How does the ranking system work

I did bad on my placement matches and got gold but when i helped my friend he got diamond. I had golds almost every game and he told me he had nothing for most of the matches.

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It doesnā€™t really work at all unfortunately. Improvements are most certainly needed!

:pouting_cat:

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Placements are more of a way of verifying if your skill level is close to what your previous season was. You are likely to get basically the same SR you ended with.
If your friend doesnā€™t play / never played comp before, his SR fluctuates more since the game have less data on his performance, so even if you played together all matches, likely youā€™ll get rather different SRs.

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Placement wins/losses donā€™t mean muchā€¦what really matters is your performance (in relation to every other ā€˜heroā€™ player at your level) in each match.

Heroes like Moira & D.Va typically have a lot of golds (as they get offensive assists very easily) whereas heroes like Zenyatta can have silvers/bronze (or no medals) but be performing above-average compared to other Zenā€™s at their MMR.

Ignore other users that say the system ā€˜doesnā€™t workā€™ because it does.

This is all you need to know:

  • the sr system looks at your hero performance (say you played Soldier) vs every other person playing that hero (Soldier) at your rank
  • if you do better youā€™ll gain more sr for wins and lose less sr for losses
  • if you do worse then youā€™ll gain less sr for wins and lose more sr for losses

Itā€™s that simple. :slight_smile:

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Just win more games than you lose till you hit a spot where you are winning as much as you are losing. That is where you belong.

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What were both your ranks in previous seasons?

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Medals mean nothing, its relative performance up through IIRC Diamond. Truly, medals mean nothing (they are going away soon with OW2 which does away with medals, cards and level-based portrait borders). FWIW, placements first time will vary tremendously for the next 10 matches or so afterwards, your ā€œplacementsā€ really donā€™t end at 5ā€¦ in fact, large SR swings which settle down as your approach 30 matches on an account is actually how it works, it takes that long to properly dial-in the MMR of a new account.

After that, all the placements are is simply matches with no SR shownā€¦ ridiculous, in fact Blizz even has indicated they give you less SR for thoseā€¦ their rationale was really weird, something to the effect of ā€œwe wanted to make the player feel better about advancing afterā€ - uh huh, no one outside of them thinks this way, they want it to be accurateā€¦

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medals donā€™t mean anything.

If he got 6 critical kills at the perfect time and you got 20 elims and 20k trash damage at meh pacing all match, he did more than you.

You can play tracer and not kill anything (not as good as getting kills), but keep both healers paranoid and not healing all game and get more value than spamming dmg that gets healed and feeds healer ults.

itā€™s tricky to identify what is the right value, sometimes itā€™s the opposite of my example.

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Play like this may help your team win but be mindful of giving this as advice as it will lead to small SR gains and heavy SR losses for defeat because the Tracer will have low stats for the match. :upside_down_face:

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Also keep this in mind when looking at ā€œskill ratingā€.

So the diamond friend and the op may actually have the same click heads rate but other non head eye coordination factors are at play.

Some games I die twice the entire GAME, get all the golds and still get less SR when I win with 14 deaths with zero medals. Itā€™s not a working system, I wonā€™t say itā€™s rigged, itā€™s just over complicated.

Donā€™t overthink about that, ow is a grindy game eventually. If you play for placements only, this is not the way.

Interestingly enough saw a thrower smurf in bronze.

Open profile (lots of throwers have open profiles I notice).

Over 100+ games he had top 1% in all metrics, but 33% win rate as he knew exactly when to stomp, and when to hold back in order to stroke his e peen with multi kills, but still have his team lose to maintain bronze.

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This to me is when Blizz should probably step-in.

  • bronze player
  • top 1% of metrics for that hero (GM+ level)
  • 33% winrate

Itā€™s kinda obvious at that point that the player is not bronze and is ā€˜gaming the systemā€™ as I think their ToS statesā€¦ :slight_smile:

I usually defend smurfing because itā€™s ā€˜difficultā€™ to prove but numbers like youā€™ve shown are a bit past ā€œI had a bad gameā€¦ā€ :rofl:

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The game had been posted up by somebody else. Mid game, after several multi kill dragon blades, the smurf tells his team that theyā€™re bronze scum and heā€™s going to throw the match.

I checked their Overbuff stats as well. 100+ games ruined via smurfing or throwing. Not banned.

I pointed this out on the forum. I got a week suspension for scumbag shamingā€¦

Even more egregious exampleā€¦
All you need to do is search ā€œRedshellā€ on Youtube. Heā€™s got videos of him trolling bronze matches and denigrating bronze players as apes, neanderthals and disabled.

The evidence is right there, with 100s of thousands of views, but nothing done as devs donā€™t give a flying toss. More alt accounts is more $$$.

I just play classic qp arcade with 2 chums now. Comp is a waste of time, and 222 qp is miserable as playing tank and support is just utter AIDS nowadays. dps is by far the most fun role. Maybe OW2 should have been 141?

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Sounds like the ego of a high-ranked player that knows theyā€™ll never go proā€¦ :rofl:

I find these forums are quite funny when it comes to what you can and canā€™t doā€¦but yeah, naming and shaming is usually gonna land you in hot waterā€¦ :wink:

I commented on a thread earlier where the person was pointing out all these other games that banned smurfsā€¦but they were all F2Pā€¦

Itā€™s a real shame that the integrity of the game is being sidelined over money but Iā€™m not naĆÆve enough to pretend I donā€™t know thatā€™s how the world isā€¦ :upside_down_face:

Glad you found your corner of the game that you enjoy! All the best! :slight_smile:

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You are 1000% correct on this point, and good luck explaining it to at least 60% of the playerbase who can only think in terms of medals and damage output. I play utility DPS often including Mei and Sombra, and often I get out-damaged by tanksā€¦ who sometimes make some commentā€¦ they utterly ignore the value that Meiā€™s walls bring and they ignore the value often that hacks bring, even to the point of interrupting ults in progressā€¦ itā€™s stunning sometimes the sheer ignorance of some people on tank about thisā€¦

I also do Tank and Support, and I never once chide DPS when I get gold damage on Tank because I know how easy it is in OW to do, especially on Zarya/Hog/Sigmaā€¦

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Yeah it was just meant as an example of unclear valueā€¦ I should be more careful though.

Bruh the fear people get to push a choke just from meiā€™s existence is value of its own.

Like a widow that is making fear from shooting over people heads.

Is it the flashy value? no, but it is value.

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All good, you made a valid point.

In fact it would be good if OW could somehow track ā€˜intanglibleā€™ things like pressuring supports or denying spaceā€¦

ā€¦I guess the tricky part is how do you track stats like that though? :thinking:

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My rank for all roles are approx 2700. I made an alt in Novembers Black Friday sale and wanted to experiment with the mmr rating. On my first match in comp ever with the new account I was in a 2900 lobby when I should be in 1800. Done my placements and end up being 3100. This system is corrupted for old accounts and it needs a complete reset.

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ā€œamount of time healers were looking at you instead of healingā€?

ā€œhealer ult generated as tank while having shield unbroken as rienā€?

hahahaha madness to track these metrics, it is impossible to properly track as metric though. as a behind the scenes value point it could be done though.

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