This community lied to me

Competitive Discussion
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Now that the season is done, I’d like to share my experience. I think there is a lot to learn in it. I started off this season in low gold, and ended in mid diamond. I did that entire stretch over the course of December alone.

I had stayed away from competitive over the course of these past few seasons, because everyone was complaining about the ranked experience. “It’s impossible to climb!” “I’m stuck in my rank because of throwers!” I decided that I was happy with where the state of the game is, all things considered it has been one of the most balanced metas, especially after the brig changes. Its better than when you could only have Rein as a main tank, or when God 76 destroyed everything, or when it was 100% dive all of the time. While Goats is the dominant team comp, I lost games running Goats, and beat teams running Goats.

I climbed fast, and had a lot of fun while doing it. I only lost a few games in diamond, then stabilized at 2600. I then looked at my gameplay, got a good nights sleep, then stabilized again at 2950. After one more session I was in diamond. This was 100% solo que, declining group invites so that I wouldn’t be held down by anyone nor would I be helped by anyone. I had more fun this season than any other season.

It should be noted, I did that run as a flex player as well. My two most played were Hammond and Brig, respectively, Moira, Rein, and Orisa or Zarya occasionally, and very rarely Mcree. Frankly, you get the rank you deserve. If you can’t climb to a higher rank, it is 100% your fault, and your attitude of blaming others is your biggest obstacle in your way. It took me 156 games to from gold to diamond. I constantly looked at myself and what I could do to win, and to improve. I never told anyone else that they were playing wrong, unless it was to maybe remind the dps to get behind the shield please. BEFORE they die. Your advice and chastising afterwards is 100% useless and is actually getting in the way of the team.

I had a lot of people tell me I was playing wrong, and that I was stupid or whatever, and I looked for the truth in what they said, and then left them behind in gold and plat, where chances are they have stayed.

I learned a few quick things as well. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Mercy is no longer a main healer. I know, it sucks, I have more hours on mercy than any other hero (mostly from early seasons and qp). She simply doesn’t heal enough to be considered a main healer. She can still work on a team, but you need to focus on damage boosting dps and getting good rezzes off.
  • If you’re an Ana player in gold, you’re bad. That’s all there is to it. Gold Anas can’t hit shots, which is why I had gold heals as brig. And won. If you can’t aim that’s ok, play moira or stop complaining about your rank.
  • Lots of people consider Hammond a main tank, but that is only in highly coordinated teams, which you wont find below diamond. Play him with a shield tank and thank me later. Also, playing him in a 2/2/2 as a dps with a rein/zarya on your team with a reliable dps can yield good results.
  • QP is great for warming up. Play a couple of QP games before playing comp as the heroes you want to play, and whether you win or lose those games you will do better in your first comp game of the day.
  • Recognize your tilt. Its very easy to begin blaming your team in your head and think that it just isn’t up to you. A loss is far more valuable to you than a win, because it allows you to find your flaws more easily. If you find yourself tilting, take a deep breath, re-center yourself, and finish the match. After, watch a youtube video to calm down.
  • If you did have bad or toxic teammates, wait a little bit before entering que again. This will give them a chance to get in another match, and then you will be able to get in a game without them.

That’s all I have to say. If you’ve gotten this far, congrats! Remember to stay positive, and that even if you cant even take the first point, you can always full hold. Have a nice season 15!

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The people who say that it is impossible to climb are in denial that they suck.

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I won the lottery once, you should too, money is good.

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Ranked isn’t random. The people at the top deserve to be there, and same with the people at the bottom. For every game you have bad teammates, so does the enemy team. If you are at 50% winrate you are where you should be. I employed specific strategies and actively got better at the game to get to where I am.

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You should go town to town teaching a class on the topic.
People would pay for it!

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I am an alcoholic although I always have sober periods. During my sober periods I always climb up to high gold, and then fall back down to bronze whenh i’ve been drinking. I have been playing for about a year, and have done the bronze to gold climb 4 times at least, maybe even 7 or 8 times. It is 100% possible to climb. Overwatch is designed in such a way that every little thing you do has an impact.

