I am a returning playing coming back to this game after a fairly long hiatus & as the title already states, I kinda need some advice on how to really impact the outcome of the game.
Right now I’m stuck at 2400 SR feeling kinda helpless. Feels like no matter how good I perform (not saying I make no mistakes myself of corse) the outcome of the game is not in my hands. With shields being pretty much gone & Hogs running wild oneshotting players left and right it’s really hard to have an impact on the game in my opinion.
I mainly play Ana (Mercy if she’s taken or there is an Ashe/Pharah on our team & Moira if it’s CotH) and I focus on landing clutch anti-nades &keeping tanks alive as good as I can. Seems like that simply is not enough to carry games as a Support.
Hence I wanna ask for advice on what you have to do as a Support to really carry a game and climb the ranks.
Replay codes would be nice ye personally rn playing support is a big no rn but in about a week the hog meta will die down i think as for avoiding hog and mccree they think alike learn their pattern and u can dodge them kinda like how a hog hooks for his first attack most of the time
Idk if Replay Codes really say anything. It’s low elo &people are just running around with no real strategy. Here are some anyways…
Mercy game on Hanamura: ENEDQ3
Ana game on Hollywood: XPA1ED
The Mercy game is just pretty much whatever. People are running around not really playing as a team which is the biggest thing holding me back in terms of things that I can hardly manipulate. Personal errors are a different thing of corse.
The Ana game on the other hand is where I felt like I could actually do something cause I had a team for once.
My issue is oftentimes that my team is working against itself with suboptimal picks or people running in one by one. I tried asking them to switch to different heroes or to group up… but it rarely works.
A friend of mine who’s a lot higher elo than me said low-elo supporting is more a coinflip than anything else &you have to group up with a very solid dps and pocket them to get to higher ranks where people actually work together…
Ye ur mercy is good neccesarily maybe fly around more like super jumping and just in general the only time u dont do that is against hog cause mercy is really fast flying like as fast as lucio but other than that ur team selection was the problem sure nanoblade is useful but only when spammed not once per round and if someones antied all u can do is heal someone else if not ye damage boost them best care scenario there is just play moira and try to dps yourself
Same universal advice that never goes out of style. Win conditions.
You have to identify quickly the way the teams are playing: what they’re running, how they’re using the map, who is being an issue, who is carrying vs. feeding, etc. You have to identify that fast, and compensate around it, before ult economy snowballs you to a loss.
In the support role that can mean more resource allocation to the overachievers, some hero swaps to counter/mitigate the impact of their carries. Plus all the usual stuff like good positioning, comms etc etc. For Mercy there are a ton of advanced micro-mechanics and game sense requirements that can help her scale beyond pistol/battlemercy. She’s the hardest bot to code strong algorithms for.
But at the end of the day, it’s hard to maintain high-impact solo agency as a support - unless you aim really well or dps out (in the low ranks) or make extremely clutch saves/jukes/baits (in high ranks).
Sadly most of ladder grind is intelligent queueing. Knowing who to avoid/dodge/group with. How to warm up, etc. Which is why most people stopped caring about their meaningless 4-year no-reset season1 SR number.
Problem number 1: Your Mercy pick doesn’t provide any special value to your team a) not a single character benefits largely from damage boost b) you’re on attack so the rezz won’t make much difference and will be 80 times harder to even pull of. Better option would be: Zen - counter enemy Zarya grav or any enemy ult, + discord the target and help your entire team break the enemy frontline. Baptiste is also okay, you can combo grav matrix with your Zarya + immortality (which your team could have used more than a pocket)
Problem 2 . Awareness. You are not prioritizing topping of squishes. Your Ana and Genji are not on full health next to you for waaaay to long - therefor you’re enabling their passivity.
Your overall impact on the fight was minimal, you weren’t synergising with your team, countered by the enemy, and on top of that add low awareness of heal priority and team health.
I don’t even know where to start …
You’re not getting contested all game and still losing.
You don’t know how to quicksquope (watch a few guides on it)
You don’t know when to scope heal vs no-scope heal
Your nades are completely diregrading Rein shields, timing and D.va matrix - you’re not getting punished for it much cuz it’s low elo, and when you do land a nade your team is already half dead.
Basically there are a million things to improve on.
Start with: What am I providing to my team via my abilities? When is the right time to use each ability?
And more helpfull and to the point.
For Mercy: Am I enabling any dps picks?
For Ana: Was i able to save my MT/tanks from dying?
This is why you can’t climb - you are looking for mistakes your teammates make (things you can’t control) vs the mistakes you make (that you can control)
Going in 1 by 1 is also good/bad depending on context
Is the point blue and below 85%? - Go in solo if needs be and try to survive for as much a possible (strife run around)
Is the point red and below 85%? regroup. Team not regrouping? Choose one person on the team (the one that has the highest kill potential like Hog for example) and stick with only him and help enable him.
I would just like to add something that helped me a lot. If you want to get better at support, one of the best things you could do is not play support.
Way back in the day when I mained Mercy, I kept getting hooked all the damn time. I then decided to play Hog for 10hrs straight and after that I was so much better at dodging hooks and baiting them out. This works especially well for your teammates picks too. Since I played Mercy so much, I just played Dva better. I wasn’t only boosting to places for myself, I just naturally gave GA locations for my Mercy. I knew where she would want to be and I never needed to use coms to tell her to fly to me. Mercy’s would just do it.
It might seem like an obvious thing, and it might seem like you already know how other heroes play by playing with/against them. However, I would suggest that the nuance of how you play with/against each hero makes all the difference. There are plenty of players in diamond that have the aim of GM players but all they do is play their hero, they don’t play the team. That’s why they’re not getting out of diamond.
Also, I don’t know if supports can carry games anymore.