I’ve heard people say in low elo, your stats are compared to every other player playing that specific hero at that elo, correct?
So if you’re in bronze rank playing X hero, does that mean your stats are compared to whatever high elo smurf who might also be playing at that elo?
Because it’s often said that if you’re playing better than whatever rank you’re in you’ll rank up. Which is understandable.
What’s a little bit confusing is if my stats are being compared to someone whose skill is say, plat or something, how are my SR gains/losses adjusted if my bronze tier Soldier is being compared to the stats of someone ranked much higher playing that hero? Does that mean I need to be pumping out stats on that hero that are comparable to someone playing that hero from a higher elo?
2 Likes
Worrying about how SR gains and losses are calculated is a fool’s errand. Don’t waste your time thinking about it. Focus on improving your gameplay so you win more games than you lose and get on the competitive grind.
1 Like
This… wasn’t what I asked, but thank you for your contribution
1 Like
The thing is no one knows the answer to what you asked. We don’t know how PBSR is calculated other than that your stats are compared to players of similar rank. Anything you get other than that and “don’t worry about it” will just be baseless speculation.
1 Like
It compares you to the average of all other players at your rank. So while that higher elo Smurf might bring the average up (assuming he’s consistently getting great stats…which means he would rank up anyways), it won’t affect you very much.
No matter what you do you will hover around where you belong
Consistency = maintain
Improve = climb
Play poorly = fall
Which is fair. Believe it or not I’m not complaining about anything because if I intend to rank up, obviously I’ve gotta work for it.
I need to know where the net is tho, because it kind of feels like I’m playing soccer with a blindfold on. I am not a good player, I migrated over to PC gaming about a year ago and Overwatch is the first competitive game I’ve decided to take seriously. Obviously I need to improve, and I would like to, but I have no idea how to. You can tell me to “focus on improving my gameplay,” but that statement alone is too vague. Focus on what? Hitting the enemy, not getting hit by the enemy, peeling for my supports, peeling for my tanks, etc. there’s just so many things.
1 Like
The biggest and most obvious factor in PBSR is number of deaths. There seems to be a ‘general performance’ statistic that influences card choice more than what the card actually says as well, notice that even if you have extremely high elims or damage you’ll never get a card if you also have frequent deaths. Or, if you only have a couple deaths and are high impact but silver medals you’ll usually get an oddball card like ‘hooks landed’ to justify giving you the card. I only mention it because if you’re frequently getting cards, you also tend to be getting high PBSR and they’re likely tied to a similar system.
2 Likes
Best thing you can possibly do for yourself is record a few games and submit them for vod reviews here or on the OverwatchUniversity subreddit. Higher ranked players will come along and point out the weakest parts of your play, and then you can focus on improving them.
And as Jacqui said… kind of all of it. Game sense, mechanics, and communication are the big 3 skills you need, but there is a lot that goes into each one. I started at 1600 in Season 4 and peaked at 4155 in Season 17, so I’ve been through it. It can be overwhelming, but consistent vod reviews (every week or so) will keep you on track as you try to improve.
3 Likes
Okay, but how do I see whether I’ve improved or not? Some games it feels like I played great, and sometimes the very next game it does not feel the same… I know there are stats within my career profile that I’d like to monitor and ‘push,’ if you would. For instance, amount of critical hits, I seen a screencap you posted on here before that had really impressive stats for McCree (not gonna lie, I’m kind of envious lol) but it makes me realize that I need to be pushing myself further to get better. Won’t I become complacent if I just solely focus on doing what I need to do for the win? Shouldn’t I also be looking to bring my numbers up as well?
1 Like
with pbsr your sr is based on how your stats compare to everyone in that rank. not the best in that rank. actual smurfs are few and far between, if your stuck somewhere then the sad truth is its on you.
another sad truth is with pbsr the easiest way to rank up is farming stats, depending on where you currently are this may be worth doing. if your silver for example, youd gain more by cheesing your way up to gold and play there for a while, get consistant in that rank and then repeat until diamond. diamond is where win rate is what matters most. there are some rather obvious down sides like missing critical skills like ult tracking and such but playing against better players within a reasonable range is going to force you to improve
1 Like
Your statistical performance is compared to the average player of your hero/rank/map. Smurfs throw that off, but so do throwers. This cancels out, because for a smurf to stay at low rank, they have to throw a lot of games. You only have to be better than the average game played to gain more than you lose. You do not need to be better than the smurfs when they are try harding.
For more detail, see How Competitive Matchmaking and Rating Works (Season 18) → Performane Modifier.
P.S.
Also, if we can assume that Blizzard developers are not idiots, they don’t include extremely good or poor performance in their statistical baselines (aka, outlier removal).
I don’t know if there’s any tangible way of knowing if you’ve improved from match to match. Improvement is a gradual process and people have built in variance to their abilities. Overall if you want to use your stats as a guide, I only ever look at 4 categories on my career profile. Hero damage per 10 minutes, Eliminations per life, Deaths per 10 minutes, and Healing per 10 minutes (for healers).
That being said, I’ve never focused on bringing my numbers up. If I were to pick one main thing to focus one, it’s positioning. Ask yourself, will you die if you stand here? If you did die, would you have died if you stood somewhere else? Just constantly ask yourself this question even while playing, and over time your positioning will get better, which will make your deaths decrease, which will make your damage/healing/e:d increase because you’re alive more often.
2 Likes
Try watching all this guy’s videos.
Letting others watches vid on here can help.
Try submitting a “flawless” game where you were “perfect”.
Guaranteed the forum veterans will rip you apart, in a useful way.
Helped me get from 1700 to 2500 a few seasons back.
Slipped a bit since then, but might make it back again.
2 Likes
That’s a good video. He explains things better than I would be able to.
2 Likes
I used the inbuilt replay for the first time as well.
I’d only healed 18k whilst enemy Moira had 27k heals.
Watched back from enemy Moira pov and only main difference was her team stuck together whilst my dps all went on mad flanks. My tanks split up, whilst hers were almost shoulder to shoulder.
Some games there isn’t a lot you can do different.
That said, posted a vid on here where I died 7 times. 5 deaths were due to silly errors. A 6th death was extending a lost team fight trying to keep my tank up. Ended up feeding ult charge and dying myself. But did hold for a few seconds longer, so not all bad.
I’ve tried to take those lessons on board and now rocking circa 80% win rate on Moira.
Early days and small sample size, but encouraging.
1 Like
I don’t like cards, I think they create bad habits. I can consistently shoot dynamites over enemy barriers all match and lose, but get a card for over 15k in damage done. Looking back at the match I can see all that damage done did little for my team besides having BOB a little faster, but the enemy Lucio ALWAYS had a Sound Barrier whenever we tried to push. And imo, Sound Barrier > BOB in almost all circumstances
Yep less than 5 deaths is ideal
Cept when you cut the lucio and get bob out
As for the initial post for dps, i would focus on who to fire at, when to flank and when to group, ult charge speed, and how to play differently on attack and defense.
I think the last one is something most players in gold don’t get which causes huge variance in their game