Stuck in bronze - team holding me back

General Discussion
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So recently I’ve been playing my Season 14 placements and so far all of my teams have been very uncooperative and won’t talk in voice chat or in text chat. I know for a fact that the more you communicate with your team the better the chances you have at winning. And the bronze players I’m with are either throwers, people who just ignore the team or people that are playing on a foreign region and don’t speak English. On occasions we end up with a good, cooperative team that have a positive energy and vibe about them. When we do end up with the bad teams and lose, I hate how you always lose SR even though I almost always end up with 3 or maybe 4 gold medals. Oh and I forgot to mention, I did my placements at level 25 so I ended up here.

Development team please hear me out and try to do something about this. I really don’t like being stuck bronze and I want to be able to play with people at a better skill level.

3 Likes
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Ultimately it all comes down to that thing you mentioned, voice comms.

In lower tiers this can really hold people back. A team with all 6 in vc makes the world of difference, even in bronze.

My suggestion would be to find 5 other similarly skilled like minded bronze players who also enjoy using vc and call outs, etc, and just group up together.

I personally play solo most of the time, sometimes I’ll get invites to stack and I will, but if things don’t go well, I will usually return to solo queuing. I’ve noticed the thing that makes the biggest difference, even in plat/diamond, is vc. A team with no vc, well, it’s just like QP, no difference.

1 Like
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Honestly you are just where you belong. Everyone thinks theyre better than they actually are. I also did my placements at lvl 25 and I started from gold and now im 4.1k

2 Likes
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Skyz, I do feel what you’re going through. 1000+ matches in comp. I was given an initial SR of 1771. I went down all the way to 700-ish. (Wasn’t very good, and I also have some disability) I clawed my way up to 15XX (silver).

I found that just people not communicating isn’t a big factor causing losses and SR drops. I found that my best games were those where I muted everyone (voice and chat) and played it like a single player game. A lot of times implied teamwork and coordination will suffice. And it’s not just me, lots of other players do the same. No chat, but they just use the voice lines like Need Healing, Ultimate Ready, Group Up…

On the other hand, I also tried communications. 80% of the time, someone wanted to be captain and someone else disagreed, or someone couldn’t carry out their plan… disagreements… arguments… throwing… leaving… etc. Useless. Sometimes I’d try to follow the lead instead. I wasn’t able to do the job, got blamed, etc… I said screw it, muted EVERYTHING and I just did whatever I thought would benefit the team. BAM. Win.

But, I play in the Singapore server (Americas), so it should be different from Europe and North America. Almost every player who communicates is toxic. Those who are silent are probably like me. So if someone is on voice, or even chatting, it’s either them trying to force their “leadership” or trying to blame the team or just trolling. Even winners are toxic. When they win, they type “GG EZ”, and hurl other similar insults at the enemy team.

Later I also found that a huge population in Bronze/Silver/Gold are players from higher tiers, trolling low level players. Some admit, some even actively look to buy Bronze accounts (most expensive). This went on to the point where these “smurfs” later found that they were facing other smurfs in Bronze, thus having no guaranteed win, and then becoming toxic. The only real smurfs would be those immortals from Masters/GM that can smoke Diamond and below.

In the end, I devised a method/strategy to rank up in this environment, solo queue mostly, no communication. Kinda working now that I escaped Bronze. But it doesn’t work very fast. Patience and hard work and determination is needed.

You are right that the team is holding you back. When my team is cooperative, I win more. But when they just don’t care, I will just lose. That’s why I told myself that I must not depend on the team, and play selfishly (at least in solo queue), selfish not in the sense that you are being an asshole and not caring about what the teammates are doing to achieve the objective, but in the sense that you try to achieve the objective based on your own good judgment of the situation of the match, helping teammates where you see fit (not where THEY see fit), and NOT always trying to get confirmation, agreements, signals, (forced) strategies, etc. Given this might not be the best, when playing with a team with very good coordination and communication, but then the enemy team should also have this problem so it’s fair game.

I got some ideas from coach 2seksi (something about learning the ability to predict teammates and enemies, when playing MUTE) https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/6wbba4/is_there_a_way_to_climb_up_without_voice_and_team/

Well anyways, good luck on your climb, Skyz.

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Ranking system need to be improved definitely. Once you slide down to bronze you are screwed.
It is the bottom line, throwers, quitters, toxic players, deranker smurfs, uncorporative teams and list goes on.
The one thing good in bronze is that you can’t go down even more :smiley:
With diamond over 3000 you will loose SR for just not playing comp which makes utterly no sense again but maybe jeff smartens up and fix things up around here.

