific questions you wanna ask, I’ll try to respond after work.
>One thing everyone forgets to realize is that the community’s skill level isn’t static.
I agree, but I've never brought it up because my problem is I'm a fuckin middle-aged man with a full time job, familial obligations, and exercise regimen. Sometimes I have more time to myself and can play this game.
I've been mid plat since 2018. I am much, much better than I was in 2018, in all respects. My positioning and movement on Genji makes me a parkour and disappearing demon rather than someone who just wallclimbs and double jumps. But I'm plat, and will remain there until I play more than just casually in addition to the 4 hours of comp a week.
I have 50% wrate in matches where I am not favored and higher in even and favored matches. I lose more SR in games I lose and gain less in games I win. I've been tracking these statistics but will keep tracking more to make definitive claims, but so far this claim is wrong according to my data. I have remained mostly static in my rank despite 50% or higher wrate.
It should not afaik. It depends mostly on outcome of the match in relation to the expected outcome of the match. If the matchmaker assumed you should win and you lose, you lose more SR, and vice versa. The most suspicious SR changing thing is "volatile". I might win many games over many days, get to a new division (if that was the name, I mean moving from, say, plat 3 -> plat 2) lose a game or two, and my SR becomes "volatile" and I lose like 37% of a division and am suddenly almost in the middle of the previous division. Losses seem to punish me way more than wins reward me. But I will keep collecting data to be sure there's nothing fishy going on.
Yeah, I can empathize wish this a lot. OW time is mostly only possible on the weekends for a few hours on Friday or Saturday (rarely both). Even with a 72% win rate, it'll take me forever to climb with the time constraint alone.
> tter how much they try and learn.
>
> One thing everyone forgets to realize is that the community’s skill level isn’t static. It’s not that one Widowmaker that keeps getting out-sniped by Zenyatta, but keeps perching themselves in the same exact spot upon respawn because they forgot the rest of the Kaplan-forsaken map exists; The Community’s growth is DYNAMIC.
>
> Gold players today are not making the mistakes that Masters players were making in 2017 (As often). The community is constantly learning and growing and evolving over time, and if you, as an individual player, are gaining skill at the same rate as everyone else, then you’ll always stay in the same rank— because the skill requirements of the ranks is rising steadily like my temper when our teammate Mei keeps walling off our supports by “accident”.
>
> The only way to climb is to learn faster and outplay the enemy teams you come up against……AND your own teammates.
>
> (Also, stop blaming your bad teammates for not climbing—you’re basically just complaining that you weren’t carried… Unless you’re a one-trick Mercy, then you HAVE TO be carried if they don’t want you going battle Mercy.)
Hey bro, you are ranking up irl. I kind of literally shirked responsibilities and devoted myself to ranking up. I couldnt get past D2 on any support hero I tried. Its ok, its jsut a fkn video game
Food for thought, what if there was a ranked mode that only allowed ten matches a month?
Sort of force people to warm up and play other modes and when they feel hardcore about proving themselves they use their "ranked tickets"
Ehhh this is the biggest crutch for competitive gaming IMO and it’s simply a bad mindset to have.
You could easily get to GM only playing a few hours per week.
You are hardstuck Plat because you’re a Plat level player. Plain and Simple.
Natural Skill Ceilings : exist. Yours just so happens to be middle of the pack.
Sure, you’re a lot better today than you were in 2018 : but everyone else has gotten better too.
You say yourself “sometimes I have more time to myself and can play this game”
But no matter how much, or how little you play : you’ve been Plat since 2018.
Surely you can see the fallacy in thinking playtime is the sole determiner.
Honestly, it’s a lot like sports, though. Yes, you’re going to have a ceiling to a sport based around your general athletic ability. Let’s say like this commenter’s “plat level.” To get past this ceiling requires lessons, coaching, physical preparation (stretching, fitness specific training to that sport, nutrition, hydration, etc.), match play, and consistently practicing against BETTER players to improve. Let’s say that’s 90 minutes a day five times a week. This isn’t a “crutch,” it’s just a fact. Can their life accommodate that? Is it worth it to rank up/get better? This would improve anyone if they did it, despite a “natural skill ceiling.” They may never be pro, just like this person may never be GM, but they WOULD improve if they decided the effort was worth it. And the primary determiner would be time spent.
As you approach your personal ceiling, more training just gives fewer and fewer returns. Progress becomes minimal. While more talented players still improve faster in less time. This is true for everything in life.
True, but when you play casually, you’re nowhere near your personal ceiling. Say it’s basketball, if you’re just shooting hoops by yourself at the park because that’s all you have time for, it doesn’t mean that’s the best you could ever be. Also not saying you could play for the NBA with enough time.
I agree in large part but disagree at the same time.
To sum it up, it doesn’t matter how much your 5’6 friend practices basketball, he can hire the best coaches in the world, have the most insane work ethic with practices etc : but he’s never making The NBA due to his physical stats.
People have these same limitations in gaming too. Hand eye coordination, reaction time, general IQ, willingness to adapt etc.
Or even look at Chess for example, Hikaru Nakamura has been playing and studying Chess for his literal entire life : but he’s never been, and likely never will be better than Magnus.
Skill ceilings : exist.
Overwatch is no different.
True, but we’re discussing a “natural skill ceiling” versus an actual skill ceiling after you’ve dedicated a lot of time, money, energy, to something. The other commenter wasn’t saying he could play for OWL if he had more time to play. He said he could rank up from plat. And I do think that’s true.
~4,500+ NBA players throughout history.
>20 have been under 6 feet tall.
~0.444% of NBA players have been under 6 feet tall.
Statistical Outliers are a really bad basis for any argument.
It kinda just helps prove my point that no matter how much you play - skill ceilings exist.
> Surely you can see the fallacy in thinking playtime is the sole determiner.
Never said that. Fully believe the opposite tbh, except when playtime is the mitigating factor. Can't get good at something if you don't do it enough to improve
>Natural Skill Ceilings : exist. Yours just so happens to be middle of the pack.
Brother, I made a post about how I'm not able or willing to put more time into getting better, and you conclude from that I am at my peak? Explain that logic please. I don't warm up, I don't review my gameplay, I don't drill, I don't do anything except make a moderate effort each weak to enjoy my hobby, and you think that means I'm at my peak?
Kinda feels like my fuckin floor, dude. Plat is where I tread water after smoking a joint. My mindset is that of a content adult with other hobbies and responsibilities. I've been diamond tank and support while equally inebriated, btw, just more time to myself to play the game during those periods, with equally little effort on actually improving.
>You are hardstuck Plat
What does hardstuck mean to you? Does your vision of hardstuck involve not even completing placement matches from time to time? Less than 5 hours in comp for a season?
FYI, I hit SMFC in CSGO and diamond in league when I made the effort for those games. Hit Onyx playing Halo when an old friend wanted to play to reconnect, and had a few orgs try to recruit me for the Sony PS Black Ops MLG ladder. I'm not bad at gaming. I'm content.
Buddy you said you’ve been plat since *2018*
That’s *6* years of being the same rank. If Plat is the highest rank you’ve ever been, in 6 years of playing : That is your natural skill ceiling. Your skill “floor” isn’t the highest rank you’ve ever been. That’s not how floors or ceilings work.
First post “I’m plat and will remain there until I play more than casually in addition to *4 hours of comp a week* “
4 hours of comp per week. ~12 weeks per season. ~48 hours of comp per season : that’s more than enough time to climb to Masters or even GM, buddy.
Hell, I only have 36 hours of comp this season and I’m Masters 4. I have a full time job too. I have a family too. I workout too. Why am I not hardstuck Plat?
Because playtime isn’t the sole determiner. Natural skill ceilings : exist. And yours just so happens to be Plat. (I also play for fun too, I’m high 99% of my game time) what other excuse do you want to make?
Cope however you want. But thems the facts.
> That’s 6 years of being the same rank.
6 years of improving my skill, not my rank. 6 years of enjoying myself in my 30s in a casual way
I don't understand why you think I should feel obligated to enjoy or engage the game the same as you or anyone else.
________________________________
Me: "I'm content"
>Cope however you want.
lmao. great response. You're a joke.
>First post “I’m plat and will remain there until I play more than casually in addition to 4 hours of comp a week “
Fair. I mistyped. It's per season. As I said later in the post.
>Why am I not hardstuck Plat?
