Dev question: Is it impossible to rank up solo q?

I solo queue. I queue all roles competitive. I get paired as a healer 98% of the time. I choose Anna or Moira. I play well as a healer, pretty well. Yet, my team loses. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that I got ranked as Bronze 5 and it NEVER changes. It doesn’t matter HOW WELL I HEAL, I get ranked Bronze 5 OVER AND OVER again. There is no progress. I pick up endorsements. Which I think does nothing.

So my question is, WHY does the rank system work like this? Am I to believe that you could theoretically be the best in the world at your role and never rank up cause your win rate is too low? I’m not saying, I’m anywhere near that. It just seems like that’s possible. That the ranking system only takes in to account WINNING. In a TEAM game. A single person has no control over WINNING. I also assume a lot of the time, I’m queuing in to pre-made teams which doesn’t help. Better communications, better teamwork. Etc.

Am I wasting my time playing this game? I don’t care about my rank as much as I’d like to advance some to play with people who better understand the game. Not to mention, getting away from the people who intentionally throw would be nice. And I’m not talking about the subjective throwers, the ones that actually sit around and do nothing the entire game or leave early making it 4v5.

I know I’m naive in regards to OW matchmaking and ranking, but I’m shocked that it doesn’t seem to matter what your stats are or how you play. It just seems like a flat win-rate system.

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Issue is that the incompent developers scewed up everyone initial ranking. Broke statistics and waited 2 weeks to fix the issue.

Now all the shills who didn’t get bugged are like “your at your rank”. In reality your dealing with 2 problems.

  1. There is a huge amount of skilled players stuck in Bronze 5. The matchmaker rigs games when you go on a win streak. This causes everyone to stay below their true rank.
  2. There is no one playing support in bronze. You have a smaller group of players who your benchmarked against.

Your not winning but you cannot derank anymore so your fighting with players who have 6 years experience in the game.

At this point just play to have fun while trying to do your personal best. In 2-3 seasons this crap might get fixed.

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I ranked Bronze 5 in Overwatch 2 with a 7-0 streak straight out of my first competitive matches.

Long story short, I ranked up to Platinum 4 solo queuing and one tricking as only Hanzo.

The matchmaker is doing as it is intended and it is doing it exceptionally well.

The inconvenient truth that many Players (I used to be one of them) refuse to accept is this:

Your SKILL is what will determine where you are to be placed and NOT by the matchmaker.

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It’s possible. It’s probably extra frustrating for everybody in bronze 5 (my reason why) but you can climb out of it solo.

They’ll never be rated to a pinpoint accuracy but they’ll be approximated pretty quickly.

It’s still true to say “the best player in the world might be underrated because they don’t play enough” but that’s sort of like saying “Are they really the best marathon runner in the world if they ran half the race, got bored and quit?”

For an idea on a timeframe, you can look at how long any given “unrated → highest rank” challenge takes in any matchmade game. OW is pretty consistent with them. Look at the tail-end where they’re well matched, how long it takes them to approach the final 500sr or so. Often it’s half of the entire challenge. Sometimes more.

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You really need a replay of your games to see how good or not you might really be.

No offense, but people historically always over value their worth and under value their mistakes. Your definition of good heals and other traits might not be contributing to a good overall situation on why you aren’t seeing the wins. Looking at top 500 I consider pretty much any healing to be acceptable when its around 1000heal/1min. If you are a Moira going like 1000 dmg + 10k heals in 10min, you likely could have outputted 6k dmg and 10k heals in 10min as a better Moira player.

Ultimately, healing is putting trust in your teammates to make up the difference. When they fail to do that basic check you sometimes need to do more direct play making ability.

I love how there is always at least one, like you; out there. Coincidentally, they name themselves “Bro” every time. :slight_smile:

every rank below diamond has “skill based SR gains” which means if you have higher stats than other players on your hero/role at that rank you will lose less SR on a loss and gain more SR on a win. if you are hard stuck at a low rank then you are hard stuck. this change was made so that smurfs get boosted out of low elo fast and it does its job good. instead of blaming the matchmaker, try watching higher ranked players to get better and getting someone higher ranked to vod review with you

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I’ve been playing FPS for a long time. I know people over estimate their capabilities. What’s even more common is people looking at the stats and making judgments about quality of play. As a healer, you’re limited by the quality of your tank and the dps. If you have a tank that is clueless(or non-existent in 4v5) games it doesn’t matter how well you heal. If you have DPS that is clueless(or non-existent in 4v5) games it doesn’t matter how well you heal.

I play Anna most of the time. My numbers are usually between 8k-19k in healing. I use all of my abilities, some of them offensively at times. My kill/death ratio is good. I do not die often. With Moira it’s really hard to die. Her survive-ability is too high.

