Time Capsule: State of Flex Queue, S11

General Discussion
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As a really boring person, I decided to conduct a really boring little experiment in order to bore people. And here it is! Starting this season, I queue up for each and every Comp game using the flex queue feature.

When we look back at the game in times to come, I want there to be something I can point to and say, yes, this was my experience at this particular point in time. Today we’re getting the mid-season patch so now’s the time to post the thread. I’d like all of you folks to chip in with your experiences in S11, too, if you don’t mind. That’s the point of this thread.

flex-s11-games-played
flex-s11-time-played

A picture is worth a thousand words, so allow me to give a TL;DR. I have played 138 games of Comp in S11. One has been DPS, which accounts for my nine minutes on good ol’ Torb. Two have been on support, which account for my seventeen minutes on Bap.

One hundred and thirty-five of my flex queue games have given me tank.

If anyone in future generations has any doubts that tanking is in a bad spot at this particular point in time, send 'em this way.

Currently there’s a fierce debate raging over solo versus duo tanking, but I think there’s something else that needs discussing. I think the mid S10 tank changes were a disaster. I didn’t bother attaching the win percentages because it’s mostly noise. For example, having a 100% win rate on Rein doesn’t mean a lot when I played him for two minutes, and only then because someone asked me to swap to break an annoying stalemate. But I do have a bit of time on Ram now. While my win rate on Zarya is at 57%, my win rate on Ram is at 45%.

Back in mid S10, Hog’s dominance made it hard to determine where Ram actually sat because Hog mulches Ram anyway. Now that Hog’s toned down and a bit of time has passed, I still feel that Ram is a wee bit lacking. His wizard staff does less damage to tanks than it used to. More ranged characters are able to shred through his armour than they used to, meaning that he’s forced to block more often.

And what with Pharah currently excelling, this should be the time that Ram’s puddle shines, right? Y’know, the anti-flier tool? How many times have you been asked to swap to Ram to deal with Pharah?

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Are all your three roles roughly near average ranks or are some near extremes (low bronze/high masters)? Or are all three close to the same rank anyway, in which case it wouldn’t matter?

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There are no bad tanks, only bad tank players.

:muscle::face_with_monocle:

That is old news! Already forgot about that…

:muscle: :grimacing:

Wow, you are amazing!

:muscle::triumph:

I have a feeling my teammates would appreciate it. They are not a huge fan of my Reinhardt. We cannot all have 100% winrates…

:muscle::pensive:

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I’ve always wondered what your left hand is doing while on the forums :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Good question. The short answer is that I average out to gold, at least at time of writing. DPS and tank gold, support plat.

I haven’t done placements for DPS so I don’t know where my MMR for that currently sits. I think it might be in low gold? Before season nine I jettisoned a lot (and I mean a lot) of SR by one tricking Mei with no regard for map or team comps. That might have been a mistake. My icicle accuracy is, uh, really something. I had one teammate mention after an embarrassing PotG that he was “flabbergasted” by my icicle play. This has really stuck with me. You know it’s bad when people break out language from the eighteenth century.

I did do my support placements in S9 and then, after some torrid placements which dumped me in low silver, climbed up to plat 4. The experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t play Comp much, if at all, in S10 and now I see that I have to do more naffing placements to get my support rank back. Nice. Great. Cool. Thanks. Superb. Wonderful. Fantastic. :tada: :partying_face: :tada:

I had a similar experience with my tank placements where the games were complete disasters and I was plunged into darkest silver. I’m currently up to gold 1 and slowly climbing. It’s not going as quickly as supports because on supports I can just go Bap and bam, SR. Tanking’s a lot harder. Or maybe it’s my choice of hero(es), I dunno.

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Aight, so the only counter-point I could’ve made goes out the window, then :smile:

Thanks for posting this btw.

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I would, but my experience with season 11 is almost exclusively playing the community crafted mode with only a handful of QP-OQ matches, and I don’t think there’s any useful or interesting info to be extrapolated from that.

Although this post did make me realise that it’d be neat if playtime per season was also tracked for non-ranked modes. Would make it possible to have these sort of time capsules for non-ranked players as well, and it’d be kinda neat to contrast playtime on certain heroes between modes (like maybe you were a Lúcio main in competitive in season 5, but played a lot more Moira in quick play during that time, for example).