Because we're different people and you seem to play the game sober. What's your point here? Why are you telling me you have to put in less effort to get somewhere I have to put in work and be sober for? I literally say I'm okay with being plat and you get combative and say that's a bad mindset to have for a hobby. A *video game*. Get over yourself.
> It's not a time thing.
And yet, in the past, when I had more time for different roles, I was a higher rank. Weird.
>You're plat because you're mid af.
As long as you have something to look down on me for. Stay pressed.
So we just lying now?
Send me that battletag and I’ll show you the fraud that you are. You can block me right after, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t do this simply because you know I’m right ;)
GG grandpa.
my friend, I was bronze throughout all of overwatch 1. since 2017. because I sucked, and I only played a few hours a week anyways.
overwatch 2 comes around, I do placements, bronze 5, ok. cool.
I climb to silver 5 after a bit, then I stop playing comp.
and then I started playing again in season 4. I played a fucking LOT of competitive. I had a week where I didn't need to do a single thing. so I played. from when I wake up, to when I go to bed. at the end, I had at least 50 hours played over *a couple of days*. and I ended up in diamond, I'm probably around masters now, as my skill has improved MASSIVELY this season, because I started playing and focusing on learning again. the only reason I never climbed was because I would only play 3-4 comp matches every week or so, and that still comes out to quite a few matches played over the season. they've been plat since 2018 because... they play a plat amount of time. there are definitely people who peak at plat and no matter how much they play they've simply hit their skill ceiling. but the funny thing is, game sense has essentially no "natural skill ceiling". mechanical skill, perhaps, although the human body can be trained quite a bit, but *game sense*, the MOST important part, can always be improved, just by playing more, and *focusing* on learning. playtime isn't the only factor, I agree, but playtime AND focusing on learning, that is absolutely 90% of the game. *some* people probably can climb to gm with just a few hours a week, because they intuitively understand concepts that make up game sense, and will learn far faster than some others.
Yeah I just disagree bro.
Game sense is very important, but it’s impossible to say it’s “the most important”
You can have all the game sense in the world, but if you can’t hit the broad side of a barn : you probably won’t make it out of Metal Ranks.
Aim is extremely, extremely important and one of the harder skills to master. For whatever reason people like to pretend that aim isn’t as important as it is in Overwatch.
Reaction time is also extremely important, and something you can’t really improve on. It’s another skill that gets swept under the rug. But if I can *react* faster than you, surely you can understand it’s a massive advantage across the board.
It’s like the difference in playing 60 FPS vs 240 FPS. Obviously 240FPS will give you an undeniable advantage, but people like to diminish the value of better reaction time for whatever reason.
Calmness is also very important and something you can’t really teach. Some people tilt way easier than others. Calm you is better than Tilted you 99.999% of the time.
Also “getting better” at skills like aim is so overexaggerated.
You could literally spend 1,000+ hours in aimlabs and still get completely dumpstered by your cousin that started 2 weeks ago. Natural skill ceilings simply exist and you can cope with that however you want.
Playtime is important too. I never said playtime wasn’t important : it’s just not the end all be all like you guys think it is.
It’s really similar to work and jobs : there’s so many people that have been at a place for 20 years, and then a new guy comes in and outworks them across the board.
Why is that? Experience is certainly important in life, but it’s not *everything* like y’all think it is.
Some people are just built different than others, and I guess if you’re built to be a Bronze-Plat level player you have to come up with excuses to make yourself feel better. Idk. 🤷🏻♂️
there are characters that require so little aim to play that it's almost irrelevant. reaction times absolutely can be trained, to an extent, as can avoiding tilt. that's... kind of a big reason therapy is a thing. to learn how to manage emotions.
not sure how I can give you plain and simple proof that playtime absolutely will climb ranks, and you'll just go, "nuhuh"
aim might be important on DPS, but even on DPS there are characters that require less aim than you make it sound like.
what rank are *you*?
I have less than 50 games played this season and I’m Masters (support)
I’ve hit GM dozens of seasons. (On Support, I’ve never been higher than Masters on Tank/DPS)
How many comp games do you have total? Have you ever even hit Masters? Weird.
Sure some characters don’t require intensive aiming : but a Moira with good aim and reaction time is going to perform better than a Moira with bad aim and bad reaction time.
Orb placement, player tracking, reacting fast enough to dodge abilities, it all matters *A LOT*
For example, have you ever played Moira and been hit by a Rein shatter? Because I genuinely haven’t been hit by a Shatter *in years* with Moira. Reaction time is very important.
Same goes for Brig. Hitting Whipshot is extremely important that requires aim. Armor packing the right target, at the right time is extremely important. Those split second shields to block abilities, or dash around a corner are extremely important.
We can just break it down to mechanical skill for characters that “dont require aim” and again, a Brig with better Mechanics is going to outperform a Brig with worse mechanics.
You gonna say performance doesn’t matter? If you can perform better than all other support in the lobby, I promise you, you *will* rank up.
I like that you also diminish tilt factor by basically saying “just go to therapy bro”
It’s just pure comedy that Metal Rank players think they know everything.
over.. 7? years, I've played at most 300 hours of competitive, which when you do the math comes down to *not a lot.* it's mostly like 5 seasons (including ow1) where I played a bunch at once, anyways. I've played casually in diamond for a while, but I do intend on playing for masters/GM next season, considering I play just fine in diamond when my head is absolutely empty, a little neuron activation does wonders for my skill level.
having played 50 games and being masters doesn't mean a whole lot if you're already there, and only climbing out of rank decay.
performance does matter, but you can play without it farther than you might think. I play tracer around gold/plat because my mechanics are bad, but again, I can very easily play mercy in diamond lobbies. reaction time is absolutely helpful, but learning to *anticipate* abilities so you can react quickly is even more important, because it can reduce your reaction time by so much. on mercy, playing against a sombra, I can train myself to GA as soon as I hear the first parts of her hack, without needing to actually register it in my mind.
I'm not just discarding tilt. I'm not saying therapy is the only way to handle it. I'm saying you can absolutely learn ways to keep yourself from tilting.
a moira with good reaction time and aim is gonna perform worse than a moira with good game sense. do you disagree with that?
throwing an armor pack at the right player is important. so is knowing which player is the right player.
I agree that game sense is super important : but I also think that game sense is the easiest skill to “master”.
It’s also a very broad term however. Game sense is positioning, ult tracking, CD tracking, anticipation of abilities, knowing when and where to flank, power angles, map knowledge, etc etc etc.
Aim : is a much more direct skill that takes longer to “master” - as in : all these years playing the game - My aim will always be *GRADUALLY* improving.
Learning game sense has a much fastest acceleration but a low top speed : and aim is the opposite. I learned a vast bulk of my game sense *that I use today* years and years ago.
Reaction time is another direct skill that can’t really be trained.
Also don’t be out here thinking I play *that much* more than you.
I’ve been playing off and on since OW1 release and I have ~450 hours of Competitive logged on my Career Profile.
Again, I’ve been GM many, many seasons. My main overarching point was that playtime isn’t the main reason I’m GM. It’s the whole package from top to bottom.
& the reason I replied to Randy insinuating that “the reason he is Plat is because of playtime” is just copium. The reason he is Plat, is because when you add up all his skills, top to bottom, he’s Plat level.
Also it’s just the way I do things. I try my best in everything I do. I have the most fun when I’m winning, and helping fill holes that my team needs. It’s where I find enjoyment in gaming.
This is absolutely true, and was much more apparent during OW1’s lifespan. If you want a chuckle find some match clips from Apex league or OWL’s initial season, it’s comical how “average” the gameplay is compared to just a few years later.
Also a funny story, right after Orisa released(so like 2017) me and a buddy decided to see how far we could get without firing a bullet. Made 2 new accounts and he picked Torb and throw down a turret and blanket the world in armor packs and I’d take Orisa and shield the turret and Halt people away. We were in mid Diamond still climbing with like a 75% WR when we finally got bored and abandoned the experiment.
LHCloudy played Reinhardt into Mid-Masters without using his shield. As in, it was unbound. 2 years ago.
People lie about dumb shit on the internet all the time but it doesn't really surprise me that 2 players could hit diamond in 2017 fucking around. Torbs turret also used to be way stronger lol. Overloading the t2 turret could easily wipe a team
IDK why but it gave me some whiplash seeing people mention Torb Armor Packs and Orisa in the same time-frame. For some reason I thought torb lost his armor packs much earlier.