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There is a huge amount of randomness.
I will suddenly go streaks where I lose 300-500 SR after staying at a consistent place for 3+ weeks of frequent play. The opposing team will have trolls and I will get smurfs to balance out the times where I was disadvantaged, but that only holds true over a long period of time. What happens this game, or the next, or the even the next 20 is random and likely doesn’t show your true performance.
A player on reddit used a common matchmaking algorithm developed by Microsoft and used for XBox Live matchmaking. While not likely to be the exact same matchmaking system, it will be similar to what Overwatch uses. It showed a difference between rank and skill of +/- 300-400 SR on your average player, and 100-150 games for an average player to be ranked “accurately”. It takes 50 hours to get within a rank of your real skill. You aren’t holding a Masters player in Gold, but that’s a lot of randomness and a lot of inaccuracy.

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That seems like the expected amount of randomness. I said in my post that it should take you about 150 games to be assured of your rank, so my point still stands.

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Here’s my little adventure so far starting with season one.

high gold
high plat
low diamond
low diamond
mid diamond
high diamond/low masters
low masters/mid masters
mid masters
high masters/low diamond (decay)
low masters
low masters/low diamond
low masters/low diamond
low diamond/low plat

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I climbed from bronze to gold in one season and in 3 more I made diamond. This isn’t a lottery, this is a player saying the truth, if you improve you will climb

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This my forum account for reasons…but my main account i climbed from silver to diamond simply by learning map control as a Tank and playing as Tracer and Genji who are op

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The lottery is not random, I won it. You are just not trying hard enough.

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@SneakyPanda that’s such a crock of crap. You were ALREADY that good, that’s why you climbed. Don’t say ANYONE can do it, that’s the lie. I’ve been trying for 3 years and I can’t even live long enough to do damage. It doesn’t matter how many videos I watch, how many hours a day I play, how many YEARS I’ve invested in the game – I will NEVER get any better. PERIOD.

I may be the worst player on Earth (pretty sure I am), but that doesn’t mean this experience is unique to me. I could part the red seas before I could get to silver in this game.

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Frightening fact: a friend of mine dropped out of diamond with placements in the previous season.

215 hours, 522 games later he got back to diamond.

That’s a lot of commitment. I’ll softly agree with the “I can’t climb” crowd. I simply cannot commit hours every week to statistically smooth the inevitable leavers, d/cs, tilted and toxic players. Out of approximately 96 games I played last season, that’s roughly 12 games a week I managed. Call it ~3 per day. 1 “bad” game is 33% of comp time on a given day.

Numbers above aren’t intended to prove a point: only an anecdote to see why people feel stuck after what they consider a significant time investment.

For my own sake, has anyone got tips on best value for time on improving OW play?

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The post above me really sums up how I feel. I don’t have enough time to put into this game to really make the grind and improve faster. Yet, as I look back, I’ve sure put a lot of time into this game. Gotta balance your life.

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There are 3 factors to climbing, your skill, teammates skill, and the enemy’s skill as a team.

2 of those are random that you have no control over. You can climb. You can also hit a royal flush in Vegas to break the bank.

Your growth as a player is not chance but everything else surrounding rank is hence the huge dissatisfaction of matchmaker and the mode itself.

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I started in bronze dude. I started when I was horrid. I’d played one FPS game before and that was COD on Xbox and I sucked at it. When i got to overwatch I would be playing 400+ games a season. It took me lots of time to climb. I went on loss streaks too. Before I even made it to diamond I dropped all the way down to gold. The problem with people like you is that you give up and so “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” instead of “I can work on this and improve, I WILL get better”

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Well I’ve been at it for three years and have played thousands of games and can’t get over 500. So clearly you already were as good as you are now. And I am not, nor will I ever be.

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Please tell me I’m not seeing things. I did say something about how you’re attitude and thoughts will affect if you improve didn’t I?

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Absolutely! I climbed to gold this season (13) from bronze when I started for the first time in my life. Many people have told me it’s “impossible” to climb out of bronze or silver, but it took me one season each to climb out of it. Now, I’ve heard people say gold is the “true elo hell” and repeat what’s been said for bronze and silver. It is NOT impossible to climb, you just need to git gud :slight_smile:

1 Like