This isn’t a rant or anything, as I truly love this game, but man am I feeling deflated after experiencing 16 losses in a row all on characters I’ve played since they were added or I started playing back in 2016.
I just can’t help but feel I’m a horrible player, yet my overall winrate is 50.1%, so I know I’m not awful. Still, it doesn’t feel fun to lose so much in a row.
How’s everyone else been feeling?
I think my longest overall streak was 10+ (match history full red and then some on top of that).
Not much to do except log out to avoid the tilt, and try again tomorrow. That’s the only thing that worked for me. Being 10+ in the red and continuing to play generally never yields good results.
If you play solo exclusively, your win/loss swings will also be much harsher than the match log of someone who parties up with even 1 additional player.
As far as I’ve looked at the profiles of super high ranked players, they don’t have these kinds of loss streaks. Their streaks usually break after 2-3 losses.
Losing ten or more games in a row, while it could be extremely bad luck, is likely your mood or touch for the game being lackluster on that certain day. Sleep it off and play again fully refreshed 
Congratulations, you have managed to match my record!
I was doing SL and I lost a few so just said, keep playing until it turns. Well.
In retrospect I frame it as science, realizing that after losing so many, you start losing more points. 
If only I could test the same with wins!
Sometimes it helps to tell the team that it’s rough.
I can’t pinpoint the time but I had several minor loss streaks (8-10) and not handling it well.
A couple years later I also managed a nasty evening of 15 losses with Valla. And a win or two and a loss or two.
The crazy thing is, I usually did this to shortcut tilt.
A year or two ago I played specifically until the first loss each day. Usually with (truly) random heroes. I was relatively happy.
Then I lost for nearly two weeks. Plus a little as I was skipping.
At one point I realized - and I firmly believe - that our contribution to a win is tiny. Partly because that’s the job of MMR (as long as you influence, your rank shifts and eventually you can’t). So, as you say, it says less about you and more about your luck - or “how the game treats you”.
I had a rough time two months ago, mostly due to connection issues and then “loser bucket”, so to speak (it always happens, either some fancy MMR adjustment or troll detection). Played a few today: W, L, W, L, W, L. Match 4 was nice, long, close. I clearly had a “welcome back” feeling during the first match and then anti-streak swings in the rest. All results were deterministic. But it was fun to play!
Both that Valla and recently Johanna… I have this thing that when I lose a few and try to win, I just can’t. So with Jo I was like, I must be doing wrong but hey, I’m going to soak. It usually works. Nope. Going to rotate. Nope. Avoid TF, just get XP… nope. I lost so much, I can totally carry now! Nope, enemy is clearly a master stack.
However, if I get angry and start running into towers, we are ahead in xp, and I totally cannot lose.
So if I accept my fate and start playing, we fall behind.
So I restart feeding and the team pulls themselves together.
Puzzling.
One match I was similar mental state on Malfurion and decided not to heal. We were fine until level 8-10-12 when my team realized and started pinging. Eventually I started healing. At that point we started losing hard.
Lesson, TLDR: Don’t think. Just play. The Matrix is bigger than you.
If I have to share my own loss steak story then I tried to end the day with a 17 loss steak.
It was just not my day no matter which hero I picked. But then the day after I was back again winning 4-5 games in a raw with a few loses in between. They are annoying when they happen but you cant really do anything but to do your best in those games and just shake them off.
You’re 1000% right, I just went away to do a workout and came back and played a game on Brightwing…and I won (and got MVP too, not that that really matters)
It’s really rough. Normally Brightwing and Morales are my go to heroes to break a streak, but it just wasn’t happening for me. But I stepped away and came back with a positive mindset and won thanks to the power of faerie dragons.
Hopefully anyone else having a bad streak pulls through, you got this 
HOTS is an incredibly toxic game in terms of machmaking towards its own players. I’m not sure which mode you play but QM is a disaster and SL heavily depends on the weekday and in which division you play.
The dishonest algorithms want you to be around 50%, so short term win/loss streaks mean nothing. Just be patient.
I think it’s important to also set goals for yourself to maintain positivity. Take those 16 losses and shoot for a 20 loss streak 
You can do it!
I had my best season with Tassadar (and maybe Qhira) when I had a broken wrist, so I couldn’t really press buttons. My mouse hand was fine.
The secret to playing well is clearly to take it easy.
Unless you’re grandmaster. In which case, not pressing buttons might be a disadvantage. Except playing Tracer or DVa.
Just trying to be a happy funny fluffy, erm, Heroes emblem. Not being a panda.
Please don’t become a head of state.
“This economy is horrible. Maybe if I nuke my own country…”
Personally, I know it’s innevitable that I’ll eventually stop playing due to the fact that my losses and wins are affected by so many things outside my control.
Like if I’m on Braxis playing the best game of my life, and the enemy send 2 more people to deal with me because I’m winning the lane too hard, and my team still loses a 4 vs 2, I can’t really point to anything I did that caused the loss. Like. “Oh, I should have drawn 80% of the enemy’s ressources by myself instead of 60%”
The worse games to me aren’t the ones with trolls. They’re the ones where you’re playing really well, bringing tons of value to your team, but they cancel every advantage you give them.
The girl who won 2nd in the speed puzzling championship was using only one hand. Maybe you guys have some kind of secret.