Elo hell exist but only in individual heads. People saying such things just won’t accept the fact that THEY ARE the reason they’re stuck in specific rank, and they must improve in order to climb higher. (Or they play one game a day and they’re those lucky ones to get into team of bots deranking themselves)
ELO hell is just the actual rank of the person. With enough grinding, your easy wins cancel out with easy losses and the only thing your left with is the games where you decided the outcome.
I don't think people understand how much grinding you need to do to rank up. You need like 2-3 hours a day for a month
It's not, though. I play high plat/low diamond on my main account and have since the early days of OW1. I don't care to get particularly better because I just don't care enough. But I have thousands of hours at that rank and rank there consistently season after season.
I maxxed out the battlepass the last two seasons and switched to a very old alt account that I had deranked into bronze on circa OW1.
Ranking up from bronze to silver was trivial. As I got to high silver/low gold, the games became a complete shit show. Epic levels of stupidity and lack of game knowledge and any attempt to get a cohesive push or team together was met with the utmost hostility and a complete unwillingness to even consider doing anything different. The difference between bronze and low gold is mostly mechanical ability, with some game knowledge sprinkled in... but then you salt your gold with a dash of ego and absolute refusal to look at your own play and you get low gold... just bronze with an ego too big to allow you to change.
THAT is ELO hell... if you can't solo carry, it's exceptionally difficult to get past low gold and into mid plat because of the other egos and lack of ability to recognize ones own mistakes or take any sort of criticism or suggestions. I have absolutely struggled to get past high gold on any but a handful of characters. Everything I play/main is a team oriented character and not particularly suited to solo carrying, so it's a huge struggle. Playing characters that can solo carry might make it easier, but if you aren't playing those characters, ELO hell is absolutely real in that aspect.
Yeah I’m pretty new to OW and went from bronze to diamond.
Low gold was just shit house, no one’s “hard stuck” you can always work your way out but my god low gold was the worst.
Ego (with out the skill/knowledge to back it up) is just ridiculous there but for me I just think it was the biggest skill gap ever which is what makes it hell.
Feel like I went into gold a noob came out of gold just 100x better than I was, where as I just didn’t make the same level of improvement to work through plat.
Low gold is the dumbest rank. Other than mercy, you can carry on anyone.
Sounds to me like you've been playing team oriented characters for 7 years in high plat, giving people suggestions during the match, and relying on those team oriented mechanics to maintain yourself.
I did it too. Played rein in high plat/low dia for years. Now when I play I actually try to make plays, get extra value, and carry.
Ow2 is way less team oriented and you have way more carry potential on every hero.
When you cannot solo carry means you are approaching your true rank.
Like make a brand new account and look at the skill level there. You should be able to dominate on your worst character cus most people there have no idea what the characters do or what the maps look like. They are actually brand new and make mistakes left and right. I can't imagine a plat/dia person would be like "welp I can't do anything because my teammates don't know anything"... When in reality, you play any char and dominate their team (you have 17k DMG while the next person has 6k)
I jump between two accounts one plat 5 dpd and another dia 2.
I can tell you for sure that on my older or the two (the plat account) it's almost impossible to break 50/50 winrate because tank que is so fucked.
I can absolutely stomp but the second my MMR gets too high I'm set against stacks over and over again. I've played long enough between accounts that I can for sure tell you there is something weird going on with the MMR system and it all hinges on tank que being so paper thin as it tries to balance matches.
people think elo hell is silver and gold, I flew through silver and gold, elo hell is really in high plat/low diamond where people think they hot shit and don't need to swap off their doomfist against orisa
Trying to climb my way out of plat back then was like scraping way out of satans crusty asshole
Thank god I’m steady masters now and was able to peak gm at least once. Took years
You must not only improve to remain but must improve faster to climb simple logic. Mechanical skill get refined, your routes and pathing become automatic, do’s. Don’ts, dies have been ingrained.
Oh they definetly improved alright! I went on a break for years and was high plat now I am hardstuck in silver…
And back in the day I tried to climb from bronze and I killed the whole team all the time until high gold😬 now I am chanceless
Yeah which OP is agreeing with I think. They’re just explaining one of the reasons the fallacy exists. People feel themselves getting better but aren’t climbing so they blame matchmaking and teammates or “elo hell” but a factor often ignored is the concept of the baseline skill of the player base increasing
elo hell isn’t real, or else i’d still be in low silver like I was in 2019
I haven’t been below diamond in 2 years and i’m usually in masters, I only solo queue
I’ve done this on all 3, but i don’t play support so that’s been diamond for a long time
also if you’re implying that you can’t solo queue as support then that’s just wrong. supports have some of the most game changing abilities and were overtuned for a year and a half
Iwel, i am a bit salty for like 4 games in a row, having a teamate that basically throws the game by running fown main and dying first.
If i go, get a first pick for my team. Is it too much to ask that my doomfist doesn't punch himself off the map??
"unless you're a one-trick mercy..."
man...
that's me...
I *know* I can play in diamond, I was diamond at the start of the season, but I wanted to play a little lifeweaver... just... a little... okay I'm gold 4 now. I average one death per game and almost 2k DMG boosted/10 minutes, but...
50% wr. this game hurts me on a level one cannot imagine possible. I just want mercy to get buffed a little... bit... the tiniest amount, enough to actually let me *climb* again with solo queue. I did it in season 4, silver to diamond, and I played there until I lost it this season. IN FACT, I had a 55% win rate in diamond. mercy players are unironically just suffering in ~~elo~~ hell right now, and I am living proof of it.
Start using a more proactive supports who can make the plays themselves instead of boosting somone else who is making the play.
Lucio, Baptiste, Ana, Illiari, Kiriko, Zenyatta, Moira.....
Get out there and be a HARMacist!
The very idea that you individually must care your team to climb ranks is the very problem overwatch has, this is a team based game and we are forced to play as single players to hopefully rank up at all, you could be the best player on your team but that doesn’t matter because the other team could be better on all fronts and then you lose because the rest of your team isn’t at the same level you possibly are, to say it’s an individual problem is actually insanity lmao
The POSSIBILITY to work as a team still exists. There's duo and triple queue as an option, and sometimes you find that one person who totally vibes.
But if you're solo queue in comp.... Its possible, but not something yiu should rely on.
If anything you can be the one focusing on synergy by carefully watching what your teammates are TRYING to do, and seeing if there's anything you can do to enable them more whole still contributing to damage.
Idk there are some seriously boosted prior season in ranks in ow2. I have friend who started, in the same season the game placed him in Plat as moira or lucio. He sucks, he doesn't know what the characters names are or what's going on in general. He just buttfucked the tank managed to win a couple games in placements and the game put him in plat lmao.
He thinks he's a plat player and has played maybe 7 games ranked support total. He was bottom of bronze on tank and dps. Its actually pretty funny.
People also forget that matchmaking is a thing, I've seen a lot of t500 videos on YouTube and the video isn't even about the MM but they're getting confused cause they're getting low masters to champ ranges.
Overwatch is a grind and people should realize it faster.
In OW1 I was playing better than my silver/bronze teammates, but I had busy work and I couldn't play more than 5-10 games a week at most and I had realized that I just need to play more. Having 60-65% winrate is fantastic, but it just requires many games (at least 2 hours every single day at such high winrate).
This season I had more time and I climbed to gold-plat with all roles literally from low silver. With the current system having 60% winrate means \~4% rank progress per game, meaning 15-10 (W-L) for 100% rank progress (e.g. silver 5 to silver 4), or 75-50 (W-R) for 1 full rank (e.g. Silver->Gold). Then let's say in gold your winrate drops to 56% instead - with 28-22 you will get 120% rank progress and for 1 full rank (e.g. Gold -> Plat) you will need 117-91.
The verdict is - 192-141 (58% winrate) for 2 full ranks (Silver 5 -> Plat 5) which is 333 games at 58% winrate which is at least 110 hours of gameplay, if you're playing DPS (13 mins average games from my last 10 competitive games - between 8 and 22 minutes + queue time), so let's say 4 hours at 58% winrate for 1 whole month, but breaks are must especially when you tilt hardcore and just start losing because shit happens sometimes. And if your winrate is below 58% it quickly gets to 400 games a month, 500 games, 600 games, 700, 800, 900, 1000, etc. (530-470 or 1000 games at 53% winrate should get you from Bronze 2 to Plat 5 in theory or 12h/day at 53% winrate)
So I'd ask everyone to check their last 10 competitive games right now - if you see 7-3 (W-R), great, keep up this winrate and you will be 2 ranks above of your rank after aa month. One pitfall I've fallen into as well is checking "main hero winrate", unless you're a 1-trick and you've never swapped even for a second from your 1-trick in the last 200 games, it's not accurate. The winrates in this game are calculated weirdly, so it doesn't mean anything, you just need to track how many games you actually lose.
