Impossible to climb from Gold/Plat

After 200 hours on both Mercy and Reinhardt I can say with certanty that climbing is almost impossible. Luck is the most important component. Once you are in Gold (sometimes plat) it seems that you are stuck there forever. When I first started playing in 2016, I got gold and was happy with that. But 4 (almost 5) years later I still can not climb. If you get bad tanks, you lose, If you get bad dps, you lose. And if you get bad healers, you lose. No matter what role I pick, one of the 2 other roles are lacking, therefore making me wish I had picked the other role, but the same problem persists no matter what I do. Making a perfect matchmaking system isn’t easy, but it would really help if next season isn’t just based on your last seasons performance. When a new season starts, all rank data should be wiped, so I can start fresh without the past judging me. I now understand why people make smurfs, but I do not want to do that.

I see many others here on this forum saying that you need to improve on your own part, and I fully agree with that. What Im saying is that when other players do not know how to play a role, I and many other gold players suffer for this, and can not climb. Watching videos on how to play a hero and practicing that hero helps, but there is nothing left for me to do. I went from Diamond to low gold this season. My rank in healing is now forever stuck in gold.

This is a real issue for some of us goldies who have been there since the start of the game.

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I did this morning on my least played role so

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Luck really is a component as stated.

i dont think it was luck, i played well and deserved it, i think your making up excuses because your hardstuck instead of accepting that skill rating reflects actual skill

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I’m not a mercy main but I think you should start playing another support to climb ana/bap/zen have way more carry potential thus increasing your chances of winning

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You aren’t making plays that win team fights, simple as that.

Watch high level rein players and try to take a really objective look at what they’re doing. I promise you they’re blocking more enemy shatters, landing more of their own, hitting more fire strikes, enabling their team, managing their shield better, etc and they’re doing this against GM players. If you can’t do that against golds, you ARE gold. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s why you aren’t plat or diamond.

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In my experience, your gameplay has a pretty big effect on climbing. Luck sure does have an effect but in the long run, bad/good luck balances out. Especially with all the variable that go into a match of comp (for example teammates/enemies, leavers, throwers and you).
I’m a tank player. I try my best to be flexible and have my skills on different heroes be somewhat even but despite that, I learned rein way faster than other tanks. Therefore my rein is a lot better than my other heroes. While flexing, I float around 2.8k and sometimes even dip into the 2600s but when I just start playing exclusively rein I climb to diamond in no time. I am completely aware of how bad of an example this is. The sample size is minuscule, tank is a very powerful role, and rein has one of the highest carry potentials out of tanks.
I even dropped to mid gold in December and it took me a total of 3 days to get back to my usual rank (which was around mid plat). Back then I wasn’t even close to diamond level so I doubt that I could have single-handedly gotten out of there just because of me being way better than the other people in those games. I do believe there was a little bit of luck in those games that allowed me to climb that fast but I still doubt that pure luck made me climb ~500 sr in 3 days.

On a more personal note, as Omni already said, Mercy is quite hard to climb and takes a lot of time. Learning another support you can consistently play up to that level would benefit you a lot in climbing.
In my experience, getting coaching personal coaching helps people a lot. I’m sorry to hear you had a bad season. You got to diamond once, I believe you can do it again.
Your point about some gold players being incompetent is totally valid. The fact that new players are often placed in gold is a big problem. On the other hand, this is a double-edged sword as changing it would make smurfing a bigger problem. All I can say for this is duo queueing with a friend. This means that you are guaranteed one teammate you can trust to be good.

I hope I helped at least a little bit :grin:

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Have you thought about improving?
(I climbed from 1600 silver to 3150 diamond, no excuses)
You don’t instantly climb when you play a lot, you climb when you IMPROVE. If you’re doing the same every game and not focusing on improving you’ll obviously stay gold

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That’s because mercy isn’t a hero with huge skill gaps involved. You aren’t really meant to use mercy once you’ve grasped the fundamentals of the game. Think about what difference you make vs the other mercy. The only difference you can make is dying less, as you both hold M1 and heal for the same healing. Bap can carry with disciplined lamp usage, and Ana can hard carry with fat anti nades

As for rein… you probably aren’t landing enough shatters, though I don’t know and you might be getting unlucky with teamates. If you are good enough you will still climb, unlucky ness only holds you back so much

Good luck

I’ve climbed from gold to diamond at least twice on support so I’m inclined to disagree… try watching your own gameplay critically, or get some masters players to watch your gameplay and offer tips. Chances are there’s mistakes your making, whether it’s positioning, ult usage, managing cooldowns, over/under committing, not realising when a push is over and dying/getting out…

Really, unless you can show us some gameplay videos (not a stomps, a pretty even match) and your playing flawlessly, I think you probably just need to focus on your own play.

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I can understand the frustration, climbing for so many years seeing no results is probably really tough.

But what I can say is that it’s not hopeless and there are tons of resources available to help you climb.

Have you tried to get coaching?

Also do you feel like you have any weak spots that you feel like you could work on?

You can inherently improve but it requires a change in the way you do things to get on a track that actually gets results

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It’s not luck if you’re playing rein you can destroy the other tanks if you get good enough in that rank.

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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?

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It sounds like you’re indirectly saying that your opponents don’t have the same problem? Afterall, if they had the same problem the game would be balanced and your skill would make a difference.

So, following that logic, there are two options that explain the problem: (1) Blizz is targeting you OR (2) you have extremely bad luck.

  1. If Blizz is targeting you, you must have offended someone off at a personal level. Solution: Think hard about how to make amends.

  2. You could have really bad luck, but for 5 years straight? Unlikely.
    Solution: Stop being a bad person and regain some karma points.

That being said, lack of voice chat and bad team composition seem to be the biggest difference between gold/low plat and diamond in my experience (besides difference in mechanical skill).

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I’ve improved A LOT on the last year and a half or so but I’m still gold. The biggest problem I’ve come across is the amount of smurfs and actual beginners being matched together. If there’s a smurf or two in the enemy team and a beginner on my team, it’s game over.

It would be impossible to climb because you are playing like a gold/plat. Yeah that would be pretty difficult.

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my biggest problem with gold rank is that there are so many leavers at this level. I was able to climb out of silver just to have near non stop leavers every match.

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What role do you play?

Luck is definitely a component in a game where 12 humans are involved with performance that varies due to an abundance of factors, i.e. daily performances, games played, how they work with the 5 strangers on their team, hero picks, enemy comp, etc.

However, it is most definitely not the most important factor (not even close in fact) when it comes to climbing. The most important factor is the consistency of your performance.

Only when you are at the rank you are supposed to be.

Huh? Which one is it?

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Ah fook me, this is a necrod thread. Ignore my comment then.

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