For the last few days i have been on a downward spiral. I’m missing alot of shots and making horrible plays. i’ve watched guides, used Aimlab , and even watched Top 500 players and pros.
But here i am still stuck in mid to high plat and now in practice performing worse than ever to the point i’m becoming depressed and feel like i should give up.
I want to get to masters or GM one day but every day it seems like that dream is getting farther and farther away. what should i do? what can i do to improve myself so i can reach my dream?
Your play time during the week and type of game modes you play in gaming session and how long you play them
Do you main a hero? do you main a role? Or you play them all?
What is your process of improving, do you watch your replay codes? Try to watch replay code before you go playing, identify your common mistakes and write it down and dont do them.
Are you using your ults in right times, do you get value with them?
Do you use voice chat to your advantage?
How do you decided what to play in the match?
There is more I could ask, but its pretty much impossible to give you proper advice without watching your replay codes.
First of all, you seem tilted/sad, so take a break from playing Overwatch for a few days and spend that time reviewing your own VODs and getting them reviewed by higher ranked players or coaches. While watching Top 500 players and Guides are good, but they don’t tell you what your own issues are.
As a hitscan player myself, I have certain games where I land headshots in succession time after time, and other games where I miss the simplest ones. Some strategic plays that pay off good and others that end in horrible failure repeatedly.
I realized that these inconsistencies are not mechanical/objective, but simply the result of my mood.
Simple advice:
If you want to play the game, just play and ignore everything else.
If your reason to play revolves around solely climbing up the ranks, then find a way to get rid of that attitude.
After spending 3k hours on DOTA2, 700 on LOL, 1.5k on OW, 500 on Chess, and probably 1k on Hearthstone - I realized that climbing as a goal in competitive games can be daunting.
Sure, it is nice seeing your ranking go up and gets you pumped up, but if it goes sideways it will backfire, because it will hit you hard in the guts.
Keep it simple. Play for fun, for connections and for personal improvement - and NOT for the win or ranks.
FYI:
never went past 3k MMR in DOTA2
never went past silver 3 in LOL
never went past Diamond in OW
never went past 1.4k in Chess
never went past rank 12 in Hearthstone
Some people are just not meant to be good at games (i.e. me), but maybe you are, I don’t know. Just don’t let it get to you! Stay frosty!
My friend, the key to getting better it’s not to care about your sr and focus on a single hero and a play style. Basically take it one step at a time. What you will find is that when you change things in the short term you will actually lose more and it will feel like you are actually playing worseand you are because you are having to divert your attention to doing that thing but when it becomes habitual that is when you will start to see the improvements
Dude I swore you copied my old post except I’m in low silver. Matter of factly I feel the better I did and the more I practiced the “worse” my SR goes.
Secretly I think I get reported for hacking / smurfing when I pop off as widow / or doom.
Because most people who play overwatch dont actually learn from their mistakes. They continue to play the game on autopilot and continue to make the same mistake over and over again enough to keep them where they are. Watching top 500 players means nothing because if you dont understand what they are doing or why they are doing it copying their plays is pointless. Aiming is something in overwatch that honestly has the least impact over positioning and game sense when it comes to winning games. Best way to improve is watch your replays and realize what you could have done better in every situation and what you could have done to win a fight.
i think a lot of players here in the forums have a weird misconception about being good.
if you reach diamond, you belong to the best 13% of players the game has to offer, so you are indeed objectively good at the game. you are actually very good at the game.
only masters and gm are even better and make up for 3-4% of the best players.
if you can reach these ranks, you are exceptionally good at the game.
no, it‘s NOT a normal place to be, and for 95% of the players it‘s delusional to even think about it.
be thankful being privileged/gifted in one way or another.
I was a Gold player myself in the beginning with the worst aim, positioning and decision making. Now I am in Masters, why? Improvement. To get there you need to work for it. But most people here on the forums and in real life, just prefer to keep blaming other people for their mistakes instead of actually improving themselves
i think it‘s a logical fallacy and a real question about potential. look for the „swimmer’s body illusion“ from rolf dobelli.
In theory, anyone can become a billionaire, but not everyone.
The question is, were you a hard working gold player or a potent masters gamer from the beginning who just had to learn a few special tricks to customize your style of play?
It is incredibly difficult to answer that question correctly, subjectively, because you only have yourself and your feelings as a yardstick. many successful people often claim to have become successful on their own. luck, natural talent and support from others are rarely taken into account.
The swimmer’s body illusion tries to focus awareness on the correct cause and effect. Maybe your reaction time is just naturally great compared to other players. You know, just as people have different eyesight, you might be one of those gifted with sharp vision like an eagle.
even with hard work, some advantages are physically unachievable for the majority. it‘s a form of „natural selection“.
the example is simplified, and training can get you to a certain level, but eventually you will hit a skill ceiling, where others still excel with ease.
I had always without a doubt belonged in the mid to lower tiers in ranked games like Rainbow Six Siege (Low Silver), Overwatch (Low Gold), Valorant (Low Silver) and Apex Legends (Mid Gold)
I can assure you I didn’t have any gifted talents for gaming when I started. Just watch this, my aim in the beginning of Overwatch: https: //streamable. com/nx36sp (remove spaces from link).
My positioning and decision making wasn’t any better.
All of that was improved greatly on by putting the time to focus on them and fixing them. That was reflected by my rank climb in the different games i play:
Overwatch: Low Gold → High Masters
Apex Legends: Mid Gold → Diamond 3
Valorant: Low Silver → Plat 2
Rainbow Six Siege: Low Silver → ??? (Haven’t played it since I stopped a few years ago, but I am fairly sure I can get to Mid/High Plat)
I believe that everything is achievable, it will just take time and dedication. My skill ceiling in Overwatch is High Masters, if I wanted to get any higher I would need to put way more time and dedication to compete against GM+ players, which simply isn’t possible for me because of time limitation and having to spread my playtime over multiple games that I really enjoy playing as well.