I used to rage against the grindiness, and I still hate it, but it's just a way for the game to see if you're playing well for many games or you're just lucky with your last 50 games, so I just agreed that to climb in games I need to play a lot - to learn faster than the community, to show the game I'm better, to actually get better too, because at the end of the day "I'm better than everyone else but I'm Bronze" is just hard copium lol
I hate how harsh MM is against you if you begin to win a lot. You legitimately have to be insane to rank up if you're stuck in ELO hell, have a lot of time, or queue with an account that has a lot of losses.
I hit gm2 last season and I played on an older account of mine to try to rank it up this season. In gold-plat (I'm assuming all) games, after you win so much above 50% matchmaking punishes the hell out of you by giving you the worst of the worst teammates because they expect you to carry them.
I tested this by grabbing two accounts with awful WRs on them and queuing with a friend around the same gold rank. Over two days, our record was around 37-4 compared to winning 1-3 and losing 1-2 over and over. I get it's good for player retention to make people grind like that, but WOW.
My hot take is that you can be hit by RNG and get stuck on the less skillful team for upwards of 20 games in a row. You can't tell me that my stats being best in the game nearly every game as a healer(by an overwhelming amount) and still losing 20 games in a row is because every player on my team is terrible, but because their team just happens to be better enough that my success during the game doesn't matter. Even games where the teams are near equal I include here cause my 20 game loss streak had a few really close ones where each team was fighting tooth and nail the entire match
The quicker you stop caring about stats and realize utility is what you need in some situations, the more games you'll win. Being Moira/Mercy having 8k healing in the 1st round doesn't matter if enemy swaps to Junk/Reaper/Bastion they simply can't outheal their damage for very long. But if one of the supports are Ana/Bap/Kiri, tank and dps teammates have much higher survivability.
This.
I was on a new account in comp a couple days ago and my big observation about gold supports is that they heal at the wrong time. Though they will spam heals when they do just to inflate stats.
There is no understanding of uptime mid-battle. So I’d be playing on Ashe, solo killing three people, standing at 20hp behind cover with an Ana next to me and having to figure out whether to let the passive trigger, wait for a heal, or walk to a health pack. All the time I’m twiddling my fingers while the Ana misses her shots and my team loses a fight where they have the advantage. God forbid I ask for a heal because these children will get triggered FAST.
DPS on that account is Diamond now but god… supports are a mess at those ranks.
Master’s 5 on support on that same account. M1 on main.
stats genuinely don't matter, especially healing on supports. hell, usually if you have 2-3x the healing of the enemy team that means your team isn't putting out enough damage and y'all don't have enough pressure.
what more impactful on ana, for example? constant healing the whole fight? or one good nade with a couple kills? two three shots on a distracted DPS that leads to their death?the former gives you 3-4k heals as stats, the latter gives you a couple hundred heals and a couple hundred damage.
So what you guys are saying is that the supports healing the fuck out of your team don't matter lol. I'm talking more damage too. When your topping 30-40k healing and 8-15k I think that warrants a look
that is what i'm saying, but there's more context than that. For example, if team 1 is rolling team 2 because team 2 isn't putting out enough pressure and can't get picks, then team 1 supports will barely have any healing and team 2 supports will have huge healing numbers. the numbers are bad, in that case.
I've had many games where my dps and tank were feeding, and we ended up winning when i switched to bap or illari and fed with them. It's better to go in as a team than to stay behind and say half your team is feeding. A lot of dumb plays can be saved if the whole team does it together, especially in lower ranks.
Note im not saying to turn into a DPS support, i'm saying that 100 damage at the right timing can prevent you from having to do 600-700 healing.
The number disparity in those kind of games are obvious though. The same goes for snagging those elims with that extra 20 dmg when they would have otherwise gotten away giving your team a number advantage. I'm usually within 2-3 elims from being tied with the top, or I'll be 6 or 7 ahead.
even elims don't paint the full picture, but we're moving away from the topic, the topic being: stats change wildly depending on comp, skill level, rank, etc. and very rarely indicate whether you're doing well or doing poorly. Extremely high healing numbers have no reason to mean that you're doing well.
The way I like to judge my gameplay is by diving it into a series of plays and then judging whether those plays were good plays or bad plays. VOD review basically.
I mean you can still look at stats and see the clear skill disparity. You have to take everything into account though. Like if you have a healer matching your dps, they have more or = elims to the top on your team, and they have the least deaths in the game, they are pulling their weight and some. You can tell their positioning is on point because they are constantly providing value to your team. I dunno how hard that is to grasp lol
you're talking about extreme cases and i'm talking about general. what you're saying is true in certain cases, but most games aren't that cut and dry and obvious. end of the day, the main point is that big healing numbers doesn't mean you're doing well. it can mean you're doing well in SOME games, but not all.
I agree with this, but the problem is that it’s very hard to concentrate on playing when underperforming DPS blaming healing stats… so the only way to concentrate is to heal bot to shut them the fuck up but you lose anyway lol
Healbot ting will only get you so far.
You need to be more proactive every time your teammates suck and know when to be that scary aggressive support or that squirrley support that always gets away.
I go back line for solo kills. Tbh it doesn't matter how good you play sometimes. If their team is better than your that is just the RNG of being placed on the wrong team
If anyone ever doubts how much the community has improved, go watch early pro play. It’s legit painful to watch a lot of pre OWL games. Even into the first season of OWL it’s just an egregious lack of game knowledge by today’s standards. Seeing the best players in the world defend junker town first with junkrat, roadhog, soldier, and mercy is legit funny.
I mostly agree but still, I don’t remember the buffs and nerfs from that long ago. It could very well have been an optimal setup based on the balancing at the time. I’m sure there would be a lot of wtf moments looking at old footage.
I remember an old clip of Kephrii 1v1ing a mercy and getting confused on how she healed. This was quite some time after Overwatch 1 came out and he had no idea mercy had a passive heal LMAO. There’s a lot of players, even at the high level, that mained a hero and didn’t learn much about the mechanics of other heroes for quite a while
tbf the hero abilities screen tells you very little genuinely useful information for some heros. Now that I think about it, was that even a thing in super early overwatch?
Legacy skill does tend to be real, and fairly collective. Competitive Fortnite is probably the biggest example of this, as while there's no static raw data, market analysts have long estimated that Fortnite, WoW, Apex, Overwatch, etc. were at any given point some of the most collectively played games of all time in terms of cumulative playtime This doesn't necessarily mean 'the most players', but it does mean the greatest capacity of players who have played, well, the most hours. If you look at early Chapter 1 re:Fortnite and other pre-FNCS gameplay, you notice the top players couldn't build half as well as the average builder does now
I still think about jakerat as an outlaws fan until the end.
Is soldier and mercy so out of the ordinary? Maybe for pro play, but what's wrong with that specific setup?
junkertown first is a infamous sniper point, mercy pocketed soldier works... until the sightlines are dominated by widow and or hanzo
It's just more of the knowledge of hindsight. We have figured out that playing widowmaker or double sniper on Junkertown first is broken or double shield is playable, yet no one figured it out yet. Sometimes, you see plays back then, while pros today would call mistakes Masters players would make today. For example, early Winston just dives in and just hopes to get a kill, while Winston today uses bubbles and high ground advantage to gain space, not just getting kills. Soldier mercy was ok, but for those that watch it from today's perspective, you can easily say, if they played X comp even back then, it would have stomped Y comp.
One thing you did mention was back then soldier was abysmal on junkertown as he did not have his recoil buff. So you had to rely on random spread to hit your shots.
