I agree with this wholeheartedly, but you have to take into an account that you cannot copy a GM Rein or a GM Mercy and incorporate it into your Gold games because a GM Rein and a GM Mercy are also playing with other GM’s in their team.
A GM Rein does not have to worry about not being able to get healed if he goes aggro because GM players know in advance what to expect from their GM support/DPS/Tank. There is no such thing in Gold. A GM Rein smurfing in low elos knows when to go in, when to back out, when to put his shield down, when not and can adapt because he is GM, he already went through all other ranks and knows how to play in all of those.
Not something that can be said for a Gold player who has never been higher than Gold. I know how to play in Bronze and Silver since I was there and I know how to adapt to that elo, but I do not know how to play Rein in Plat.
I am not saying to ignore GM plays and their decision making, hell I still watch high ranked games and try to incorporate whatever I can in my own games. But I now focus more on individual playstyle in those games rather than teambased ones because you cannot copy a teambased decision or a teambased play being played in GM thinking that if you do the same you will get the same results in Gold.
You can tell your Ana in Gold how you want to go aggro on Rein because you saw Flats doing the same thing with his Ana, but the difference is going to be his Ana is in VC, is also GM and his Ana already knows what her Rein plans on doing and is there to back it up. GM supports know what to expect of their GM Tanks and vice versa, anything less is considered throwing, win trading or that particular player being boosted.
What I currently take from GM players is, depending on whom I am watching, what role they play, stuff like when they say to chat “in this particular situation chat, I cannot go for the enemy Cree since I have not seen or heard him use his flashbang, so if I go in blind and get flashbanged, I am throwing.”
What I learn from that is “aha, so wait for the enemy Cree to use his flashbang before I dive him.”
I cannot tell you how many times, and I literally have it written down on a piece of paper every single positioning ML7 uses on all maps, attack or defense and how he moves, what corners he takes, how he rotates around a certain map, etc., and how many times it failed because my team did not rotate the same way his did.
I do not try to focus on GM’s superior mechanical skills, superior teamplay, jukes and tactics that only provide value in GM, but some individual plays that can be incorporated in every elo.
My point is, simply trying to replicate to the bone what a GM Rein does most of the times will not work in Gold, because you do not have other GM’s who already know what you will do before you do it and will back you up. What I know for a fact in my elo that my Rein has already decided to kill himself while charging 1vs 6 when he is 150 hp down and me not wasting my nano on him to save him because he is dead before I even press Q. This happens in 95% of cases when I have a Rein. Sometimes I feel like I am playing with the same kind of player every time they do smth like that.
It most definitely does not mean that you should not try and incorporate certain decisions that can be used in every elo, like for example firestriking when Sig shift is on cooldown or D.Va’s defense matrix or Genji’s deflect. And even if you as Rein realize that this is the perfect opportunity to go aggro (both enemy healers are down, we have the advantage) and push the enemies back and you call it out in your Gold matches it does not mean that your team will follow up, and if they do not and you decided to go aggro on your own, you end up being the one who is throwing even tho you were 100% right and it was the perfect moment to actually go in and push them back to spawn.
Do you know what I mean?