I took the forums advice - I stopped flexing

Competitive Discussion
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I made a thread a couple weeks ago seeking advice on why I was nuking so much SR while trying to play around my team.

I took the advice from there and started one tricking Wrecking Ball, who I was flexing off of every second game or so at the start of the season.
Every time I did so, I would lose, and lose a ton of SR. Or the off chance I won, I’d gain less than 20. This reflects in my wonky win rates outside of Wrecking Ball and Orisa.

After 10+ hours one tricking Wrecking Ball on every map and mode I’m at a %65 win rate and I gained back the 200+ SR I had lost flexing.

Learnings: The SR system works against the way the game is intended to be played. We’re told to switch to counter enemy teams, but in doing so you risk playing at a sub-optimal level, which in turn fights the PBSR, meaning less SR for a win. You’re better off maining one, maybe two heroes, and breaking 10 minute PBSR averages to maximize the SR gains against the average loss.

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Hey, thanks for the update on your progress. I’m glad to hear you’ve gained your SR back.

It legitimately feels like this. There have been a lot of complaints over the game’s life that violating the spirit of the game (compromising with your team, rather than being selfish) is the “right” way to play for those looking to climb. I’m still hoping that changes one day, but it is what it is, I suppose.

Keep on keeping on, OP. Best wishes to your continued success in the future. :slight_smile:

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Another successful test of my theory. Basically you start playing the real game when you are gm plus.

The losses immediately after not flexing was due to the flexing.

I didn’t make the rules I just abuse them.

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I’d like to see some of your wrecking ball play, not every day I see a ball OTP~ :slight_smile:

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One tricking is incredibly selfish

Pick 1 or 2 hero’s in each category and flex subject to those limitations.

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Thanks! :open_mouth: I’ve been recording my gameplay to watch it later. Editing isn’t my forté so I don’t bother uploading anything to YouTube haha…

The reason I was flexing so much off Wrecking Ball was because some maps just aren’t favorable. Junkertown outside area, and Temple of Anubis for example, have no high ground or are too cramped to get big roll outs or piledrivers. But the more I force myself to play him the more lanes I find to work with.
Wrecking Ball feels unstoppable if he’s not countered. I’ve gotten so good with him. So many games my team will sit on the point while I wreak havoc and get solo kills on squishies not in LoS of their supports, Piledriver the back line in the middle of a team fight, reading plays with Roll (third person wall hacks :zipper_mouth_face:), and splitting teams in half with mine field then peel back for healing and do it all over again. It’s the most fun I’ve had in this game in a long time.

Then Sombra and Mei come along and ruin all my fun

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The thing with learning to one-trick something is you get to know your options when it comes to situations that aren’t good, how to really capitalize on the strengths of a hero :stuck_out_tongue:

good thing they aren’t very meta owo cries in mei main

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You’re only playing at sub-optimal levels until you’ve mastered the hero you’re playing. When you’ve mastered other heroes, then you can flex to them.

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How long have you played Ovewatch for? More specifically, how many Comp seasons have you invested at least 100+ hours in before 1 tricking Wrecking Ball?

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you know playing two or three heroes isn’t really flexing either, just don’t play main tank when your best three heroes are supports etc.

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Here is the problem.

This guy is one person out of hundreds of thousands if not millions in the same teir.

Not everyone has the same group make up and SR/MMR evaluation. There are bound to be flukes and rare instances that happen to coincide with what he is doing.

If like me he has an account that has played multiple seasons trying to climb his MMR would not have changed that much. If he has only played 1-2 seasons of Comp of COURSE he’d climb a little. 200 SR is not a lot of improvement solely from one-tricking. If he climbed up to Diamond from high gold in a matter of a week, then that would be more conclusive.

I gain and lose 200 SR without one tricking. Its a question of odds. Whether you are on the team with throwers and lower skilled players, Plat ranked boosters who drag Silver ranked players up into mid Gold rank matches, or the occasional toxic thrower who makes it his business to tilt people by screwing the team over.

There is a lot more going on than just playing a single hero.

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There are some players like myself who are skilled with many heros, but as I said, its a dice roll when it comes to being placed with people who do not have the same skillset as you do.

It always feels like the game purposely places people who have decent MMR with players whos MMR is lower in an attempt to bring their MMR up by breaking their loss streak.

Literally every 3-4 matches I win, on the next match I always hear someone saying or typing “Dude I am on a loss streak right now and I really need a win.” Which tells me that the game places players on winning streaks WITH players who are on loss streaks. Those people are always frustrated and tilted and have such a dismal outlook on the upcoming match based on who picks what, because they are using the experience of that loss streak to determine their opinion of this new team, and that is where the problem starts. Because now that person will prejudge every new player based on past players poor performances. I play Hanzo, it happens every day. “Dude my last Hanzo was bad. You better be good.” Is something I hear on a daily basis, and that kind of mental pressure can be hard to deal with especially if I happen to have 1 bad game after 6 good ones. Then they get validation on their fears.