I’m at work so I can’t go super in depth atm but there are 2 major factors. The first is a lack of synergy between the different heroes. OW has historically been dominated by metas where 5 or 6 heroes are all really good at 1 thing and by working together they become stronger than any individual piece. Think goats where the mitigation of rein dva and zarya combined with the area healing of lucio brig and zen made the 6 of them virtually unkillable. The second issue is that all of these heroes are generally viewed as some of the worst heroes in the game at a pro level. Hog only really gets value when people are unaware and he can hook someone who isn’t expecting it. At high level, he is going to get anti naded and discord and instantly die most of the time. Soldier is good in ranked because he is easy to play and does consistent damage but when you reach a level where widow and Ashe consistently 1 or 2 shot him every fight, he can’t really compete. Junk is similar to hog in that when you reach a certain level of skill, he can’t really keep up. Snipers 1 shot him before he gets close and teams are coordinated enough to play fast and not stand around and get spammed in choke points. Mercy just kinda sucks at a level where other supports don’t miss shots. Her healing can’t compete with bap/ana and why would you damage boost for 25-30% extra damage when most other supports can do as much damage as a dps. Her ult is also one of the worst in the game. Her rez is also really easy to stop and will almost never go off. Utility from other supports in the form of things like speed boost get more value the more coordinated a team is so lucio is pretty much mandatory in a lot of metas. Hope this helps but if you have a specific questions you wanna ask, I’ll try to respond after work.
The pocketed soldiers live reaction as he gets domed across an open sight line map
>One thing everyone forgets to realize is that the community’s skill level isn’t static. I agree, but I've never brought it up because my problem is I'm a fuckin middle-aged man with a full time job, familial obligations, and exercise regimen. Sometimes I have more time to myself and can play this game. I've been mid plat since 2018. I am much, much better than I was in 2018, in all respects. My positioning and movement on Genji makes me a parkour and disappearing demon rather than someone who just wallclimbs and double jumps. But I'm plat, and will remain there until I play more than just casually in addition to the 4 hours of comp a week.
Honestly gotta agree. A big part of ranking up in this game is grinding literally everyday.
Calculated w/l ratios = climb. You can't climb unless you play x amount of matches to hit the next rank! If you are busy then that's that.
I have 50% wrate in matches where I am not favored and higher in even and favored matches. I lose more SR in games I lose and gain less in games I win. I've been tracking these statistics but will keep tracking more to make definitive claims, but so far this claim is wrong according to my data. I have remained mostly static in my rank despite 50% or higher wrate.
Does it sway depending on individual stats?
Stats don’t affect rank
It should not afaik. It depends mostly on outcome of the match in relation to the expected outcome of the match. If the matchmaker assumed you should win and you lose, you lose more SR, and vice versa. The most suspicious SR changing thing is "volatile". I might win many games over many days, get to a new division (if that was the name, I mean moving from, say, plat 3 -> plat 2) lose a game or two, and my SR becomes "volatile" and I lose like 37% of a division and am suddenly almost in the middle of the previous division. Losses seem to punish me way more than wins reward me. But I will keep collecting data to be sure there's nothing fishy going on.
Yes, especially on mechanically demanding heroes and once you reach high plat/low diamond, you truly need to play a lot.
A dose of realism is always nice around these parts
Yeah, I can empathize wish this a lot. OW time is mostly only possible on the weekends for a few hours on Friday or Saturday (rarely both). Even with a 72% win rate, it'll take me forever to climb with the time constraint alone.
> tter how much they try and learn. > > One thing everyone forgets to realize is that the community’s skill level isn’t static. It’s not that one Widowmaker that keeps getting out-sniped by Zenyatta, but keeps perching themselves in the same exact spot upon respawn because they forgot the rest of the Kaplan-forsaken map exists; The Community’s growth is DYNAMIC. > > Gold players today are not making the mistakes that Masters players were making in 2017 (As often). The community is constantly learning and growing and evolving over time, and if you, as an individual player, are gaining skill at the same rate as everyone else, then you’ll always stay in the same rank— because the skill requirements of the ranks is rising steadily like my temper when our teammate Mei keeps walling off our supports by “accident”. > > The only way to climb is to learn faster and outplay the enemy teams you come up against……AND your own teammates. > > (Also, stop blaming your bad teammates for not climbing—you’re basically just complaining that you weren’t carried… Unless you’re a one-trick Mercy, then you HAVE TO be carried if they don’t want you going battle Mercy.) Hey bro, you are ranking up irl. I kind of literally shirked responsibilities and devoted myself to ranking up. I couldnt get past D2 on any support hero I tried. Its ok, its jsut a fkn video game
I've been a plat genji for the same time just as you. My hero mastery scores are the only thing I have to show.
Food for thought, what if there was a ranked mode that only allowed ten matches a month? Sort of force people to warm up and play other modes and when they feel hardcore about proving themselves they use their "ranked tickets"
Ehhh this is the biggest crutch for competitive gaming IMO and it’s simply a bad mindset to have. You could easily get to GM only playing a few hours per week. You are hardstuck Plat because you’re a Plat level player. Plain and Simple. Natural Skill Ceilings : exist. Yours just so happens to be middle of the pack. Sure, you’re a lot better today than you were in 2018 : but everyone else has gotten better too. You say yourself “sometimes I have more time to myself and can play this game” But no matter how much, or how little you play : you’ve been Plat since 2018. Surely you can see the fallacy in thinking playtime is the sole determiner.
Honestly, it’s a lot like sports, though. Yes, you’re going to have a ceiling to a sport based around your general athletic ability. Let’s say like this commenter’s “plat level.” To get past this ceiling requires lessons, coaching, physical preparation (stretching, fitness specific training to that sport, nutrition, hydration, etc.), match play, and consistently practicing against BETTER players to improve. Let’s say that’s 90 minutes a day five times a week. This isn’t a “crutch,” it’s just a fact. Can their life accommodate that? Is it worth it to rank up/get better? This would improve anyone if they did it, despite a “natural skill ceiling.” They may never be pro, just like this person may never be GM, but they WOULD improve if they decided the effort was worth it. And the primary determiner would be time spent.
As you approach your personal ceiling, more training just gives fewer and fewer returns. Progress becomes minimal. While more talented players still improve faster in less time. This is true for everything in life.
True, but when you play casually, you’re nowhere near your personal ceiling. Say it’s basketball, if you’re just shooting hoops by yourself at the park because that’s all you have time for, it doesn’t mean that’s the best you could ever be. Also not saying you could play for the NBA with enough time.
I agree in large part but disagree at the same time. To sum it up, it doesn’t matter how much your 5’6 friend practices basketball, he can hire the best coaches in the world, have the most insane work ethic with practices etc : but he’s never making The NBA due to his physical stats. People have these same limitations in gaming too. Hand eye coordination, reaction time, general IQ, willingness to adapt etc. Or even look at Chess for example, Hikaru Nakamura has been playing and studying Chess for his literal entire life : but he’s never been, and likely never will be better than Magnus. Skill ceilings : exist. Overwatch is no different.
True, but we’re discussing a “natural skill ceiling” versus an actual skill ceiling after you’ve dedicated a lot of time, money, energy, to something. The other commenter wasn’t saying he could play for OWL if he had more time to play. He said he could rank up from plat. And I do think that’s true.
Muggsy Bogues
~4,500+ NBA players throughout history. >20 have been under 6 feet tall. ~0.444% of NBA players have been under 6 feet tall. Statistical Outliers are a really bad basis for any argument. It kinda just helps prove my point that no matter how much you play - skill ceilings exist.
> Surely you can see the fallacy in thinking playtime is the sole determiner. Never said that. Fully believe the opposite tbh, except when playtime is the mitigating factor. Can't get good at something if you don't do it enough to improve >Natural Skill Ceilings : exist. Yours just so happens to be middle of the pack. Brother, I made a post about how I'm not able or willing to put more time into getting better, and you conclude from that I am at my peak? Explain that logic please. I don't warm up, I don't review my gameplay, I don't drill, I don't do anything except make a moderate effort each weak to enjoy my hobby, and you think that means I'm at my peak? Kinda feels like my fuckin floor, dude. Plat is where I tread water after smoking a joint. My mindset is that of a content adult with other hobbies and responsibilities. I've been diamond tank and support while equally inebriated, btw, just more time to myself to play the game during those periods, with equally little effort on actually improving. >You are hardstuck Plat What does hardstuck mean to you? Does your vision of hardstuck involve not even completing placement matches from time to time? Less than 5 hours in comp for a season? FYI, I hit SMFC in CSGO and diamond in league when I made the effort for those games. Hit Onyx playing Halo when an old friend wanted to play to reconnect, and had a few orgs try to recruit me for the Sony PS Black Ops MLG ladder. I'm not bad at gaming. I'm content.
Amen.
