Is anyone curious if gold is easier than bronze?

General Discussion
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Several seasons ago, maybe a year ago, I placed low gold tank, low silver dps, and high bronze support. At the time I was maining Mercy and Lucio (and still am), but most of my experience was tanking (Orisa, Zarya).

I think I placed 1256 support. My SR is down under 600 now.

I’ve said that the caliber of games in bronze competitive is way higher than it should be. I’ve said that most of the players are actually experienced players, alternately killing all the noobs and then throwing games to keep their SR low. I don’t think people believe me.

But I created a new account to test a theory. I thought I’d grind my 25 levels and then do placements. I think it likely that I’d place gold (I’m better at support now than I was at tanking when I placed gold in tanking). And if I did, and stayed there, would I have proven that gold is easier than bronze?

But my 25 levels have not gone well. I’ve got a 33% win rate on Mercy and Lucio. Is this just unlucky? I mean, even if I just suck, the matchmaker is supposed to find me opponents that suck, right? Why isn’t it doing that?

My theory is that the matchmaker thinks I’m better than I am. It’s using metrics other than wins and deaths (because I’ve sucked there!). I do usually get gold healing, I am often the last to die in a team fight, even as Mercy, I am often the only one coming back from a team fight to meet teammates coming from spawn.

What if my MMR is actually really good, and that’s why I’m being placed into games with players who are better at winning than I am? Whether that legit represents my skill or not, if it’s true, then I just might still place gold, right? If I manage to win a few placement matches?

Seems farfetched, but I only have two more levels to grind through to test my theory. But I’ve been so frustrated at losing that I’ve requested both my accounts be deleted. I’d have to cancel that (for the second time!) to test my theory.

Anyone think there’s a chance in hell I might discover that gold competitive is easier than bronze, and thrive there, where I just kept sinking further and further in bronze?

Anyone think it’s worthwhile to continue?

2

Up to you
You could make a YT video or something like that

The thing is that bronze probably has 100% more Smurfs, throwers and boosters
That’s a fact confirmed by… Me?

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Gold is close to plat where people start to get egos

4

Gold is only good for:

  1. Making piglins not attack on site
  2. bartering
  3. Making netherite

Other than that…its trash

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FWIW this is how well I play Mercy: ZXE5D5

I’m ninemeow on red team.

I do a few dumb things, but this is pretty representative.

Funny play of the game, D’va ults right behind me as I’m rezziing. I don’t know how close it is until I turn around, and it’s…right there!

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I’d say that the only difference between bronze, silver, and gold is that you are more likely to get a total disaster match the lower down you go. Before they added rolequeue there were bronze matches where I had to decide between being the only healer or the only tank, that sort of thing stopped happening as often in silver and above

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Placement MMR is something we know the least about, but we do know that performance based SR adjustments are stronger during initial placements than at any other time in the game. We don’t know exactly what metrics are in PBSR, but it does seem to be closely correlated to your “on fire” metrics. For supports, assists (offensive & defensive) seem to be as important or more important than healing.

If you want to know more about how the system works:

There are a lot of smurfs. There are also a lot of “drunk accounts”, alt-accounts of experienced players who don’t want to play on their main account while drinking or … otherwise inebriated. There are also, consequently, a lot of experienced players who have been tilted by a smurf or by a particularly raging or trolling drunk account and consequently crashed down to low SR.

Almost everyone that gets out of Bronze does so by simply focusing on killing the entire enemy team whenever they get near the objective. Oh, well, or by getting boosted of course.

Since everyone who isn’t trying seriously to climb is probably inebriated (or a smurf) and everyone who is trying seriously to climb (including your supports and tanks) are playing like it’s a deathmatch, it often feels like your entire team is throwing.

That turned into a bit of a ramble, but the key two points to take away:

  1. Not all experienced low-rank players are smurfs
  2. You’ll never get out of Bronze by relying on your team. Nobody will kill the enemy if you don’t. If they could and would, they wouldn’t be in Bronze.
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Placements complete. Very low gold.

Includes a game where I was wrecked by Ashe, another I spent most of the game hacked, and another my team roflstomped and didn’t need me.

Played two games post-placement, a win and a loss for a net gain in SR. That doesn’t happen in bronze.

Going to wait for Genji nerfs to go live before continuing this.

9

Golden carrots are the most filling food, though.

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I was Bronze back in 2017 so the whole smurf thing hadn’t exactly taken off yet. I also spent a lot of time practicing in Quick Play before I returned to Comp after getting placed in 625 Bronze, so by the time I actually started playing Ranked I was a little overqualified and climbed fast.

I found Gold an utter hellhole, if I’m being honest. From my experience, it was made up of Plats who got unlucky and Silvers who got too lucky, with a bunch of stubborn one-tricks added into the mix. I spent far too long in there and it seemed no matter what I did, I was stuck between 2300 and 2499. Even today, I still have a fear of falling back into Gold.

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I heard someone say that Gold and Plat are easier as you can predict what they will do, while Bronze players are completely unpredictable, which makes them the best players… or something along those lines.

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