My experience from Silver rank on Alt account (info, tips, stats)

Competitive Discussion
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I would like to share my experience from next rank which was Silver, It took me 9 days to reach Gold on every role from 1500 as starting point. If you are interested to check my previous climb from low/mid bronze to Silver, you can check it here:

But now to my Silver - Gold run. As last time I will make few points and write more about different stuff there.

  1. Why are people stuck in Silver - common mistakes
  2. Hero choices
  3. My rules and next goal
  4. Statistics

PLAYERS ARE STUCK IN SILVER BECAUSE

  • They dont pick main tanks(I won games even without main tanks but these game were usualy going much worse)
  • People in EU dont join voice chat, they do in US where are games a lot more coordinated
  • They are running to point solo
  • They are not aware of someone flanking behind, flankers are getting a lot of value because of this
  • They are wasting ults when fights are already over or won
  • They are wasting ults while being solo
  • They are wasting ults when near death
  • They almost never properly group up
  • They are shooting only easy targets, almost nobody is targeting support or hammond
  • They are not helping their team mates in danger
  • They are doing same failed tactic over and over again
  • They are not switching heroes when countered or to counter someone
  • They react very slow while playing support, often focusing damage while team mates are dying next to them
  • They flank as Moira way too often not healing their team
  • They accept loss when game is far from over
  • They leave games with leavers while staying would cost them less SR
  • Shield tanks dont shield when team need it
  • They dont know where to defend with tanks
  • They very rarely use high ground as advantageous position
  • Ana players are often ulting wrong targets or in wrong time
  • They dont know which DPS heroes are better to take in certain maps
  • They are overextending a lot, often crazy flanking next to enemy spawn and dying
  • They are feeding a lot
  • They have often no idea what they are talking about, forcing others to switch certain heroes when issue is somewere else.
  • They are trying to flank with heroes who are not flankers
  • They completely ignore Symetra turrets like they are invisible
  • They stagger their team over and over again often resulting in 2 lost point on payload until they finaly group up.
  • They dont wait for support and go in without them, dying and then blaming support for not healing them
  • Lucio players flanking or trying to contest point solo while their team is without support
  • Reinhardts charging deep into enemy lines
  • Reinhardts not charging enemy reins back

There is definitely more, but i decided to share this after what I directly saw in my games.

HERO CHOICES

Tank - I played mostly Roadhog, Zarya in two games
Support - Mostly playing zenyatta, people like to pick main support heroes so its totaly fine to play zen almost every game.
DPS - I switched from Mei to mostly playing Soldier, because i wanted the change. I used few other dps heroes too: Bastion, Junkrat, Widowmaker, Reaper, Pharah, McCree.

I was usualy trying to pick dps which were good for certain maps and to fill our team comp, to have good synergy with other heroes.

MY RULES AND NEXT GOALS

  • I am trying not to be toxic
  • I am trying to be positive all the time
  • I am playing mostly solo so far in both US and EU

My next goal is obviously Platinum rank with all 3 roles, but I will probably make next update separatedly for every role as climbing into Platinum will be more time consuming probably.

STATISTICS

I sadly lost data from few games, so I filled it with “NO DATA”, I was able to recorver some stats only partialy from these games.

DELETE BLANK SPACE AFTER DOT TO SEE PICTURES

TANK: imgur. com/a/mVoMkTg
SUPPORT: imgur. com/a/WUmL4oJ
DPS: imgur. com/a/zYAt2Ct

So I did 10 games on tank, 27 games on support and 28 games as DPS

In all these games I saw:

  • 3 Games were canceled
  • 5 Games with Leavers on my team (we won 3 of them anyway)
  • 5 Games with Leaver on enemy team (we lost one match anyway)
  • 2 Game with someone using alt/smurf account on my team(Platinum and high diamond guy)
  • 3 games where someone was throwing 100% (twice my team, atleast once enemy team)

Was there anything else interesting I saw? :smiley: Oh yes

  • Doomfist falling off map 3x in one match (not throwing tho)
  • D.va player walking to point while enemy junkrat was killing 3 team mates next to her, she didnt even turned around, no interest
  • Practicaly nobody except few games was dealing with enemy reaper or pharah, I had to deal with them and kill them as zen. And there was a unhleathly amount of reapers to be honest. Almost every game.
  • Team with horrific positioning without shield asking for better heals, no healer would heal them as all of them were critical all the time
  • I think I destroyed like 60 turrets one game, didnt see anyone else shooting them
  • Team not waiting for me and dying to blade 5v6 while I had my trans ready, feelsbadman
  • Several games with completely trash teams
  • Several games with steamrolls (I was probably reason few times)
  • Two games in row with tank on my team at 1300 while I was 1900 on support, it was weird.
  • One game Ana killed by Mei, told to go to voice to ask for help or warn us next time, Ana going voice chat, Ana dying to Mei again and typing “Mei behind” while I was already killed by meit as next target too.
  • Enemy widow trying to cap the point 1v6 in middle of game while their team just died there.
  • 3 people chasing hammond across the map while rest died trying to defend 3v5

