A lot of people think solo q is meme or completely irrelevant in terms of skill. But I do not think that is the case.
So far I’ve only had 1 queue session and gone 39-21 as pres evo. (Instant queue pops as a healer btw, not once did I wait longer than 15secs)
1-it is very different now compared to pre patch. There is for sure a lot more skilled players and people taking it seriously.
2- I do believe RSS (ranked solo queue) has been a good baseline of testing peoples knowledge of classes, game mechanics and reactionary capabilities.
For example: if you are a dps or healer and you die, while still having a trinket, defensive cooldown, or (as dps) have line of sighted your healer that’s your fault.
If you are a healer and still have big cooldowns up and a dps died thats in your range that’s your fault.
I’ve hit 1800 so far and let me tell you the way people play has been changing the higher rank you go just from a healers POV.
There’s also a very big difference between players and how much dmg they put out, ie knowing their class.
I had one feral Druid just absolutely pumping damage unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I saw one warrior absolutely just chunking people. I had only 1 shuffle set where I was completely outplayed by a resto Druid and went 1-6. That was totally my fault he outplayed me hard, I rewatched video and adjusted my following matches. After that adjustment all my other matches were a positive win rate.
I will say though as well there are some classes that are completely irrelevant in RSS due to design in RSS and how it functions, resto shaman is one, mages are also no good as sheep always gets broken. It for sure favours high damage dealers due to increased dampening and pace.
solo q definitely needs more skill, after all you have to behave together with countless combinations, instead of abusing the same composition with the same combos.
Idk, there are some very meme things about solo shuffle. There are many games you will lose due factors that are out of your control as a healer like cheese, partners on opposite sides of the map, partners that just can’t kill anything no matter how long you keep them alive. Random games where people decide to switch up the kill target and throw a match. If there is a DPS that goes 0-6, healers go 3-3. DPS go 4-2.
And all of this is on top of solo shuffle inherently favoring certain classes and toolkits.
I got over 1800 on two healers last night and it really did not feel like an accomplishment.
I don’t think it should be dismissed as a representation of skill, but it would be definitely wrong to take any solo shuffle rating at face value because there are a lot of shenanigans happening in the bracket.
my favorite so far has been when my teammate DKs grip the enemy DH 7 seconds into the start of the match when the DH was gonna mongo into his melee range anyway