So I decided to experiment and buy a smurf account back when it was on sale during Christmas 6 months ago. This account. However, after I leveled it to 25, I decided to give it to my friend who wanted to play OW with me and my other friends. After about a few months he got a new account and I could then play on this one whenever I felt like it. I mainly used this account to hone my skills on other characters that I may be forced to flex to on my main account, seeing as I’m a main tank player, and if that role is taken I would then be expected to play the off tank role. So I practiced characters like Zarya, Hog and D.Va and a few other DPS like Hanzo and Widow just to practice aim. I basically treated competitive as casual because there wasn’t really anything on the line and I felt no pressure. This was all mainly in Season 10. After placements I got placed at 2450, which was to be expected as my friend spent a solid 3 seasons at about mid gold. I pretty much hovered around this area and basically had fun like I would in qp, but in a somewhat competitive environment. But then I wanted to do a bit of testing and see how my true skills stacked up against others in this ELO, so I decided to play my signature hero, Reinhardt (or at least in this meta lol, rip Winston). And I was surprised to see how easy it was to climb. After I won my first game by a blowout, I wanted to go tryhard and see how much I could climb in a short amount of time.
So I did and gained about 250 sr in about 3 hours of gameplay. I could see that the amount of sr getting was no where near the amount I was received when I was playing more casually, up from about 20-25 sr to 30-35 sr (there was even one game where I got a whopping 43 sr, I don’t even know lol). The overall way I approached each game was just play Rein just like I would in my normal ELO, and I was getting shatters every 30-60 seconds, getting at least 2-3 stuns every shatter, with 4-5 man shatters pretty often and blocking enemy Rein shatters almost every game. I also communicated with my team as best as I could and asked them to go into team chat. I would frequently give advice to my supports in how they should play so that they would stay alive, and always asked for a Zarya before the game started (so i don’t get bullied as Rein) they usually switched about half the time, but when they did I would ask for bubble and just swing away until I got basically half my ult. Anyways, my main point is that where is this ELO hell everybody keeps talking about? Even I was pretty much in the mindset of “well I know I can only improve myself, not my team, so I’ll mainly focus on my team, but sometimes I just can’t carry my teammates hard enough” before I smurfed. But I’ve come to realize know that if you deserve to be higher, you WILL climb. And I think another thing people need to realize is that just because you’re playing adequately, does not mean you deserve to climb, then you’ll just stay at your current sr because that’s where you belong. Climbing is not only being able to play adequately, but also being able to CARRY at that ELO, that’s the only way you’ll truly climb. Sure you’ll get throwers, leavers and games where everyone mains one character and they’re forced to flex, but the enemy team can easily form a perfect comp, every now and then, but the normal games will always out weigh those by a large margin. And hey, the new LFG system will definitely solve a lot of those problems anyways.
Main account is RedElRegnans btw
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I assume since you play main tank that by, “carry,” you mean perform actions that increase your entire team’s odds of winning, and not necessarily that you have to be the one getting every elimination. Would that be correct?
I just want to clarify, because people have different ideas of what carrying means.
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that’s pretty much it yeah, I mean being able to do everything for your team is pretty unrealistic so yeah.
I just wanted to make sure. A lot of people get it in their heads that carrying requires becoming a god-like DPS and wiping everything out.
But I always just tell people who struggle to get better on heroes like Rein, because you can control the the flow of a fight, and the more space you create, the better off your teammates are allowed to be.
Guess I just never considered that carrying.
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fair enough, that’s pretty true
I agree with what you are trying to say, if you “deserve” to be higher you will climb.
but that might not be understood correctly by everyone.
who deserves to be higher? it is not like “i have been playing for a year now and im stuck in silver… damn forced lossing streaks/leavers/throwers/matchmaker/ ELO hell…”
you dont deserve to be higher just because of the amount of time you spend.
you deserve to be higher if you learn and “earn” the skills of higher tier players.
these skills include hero mecahnics as well as good game sense.
in hero mechanics you need to learn how your best heros work, where they should be and when and what abilities to use and when to engage and when to pull back.
in game sense you need to know how to build a winning comp (2-2-2 is the basic one) hero synergies, having a main tank and an off tank, having a main heal and an off heal, be aware of the DPS, hitscan/projectile, flanker/with the team ect, picking counters to the enemy team is also very important.
when in the game know where your team is, how to work together how to communicate how to combo ults, when to flank, where to go, when to push hard, when to reset and regroup, keep in mind how to out play the enemy team, try and figure out they might do next, mostly in the area of what ults they are going to pull out.
there is a lot to learn in this game players need to understand that this is a team game but indevidual plays matter a lot, if you review and watch a close game you lost you will see probably a few key plays YOU DID that might have turned the game around and make it a win. a miss played ULT, a time you dies that cause your team to stagger, a kill you could have had but missed, or didnt push and so on.
on another note, about the smurf account, i also bought a new account to train on some off heros that i am not the best at, but i try hard with the new account and try to win, but i dont pull out my main heros because that would be not fair, if you are a mid gold with hanzo, then pulling out a rein which you are a diamond with is not fair to the other team, and makes the whole game just feel bad, the enemy team gets stomped, your team gets carried, no one really learned anything from that game and you just boost your own ego… thats one of the bad things in this game, i dont want a smurf in my games, i want each game to be a good balanced game where if my team wins it is because we out played a team with the same skill. not because we had a god player that crushed everyone.
As a fellow Rein main, elo hell is in the 2200-2800 range for me. At 2200 you get enemies that are a little bit easier to kill than 2800 but at the expense of nobody on your team working together. All things considered it’s about the same difficulty to win and basically a dice roll within that range. Below 2200 I can just go DPS and carry and above 2800 the average player is too good for me. I’m hoping that role select could be my ticket to diamond next season though, so I’ve been trying to get better at all the tanks.
I consider carrying to be preforming a few hundred SR above where you are currently. No matter the role, preform better than your counterpart to tip the odds in your favor.
Sorry what? Theres no elo hell. If i play rein in gold/plat, i just straight up destroy the enemy team
how often is both tank slots taking in competitive? I main tank and do QP and I’m usually the only tank in the group. I’m lucky as road hog to get a 2nd tank to pair up with me.
You deserve to be in plat.
You need to play more.