I really don’t get how a high bronze rein can constantly carry well in bronze but get bodied by another rein who is silver or gold. Like what is the difference? You shield damage and swing on people with an occasional charge. What’s the big changing factor?
Positioning, wasted Barrier health (using it to shield thin air etc.), failed charges, getting aggressive and starting to swing at the right moment and lost Shatter mind games.
Also lower elo Reins tend to hold their shatter while waiting for that huge team kill, while a successful solo shatter often ends up with the same result of a won teamfight 
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Positioning, the invisible killer. Teams in gold, while far from perfect, are a lot better at punishing bad positioning. Think of things like overextending, never pushing past choke, and going on mad flanks.
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Not sure if you know about flats the streamer. He has vids of bronze and silver rein players on YouTube. You can literally see the difference of tank players in different elos.
Bronze tank generall exists or feed and that’s the main aspects in lower elos
The biggest differences can be split into two things that are related.
1 - Level of Aggression
2 - Awareness
While many have mentioned positioning, I believe positioning is part of awareness.
In bronze and silver, tanks are… well, to put it nicely, they are quite wussy. If you watch and pay close attention you will notice a pattern in which the teams with the most aggressive tanks win and the most passive tanks lose.
Aggressive tanks take space and actively work to keep it. They place an arbitrary line in the proverbial sand and say “this space belongs to my team and you shall not pass.” They also have awareness, in that they know what is happening in their backline (because they look behind them and don’t wait for a callout) and will cease their advance when needed and/or turn and peel for a teammate (D.Va, Roadhog).
Passive tanks cede space to the enemy. These are the tanks you often see in low ranks who, on defense, will not stand in front of the payload, but directly on top of it or behind it, and then as the enemy team comes close, they walk backwards while keeping their shield between them and the enemy, thus allowing the enemy to freely push the payload.
An aggressive tank on payload defense will be a good 50-100 feet ahead of the payload with his team behind him preventing the enemy from ever reaching the objective in the first place.
This is a HUGE, HUGE thing in low ranks. The passive tank will lose, every. single. time. The only way to pull a win in one of these games is if you have very aggro flanking DPS and a support that can back them up like Briggite acting as a pseudo tank, and this will only work below gold. Or, you might win if the enemy team also has very passive tanks and you have the more aggressive/better DPS. But passive tank vs aggressive tank? Aggro tank wins. Every. Time.
Like wussy Rein, for example, will hold up his shield until it breaks. Then he will duck behind a wall. Sometimes he might not let it break fully, but usually he does because he thinks he’s doing something if he gets 25k damage blocked. Wussy Rein does not swing his hammer when someone gets close, he just tries to keep his shield between him and them, despite the fact that he does insane damage and is scary as hell. When wussy Rein does go in, it’s usually with charge because it can “one shot,” but he didn’t look behind him (no awareness) so he doesn’t realize that Reaper or Tracer is all up in his backline’s butthole, and so he dies and complains that he didn’t get healed.
Aggro Rein, on the other hand walks forward with his shield up toward the enemy front line. Anyone who tries to get past him gets the hammer. If there is a DPS in his backline, he will charge them and peel for his healer and then go back to the front (unless the other tank is able to peel, in which case he just holds his ground until he can advance again). Aggro Rein watches the enemy Rein and waits for that shield to go down and then he shatters him in the face and his team takes the point. And if he notices enemy Rein is acting sketchy, he knows the shatter is coming.
So anyway, the number one issue in low ranks is actually level of aggression/passiveness and whether or not the tank understands that their job is to take space and keep it, not just act as a meat shield and hide behind their barrier and then run away when it breaks.
The number two issue is awareness, which ties into positioning and feeding as others have said, but also with ult tracking. The Reinhardt who is aware of the other Reinhardt’s ultimate status can bait out a shatter and get his off without a block.
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ive been in both bronze and gold with rein, the main difference between the two roles is their opinions on their shift button. gold rein has learned their shift is something that maybe doesn’t need to be on cooldown 24/7, bronze rein hasn’t learned that yet
The other thing to consider higher ranked team mates… A rein with a decent support and DPS behind them can be far more aggressive. A bronze Rein might just constantly hold their shields up at choke while their own team achieves nothing between breaks.
