I started playing comp immediately just like you did at level 25. This was back in the final couple weeks of season 2.
I got placed in the equivalent of mid platinum (this was back when the ranking numbers consisted of two digits, and the high end was 70, I got in the high 50s), as a hanzo one-trick, before he got any buffs that made him decent, off my mechanical skill alone. I can only imagine how your games would have had to go to be placed in bronze.
i said it was the least important. and rarely ever the reason you climb out of a rank your stuck in. The main factors to climbing out of a rank is one or any combination of the following:
Improvement in GameSense: Ultimate tracking, Positioning, Map knowledge, Awareness, predicting what the enemy planning by their movements and change in habbits
Improving in communication: Calling out your targets, Telling your team what your doing ahead of time (not what they should do) alerting them of knowledge about the enemy team.
Hero examples:
Zen: Call out your discord targets and flankers
Sombra: Call out your hacks and enemy positions
Reinhardt: Call out shield damage “full” “half” “500” “dropping” “recharging” and pre-call dropping your shield call out your plan of attack your the main tank you should make some of the strat calls (not all of them ofcorse)
Symmetra: Call out Teleporter before you use it. Tell them where you plan on going ahead of time. if your just TP bombing then tell your team. so they can follow up on it.
I could sit here and list every characters general informational call outs you should be using but that’d take a while feel free to ask me for hero specific ones.
This would also go under gamesense and communication but because it’s a mix of both i’ll just mention it down here
Teamwork and awareness of your own team: This is probly one of the hardest skills to learn just from how self rightous this playerbase is. but learning to be aware of your own team even if they not aware of yourself will help a ton. be it pealing for your supports or saving that flanking dps as a support/tank.
Also knowing when and when not to use ultimates is important. this comes with communication and game sense because u first have to awknowledge if the fight is ‘winnable’ then you have to know if ur team will get value of this ult or if u can get value out of it yourself. (a few seconds is all it takes to gather this information)
Knowing when to leave a fight early is also a skill you have to learn. it comes with experience of noticing a winnable or unwinnable fight. if they get an early pick like your main healer and your invested into the fight. just reset. or if the enemy used a ton of ults to get some early picks don’t waist yours just to try and even the score. save them so you have the advantage in the next fight.
notice when your just feeding!
if your team is staggering sometimes the best thing u can do is just stand in spawn till they die so they group up. there’s no reason to feed the enemy even more ult charge so it’s even easier for them to win.
Then at the bottom of importance you have aim which is the least impactful of the skills you can learn. YES it is important to have but it’s not a make or break skill. When i was bronze i had 35-40% accuracy i’m in diamond with 40-50%. Aim is not why i got unstuck out of bronze it was all the other things.
I could go on for a long time about the things more important then “aim” but that will do for now.
;^; But that’s going to take literal years with how many games I play.
Thanks for the feedback!
I was in sub 800 SR for my first 2-3 seasons. Like you I started somewhere in the 1300 SR range. I’m currently in plat.
Think of OW like basketball (or any other sport). You may know how to shoot very well (in OW have good mechanical skills) but suck at working with your team, have any game sense, off-ball movement, or know how to pass or do small things like rebounds or good defense to win.
In Bronze, nobody has good mechanical skills, game sense, or positioning. One of these three skills will carry you out of Bronze. There’s little to no team coordination down there, so your own individual skill will carry you out. If you’re naturally a shot caller, you might help coordinate your team better but nobody listens anyway.
I personally climbed 6 stacking and being picky with my team mates. Yes, your opponents will be more coordinated and more difficult to play against, but you’ll learn valuable team-skills along the way.
You dont need voice chat or even team work to climb out bronze, just practice and get better at dps to the point that you can carry most games.
I don’t know this to be true obviously but have wondered about the period before the game had a competitive mode and if a lot of MMR data that has stuck to some players was derived from all their play in pre-competiive-QP, which was the only mode at first.
During this time, frankly it took a bit for a good swath of people to learn the game. Some had trouble adjusting to the team-based style (not rewarding SP DM skills) and and some ults (like McCree, Genji, others) would wipe whole teams because no one knew wth was happening and Bastion (same as now) was literally destroying and getting every single POTG. We also had stuff like teams full of Torbs and people just trying to learn or figure out their favorite toons. I’ll personally admit to some frankly terrible Pharah play on my way to learning her, along with a penchant for some selfless suicide peels or antics with various chars to help team objectives - - not necessarily stuff that maybe translates into great skill optics or ratings but that still maybe helps the team win or do something important in the moment.