That’s what Blizz is aiming for. If you win too many matches, you will be placed with losers, feeders, players known for AFKing or those that earned a lot of complaints. Just to make sure you lose and lose and lose to get you closer to the 50% again. Happens all the time. You have a winstreak of 10 matches and suddenly it all changes and you lose 10 matches in a run although you play no different to before but suddenly your team mates pick the worst garbage without synergies, the worst talents possible and then start to yolo or never try to dodge any AOEs.
It’s so obvious that from one match to the next the skill of the players in your team are getting worse just to make it harder for you to win - or in other words: To make you lose so your winrate goes down to 50% again. Just check the profiles of players that have thousands of levels. You will always see the same. Close around 50% and when you scroll through their match lists you will find streaks of losses there, too.
This forced winrate model has been complained about since this game went live. Blizz always denied that they actively force this and merely said, that it is just natural to end up at 50% because you will be matched with better players after a while and at some point find your skill ceiling and then you will always bounce back between too easy and too hard - hence 50%. But this logic doesn’t count in ARAM. There is no skill level that increases. It is not like ranked.
forced winrate has been debunked.
It’d be nice if you were literate enough to notice that instead of demonstrating your arrogant ignorance instead.
If you would like explanations or sources, feel free to ask, but you are otherwise not skilled, not observant, and not presenting actual evidence to back your claims. The capacity to claim whatever impulse crosses your mind does not automatically make it correct. That should be “obvious” but a number of people don’t put in enough exercise for their brains to learn the difference between correlation and causation. Instead, they want to pretend they’re internet experts with nothing to show for it, and then get frustrated when few others believe their conspiracy theories.
So they make alts to repeat themselves and pretend they represent some magical ‘majority’ that they do not.
OP, I too have had my share of miserable losing streaks. I believe my highest was 11 losses, a streak I broke with the ever reliable (and easy to play) Nazeebo.
I’m happy to read you broke yours with my favorite faerie dragon. When I’m having a losing streak in QM, I’ll either log off, or pick a hero like Brightwing or Nazeebo, that I enjoy playing, win or lose, that alone can break the losing “curse.”
it doesnt happens to me, with good teammates i can win over 70% of the games… but with bad teammates, man i can lose whatever games you want, and the point is, when i have a bad dudes doing bad things on my team… i just say… okay two can play that game, so i ensure the game will end even faster, i dont even bother carrying people who doesnt want to play nice, so i just go okay and do anything else till game ends… and it feels amazing because i never feel i´ve lost, i always win even if i lose
When you reach your skill cap, being at 50% is perfectly normal. It’s a sign of a balanced healthy matchmaker.
Nobody is forced to lose 50% all the time though. Fan and countless other GM streamers have proven time and time again they can go on 200+ streaks of winning with nothing more than 1 or 2 losses in between.
Not to mention the countless people at low Bronze who have 25-40% lifetime win ratios.
They would be thrilled to be forced to win 50% of the time!
If you are playing solo your winrate will always be close to 50% no matter what unless you better than the average player. This is not a secret lol. If you think you belong much higher then you have to prove you belong there.
And QM winrates means nothing anyway because of how its build to make groupes have higher winrates then solos. The only game mode where it would matter is in ranked.
I’d imagine playing in a hyper-sweaty five stack in QM probably does wonders as well, but who am I to say
Sometimes I take that advice and keep losing. It annoys me further.
Same with logging off.
Generally it does help, don’t get me wrong. HotS Pomodoro - two matches, break.
So if I burn, I wish to burn until it stops.
Besides. If I lose 50 matches in a row, it will get really easy from the next day on, and I’ll have a happy month ahead. Aside of not playing for a while out of spite.
After losing a few matches in silver it puts me in a diamond match. At first glance it’s nonsense, at second I deduced that there might be several layers of MM (current MMR, average MMR, match MMR) and most of these make sense one way or another. One of the simple ones is, my MMR gets low so now I am the one being decoration: getting carried by really good players - hopefully also inspired and happified. Extra layer, intentional spread of match quality to give people all kinds of experiences, a lot of people complain that they need high quality teammates to function. Ultimately though, in a foul mood, all of this is salt on the wound while in a good mood, this can be entertaining and smart.
Case in point, any and all of this can be hit and miss.
Like after tanking my MMR with a questionable hero, I log my main to win some, and suddenly I am 1000 MMR higher and oopsies. (Regular experience.) Heck, it’s legit to avoid artificial 100% winrate heroes (lose 5 matches, log main for a free win, repeat).
Hiding rambling behind a collapsible wall doesn’t make it better, does it.
(I respect your post however. Happy that it works and also for OP.)
Do you ever have anything even slightly positive to say? My post was not directed at you, and considering I suffer from social phobia, it’s both laughable and insulting that you keep making the claim I play in five stacks.
Except for playing as a duo with two IRL friends, for the past five or so years, I’m exclusively a solo player, but hey, keep projecting upon me whatever narrative that suits you.
My own advice doesn’t always work for me, either. I’ve logged off after a big losing streak, only to return a couple of days later only to extend that losing streak. My approach isn’t for everyone, simply if I’m losing too much, and I don’t intend to take a break, I pick heroes that I love playing, so if I do continue to lose, it’s not quite so demoralizing.
Gosh I wish I could 5 man all day, instead I stomp them.
lol