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What is your main game strategy? Do you help your teammates?

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Your team isn’t holding you back, your skill cap is. Try to actually improve and you’ll climb like countless other players did before you.

1 Like
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You can always climb by stats.
Rule#1 always play DPS, and never switch - no matter what.
Rule#2 play for yourself - do as much damage(random is good too), as much hs as possible - to maximize fire gain
Rule#3 - the worse your teammates are - the better, more SR for you, less for them.
Rule#4 - if things are not going well, make sure you rally everyone to report supports or tanks … you don’t want to be reported, and finding a scapegoat is a must. If there’s a Mercy - even better, you need do nothing since everything is Mercy’s fault anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These are basics, there are more, but you’re not ready yet young grasshopper …

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If you really think you’re better than your SR says, play an off tank. Roadhog is nice and self-sufficient with great potential to get picks. D.Va can carry extremely well by getting pick-offs, being basically immortal if you play her baby form right (speaking about bronze of course). Zarya will run around with 100 charge at all times in bronze as well.
Thing is, when you play a tank, you have more “authority” to ask for a healer (otherwise you’ll probably get 1-0-5 comps). If you’re DPS and cry for others to play tank and healer, noone will take you seriously, because if you can’t be a team player, why should others be?
In addition, even mute people are more likely to follow a tank than just run around by themselves, cause they realize your presence gives some protection. Similarly, Lucio encourages team mates to stick with him as well, but there are many DPS mains that don’t realize that. Even in gold, you will regularly get “Moira, Lucio - why don’t you heal me [when I’m 50m away]?”

So yeah… DPS is a low impact role. The difference between a silver DPS and a bronze DPS will be around 10% of damage, which is insignificant if you compare that with the increase in durability, protection and pick-off potential of an (off) tank.

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All you need to know.

You can climb with sub 50% win rate. It wont be pleasant but it’ll surely be much better than trying to play around a team of potatoes.

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Anyone who claims " its my teams fault" is the actuall problem
You are where you belong and where you deserve

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I’m sorry but this “your team is NEVER the problem” is a load of rubbish. A year ago I would agree with you beacause even in bronze there was some teamwork. But lately the level of play displayed even in gold and lower plat is dismal. I’m not saying you shouldn’t look at yourself and improve even in grandmasters but when a teamate just walks off the edge as the game is about to start, or steps staight into a junkrat trap outside spawn and dies well…

No one stands behind the barrier, surely that’s just common sense that the blue thing stops bad hurt if I stand behind it. What’s more this is stuff that doesn’t even require mechanical aim.

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You are an extremely delusional player.

It has nothing to do with “vibes” or “feelings” and certainly not voice comms (it’s better to play with voice turned off 99% of time in low ranks).

It has everything however to do with your mechanical skill, movement, game sense, which if you are in bronze are no doubt abysmal.

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Having some 2000 hour experience in the game, I can attest that you are not bronze, unless theres something wrong in your gameplay. Bronze players are REALLY bad.

Overwatch’s SR system measures practically entirely mechanical skill (one of its issues). You should be able to climb out of there simply with positional awareness and mediocre aiming skill and ignoring your team entirely. Its the only practical way. You won’t get your team to cooperate at bronze. You will just end up wasting time.

Even at gold you basically have to ignore team and just do your own thing. The great contradiction of overwatch is that its supposed to be a team game, yet the best results are achieved by ignoring the team aspect and just focusing on fragging. Only at platinum and upwards is there a modicum of teamwork present.

Pick soldier. Stay back and shoot, if enemy overwhelms your team, run away. Regroup. Start again. Get ultimate. Visor enemy team down (visor is practically free teamfight win at low ranks). Take the point. Win.

It IS a load of rubbish, but you cannot change your teammates in the space of one game. Your only option for climbing is to focus on your own performance.

Correct. See above. The system measures ONLY mechanical skill, as I mentioned.

(But its wrong on a conceptual level that the system is like this. The system should measure players actual skill and knowledge how to play the game. Not just aim.)

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Also as a reference yesterday during placement games I

left 2 of them
played all of them without voice and 0 care for my team
got a single endorsement and probably 10+ reports
won 5 and lost 5

In the end because of my stats I gained 100 SR, lmao