I’ve been told not to focus on stat sites. As far as playing tanks, it’s because I want to have a few tanks in my roster. It’s kind of hard to play DPS without unbalancing the team since DPS are usually instalocked. I could play support I suppose. I’m just having a lot of fun with Zarya.
Stats are pretty important. Your stats with a hero compared to other players in the same SR range decide how much SR you gain or lose after the match.
If you have a 55% win rate with a hero, but below average stats, you might gain no SR at all. On the other hand, you would gain a lot of SR with that win rate and a hero you play with above average stats.
I’m just having a lot of fun with Zarya.
Yes, but your win rate with her isn’t great. If you want to climb, you’d either have to improve with her or play other heroes.
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I think it’s because Zarya needs her team more than other tanks. There isn’t much coordination in solo queue Silver. I’m not blaming other people, it’s just the way the ranks settle. Maybe I should pick up a stronger solo carry like Roadhog, or just bite the bullet, and lock a DPS.
I wouldn’t trust solo queue in silver, especially if you want to use tank or support. Use LFG for better games and a better chance to climb.
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Ok so behind the scenes we have our MMR, we also have a little value of ‘confidence’.
The more confident the system is that you are at the correct MMR the less MMR you will gain AND lose.
The system thinks you are at a place where you belong and this is done to let you have many many fair games without accidentally getting too high and having a bunch of stomps until you are back down.
So while it sounds like the system is holding you down, it is also holding you up. It protects you from a losing too many fair games and then having to stomp your way back up.
OH no what If I improve and the system is just keeping me down??
Well as you are under diamond, you are covered here - Your ingame performance is compared to other players of your rank, if you have a game where you perform better than average for players of your rank then you will get a small SR boost. Keep performing well across many games and even if you are losing just as many as you win then you will still climb.
The ranked system isn’t magic, it needs many games to become accurate. If you perform better than your rank across many games then you will climb, if you perform bad across many games then you will slowly fall.
If you perform great one day and terrible the next then your SR can fluctuate more rapidly as the system isn’t able to place you as well as players who perform more consistently.
If you buy a new account then you will have a low confidence, the system will let you gain and lose rank more rapidly - This is why you will hear stories of players stuck in bronze who get placed in plat. 10 games is not enough to be accurate, usually (not always admittedly) those players go on to drop over time back to approximately the same rank as before.
If you want to have your primary account become less confident then you can stop playing comp for a season and upon returning the confidence is much lower and more flexible.
TL:DR; Performance based SR bonus means that you would climb even though technically your MMR is a bit ‘sticky’. Buying a new account might give you a temporary boost, it might even drop you lower but if you play it enough it would eventually match your other account.
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If by starting fresh you mean “taking previous mistakes into account and overcoming them”, then, yes, your new account will not bу weighed down by your previous performance.
Also do not judge anything according to placement results. New accounts tend to get placed at middle gold (hence the total mess there). Play around 100 games on your new account, around this time matchmaker is more confident about your SR.
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In my experience MMR is actually more volatile that you would think. I’ve definitely noticed when I am playing like crap and might have gotten lucky with a win streak - I get placed in games with average SR under my current one and I get like 19-20 SR for a win but might lose 22-23. However when I start to perform again this quickly changes and I get placed in relatively higher SR games and gain 25+ SR for the wins.
So basically if you consistently lose more SR for a loss than you gain for a win and you consistently get placed in games with the average SR being significantly lower that your current SR - then there might be a bit of a difference between your current MMR and SR. However if this is not the case your MMR should be in line with your SR and your ability to climb lies in your hands.
In any case - there’s not much more you can do than keep playing your best heroes, perform well and work with your team to win as often as possible.
There’s a lot of myths surrounding MMR, so most of what you hear and read has to be ignored, this included. See How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 11) → Summary → “Summarize matchmaking, rating, and progression for me” for the basics. The important thing to realize is that MMR is a single number, that goes up when you win and down when you lose. As such, it has no memory of the past, and the way to fix it is primarily to win more.
As an aside, I had a low SR of about 600 in season 2, and am currently low plat. There is no evidence that I was ever held back by anything but my own ability or playing enough games.
There is evidence though that on a fresh new account, the system is a lot faster to move you up and down. (but I know you know that) Just saying for people new to the subject.
So, old accounts aren’t held back as much as they don’t benefit from the boost a new account has.
Many people say you eventually go back to your deserved SR, but it’s not all that true.
The sheer amount of bad players in Gold and below definitely doesn’t help someone with greater skills and gamesense.
So because the system doesn’t allow you to climb fast enough, you can get temporarily stuck at whatever rank for way too long which sucks.