So how exactly did I climb? Playing better than others in my rank, having better mechanical skill and game knowledge than others. By punishing others for doing mistakes, by using heroes to counter enemy heroes, by using voice chat and telling my team what to do, where to defend, which heroes to pick, to group up. Most importantly gaining more SR for wins than losing SR thanks to my performance. I did care about my team mates too, trying to help them as I could, but not do die because of them. I generaly had to do more than my role in order to shine and climb, simply doing only what I should would not be enough sometimes. I too sometimes had to play very agressively, risking but making big plays. Its good to find a balance and adapt, even stupid decisions can make a lot of value if you are not punished for it. You just have to know when to stop.

Queue times on support and even dps are usualy still shorter in US than queue times in EU but I noticed a lot shorter Support queue time in general, maybe more people started playing after shield nerfs? Silver games were still very often silent in US as people dont usualy join voice chat there. My tip would be playing in US because games feel a lot more coordinated there and people are generaly more friendly.

See you in Platinum :smiley:

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You threw your way into silver. “Good” job, you want a medal?

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To be fair, Tsene, the threadstarter, Love mentioned that the account was acquired. Taking it at face value, he did not throw / de-rank to Bronze per se.
He legitimately played his way to Silver from Bronze and now from Silver to Gold.

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Thank you very much for posting the pictures.

I started in bronze so no? :slight_smile: Like do you even read the topics?

Nah, no thanks, I have plently of them in my games.

I just wanted to share my data, some people can find it interesting.

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Love, thanks for taking the time to record and post the stats.

I noticed, once again, that most of the SR gains for tanks are in the +40 SR range and it took you the least number of games to reach the next tier. Probably for the same reasons as your ascent from Bronze to Silver.

Support, barring the +144 SR, it looks pretty much to be “normal”. Same goes for the Damage Dealer category.

My brief analysis of this is that Tanks, when played right, have the highest carry potential. That is, of course, if the player has your level of skill, knowledge and insight into the game.

Thanks once again. Looking forward to your next installment.

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My pleasure and you are most welcome.
Be well, Love. =)

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I am honestly not sure if its all tanks or just the hog. Because as Roadhog you can get a lot of damage, kills, you dont die so easily and you can actualy gain a lot of healing on top of that.

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Yes but the most kills i ever gotten out of Hog was like 20+ in a Bronze game despite the lack of support by my co-Tank and no heals.

I remember one game on Busan, I was achieving Gold elimins and ended the game with 20+ elimins but died like 10+ times because i was being focused down all the time by the Red Team. I reckon that i was ID-ed as the biggest threat. Each time i die, they would take the point and team wipe.

So yes, while Hog has high carry potential in Bronze and likely, Silver; the average Bronzer and Silver would not be able to achieve the number of elimins and K:D which you had.

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Ok so I read like 70% of this because my queues aren’t that long. +1 applaud the effort and I agree with these insights. Anything with data is super constructive so congrats you’re already in the top 5% of forum iq.

But yeah, then you get all this. It seems a little 20/20 hindsight to come in and say ‘here is how a plat player climbed up out of silver multiple times’. If only people weren’t in/out climbing their alts, the normies might actually get some fair matches and climb genuinely.

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You know, i was just thinking about this the other day while looking at my stats on Overbuff to see how i can get better.

Because PBSR is awarded based on a player’s skill on a character relative to all players within the same Tier, good players would definitely set the benchmarks overly high so that a 30+ elimin with a 3:1 K/D on a tank is seen as “normal”.

It really does mess up the benchmarks.

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Yes, been saying this. +pbsr based on what? smurfs outputting bizarrely skewed data at the lowest ranks?

Although someone with potentially insider access mentioned a lot of +pbsr is based on the on-fire metrics. So playing to be on-fire will help things I guess, and people have reverse-engineered what the various micro-tasks offer in terms of on-fire status. Killing a symm turret is +25 units of on-fire, for what that’s worth.

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In that case you have to work on your hooks. You you will do hook, walk to target shoot and melee, you should eliminate most heroes except tanks. You have to finish tanks with left click. if someone is at mid range, spam right click, you have to slightly predict where target will be and shoot there. Dont go too much in the open, work around corners as you are big ult charge, every time you are below 400 HP use breather, it reduced dmg taken and give you ult charge, turn around when you are healing yourself too.

