this is the most plat take I’ve read in a while. Very often, either you need to swap heroes to peel a certain comp/have more damage/play certain heroes that are good, or there is a very clear play that you must do.
For example, if you are running Hog Rein and the enemy has a Hammond, it doesn’t make sense for me to swap off of Widow because you are unwilling to hook the Ball as Hog and instead prefer greeding for the Ana.
Likewise, if it comes down to an Orisa Sig vs Orisa Sig situation and your supports wanna troll on Ana Mercy (support btw is a role that VERY OFTEN attracts trolls, far more than tank, why is nobody talking about this?), then if your supports are unwilling to swap to shieldbreaking heroes (Bap, Zen…), there is no reason for you to play Ashe Hanzo as you will never get good angles or help your tanks be aggressive.
These simple concepts are often misunderstood and are what makes people plat or diamond, even in masters often people fail to grasp simple things.
One more example, if you are running Tracer Widow and your tanks are like idk… Rein Hog or Rein Zarya or Sigma Rein and they have a Ball, it doesn’t make sense for you to go for their backline as Tracer, you can play a tank killing role and go for the Ball, by doing so you enable your Widow massively and make her feel safe also, and it’s a fairly easy 1v1 that nobody wins but it’s more valuable to stall a Ball than a Tracer so on an average team you come out ahead.
This of course assuming your Widow hits any shots at all, but from a certain elo Widows are semi-consistent and you can count on her hitting a few shots if she gets peeling.
tl;dr: comp matters and understanding win condition matters. “It’s everyone’s job to peel” is a very plat take that fails to capture how to play a comp and how to take favorable 1v1s, if for example I am Tracer and I am doing OK, I am not gonna peel a Dva or the enemy Tracer if I don’t feel like it because these are not interesting 1v1s for me that I can get a lot of value from, it is your duty to swap from Ana and go something else if you are dying to the enemy Tracer because the way I see it, enabling your Ana to miss all Sleepdarts and Anti-nades is not valuable especially if they run like Ball/Sigma or Dva I’m 100% not gonna peel for you, you are throwing by playing Ana unless you are a god-tier gamer (which if you are not smurfing and at your equilibrium elo, you probably aren’t), so if you wanna keep throwing don’t wonder why you derank and people seem selfish and you never get peeled, I might not be willing to go McCree for a plurality of reasons ranging from inconsistent healing (McCree requires pocket) to the enemy having something annoying for McCree to deal with like Sigma or Hanzo, to me just wanting to play Tracer in that moment and the hero happening to be good.
Too often the blame is put on the wrong people, I agree specifically tanks are blamed too much and supports are not blamed enough especially for their 1 tricks not working.