Just saying. ![:wink:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=5" ":wink:")
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Yeah, I started to edit my post but I’ll just reply to you instead. New accounts first game is at about 2350 (quick play does not matter), and they are more fluid than old accounts. See Initial Competitive Skill Rating, Decrypted.
Even with this fluidity though (which only lasts 25 or so games), it can take a long time (hundreds of games) for new and old accounts to converge to each other: Overwatch Forums
My strategy for getting out of silver last time I was stuck there was to one trick a dps. Climbed from 1700 to 2350 with 65% win rate and phat Sr gains.
I then held 2350 for 4 seasons playing support and tank. Now fallen back to silver and trying to tank and heal is harder than when I was winning games at 2400 a couple of months back.
I’d suggest instalock dps until you reach a level where you are worse at dps than other people, then switch to heals or tank.
My plan next season is pure dps. Fed up healing dps that can’t get kills and tanking for idiots that run ahead of my barrier to be murdered.
Edit, or play Brigitte. Someone posted how they gained 1000 Sr with her in a week. I’ve played her for a total of about 10 minutes. Hopefully after another 10 minutes I’ll have mastered her and I’ll try to climb with her.
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Yeah the reason why nobody wants to heal in silver and below, even gold sometimes, is that you pretty much heal bad dps or tanks that don’t stand more than 5 seconds at the right spot so they die quickly.
Tanking is also boring because nobody protects you and you are not protecting people in good spots: people run all over the place and your shield is useless.
Getting out of silver is actually pretty easy.
It’s just that the deeper down you are, the harder it will be to climb.
I climbed fast using Moira: you are a healer but if you pick their healers and the small flankers you help your team a lot.
Zen if you have good aim and Brig if you are not afraid to 1 vs 1 someone.
Then there are the derankers and smurfs… 
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current MMR does affect next season’s placements, but early MMR on an account do not affect more than the next couple games. If you actually outperformed in any game, the game will notice it. The problem with this community is they don’t know what performance is expected. They have this idea that pro level performance requires high damage output/high healing, when in reality performance is mostly measured by the things in the bottom right of your score screen when pushing tab. Use overbuff, find the top players for your character, then drop their stats to about 80% (i assume averages will be slightly lower in gold/platinum, based on experience.
If you then assume that since the top player’s overbuff values are averages, you can assume that the player probably puts out about 50% more than that when he’s hard carrying and less when he’s not doing well.
if you output 50% more than the average stats on the right side of the score screen compared to the top players for a character, you will always get increased MMR gains when winning, and reduced ones when losing.
The problem is players think that they did well because they got elims (touched a few opponents), output damage (probably trash damage on tanks) and gave their team healing (that didn’t result in helping the teammates get kills or assists of any kind). That kind of performance just doesn’t cut it.
as a healer it kind of sucks because if no one on the team is getting kills it can be hard to get assists, and as tank it can be awful to try to get good stats without good healing, but the reality is they don’t care if you perform slightly better than the rest of your team, but your whole team played awful. If you can’t help your team get actual kills as a support, the system considers you just as much the problem. If you can’t carry, swapping can be fine in that situation.
Though I personally would just work harder on finding places to help my team get kills. A good support needs to be able to make plays
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My main is level 400 and climbed from silver to master. I don’t suggest starting a new account unless you want to use it for learning purposes like I do with this one. You can climb, and your MMR will not hold you back.
No. The only thing weighing down your climb is your own abilities. Everybody always looks to attribute it to something else as if the reason they can’t climb has nothing to do with them.
Play some free for all for a few days, if you’re getting stomped by diamond+ players, then you don’t belong there.
Eh FFA is a different beast and not a good indicator of where you belong on the ladder.
Why not? It showcases pure mechanical skill. No blaming throwers, trolls, or other teammates for your rank.
Because pure mechanical skill is not all there is to this game. I have a friend who pretty easily hit master in comp ffa yet can’t break out of plat in comp. Meanwhile I had to grind hard to get master in comp ffa even though I sit in master on the ladder easily.
MMR cannot be a global average or even weighted average of your SR, which is what you are essentially suggesting.
If this were true, then the statement made that MMR and SR closely follow each other could never be true, ever.
Likewise we also know for a fact that MMR is used by the match maker to create matches, Blizzard have said this much to us…
So now remember back to the last time you moved from one rank to another, there would have been a few games as you transitioned where it was mixed lower and higher ranks, but after two or three wins you are in the clear and now playing with the higher rank.
If MMR was a global average, this behaviour would never occur.
Transitions between ranks would take a LONG time, weeks or even months depending on how long you’ve played for.
One win is a drop in the ocean of most experienced players total matches, my main have something like 3000+ comp matches.
So with all of that in mind, in my opinion, it cannot be a global average.