The main difference between high elo (diamond +) and low elo

Competitive Discussion
1

Is how the tanks play. What i mostly mean is how aggressive they play. In high elo, you will regularly see the tanks show up in the kill feed, securing kills. And in high elo, they seem to adopt the marines motto “first to fight”, which is the proper mentality to have if you are playing a tank (on attack, not defense). You should ALWAYS be the first one to engage in the fight. Its your job to start the fight, and you do so by hurling yourself against the enemy. This causes panic and confusion for the enemy. Especially if you jump on the enemy healers. What happens is the healer you jump on desperately tries to fight for their life, their healing partner turns all their attention to their healer, the tanks turn around and try to protect their healers, leaving their dps to have to fight with no healing support. This makes it MUCH easier for your dps to get picks as well. Because it takes the enemys eyes off your dps. The less enemies you have watching your dps, the better your dps are going to do.

On defense, the dps naturally have a big advantage over the offense’s dps. Because they can sit on the high ground, behind a shield and wait for the enemy dps to come to them. If the offense’s tanks dont play aggressive and force the enemy out of their advantaged position, you are basically asking your dps to beat the enemy dps who are standing behind a shield on high ground, while they dont have a shield themselves… does that make any sense to you?

I am a diamond dps player, so i have gotten used to tanks that play aggressively and consistently make space for the dps. But with role queue coming out on ptr, i played support (low plat) and it really opened my eyes to how wrong the tanks mindset at those levels are. I heard multiple times support/tank players yelling at the dps to make space so the tanks could advance… that is completely backwards and actually makes no sense if you think about it.

My last game as support featured a mix of gold and plat players on my team on junkertown. When we got to the entrance after point A, the enemy team put an orisa on the high ground with a mccree and the other 3 somewhat behind them, watching the flank and in position to rain fire down to stop advances. Our tanks were rein and zarya and pretty much just stood there on low ground, not advancing… in this scenario, our dps basically would have to advance past their own tanks and then climb up the stairs and then kill the enemy team in a vastly out numbered situation to have any chance to kill the enemy. Not only that, but the supports were completely unable to do anything to help the dps, as we had to stay behind our tanks shield and could not get in range to help our dps… basically it was up to our dps to win a 2v6 fight in order to be able to advance the payload… we goy completely stalled out and lost the game, at the end, our tank said “our dps were trash”… now does that really make any sense? Dps were trash because they couldnt win a 2v6 fight because the tanks wouldnt advance to give them cover, preventing the healers from being able to advance to help the dps? It was very frustrating for me, because i knew that it was the tanks’ fault, at the same time i knew that if i was playing dps, i would be able to break the enemy’s defense. Because i am good enough to win outnumbered fights in that elo as a dps… which is also completely necessary to do as a dps in low elo. Because of the poor tank play, you have to get used to playing solo and carrying games to climb as a dps…

Which brings me to another point. BECAUSE you have to consistently win fights on your own, playing like rambo to advance to diamond as a dps, it leads to a lot of low diamond dps players that have no idea how to play as a team (i didnt, when i first got to diamond). They constantly run off on their own and try to fight the whole enemy team by themselves… this is completely maddening as a tank player (i played with a lot of low diamond dps on my tank role queue games) and would yell at them to group up, only to watch them go on solo flanks all game until the final fight where they would finally listen and fight with the team, allowing us to win. But at the same time, i couldnt really blame them for thinking that is what they had to do, as up until diamond, that IS what you have to do as a dps to win… diamond is where you actually start to learn how to play the game properly (as a cohesive team)

I mean, you dont have to take my word for it. Just watch an owl game. Do you ever see a dps running ahead of the tanks and engaging the enemy team there? Rarely, you generally see the dps follow behind the tanks while the tanks move forward. Even in dive meta, you didnt see the flankers engaging first. They would get into position and then wait for their tanks to attack an enemy before joining in. Theres a reason tanks have much bigger health pools. Its so they can absorb damage from the enemy, which reduces the amount of damage that is directed towards their weaker teammates. You dont need to run away as rein at the start of the fight, just because your shield broke. You still have a massive health pool and likely a healer pocketing you. The longer you stay in the middle of the fight, the more chances you give your dps to be successful.

Ask yourself, what do the best tanks in OWL have in common? They all play very aggressive consistently make impactful plays. They dont win games by playing passive and waiting for their dps to kill everyone

14 Likes
2

It’s just not the tanks, the whole team is aggressive.

You can try being an aggressive tank in plat, and your healers will most likely not be able to keep you up. You can make all the space you want, but your dps will not be able to keep up with you.

Also the biggest thing people fail to do in lower ranks, is cleaning up. You just won a fight and killed 4/6 enemies? Push up and stagger the other two that are falling back.

10 Likes
3

There are DPS in OWL? I guess I haven’t watched in a while.

3 Likes
4

Ya i was going to point that out as well. In high elo, every player is aware of the kill feed, on attack everyone understands that if you get the first kill, thats the green light for everyone to go forward full speed. On defense, if you get a couple picks, same thing. But in low elo, i remember one time we got like 4 picks on defense, i ran forward to stagger them, expecting my team to be with me, none of my teammates did, i ended up in a 2v1 fight and died. Then my teammates yelled at me for overextending. I was like “whaaaaat?”

