I frequently see people posting about SR changes, whether it’s a gain or loss, of 30+ sometimes even 40.
My question is how do changes like this happen?
I consistently have changes of +/- 23-27. And by consistently I mean 99.9% of my games since probably season 4 when I began playing competitive regularly. I would say 100% because I can’t remember a time outside of those numbers, but surely there has to have been an exception.
Over the seasons since season 4 I’ve climbed from high silver to high diamond and fluctuated mainly in high-play / low-diamond. Not sure if that has any influence.
It happens on new accounts or accounts that have recently returned from a long period of inactivity.
There is also a rare (<1% of games) bug that can cause very large or very small SR changes.
It’s also performance based. If you’re doing good, staying on fire, pushing things and really being effective you’ll see a bigger SR boost at the end of a win, and you’ll see a smaller loss on a lose.
Diamond+ does not have performance SR. In plat and below, gains of 30 or more due to performance SR are rare unless someone is account sharing (against the ToS) or on a new account.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by diamond+ not having performance SR?
So once I hit diamond, my SR changes are essentially fixed based on win or loss?
There are other effects besides performance SR that can keep it from being strictly fixed: expected win probability, high ranked SR debuff (probably only above 4000 or 4500, but the developers didn’t give an exact number), decay.
See How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 10) for the full story, especially the matchmaking, skill rating, and performance modifier sections.
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Not with me, and I started playing this game again three weeks ago after 6 months
Yes. Performance based SR awards/penalties only apply to platinum ranks and below.