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Willingness to not only push w, but push w when others are with him.
The fact that he’s just holding his shield up at the choke is why his team is achieving nothing.
I am a bronze tank, and everything in this post was true. I’ll add: something else I noticed is that my sense of when to be aggressive or when to be defensive is broken. I’ll randomly go rogue and charge into their backline, I’ll lose my mind and just swing my hammer wildly when I’m low HP and should be shielding. I really just don’t know what’s happening around me most of the time, utterly clueless.
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and yet the “Just push W” trope is meaningless if your team can’t break the enemy shield, get a pick or do something. Pushing mindless forward just gets your dead.
Can’t get a pick if your Reinhardt is mindlessly standing there holding his shield up while Widowmaker domes your supports from an off-angle and your D.Va doesn’t understand that dmatrix+ boosters+missiles+melee= dead Widowmaker.
Can’t break a shield if you can’t hit it without dying because your Reinhardt held his shield until it broke and then just stood there and died to Bastion because what even is natural cover and why should you bother using it?
Regardless, I’m not just talking about Rein in my passive vs aggressive argument. Rein has a harder time being aggro in certain chokes (Blizzard World offense comes to mind) because there is so much ground to cover, so if he doesn’t have a Lucio to help him traverse the space quickly it’s difficult for him. However Orisa and Sigma can take ground easier, even if it’s a few meters at a time just by the nature of the way their deploy their shields.
The lack of aggression isn’t JUST a Reinhardt problem at low ranks, it’s an every tank problem.
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They are about the same. Random. Seen great bronzes and terrible golds.
The general difference between Bronze and Gold is camera control and environmental awareness.
Golds generally have a good idea of what the heroes do, unlike most Bronze.
Gameplay wise these things aren’t going to show alot on heroes like Rein though…
You start to read other rein movement, learn to counter charge and how not to charge off the map i assume, i dont exactly know how bronze rein work but hero is not as simple as some people make him to be in terms of difference on higher ranks, part of it is learning self control, but that soon be removed and rein will be simpler i guess.
Playing reinhardt is an art form, AN ART FORM I TELL YOU.
Rein is super gamesense reliant and alot of his skill comes from reading the flow of a fight and picking the best times to start them. So a bronze rein who probably isnt the best with game knowledge, or understanding the matchup or how to rein v rein would obviously struggle. Also a gold rein consistently goes up against better reins compared to the bronze who only ever goes up against bottom of the barrel reins.
Rein is a werid character in that sense cause he seems like hed be easy but when you play main tank you have to hard wire your brain in a way that’s completely different from the other roles so stuff that made sense to you on sup or dps changes on rein or the other MTs.
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TIMING. Rein is all about TIMING.
there is no difference, below like ~3100-3300 it’s different shades of bad, people do good decisions but randomly and don’t really understand what they are doing, the ones who climb to gold/plat are just those who by accident do more good plays and more rarely bad ones, but I’m very sure this is accidental because these days even in masters people don’t understand how the game works.
Also, Rein is not good vs every comp or on every map, and how you play him is heavily dependent on what your 2nd tank, supports, and enemy team comp are… it’s not as trivial as “block more shatters”, that’s not the only thing that makes you rank up, in general securing kills is what makes you rank, but securing a kill as Rein vs a Sigma (easy) is not as easy as, say, killing Widowmaker (very hard).
Positioning is part of it but far more important is pathing along with positioning.
For example on Gibraltar attack I see so many Reins pushing main and going low ground. It’s waaaaaay better to take stairs up on the right with your whole team and bully them off the high ground. Or go into the the mega room on the left and across bridge for complete highground supremacy.
Far too many low elo Rein players just want to slow push main and play on the paload.
Timing and knowing when to go aggressive is key. Being proactive with your firestrikes along with good timing is super important.
Timing, positioning and pathing.
Golden rein knows his hero name, bronze rein plays rein because you know, the man in ironclad with a hammer, must be cool!
Once heard a dialogue in bronze
What is this?
That one is invis, that one is grenader…
Oh, grenade man must be cool, I choose him!
(Talking about Sombra and Jsilly)
PS. But what’s mutual is that both don’t know what are they doing in their matches 