I’m a silver DPS player plaing in oceanic region (Sydney server). At the start of the season, I was having a good time in competitive mode on my DPS role. There still were a couple of unwinnable games here and there, but most felt winnable to me and it was just a matter of me getting good (which I’m not afraid to admit).
But for the past 2 - 3 weeks, I’ve noticed that the matchmaking has gotten increasingly more unbalanced and stompy to the point where I’d consider over half of the games I get unwinnable unless I’m at least diamond or above in skill.
Majority of my losses come from the enemy having diamond+ DPS smurf (while we don’t have any) and my team feeding to that smurf every team-fight, and constantly leaving me in a 1v5 (or 2v5) situation.
The other losses come from the matchmaker giving both teams DPS smurfs (or high ranked DPS player), which technically makes the match"fair". But we lose due to our smurf being outplayed by the enemy smurf.
I just find it so hard to get value as a DPS when I have to constantly compete against higher ranked DPS players. Especially when getting kills is the only way to get value on a DPS role. As a DPS, you can’t really get value by any other means besides getting picks.
I mean yes, there are utility-based DPS heroes like mei and sombra. But in the end, getting picks is all that matters on a damage role. So if my teammates are feeding to the enemy widow or pharmacy, going mei isn’t going to exactly help with that.
Whereas when you’re on a support, you can get value through multiple means, such as by getting picks as well as providing sustain to your teammates. I can’t speak much of tanks since I stopped playing tank when OW2 came out (I preffered the tanking experience of OW1). So I can only speak my experience from DPS and support.
Anywho, I’ve mostly been playing support for the past week because of this very reason. Personally, I just find it much easier to manage smurfs and unbalanced games on the role and still be able to hard carry the game to victory. If there’s an enemy widow that can click heads, if I’m on support, I don’t necessarily have to deal with them and just focus on keeping my teammates alive and get value.
But a DPS, my sole job is to get more kills than the enemy. I don’t have the ability to provide sustain to my teamates like support, nor create space like the tanks. I don’t know about others, but I just find it hard for me to deal with smurfs as a DPS compared to support because of this.
One thing I’ve noticed is that quickplay actually feels more balanced now as of late. At least compared to the abysmal matchmaker in competitive mode. And one of my fellow teammates quickplay brought up a good point on why that might be. It’s because there’s more players to work with in quickplay.
I didn’t think of that possibily at first, but now that I think about it, it makes sense. Especially considering how small the active playerbase is in Australia. Australia basically has 10x less population than United States.
Maybe this is just a skill issue, who knows. But I’d love to get your guys opinions on this matter (especially from fellow aussie players). Do you think that DPS role is actually harder to climb on certain regions due to varying active playerbase? Thoughts?