Generalist vs OTP, which is the best player?

General Discussion
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Sasuke wrote something fascinating in a god forgotten forum and i decomposed it into questions because i have that much free time.

Can only OTPs master a hero?

It depends on what level of skill you are referring to with “mastering” but, if you are talking about becoming the rank 1, you 100% have to be an OTP to do that and there’s no way around it because only the OTP can develop the most detailed and ornate plays, habits and muscle memory that you simply cant think of or even understand if you dont have a lot of experience on the hero.

Can generalists know a hero better than a OTP?

Being good at everything means you are exceptional at nothing, that’s the deal.

Is it true the generalist knows how to play a hero from different aspects of the game while the OTP only from one aspect?

It is in fact exactly the contrary due to the following wall of reasons:

Talents: The OTP knows the talents of his hero far better than the generalist because he has experienced them more and is therefore more likely to correctly give value to talents and builds relative to the situation he is in.

Plays:
We all have a repertoire of plays we have access to for any hero we play & some of us know more plays than others.
Two Samuro players, one of them knows how to do the Q, B, shift+D combo to heal half his HP without backing, and the other doesn’t. Another example is the chain reaction on Mephisto. An OTP is far more likely to know about these kind of plays and knowing them gives you an advantage.

Playstyle:
Do you profit a lot from being chased or do you want to be the chaser? How should you play the team fight, proactively or reactively? Should you be the team’s scout or should you stay behind someone else? Again the OTP is more likely to choose better.

Synergies with other heroes:
Some are very wide-spread like Anduin+Johanna, but only the OTPs know about the most subtle ones. Do you know about Alarak’s synergy with an allied murky or of KTZ+ETC or of Deathwing+Blaze? Again, the OTPs are more likely to know and profit from knowing.

Timings:
Do you have enough time to kill the merc camp before the objective? Can you kill the boss before the enemies respawn and invade you? There are countless questions like this and the OTP is more likely to know the right answer.

Trading:
If you charge that enemy, will you win the trade if both of you have all your CDs? If you are missing one CD, can you still trade positively against this enemy in this situation? How should you cash-in after winning a trade and forcing your enemy back? Again, the more experienced OTP player has it easier to answer these questions.

Cooldowns and attention:
Knowing the exact cooldowns of your abilities by memory allows you to keep your eyes on your enemies. This is a great advantage for the more experienced OTP players because looking at your cooldowns for one instant can get you killed.

Dealing with expectations:
OTP players can more easily tell what their enemies think that they are going to do and how they are going to behave, therefore they can surprise them and profit from it. Generalists, on the contrary will more commonly do what their enemies expect and be punished from it.

I can go on for a long time but i think that not many will get far enough to even here so, that’s all folks.

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Good hearted people will say generalists. I say otp. And if using 3 heroes of the same role still count as a otp rather than generalist then I definitely say otp.

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Which is the “best” (more like better) player? Generalists. Ppl who can reach high mmr without spamming a Hero they “mastered” imo shows more skill.

Now which is the better with a Hero? Probably the OTP is better with an individual Hero than one who doesn’t main it but really good. Tho pretty sure there are many none Masters+ OTPs, which won’t be better with their Heroes than a Generalist Master imo.
Exceptions exist tho.

Also the Rank 1 on HP is a hollow “trophy”.

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I say neither, I’ve seen very good one tricks and flex players. However I have also seen some pretty bad one tricks and flex players. It really depends on the person. Some people are great at doing a lot of things while others are only good at one task.

I would not say trying to master every hero in the game makes you a worse player. Nor does playing one or two heroes make you better.

If you are also referring to who I would have on a team, I am fine with both. My only mandate for teammates is that they are polite.

Also I would like to add that it sounds like in your post that a player can only be a one trick or a flex player. However I find that they tend to mix together a lot. Someone for instance could become a flex player from the heroes they one tricked. Or a flex player decides to one trick their best hero. There are also players who just go “whatever” and pick whoever they feel like.

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Others calls me “Yasuke” or “Sasuke”.
Me: But I am “YUsuke”. :joy:

It always facinating how a lot of people write my name wrong, it’s like they are used to certain names, so their mind confuses them.

But on topic:

All things you mentioned about OTP can also be applied to generalists, the only difference I see that OTPs learns a certain hero faster than a generalist player, but on the contrary the otp player have to do other mistakes, before getting good.

For example a generalist plays different roles and knows the strengths and weaknesses of each role while the otp player do not, he only knows his role. I would say both ways balance it out.

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In draft a generalist is better, because the OTP can have his hero easily banned and gets significantly weakened. The generalist can adapt.

In QM the OTP is better because he can guarantee that he plays his hero.

Idealy though you want to have a player that is a bit restricted in the heroes he can play well. Since even if some of the heroes in draft can be banned, they cant ban all of them (or they just waste A LOT of countering in their draft). And because they still focus on just a few heroes, they are very similar to OTPs in QM.

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That’s a really good question. I saw a post by one of the pros saying no one beside OTP can master a hero. Others can play it well but will never be up to the their level.

But in terms of a smaller pop with an open draft (where you know the players names) the people that have a wider pool probably do better.

The other advantage of having a wider pool means you also know better about what your up against.

Personally I have a wider pool (I don’t think I have the best hand skills for micro player) and will get out played on my main by one tricks but if you can hold your own at least I think that with knowledge of game play and counters will proabably overall net you more profit

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I think this is what most “pro’s” go for and probably the best way to go.

