Low ELO makes no sense

Competitive Discussion
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How does it make sense that on one account I regularly get placed in 2200 games on tank and win about 50/50, while on my other account I can’t climb past about 1400 (again on tank)? Like, yes, I know, get better, obviously, but I’m 800 ELO difference between accounts and trying just as hard on both. That feels like something is broken.

Just to be clear, I’m not under any delusions of grandeur about my actual skill, I just want to play games with other people at my level who are genuinely trying, and feel like I have some agency over the outcome. Bronze does not feel like that. Instead, I have the distinct impression that a large percentage of bronze players are alt accounts of much higher ranked players who are meming or throwing and not sincerely trying to win.

I think a big part of the issue is that the ranking algorithm does not deal well with players whose skill is stable for a long time and then improves quickly. I was casual and happy to be bronze for years until COVID hit and I decided to spend the time at home learning to play Overwatch. On a new account, I get placed instantly near my proper level, but on my old account, I’m stuck fighting the inertia of years of data.

I would pay MORE THAN THE PRICE OF THE GAME just to be able to get a completely blank slate of placement matches on my original account.

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How often do you play comp on both accounts?

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I play for like 6 hours every day. Pretty evenly split between accounts since I made the new one.

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Why do you waste time on alt? Maybe you would already climbed if you focused your main acc.

If you play like 2200 player, climbing from 1400 should be easy. Just adapt on lower elo, lower your expectations from others snd punish mistakes enemy team do.

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I have said it many times but the Placement system is broken for new players.
No matter what rank you are in low Elo’s you can be held back by inexperienced players.

5 placement matches where a player can be carried by experienced players on their team is not an accurate placement.
Its so difficult to determine what will actually make you climb in low elo that players who do get experience develop bad habits.

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Ok but if he has 2200 skill, he would not be stuck at 1400, not for a long time. Some games could be screwed by others but he should be able to carry game up to like 1800 as someone who is 2200.

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Players who have old stuck account lower than new alt higher often do not understand that they cant play in a same way in both different ranks. You have to adapt.

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That would assume that the matches you get are consistent.
Regardless of SR distances if the win percentage is not high enough you wont climb.

Other players have mentioned skill creep in Silver in the past so idk if that has something to do with it.

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But if your skill is 2200, you should carry games in mid bronze so your winrate will not be below 50%. Not only that, as better player in worse rank, PBSR will reward you more.

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You are only one sixth of your team tho.

Its like throwing big plays into the enemy and see what sticks

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…did you read my OP past the first paragraph? My whole point is that the job of the ELO system is to place players appropriately. It shouldn’t be possible for the same player to be stable at completely different ranks on different accounts. The whole job of the ranking system is to efficiently adjust players to the appropriate level. If that’s not happening, something isn’t working properly. I’ve suggested two possible issues:

  1. Bronze may have too many higher skill players who are not trying to win.

  2. Ranks may be too sticky for players who started improving after stagnating for a long time.

The point of this post was not to ask for advice on how to climb. I will keep playing and keep improving and eventually I will get there. The only reason I posted here was as feedback to Blizzard.

I’m sure it’s very easy for a 4500 to solo carry a bronze match constantly, but if the skill gap is only 800 SR, it’s more like I can frequently make plays and not die, but the team has to actually use the advantage I created. Above 1600 I can usually count on if I e.g. get an opening pick we can win the fight. But how am I supposed to carry games when everybody just runs 1v6 into death for 5 minutes, or loses 4v6s? I’m not a god tier gamer, I’m just a pretty decent mortal.

Another way of stating it is that the smaller the skill/rank gap, the less of an effect it will have on win rate. So it would probably be very fast for an extremely high skill player to climb out of low ranks, but for a just mid-tier player to climb it may take a lot longer. The system compensates for this with new accounts by giving/taking much more SR for wins and losses, but if you have been bronze for a long time and suddenly improve, it thinks it “knows” your skill level with a high degree of certainty, so you are basically relying exclusively on your win rate to climb. And yes, there is bonus SR for individual stats, but that’s relatively minor compared to winning. So yes, I do agree with Shadow that eventually my rank will converge to my skill. But it’s frustratingly slow on older accounts and in bronze specifically.

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Somebody posted in a thread that this matchmaking can be wrong by around 800 points. Lower ranked is even worse. I tend to agree.

Disclaimer for people that will jump on with “mm is working”. Nobody said it is not and you eventually climb but not as fast as you should. The problem is that people that get placed blow their rank eventually get a proper match and then it is a stomp then again on the other side few people that are misplaced.
This happens in lower ranks pretty often because of player inconsistency AND other mm quirks.

Nothing you can do really. Play and eventually the stats will work out if you belong to higher rank. Sadly it is time consuming.

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It is possible as placement system is kind of broken and overplace players a lot. I am actualy curious, can you share two your close games from both elos?

