Realistic climbing speed / getting to where you belong

Competitive Discussion
1

Hi guys!

When it comes to the competitive system and it’s function when it comes to evaluating and placing people “where they belong” I have noticed that people on these forums seem to be extremely focused on specific and non important recent events. Such as

  • How can I climb as a support when my rein just kept charging in solo last game?
  • How can I climb as a dps when I killed half the enemy team in my match 3 minutes ago and then the rest of my team couldn’t even win a 5v3?
  • It’s impossible to climb as a tank when the Ana in my last game can’t hit the broadside of a barn!

In general people are not very willing to accept that allowing the system to place you where you belong will take a bit of time and it’s just a matter of being consistently better than your current rank - and you will rank up. The rein that charged in solo last game probably won’t rank up and it sucks that you lost a game because of him - but losing a single game has no impact whatsoever at what SR you will be at next week as long as you play enough games.

Enough of this and I’ll try and get to my actual point. I am a solid low-mid diamond support player that have been sitting between 3.1 and 3.2k this whole season. I know how to play Overwatch at this ELO and I know when I’m doing ok and when I’m not doing ok. Basically pretty solid.

I have a few other accounts that I don’t really play on any longer and one of them I had actually given away to a friend (who was on a suspension on his main account) who tanked it down to high gold and then gave it back to me beginning of season 18.

I figured lets do placements on it and see where it’s at. I placed somewhere around 24xx. Then I figured that maybe I should play it up to diamond - to sort of prove to myself that I didn’t get lucky the first time I climbed up 4-5 seasons ago.

So I started playing support on that account and here’s my point. As a 3.2k support we’re not talking about some ML7, hard carry 1v6 the whole enemy plat team and climb out in an afternoon. We’re talking normal, natural climbing when being just a little bit better than your rank.

Yesterday when the dust had settled I hit 3021 SR and it took me

…

…

…

119 games!

Yes people - over 100 games as a low diamond support to support his way through all of plat up to where I belong.

Granted I actually had the hardest time around 2.5k-2.6k simply because I wasn’t prepared for the low quality of some of the games and the low understanding of the game itself and was sort of just doing my normal thing expecting people to do what I was used to from my normal games. From about 2.7-2.8 the games got waaaaay easier to win.

I also played way too much Ana just for the fun of things (vs dual barrier doom etc) but I felt like I was allowed to have a bit of fun as well being “on an alt”. But definitely could’ve shaved 10-20 games off if I had gone more optimal heroes.

I won a total of 67 games, lost 48 games and drew 4 games - giving me a win rate of 58.26%.

And that’s the thing - if you deserve a higher rank (even if it’s just sitting in mid gold deserving low plat) you will get there and you will get there with a significantly positive win rate. However don’t ever think that you will get there in 10 or 30 or maybe even 30 games unless you are Dafran doing unranked to GM. Most likely it will take you as many games as it took me - 100 games.

I could say a lot of stuff about not fixating on a number and focusing on improving etc but that’s a different discussion.

And for anyone who’s interested. This was the account I played on:

https://www.overbuff.com/players/pc/IamCowboy-21373?mode=competitive

EDIT: Strange - I have always been able to link but can’t now for some reason.

7 Likes
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Thanks for sharing. I usually tell people it takes 150 recent games to have an accurate rank, so this is pretty close.

My number comes both from analysis: https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/aatezy/why_match_quality_is_frequently_poor/

and an old experiment, similar to yours, but out of date now: Overwatch Forums

2 Likes
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wow u are boosted it shuld only take a player who really deserves there rank the number of wins in a row they need to rank up as long as they arnt being held down by rigged mmr which you are clearly not since you ranked up even tho u are boosted so you clearly got boosted by the rigged mmr i have not won all my games to top 500 because mmr has rigged my games and marked my ackount

1 Like
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Do you even english?

2 Likes
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I’m pretty sure he was trying to make fun of people who blame the matchmaking system and say that their account is somehow “cursed” and “forced to stay in low elo” no matter what they do etc.

OP proved something that has already been proved thousands of times by many people in this community of all ranks: There is no elo hell. If you are better than the rank you are in, you will climb out of it.

But don’t expect to do it in a couple of days. Hell, it might take several seasons, depending on how many games you play per season.

3 Likes
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Yeah on this i agree. To climb you need to be good, improve and play to your fullest in each game. The rule of big numbers will nullify the impact of leavers, smurfs, throwers, toxic people if you play enough games and you are the deciding factor than.

Only thing is that people often are not willing to put in the effort to go through the meatgrinder and get frustrated. I was 2800 and went down by playing off heros so i can play with silver friends. And i can tell you they also blame the system… well somehow i have the feeling people need that. If you belong in a certain rank, be good and grind. Thats it, no frustration, rage or angre. Just always give 100% and play a lot and see where it gets you

7

You do know account sharing is against the TOS?

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Exactly, you just need to “embrace the grind” and ride it out. People need to learn to reset after a bad game. Because that one bad game with a troll or whatever will have zero significance in the big picture of 100+ games.

I have done something similar recently, my support was at 3k, but then I decided I wanted to play Ana. I went on a huge loss streak and dropped 400SR down to 2600, and I have stabilized here now only playing Ana.

Sure the quality of games is a little lower but I am having a lot more fun playing Ana because I got completely sick of Moira.

I don’t care about climbing back to my peak as fast as possible, I am having way more fun and will probably climb eventually once I improve my Ana.

9

You are correct!

With currently 3 accounts sitting at a 150SR spread I have always been very vocal with how precise I believe the SR system is when it comes to putting people in the correct ranks.

I just had a golden opportunity to put my money where my mouth is with this account as it was a full rank and change below my main. However I was honestly expecting it to be a bit faster than this as I was expecting it to take maybe 50-75 games. That was my real point - that about having realistic expectations on your climbing rate given that you have already improved enough to climb.

The poor guy had managed to be toxic enough to get both his accounts suspended just in time for his gf to have their first baby. Can’t deny the guy some OW relaxation (if shouting at your dps to uninstall counts as that) when he gets an hour downtime between feeds at 3am :wink:

1 Like
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Do you notice how a lot of your overbuff stats are >50%? Meaning you perform better than the average player on that hero. When you perform better, you go up. It’s not a hard concept to understand. If you take a look at any person complaining that they are hard stuck because of teammates etc, their stats are actually mediocre which indicates they are where they should be.

11

Hey, actualy good post. If you are interested check my progress.

I think this is usual problem. People are just expecting to climb way too fast and its not realistic. You actualy have to grind the game to climb. Amd I think its perfectly fine.

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Sorry but there is no excuse to breaking the rules. Good to hear a toxic person did get banned though.

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Yeah I agree. However the pitfall in that is when looking at an account like the one I used is that many stats are like in the 80ies / 90ies and you believe that you deserve to be higher when in reality the stats are inflated from when you were stomping 300SR ago but then compared to your current SR fellow players.

But I am a firm believer in that by increasing your stats in the areas where you have identified weaknesses - SR gains will follow. Figuring out how to increase those stats is a different matter though :wink:

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This is very true. It’s how I climbed from Gold to Master. It took me 700+ games though :slight_smile:

1 Like
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qué?

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Actually its in reverse with how my games are going. i decided to train my game sense and aim for hours on end. and i definitely felt like i improved, i got better control over my aim and learned how to make the right call outs, yet i only get more losses the more i actually train. it’s actually annoying yet i really want to get out of gold again.