As someone who’s been stuck in bronze, I can tell you that the skill level at the bottom has changed. Only the three digit (999 below) players are quite that bad, and it’s not even a guarantee.
I have had more than enough frustrating matches where there are Soldiers who can cleanly pick Pharahs out of the sky, I’ve seen Genjis do rare but occasional 3+ team kills and rush back to safety. I’ve personally had matches where I’ve been on fire the entire match, incredibly high (at least 50%) accuracy, and it just doesn’t matter because one or two players on the other side start pushing back as hard as at least Gold level players and wiping out our team.
It’s madness. It’s the sort of thing that shouldn’t be happening at bronze. You should listen to the people who tell you that bronze has become a deranking festering hole full of total imbalance. It’s true.
Get involved with Overwatch improvement communities. Wawa’s Bootcamp and Scrub Cup were the two big ones that I got involved with. Now I’m involved in a few smaller ones as well. But what these will do for you is give you a way of contacting higher ranked players that are willing to help you improve. They will do vod reviews, ingame coaching sessions, etc. Most of these have Discord servers.
Watch your own gameplay. You don’t have to do this too often, but rewatch gameplay you’ve recorded. Often times you’ll see a lot of mistakes that cost you fights which were easily avoided. Every time you die, ask yourself what you could have done differently. Every time a fight is lost, think about what more you could have contributed. Yes, sometimes your teammates underperform, but you can’t control that, so only focus on your own play.
Practice your mechanical skill. I don’t do this as much any more, but it was pretty important back when I first started. I did have decent aim because I came from an fps background, but I found it really hard to aim in OW because the movement was so weird. So I made custom games and added bots to practice aim and movement (equally as important) with heroes like Tracer, Genji, Winston, etc.
Realize that you should play for fun. This one is especially tough, but around mid plat I had an epiphany - I hated playing ranked. I couldn’t figure out why, and at some point it clicked that I was far too focused on my SR. There were times when I completely forgot this was meant to be fun. So now I only play when I want to, and if I stop having fun I take a break. Also, I realize that competitive is a far more fun experience than QP or any other mode for me, and that’s why I play competitive.
Notice the theme is to focus on yourself. Everything else is out of your control, so there’s no use fretting about it.
As far as specific advice for getting out of low ranks, I’d say make sure you play a carry hero. Luckily for you, DVa is an awesome carry hero. She’s a fatass dps with absurd mobility and an important protection ability.
Personally, I climbed out of silver with Lucio somehow and then Soldier til plat.
Thanks man I appreciate the advice I’ll make sure I practice these things regularly. I think one of the main reasons I am still stuck in bronze is that I never really feel like I have time to hop into a comp matches. Also I feel like sometimes like what happened to you where I’m playing but not having fun. Just one more question how long did it take you to get from your starting Sr to gold?
Statistically speaking, this is BS anyways because its, realistically, gambler’s fallacy.
Rainbow Six Siege does this, and what happens is that if, lets say, you place in Silver III, somehow rank up to Plat I (which is effectively like high Masters in OW since Diamond in Siege is GM) and derank to Gold III, you kinda just stay there. Next season, if he places in Plat III, ranks up to Diamond, but wasn’t skilled enough to stay in Plat, he’d derank back to Gold. However, if said player was good enough, he could place in Copper IV next season and then rank up and maintain Plat III to I or even stay in Diamond, then he stays there. Next season, if he maintain’s his performance, he could even place in to Diamond or somewhere in Plat. The problem with SR’s or MMR’s not having resets is that it doesn’t really show the full potential of a player’s improvement because if you expose a player enough to mediocrity, then mediocrity will be the experience in general.
Honestly, its still better to have a reset.
Here’s the thing… the game was heavily designed in such a way that a 5v6 is grudgingly difficult, if not impossible. A 5v6 can be more than just having a leaver. Saying the possibility of it happening on the enemy team, in general, further legitimizes how stupid the competitive ranking system in this game.
I was high Masters in FFA, and if you play games like Rainbow Six Siege in which sometimes matchmaking will deliberately put Plats with Silvers, you should get used to this.
And do I like being paired against GM’s? Yes. When you play competitive, you unconsciously agree to taking the challenge, whether you like it or not.
My entire first season of Overwatch was spent dropping because I played it like Call of Duty and only played soldier, and I started about halfway through. I actually initially placed at 2350 in s4, but never went any higher than what I placed because I had no idea what I was doing. By the end of s4 I had fallen to 1800 and was sitting at a mediocre 38% winrate overall. My initial placement was a fluke; I absolutely was not a mid gold player.
The first season that I consider my ‘real’ season where I started at a skill level I belonged in was s5, in which I placed 1600. I climbed to gold with Lucio in probably a month after focusing on improving, but I got stuck in 1900-2100 until I joined the scrub cup and was matched with a GM hitscan main as coach who convinced me to play DPS and showed me how to play the role successfully. I finished s5 just barely in plat.
overwatch uses to many factors in match making. That and giving or taking SR. Did you play as good as 100 other soldiers76’s on that match? Did you heal as good as 100 lucio’s on that map? It’s not how you did in the match it’s how others did previously. You might have rocked the healing and still not done as good. Which leads to a serious problem that has yet to be addressed.
And you do realize it’s because they are trying to match your MMR and SR, so if you have too high a SR, then they set you up in matches where you lose to balance it out, for the ultimate good, of course… so it’s not the SR.
This is nonsense, only SR is used to make average team sr’s as close as possible for a match. MMR is simply what one of the devs used to describe SR without decay.
No, there is SR and MMR. SR is your score that represents where you are at in ranked, MMR is the skill rating the game has decided you’re at. If your MMR and SR don’t match, then it will try to place you where it believes you’re supposed to be. This is why you will go on long win streaks and losing streaks before it balances out.
You have no clue of how matchmaking works. Why do you come up with such fantasies? Does it make you feel better about your rank? Feeling better about yourself isn’t gonna make you play better.
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This is why you will go on long win streaks and losing streaks before it balances out.
Actually this was how it was explained to the community by Blizzard, so apparently you missed that whole part of the MMR debate over the years, or you’re unaware of what MMR actually is. MMR is used to choose your opponents in Casual, but it’s used to place you at what rank they believe you should be in Ranked. This has been how its worked since the start of the game. How do you think they set your SR after your placement matches?
Actually thats not how blizzard devs explained it and its not me who apparently missed the debate. I bet you just started playing the game recently hence level 150 and 600sr. You must have either had low ability to comprehend dev posts (like some <1500 sr conspiracy theorists here have in the past) or you’ve simply listed to those theorists still active today and liked their interpretation of dev posts. But hey, here, let me enlighten you as to what the devs have meant with what they said. MMR is combined stats/performance rating for quickplay, in no way is it anyhow used for ranked, including placements. SR for first time placements is 2500 ± wins/losses. More consecutive wins/losses increases/decreases amount of sr gained/lost from the base of 2500.
MMR for ranked is what devs internally refer to SR without decay (only applies for player over 3000). Under 3000 there is a modifier AFTER a match that adjusts SR gain or loss by up to 30% depending on stats relative to playerbase (on that map, that hero, etc) performance is not used by matchmaking. Sole matchmaking algorithm is just putting 6 players on each team that average out as same or close sr as other 6 players on the enemy team, thats all.