is it smurfs? is it the rank increase being slow? has anyone else had this experience of such wildly different players all found within the same 2-3 tiers of gold? skill range in my matches will be like gold4-gold2, gold3-gold2, gold4-gold3, but it’s very obvious there’s a huge gap in the skill levels of the players in that lobby, like the actual range is supposed to be silver2-plat4 or gold1-dia5.
I think it’s just because you’re opened to such a wide range of skill levels. Sometimes you’re hard carrying the team cuz you’re the highest rank in the lobby with silvers who don’t know what they’re doing, or you’re being matched with high plats who know positioning, cooldown and ult management, and a higher skill ceiling and getting rolled.
To me gold was just one of those ranks where you had to lock in on your best hero to try and carry or hope you have teammates who have an idea of what to do. Kinda just luck of the draw at times with who you’re matched with.
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Rank reset in s9 - former masters/diamond/gm players start from gold, I guess it’s the same with silver bronze.
End of season - most players hop on alt accounts that are not correctly placed due to the rank reset.
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Seems like every rank has it too me. I can’t say for anything above plat though.
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as some one who started OW as their first competitive shooter I started in LOOOOWWW bronze (500 SR) way back when, and I have peaked diamond 1 on both DPS and support so here’s my take on the ranks
- Bronze - ranks holds all players who have a glaring deficiency for competitive play. You can be an aim bot god but if you literally have no experience in OW or playing as a team as in have no idea how to combine ults or play for objectives you will lose enough of your games to put you here. This rank will include throwers, people who only play while on drugs or are drunk, people who do not care about competitive, people who have mental issues or physical impairments etc. Bronze has so many reasons for why you could be here but i think 9 times out of 10 there is either one or a handful of these BIG reasons why you are here. (Personally I started here because I had 0 experience and I played on a potato computer with 20-30 FPS and had no concept of teamwork or objectives… 3-4 major issues right there to hold me back)
silver -: IMO this is the same as bronze. You are still super low ranked because you have one or several major issues holding you back like literally just your skill, or understanding team work or the objective. Maybe you suffer from an IRL deficiency or something but point is this is the same as bronze - You made it to silver because you might excell at one or two things… Maybe you figured out like 1 cheese strat with a hero you like example maybe on this particular patch hero “X” is kinda OP so you tried it out and learned you are super tough to kill for ‘x’ reason so you have won a bunch of games to boost up to the next rank. Or maybe you corrected one of your big issues or maybe you are actually very skillful but understand little else… For me I broke into this rank after discovering competitive FPS settings on youtube… realizing I needed to play at high FPS… not 20to25 FPS at 4k max gfx and setting a high polling rate for my mouse etc… Swapping to 165FPS low GFX was game changing for me and even though I still lacked in every other thing this was enough to significantly boost my rank to silver.
- Gold: I think this is the most interesting rank and my answer to your question is this. Gold is IMO one of the highest ranks you can reach by excelling at any one pillar of the required skills in OW. Maybe you are extremely good with coms and team coordinating with your ults or flanks with your fellow DPS, or good as a tank understanding your supports lines of sight so you don’t just go in and die a lot… Or maybe you are top 1-5% of people with aim, or maybe you excel at 1 hero, or excel at one cheese strat that is working for you when no one counters it. The problem is in this rank no one is good at everything yet so your aim god will some times just be countered by a comp that doesn’t care that you have really good aim… if you are getting dove by a team that happens to be good at coms and diving together your aim bot soldier is just toast. If you happen to be an awesome junk rat because in low ranks most people just walk into your spam over and over that’s great until you happen to face people who won’t do that lol. Point is I think gold is where the bronze and silver players have either rounded off enough of their glaring issues, or have learned to excel at one or two or 3 skillsets that have boosted them up to gold. Gold is where I think around 50% of players have BASIC understanding of the meta and know maybe half the hero roster. That’s why games feel so random here IMO… Peoples skill in certain areas can carry you here even if you are lacking hard in other areas. Personally I think the way I broke into gold was after fixing my horrible settings and started becoming more skillful with my aim and input delay not being atrocious without realizing it I just simply put in enough hours to understand the meta / hero roster enough and worked on my glaring issues like I started to ult combo with people, listen to call outs, and not just feed because I understood it’s a team game finally.
