Was hoping maybe some people in this thread could help give some insight as to why my friend seems unable to escape bronze. This will be a bit of a long one.
My friends and I have started playing comp recently, we’ve all climbed to plat and are planning to climb higher, but are no longer able to play with our friend in our respective roles because they cannot seem to escape bronze, and are becoming increasingly upset about it. For context: they are a Mercy main, with over 200 hours in comp, 400 Mercy hours, 2 gold weapons, yet still to my knowledge have never made it out of bronze, even since they met and began playing with us lately.
We’ve even offered to watch some of their replays and try to see if we can find out why, but they like to deflect any reasonings we come up with. I personally do not know exactly what factors into the ranking system (which is why I’m here asking you) but I will tell you things in their games that I have noticed:
•They don’t die very frequently, if at all
•They don’t use their pistol very much, if at all. Almost never, except on the occasional Widow
•It is very rare that they swap characters. Usually 100% Mercy
It is noticeable in both our comp and quick play games that their movement, healing, and damage boost enabling us to get more kills are most definitely there. Healing output and staying alive is not a problem for them- the main things my friends and I have noticed are what I’ve pointed out above.
Please, if someone could help provide some insight, a better understanding, and some advice for climbing for a stubborn Mercy main, we’d all appreciate it. We’re not quite sure what to tell them anymore.
no. 100% of mercy mains in bronze do not know how to use their ult correctly. heck 80-90% of gold mercy mains do not use their ult correctly.
The primary differentiator between gold mercy and bronze mercy is # of deaths (which you claim is not too high, though I wonder if you know what carry level deaths on a mercy player needs to look like) and awareness.
If you don’t understand who is doing well on your team and who has to be prioritized based on skill of teammates and available ults, then they will heal the wrong person (useless player) thereby causing their team to lose.
Getting to plat with mercy requires not suiciding and having basic understanding of what your teammates are doing. Getting to diamond requires you to actually learn to push Q properly.
That’s why I despise the character. no other skills required, just basic game sense and Q pressing. but your friend will not rank up by getting carried by you. the system already factors in your skill and will figure out what differential your friend is making for your group. if two of you group and you typically perform at plat, then they will test whether your friend and you can deal with plat + higher bronze or plat + silver…so ultimately your friend has to have more impact or he/she won’t climb
Nothing is impossible, but escaping Bronze on Mercy is going to be really hard. It’s just easier to switch to basically anything else to climb and get back on Mercy when your at a higher rank. I’ve never been in Bronze, but I think I can sort of imagine what it’s like and you have to fight yourself out on your own. Mercy is by far the worst hero for that, and works better the higher you climb.
I’m sure it’s possible to glock your way out of Bronze as Mercy, but it’s going to be easier on literally any other hero in comparison. It’s always good to have a alternative to your main hero anyway and Bronze is a great place to find out what that hero is.
Matchmaking sucks at the moment, but it’s not keeping silver or gold players in bronze. As for the bug, it was fixed awhile ago. I’ve had alot of people claim they are still victims of it but when I watch their replays they are clearly bronze.
You’d need to watch their replays but if they are in bronze they are probably supposed to be there. Generally being bronze mercy means not capitalizing, and not ever helping the aggressive player who’s trying to get stuff done. Whenever someone is doing something help them, if they aren’t doing something let them die.
Most supports in bronze are passive only so they get healed by the other support anyway.
But really, replays are where it’s at.
I’d focus on this first of all before jumping to any “matchmaker bugged” conclusions. There are for sure bugs, but that doesn’t mean everyone who can’t get out of bronze gets to claim bugs. Most are just legitimate bronze players.
That said, you haven’t really given us anything. You might as well have said “they do stuff”. The least we could use it a replay code.
Mercy is difficult to carry as, but it shouldn’t be difficult to do in bronze.
