"[Insert role here] swap."

Everytime someone types this in the chat I get irrationaly angry.

Its such a generalized statement from people who CLEARLY dont know how to play the game. Im not talking about the obvious examples like playing D.va into Zarya or something, but the situations where someone isn't doing good, stuff like that.

Its such a blanket statement that ignores any nuance, and people expect that if someone swaps, everything is going to magically work out and you win the game and I CANNOT STAND IT. If you want someone to swap, tell them why, tell them what is incorrect in their matchup, tell them why their ult/kit isnt impactful.

This is probably basic knowledge, but Im fuming from seeing this when we are losing, because those people clearly dont want to help in any way, they want their team to do a miracle while they do the same thing as before.

Edit: The D.va Zarya example was just off the top of my head. I also am comfortable being D.va in that match up and its not that hard.

I’m talking about mostly quick play here, not competitive. I had to take a long break cus I had the worst games back to back where I just wasn’t having any fun anymore. The team experience level of my team vs the enemy team kept being so stupid and outrageous. Enemy teams with 2-4 people with level 100+ characters, and me with entirely new people playing DPS and Tanks.

These teams kept running the most annoying teams compositions too. I genuinely don’t get frustrated from losing, all I care about is feeling that I did my best and had fun. But when the team comps are so stacked like this where every-time I step out of spawn I explode, it’s so disheartening feeling like I can’t do ANYTHING.

If it was an occasional bad match where the teams were matched bad I wouldn’t care, but this was like 5-6 games in a row. I’m tempted to start only playing competitive for now on just so things will feel maybe a bit less miserable. Did I just have a bad day and I’m seeing patterns that aren’t there, or have a lot of people experienced the same thing?

Let’s say, Hypothetically (hypothetically) [hypothetically], I’m a diamond-level player.

If I had a plat account, how much time would it approximately take for me to push that account up into diamond? (tank/support)

Assuming I start in the current season, with the latest changes etc.

This is a realistic question about a purely hypothetical scenario, ignore my current skill / rank / etc.

Preferably looking for answers from someone who has done it or plays in those ranks right now. I know it’s a little vague but please ask me questions about the scenario if needed.

Thanks!

I've been playing Dva since OW1, i once got to diamond 3 when they hard reset comp. But I cannot get out of plat even if my life depended too. I just can't. I also play D.mon from time to time, but i prefer Dva.

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, in all honesty. I might be the worst Dva out there even with almost 300h, cause my own team always HATES ME, and the enemy time spams "ez" and "dva queue again i want to win" all the time.

Please tell me if its time to give up on OW competitive.

Nickname: L3g0nY4Fl00r

Hero: Dva

Rank: Emerald 5 at that time (now Plat 1)

Map: Rialto

Code: ZNBVST

What do you do after three consecutive losses? Do you log off for the whole day or just take a break? How long is that break. Do you feel this rule has saved you from loss streaks? I only tilt from forced losses so I only subscribe to the rule to deal with matchmaking. I am still not familiar with it since I just go until I win.

I got two expected losses back to back and then trash teammates today and am unsure what to do right now since it’s so early in the day.

The problem isn't genji being overbuffed it's being underbuffed. Fact of the matter is genji has been nerfed so much, and has such a dedicated player base that genji mains are in a lower Sr rank than they should be. So every time he gets a tiny buff it looks massive because the players playing him are so much better than the other players in their sr.

I couldn't tell you any other hero that has such a volatile power level when anything is tweaked the tiniest bit like genji. 1-2 extra damage = broken, 1 extra blade swing=broken etc. Etc. We already know people that love genji do so because he's got both a high skill floor AND ceiling so it should be no surprise that those players are just better than other simpler character mains.

Buffing him to the same effectiveness as the rest of the cast will move all the genji mains to their proper sr where tiny changes to his kit will make tiny differences. This whole thing started when people got upset with too many genji mains on the leaderboard and had to nerf him to give themselves a chance.

This is now a 10 year news flash that people dedicated to putting their hours into a high skill ceiling character are going to come out on top.

This rank has some of the most volatile games i have seen since bronze.

