Your highest rank is not your current rank.
This does not mean anything. In everygame every rank you have +1 rank teamates and -1 rank teamates. You were amongst the least effective of your teamates and got carried without realizing it.
Your true rank is the one you CANNOT smash through, not your peak rank!
Sure. I have an alt account that had to go through Gold during Placements. It was the easiest OW of my life. I won two 5 v 6 games against Golds and Plats and can post one of them if you want.
Gold is a joke because they have no game awareness nor mechanical skill. You can win every fight on autopilot just by being the better player (unless you’re a Reinhardt one trick). I’m glad I made the alt so I can tell the “Elo Hell” people how fake it is. If you are stuck in a rank, you belong there.
ITT: People prove my ‘slumming’ analogy for the low tiers correct. Delightful.
Frankly so many of the attitudes here remind me why competitive was a horrible addition to the game.
And yet many, many players have climbed through the exact same ranks with the exact same problems.
There is no ELO hell. Only your own personal hell.
Er no
… The skill mechanically and situational awareness of people in gold is trash but if you have those tools you can make a real serious impact
And, this, right here, is a huge issue with OW’s Comp mode.
The core game, advertises itself to be a team game. And, your SR is based on whether or not your team wins. So, people try and be a team player, and thats not “good enough” at low ranks, as youre saying.
So, what these players need to do is “carry”, which basically comes down to: “Be a one man army, or never climb out of low ranks.” This mentality goes against the whole “play with/enable your team” idea of OW that is present at higher ranks, and especially, OWL.
So, its just one big contradiction. You baically have to learn to play two versions of OW: “Every man for themselves” at low ranks and “Be a team player” at High Ranks. Its nuts.
Also, this is where it gets fun. If you want to try and carry at low ranks, your best bet is DPS (if you can aim). But, if you already have 2 DPS on your team, going a 3rd or 4th DPS can anger your teammates. Theyll complain and say: “We need another Tank/Support.” And, if you stay on DPS, you could make them mad (and possibly causes toxicity and people to throw, because they arent getting what they want). But, if you go, say, Support (and make your team happy, at least, for the moment), no amount of healing will win the game, if the people you are healing arent killing things and/or capping the points.
So, because of all this, OW Comp becomes this odd thing. Where team work is preached (and 222 preferred), but if youre in the low ranks, people wont work with you and yet still get mad at you for trying to carry, because you werent being a “team player” (didnt pick Tank/Support, and instead went with DPS, which has the most “carry” potential)
In short, OW Comp is this weird Balancing Act of trying to be “An Army of One” while still trying to be a “Team Player” (at least at low ranks), and i get why it frustrates people. Its a complete Mind [EFF!]
“Team based game” yes, but you are part of that team and your contribution matters.
If you are plat skill with gold SR then your team is 5 gold + 1 plat vs 6 gold players. You have the advantage. You won’t win every game, but you don’t need to. You just need to make the difference when it matters.
You can learn something from every game, and improve your own abilities. You could never get stuck in bronze or silver because you possess gold skill. Obtain plat skill and you could never get stuck in gold either.
Yeah, I agree that Getting up in rank through this game is awful.
Silver players right now are trying to win, MORE than Gold ranks. When I started pushing into GOLD last season. The players there THREW more games than the silver players did. More people were in VOICE COMS in SILVER than gold!!
I dropped out of that rank back in November because it wasn’t the Rank I remember. It was ALWAYS Someone got tilted, they bailed and the amount of SMURFFS in it was AWFUL.
I’d aruge my awareness is pretty high and i doubt i’m the only one. I wish people would stop making blanket demeaning comments about low rank players because everyone has different difficenices. But if you listen to this fourm everyone gold and below is terrible at everything
Well that just shuts down any attempt at a reasonable discussion. Excellent debating tactic!
This game’s rank system is not about skill it is about random luck of teammates and willing to grind with that.
It stopped being competitive once alt accounts were allowed. Risk free troll accounts.
Im not saying im disagreeing with you, but i want to thought experiment:
Lets say you are a Mercy Main. And, lets also say you are good at gamesense, positioning, rarely die, having good healing stats, etc.
Now, youre healing/damage boosting your team, making good rezes when needed, etc. But, you notice your team isnt getting enough kills and is capping the point/escorting the payload.
Basically, youre trying to Support your team, but they arent Supporting you. So, what do you do? Pull out your pistol and try to be “An Army of One”? You could, but that might not go over well. You are, essentially, putting another DPS on your team and leaving one person or no one to heal. Not only that, youre trying to do the job of two other people, as one person. Its just, nuts.
Now, yes, if you are some Diamond DPS player (aim wise), odds are, if you are in a Bronze game, you could probaby kill the whole enemy team, and cap the point, all by yourself. But, no one should have to carry that hard just to rank up
Also, let me try a personal example. I was playing Solider awhile back. Got in a game and i was really hot. On fire most of the game, got gold everything (except healing, that was Silver).
