Your mind is playing tricks on you there. Yes, there are smurfs in OW, but far less than people think. Think about it this way: how do all these smurfs stay in the tier they’re playing at? They would have to throw around every second match (or even more, since their average performance will far exceed the average of everybody else). And since you get paired with 5 randoms against 6 randoms, in the long run it means that you will have less throwers (and smurfs) than the opponent, so often the “winning smurf” and “thrower smurf” would have to battle it out on the same team.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe you that you think you have smurfs on every match. But somehow, when I review some replays of lower (than me) ranked players, I never once saw a smurf. I’ve encountered a few smurfs in my matches, but that’s like 1 in 100 matches or so.
What is more likely is that you’re getting outplayed, but that doesn’t mean the person in question is smurfing, just that he/she plays better than you. By convincing yourself that that person must be a smurf, you subconsciously avoid having to question your own performance; after all, when it’s a smurf, there’s nothing you could do to win.
A widow with 100% accuracy is not a smurf, she’s cheating. Not even GM will hit every shot. Next time you have a good widow, watch the replay from her perspective, you will probably see that she misses, and what the opponent did wrong to get hit. I’m not a good widow player, but sometimes even I manage to get 3 or 4 kills at once when the opponent doesn’t pay attention and just runs in a straight line.
There is. You don’t need to have amazing mechanical skill to counter opponents. OW is a game about adapting and counter-picking. In fact, you can still throw the game despite having pretty good mechanics.
Take a look at https://youtu.be/GpLGprj6S-o for example. That’s a review of a Genji main that was at 2900 peak, and still loses games in silver. He outplays them in every 1v1, but because he didn’t realize he needed to switch when the enemy team picked a comp that counters him, he lost his team the match.
For example, if they have a good widow player, there’s a lot of things you can do: when you’re playing Tank, switch to Winston and dive her. When Widow doesn’t have her grapple available, she will lose the 1v1. Even a high tier Widow will struggle to win against an average Winston. (Coincidentally, I had a match yesterday where the Widow player was pretty good. The moment I switch to Winston, he swapped off to Reaper)
Are you playing DPS? Pick Tracer, Sombra or DF and just annoy her. Or pick Mei to wall her off and send some right clicks her way. Support? place Bap’s lamp where she can’t hit it and she can’t confirm kills, while you can take time to shoot at her. Or you could even go Mercy and rez one important target she killed, and when you have Valk, fly towards her and gun her down.
And of course, pay more attention to sightlines. A widow cannot headshot you if there’s no LOS.
Watch your replays, and if a player gives you trouble, watch from his perspective.
And finally, probably the most important part to get better OW matches: play more comp, you will eventually get to a level where you are comfortable. High silver/low gold is actually pretty good, and really good considering you only play a few hours per week. Many casual players have moved on from OW, and the players that still play it do it because they really like it and try to improve, like you.
That also means that the average skill (which the SR systems tries to place around 2500) increased a lot compared to 2 years ago. A friend of mine that also only plays a few hours every other week was around 1700 a few years ago, and now he’s between 500-900. I’ve reviewed some bronze matches that kinda looked like 1800 SR matches did 2 years ago; you could still tell something was off, like people missing a stationary torb turret 3 times in a row, but gamesense wise it improved a lot.
QP tries to find you a match quickly, and it can end up placing a 900 DPS + 2500 Support against a 2500 DPS and 900 Support (in this case, there’s not much the plat support can do, as the dps will lose every fight)
Comp tries to get you to a level where you have a 50% of winning, and if you don’t play a lot of comp, it tends to place you a little bit higher at the beginning (which is probably done to get smurfs out of lower ranks quickly, btw). I know it can be frustrating to see the SR going down (in fact, this is why the end screen shows the SR going up when you won, and only the new SR when you’ve lost); so I recommend just leaving the comp match after (or before) the POTG and just requeue. Get in the mindset of “gg. on to the next game”. You will eventually land in a spot where you’re comfortable and can improve from there.
I didn’t really improve for years because I played too much QP. I bit the bullet and played mostly comp, dropping 600 SR or so, but then actually felt I had an impact, and it made it much easier for me to notice when I did play badly, because I stopped making an impact. These stuff helped me a lot improving and getting back to my old SR and even climbing beyond that. And I’m in my 40s, so if I can do it, you can as well.
Just be aware that playing only a few hours a week means you probably won’t reach a high rank. For example, I’ve heard people say to climb in Plat you’ll need something like 2-4h a day to be competitive.
But that shouldn’t matter. Nobody but you cares about your SR anyway, so if you have fun, what does it matter if your SR is 500, 1000, 1500 or 3000?