Anyway, as a fellow boring person who really enjoys these sorts of stat-focused posts, thank you for making this post :blue_heart:

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I’m in so much pain.

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I think there’s some interesting discussion to be had from the creator mode! For example, I think headshots make Moira much more fun to play as, although I probably would still prefer Illari and Bap. I’d be all for x1.5 Moira headshots in the real game.

I also really, really dislike the Mercy Rez substitute. Not just the feel of it, but how it hits the hero fantasy. “Heroes never die! For ten seconds.” It reminds me of that Simpsons joke where Lisa, and her children, and her children’s children, are banned… for three months.

At first, I was all, “Woo! Hog nerfs!”

And then the Fire Nation attacked.

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I’ve actually had a lot of fun with it when playing Bastion specifically. Just running face first into an enemy player, sustaining myself with self-repair until I get close enough and then just take them out with me as I go boom, and then have my Mercy res me to look for my next target within the next 10 seconds, basically guaranteeing a 2 for 1 trade every time. I’ve ended a lot of matches with 20+ deaths this way, but it’s really funny and surprisingly effective. :p
Aside from that, admittedly very dumb strategy, yeah I agree, the res change is pretty annoying.

Also fully agree with Moira being more fun(ny) with headshots.

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I tried Bastion a few times. I really like the spirit of the changes - shifting power from turret into recon gun, self-repair - but I don’t see why he couldn’t have gotten grenade on e. Or self-repair on e, I’m not picky. Without grenade, he felt a little dry to me.

I’d also think I’d prefer a turret bonus damage against barriers than the ability to crit but I’d have to play it to be sure. Barriers are so good that I feel that it’s necessary to have strong counterplay against them that doesn’t involve playing characters like Tracer, which only relatively few people can actually pull off.

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Kinda wish you had done this for the other 10 seasons

Cause I suspect it wouldve looked similar for just about all of them

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I imagine your suspicion wouldn’t be far off the mark, but I feel like it’s stepped up a notch in more recent times. But given it’d be arguing about tank cropping up in flex something like 80% of the time as opposed to 135/138, that’d just be nit-picking on my part anyway.

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I think it’d be neat to give him both grenade, and self-repair. It’d incentivize going for grenade jumps more as you could just heal the damage from it immediately yourself (as opposed to relying on your supports being able to follow you over the obstacles you generally use the grenade jump to get over). And using the grenade for mobility is objectively the most fun way to use it (y’know…when it works properly).

The main thing that still irks me about Bastion’s rework however is the loss of his old ultimate. Rocket jumps were super fun, and for a very positioning focused hero, it gave him a cool/skillful way to reposition and get to some very advantageous spots. Also hitting long range directs on squishies was satisfying as heck, and gave an otherwise very simple and easy hero some nice skill expression. I have my gripes with other aspects of the rework, but to be totally honest, artillery strike alone is the thing that has prevented me from touching Bastion at all for the past (nearly a) year. I genuinely despise that ultimate and I want it replaced (heck, doesn’t even have to be replaced by the old ultimate (though that’d make me the most happy), just give him an entirely new one, just anything besides artillery strike xd)

But even getting back some of the other aspects of his old kit (self-repair & faster fire rate in recon) has been enough to get me to play him again, and I’ve really enjoyed reconnecting with my old main.

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It’s not like there’s anyone out there that’s particularly attached to Artillery Strike, right?

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I have seen a few people who prefer artillery, though it’s hard to really tell whether that’s the opinion held by the majority, since Bastion has always been a niche hero and people don’t really talk about him much :/

I could only find 2 recent videos (here’s #1 & here’s #2) discussing his rework, and both creators suggested bringing back his old ult, and it seems most of the commenters agree, though that’s only a few hundred people at most, so take that with a grain of salt.
(sorry for hijacking this topic to yap about Bastion btw :p)

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You’re always welcome to talk about whatever you want in my threads, Touster. We can chat about Bastion or about the price of ham in China, it’s all good.

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Man, this is so boring even read (i gave up on second sentence) can you summarize it for us please ?

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Mission accomplished.

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