I’m a Mercy main too, scaped bronze 1 last week. (climbed to silver 4, i’m silver 5 again but working on it XD). It was easier to climb switching betweet Kiriko and Mercy, sometimes Lucio and Bap. I think more variety is better maybe if your friend try something different and wait until they climb to pick Mercy more…?
I read somewhere that healers need to be sure and get assists so they can raise their MMR and get ranked up. So she should be changing to her pistol every once in awhile once she’s sure her team won’t die without her healing, and for sure needs to be using that right click to dmg boost.
Honestly unless your friend picks up another support he’s gonna have a hard time escaping bronze just playing mercy. She’s too team dependent and at that elo you’re just damage boosting garbage that can’t hit shots. Only way I’ve been able to escape bronze and silver is playing Ana/Zen and DPSing myself, only healing when necessary
It could be they haven’t played enough games. Blizz stated they only look at wins to calculate your SR. It could just be that your friend needs to play more games, a lot more games. If your friend’s win rate is not exceptional they will have to play even more games. For me it’s too much of a grind so I just can’t play ranked with my friends unfortunately. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, having other priorities.
I’ve got to gold as 90% mercy. Struggling to get passed it but I’ve got some tips that allowed me to get out of low silver
Watch a YouTube video to learn the movement abilities she has
Look at the enemy team, if they have no long range hitscans, you are free to fly about above the battle at all times. If they do you have to play around cover and dart between walls, you’ve got air cover on certain maps too
Start with toggle beam and toggle GA, and just focus on learning the movement, then switch to hold GA to learn how to play with that, then once you are comfortable with that switch back to hold beam
Get out of the habit of doing risky rezzing, only rez when there is clear cover, even I try risky rezzez every now and again and 60% of the time I’ll be punished and now we are 3v5 instead of 4v5.
look at your other support, if it’s a main healer like ana, you are free to pocket a dps, if it’s one with less main breaking like moire or zen, you are gonna need to stick near the tank and help keep them topped up
If you’ve got a good second support with high healing, don’t bother healing yourself unless they are below 50% or the other support is no where near. Trust the other support and damage boost!
You have to be very adaptive if you wanna main mercy and read the game well
Hours played and gold weapons have nothing to do with skill. There are plenty of bronze, silver, and gold Mercy players with many more hours than I have playing the hero, yet I’m a better Mercy player than them. And I wouldn’t consider myself to be a good Mercy.
Then they’re going to stay in bronze if they are unwilling to accept help/advice (unless they are wanting advice from someone higher rank than you guys, but they might’ve told you that unless they couldn’t think of a polite way of wording it).
These might be a couple of issues holding them back from climbing out of bronze when solo queueing, but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately figure out the problems without replay codes. So I want/need replay codes. Tell your friend that you met me, a diamond support and diamond+ tank, and I’d like to help. I want at least 1 replay code for a loss that they thought they played well so I can review them. Then I can either pass along my notes from reviewing or maaaaybe privately stream the vod review with them on Discord so they can interact.
Finally, one thing I can note is that bronzes and silvers play VERY differently from the other ranks, and I got to experience that when switching to PC from console and having no mechanical or technical mouse skill; I ended up playing with bronzes and silvers in comp and quick play a lot before developing mechanical skill and turning down my edpi that was at least 8x too high. Anyway, bronzes and silvers play very differently and not in a good way (obviously since they’re bronze and silver). I can give examples if requested, but the key advice is that your friend can’t play like they’re in gold or plat but like they’re in a rank where people do the opposite of what they should with their hero, in situations, etc. Because that’s where your friend is, and you can’t convince the people down there that they are playing backwards (I tried, believe me; they thought I was crazy when I’ve been playing with and against GM’s when tanking in QP since 2020!).
Like others have said, they would probably benefit from outside eyes looking at some replay codes. They are likely too proud to accept that what’s holding them back is their skill or mistakes. They can climb out of Bronze but only after they try and improve. Sounds like they might be banging their head into the same wall over and over hoping for a different result.
maybe if your friend try something different and wait until they climb to pick Mercy more…?