One game you will face people with coordination, timing, mechanics, positioning, cover or just nice general game sense and the next you will see the most boosted dogshit players that you will have to BEG not to int before the regroup.

Thats not really the point of the post.

The funniest part is the egos, oh the egos. Either “swap and die you’re 0-2” or the pretentious buzzword spammers that binge watch spilo before bed, you will not find a single decent human in this rank.

I don’t even recall silver players blame shifting this much. Honestly just a joke post but i think most people struggling in emerald will relate with the social part.

This wasn't much of an issue before. I have noticed that now, since I have fully trained my brain to listen for every heroes audio/visual cues, I am overstimulated asf like every game. It's made worse when I play in a stack with vc on. It honestly is beginning to make me feel anxious as I play as well, especially when I play with friends.

Theres just so much going on and so much to think about in this damn game and it is making me play terribly. Any advice or settings or anything I can do to help myself? I have already heavily decreased how often I play and its helped a little but not by much. I enjoy playing still and want to continue playing but this really sucks.

Here are just some thoughts I were having, not very organized and I'm mainly writing for myself.

So I was watching this recent Spilo Coaching video (btw, this video is awesome, I learned a TON and I'm going to try to implement it in my gameplay today). The main theme of the video was laning, meaning figuring out the effective range of your characters and playing there, looking to take space. But the video goes a lot more in depth than that. But here's the thing, the whole reason this discussion was brought up was not because the student was not playing in their effective range (in fact throughout the whole VOD they were executing this concept near perfectly), in fact the topic was brought up because the student wanted to understand the fundamentals of DPS. Spilo, the most well respected coach, thought this topic was *the* most important topic to understand on DPS.

That got me thinking. Throughout my climb on DPS, I never once thought about this concept. Sure I obviously knew that on Widow I should play far and on Genji I should try to close in. But I never got nearly as in depth as Spilo described it. How did I even climb? Was I stupid?

I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent by dogging on a few popular creators. Apply is a great streamer, seems like a great person, and obviously he's an ex pro player, so nothing but respect for him. But man he's a dumbass sometimes. If you watch any of his VOD reviews that are not in the metal ranks a lot of his advice is just straight up not good. Even when reviewing tanks/supports in metal ranks (he's a DPS player), his advice is always just "go do more or something." Once again, Apply always tries his best to give the best advice he can, so nothing against him. He also has some absolutely terrible takes against aim training (see this video), yet he has great aim. Also, you see streamers like Metro and Necros, who are top 500 players. Yet you always see these crashout videos where they're so toxic all the time and making blatant mistakes while blaming their teammates. This is plat behavior, how did they climb so high? I found Necros for the first time when I wanted to learn Genji so I pulled up his unranked to GM. In the first few seconds of the first game, he pushes up well past his team and gets beamed down by a Winston. He then proceeds to blame his teammates and call them low rank. Wtf??

So here's my main point. People who are higher ranked aren't necessarily smarter than you. They don't know more concepts, they haven't drilled certain game sense concepts more than you. They simply sometimes have more hours in the game than you. The reason why I do the laning thing consistently on DPS is because I have so many hours that I learned "on Genji, if I play here, I don't do much." This is all subconscious, I never actively thought about this. If I *did* make this connection, I would've learned this skill a lot faster. But I did learn it eventually. And I think it's the same with all these pro streamers. They got their rank by pure hours into the game, rather than by consciously thinking about their mistakes and fixing them. Apply has more hours in Overwatch alone than MattyOW (the best aimer in the world) has across all aim trainers, of course he will have better aim than him in Overwatch.

My point isn't to just flame streamers to reinforce the idea of "I knew my least favorite streamer was trash." Here's a few useful takeaways from this.

1. This is the reason why a lot of "educational" content misses the mark. It's common knowledge that Awkward's unranked to GMs are mostly a waste of time, but why? It's because Awkward doesn't know what's actually useful and what isn't. The claim of the videos are that "as long as you off angle and constantly apply pressure you'll win." And during his unranked to GM, it seems like that's the only thing that Awkward is thinking of, and it might be. But subconsciously he's doing a lot more, which he won't explain because he's not aware that he's doing those things. Things like cooldown tracking, laning, matchups, etc. So my advice would be to be aware of why you're watching educational content, because if you're trying to find a one shot video that explains *everything* about a character, it doesn't exist.