(The only time I got to Top 194 in Overwatch was when I spent a full season only playing Overwatch and putting more time and effort into the game and pretty much neglecting to play other games. It is possible, but it’s not worth the time investment for me to try to compete in GM+)
To stay down in Bronze/Silver, means you have multiple fundamental issues, wether it being Aim, Positioning, Gamesense, decision making or a combination of all of them. The only time when you really do belong there is if you have a huge handicap like extremely shaky aim or incredibly bad eyesight for example.
Many people just prefer to just mindlessly play the game without even thinking about their mistakes or how to improve them and resort to blaming teammates or other factors for why they are hardstruck. So imo, unless you have a severe handicap, you have no excuse to why you are hardstruck in a lower rank.
i think this is right, but only to a certain degree. training will make you better, but the point of diminishing returns varies from person to person. your „natural“ skill ceiling is masters now, and you maybe could get some steps further - but only with totally try-hard gameplay, while people like kabaji, chipsa and dafran already get bored in masters.
my skill ceiling is currently gold, with a maximum potential for high plat at best.
there is no universe in which I could reach masters - even with hundreds of hours of training.
If things would be as easy as you described, like it‘s only a question of mindset, professional sports would be meaningless.
there is a reason why athletes cheat with doping. they try to overcome their physical „disabilities“ or limitations for better results. which shows that there are indeed limitations that cannot be overcome with MORE training.
Gifted and talented people like Dafran and Kabaji can easily compete in GM+ without sweating much, but that doesn’t mean that only gifted people can get there, for anybody else it required time and dedication to reach that spot, it’s still possible.
It’s not easy at all, which is why people get stuck certain ranks, especially lower and average ranks. I had to put a lot of time and effort to improve.
I don’t want to deny that, but during your training you learned techniques that wouldn’t work for me, for example. Simply for mechanical reasons. And mechanical capabilities are just not infinitely expandable.
That’s why most professional basketball players are over two meters tall (yes, I know, Europeans with metric system). Have they reached their height through training or through their genetics? And I don’t think anyone would seriously question that size is an important criterion for a good basketball player. Not exclusively, but still very, very important. Same goes for reaction time in video games and hand-eye-coordination.
Incidentally, it is also an important factor in the discussion about material or social differences. Privileged people tend to attribute their abilities to everyone else, as if it were possible for anyone to achieve their status. But these people only have themselves as a point of reference and it is difficult to assess at which points in life they fortunately did extremely well. Sometimes it was the right decision at the right time, sometimes it was just a lucky meeting with the right person at the right time at the right place. And more often than not it was the parent’s money and network.
Gosh I’m sounding like Jordan Peterson right now. Time to buy some meat.
I don’t think a potent masters player falls down to near bronze and then struggles in gold plat for 6+ seasons.
You imply that masters+ players naturally have something that gold players don’t… at what point was all my grinding mine, and that I just improved through my own merit? Was my 11 seasons I spent in low elo not enough to show that someone who isn’t naturally great can still achieve high marks?
Completely true! Even just going 1 rank below where you are should be a complete cake walk, for example when I played on my Alt account that was Diamond, the games were way easier compared to Masters. Imagine how easy the games are by going multiple ranks down. If a masters player struggles in Gold/Plat, then there is a serious issue apparent.
On point! We all start somewhere, most likely from the bottom or middle, there is no shortcut to become Masters+, most people getting Masters are not naturally gifted players, but people who spent time improving themselves with VOD reviews and Aim training. The only place I see genetics would differentiate between people, is at the very top of the ladder/pro league
What are you talking about? Do you think we STARTED in Masters??
We were literally like everybody else, complete noobs that started in Low/mid ranks. The only difference being that we spent time improving ourselves to rank up. None of us started with Masters level skills our rank, we had to sweat to get it
EDIT: Did you even read what we replied to you before? We literally explained this multiple times.
yes, but you are simply ignoring everything i wrote. you can‘t accept the fact that only SOME of your training brought you to masters. you also need the physical ability to transfer your knowledge into actual performance.
if you are naturally slow, you will never get above plat. is it really so hard to understand?
i mean i‘m actually complementing your skill. it‘s exceptionally good, if you reached masters, but you overestimate the impact of your training. it‘s only one side of the medal.
thing is, we don‘t know our own potential before we reach the very top of it. there are for sure gold players, that can and will make it to GM one day. but to do that, they need the mechanics and reaction time.
if they lack fundamental physical requirements for playing at the highest ranks, they could practice as much as they want, they just won’t close the gap.
so grats to you - mechanics weren‘t probably your problem.
Sorry, I don’t intentionally mean to ignore anything you have said, I just didn’t quite understand what you meant by it at first.
My answer to that is that you don’t know you skill ceiling until you hit it, which you will only do by investing time into improving yourself. While mechanical skill is important, you can still make it to the higher ranks even while lacking it, because there are other important skills such as positioning, ability usage, game sense, decision making which you can take advantage of to improve. Also not all heroes requires great mechanical skill to be effective.
I would personally have stayed a complete BOT if I continued to mindlessly play matches without intentions of improving.
I really do appreciate your compliment. I want you to know that I wasn’t writing any of that to brag, I seriously want others to improve just like I have. I used to be absolutely terrible, as you could probably see from the clip I had linked in a previous reply, and with the guidance of better players and training I was able to improve and rank up higher to where I am now.