I need to find a document that describes the ranking system. If it’s just win-rate, I’m gonna stop playing. Bronze 5 games are just too chaotic. I had 5 Junker-queen tank games in a row. One guy knew how to play her. Two of them threw intentionally, Two of them were just clueless. One of the guys was begging people to report him. Everyone did. I had reported him previously for throwing. Doesn’t seem to matter. What do you do when you get paired multiple times with someone like that? It affects your win-rate.

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that’s because I did it.

The game is literally unplayable and unbearable at solo queue rn. You get so many new players who don’t have any game sense or know how to counter any characters that it’s immensely frustrating. If they never got rid of LFG this would’nt be an issue because people could at least still build competent teams. Keep in mind I’m playing at my rank in gold and have been there so ranking up isn’t the issue, I just don’t want games that make me wanna cry because of how the team is losing just by being uncoordinated and not knowing how to play the game

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You are right about stats. The thing is that results, good plays, and stats tend to correlate with each other on making a difference for your team. Even from support you can make large changes. Especially if your delta for your team is higher than where you belong.

There are so many unranked to GM account videos out there over the years where people just one trick to GM where they get results. Even some deranked. While some of those players are indeed top 500 players even regular people can raise fairly quickly if they are really as good as they need to be. Generally, 1000-1500 SR is a HUGE difference in ability is kind of nutty. Within 500 its not as easy to tell.

Part of your issue might simply be not recognizing when you need to make particular plays. You don’t go in when you should and stay too far back. Using ult at the wrong time not comboing it with someone else or saving it for your best performing player. Not keeping sleep dart in reserve to kill a pesky diver. Failing to secure kills that you should have gotten. Perhaps blaming teammates on not saving you as Ana when you have perfectly good options in the support roster to make use of at all.

Too many times I have seen people raise in rank because they were legitimately good and too many times I’ve seen people think they were good give a replay and you spot numerous mistakes made that lead to missed opportunities.

Our discussion is very subjective and the only objective thing are some games.

I started as DPS at bronze 3 and now I’m gold 3. I haven’t been able to get past gold 3. So for me, I guess it might be impossible to move on beyond gold 3. Certainly, if I get a carry, I can go higher.

Yes, unfortunately yes.
My advice is: Play open q. This way you are not stuck on a role and you can switch to what is needed. By climbing the ladder up in open q, your rank in role q will most likely adjust to your rank in open q when you come back to play it.

Have you done this as support though?

How often do you die though? Apparently, we’re never supposed to die, like 3 deaths max.

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I climbed from silver 4 to diamond only through solo queue and some coaching/vod reviews on the side. FYI, this game does not get any more fun the higher you climb up. Learn to enjoy the game and rank you’re in, have fun, and improvement will come if you enjoy learning. If you are expecting the game to magically become fun at rank X, you might be disappointed.

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As support, I really think you’re at the mercy(pun intended) of how good your tank is. Since there is only ONE now, if they are horrible it’s really hard to win. That tends to be the biggest issue. I can easily go 5-10 games in a row with a tank that either doesn’t know what they’re doing or is outright throwing(not by choosing their class) or just leaves putting us 4v5. I have won a few games 4v5, even won once 3v5 incredibly. It’s really hard to do when it’s the tank. You need godlike DPS.

As a good healer you can make the team better, but a really bad tank just sinks the ship more. There are two healers so one bad healer can be compensated for. One bad DPS can also be compensated for.

I play chess at master level(2200+), I’d put my OW2 elo at somewhere between 1600-1800. That low because I don’t know the maps like the back of my hand yet. I don’t have experience with some of the newer characters. I lack experience on ultimate timing, but in bronze 5 it’s really hard to find people who know how to coordinate ultimates. You’re lucky if you get basic communication in a solo q group. As for my dart, 90% of the time I save it for flanking players I get surprised by. Regardless, my strategic play is not master level nor even expert. It’s just not beginner level(500-800) but that’s where I’m playing.

I just want to escape the intentional throwers and the leavers. WAY too many of them in Bronze 5. I can handle being paired with people who don’t know how to play.

Its definitely possible watch some of those from bronze 5 to GM YouTube videos.

we are not talking about ranking to plat 4…we are trying to rank from bronze 5 to bronze 4 with hundreds of games over 50% wins and good dmg healing kills efficiency…the system basically keeps us with people with hypothetically 0% wins, 0 damage or healing …heck…he doesnt even have to play just run around and hes the same rank as you busting your butt off every match…i play with my friend that is steadily ranking and now gold 4 while i didnt move one rank from bronze 5…same w/l…similar stats…get your head out of your azz your experience isnt the only one…bronze 5 was already a bug they “fixed” so thats a red flag right there

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They knew exactly what they were doing. If they hadn’t got rid of LFG you would get groups of vets vs solo newbies and the game would be losing even more players than it already is.

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I have. My first placement 4 years ago was bronze. Now I’m t500. In OW 2 I placed plat 3 and now I’m sitting at rank 278 on support at the time of this post. You can definitely solo q and climb on support if you’re good.