Ok, let us put all the trolls, smurfs and throwers aside.
There are matches played by normal players who are naturally at the same skill level.
Every now and then even the worst matchmaker manages to provide a theoretically even match.
Still, Overwatch sometimes tends to make you feel like you’re banging your head against an impregnable wall.
You can see that the opponents are not necessarily better and your own team is not necessarily worse, but small decisions quickly result in a snowball effect, which often makes real comebacks in the game difficult.
Yes, I know that teamwork is the key to victory, but sometimes it isn’t.
If the first team starts with a solid line-up and the second team contrasts it with a worse or more experimental set-up, the first two team fights are decided by pure luck and individual skill. Otherwise you can already say that the first team automatically has an advantage.
And this advantage is often so far ahead that from the second fight at the latest, the corresponding Ults are available for Team 1 in order to extend the lead even further.
What are the options for Team 2?
They can
a) Develop a strategy to break through the defense
b) wait and bait for their own ults to knock everyone out at once
c) Punish the mistakes of the other team (e.g. overextending or positioning errors)
d) wildly switch to theoretical “counters”, while losing ult progress and more or less starting from scratch
However, all three options require either communication, coordination, accurate game sense or very good individual mechanical skills.
And in the middle ranks there is seldom anyone experienced enough or has the ability to make good callouts. Especially if you have joined via solo queue.
It is often the case that a team then uses the same route and the same non-working “strategy” over and over again until the match is over. Playing in middle ranks is basically about smashing ults randomly against the enemy in hopes of getting 1-2 kills. The most common mistakes here are:
- Staggering
- Solo-Ulting
- Feeding
- No common target/focus
- No peels
Typical scenario is tanks play dive or only off-tanks, while DPS and support play more stationary or mid/long range. Or the team doesn’t really know how to execute a correct dive tactic. Or the team has trouble COUNTERING diving DPS and tanks, that make repeatedly valuable picks. Also a standard situation is a tank making a picknick at the choke or going in alone, breaking every line of sight for heals, also snipers against double shields… you get it.
Ironically, it is then often up to individual, attentive, but also skilled individuals to turn things around with a hardcarry. But that doesn’t always work reliably and depends heavily on whether you have the potential to carry with your main, or whether you have a hard counter on the opposing team.
Once you get to that point, the match is just frustrating because there is no discernible chance of making a difference as an individual, if you don’t have an IQ 1000+ moment. Not everyone masters all heroes equally well in order to provide the right answer to every situation. I have, for example, only two DPS heroes I feel really comfortable with. Every other DPS is quite unreliable for me and only works with a bit of luck. If my first two heroes get shut down, my contribution is heavily weakened. Hoping for some “enabling” from the team is wasted energy in middle ranks.
How did you handle these situation? What is your individual strategy if you run into such a “wall” and your team does not harmonize or even work together?
I know that if winning and losing balances out, you are at your proper skill level, but it doesn’t improve the user experience. It always feels like stomping or being stomped.
// TLDR: Even without smurfs and throwers the game gets very one-sided by design, thanks to snowball effects and extremely powerful synergies. If you are on the losing side, the team typically doesn’t use any synergies at all. How can you outplay that disadvantage?
