To all you hardstuck players in bronze/silver

Competitive Discussion
1

This is probably similar to many other posts, but then again it only underpins the message I am trying to convey.

I started playing OW on PS4, got almost to lvl 200, and barely managed to get into platinum as dps. Now I play on a PC, and I’ve been struggling in silver ranks. As support, however, I’ve been mid/high gold. How is this?

Am I a much better support player than a dps player? Not necessarily. Do I have better game sense or am I better at game mechanics as a support? Nope.

So I tried to figure out what I was doing right as support compared to playing dps, in order to climb out of silver, and at one point it struck me. As support, I main Lucio, almost to the point of one-tricking. In lower ranks, regular players in general don’t have impressive aim skills. Also, they are not as reactive and used to fast game play. These are Lucio’s strengths, and by playing Lucio I manage to avoid getting killed, getting some picks in and healing my team, as long as I focus on staying mobile.

How could I then translate this to the dps role? I started thinking about what heroes people in silver usually play, and what heroes I myself hate to play against. Obvious heroes that comes to mind are of course Bastion, as he can be super oppressive in lower ranks when players have a hard time countering him. Reaper can also be such a hero.

I started thinking about one-tricking Bastion or Reaper, but then again, that didn’t really reflect the strengths I was utilizing as Support. I needed mobility, so I tried Tracer for a while. By playing Tracer, I managed to get a few picks here and there and not die, but consistently making huge plays by not having to depend on the rest of my team was really tough, such as dropping down on 4 squishies with Reaper and ulting.

So then I started looking at Pharah and Echo. After a few rounds in QP with both, I felt like Echo was the better pick for me as she had significant burst damage, great mobility and her duplicate could be really nasty sometimes when duplicating the right enemy hero (Players in silver are not that good at avoiding D.Va bombs).

As it turns out, playing Echo quickly took me to gold. Enemy players using heroes such as Soldier, McCree, Ashe and (especially) Widow, in general do not have good enough aim in silver ranks to instantly burn you down. I managed to consistently get picks, of which many felt like free picks, because due to Echo’s mobility I could move quickly around and take out players that were far off from their team or low on health. Her sticky bombs are also really nasty in lower ranks when the enemy healers are not paying attention to their team members, and you can dive in and finnish the kill(s).

At this point you may ask, what am I trying to illustrate? Play smart. Don’t overanalyze Overwatch. Winning more than you loose as dps, especially in silver/bronze, comes down to a few bullet points:

  • Consistently avoid dying
  • Consistently get picks
  • Consistently make plays that have a significant impact

And lastly, choose a hero that enables you to follow these points. This is ofcourse an individual pick, but as I mentioned, think about the weaknesses of most players in lower ranks and pick a hero that can, consistently, take advantage of these.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, do not join voice chat. Why? Coordination in lower ranks is a mess. Someone yelling “McCree flanking!!” is not helpful, because it does not tell team member anything about his position and no one knows how to react to it. Mostly, what you get from VC in lower ranks are toxic behavior and non-constructive comments, which are only distractive and can throw you off your game. Secondly, in order to climb as dps you should never have to fully depend on your team, because (sadly) most of your team in bronze/silver is generally independable.

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Due to my recent experience, I now believe it largely comes down to your kill/death ratio, particularly in placement matches. Play conservative, don’t feed, be aware of your surroundings, communicate, and most importantly:
DON’T DIE.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, do not join voice chat. Why? Coordination in lower ranks is a mess.

That’s dangerous. My policy now is to join voice chat, but mute the salties, the chest pounders, the toxies, the clueless and those trying for a career in the performing arts. Occasionally in Bronze/Silver you will join a group of 3 or 4 who are seriously trying to climb, and their communication is excellent.

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Sorry, but gotta ask :smiley: what kind are those?

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I partly agree with your first point. In terms of your second point, however, having to evaluate during a match whether you should mute a team member for being toxic is a distraction in itself. As you mention, occasionally you join a team with above average communication skills, but that is the exception, not the norm. I would argue that a player should acommodate their playstyle and choices of environment to what is regularly the case, namely that communication during matches is usually poor, and in many cases toxic and abusive. Also, calling it “dangerous” to avoid joining VC in bronze/silver ranks is an extreme exaggeration to say the least. If you had rather argued that “it can sometimes be an inconvenience to not join VC”, I would have left it at that :slight_smile:

Lastly, many players who are “seriously trying to climb” still are not climbing, in large parts due to the reasons mentioned in my main post, not due to team members not joining voice chat.

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Keyboard and gamepad difference, plus console version has an aim help system for gamepad users and PC’s is not. PC specs difference, monitor frequency and such other factors. Console has same specs for every owners, except may be using console only mouse and keyboards.

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Usually the “singers” or “voice actors”.

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To expand on that, a group with good communication skills can (in my experience), double your chances of winning in Bronze/Silver. Muting toxies is a distraction yes, but teams with toxic people have a high chance of losing, so you may as well just take the distraction of muting them so you can concentrate on playing your best game, despite the fact you are likely to lose.

Also, calling it “dangerous” to avoid joining VC in bronze/silver ranks is an extreme exaggeration to say the least. If you had rather argued that “it can sometimes be an inconvenience to not join VC”, I would have left it at that :slight_smile:

I have a theory that the algorithm also penalises you for not joining VC, hence the term “dangerous”.

Lastly, many players who are “seriously trying to climb” still are not climbing, in large parts due to the reasons mentioned in my main post, not due to team members not joining voice chat.

