So stuck in a conundrum here. Me and my friends are stuck in Gold as a 3 stack. Weird problem. Not to knock us down a few pegs, but we are pretty good but far from good enough to carry. The game keeps thinking we should be able to carry trash tier players, you know the kind. Crappy DPS that can’t even get more damage medals than a Brig or Zen.
We’ve been plat for a few seasons, maybe 30% in total. And we stayed plat. However the other 70% we start high gold or maybe even low plat after placements and just get SHOVED down due to us being unable to carry terrible players. I’m talking the most garbage tier players ever. The ones you know got carried there by friends. So we tend to stay stuck in Gold. We want to climb but looking for some advice on how we can carry harder. To clarify I play mostly tank/heal but can DPS decently (45% accuracy with McCree on a good day, 20% on a bad one), my other friend MainTanks/DPS (mostly mei/Junk for those situations.) and my 3rd friend mostly heals with the occasional offtank. Numbers are always solid on any role we have to play, healing numbers, damage, kills, low deaths, etc.
So recommendations? Is it kind of hopeless in that we are a victim to the system until 2-2-2 gets introduced and the crappers get shoved down accordingly? Maybe try to position ourselves AROUND the crappy players so we can at least defend them from sucking? Just looking for some general tips we could try to follow that might help us out.
comboing. Right now it would probably the best to just Play Hog Orisa and keep halt + hooking. That’s basically a free strat up to like master
Also playing Mei in a coordinated environment is basically a free win. Oh, and you can stop the enemys from halt hooking with your walls. Just the fact that no one in gold does this combo and hog + orisa (if you even get them on your team) do mostly their own thing, will win you games.
Communicate with the rest of the team, it’s very easy that a stack starts talking to themself and not bothering to include the others and that can be hurtful since it’s harder to achieve any form of coordination (especially if you play tanks and such) and team morale as people usually hate playing with stacks that don’t talk and do their own thing.
I have plenty of friends who think they communicate with the team when they in fact don’t communicate with them at all and just talk in discord.
Great advice here. My friend plays quite a bit of Hog so I could easily play some Orisa and we can do some nasty stuff with it. Plus this strat only hinges on me and my friends doing it and doesn’t need to be as coordinated as something like GOATS.
We definitely do communicate, we always make sure we are in team chat (in addition to our own discord). As a matter of fact we keep each other accountable because if we notice someone isn’t in chat we call it out (within our 3 stack). So we do try to communicate…its just these garbo players we’re dealing with do not join team chat and thus hear nothing. We do try to type it but it gets ignored often. So its why I want to attempt to climb without having to rely on crappy teammates.
Firstly get the idea of a broken system out of your head - there’s no such thing in this game. If you deserve to climb you will. Your stack may be higher than the matches you’re getting so the system matches you with lower players to make fair matches. If you were good enough you would be able to carry them and win over multiple matches.
On another note, try solo queueing. It’s more accurate than stacking (except maybe duo queue).
This is why you’re gold right there. That kind of thinking.
You know what, I can’t even take you seriously at this point. This is so toxic and so wrong I can’t even…
people can solo rank up with 5 randoms without blaming their team for anything, but you 3 can’t? And blame it on your team?
Jesus christ…
I never said the system was broken so I don’t know where you got that from. I did however accurately describe the system as explained by Blizzard themselves. Where if you are a player doing exceptionally well it will place you with players not as good so you can carry them. The problem is with my stack, and me especially, I do exceedingly well numbers wise when given the proper environment to do so. Good teammates, map awareness, game sense, etc. Where I struggle is when those exact perfect conditions are there. So looking for general tips as a stack so we can get better as a team.
I may try solo queue a few times just for the hell of it and see how I do. Haven’t done that in forever.
You must be the exact kind of player I’m talking about. The player who never goes in team chat, berates teammates for their own failures, etc. Notice how I’m here to get advice and critiques on climbing? Unlike the stubborn player who thinks they know more than everyone? I feel like you didn’t even read my post. I was asking for advice because yeah, we are having trouble climbing and our 3 randoms who tend to instalock DPS have been getting outdamaged and getting less kills then SUPPORTS (us). In addition to the constant feeding of course. If you’d like some replays let me know, because that new feature has been great for me analyzing when I failed and when others did. I fail quite a bit, so if they’re failing more than me you can kinda see how bad it gets.
Considering you’re basically Gold I really don’t need to take any of your advice seriously anyways. You’re struggling to stay in plat yourself. Pretty sure you could use the same advice. Hell I bet you feel the same problems. You heal like crazy, barely die, yet your team doesn’t do jack. What can you do right? Pay attention and see if someone gives good advice you can follow, that’s what i’m looking for.
Do you? Why are you even here? You’re not helping. My mentality isn’t the issue because like I said, I’ve been plat, hit plat, and stayed in plat for some seasons. I want to get back there. I’ve had some terrible luck the past 10 games or so where the random teammates were constantly attacking me or my friends via voice comms despite being the obvious weak link and I’m pretty fed up with it. Especially tired of the racist tirades I received but that’s a different story for moderation. I want to be able to do well without worrying about these kinds of players.
What’s funny is that I have literal replays showing these problems yet you seem to think (without proof mind you) that I’m the issue? Look, either give REAL advice or get out. I’m looking for tips for climbing with a stack, not some preachy Blizzard white knight crap. “Oh nO iTs yOuR FaUlT! yOuR RaNk iS AcCuRaTe!” Yeah super accurate, that’s why Blizzard is switching to forced 2-2-2.
