The secret to climbing the ladder

General Discussion
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Professor Poom’s secret to climbing guide

Let me ask you something: if you can’t carry your entire team on your back at your current rank, do you honestly believe you deserve to be in a higher elo?

What makes you think you’re going to be able to perform at a higher level if you can’t even carry your team at your current level of play?

If you’re a lower-elo player, keep playing, keep making mistakes, and keep learning from those mistakes. Until you reach a level of competency where you’re not only able to carry your team by yourself, but you’re also able to eliminate the enemies with ease,

As you climb the ladder, this logic diminishes a bit as your reliance on your teammates to perform dramatically increases, but it still very much applies if your goal is to climb. For example, if your rank is masters 2 and everyone in the lobby’s level of play is 4, then your level of play needs to be at an 8 if your goal is to get to a rank like GM. You need to be levels ahead of everyone in your lobbies if you wish to climb.

It’s weird logic because it’s a team game, right? You’re supposed to climb with your team in mind, right? Of course, at some point you will need to rely on your team to even perform, but that reliance on your teammates isn’t something you should be requiring at the lower levels of play.

Here’s a little tip: If you’re having trouble carrying your teammates in the lower levels of play and you feel you must rely on your teammates to be able to climb, play characters that have an all-in-one agency of their own.

For support, I’d recommend Baptiste; he has a consistent damage output, he has self-healing abilities, and if you find yourself in a bad spot, you have an immortality ability.

For DPS, I’d recommend playing Tracer. She deals great damage and has insane mobility, which allows her to grab health packs with ease. She also has a recall if you find yourself in a bad spot.

For tanks, I’d recommend Roadhog. His damage capabilities are not the greatest anymore, but he still has a ton of HP and a self-healing ability, which gives him the freedom to play without the complete reliance of your team.

In conclusion, if you’re playing at a lower level of play, play characters that have good self-agency, so you don’t have to be so reliant on your team. If you’re struggling to carry your team with the characters that have good agency, keep playing and make sure you’re learning from your mistakes so that you may improve. Ask yourself why you couldn’t get that kill, why you died, how I could have done that better, etc. And lastly, don’t expect to be able to climb if you’re not able to carry your team. If everyone is playing at a level of 4, then you should be playing at a level of 8 if you wish to climb, i.e., get gud.

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NO. Not in this meta or this season. Tracer is very strong, yes. But she’s not self sufficient at ALL right now and her carry potential is limited. Ashe is a much better pick than Tracer if you’re wanting to climb below high Masters.

Have you ever…played Hog? That’s how you get hardstuck Bronze :joy:

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The problem with this myth becomes obvious when you have multiple accounts. Masters account - games are easier in a sense because you have more reliable teammates. In OW1 anyway, OW2 it’s a wasteland of people that play at that level and the random career gold player that magically “improved” and is a “masters” player that still plays like a gold player.

I have an account in diamond that almost never gets used anymore because those games are even worse.

And if I took this account into plat, I don’t doubt those games would be another level of bad.

Comms are gone, teamwork is toxic. Inflation and seeding ranks for queue times has made it even less reliable than it used to be. The point though is that if you can work within a team and regularly win in masters, but the plat account is the bigger nightmare to play in, are you not really a masters player?

No, you’re just used to having a certain baseline of general awareness and ability that won’t be replicated in lower tiers unless you micro manage the hell out of your teammates. And people don’t like that unless you’re a famous streamer (and even then it rubs people the wrong way a lot of the time).

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There are tradeoffs. If you go up and people are a little better at coordination either intentionally or just naturally, then as you go down you run into people who make more mistakes. Offer you greater chances to get around them.

Its balanced in that you have worse mates, but its easier to abuse flaws in players on the enemy team. If you can enable your team and remove threats on the enemy team, you just snowball harder. Oh, my Winston is forcing Winston into Bastion. This can work. I just need to focus the hell out of that Bastion on like Echo or S76. Yeah, there will be some rough patches, but otherwise we get enough kills.

Winston gets to go completely uncontested otherwise. A ‘lost’ game is now suddenly won when you remove barriers. That’s just better on the fly adapting to the situation and having the skill set to branch out into more heroes.

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This wasn’t a hypothetical. It’s experience.

Yes people make more mistakes, including your own team. I can see them coming, I just can’t stop them from doing it. I know where teh opportunities will be, but my team won’t be ready for it (even when I tell them they’re coming).

I’m a worse plat player than I am a masters player. It’s also why I always hate to see this “secret” to climbing being perpetuated.

Only when you so outclass everyone in the game, like a top 500 on an unranked to GM challenge, or a masters player in bronze, does your awareness and skill allow you to solo the entire game without consequence.

EDIT:
I guess more what I’m getting at is that the secret to climbing is time. I don’t have the time to grind out a plat account back into masters. In OW2 this takes even more time and the experience is even more irritating than it was in OW1. Given enough time and grind, you can pretty much take any account to at least diamond. But why bother?

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Honestly I just abused other lifeweavers who didn’t do damage, it was a great way to get free SR.