this really deserves more attention. it’s the sad truth.
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Nice guide. And good luck on your journey. Keep it up.
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climbed to plat too, agree on everything apart from leaving voicechat. It’s much easier to climb in voicechat, its like 100-200 SR as a gift, trust me, stay in voicechat.
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Some nice points!
I don’t agree on the last part however - quick play isn’t horrible practice in my eyes because… if you can manage to play a hero well under quick play conditions, meaning no or very little communication, no or very little cooperation and bad team compositions you can also play that hero well if you have these things, even better probably. 
I have 20h on every hero in qp and 25h in all modes and I only play a handful of them in competitive but am always able to fill as anything while still not being a burden. The only heroes I wouldn’t touch in competitive myself are Genji, Doomfist, Junkrat and Tracer because I simply don’t play at all anymore. On any other hero I would feel comfortable to play at around 4k rating, even though my DPS is definitely not consistent enough to be GM worthy.
But again, I think it’s great that you shared this info here. Especially the call outs and playing to improve rather than for the SR, learning from players that are better, was what helped me a lot personally to go from Platinum to GM.
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I agree. I climbed from 700SR into mid gold using Lucio. Then I went back down into low silver learning Baptiste. It was annoying losing so many games but I needed to learn Baptiste because I want the option of playing a main healer and I find him more fun than Ana and Moria. So I just concentrated on improving my stats, mainly dying less and healing more.
Anyway after 60hrs on him I sorta know what I’m doing and my winrate has gone up to 60% (it was 40% for ages).
I enjoy healing but I sometimes wonder what it would be like just to play DPS. I experiment with it from time to time but my aim isn’t great and I like having committed healers on a team. Playing tank is miserable if no one heals so I kinda feel like it is my duty to help them. A flex player picking up a healer randomly won’t be as impactful as a healer main. The same with tanks. You need people committed to these roles. So although I enjoy DPS I don’t enjoy it enough to put my team at a disadvantage. Also it is kinda frustrating knowing that I can get more kills with Lucio (his projectile takes some getting used to) than I can with Ashe or McCree.
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I play healer+hammond on my main.
Me too I wanted to try to just play DPS (and Hog) and I created another account for that.
Depending on my mood I chose the account I want to play with.
Lol if i know there is a GM widow smurf i will just go full dive dps on them ez.
That sounds like really good advice. But what do players DO about the Bully pulpit known as FALSE REPORTING of gameplay sabotage during Competitive playing.
I have my select heroes that I am GOOD at. But none of them are on-meta according to most. HOWEVER, When I jump onto that character and still am making an impact. People tell ME to switch. For fear of losing my account. I do JUST that.
Blizzard has this HUGE problem of suppressing others. Despite the characters are AVAILABLE in the game and UNLOCKED.
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And yet people claim to be “practicing a hero, just chill bruh”. Amazing logic.
QP is the worst practice ever. Doesnt look like comp and you get away with things that won’t fly in a million years in comp. Also you can’t play properly because every one is just “chilling bruh”.
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Yeah, this is the only way to do it. The roles and even some of the characters within each category, are so different that you need SR for each one.
Swapping roles, you have to learn everything again, positioning, ult management, weapon speed, the enemy counters etc. It is too draining using one account for them all.
Best thing to do is establish communication with your team and tell them your gonna play off meta heroes before you select one. You will have less people complaining and explaining your pick after they complain is pointless.
Even if they know they are wrong their pride won’t allow them to admit it.
I believe QP is a great way to practice mechanics and learning enemy abilities/cooldowns, but learning gamesense and positioning in quick play is bad because of the really garbage comps and terrible matchmaking.
1 exception.
Don’t learn how to aim in comp.
Srsly qp / now workshop is way better than throwing ranked games bc its the first time of your life you actually aimed.
Teamplay and everything, sure comp.
But raw aim is learned easier and friendlier in qp / arcade
It doesn’t matter if your team plays well, nothing changes the fact how you click heads.
(in comp if they see you miss a lot, they prob. Make your life pretty quick as they know they don’t have to fear you.)
Like a widow that misses nearly every shot is no thread to anyone. 
Otherwise i agree
Not flexing works awesome, but i’d say in dia you can start to flex. Not sure if its true, but its my top line until then I refuse to play anything I don’t have practice with.
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I climbed from silver to plat in one season playing mostly junkrat lol but now I’ve been in plat for a year and a half
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Thank you for all of your replies! Sorry for the late response.
Glad I could help! <3 Wish you the best of luck in getting to GM.
Thank you! Sadly, I have really lost a good amount of motivation for comp. I’m debating playing on this season but I’m unsure. I could def touch diamond if I put in as much hours as my previous seasons but I’ve been playing other games recently.
The issue is that voice chat and text chats can apply pressure when you are trying to learn a hero. Voice chat is required if you want to throw everything you’ve got to win, but when I was practicing heroes it was very easy for me to personally feel pressured and choke due to worrying about being flamed.
Thanks for your response and congrats on getting to GM! The reason I mentioned quickplay is not viable practice is because you get away with stuff that wouldn’t work in really any competitive situation. QP is more to get a feel of the hero but comp is how you perfect the hero.
Congrats on climbing to cold! Keep it up!
My best advice for this is to just ignore things like that. If you worry about false reporting and respond to people flaming it will most likely make you lose your concetration. If you have to, just leave the voice channel and mute text chat. It’s unlikely for you to be banned because even if they do spam report you, you can always email Blizzard and they will unban if the automated system were to screw you.
I mean, I honestly don’t think QP is viable practice… but some people use it for that. I personally use QP to try meme strats I’m planning with some friends in comp or to just mess around. QP is like the ultimate casual experience so don’t expect much in general.
I’d argue that comp would be an amazing place to learn how to aim, as I learned how to aim through all of the comp hours myself. If you try to learn how to aim in quickplay, it is very likely since it is a casual experience that people will not have the comp equivulant aim. If you’re in comp, you are going against people that either know how to aim or are on the same aim level as you. QP has like zero MMR system so it’s highly unlikely you’ll get any balanced team. QP has so many just casual situations that would never go on in comp.
I do however, agree that custom games can also be really good practice. Pugs are really great (if you’re ever selected to be in a team for one) and I honestly learned a lot of my aim from constantly 1 v 1ing people. I 1v1’d people against a whole bunch of ranks that really shaped my aim into what it is today. My aim I’d argue is still pretty meh at times, but even though it’s a team game, practicing 1 v 1s in custom is a great way to improve aim.
Congrats on getting to plat! I understand motivation can be really hard to find when climbing. My best advice is if you ever feel burned out is to try some other games for awhile, maybe a season or two and come back. Constantly going at ranked again and again day on day end will just burn you out hard.
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i agree with most of this. but i disagree with qp being bad practice. if u can do good in qp with no real support then u will obviously do good in comp.
comp gets you comfortable with structured comps. which is bad to a degree. cuz if the enemy does something unorthodox/your team then most of the time you wont be able to handle it.
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The reason I said it wasn’t good practice is because there will be so many situations and instances that wouldn’t ever be there or would have happened in a competitive situation. You learn casual OW instead of competitive.
Having been in every rank between silver and masters, i can estimate you’re probably already having the most fun with the game that you can. The grass isn’t really greener…just thicker and weedier.
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This. This is basically higher ranks in a nutshell.