For the last three seasons, I mostly play competitive with friends just to keep them company. Currently I’m at 2820 SR without any real effort and I have realized the following.
The main problem in low leagues does not lie in the lack of mechanical skills. There’s a huge problem in perception. Not in game real time sense, but overall perception.
Most of the people I engaged were either stuck on meaningless numbers or they were blaming somebody else (other roles).
Here’s a list of the most common conversations with my teams:
Mercy & Zenyatta combo does not offer enough healing anymore for reckless deep dives.
Who do you expect to kill by picking this particular hero and what’s your role? Yesterday I had this conversation with a genji against a Hog, Baguette, Moira, McCree, Rein & Zarya.
To whom should you focus to? A lot of times, fights are won or lost by individual skills, such a good ultimate, a pin or a nano, but most of them follow a particular pattern. A reaper deep flank, a free widow multi kill and so on. First shut down or disrupt that troublesome guy and then keep on. Nobody cares if you achieved to kill that Mei with 5% accuracy.
Stay alive & stop poking alone especially if you are a tank. This is one of the most common arguments I have in my games. You know that hog who didn’t die in the last attack and stays on the choke poking to fill his ultimate until the group up. While that hog has gained 10%, he has given cumulatively at least 60% to the enemies due to his huge model.
Stop playing heroes that need synergy if you are incapable of speaking & guide, or if you do not always have a perfect timing. I’m referring to EMPs or even worse the graviton surge. I can’t recall how many times I have seen a good but random Graviton combo with two or even three ultimates being used because of panic and lack of communication. Once I won a game because the enemy team used a grav, nanoblade, Rip tire and a coalescence at the same time.
Killing yourself is not a solution. That goes to that tracer who tries to stall the point alone against a composition that can kill her without even using their mice.
Stop acting defensively without reason. Sometimes It’s not your day. Nobody said that your existence in this world is an utter piece of crap. It’s just not your day. Just pick something safer just to contribute to the team and help the one who is has a good game by picking a counter to his counter/counters. That reaper/soldier/junkrat pick may give you a free win.
What’s the reason you have trouble climbing? Is it your teammates, the current game state, your skills or the lack of communication? What makes your life difficult?
Focus 90% on your own gameplay and 10% of that of your team.
Just get that hidden MMR up and you will climb.
Keep whining every game and u will play worse.
I don’t play enough. I was stuck at 2.9K for about a month. I played comp like once a week. I started playing more consistently and climbed 600SR in 2 days. Stopped climbing because I stopped playing. And now I’ve decayed to 3K
The best players I played with were very good with multiple heros and quite often had 100+ hours per season. There is a reason why some people call it “grinding”. There seem to be some shortcuts though.
Climbing requires consistency, i dont have it.
My mood changes a lot and at my age, more than 2 hours of OW gives me a headache or tilts me to no end (yes even if im winning).
By the time my aim is “warmed up” im already in the process of getting tired or annoyed. Its easier for me to play a few arcades, do something else, then a bit of QP and then out for 2-3 days.
Inconsistently is a huge problem for me. Which means I play like effect if its a familiar name, i do hours of qp before i even dare to join comp. But even then I could perform bad compared to my peak performances.
(public profile if you wanna see my ups and downs) 2 seasons like 2 and 3 started in bronze.
Because of too much healing. You need to break the shields and kill the tanks, if you cant do that it doesn’t matter how good you play. This is why so many characters are pointless.
It might be true below 3000SR where there is PBSR.
In the last few days I was experimenting and seems that if I’m hyperactive (basically on fire most of the time) then I seem to lose less SR in case of defeat and gain more SR in case of victory. In a low rank match it’s easy to become lazy compared to naturally more aggressive higher ranked matches. If my observation (that isn’t based on a lot of samples) is true then it means that picking some heros you aren’t very good with (e.g. in case of being polite and filling) might cause you more harm if the outcome is defeat and less gain if the outcome is victory. Perhaps this is why some people prefer playing only their “mains” (and many more simply because it’s comfortable and enjoyable to play a favourite hero and requires much less time to master only one).
If PBSR is real then it also means that picking certain heros might make climbing very difficult. For example when you have a pretty bad 5 or 6 DPS team then how could you perform well with a Rein who relies a lot on the rest of the team (e.g.: healing)? On the other hand you might be able to carry even a terrible 6 DPS team against another not very good enemy with a good junk on defence and perform extremely well. If the rest of the team is just plain bad (e.g.: overextending and serially dying) then you won’t be able to perform well with a healer. In a bad team you sometimes have to play even the same hero in a very different way if you want to survive longer and still perform well. (e.g.: playing mccree with and without healer, with and without tank, etc…)
Many people complain that after losing a match and winning another (or vice versa) they are a few SRs lower than they were. In my experience the same scenario can end up with few SRs higher. This is probably the visible part of performance measurements and MMR adjustments.
Climbing probably isn’t only an about above 50% win rate (at least in the PBSR zone) but a good aggressive player who isn’t a “lazy shooter” will probably have a few percent more.
Because in a game with 12 players I can only control 1 of them. All it takes is one of my 5 team mates to be an idiot and we’re going to struggle vs 6 semi-coordinated people.
That’s before throwers and leavers. Someone on our team leaves then it pops up an annoying red box that penalises the rest of us if we leave even though most of the time it’s a lost game and a waste of time.
When it works it’s brilliant, but more often than not it’s about who sucks less which. Isn’t a great advert for the game
90% of matches are dictated by leavers / second-account-users who troll.
10% are for climbing/descending.
People asked for a competitive mode, because this was the life of quick play.
Trolls and leavers.
Now, with everyone trolling on their second account, were back to release-day trolling.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d1kzxbyyijk9k6.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")