The same is true for when I have a loss streak, and then I am placed in a group with people who are winning.

They think that by mixing the 2 it offsets the difference, but it doesn’t. All that does is cause a breeding ground for toxic behavior when that one frustrated person has everything to say about everyone elses performance and cant objectively analyze what they might be doing wrong.

For example, I feel like I have to babysit tanks and DPS that keep poorly positioning themselves and dying because they immediately complain that they werent healed or bubbled. Because when you try to explain their error they just tell you “F u” and keep making the same errors over and over.

Despite being polite about it and making sure they know what they did was incorrect in terms of game sense, they have an attitude because they are either already frustrated and acting from desperation for kill credit, or they just genuinely don’t think they are doing anything bad.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a seasoned player like myself who has practiced almost every hero (except for Genji), and has the game sense and skill necessary to climb out of Gold, is held back by the bad decisions and poor game sense of other players who make error after error and can’t admit they are wrong for making them.

If I screw up, I admit it. If I don;t know how to do something, I admit to it. If I am uncomfortable or not confident enough in playing a certain hero on a certain map or in a certain mode, I don’t play it. That is part of good game sense. Knowing your limitations. Most people do not understand that.

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Well, yeah. You have to be good at that hero. And ideally the hero should not be F-tier, should be generally useful, shouldn’t tilt your teammates, etc.

I’ve climbed 1000+ SR over two years by mostly one tricking Zenyatta. He’s low plat/high gold. My other supports are gold or so, and not supports are probably silver or lower.

It’s certainly possible to climb and flex frequently, but it is much, much harder. The more you flex, the harder it is.

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I haven’t played much competitive at all, compared to my overall game time. Probably less than a third of my total play time is in competitive and I’m level 779. That said I’ve played competitive since season three, started in silver.
I’m usually open to playing any hero. This season was especially bad for losing SR which is why I resorted to one-tricking, just to see if I could abuse the system. It seems to be working

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Nice. Maybe i’ll give him the 20 hour treatment as well and add him to my roster.

How long do you suppose it’ll take before the MMR adjusts and i stop seeing the defeat screen? :stuck_out_tongue: I noticed that as i add more heroes, the time it takes for the game to stop putting me against players on par with my main and start putting me in with noobs takes progressively longer and longer.

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It’s not about gaming the system and manipulating MMR. It’s about getting good with one hero, so that you win where a flexer would not have. And if you are in plat or below, you get more performance SR.

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Gaming or not, that’s how it went for each hero you see in my profile. 20 hours of using just that one hero that i previously had zero hours on. So every team i am in will lose games until the system realizes i’m not using my main (i.e. my stats dropped) and i start getting put in with other noobs.

There’s obviously going to be a pretty big skill difference between my Wreckingball and Orisa. And until the system start realizing i’m not using any of my mains, my Wreckingball is going to be in over his head.

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But in the event I’m playing Wrecking Ball, and I’m getting shut down hard by Mei, Sombra, Bastion, etc, logic would dictate that I should switch to not be detrimental to my team.
But as it turns out if you want to climb, you’re better off performing as well as you can on your chosen hero, and risk taking the loss, and lose less SR for performing well in your skill bracket. If I switch to Reinhardt mid match for example, and do mediocre, I’ll either lose MORE SR than if I stayed on Wrecking Ball and lost. OR, I switch to Reinhardt, perform mediocre, I’ll gain less than 20 SR.

See what I’m getting at? The Player Based Skill Rating doesn’t care if you switch. It’s very heavily favored on how well you’re doing compared to everyone else in your skill bracket, not necessarily the team plays you’re making in the game.

Of course there are other factors that determine how much SR you gain/lose (being the under dog team for example), but in my experience 20 - 24 is average for a win, and 20 - 30 is average for a loss. Perform well enough on one hero no matter the circumstances and you can outweigh those losses over time

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It’s not “The System”. When you start playing a new hero, you are bad at them. So you lose, because you are weighing your team down. As you fall down the ladder everyone else in the match is getting worse and you are getting better due to practice. Eventually, those two things balance and you stop losing so much. As you improve further, due to more practice, you can start climbing again.

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Yep, that’s how the MMR works. As your stats get worse after each loss, you start getting put in with lower level players until you get put in with the noobs. Until then, you’ll be losing game after game as you keep being put in with players that are on par with your main until your stats stabilizes at the skill level of the hero you’re badly playing. That’s how it worked for each of the heros in my roster.

Over the months as i added more to my roster, the time it takes for the quality of games to get low is taking longer. Will it take the full 20 hours to bottom out? Or will it now take 25.