Medals don’t matter. It’s just one piece of information that doesn’t come close to encapsulating the whole story. It’d be like reading a page in a book and coming to a conclusion based on it.
1 Like
Too black and white. Gold medals might matter and they might not. You gave two scenarios where they don’t matter, but there are scenarios where they do, and yes, there are definitely situations where DPS aren’t pulling their weight and other players have a right to not feel great about the lack of damage happening.
1 Like
or C. the dps on her team aren’t doing much.
not even close.
context is king, lets say for instance that the supports are pumping healing into a rein. maybe your in gold, that rein is now able to do more dmg then any gold dps could ever imagine.
but…depending on how effective said rein is overall they might end up feeding more then carrying. so you lose
generally a loss is a team effort. having medals doesnt mean someone isnt doing there job unless that medal is healing as its the only medal only one role should have gold of. dmg is something everyone can do.
but medals dont show you context. having 25k+ dmg as a dps means someone was feeding.
also 25k dmg is REALLY high, like someone did the math sometime back and the average amount of dmg per kill youd have in a PERFECT game if you solo killed everyone in a 2/2/2 comp (without feeding a single drop of a healers ult via healing). was 280~ or so. so applying that to 25k dmg means the player would have to of done 89 elims too of not fed.
if we assume a more realistic number of like 40 elims, then the person is feeding ALOT of ult charge to supports.
high numbers dont always mean good things are happening.
If you’re 4 minutes into a game and 700 damage is all you’ve got to show for it as DPS, then either your pick is wrong or your team’s picks are wrong. If after 2 minutes you don’t have at least 700 damage, you should consider switching immediately. Don’t prove Einstine’s point about insanity, just pick something different; go dive tank maybe and help your team advance.
I start off playing tank mostly but I’ll quickly change if I find there’s a DPS deficit and next to no progress made within the first minute. Sometimes, it’s to another tank, and other times it’s to another role entirely. In either case, I get restless and I make the switch because that’s what a good player does. If I 'm Rein and my barrier is good for 2-3 seconds, then I pick another hero who isn’t goint to be a soft sponge for 2-3 seconds, etc.
It means quite a bit actually
for example, gold healing means one has healed more damage than any other teammate
as another example, if the roadhog on your team got the gold healing medal, it means your supports did not do much healing
when i see people go like “wtf, i have 25k damage, why are we losing” I just think to myself, so you spammed tanks all game and let them have support ults off cooldown?
2 Likes
My god, a bronze player in the wild.
If you are playing Reinhardt and you DON’T have gold medals over your DPS you are unironically garbage at the game. Miss me with this nonsensical “DPS should have all golds get 3k every fight and carry my anchor looking butt into silver” ideology, it will get you no where.
1 Like
Can confirm, medals don’t matter.
Who did that damage go into? Did they completely farm the supports all game? Or did they sprinkle damage consistently over the whole team, providing little impact and just feeding enemy support ults?
Or are they shooting a barrier all fight, then their Rein finally dies but you’re the only person on your team left. You get an amazing 4K but alas, you die and you have about 1300 impactless damage added to your tally while never helping your team to win.
Context matters. Medals, on their own, do not.
2 Likes
Medals only matter with context
OP is literally screaming “silver hard stuck.” 
This is just not an intelligent response to the person you responded to.
Let’s say I play Ashe. I can rack up 5000 damage very quickly though dynamite spam. But if none of it leads to kills, then the damage really doesn’t matter.
Once you hit Masters and higher, if tanks aren’t effectively managing space, you’ll never stand a chance as DPS. You can have gold elims/dmg/objective kills every game and still lose….
Medals don’t matter. The context matters.
Pretty much….
I think closer to silver. I’m not convinced bronze players can find the tab screen
Agreed actually. Tanks like Rien/Zar, Monkey, sig can take gold elims and damage easily on the front lines.
Another intelligent gamer 
1 Like
Let’s expand on that…
Let’s say you’re on a team with a Rein and a Hog. The Rein is basically using his sheild for himself while he runs in and swings his hammer. The hog is running in left/right clicking and using his breather.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is running Pharah and Widow and basically destroying everything, because no one on the team can function properly without a stable tank line.
Because hte tanks have 2x as much HP as everyone - or more - they can live 2x longer and do damage while your team is getting headshot and rocketed down by Pharah; unable to do anything but run for their lives.
At the end of the game, the tanks say “trash DPS.” DPS says “needed a better tank line.” Rein say “I have gold damage.” Hog says “I have Silver healing, lawl git gud.”
#MedalsMatter
Also, a fact… Elims pretty much don’t matter. Final Blows is what matter. You can play Moira and do 20 damage to an entire team with a damage orb and you will get 6 elims if you go AFK and your team kills them.
Often, funneling damage into enemies is not good. Tanks can take damage on purpose to help farm up fast ults for their supports, but people continue to damage him when he peeks out, even after you tell them not to do it… cause they have to have that medal. This is very bad on assault maps. You can be outplaying the enemy team, but because one or two people on your team won’t listen, the enemy team can farm up two support ults much faster and zerg you with them.
The things that matter are Weapon Accuracy, Critical Hit Accuracy, etc. But there are no medals for that. The only thing that can save a DPS is if they get a card that tells the team that they did well in those stats.
This game needs a team scoreboard that tracks those stats, IMO. That will stop people from caring so much about medals.
Low rank (Plat and below) players play for medals. This is why the games are so inconsistent in quality. It’s basically team deathmatch.
Soldier vs. Reinhardt.
Soldier has a 6-second cooldown Helix Rocket.
Reinhardt has a 6 second cooldown Firestrike.
Soldier’s Helix Rocket does 120 damage on impact on one target.
Reinhardt’s Firestrike does 100 damage per target hit by it, up to 6.
Reinhardt’s Hammer does 85 damage per swing per target hit with a cleave radius of 6 meters.
Soldier’s gun does 19 damage per shot, with up to 9 shots per second and typically can only hit one target.
If this doesn’t give you at least a hint of why Tanks have the possibility of exceeding the damage output of most Damage-role players, then try to consider this…
What is harder to hit; Winston’s Tesla Cannon or Genji’s shuriken?
Imagine being so dumb that you can’t even realize that you queued up for tank and are being greedy trying to get golds instead of actually holding the objective – the actual way to win the game.
Nothing meaningful perhaps, but enough to get the gold elims and damage picking off stragglers
I wasn’t saying you were going to win the game I was just saying that you could get gold damage and elims. Of course you can’t win otherwise.
1 Like
just going to say I play mostly tank
and literally all of this is true
medals do not matter
this isn’t COD or Fortnite or Apex where the objective is to get kills
there is so much more to the game than what those medals show
is a mercy throwing if she has 0 damage?
no!
is it the fault of a low dps hero like genji because your team can’t get kills?
no!
its a team game medals don’t show how much value you have
especially when you only have to slightly touch an enemy to get credit for their elimination
medals don’t matter, winning matters, the team winning matters, not just “you”, the team
"Gold medals are a poor indication of who is contributing the most towards success since they only measure hard metrics with no context or weight. "
… but that’s a lot harder to type out.
3 Likes
what other people said, medals matter with context. If tanks have 1000 dmg after 4 mins and thats gold, it matters. Tanks still need dps to put up pressure.
1 Like
It’s pretty easy to get gold damage and elims as Zarya or Sigma.
1 Like