Advice from a Grand Master

Competitive Discussion
43

Ok so ignore all the team stuff and look at the individual personalized advice that I tailord just for you.

Your playing rein, people standing next to you shouldent get sniped. If your stabding there with your sheild up and not shuffling around blocking shots your not doing anything. Theres no point in sheilding if your letting your team die behind it.

If you want to carry, you dont need to be DPS. Nor do you need to be hard careying to push throgh plat, you just need to do slightly better then other people in simmialr heros.

Its good that you play a diverse group of tanks, I recomend mastering the winston punch/jump combo and watching XQC if you want to get better at winston, who i think is better for you to climb if your team is bot helping you.

In addition you really should have a DPS you can play well eaither way, incase your team needs one.

In addition, you said that theres rarely 6 in team and thats something that is just not true in plat. Sure you get one or two stubborn dos mains every coupple of games but they tend to join if you talk to them positivly in team and say you will support there hero choice.

Finaly, from everything youve told me you sound like you play far to passivly and I thibk you should try throwing in some agressive plays, even if they fail at first keep practicing and find your limits. One recoomendation for agressive rein play below mid diamond is that if you jump and look down while facing someone with your sheild up while there trying to walk into your sheild they usually miss-time there shots and cant hit you, causing heros that would normaly shred you like reaper and hog to have to break your sheild first.

44

Using your example again (because it’s so juicy). Who the hell cares if people play stupid to hit some metric for gauging skill? If that metric makes people play stupid then it means it actually ISN’T a metric to determine skill. Therefore Blizz should adjust it. But regardless we should know what is affecting our skill.

45

Urrgg. if your a diamond level player in gold, you going to be doing significantly more then other heros in that tier and the system will boost you. If your not good enogh to climb normaly your not going to be able to pull of the tricks to exploit the system, aside from solo healing.

I dont know what you two are trying to prove, if you want to convice anyone that the MMR system is out to get you, explain why people can so effectivly move accounts to there main accounts rating.

(Hint: unlike your other “ideas”, you wont be able to copy paste the answer to this from the MMR conspiricy threads, so try coming up with a thought on your own)

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46

It’s not out to get anyone. It just isn’t gauging peoples’ skill correctly. I’m a very good player. I know the game. I know the game within the game. I know how to win. I win at every game I play for many years. I can adapt and play anyway. But I need to know what is expected.

I’m a very aggressive player at any game I play. That’s the only real explanation. Blizz wants the player to play passive. BUT no they don’t. I’ve played in gm and masters before, they’re very aggressive. Try to be aggressive with a bad team though. It doesn’t work. So I have to neuter my playstyle and stats, the better style, for a passive team.

If I knew what the game wanted, I’d just adjust and play like that. If it wss wrong blizz could adjust metrics. It’s all guesswork now.

47

If your above 3000, your not effected by metrics at all anymore.

If your below 3000, you are not close to good enogh to be in GM. You can improve to reach that point, given some time and effort, and I can help you with that, but a GM level player is not going to get stuck plat unless there one-tricking, toxic, or throwing.

48

Passive teams ruin stats. I’ve played in gm and master, those are my people, very aggressive, fast paced. Stats will be higher in those games no matter who you are.

Passive teams make getting stats more difficult. Less action means less stats. Not doing what you’re supposed to do as a team will make getting picks hard, doing damage hard, healing not as necessary, and tanking just a waste of a slot. It ruins games, but that’s how most sub diamond play. It’s essentially 1v6 in those games, and I will often take out 2 to 3 consistently, but it doesn’t matter, too passive of a team to capitalize.

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49

I really dont care about your opinion on this system. Please stop posting here unless you want any kind of gameplay tips or information.

edit

God i cant belive im going back and edditing in a response but the shear amount of missinformation fourm trolls have fed you hurts my soul.

The people your competeing against and trying to have better stats in are playing in the same “passive team” conditions you are. If you cant change your playstyle to fit and help your team in these situaions you dont deserve to rank up. Why are you expecting a game to reward you for what sounds to me alot like feeding.