One from 1400 and one from 2200, same hero you play a lot? I guess hog or zarya besed on your profile? I play both too btw :smile:

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While this is true, it’s not worth worrying about while you’re actually in a match, and won’t prevent you from climbing. Assuming you are not a thrower, there was one thrower in every match, and the thrower always determined the outcome, your winrate would be 54% – because there are 6/11 chances for the thrower to be on the enemy team, and only 5/11 chances for them to be on your team.

However, the reverse is true when you assume there is a smurf who is trying to win, by much the same reasoning. In the end, it roughly balances out so that all the “unfair” games together drag your winrate towards 50%, slowing your climb or fall but not changing the direction.

More of an issue for you is that you cannot count on DPS to do damage, or on supports to heal you. If you play the exact same style as you do at 2200, you will not be able to climb out. It’s not about inertia of an old account even, it’s simply about adapting your playstyle - I’ve met more than one tank player that fell into Bronze on a drunken weekend and could never get out again.

Fortunately you have a positive winrate on Roadhog, and an even more positive winrate on Reinhardt. If you play Rein with positive voice comms (good communication raises the chances your supports heal you and your team follows you) when you can, and switch to Roadhog when your team won’t give you heals and/or won’t follow you, you should be able to get out.

Your Zarya winrate is negative, you’re probably relying on your team in your Zarya playstyle in ways that work in gold but are suicide in Bronze.

I can’t really help with specific tips, I’m only climbing on DPS, but all the tank mains I’ve known to get out of Bronze did so on Reinhardt, Roadhog, or both and you seem to be doing fine on those two. Just play a little more independently and you should be fine.

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Blizzard’s engine does not randomly match you with teammates and against opposing players in your SR range. It also does not evenly grant or take SR after wins/losses.

Unless you are playing on a fresh or long-abandoned account, Blizzard’s goal is not to get you to the SR ranges that matches your performance. Their goal is to ensure a 50% winrate, to “keep things fair”. This is what’s happening to your older account: It’s at a (hidden) MMR that corresponds to its SR, and its (equally hidden) MMR bias is very high so that you don’t win much SR on wins.

The opposite is true for your newer account, so initially you were able to rise quickly.

If this frustrates players, so be it - as long as they keep returning or even better, buy new accounts. The only two solutions are to either come to peace with your role, or uninstall.

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Sorry OP. Shadow strongly believes that the matchmaker is perfect, smurfs don’t exist, you are always at your correct SR without exceptions and that everything is your fault. He is a bully no doubt and he says all this acting like he is much better than you while being in silver.

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A couple of items. The majority of new accounts will place in Gold, that’s just where the system dumps everyone. From there you either climb or fall, how fast you do either is based on your skill, luck and a little bit of, let’s call it, Blizzard magic.

That being said, to climb at anything but a snail’s pace you need to be skilled something like 2,000 SR (as an indicator of MMR for the sake of simplicity) above your current rank. For instance a Gold player should give a Bronze team a huge advantage, but a hard carry of a short bus of teammates is a heavy task. On the other hand a Plat should be able to hard carry a Bronze sack of potatoes more often than not. Also working against you is that, in my experience, there are many more leavers in Silver/Bronze, as players just give up and don’t care about their SR, or anyone else’s. That’s where luck can really screw you (though Blizzard could offset this bad luck by not putting you in matches with players that have disconnected previously if you’ve recently had a leaver).

An added complexity is that the matchmaker will try to create even games so if you’re really in a low rank compared to your skill, it will attempt to put other similarly skilled players on the opposing team to avoid stomps – this is why you can’t just be 1,000 SR higher in skill, there are lots of players in that situation, you really need to be an outlier in the rank to climb quickly.

So, the fact you’re in Gold on a new account is really meaningless. You may be slowly dropping to a true rank somewhere in low Gold or Silver. That wouldn’t be enough to hard carry through Bronze chaos.

On the other hand, if you continue to improve, say by only playing on the Gold account, you may improve enough to hard carry the Bronze team.

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My experience is that for tank, playing a stable front liner is more useful for climbing into higher SR the more consistent your teams are. Basically, at low silver, your team isn’t always gonna be able to capitalize on you doing that job. I play on PS4 but for me, below 1800 rated games is where I have to focus on trying to make bigger plays and heroes that can do that. I recently played with a group and went on a losing streak with them resulting in dropping from ~2100 to mid 1800s. The funny thing is, I lost my next few solo games and dropped as low as ~1700. I realized part of it was playing impatiently cause I was thinking “oh I’m better than this” but also because I wasn’t being aggressive and pouncing on mistakes. Once I sat back took a breather and focused on what I was doing, I made it back to gold in about the same time it took to drop out of it.

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Nice attempt at gaslighting/ad homonym/bullying of your own. Now try again without resorting to the trolling and bullying you claim to be against.

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Its a system that largely does not account for the large disparities in each match. It’s basically using chess rankings for a team game with multiple heroes.

The ranking system was designed for teams to play against each other. At some point the producers realized most players would not put in that kind of work and so now we are stuck with role-lock and PBSR.

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