plat - I like to think of plat as Gold +. IMO it’s got all the same issues I mentioned with gold but it’s more like 75% of people here now understand the meta, the major rules and roles you should play for each map style etc. You will still have your occasional one trick ponies that will refuse to play the meta hero’s for the map or objective you are playing, but I think platinum is where for the MOST part MOST of the time people at least understand the meta and the objective and how to play it. Don’t get me wrong, you still will find your trolls here and fair share of people who got no clue what they are doing and you wonder how they made it to plat (remember I called this gold +)… There’s still like that other 25% of people. I think for the most part though, people who had or still have a glaring deficiency though have rounded off most or all of their weaknesses in this rank.
- Diamond: This is the cut off rank IMO where team comps / strategies and synergy, and how you are actually playing the maps/objectives combined by each teams understanding of the meta etc are the real deciding factors of matches now. Players in diamond and above understand meta, they probably have read the latest patch notes, they know how all the hero’s play, and they know what counters what. Yes I know, every rank even through GM will still have trolls or one trick ponies etc but from my own experience I think diamond is where at least more than 75% of your games will feel like there is a good level of team coordination and teamwork, and a true understanding of the objective / rules etc. I think like 90% of players here know what they are doing and can self identify mistakes.
That’s my quick take on the ranks… I can’t speak for masters / GMs / Top 500 cuz I’ve never been there. at Diamond 1 for a season or 2 I did play against a lot of master teams / some GMs and I guess if I had to give an opinion I’d just say masters feels like diamond +. It just feels like they are the next tier in terms of … well everything lol. Their aim and reflexes are just that much better… strategies that work against plat players / diamond players most of the time hardly work even some of the time on masters +, they certainly won’t just fall over on dumb cheese strats etc… you won’t get away with sneaky c9’s (at least not at any worth while rate) and you won’t get away with your YOLO i’m gonna score a 5k with my solo ult nonsense. diamond and above IMO REQUIRES full team work and coordination and understanding.
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blizz starts new accs in this area so you got a bunch of actual noobies, some bronze-plat players ‘rerolling’(“the system is wrong about me! I’m sure I will get gm on a new acc!!”), the dia/plat ‘smurf’/alt placing and everything in between it’s a mixed grab bag with very varied game knowledge and skill expression but it’s okay because if you’re good enough you will climb past it
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Welcome to how blizzard wants to matchmake. They consistently stack the odds against you more and more til it becomes pretty much impossible to win. They don’t give a damn about competitive integrity, they just want to force lopsided matches
But they aren’t stacking the odds against you lol. You have just as much of a chance to be the lowest rank in the lobby and be on the winning team as you do being the highest rank and still losing. That’s not stacking the odds that’s just a low elo match
I guess masters+ is low elo now lmao. The matchmaking I’ve seen has been pretty horrendous, and no amount of your gaslighting changes that 
That’s not gaslighting it’s just fact lmao. If you’re in gold/silver (the range that OP is talking about if you read it) THAT is considered low elo, and those are the matches you’re going to get.
If you’re getting rolled in a high elo match like masters +, then that’s a different issue to discuss.
well they drastically lowered the skill requirement when they adjusted hitscan and projectile sizes.
so basically a silver will hit more shots they don’t deserve, while still being stupid and the same thing for plat, while the match maker admittedly, tries to put loss streak players on your team, so everything below masters is basically the same now
with the only real identifier consistency, that it, congrats on masters you silver weirdo lol
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I thought it was a direct reply to my response, so mb on the misunderstanding. I do still think that the matchmaking is pretty whack throughout all levels of play though, I dont think it boils down to just low elo shenanigans. Just because they might not be able to play at a high level doesnt necessarily mean there won’t be sizeable rifts in skill relative to their skill tier