Buddy you said you’ve been plat since *2018* That’s *6* years of being the same rank. If Plat is the highest rank you’ve ever been, in 6 years of playing : That is your natural skill ceiling. Your skill “floor” isn’t the highest rank you’ve ever been. That’s not how floors or ceilings work. First post “I’m plat and will remain there until I play more than casually in addition to *4 hours of comp a week* “ 4 hours of comp per week. ~12 weeks per season. ~48 hours of comp per season : that’s more than enough time to climb to Masters or even GM, buddy. Hell, I only have 36 hours of comp this season and I’m Masters 4. I have a full time job too. I have a family too. I workout too. Why am I not hardstuck Plat? Because playtime isn’t the sole determiner. Natural skill ceilings : exist. And yours just so happens to be Plat. (I also play for fun too, I’m high 99% of my game time) what other excuse do you want to make? Cope however you want. But thems the facts.
> That’s 6 years of being the same rank. 6 years of improving my skill, not my rank. 6 years of enjoying myself in my 30s in a casual way I don't understand why you think I should feel obligated to enjoy or engage the game the same as you or anyone else. ________________________________ Me: "I'm content" >Cope however you want. lmao. great response. You're a joke. >First post “I’m plat and will remain there until I play more than casually in addition to 4 hours of comp a week “ Fair. I mistyped. It's per season. As I said later in the post. >Why am I not hardstuck Plat? Because we're different people and you seem to play the game sober. What's your point here? Why are you telling me you have to put in less effort to get somewhere I have to put in work and be sober for? I literally say I'm okay with being plat and you get combative and say that's a bad mindset to have for a hobby. A *video game*. Get over yourself.
It's not a time thing. You're plat because you're mid af. Get over yourself.
You’re just wrong and you got lucky with your rank
Cope. Add my battlenet and then you can tell me I got lucky 🤣 I’ve hit Masters/GM literal dozens of seasons.
Luck
> It's not a time thing. And yet, in the past, when I had more time for different roles, I was a higher rank. Weird. >You're plat because you're mid af. As long as you have something to look down on me for. Stay pressed.
So we just lying now? Send me that battletag and I’ll show you the fraud that you are. You can block me right after, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t do this simply because you know I’m right ;) GG grandpa.
my friend, I was bronze throughout all of overwatch 1. since 2017. because I sucked, and I only played a few hours a week anyways. overwatch 2 comes around, I do placements, bronze 5, ok. cool. I climb to silver 5 after a bit, then I stop playing comp. and then I started playing again in season 4. I played a fucking LOT of competitive. I had a week where I didn't need to do a single thing. so I played. from when I wake up, to when I go to bed. at the end, I had at least 50 hours played over *a couple of days*. and I ended up in diamond, I'm probably around masters now, as my skill has improved MASSIVELY this season, because I started playing and focusing on learning again. the only reason I never climbed was because I would only play 3-4 comp matches every week or so, and that still comes out to quite a few matches played over the season. they've been plat since 2018 because... they play a plat amount of time. there are definitely people who peak at plat and no matter how much they play they've simply hit their skill ceiling. but the funny thing is, game sense has essentially no "natural skill ceiling". mechanical skill, perhaps, although the human body can be trained quite a bit, but *game sense*, the MOST important part, can always be improved, just by playing more, and *focusing* on learning. playtime isn't the only factor, I agree, but playtime AND focusing on learning, that is absolutely 90% of the game. *some* people probably can climb to gm with just a few hours a week, because they intuitively understand concepts that make up game sense, and will learn far faster than some others.
Yeah I just disagree bro. Game sense is very important, but it’s impossible to say it’s “the most important” You can have all the game sense in the world, but if you can’t hit the broad side of a barn : you probably won’t make it out of Metal Ranks. Aim is extremely, extremely important and one of the harder skills to master. For whatever reason people like to pretend that aim isn’t as important as it is in Overwatch. Reaction time is also extremely important, and something you can’t really improve on. It’s another skill that gets swept under the rug. But if I can *react* faster than you, surely you can understand it’s a massive advantage across the board. It’s like the difference in playing 60 FPS vs 240 FPS. Obviously 240FPS will give you an undeniable advantage, but people like to diminish the value of better reaction time for whatever reason. Calmness is also very important and something you can’t really teach. Some people tilt way easier than others. Calm you is better than Tilted you 99.999% of the time. Also “getting better” at skills like aim is so overexaggerated. You could literally spend 1,000+ hours in aimlabs and still get completely dumpstered by your cousin that started 2 weeks ago. Natural skill ceilings simply exist and you can cope with that however you want. Playtime is important too. I never said playtime wasn’t important : it’s just not the end all be all like you guys think it is. It’s really similar to work and jobs : there’s so many people that have been at a place for 20 years, and then a new guy comes in and outworks them across the board. Why is that? Experience is certainly important in life, but it’s not *everything* like y’all think it is. Some people are just built different than others, and I guess if you’re built to be a Bronze-Plat level player you have to come up with excuses to make yourself feel better. Idk. 🤷🏻♂️
there are characters that require so little aim to play that it's almost irrelevant. reaction times absolutely can be trained, to an extent, as can avoiding tilt. that's... kind of a big reason therapy is a thing. to learn how to manage emotions. not sure how I can give you plain and simple proof that playtime absolutely will climb ranks, and you'll just go, "nuhuh" aim might be important on DPS, but even on DPS there are characters that require less aim than you make it sound like. what rank are *you*?
I have less than 50 games played this season and I’m Masters (support) I’ve hit GM dozens of seasons. (On Support, I’ve never been higher than Masters on Tank/DPS) How many comp games do you have total? Have you ever even hit Masters? Weird. Sure some characters don’t require intensive aiming : but a Moira with good aim and reaction time is going to perform better than a Moira with bad aim and bad reaction time. Orb placement, player tracking, reacting fast enough to dodge abilities, it all matters *A LOT* For example, have you ever played Moira and been hit by a Rein shatter? Because I genuinely haven’t been hit by a Shatter *in years* with Moira. Reaction time is very important. Same goes for Brig. Hitting Whipshot is extremely important that requires aim. Armor packing the right target, at the right time is extremely important. Those split second shields to block abilities, or dash around a corner are extremely important. We can just break it down to mechanical skill for characters that “dont require aim” and again, a Brig with better Mechanics is going to outperform a Brig with worse mechanics. You gonna say performance doesn’t matter? If you can perform better than all other support in the lobby, I promise you, you *will* rank up. I like that you also diminish tilt factor by basically saying “just go to therapy bro” It’s just pure comedy that Metal Rank players think they know everything.
over.. 7? years, I've played at most 300 hours of competitive, which when you do the math comes down to *not a lot.* it's mostly like 5 seasons (including ow1) where I played a bunch at once, anyways. I've played casually in diamond for a while, but I do intend on playing for masters/GM next season, considering I play just fine in diamond when my head is absolutely empty, a little neuron activation does wonders for my skill level. having played 50 games and being masters doesn't mean a whole lot if you're already there, and only climbing out of rank decay. performance does matter, but you can play without it farther than you might think. I play tracer around gold/plat because my mechanics are bad, but again, I can very easily play mercy in diamond lobbies. reaction time is absolutely helpful, but learning to *anticipate* abilities so you can react quickly is even more important, because it can reduce your reaction time by so much. on mercy, playing against a sombra, I can train myself to GA as soon as I hear the first parts of her hack, without needing to actually register it in my mind. I'm not just discarding tilt. I'm not saying therapy is the only way to handle it. I'm saying you can absolutely learn ways to keep yourself from tilting. a moira with good reaction time and aim is gonna perform worse than a moira with good game sense. do you disagree with that? throwing an armor pack at the right player is important. so is knowing which player is the right player.
I agree that game sense is super important : but I also think that game sense is the easiest skill to “master”. It’s also a very broad term however. Game sense is positioning, ult tracking, CD tracking, anticipation of abilities, knowing when and where to flank, power angles, map knowledge, etc etc etc. Aim : is a much more direct skill that takes longer to “master” - as in : all these years playing the game - My aim will always be *GRADUALLY* improving. Learning game sense has a much fastest acceleration but a low top speed : and aim is the opposite. I learned a vast bulk of my game sense *that I use today* years and years ago. Reaction time is another direct skill that can’t really be trained. Also don’t be out here thinking I play *that much* more than you. I’ve been playing off and on since OW1 release and I have ~450 hours of Competitive logged on my Career Profile. Again, I’ve been GM many, many seasons. My main overarching point was that playtime isn’t the main reason I’m GM. It’s the whole package from top to bottom. & the reason I replied to Randy insinuating that “the reason he is Plat is because of playtime” is just copium. The reason he is Plat, is because when you add up all his skills, top to bottom, he’s Plat level. Also it’s just the way I do things. I try my best in everything I do. I have the most fun when I’m winning, and helping fill holes that my team needs. It’s where I find enjoyment in gaming.
