Is there any point in playing in lower levels?

Competitive Discussion
1

I’ll happily admit I am not the greatest OW player in the world, pretty standard. I’ll have a bad game here or there, as everyone will do.
I’ve got better, put up with the idiots, and deliberate throwers, and managed to move up, with last season finally getting into the gold tier. It was short lived however with several losses, with a loss streak of around 14. The occasional loss I get (for every team that wins, one has to loose) but to be repeatedly put with incompetent players was stupid. I went from 2156 to 1750 before giving up, and decided to play a different game till the season was over.

This season started off well, decent teams, close matches - what I would say was fun - staying around 2100. Then again hit with players that are either so bad i shouldn’t be placed with, or people deliberately throwing the matches. I’ve just came off of a 11 loss streak, dropping 300sr.
I’ll admit some of that loss was because of a d/c, and one was a weird bug where I couldn’t move my character :thinking:. But those were before the loss streak.

I’ve been frustrated with competitive for a while but not enough to make a topic till now.
But with the state of competitive as it is in the lower tiers, is there any point? Just to be put with people intentionally ruining people games? :thinking:
Is there the actual ability to move through the ranks, or am I just unlucky?

1 Like
2

Short answer - no.

Long answer - pick your best hero and ignore your team. Play for stats. You’ll eventually move up even with sub 50% win rate.

EDIT: Ok I actually checked your profile and you seem to be playing your best hero a lot. So it is your problem really, you should be able to climb if you are spamming your best.

4

So it’s my fault I’m placed with people who do all they can to throw the match? :upside_down_face:

All I can do, and all I do is play as well as I can.
My point was is there any point in playing in the lower tiers as it’s full of players intentionally ruining games?

5

No point rly playing unless u have friends or find people to play with, i have the same issue right now and only solution for me is to que up with my friend who is 500sr higher than me but he can only play couple games a day. i was able to start climbing again, just had 5 win streak 100+sr or so, then i qued solo and insta loss because 2 players were unwilling to switch.

6

Without trying to be that guy, “if you are good, you will climb”.

ELO hell does not exist, sure you will have games that you simply can’t win because your team is throwing or you have a leaver(s). But overall, if your personal stats* are good, you will gain more SR for a win and lose less SR for a loss.

*your avg/10 mins stats compared against other players of the same hero at your rank

But I guarantee that if I was to play on your account it would be plat within 2-3 hours.

7

Hey Halobolola!

They suggest you play your strongest pick, but if that’s for example Reinhardt, then you can’t really help it if your team struggles vs. superior flankers killing your backline :frowning:

Do you wanna duo-queue? I find it kinda easy to play with Doomfist atm and I think it could be nice if you had a reliable partner :smiley: I sent you an ingame friend request!

8

Ehh idk I can Rein on 3k to 3.5k but I can’t Rein on 2.6k apparently (main account).

9

Every time I see a thread where the majority of people are claiming that “ELO hell doesn’t exist” and that “if you’re in bronze then you’re a bronze player” and that “if you are good you will climb”, no one ever replies to the person that points out that they have two accounts with drastically different ratings.
I have a friend stuck in bronze playing Brigitte on one account (50% win ratio) and is playing in gold with Brigitte on another account (climbing slowly). Same player, same character, same playstyle and drastically different ratings.
So why does no one ever reply? Perhaps because it’s the one thing that blows their theory out of the water?
However SR and MMR works, there is definitely something very artificial, forced and broken about it.

10

Originally my alt account was placed about 1000SR higher than my main but today they are very close. However, I’m not very surprised.

I think Elo rating would work much better by applying it to the stats of the competing sides (teams), not the members of the team. The problem is that most teams aren’t stable in OW, they are mostly random teams of casual players who want personal badges. In that case Elo rating could still work much better (than the way it works) if players played mostly the same smaller set of heros or roles they are good at. However, in real life in OW solo queue that won’t happen. These problems and the random nature of teams makes the whole system relatively unstable. For this reason I’m not surprised that MMRs are sticky and placement matches don’t do much: in my opinion this “stickiness” is there to make the system stable enough. To be honest I’m surprised that under these circumstances they could get per-player ranking work at least to some degree.

On the other hand, those who expect consistent results from random teams (lottery) can’t be very smart. This is especially true in lower ranks where player’s skillset is very patchy. Careful team building in LFG can improve team quality a lot.

11

I just lost nearly 400sr in the space of two days. Dropped from 22k down to 18k. The lower I fall the worse my games get (lack of co-ordination, no combos, no ult economy, no peeling for healers) and I now feel like I’m in a continuous downward spiral.

12

Those who play the lottery can lose even more within a single day. 22k? 18k?

13

I have had 4 accounts to date, in February of this year I was a low Silver player. I climbed to Gold on my main account and eventually into low Plat.

This is when I made my first “smurf” account. It placed in Gold and eventually climbed into Plat.

As I learned more about the game and got better I eventually reached Diamond and made my way up to high Diamond. I’m currently playing at 3100 and I’m still being accused of Smurfing (despite the fact that this account placed 2300) and aimhacking.

What I’m trying to say is that all 4 of my accounts ended up exactly where they belong.

You have to remember that while one hero is viable in X SR, it may not be viable in a different ELO entirely. Brig is amazing when played in Goats Comp (3 Tanks, 3 Supports) but she is not a main healer and cannot support an entire team by herself. Players in Bronze don’t understand the game at a basic level and Brig is the worst hero to play if you want to gain any sort of mechanical skill or understanding of gamesense/positioning in order to climb.