Well, this is my experience only, but having communication between at least 3 players can disproportionately increase your chances of winning the game, because the other team is full of non-communicative bronze/silver players as well, and comms just gives you an edge. Rule of thumb that it is logarithmic increase in chances of winning with every non-toxie joining VC. Mostly because co-ordinating ultimates is a primary meta tactic.

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Telling your teammates to NOT DIE is pretty controversial at this point.

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Ah, it’s okay if I get it though. As long as I keep it to myself.

But let me try telling my teammates to not die. Oh boy, then there’s nothing you can do right.

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Well yeah, probably difficult to tell your team mates that. Unfortunately the META (not meta) strategy for this game is.

  1. Farm ultimates.
  2. Use ultimates.

The primary fire play is largely a stalemate if the matchmaking is working correctly (sometimes it does, 5% of the time).

To prevent the enemy team from achieving (1), you have to not die. To achieve (1), you need to kill the enemy team.

One way the game could be balanced is that you receive more ultimate charge if you eliminate a player with gold or silver eliminations. So if the enemy team has a Bastion harvesting ult from behind Rein’s shield with gold elims, eliminating the Bastion gives you 25% ult charge. Eliminating the silver elims player gives you 15% ult charge. (I’m just spit-balling numbers here, the real number could be determined analytically). This would incentivise the targeting of high value enemy players and would encourage team co-ordination / focused fire.

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i generally try the “lets group up team” its harder than it sounds though

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:sweat_smile: Had 2 games yesterday (Tibet/Anubis tomb) where half of our team rep. died because they waited (or peeked) to groupe up on the main path line of fire from the enemy. :see_no_evil:

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In more or less words. You try just about everything when you want to keep your teammates alive.

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Echo has one of the most interesting and fun ultimates in the entire game… of course Blizzard would nerf it by 15% today.

That would be an extremely interesting way to gain ult charge and I really like it but it introduces some things that go along with it - How would the enemy team know who has gold elims from the other team? What if multiple players have gold?

Instead of doing that in voice chat you might want to bind it to a hotkey and use the communication wheel version, people get less angry if you use that version.

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The medal system is a disaster and shouldn’t be used for anything.
If you want more ult-charge for eliminate a strong opponent, use On Fire instead.

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That still brings up the question of multiple people being on fire, and could actually help teams that aren’t doing so well to even out the games.

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Yes. I suppose the fundamental question is if Overwatch needs an anti-snowball mechanic. If it does, that would be one.

I’m kind of ambivalent personally. I think Overwatch is a little snowbally but only a little, so I could take or leave it. If the bonus was not too large I think it would be fine.

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This could make things worse. Let’s say the enemy bastion is behind a shield shooting. It would only encourage people to target bastion even more. One thing about that throws teams off is precisely that they bastion do focus on bastion so much when sometimes the best plan of attack is to play around natural cover and focus on the team because the enemy sometimes suffers from the same flaw in reverse, they focus so much on keeping bastion alive that they forget about their other teammates, their surroundings, or themselves.

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18

As soon as I see a bastion locking down the main path, it almost immediately becomes apparent that if a.) we do not have a bastion counter that can take it out, or b.) there is no possible way to approach the main path, then it becomes imperative to immediately seek an alternative path. Especially favoring a path that results in closing distance towards the camped bastion.

It would seem communicating this logic is impossible though.

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I don’t think it matters if you really know or not. If you took out a key player and they were on gold eliminations, or maybe gold healing, or even gold on checkpoint for bastions that sit on top of payloads, then there should be a counter reward.

So many games are unbalanced because of gap jumps in skill with a character. Take Doomfist for example, most people can’t play him very well, but with a little practice, a slightly better elo doomfist can take out a whole team 1v6. Particularly in destroying backlines. If you took him out and got an ult reward for doing so, it would be like hyper-feeding.

The reason it’s so unbalanced now, is because a slightly better doomfist, or a slightly better genji, can make a trade of 4 for 1 eliminations. So to counter-balance that, taking out the key player rebalances the team’s force multiplier by rewarding them with ultimate charge.

Here’s a modification. The ult charge the player receives is proportional to the K/D ratio of the gold elim player they eliminate. So, something like 50% * KD(gold elims player) / KD(final blow player).

This might even moderate the effect of smurfing, because taking out the player who is disproportionately better rebalances the game.

Yes, sometimes. But other times a doomsmurf is tearing up your backline, or it’s possible to switch off shield to dive, or hitscan to genji, or anything else to take out the Bastion, or encourage focused fire on a doomsmurf, and you get rewarded for adaptation. In my experience, based on complaints heard in game, OP players (smurfs or bunker scrubs or whatever) are the thing that newer players hate most about the game.

And saying “Get gud” is quite possibly the WORST piece of advice you could give in response to that. The correct response is “if you take out that key player, you get a huge ult charge”, that will encourage experimentation and adaptation.

And yes, it might also result in hyperfeeding, but most games are a lost cause anyway. 80% of games in quickplay are a stomp. Comp games are slightly better (gold and above), but bronze and silver are a stomp also. So why not experiment if you are going to lose anyway? It might even turn the game in your favour.

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I like that idea. If the whole team is on fire, then you get ult charge whoever you eliminate. Would act as a brake for snowballing (or highly unbalanced teams). I think the issue would be that Blizzard likes short games. Costs less in server resources and helps with queue times.