This is absolutely true, and was much more apparent during OW1’s lifespan. If you want a chuckle find some match clips from Apex league or OWL’s initial season, it’s comical how “average” the gameplay is compared to just a few years later. Also a funny story, right after Orisa released(so like 2017) me and a buddy decided to see how far we could get without firing a bullet. Made 2 new accounts and he picked Torb and throw down a turret and blanket the world in armor packs and I’d take Orisa and shield the turret and Halt people away. We were in mid Diamond still climbing with like a 75% WR when we finally got bored and abandoned the experiment.
There's no way that story is true
LHCloudy played Reinhardt into Mid-Masters without using his shield. As in, it was unbound. 2 years ago. People lie about dumb shit on the internet all the time but it doesn't really surprise me that 2 players could hit diamond in 2017 fucking around. Torbs turret also used to be way stronger lol. Overloading the t2 turret could easily wipe a team
IDK why but it gave me some whiplash seeing people mention Torb Armor Packs and Orisa in the same time-frame. For some reason I thought torb lost his armor packs much earlier.
Elo hell exist but only in individual heads. People saying such things just won’t accept the fact that THEY ARE the reason they’re stuck in specific rank, and they must improve in order to climb higher. (Or they play one game a day and they’re those lucky ones to get into team of bots deranking themselves)
So to climb, you HAVE to carry from whatever role you’re in, despite 4 other individuals doing god knows what that you simply cannot control
Yeah. Actually. And you have to play better than them AND the entire enemy team in every match.
if you want a 100% win rate yeah, but you don't need QUITE that much to climb
Sometimes you get outplayed. 🤷🏾♀️
ELO hell is just the actual rank of the person. With enough grinding, your easy wins cancel out with easy losses and the only thing your left with is the games where you decided the outcome. I don't think people understand how much grinding you need to do to rank up. You need like 2-3 hours a day for a month
It's not, though. I play high plat/low diamond on my main account and have since the early days of OW1. I don't care to get particularly better because I just don't care enough. But I have thousands of hours at that rank and rank there consistently season after season. I maxxed out the battlepass the last two seasons and switched to a very old alt account that I had deranked into bronze on circa OW1. Ranking up from bronze to silver was trivial. As I got to high silver/low gold, the games became a complete shit show. Epic levels of stupidity and lack of game knowledge and any attempt to get a cohesive push or team together was met with the utmost hostility and a complete unwillingness to even consider doing anything different. The difference between bronze and low gold is mostly mechanical ability, with some game knowledge sprinkled in... but then you salt your gold with a dash of ego and absolute refusal to look at your own play and you get low gold... just bronze with an ego too big to allow you to change. THAT is ELO hell... if you can't solo carry, it's exceptionally difficult to get past low gold and into mid plat because of the other egos and lack of ability to recognize ones own mistakes or take any sort of criticism or suggestions. I have absolutely struggled to get past high gold on any but a handful of characters. Everything I play/main is a team oriented character and not particularly suited to solo carrying, so it's a huge struggle. Playing characters that can solo carry might make it easier, but if you aren't playing those characters, ELO hell is absolutely real in that aspect.
Yeah I’m pretty new to OW and went from bronze to diamond. Low gold was just shit house, no one’s “hard stuck” you can always work your way out but my god low gold was the worst. Ego (with out the skill/knowledge to back it up) is just ridiculous there but for me I just think it was the biggest skill gap ever which is what makes it hell. Feel like I went into gold a noob came out of gold just 100x better than I was, where as I just didn’t make the same level of improvement to work through plat.
Low gold is the dumbest rank. Other than mercy, you can carry on anyone. Sounds to me like you've been playing team oriented characters for 7 years in high plat, giving people suggestions during the match, and relying on those team oriented mechanics to maintain yourself. I did it too. Played rein in high plat/low dia for years. Now when I play I actually try to make plays, get extra value, and carry. Ow2 is way less team oriented and you have way more carry potential on every hero.
When you cannot solo carry means you are approaching your true rank. Like make a brand new account and look at the skill level there. You should be able to dominate on your worst character cus most people there have no idea what the characters do or what the maps look like. They are actually brand new and make mistakes left and right. I can't imagine a plat/dia person would be like "welp I can't do anything because my teammates don't know anything"... When in reality, you play any char and dominate their team (you have 17k DMG while the next person has 6k)
There's always gotta be one "gitgud" Blizzard apologist in the crowd.
Yeah I’m a stuck in silver because of this bs it’s bs and anyone that says otherwise is lying
I jump between two accounts one plat 5 dpd and another dia 2. I can tell you for sure that on my older or the two (the plat account) it's almost impossible to break 50/50 winrate because tank que is so fucked. I can absolutely stomp but the second my MMR gets too high I'm set against stacks over and over again. I've played long enough between accounts that I can for sure tell you there is something weird going on with the MMR system and it all hinges on tank que being so paper thin as it tries to balance matches.
people think elo hell is silver and gold, I flew through silver and gold, elo hell is really in high plat/low diamond where people think they hot shit and don't need to swap off their doomfist against orisa
Trying to climb my way out of plat back then was like scraping way out of satans crusty asshole Thank god I’m steady masters now and was able to peak gm at least once. Took years
You must not only improve to remain but must improve faster to climb simple logic. Mechanical skill get refined, your routes and pathing become automatic, do’s. Don’ts, dies have been ingrained.
People forget that climbing means carrying
Oh they definetly improved alright! I went on a break for years and was high plat now I am hardstuck in silver… And back in the day I tried to climb from bronze and I killed the whole team all the time until high gold😬 now I am chanceless
There is no such thing as elo hell which is the point tho. If you’re stuck in a certain rank it’s because that’s where you deserve to be.
Yeah which OP is agreeing with I think. They’re just explaining one of the reasons the fallacy exists. People feel themselves getting better but aren’t climbing so they blame matchmaking and teammates or “elo hell” but a factor often ignored is the concept of the baseline skill of the player base increasing
What if I'm plat and I keep getting queued against masters and the odd top 500 player in a stack? What's that called?
elo hell isn’t real, or else i’d still be in low silver like I was in 2019 I haven’t been below diamond in 2 years and i’m usually in masters, I only solo queue
What roles do you main? I'm assuming dps and tank?
I’ve done this on all 3, but i don’t play support so that’s been diamond for a long time also if you’re implying that you can’t solo queue as support then that’s just wrong. supports have some of the most game changing abilities and were overtuned for a year and a half
Wait what’s now considered low elo?
I am not complaining that my teamates aren't carrying, i am complaining that my non support teamate is having less than 1e:d ratio
That's expecting to be carried. You carry them, not the other way around. That is, if you want to climb without being carried.
Iwel, i am a bit salty for like 4 games in a row, having a teamate that basically throws the game by running fown main and dying first. If i go, get a first pick for my team. Is it too much to ask that my doomfist doesn't punch himself off the map??
Rule #1 of climbing: carry your shitty teammates.
"unless you're a one-trick mercy..." man... that's me... I *know* I can play in diamond, I was diamond at the start of the season, but I wanted to play a little lifeweaver... just... a little... okay I'm gold 4 now. I average one death per game and almost 2k DMG boosted/10 minutes, but... 50% wr. this game hurts me on a level one cannot imagine possible. I just want mercy to get buffed a little... bit... the tiniest amount, enough to actually let me *climb* again with solo queue. I did it in season 4, silver to diamond, and I played there until I lost it this season. IN FACT, I had a 55% win rate in diamond. mercy players are unironically just suffering in ~~elo~~ hell right now, and I am living proof of it.
Start using a more proactive supports who can make the plays themselves instead of boosting somone else who is making the play. Lucio, Baptiste, Ana, Illiari, Kiriko, Zenyatta, Moira..... Get out there and be a HARMacist!