Now, during a teamfight, i got 3 kills (almost a fourth), but sadly, i did die. Still though, that put my team at a 5v3 advantage. Were the able to cap the point? Nope. We do another team fight, same thing happened again. Again, didnt cap, and we lost.
Now, i know some of the things that could be said about my performance there. First is, if i didnt die, that would have been better. Okay, fair enough. Second is, maybe if i would have gotten 4, 5 or 6 kills, that would have helped even more.
Now, on one hand, i get that. Looking at it from the “take responsibility for your actions” side: if i did more, maybe we would won. Looking at it from the “teamwork” side though: where was mine? I mean, no one, at any rank, should be expected to 1v3, 4, 5, or 6 the enemy team, plus solo cap, for the winning. Theres “carrying” and then there is unrealistic expectations
So, while i dont fully disagree with what you’re saying oh, I do believe that there is a “grey area” for a lot of people, in this game, where they are “good” (better than their current rank), but not “good enough” to hard carry themselves out of said Rank.
Like someone could be Plat, but are in gold, because they try to be a team player, but cant enable their team properly (like no matter how much you heal a DPS player, if they arent getting kills, it aint going to matter), or they can “carry” a team, but not hard carry (1vMost of Enemy team, solo cap, etc), like in my Solider example.
There also is the concern of skill vs time. Some people due have the skill to climb, but not the time. Like, that player who can carry, but not hard carry. If they dont play a lot, they wont climb hardly at all and it will take them seasons to go up one rank.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is there’s a lot of factors in this game. And for a lot of people, it’s not as simple as: if youre good, youre in a high rank and if youre bad, youre in a low one. Theres a lot of grey area in the way OW’s Comp system is set up. Personally, I wish it was more straightforward and less complex.
Your starting senario feels alot like my situation ever since i feel to silver last season and have been back and fourth between gold and silver i feel often like i’m trying to heal through stupid
Disargee here entirely as you go up or down in ranks there is definitely a skill difference
I did it, i went from silver to plat in 1 season, when i first got to plat. You need dedication, patience, and a very very tight sense of toxicity, aka dont be toxic.
Thats how you climb in gold, especially as a healer/tank.
also comms are key, since majority of games there are no comms at all
The difference is, with your friends account your job was just to lose and win about the equal amount of games, so you didnt have the pressure of climbing, with your own account you have to climb constantly, which creates this pressure around you aswell that makes you more tense and more easily irritated, i could assure you if that was your friends acc on the lower SR aswell you wouldve climbed, because you didnt need to be as worried.
Considering how many games in gold ive played in the past few weeks, id say that the strategy is different not that there is none at all, you just have to learn it again.
Win 6 games in a row, keep playing, lose once, try again, lose twice, take a break. Thats the best way to keep climbing, burnout is a real thing aswell.
I just got to gold. It was nothing to do with SR hell.
I switched at the right time to counter the right hero, which was the one thing I thought was missing in my gameplay. I wrecked face as junkrat, I wrecked face as reaper and I obliterated people as Zarya and S76.
I learned to not let my favorite hero cloud my switching judgement and fill for spots with heroes I can fill with.
I never even thought of depending on my team, did what I could do, and do a leap of faith with my teammates.
And you know where I started? 758 SR in season 11.
Placed 1730 in S17 with 28 wins and 21 losses. Just ended at 2001 SR
Was it hard? Yes
Were the teammates occasionally crap? Yes
But was it hell? Hell no.
I used to think the same things, elo hell, bad teammates and stuff, but Git Gud is the only way.
Plat is most wiggly-wiggle rank out of all. You can easily stuck in plat if you have amazing personal skill, but nonexistent teamplay skill. Or opposite.
And I would argue I’m in gold and can confirm even I make stupid mistakes, especially in solo que. If you wanna argue that your awareness is high and you are good, then by all means. Scream it loud. If you are still in gold I would say it’s certainly not trained or tuned appropriately. But what do I know?
The sooner you acknowledge that you are imperfect, and that there is room for growth, the better. How can you improve when you attribute your losses to outside factors? How can you improve when you think you’ve already peaked? Stop looking for excuses, and get on the running wheel. Practice, improve look at mistakes you’re making. Watch replays and look for things you could have missed or could have done better.
You can do it 
When I started criticizing what I do wrong and stop jumping into fights I clearly can’t win, I reached diamond in s16!
I thought it was straight up luck because I didn’t feel myself get any better so when I qued up with a gold friend- I realised how much I had improved. He would jump into fights, blame everyone else and not himself, think that he deserves to be higher than he is, he is the type to do 1vs6, clearly doesn’t know when to ult, doesn’t know when to switch, or wouldn’t wait for the team etc.
(We won the game at last and he blamed me for being “a bad tank” his argument? You play support, why play tank out of the blue?")