If your team is not supporting your agressive plays, and you cant pull them off without them they play less Agressivly.

I am a tank main with little to no dps expirence. I can confidently say that i can climb at least to diamond one tricking battle mercy DPS.

You can choose to imporve, or choose to shift blame and complain. One of them will get you a high rank, one of them will make you look like a chimp on an online fourm.

I really do not want to be rude and frankly I just wanted to start a positive fourm about becoming better at the game, but you honestl seem beyond help. You are so convinced that your some kind of hidden master locked in gold, but im telling you for a fact you are not as good as you think you are. Unless you want to improve, please stop posting here.

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51

Can’t tell if sarcasm or plat player pretending to be good hmm…

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52

wrong again. 2 dps are separated from one another. one is guaranteed to get picked and contribute nothing, my choice is keep hanzo or soldier alive, leave my correct positioning, and expect both the healers and other tank to follow suit to make up for the DPS’s terrible position. or go balls deep against them to generate ult charge faster than them and hope my healers can pocket heal me.

the third option being swap my hero to hog and more reliably create 5v5’s or pick them off quicker than they can respawn not caring about ult charges on anyone.

i choose the third option every time because i understand me holding my shield is’nt going to enable soldier or hanzo, just one dps, to become capable of handing an orisa/dva on the payload combo. neither of them are going to get through that and we MUST stop the payload and take control of it at some point.

this is plat elo where i have 2 long range ish dps where neither of the two want to stand behind the shield, i can bring the shield to one of them, not both, and they are not scoring picks as noted by the 2 checkpoints lost. i must adapt. i choose hog in the losing situation to stabilize what is a guaranteed 3 checkpoint push by the enemy team.

(we now lose significantly more slowly as i readily pick off key targets, and shut down enemy dragonblade twice, but we eventually lose because they’re playing better as a team and eventually use all their ults in overtime and overwhelm us, fine)

oh, and either dps turning on their mics to listen, or swapping to reaper/mei is downright out of the question. i cant tell them how to play the game after all. “they paid to play this way”

its infuriating to guaranteed lose because im not capable of outweighing my teams deficiencies, not that im terrible, or showing average play, but because they are uncooperative, unresponsive, and counterpick themselves and put me in a tougher spot than i have to be in. just because i cant 5v7 doesn’t make me a worse player, it just means i should have been able to label this game as an outliar among my statistics. which it is. but still the AVERAGE game somehow (because of statistics yet again, it wont be him next time, it will be someone else on the enemy team also playing like an ape) handing me my win.

1 Like
53

You should add dva as a counter to pharah, hitscans are better, but a dva flying in pharahs face just ruins her day, and is good when you lack hitscan players. The counter to this, for pharahs team, is to get a hog or zarya and target her when she boost in.

54

This is an excellent suggestion D.Va is actually my go-to hero for shutting down pharas, thanks.

Zero and fudge, if you are going to insist that somehow the ranking system is broken please address why its so easy for people to rank fresh accounts up to there regular rank. Fudge, if you have to chose between saving 2 dps the answer is not to let them both die, and getting a pick makes a fight a 6v5 not a 5v5.

EDIT2:
Zero actually just bought a fresh account in the hopes that he wont be stuck in gold again, my bet is he places just under what is main account is (high gold) and maby peaks plat occasionally. If he reaches actually GM ill edit every post I have on the forums to “Zero was right, the matchmaker is a lie”. Mind you, this is a guy who has 25 minuets of objective time last season after over 30 hours of play so my hopes are not high.

A much better way to reach GM might be to take advice from someone whos made it through the same climb your attempting.

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55

Cheers Skelly. Always nice to see positive posts, on this forum especially…

I am 2300 gold, and belong there for various reasons. I knew all of the stuff in your post, so I guess it’s my bronze mechanics holding me back. So not a frustrated GM by any means…

But I can understand where some of the match making moaners are coming from.