Anyway - I’ve long wondered if this cumulative noob period and maybe more reckless and unaware play really hammered the MMRs for people that weren’t already FPS adepts and basically consigned them to Bronze in a way that would take an exceptional, maybe even insurmountable amount of math to overcome? This seems to be the case because there are all kinds of instances of people starting new accounts and garnering higher placements, etc… I myself have never done this and don’t feel it’s super “honest” to do as a player but I’d be curious to know if that pre-comp QP period figured into the MMR/SR for those players that are still active from that time.
QP MMR never actually counted in competitive SR, even when Season 1 first started a couple months after the full release. Competitive mode existed in beta, but the system was different and it allowed literally all players to be able to reach high ranks, so it wasn’t ranked but just another level grinder.
The thing with placements is that when you start your very first placement, you have always started smackdab in the middle ranks. And since the accelerated SR gains (for win streaks) and accelerated SR losses (for loss streaks) are nerfed to near non-existence, players aren’t able to place too far away from the middle starting point anymore. That’s why a hardstuck SR<500 player who buys a new account and does placements can place in mid-Silver nowadays, and an actual OWL pro can also buy a new account and sweep placements, but not place any higher than low Diamond.
I did the same thing and was stuck at about 700-1k sr for about three seasons and Id say yeah use voice it really helps most games but if you get someone toxic feel free to mute them or your whole team even, that way you can still have input by calling who’s low and who has ult. Try to join a community of players who hold Pick-up Games often or scrims and put an active effort into learning from better players and have them teach you. Try to get your weapon accuracy up and try looking up some vids about movement in OW. With just focusing on aim for about two seasons I got out of bronze and into plat. From then I improved my game knowledge and know im playing in games with masters and stuff. It really will take time and an active effort but it is well worth it for harder games. (btw its a misconception that games get less toxic as you go up in the ranked ladder, the least toxic ranks yet for me is silver bronze and masters) GL on the climb and on improving as a player
Season 4 and 5, toxicity at it’s worst, I literally dropped to 700sr due to all the toxic throwers, wasn’t a fun moment of my life but I tried to get through it and enjoy my time in the game, but overall it passed over, now it’s just a problem with alternate accounts and smurfs that exploit losing games to be in lower tiers, even met a group at one point during those seasons that were actually deranking in a 6 stack group, joined them actually won the game for them, but legit they admitted being on alternates just fooling around, at that moment I knew the state of the game is as bad as I thought it was but I keep playing for some reason, there’s not always a full proof solution to solving these, I just wish there was so I could better my ranking, I linger in silver and only ever touch gold “IF” I end up in a group trying to climb, solo queue never works for me, just lots of solo queue players don’t communicate, don’t use sound, aren’t in voice chat or don’t know how to play or worse play for themselves yet it’s supposed to be a TEAM BASED GAME
Focus on your self to improve and fix your mistakes you will eventually climb and carry. I’m high gold/low plat and when I play on my gf account or friend at their place who are in bronze I won the match easily. Doesn’t matter what role I picked so focus on 1 hero.
when I 1st played comp at level 25, I placed gold
This is gonna sound really toxic, but ever think that after 1500+ levels, it might be YOU that doesn’t know how to play, considering that you’re still silver/low gold?
If you’d like, i could try and coach you out of your SR, up to you. My discord is Nickdarick#7021
Sure! I will try to find your discord, I also used my other account and now am in gold on my second account… but hey! Still stuff too learn!
Hammond + Hanzo (personal favorite, when I pile drive behind an Orissa shield my friends who mains Hanzo picks them off when they’re knocked into the air)
Winston + Mercy (pocket healing)
McRee + Mei (for anti dive comp that play near their healers)
Rein + Brigette all really good at low ranks if you’re in comms and you use awareness
This reply is so bs…
Instead of answering with a half sentence and rash remarks, you could correct my mistake. If you are not able or willing to do so, your message is worth much less than my initial message.
From my experience, I would say that for any player who practices enough and fulfills the mechanical skills for Platinum, it is possible to reach Platinum without any communication or attention to the teams.
I am not saying you cant reach higher ranks without communication, but comunication has great benefits, its team game. Situation is already bad in EU in term of people not comunicating, same as problem with people taking dps role way too much and not other roles on all platforms.
And your advice is dont comunicate and just play dps. Sorry but its just dumb.
Sadly, frustration is an essential part of the game. A significant part of players perform much worse because the frustration is very high.
Deactivating the chat and the voice channel are my personal suggestions.
Follow the buddy system:
Find* someone near the objective that looks competent. Shoot who they shoot. Now you have two bad aims verses one bad aim and you are near the objective which is KEY at bronze. I recommend heroes that can sustain themselves (I climbed outa the 800s with Roadhog and Moira) but mostly learn the maps, learn the heroes (abilities and CDs!), etc. Knowledge is power.