It’s very comforting to believe, as a low SR player that you’re made for great things and that you can climb high and that surely you’re not THAT bad at the game but in truth, you are. I remember recording games from when I was low Silver to show my friends and ask them why the Hell I was in Silver when I played much more like a Plat or Diamond player, but looking back at them now. I BELONGED in Silver because I made mistakes like a Silver player.

The game is a lot more complex than at first it seems. For example, on this account I play almost exclusively Tracer. I have played Tracer for probably 85-90% of all my competitive games, regardless of team composition.

With this changing meta, I don’t play Tracer the way I always used to. There are multiple different playstyles that you can execute depending on your enemy team’s setup and your team’s set up.

As a quick example: If I’m playing Tracer and we have a Widowmaker who can hit shots but is being harassed by enemy tanks. And keeps getting killed. What’s the first thing your team is likely to do?

“SWITCH WIDOW YOU SUCK.”

This tilts the Widowmaker and makes her play badly and less likely to switch. In this case, the tanks could protect her and give her SPACE. Space is the ability to execute your role without being harassed, making you much more likely to succeed.

At lower SRs, tanks are played like DPS heroes. They are not often used to defend the dps or supports to create space. This is one of the reasons why Widowmaker has a much lower pick rate at low SR.

Back to the scenario. My tanks aren’t peeling for the Widow so what do I do? I take the highground with her and help to peel so that she can kill the supports and be effective in helping us win the teamfight.

Now, if we have a Junkrat on the other hand, I’m much more likely to be in the backline and harassing the enemy supports whilst my Junkrat assists the tanks in the frontline.

The higher the SR, the more safe I play. In Gold I could likely teamkill every teamfight just by one clipping the supports from the flank while the frontline is busy. But as you get higher, more people are using comms, more people understand their role. Whereas a gold Zenyatta would likely be oblivious to me in the backline, if I tried to kill their Mercy without my team’s help, I would likely get pistol whipped by Mercy and headshot by Zenyatta if I tried the same tactic in Masters or higher.

TL;DR Playstyle/hero choice varies greatly depending on the ELO you’re in. You can’t just play the same way you would in Gold as you would in Diamond. Aside from generally better mechanics, each skill tier has its own things to consider. I’d probably rank them something like this:

Bronze:
Total chaos, terrible mechanics, terrible positioning, little or no communication, no good team composition, no idea how the game works.

Silver:
Bronze but with very slightly better mechanics.

Gold:
Dramatically better mechanics compared to Bronze, usually understands that 2/2/2 increases your chance of winning vs 6 dps.

Platinum:
Mechanics steadily increasing, counter picks start occurring, map awareness increased, small understanding of when to play aggressive and when to be defensive.

Instead of focusing on where you think you should be, focus only on conquering the ELO that you’re in.

If you’re below Gold, focus only on your mechanics. Mechanics alone will take you into Gold. Once you reach Gold, begin to play like a Platinum player, continue to work on your mechanics but also start focusing on grouping up and trying to coordinate plays with your team. Graviton Surge, Earth Shatter, Blizzard + basically any other offensive ult can be devastating because most teams can’t or won’t have any answer for it. The same reason Pharah/Mercy is so strong in low ELO because most hitscan players simply don’t have the mechanics to take them out.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough, I hope this helps a little and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask away

1 Like
14

What you said is true of a small sample size but is incorrect over a longer period of time.

15

If you click the find teammates button and try to buddy up that way before finding a match you will likely have people that communicate. Communication is a big issue in lower ranks and it can help a lot. You can add people you like playing with to friends list etc, this will reduce the likely hood of trolling randomers etc. Remember it is a game for fun so try your best not to get in a bad mood. When upset and angry people start instantly looking for blame and insults can start to fly about in your head. Your brain is distracted at this point and you will play lots worse and not enjoy yourself and also possibly bring down the morale for others. If you get too stressed just pause for a few mins between games to refresh your mind. Ultimately though you need to self improve, best way to do this is record your gameplay and watch it. You will think you are doing very good at moments, watch it and think omg wtf did i do that was a bad idea. Find your mistakes, and be mindful of them in future games. Also watching some youtube tips on each hero can teach you a lot. You will be surprised at what you can learn and how much you can progress. I hope this helps :slight_smile:

16

There is much more random in solo Q games than in matches played with the same team members. This applies regardless of the period over which we examine it.

The two might converge towards the same target with different velocities, but too much random can make this practically impossible with the playtime invested by the average player. People might not play enough to offset the negative effect of randomness in relatively complex game like this. Too much random can also make a game less enjoyable or downright frustrating.

In my experience one has to be much better than his/her current SR in order to be able to climb effectively. The problem with this is that finding and improving those aspects of one’s playstyle that actually bring results is very difficult in a very complex game with a lot of randoms.

By buying a secondary account and being placed almost 1000SR higher I had much easier time to figure out a lot of things. I could compare games at those SRs and better players simply don’t make certain mistakes that often making it easier to learn from them. Playing with low SR players alone increases randomness a lot, matches are much less structured at 2000SR than around 3000SR.

But this is a team game sold for casual lone wolves. Most people don’t want to build and play in a team of regulars for various reasons. I still think that it’s nice to have a team based shooter for casuals. There are a lot of other games as alternatives for those who don’t want to depend too heavily on team mates.