2. Be careful who you get coaching/VOD reviews from. If you get coaching from an actual pro player, it doesn't guarantee they'll give you pro level advice since they only subconsciously understand the nuance of their character(s). Getting coaching from a pro player who plays your character is better, but they still sometimes won't be able to understand what's wrong with your gameplay. That's why coaches like Spilo are considered the best, since they don't have to spend all their effort practicing game sense or grinding ranked for hours, but instead just learning the fundamentals of the game.

3. If you really want to improve, don't just mindlessly grind rank. Think about why you are losing games or losing team fights. You don't need to watch 100 hours of educational content, you can come up with these concepts yourself by watching your games back and then actively thinking about why things happen (win/lost team fight, died, etc).

4. Apply, Metro, Necros, Awkard, and whoever else fits the criteria I mentioned are still great players undoubtedly, either pros or amazing ranked players. So that means that it's not a bad thing to have these things in your subconscious rather than always thinking about them. But to get them into your subconscious as fast as possible, you need to drill these concepts over and over until you stop thinking about them. If you want to practice not engaging on tracer while recall is on CD, spend a few games thinking about that only.

I got into this game in January with some prior experience in Rival. I intially was at gold/plat level and then climbed to diamond in tank and support and dps in master after five month of playing and learning from tutorial. After not playing for three month due to external reason, I came back to use some time to pick up game sense while stuck in diamond 5 and now back to master 5.

Now, I feel miserable that aftering playing everyday with aim training at least 20 minutes in custom game, I still struggle to climb out diamond1-master 4. Especially with the recent hitbox adjustment all my top pick heros are affected and I'm confused what I can still play. I also feel stuck on what to improve since I can't really see a clear mistake I need to focus on by watching replay. Or even if I do, it's very difficult to be aware not to make that mistake in game because I'm always so hyped/anxious/stressed playing and fear to not perform well. This largely affected my performance and I have no way to deal with it (Yes anxiety and yes I'm on therapy but not helping tons).

In games when players are below diamond 2, I would feel so bad and questioning my self worth if I don't perform above these players regardless if we win or not. So, I want to check these players profile if they are really diamond 2 or previous master/gm to justify that I'm not worthless. Sometimes playing playing 15 matches a day and my rank is still the same, I would self critique if I'm really improving.

One of the reason I climbed faster initially was I had some high level player did four play analysis. Now I'm wondering if I need to do the same. But it feels weird. It feels like I can't improve by myself and have to rely on others' teaching. What happens after I climbed to GM/Champ5 and can't find more coaching? I keep asking this question to myself that why can't I get better by just "playing alone"? Why am I stupid?

So, I always have this question about pro players, especially top pro players: Viol2t, Proper, Lip, Shu, Stalk3r... Have they ever got stuck in a mid level rank before they become the top? Or they just go straight to the top by just playing substantially less amount of time comparing to majority of players? What are trait that they have that I lack, or it's simply they are smarter than me? It feels like even, in theroy if I climbed to champ, I'm still far below them because they are always ahead of the game, like gifted, talented, be able to see the mystery components that I can't see, something that I don't possess and can't ever get by trying hard. It feels so depressing.

hi everyone, playing comp makes me realize how bad i actually am at this game and it gets discouraging. to start, i have adhd and am unmedicated which makes it hard for me to focus on multiple things at once.

aside from that, i can’t get out of gold/silver on support. i am a mercy - kiri - juno main but i can play pretty much anyone aside from lucio brig. i am all over the place when i play, so i ask please for someone to go hard on me and tell me my flaws and what i can do to improve.

i find myself dying often to things like torb and sym turrets, moira, and orisa ults so that’s something else i’d like to improve on as well. but for rn, here’s this replay of one of my losses. i’m the juno, PHIA! and my duo is the lucio. thanks in advance :)

replay code: 8VJ8B0

REPLAY CODE: R68Y19

Playing Circuit Royal on console as a Gold 3 Juno (I finally ascended from silver, praise lord T^T)

As a former healbot, I've been trying to contribute more in fights, which is what I believe got me out of silver but there are times I'm not sure if its strictly my fault when someone dies. I get there are some people I could've kept alive but there's also cover they could've gone behind or shots they could've hit to win the duel. I definitely made my fair share of silly misplays but I feel like I was healing a good amount, its just when I look at the scoreboard that I start questioning it.