Just few tips and btw be patient with your hooks, dont just throw it randomly :slight_smile:

I understand how you mean it and to be honest I sometimes feel bad when I am steamrolling enemy teams, its most visible on Roadhog I guess because he can be really monster.

I was thinking about what you said and it would be really nice but its just not how it is. People will be playing on alts, from different reasons, this wont change. What is fair match tho? If you are where you belong, you will have fair games often. But then you wont climb. What do you need to climb? Be better than others so you will not have fair games becfause logicaly if you are better than others, match is not fair as you have bigger chance to win.

I think that every player still has pretty big chance to climb, as you can see it can be easily done by stats, PBSR, well not that easily, but in time. I am just random guy, nobody special, anyone can do what i do. Honestly my only advantage is game knowledge because I play from release and invested time. And btw as you can see in my stats, smurfs are really not that common. Maybe I was lucky tho idk.

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You surfed into silver, ruining the game for a few people.

Proud of you.

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So you literally just described about 85% of the matches I play, and I am generally in your posistion (though mistakes are made, obviously).

This is the same crap that holds people back.
I climbed out of Bronze, into Silver, into Gold, into Plat, and almost into diamond.
I have climbed from Silver to Bronze several times, but every time I am about to get promoted into Diamond, suddenly all this crap happens for like 20 games in a row, over the course of an entire week, sometimes even two weeks. I generally only play maybe 4 matches a day, more often just two.

I followed all the pro advice, watched my playbacks with people FAR more skilled than me so they could torture me by pointing out every mistake I made…
I got gud, and yet I still keep getting grouped with basically nothing but the kinds of people you just described.
Performing better on average leaves you with a lot of time to notice the stupid crap people do.

Hopefully you can climb into Diamond, because the Gold and Plat brackets are genuinely worse than the Silver and Bronze. They see the Gold rank, and think it means they are good, when in reality they are below average in skill.

Though I highly disagree with you about the US server being more organised. I feel that it is about the same, since I am experiencing literally all the same things you are, and I play ONLY on the US server.

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Thanks for the advice, Love.
I know you meant well and barring reviewing a VOD, you would just have to take it at face value and off the Overbuff stats that for a Bronzer, my Hooks are okay.
Of course, it definitely can be better i.e. better than 50% and definitely better target prioritisation.
I execute the R/LMB/ Hook/ LMB/ Melee combo well enough. Typically it is a one-shot kill once i get a squishie hooked.

Anyway, i am not really looking to “climb” the “ladder”.
I am just an old, slow, filthy casual who just want to relax playing the game.
At the moment, i am pretty much not having all that much fun and am ready to cease playing.
It is just a pity that the best mode in Overwatch is Competitive mode and i cannot truly enjoy playing it nowadays.
I played QP yesterday for about 2-3 hours and won 13 games almost consecutively (i decided to try out Hammond and wow! He really is so much fun!) but despite all those Wins, they were not all that satisfying compared to Competitive mode.

BTW, it probably is a little late now that you are advancing towards Platinum tier from Gold but you know, in the interests of “educational research” insofar as this video game is concerned, perhaps playing Main Tanks instead of Off Tanks could have been of more value especially since many people seem to be unable to advance playing characters like Reinhardt especially. Also, if others can see how you had done it, it could be seen as something encouraging and rewarding to play the most thankless role in the game, which is to be a Main Tank.

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Trust me, you would be talking differently after spending several weeks on EU servers :smiley:

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Who could have known that approaching your games in a more objective scentific kind of way and looking on how to improve would be more productive and yield better results rather than QQ on forum about how impossible it is to get out of lower ranks due to all the throwers, cheaters, leavers and so on… :rofl:

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Love, i am seeing a lot of people posting negative things about you smurfing and such.

I am unsure if they have had a look at the stats which you had posted the number of games you had to grind out, especially for the Damage category.
Also, i am unsure if they are aware that despite being as skilled and as knowledgeable as you are in the game that you still had to grind out 50 games to get to Gold tier and for others who are average, the grind would be longer.

Despite that, thanks for the stats collected and the observations.

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Its fine, I was ready for it. I knew some people will be negative, I dont really blame them, they have right to do that, I understand that most people hate alt account users and smurfs.

I am really trying to climb as fast as possible, I am trying to win every game, its not like I am exactly smurfing. I would probably climb faster with different dps heroes. But I really wanted to try Soldier again as I did main him in past and he is really not that great recently in higher elos.

I could eaisly abuse reaper and get even much better results, or with Doomfist.