5 Likes
5

Tbh plat tanks can be happy to find such a “guide”. This should boost them easily to mid diamond.

3 Likes
6

As dps, they love to blame you every time the other team isn’t magically dying… but it’s almost always when the tanks are playing like whimps.

7

While I absolutely love your post, I wish you made it shorter, or gave a tl:dr for people who have low attention span or not patient enough to read a wall of text. It doesn’t help that people prefer flocking into “x needs nurf!!” posts more than ones that’s actually legit useful for most players (I take the majority of the players here are below Diamond).

As a support, I absolutely hate seeing tanks that are so blatantly passive but proceed to blame the whole team (mostly DPS) for not getting kills. Well… there is no space created, what do they expect? A Widow getting 3k’s to ‘make way’ out of nowhere? That’s more about the Widow carrying the team than the tanks helping the team to get kills.

As a tank, this is also another reason I hate playing Orisa. Because it’s a STARING contest outside of the occasion halt+hook, and that’s if your Hog even bothers doing it (they really don’t below Diamond). Playing the likes of Winston is really satisfying because you’re demanding attention, else you’re taking at least one support even if it means trading your life, which is still a fair trade, imo.

Aggressive tanks are the best. I’d gladly give them my nano every time as Ana if I see my tanks trying to make space by playing aggressively. Swingings Reins > Shielding Reins.

3 Likes
8

Yep, I was one win from Diamond away, and in that match I had an Orisa on Volskaya that was just placing her shield in the chokepoint on attack. The enemy had Orisa Hog and Widow set up on the Highground next to the spot, so the choke was clear and easy to move through if our Orisa had managed to actually advance. But no, she was not in Voice and didn’t move, just camped in the choke until her shield broke…And we all got picked by the Widow (smurf btw) 1 by 1…As a Support you cannot do much bust just despair … :frowning:

2 Likes
9

Ya because it’s been forced 2-2-2 for a couple weeks now

1 Like
10

Controlled aggression is the name of the game. I went against a 4400 tank line in PTR, and let me tell you, I’ve never felt so helpless. These guys knew exactly when to push and when to back off, and they spawncamped us basically the entire game.

As you go up in ranks, this is increasingly true, and it doesn’t just apply to tanks. It applies to every role. As you go up, it becomes increasingly important to know when to commit and when to back off.

3 Likes
11

100% agree. I’ve actually been realizing lately in my plat games that it’s the DPS that are being forced to make space for the tanks which is entirely backwards.

1 Like
12

If you play aggro tank in low brackets you usually die because your healers will do nothing to keep you up most of the time and you have to pray your dps will use the created space to make picks.

1 Like
13

Several teams in Stage 3 threw 1 tank 2 heals 3 dps at people. Some did Sombra GOATS, switching D.Va to Sombra.

Stage 4 is role lock, 2-2-2. Washington Justice 4-0’d the Vancouver Titans, and the Titans looked completely lost.

2 Likes
14

low elo games are just anarchy. 222 will hopefully allow people to focus on their role and learn to trust their team mates. then your rank will actually be about your skill level on that role amd not biased so much by rng and time spent grinding.

3 Likes
15

That’s because low elo players want to sit and poke at the choke. Basically secure kills without placing themselves in danger because they’re not confident enough to win 1v1s. And if you play aggro tank they will often sit there and stare at you engage, kill 2 people, then die because your healers are busy trying to do damage.

Saying their mindest is ‘wrong’ is lacking perspective though. You can only successfully play aggressive if your team supports that way of playing, and 90% of the time they don’t and you’ll get screamed at for the rest of the match.

2 Likes
17

If I want to climb I can just play tank. But climbing isn’t my intention so

18

How dps play as well…

I’m support advancing behind our Rein. All our dps running ahead of the barrier and being murdered by enemy smurf.

Repeatedly…

I suggested that our Rein switch off as our team mates were too moronic to tank for.

Barrier tech is too advanced for anybody below plat apparently.

As to my own tanking. On Kings Row charged in, squished Brigitte and hammered another enemy. No fps follow as they’re crap. I get flamed for going in and dying. I just got two picks.

That was the game our Zen had all the gold medals on a team with 3 dps…

Aggro tank needs good follow up. Low ranks don’t have that, so they don’t dare aggro…

19

I like playing an aggressive Orisa on Attack with Payload maps. Throw a shield a little bit forward then just push up laying down suppressing fire. I played Rialto the other day with my friends and because of how often I got my supercharger, and my friend nanoing me, I ended with silver damage as Orisa. I would have gotten gold, but it was taken from me at the very end by 200 damage.

2 Likes
20

Just wait til you are forced on support the whole time in 2-2-2, it’s by far the most infuriating role to be stuck on from my experience on the PTR (and that’s already with a bit more serious folk competitively speaking usually).

Used to be a flex player that plays all roles but I’m definitely not touching support in 2-2-2 role lock.

21

What’s wrong with playing support?