I hit Grandmaster

Competitive Discussion
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After three years of playing this game, I finally decided to try taking it seriously. That occurred about a week before the summer of this year.

For most of my competitive career, I’ve been Platinum. After climbing out of gold I immediately peaked 2.9k, and then was far too busy to play again. I still completed my placements, but I never really cared.

I started closely following the Overwatch League, various players, and coaches. (I know this will get meme’d, but)- It was like a dream come true, to finally have entertaining content about things that I enjoy.

About a month in, I hit Diamond.
I knew I could go farther but I didn’t know how, so I made a team who’s goal was T2. We’ve been waiting for Open Division, but have participated in GGNA S4 and scrimmaged a lot in the mean-time.

It was only until I started participating in scrims that I realized how much I truly love the competitive Overwatch scene.
Fast forward to the end of “summer-vacation” and I hit Masters.

I told myself that was it.
I told myself I had peaked and that, I had reached my initial goal. But after a full season, I knew I wanted more. Masters was too stagnant for me, and I committed to putting in the time each season to climb and learn, to analyze my plays every game, and to keep grinding.

It took three full seasons in Masters for me to do it, and I don’t believe I’m anywhere near as good as I could be- but I made it. I still make mistakes all the time, but I realize it and I learn from it.

——
I don’t know why I made this post.
I truly don’t, but if there’s one thing you paid attention to from this, please let it be that you can do it.

It doesn’t matter where you are now or where your goal is.
I know life is hard and that most of us are extremely busy and burdened, but you can do it.

Anything you truly push yourself for, you can achieve with enough time and effort.

Best of luck.
P.S. If anyone has questions, please feel free to respond. I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.

P.P.S. I was at 3999 for my 2nd to last game. I earned 38sr from my final game.

I hate to ruin this post and the positivity I wished to spread, but its legitimacy is being questioned, so I was given no choice.

https://imgur.com/a/x99naA1
https://imgur.com/gCjrHDN

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Congrats buddy. I never took this game seriously, and most likely never will… So I’m staying in gold with the rest of trash, where the party is ROCKIIIIN’.

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If i wanted to climb i’d have to play a different hero.

Not gonna happen.

I rather enjoy the game than playing only to win at all costs.
(qp player)

But occasionaly i do comp. :sweat_smile:
To see where i am with my heroes

Hope you can still play what you desire to play.
Congratulation. Btw

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Congrats you did it!!!

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Congratulations. Best of luck out there.

What heroes do you play?

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Why you should change to climb ? Many gm play tracer :c

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welcome to the big boys club :muscle::leg:

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Reinhardt main in QP, Orisa main in Comp :thinking:

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Play the most busted hero to climb.

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Congratulations! I doubt I could ever reach that level, and after playing the game pretty much non stop for the past 2.5 years, about 1000 hours now, I’m a bit burnt out with it.
Haven’t even finished my placements for this season, I finally reached my goal of getting to diamond last season (well, I got there in the RQ beta, but last season proper) and now I know without pushing myself and playing a lot more, I can’t get much higher than that really.
Would like to but now I get bored after an hour of playing and feel like doing something different.

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Congrats OP.

I don’t mean to tarnish your accomplishments, but I’ve never really taken ranked too seriously. There are way too many flaws in the system, and personally I’d rather not try and grind my way to higher levels. I feel I have the potential, but that doing so would just ruin the game for me, so I remain happily in plat. Besides, I may be “better then my rank”, but I’ll never be good enough to be a pro, so knowing I don’t have a chance… why does it matter what my rank is? As long as I’'m having fun, right?

Glad to see you’re doing scrims and tournaments though. That is where it is at, and it’s what truly separates the men from the boys. Also (and I know I’m going to get some flak for this) it’s the only way currently to play the true game. Ladder is a complete clown show by comparison.

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You’re not trash! Gold and Plat are average! You’re doing great, in your own way- being happy and content is what matters! :smiley:

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I would have to play easy heroes without much chances to fail to play consistency good.

I have games where i destroy everyone like a high diamond smurfing, but other games, i’d rate my performance low gold. :sweat_smile:

And i rather play tracer at 80% brain usage than requireing 250% for every single game.

Giving me great moments once i use 100%

The only other options are mccree/widow but both are more for the hitscan moods.

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Preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeach!

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congrats that’s one hell of an accomplishment. although I can’t seem to understand how you climbed up that high because you say that you practiced a lot and watched videos and played a ton of Overwatch but specifically how were you able to break through each time you thought you were peaking? How many friends to you team up with when you play? None? duo? triple stack? quad stack? 6 stack? Or solo queueing the whole time? Cause a lot of time just practicing isn’t enough to climb, and who your other 5 teammates are & what they are doing matters more lol

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I honestly just had to play more.
I’m not saying that when I was Gold 3 years ago that I was “Secretly GM” or anything- but the secret to practice is that you actually are working on something.

For me, my callouts were good, my CD management was good (though I did have a few errors), and my ult economy was good. My positioning or shield positioning was what got me killed the most, but it didn’t matter much because of everything else- I averaged over a 5:1 KD, which would be mostly assists (as a Main Tank). So I knew I was succeeding in my level of aggression and team-play.

Breaks helped my sanity, I’ll be honest.
Every time a fight is won, I ask myself what I could’ve done better.
Every time a fight is lost, I ask myself and others what they think was wrong- and then think about if I could’ve done anything better.
Every time a game is lost, I make mental notes about what I know I did to be a part of the problem- and then refuse to repeat that behavior in my next three games, which typically makes me avoid it for the future.

In past seasons, I duo’d or trio’d in Masters with a few friends of mine, but I never really went anywhere (with the exception of one lucky win-streak where I got to 3.8k in a previous season). For this season, it was mostly solo- though on the cusp of 3.9k+ I got an Off-Tank who requested to duo with me (despite being EU).

That was it. (Yes, I know “oh you didn’t do it solo- so it’s less impressive” is a thing. But we faced T500s consistently on the enemy team, so- I disagree).

This is correct, especially on Main Tank (and Orisa). If I block a shatter with my shield positioning, but my team runs through shield when I yell “Rein has slam” or “Rein looking slam” and they all die- there’s not much I can do if shield is on CD.

If I say “Use X and Y ult” or “X ability and Y ult, ONLY”- and everyone presses Q? There’s nothing I can do there, consistently.

I’m a shotcaller due to scrims and my natural playstyle as a Main Tank.
I shotcalled for every single game. I was in 99% GM games, often times as the only Master player for the entire match. GMs listen to calls, and they offer advice when a call is bad. They listen for calls to retreat, they listen for CDs.

That’s the only real benefit of a Duo or more- synergy.
But the teams I got placed with had natural synergy because they were used to it already (likely due to their rank, or outside experience in scrims- I can’t say which). They listened, and we won.

I’m not going to claim that I carried in any way, shape, or form. But I definitely contributed.

Studying Overwatch via VODs and youtube videos, Coaches & Pro streams, and even documents / published works helps me to understand the game better. As a Shotcaller/Main Tank, my job is to enable everyone else. So the better I understand the game, the better things work out.

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The moment you stop pointing fingers and saying ‘‘my team is why my losses happen’’, you climb.

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Congrats, Welcome to the 1%, we hope to god you don’t feed :slight_smile:

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But feeding on Rein is so fun! /pout

Fine… :stuck_out_tongue:

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