I am struggling to understand why I can spend hours and hours playing comp and win a great number of games and slowly but surely climb in SR and then lose a few games and completely lose everything it took hours and hours to gain. I DONT GET IT. I am stuck on the Bronze/Silver line where half of the games someone leaves or throws intentionally or people generally have no idea what they’re doing. I have decent game and mechanical knowledge and main tanks/heals in order to try and fill the roles the team needs but nothing I do is working. I just want good competitive overwatch where people aren’t complete idiots. With the current SR system I do not believe there is any way for me to get out of this spot. It doesn’t make sense that one loss can ruin what it took 2-3 wins to earn. SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS SYSTEM WORKS.
There is a great and detailed post here that explains how SR adjustments work in Overwatch:
You clearly misinterpreted. I UNDERSTAND the mechanics behind the SR system and how it works. What I don’t understand is how anyone can actually think it’s balanced or working well. I can spend hours or days working hard and grinding out wins and lose all of it in a matter of a few matches. The system is the opposite of balanced. It leaves players like myself stuck in a bracket that is full of idiots and throwers/leavers and it literally ruins the game. This system is good for GM/Top 500 style of players. This system ruins competitive play for 80% of the player base. It makes it incredibly in-accessible. The problem I have with this is that I can’t even get into a higher bracket to be able to play with better players (thereby making myself a better player.) This is an elitist system that keeps average players from progressing or ever developing their skill as teammates and individual players.
No offense, but your stats are not great. If you truly didn’t belong there you would be trashing players at that ELO.
Why is that the generic response from anyone in this community? I spend hours watching professional level play to try and learn more about the game and about how to play at a higher level. I spend time practicing and working on improving at the heroes I play. I am doing everything that everyone says I should be doing and I am just stuck.
Trying to emulate Professional play in Bronze is probably your first problem. Rules dont apply there, just run in with DPS and wreck the enemy team.
If you were even a Gold player, you should be able to do it.
A friend of mine said it best, and it’s working so far to have gotten me out of Silver and working me up through Gold. If your’e a DPS, just behave as if you have the biggest cajones in the match and voila.
It requires some common sense too, but that confidence can do wonders.
This is all fine and good, but how does one improve if they are a tank main?
How many hours you play is largely irrelevant. Unless you improve, you will tend to bounce between where you are nearly guaranteed to win and where you are nearly guaranteed to lose.
This is a much better topic to post. I’d advise starting a new topic with it. Take what follows with a grain of salt, as I fill as tank occasionally, but am not a tank main. I did spend a long time in bronze before climbing to gold, though.
Avoid Reinhardt, except perhaps in very enclosed places like LiJang Tower, Control Center, where you should be fairly aggressive. You can’t rely on people to work with your shield in bronze/silver.
Avoid Zarya. The enemy doesn’t aim well enough to charge your weapon.
As D.Va, you should be aggressive, but not so aggressive that you get killed constantly. You should be getting picks. Learn how to abuse high value targets like mercy. Time your defense matrix for high impact situations. You can still get big kills with your ult in the lower tiers.
Winston is a flanker in bronze/silver, not a diver. Diving will get you killed. Things are different in the higher ranks where you can count on people to follow you up.
Orisa is good on payload attack. Put your shield on the payload and stand behind it. Otherwise, I’d avoid Orisa at your level.
Also, post a video of your play so people can give specific advice.
Just keep going at it. I went through 2 promotions (silver-gold-plat) where I felt the game was just out to get me when I was near promotion - or the usual grouse, hit your season peak and get forced losing streaks.
Just saw your profile. Big props to you for flexing between tanks and heals. If only your Ana playtime was above soldier, you would have all heals and tanks as most played. Rare specimen of a player in lower ranks.
Since I mained zarya previously in the lower ranks, you could try her actually.
- Enormous carry potential.
- Keep getting in your enemies’ faces and bubbling up. Lower ranks don’t know how to deal with bully bulldozing zaryas, they panic and will just continue shooting at you while bubbled.
- You can’t fix stupid, but you can shield it - good for teammates who goes out of position as a pastime. Good for you to get more charge.
- Gravitonk doesn’t just pull enemies together, but also pull your teammates together towards a common target since comms is non-existent. Even if you meet selfish players who just wants to dps, or their sole purpose is comp is to clip POTGs, I found these players tend to stick to zarya more due to gravitonk. Win-Win.
- I realised small things such as choosing a tank/heals in the hero selection right away instead of flexing after everyone has chosen helps. Just my observation that the moment someone sees a tank/heals being nailed down, it makes them happy that it would be a worthwhile game. More oft than not, even with a lost, the collective effort was noticeably more.
- Keep talking in comms even when nobody is talking/responding. A simple “gravitonk in 3 2 1” works wonders instead of a random ult out of nowhere.
If all else fails, learn one DPS, join the dark side. I mained reaper from silver to mid-gold. I changed to Zarya from then on to plat.
Good luck! And again, props to you for flexing all tanks and heals.
It’s sad to say, but I too have started falling to the dark side. Going with DPS characters has been getting me the SR raises that I wanted. It’s incredibly difficult to get the SR gains in lower ranks as a support or tank.
Using Sombra or Reaper lately has done wonders for my winrate >_>
Exactly what braioch said, go dps and u gota literally 1v6 the entire team in these low ranks.
I spent about 30hrs on doomfist in quickplay, went back to comp and just consisitently make the other teams healers life a nightmare. I have 3 times now jumped a point and 1v5d the enemy team. One of those times was in low silver, my team then had a 5v1 because i died. And they still lost the point.
So far climbed about 800sr
See, this advice works great if you truly belong in a higher ELO. If you don’t, you’ll likely just end up feeding. Better advice is to learn how to play smart.
Part of the stats that play into PBSR is elims, but another part is deaths. Learning when to disengage (which no one in low ELOs knows how to do. They fight until they die every time, despite the fact that teamfights aren’t actually a thing there), learning how to properly poke, learning smart positioning. These are the things that will help you climb, even if your mechanical skills aren’t above par.
Or you could always just get a few dozen hours of QP practice on a dps hero, then come back a changed player and pubstomp your way up to your new appropriate rank.