After the first round was over they started typing in chat (its so funny, rewatching the replay I feel like you can sense my sadness in the walk back). When I compared mine and our Lifeweaver's POV I did notice I was farther up than I thought so that may be it but I can't help but think that if I was in a higher lobby people would know how to disengage better (tho I'd probably be dying way more too)... Am I being egotistical?

(Can't post pic but)

My stats ended up being: 29 elims | 29 assists | 9 deaths, 11k heals.

My tank and dps got: 30-34 elims, 5-6 assists 11-14 deaths.

My other supports got: half my elims but doubled my healing with 20-21k heals

I played professional poker for a number of years and still have many friends that do. One of the most difficult parts of being a professional gambler was dealing with variance (luck) and everyone that is a pro understands that losing streaks happen and that it could happen much longer than you would think possible.

Losing streaks caused many good poker players to go broke or quit the game, because they couldn't handle the mental pressure and tilt that came with it. If poker players (people who have to understand the probabilities) have a hard time with variance, then Overwatch players certainly do too.

So I put together this video that visually SHOWS variance and it's effects, which I think is extremely important for people to understand and comprehend it's affect on matchmaking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioWt_EwiE8s

Some random takeaways:

• A small win rate edge isn't enough to beat variance in the short term
• Even with a 55% win rate (skill equivalent, that is), you can still derank with hundreds of games played
• A 50/50 match making win rate doesn't mean consistency
• Variance can mistake players into thinking they are at a higher level than their true MMR/SR

It's a tough line to tread, because one on side, there's the camp that blames the matchmaker for being rigged and throwing teammates. On the other side, there's the camp that points only at your win/loss and nothing else.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, because win rates matter, but volatility and chance play a large part in short term results and team compositions. The advice to simply "play more" is mentioned a lot, but just how much you need to play is not covered enough.

Also, I included a section in the video on rank resets that really shows just how large of a (negative) impact it has on games, so hopefully that helps some people at least understand what is going on in the last season.

im starting to lose my mind, ive been bouncing up and down between plat 2 and 3 for the past few weeks. Ive gotten my vods reviewed several times by a masters tank friend, and ive noticed improvements to my gameplay because of it. However it seems i keep going on a huge winstreak followed by a huge losstreak keeping me in the same rank range. I realise it cant be anything but something wrong with my gameplay but im too stupid to figure out what. In this game on Eich I was trying desperately to create space/create a split to allow my team to push forward, i even got the enemy tank to follow me to point 2, but my team didnt push, they pretty much stayed at the choke for the entire first point until ults until i switched ram and sent it down main with them. I need to know if theres a reason they didnt push aka i should have dipped earlier to return to the frontline to peel. I need some advice regarding my gameplay cause im able to recognise some micro mistakes but there has to be something im doing wrong as a whole on tank. I want to improve and rank up. I would really appreciate some pointers on my Dva gameplay in particular as shes the character i want to improve on the most

I'm hovering between m1 and gm5 playing mostly Sombra and played Illari for a lot and probably this is my biggest issue.

Let's say I die early or I respawn late. Now, maybe some teammates started shooting already, maybe some aren't yet etc.

How do I decide what to do in these situations? If I play aggressive I die and if I don't do anything I feel like my teammates will struggle.

Any help is appreciated!