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True one tricks flounder in high to mid diamond bc people recognize their name and ban their hero. I will ban one tricks even if they’re on my team (unless its something super impressive like medivh or genji). They’re just not fun to play with in ranked bc they’re selfish people.

Generalists also have issues. I am a hard flex player myself and i have screwed over my team before bc ill wind up with a hero in not great with instead of forcing ny 60%+ wr rehgar through.

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Well, i think most pro’s do still focus on certain aspects. So in a team there is a player dedicated to tanking, some dedicated to assassins, some to healers, and at least 1 dedicated to flexing (being a full generalist).
This way they can nearly always get a draft to go well.

Still, a OTP often enough still faces a few issues. Even if though they know their hero to perfection, a hero can still have a vulnerability. They can mitigate the risks of that vulnerability quite well. But you sometimes just want to have a diffirent hero.

But most of the time, OTP’s have a few fallback heroes that are very similar in playstyle. And that might show as a 80/20 playtime ratio, but that doesnt mean their 20 hero is significantly weaker.

And this does vary with those that realy focus on 3 heroes in a 33/33/33 style. As they do not fully dedicate to just 1 hero. The only diffirence is that those who are more flexible are much faster at adapting a new hero. This makes them a lot harder to disrupt them in a draft, and are far less affected by reworks. While at the same time, because they dedicate to those heroes equaly, they arent suffering much either. They will still perform at 99% of that OTP, and compensate that 1% by simply taking a better hero for the situation.

Only in solo queue QM the OTP beats him, because there is no randomness in drafting taking place. As soon as the 3 hero person groups up, he is in an advantage already.

To be realy competetive, you often dont master a hero, you master a class. And to master that class, and in competetive this usualy is restricted towards meta heroes. Which limits their selection a lot, and makes it managable.

I think most pro’s only truly master like 5 heroes. And on all others are less efficient. However, because their 5 heroes are often chosen in a flexible style, they are very good at using those they practice less with. Because they know the basics for all heroes, and simply have very good coordination and awareness.

But there is another aspect that OTP’s never face, and that is that players dedicate their training towards certain combat styles. Competetive games often have a diffirent flow than SL games. Mainly because of stronger communication and awareness of what the enemy team is most likely going for (they know their enemy).

If an OTP gets put in such environment, they will dedicate towards hardcountering. Normaly this means a ban in draft, but lets say they allow him to take that hero. They will have experience against that player, because each time they face that team, they face that player. Competetive is a lot more restricted in player variety.

This means that whatever the OTP uses to his advantage, is known, and will be counter drafted for. It will negate the advantage the OTP would have from having perfected that hero.

Mastering a hero too far backfires in competetive environments. This is why the strongest players in their team are usualy the flex players. The other teammates are simply a reliable backbone to allow their flex to force a certain flow. This isnt visible as the entire team goes as a team though. And the flex itself doesnt realy shine more than others. But he is the strongest because his hero choise matters more on the game than the choises of others.

Its strange how diffirent top level competetive games usualy are compared to the main game. They face aspects you never would face in normal MMR systems, even if the skill level would have been higher there. Competetive enviroments are often an entire diffirent game on their own (in team fortress 2 its no diffirence either, the team format might be the same, but the game flow is completely diffirent).

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OTPs on their main can be entertaining to watch, but I don’t want them on my team during draft pass a certain rank. It’s rare to see an OTP with over 5k pts master. They’ll either get banned out or will force painful drafts.

Like here:

Sorted to Player MMR and descending, there’s almost no player with over 50% games played on their main hero.

If you want to aspire to be a good player, do what they do. Main 2 roles, know who to ban and practice a lot in high rank.
The next step is doing scrims with voice comms against the best players.

You were happy to beat out the Kerrigan OTP in QM, but he’d be nothing in GM games.

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So you’re a troll. Banning your OWN team’s onetricks

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Not against the rules. No report option for it. You need 16ish heroes to get into ranked last i checked :thinking:

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I consider your action as griefing, if you know exactly that one of your teammates is a OTP and you will ban his hero without reasoning. I would just report you for abusive chat as I see your behaviour is toxic in that case.

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Good thing i don’t type in chat when i do this.

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So you’re don’t communicate to your team, if they ask you kindly why do you ban a hero your teammate want? Looks like you’re not really a teamplayer, but a solo selfish one.

It becomes more funny, when I read your posting again:

Complaining about selfish player, while being selfish himself, the irony.

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Just a reminder that youve had your account banned temporarily before while i haven’t so careful throwing stones in glass houses. The lesson is simple, dont go into ranked with 1 hero in your roster. I actually wait to type to see how team feels. ost of the time we nass report the otp who feeds as a result.

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Your response is a threat? How lovely… but still it doesn’t change the fact that your behaviour is wrong in that case.

While I agree it’s not great, if players only picks 1-2 heroes into ranked, but it’s still legit, because there are no rules from Blizzard that it’s against the rules. But it’s actually quite the opposite devs encourages OTPs, because they removed the level restriction to heroes.

If he’s feeding on purpose, because you banned his hero then it’s obviously legit, otherwise it’s false report.

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I know that english is your second language which is impressive as heck and this isn’t ne trying to put you down. You seem to have completely misinterpreted my comment however as it was in no way a threat. True though it didn’t do nuch to justify the situation. I don’t have time to sunnerize (m key is broken so i have to use n) the exact circumstances surrounding every banning phase. Needless to say i save it for very specifc circumstances that do not wind up in ny team regarding it as trolling. So its nuch easier to type “i ban otp” than “i sometimes ban otp when they’re toxic in draft and when they feed ny team reports the pony”

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I just found this funny, ignore this :smiley:

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