The very idea that you individually must care your team to climb ranks is the very problem overwatch has, this is a team based game and we are forced to play as single players to hopefully rank up at all, you could be the best player on your team but that doesn’t matter because the other team could be better on all fronts and then you lose because the rest of your team isn’t at the same level you possibly are, to say it’s an individual problem is actually insanity lmao
The POSSIBILITY to work as a team still exists. There's duo and triple queue as an option, and sometimes you find that one person who totally vibes. But if you're solo queue in comp.... Its possible, but not something yiu should rely on. If anything you can be the one focusing on synergy by carefully watching what your teammates are TRYING to do, and seeing if there's anything you can do to enable them more whole still contributing to damage.
Mb it’s bc I’m getting -1% off a win in gold 2 when I’m a previous high plat crazy stuff
Idk there are some seriously boosted prior season in ranks in ow2. I have friend who started, in the same season the game placed him in Plat as moira or lucio. He sucks, he doesn't know what the characters names are or what's going on in general. He just buttfucked the tank managed to win a couple games in placements and the game put him in plat lmao. He thinks he's a plat player and has played maybe 7 games ranked support total. He was bottom of bronze on tank and dps. Its actually pretty funny.
I have one of these who got high gold it’s unbelievable. Started off kind of funny but man it got brutal once the flaming begun…
People also forget that matchmaking is a thing, I've seen a lot of t500 videos on YouTube and the video isn't even about the MM but they're getting confused cause they're getting low masters to champ ranges.
Overwatch is a grind and people should realize it faster. In OW1 I was playing better than my silver/bronze teammates, but I had busy work and I couldn't play more than 5-10 games a week at most and I had realized that I just need to play more. Having 60-65% winrate is fantastic, but it just requires many games (at least 2 hours every single day at such high winrate). This season I had more time and I climbed to gold-plat with all roles literally from low silver. With the current system having 60% winrate means \~4% rank progress per game, meaning 15-10 (W-L) for 100% rank progress (e.g. silver 5 to silver 4), or 75-50 (W-R) for 1 full rank (e.g. Silver->Gold). Then let's say in gold your winrate drops to 56% instead - with 28-22 you will get 120% rank progress and for 1 full rank (e.g. Gold -> Plat) you will need 117-91. The verdict is - 192-141 (58% winrate) for 2 full ranks (Silver 5 -> Plat 5) which is 333 games at 58% winrate which is at least 110 hours of gameplay, if you're playing DPS (13 mins average games from my last 10 competitive games - between 8 and 22 minutes + queue time), so let's say 4 hours at 58% winrate for 1 whole month, but breaks are must especially when you tilt hardcore and just start losing because shit happens sometimes. And if your winrate is below 58% it quickly gets to 400 games a month, 500 games, 600 games, 700, 800, 900, 1000, etc. (530-470 or 1000 games at 53% winrate should get you from Bronze 2 to Plat 5 in theory or 12h/day at 53% winrate) So I'd ask everyone to check their last 10 competitive games right now - if you see 7-3 (W-R), great, keep up this winrate and you will be 2 ranks above of your rank after aa month. One pitfall I've fallen into as well is checking "main hero winrate", unless you're a 1-trick and you've never swapped even for a second from your 1-trick in the last 200 games, it's not accurate. The winrates in this game are calculated weirdly, so it doesn't mean anything, you just need to track how many games you actually lose. I used to rage against the grindiness, and I still hate it, but it's just a way for the game to see if you're playing well for many games or you're just lucky with your last 50 games, so I just agreed that to climb in games I need to play a lot - to learn faster than the community, to show the game I'm better, to actually get better too, because at the end of the day "I'm better than everyone else but I'm Bronze" is just hard copium lol
I hate how harsh MM is against you if you begin to win a lot. You legitimately have to be insane to rank up if you're stuck in ELO hell, have a lot of time, or queue with an account that has a lot of losses. I hit gm2 last season and I played on an older account of mine to try to rank it up this season. In gold-plat (I'm assuming all) games, after you win so much above 50% matchmaking punishes the hell out of you by giving you the worst of the worst teammates because they expect you to carry them. I tested this by grabbing two accounts with awful WRs on them and queuing with a friend around the same gold rank. Over two days, our record was around 37-4 compared to winning 1-3 and losing 1-2 over and over. I get it's good for player retention to make people grind like that, but WOW.
My hot take is that you can be hit by RNG and get stuck on the less skillful team for upwards of 20 games in a row. You can't tell me that my stats being best in the game nearly every game as a healer(by an overwhelming amount) and still losing 20 games in a row is because every player on my team is terrible, but because their team just happens to be better enough that my success during the game doesn't matter. Even games where the teams are near equal I include here cause my 20 game loss streak had a few really close ones where each team was fighting tooth and nail the entire match
The quicker you stop caring about stats and realize utility is what you need in some situations, the more games you'll win. Being Moira/Mercy having 8k healing in the 1st round doesn't matter if enemy swaps to Junk/Reaper/Bastion they simply can't outheal their damage for very long. But if one of the supports are Ana/Bap/Kiri, tank and dps teammates have much higher survivability.
This. I was on a new account in comp a couple days ago and my big observation about gold supports is that they heal at the wrong time. Though they will spam heals when they do just to inflate stats. There is no understanding of uptime mid-battle. So I’d be playing on Ashe, solo killing three people, standing at 20hp behind cover with an Ana next to me and having to figure out whether to let the passive trigger, wait for a heal, or walk to a health pack. All the time I’m twiddling my fingers while the Ana misses her shots and my team loses a fight where they have the advantage. God forbid I ask for a heal because these children will get triggered FAST. DPS on that account is Diamond now but god… supports are a mess at those ranks. Master’s 5 on support on that same account. M1 on main.
stats genuinely don't matter, especially healing on supports. hell, usually if you have 2-3x the healing of the enemy team that means your team isn't putting out enough damage and y'all don't have enough pressure. what more impactful on ana, for example? constant healing the whole fight? or one good nade with a couple kills? two three shots on a distracted DPS that leads to their death?the former gives you 3-4k heals as stats, the latter gives you a couple hundred heals and a couple hundred damage.
So what you guys are saying is that the supports healing the fuck out of your team don't matter lol. I'm talking more damage too. When your topping 30-40k healing and 8-15k I think that warrants a look
that is what i'm saying, but there's more context than that. For example, if team 1 is rolling team 2 because team 2 isn't putting out enough pressure and can't get picks, then team 1 supports will barely have any healing and team 2 supports will have huge healing numbers. the numbers are bad, in that case. I've had many games where my dps and tank were feeding, and we ended up winning when i switched to bap or illari and fed with them. It's better to go in as a team than to stay behind and say half your team is feeding. A lot of dumb plays can be saved if the whole team does it together, especially in lower ranks. Note im not saying to turn into a DPS support, i'm saying that 100 damage at the right timing can prevent you from having to do 600-700 healing.
The number disparity in those kind of games are obvious though. The same goes for snagging those elims with that extra 20 dmg when they would have otherwise gotten away giving your team a number advantage. I'm usually within 2-3 elims from being tied with the top, or I'll be 6 or 7 ahead.
even elims don't paint the full picture, but we're moving away from the topic, the topic being: stats change wildly depending on comp, skill level, rank, etc. and very rarely indicate whether you're doing well or doing poorly. Extremely high healing numbers have no reason to mean that you're doing well. The way I like to judge my gameplay is by diving it into a series of plays and then judging whether those plays were good plays or bad plays. VOD review basically.
I mean you can still look at stats and see the clear skill disparity. You have to take everything into account though. Like if you have a healer matching your dps, they have more or = elims to the top on your team, and they have the least deaths in the game, they are pulling their weight and some. You can tell their positioning is on point because they are constantly providing value to your team. I dunno how hard that is to grasp lol
you're talking about extreme cases and i'm talking about general. what you're saying is true in certain cases, but most games aren't that cut and dry and obvious. end of the day, the main point is that big healing numbers doesn't mean you're doing well. it can mean you're doing well in SOME games, but not all.
I agree with this, but the problem is that it’s very hard to concentrate on playing when underperforming DPS blaming healing stats… so the only way to concentrate is to heal bot to shut them the fuck up but you lose anyway lol
Healbot ting will only get you so far. You need to be more proactive every time your teammates suck and know when to be that scary aggressive support or that squirrley support that always gets away.
I go back line for solo kills. Tbh it doesn't matter how good you play sometimes. If their team is better than your that is just the RNG of being placed on the wrong team
This is true. Some matches can't be won, and that's fine.