You blame your teammates for your loses (in the most toxic way ever)
You look for advice on how to get out of gold.
I tell you that it’s your mentality thats keeping you down in ranks (I quotes you, and said - that way of thinking is why you’re gold)
You reply with:
So in conclusion… I have no clue what i’m doing here, other than regreting setting you ablaze (which you already were enough, to be fair.)
Communicate. I only solo play and in my experience I see more horrible 3-stacks then I do good 3-stacks. If you can’t coordinate with the rest of the team your 3-stack honestly doesn’t amount to much.
Also, I’d be interested to know if your ranks are similar when you solo play cuz like it or not, one of your team mates may be a weak link.
Also maybe consider your synergy? I hate when I see a 3 stack go Hog-Baptist-Pharah. Like what? At least synergize with yourselves.
Id also say that do a 1-1-1 since taking 2 roles of anything (supports, tanks, dps) can have an extremely bad effect on who the rest of your team can pick or play. Buuuuuut 2-2-2 role lock will fix this.
How do you recommend communicating in a better way to those who ignore it? Basically those players who mute everyone and never join voice chat? Without pings we struggle to do so and feel we got spoiled with Apex in that regard.
If I was being honest then myself and friend 1 are of similar rank, we WERE mid gold (but due to the Blizzard server issues last night we both got D/Ced at the same time and lost 50 points each). Friend 2 unfortunately is about 200ish less points. Granted he plays mostly healer and for whatever reason gains the least amount of points despite having good numbers. Would that be an issue too?
We do try to 1-1-1 if not 2-1 because like I stated people tend to instalock DPS. We will try to stick to this and see if it helps.
Well you can’t really but making yourself available is all you can do. But you as a 3-stack who communicates will have much more influence then me as a solo player communicating.
200ish SR may not be a huge deal but breaking ranks will def be harder. Those mid-zones like 2400-2600 SR has a lot of players dropping out of higher ranks for multiple reasons but they still are higher rank and you will run into them a lot. If you’re both at say 2500 and your friend is at 2300 then when you face some ppls whos regular rank is 2600-2800ish your friends going to be facing people 500 ranks higher then him. That’s going to be rather difficult no matter which way you slice it.
Good thing is he prob has the best potential to improvement if he toughs it out and learns.
I think once you all can reliably pick your best roles in 2-2-2 your going to have an easier time.
I also didn’t address this but big part of ranking up is also eliminating this mentality about other players skill as much as possible. Even if you don’t say it if you start thinking a player is bad and subconsciously stop supporting them properly it can have a major effect on the game.
You will always run into people who are playing poorly but the more time you 3 play proper OW the more you will win.
A little story about a JR I played 4 games with. I was teamed up with him for 2 games and we won. He was extremely aggressive and positioned poorly but I was able to support his playstyle with WB.
In the following 2 games I was placed against him. I went Zarya for both rounds and not only prevented him any value but demolished him. I knew how to support and destroy his style of play. Near the end of the 4th game he swapped McCree but it was 2 late.
He wasn’t really a bad player but he certainly wasn’t good either. I worked with it and against it. That’s kinda the key to ranking up in my experience.
The thing is with the new replay feature, its given us a new understanding of problems. Like we’ll watch a replay together say “Oh damn I should have been positioned here instead” or “Oh crap I exposed myself and died so I couldn’t heal.” We can identify when we screw up which has been great for us. At the same time we eye our teammates as well because sometimes, we did everything right.
The thing we noticed in those games were the DPS instalocks were just terrible. Positioning, aim, etc. For example last night we had an Ashe who would literally just stand out in the open, miss their shots, and die. I had gold damage and elims (something like 30ish) as Zen with 2 deaths by the end of the game. So we were scratching our heads at that.
That being said you’re aiming at my point I made before where we need to play AROUND those players, and I appreciate the feedback in that regard. The more we tighten up our own gameplay the less bad players will affect it. Its why i wanted some general advice I could relay to my friends. I definitely could see myself playing Zarya and backing up a bad outpositioned DPS so they can at least do some damage. Maybe even mention to each other that XXX player may need more help and we can heal/shield them a bit more than the rest of the team who can self sustain better.
I quit comp a few weeks back as fed up to the back teeth of feeding team mates, toxic comms and watching idiots run ahead of barriers to be picked off. Really did make many games boil down to which teams had most idiots on it.
(I played several games in 6 stacks and that made me realise how crap normal comp is. Went 2-3 in the 6 stacks, but at least were “proper” Overwatch games).
I’m going to do my 15 placements when role queue comes out and then decide whether to resume or wait for clans…
Anyway, I previously managed to climb from 1700 to 2550 following a few simple ideas.
Games is 1v11 solo queue. 3v9 in your case. Randoms won’t work with you. See what hare brained schemes they try to enact and help them to succeed.
I recommend mobile heroes. A lot of dps have no ideas that barriers are good. Even players in plat think that barriers are “ghey” and avoid using them at all costs.
To this end I gave up main tanking at 1700 and just played Lucio and Moira with an 80% win rate to gold. Both survivable heroes that can look after themselves.
Stop using heroes that don’t work. Seems obvious, but I was obsessed with the idea that games should get easier as SR drops. Not as main tank. Heals and team mate intelligence drop sharply as you drop. When I switched to mobile heroes my win rate shot up.
ALways be on comms. 95% of the time it means nothing. But sometimes you get great team coordination (I still fondly recall the 5-4 Volskaya wins with 2 good teams) and make new friends.
If you’re lucky you’ll make new friends and can build to 6 stack, which IMO is the best way to play OW, even though game gets far harder.