I've been watching a lot of coaching videos and watching good player and pro players playing ranked game so I can build my game sense and improve my mechanics so I would like to kindly request from players that are better than me to watch my vod and pinpoint my mistakes and tell me how to fix them and improve my next games

Replay code: PRREHN

Battletag / in-game username: FatManXXXL

Hero(es) played: Cassidy, Anran

Skill tier / rank: plat

Map: grimsvotn

PC or console: pc

Hey y’all. I’m an Emerald hog main who tries his hardest here, yet sometimes, I get people telling me I can’t play tank, as in this game here. I’m wondering, am I “allergic to the W key” as my Anran states? Am I not being aggressive enough? I really wanna get better, so honesty would go a long way. (QP vod, but I think I can still learn from it.

Replay Code: 4HTGRZ

IGN: MysticBrad

Map: Eichenwalde

Skill Rating: QP

Hero: Roadhog

PC

basically last season i was diamond and now im hardstuck emerald and i want to rank back up to diamond, i have been one tricking tracer for some time and i feel like my decision making is getting me killed a lot and not allowing me to have great uptime, would someone pls give me a vod, the code is V13T04 and my in game name is Blink, if someone could help that would be amazing tysm.

Hello OWUni! I'm a Silver Tracer who went from rocketing through Silver, before capping out at Silver 1 81% where a loss led into a tilt queue into downward spiral into Silver 3. I have around 100 hours on this game (half of which are on tracer) and 50 levels on Tracer and wanna get good enough to get back up to 60% wr and climb consistently like I used to.

I'm aware of the off-angling and pressuring fundamentals on Tracer but I think my application of those concepts are just garbage. I have such a hard time with the concept of timing. I went from being too fast, to overcorrecting and being too late. I really think after my downward spiral I lost alot of confidence on this character and overcorrected with passivity. I realize I tend to overstay in bad positions, sometimes don't have an escape plan, misuse blinks, mechanical problems, etc.

My mechanics are pretty ass imo and I'm working on it but that's going to improve with hours so I'm not concerned with that so much. If they look choppy or inconsistent it's probably because of the potato I'm playing on FPS dropping. Still would appreciate you guys telling me which mechanics I need to learn and how to practice them. Comments about my mechanics are welcome and tell me which parts I need to work on!

I can tell that I'm probably the reason for alot of my losses as I'm probably not providing the value I need to. Sometimes I get emotional and get impatient. At some point I started dropping 1v1's and kills that I used to during the downwards spiral

I've decided to for now, grind out 50 QP wins on another account with friends playing mostly Tracer and start the climb anew on another account because I'm seriously mental boomed on this account and I feel like I'd really get in on my own head seeing how much winrate I have to claw back up to a decent one.

I'm very committed to the grind and this character, she's genuinely the only character I find fun and wll embody THE Tracer OTP. It's a long ways away but I wanna have fun in this game by being good.

That's about it, appreciate all responses! Will be providing replay codes of different games! I'd love all feedback about what I do well, what I'm doing terribly, the difference between my good games and bad ones, etc.

IGN: OrigamiAngel

Replay Codes

Wins (played decently, or not so bad that I was able to be carried) - 3NE3V8 (NQS, probably my best Tracer performance ever), Q90WRD (Rialto), Y8Y01S (R66)

Losses (mostly games I solo lost) - YRNVPT (Grims), 5REK34 (Midtown), K93N6G (Shambali), 10KDHQ (KR), 1ZFF2Y (Eich)

Not gonna lie, the two culprits for my complete mental boom was the Eichenwalde and Shambali games. Eichenwalde was a full hold 1st half into an AFK teammate loss. The Shambali match was even worse, it was my rank up where I think I played well and was a super winnable game until my Mauga used Cage Fight in a Torb ult.

Thank you!

I been on a on/off losing streak. I genuinely want to improve. I think I am playing passively, but I am unsure. OW2 was my first shooter. I managed to climb from bronze (season 1) to diamond. I was diamond for a couple seasons and plat for many haha. I hit masters 5 for a short time before the reset, but now I am struggling. Rank is kind of whatever, but seeing how I used to be in a place and how hard it is to get there is a little frustrating. Any advice is helpful

Em 5 Kiri --Kudasai--J338KH PC