Common sense isn’t always that common…
e.g. Rein moves left to attack Oasis. At high levels team move with and stay behind him. At low levels you can count on several team mates to go right, leaving Rein on point with his metaphorical metal c*** in his hands shielding nothing…

At lower ELOs, where 0-2 people are on comms and everybody picks what the heck they want, you need to learn a very important additional skill. Adaptation.

e.g. Had a game where I blocked 42k damage with Orisa. We still lost. Looking back over the game I note that the dps were Tracer, Pharah and Reaper. No way they were going to be using my shield. I’d have better served the team using a Winston, or even going 5th dps. After all, no way they were going to switch to McCree/ Soldier to make good use of the Orisa barriers…
Heck, I’ve had a game in gold where we went 6 dps for the lulz and full held point 1 Numbani.
At low levels all the stuff about meta just doesn’t apply. You need to work with what you’ve got.

I main Lucio, Mercy, Moira (Learning her still), Torbjorn, Junkrat and Orisa. I am looking to pick up Winston next to cover the above scenario where everybody else has gone dive. I’ll also be working on DVa as she’s just incredibly powerful and versatile anyway.

You started in gold. Did you encounter these types of no comms, super chaotic scenarios?

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56

Incredibly well detailed. Thank you.

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57

You get players not using comms as high as GM. Its a problem all the way up, however its rare to get more then one person who wont join when you ask.

I havent played in gold seince like season 4, on a different account, but you can usually get at least 4 in comms including yourself as long as you ask and remind everyone witch really is enough, tell them in chat witch way your heading as rein, and if noone follows make sure to get to a position where you can cover at least a few of them anyway. At the beginning of the game, type out witch way your heading for an initial push so those not in voice chat know. In your case, maby a charge to get back to them might have been good (if the enemy team dident have a good hog).

Just because your aware of the strategies to do well, it dosent mean your always executing them. I really do think recording some of your games with the battlenet streaming thing and re-watching them to see if there were any points were you got yourself staggerd/ held and ult to long/ missplayed and try to be aware of not making those mistakes in the future.

I also agree that there is a diffrent meta at every teir, and what works in some dosent work in others. Gold is were climbing starts becoming more difficult, but if you work with what your one-tricks / auto lockers pick and

In the case with orisa, winston or d.va definitely sound like a good swap to help the tracer and even phara take out the backline. Winston is really good in situations like that, his dive potential is amazing and hes not useless playing as a main tank as well.

Gold is when climbing gets “hard” in my opinion, in that you cant solo/duo carry every single game automatically, but as long as you do well on the heros you play and maintain a decent winrate, you can always get out. The heros you main are all pretty strong in that rank (besides orisa who relys alot on teammates comboing with her ability’s, so you might want to play her a little less unless your team is playing more heros who want to stay behind your shields and can burst down targets you orb)

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58

I play on PS4 alas.
Varies a lot between 1-2 players on comms and the occasional all 6 (Which are some really great games).
Sadly no facility to type on PS4. Comms are just a lot worse in general. Friend of mine was suggesting getting PC version.
Definitely agreed on taping games. Was shocked when I had a 40 elims game where I thought I’d done really well, then watched back and realised that I’d played like a donkey. Always worth doing when you think you’ve played a flawless match. Then see the 20+ errors pop up on review…

59

Also START BLOCKING ALT and NERF accounts

  1. Select GROUPS or RECENT players
  2. Go to the alt nerf PLAYER PROFILE (not the career)
  3. BLOCK them

Therefore your chances to be grouped with MAIN acc will rise

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60

Wow, that is pretty detailed and practical advice and in a easy to read format to boot.

Kudos!

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61

Keep your “advice”, good Sir.

62

When you play Rein, how do you know when to shield for your team and when to let your shield recover ?
When there is a widow trying to pick on your team, how do you manage to lower your shield without offering her an opening to kill your zen ?

63

Sorry but reaper doesn’t really work that well against quad tank junkrat works a lot better