I'm going to do a quick post to try and explain why "MMR Hell" appears to exist.
The blurb is that the lower MMR you get, the more varied the skillsets become, and the harder it is for the matchmaking to pair people together because of their different strengths. By comparison, at high levels, because everyone is roughly similarly capable, it has a much easier time. I have wasted 20 minutes in paint making an awful visual aid:
To put it simply, there are different types of things to be good at. 6 is not an exhaustive number of skills, I just picked it because hexagons are cool and I could easily come up with 6 obvious skills.
Aim is self-explanatory.
Character knowledge indicates your knowledge of all characters and how well they match up. e.g. can a Symmetra beat a Winston, who is a good response to an enemy Pharah, which character is a good pick on this map, etc.
Movement & positioning both include micro-movement (knowing how to mini-strafe to make it harder for enemies to predict your movement) and knowing how to use mobility skills to your advantage.
Map knowledge is knowing which routes are optimal entries (especially with the comp you're running), which chokes are grindiest, which spots are good for certain characters like junkrot, widow, and so on.
Team awareness is things like not trickling, knowing where your healer is, recognising where your team is (or isn't) trying to push through, and generally understanding what your comp is trying to do (or not, at lower levels).
Role knowledge is tied into comp awareness, e.g. what is your character doing for the team. This is a constant hiccup for lower MMR players and is why you see 4-dps comps with Genji, Hanzo, Sombra and Symmetra, +tank&healer. Everyone wants to be the flashy +1 role, not the workhorse.
And you can see from the examples I've given that there are some low MMR players who have good aim, maybe even aim close to as good as a high MMR player. But that is not supported by other skills, and so they'll do things like run in solo and trade, or won't protect healers, etc. Or you've got people who can't really aim, but have good general knowledge (they read/watch a lot of higher MMR play, for example). Ultimately, however, while each player might have something they're good at, they're lacking in other areas. And the matchmaker can't determine this about a player, so what you'll often get is several of these players together who all can't really do well in one particular skill. When they get put in a group like that, where 2 or 3 members are lacking a key skill, their chance of winning is low. But equally the matchmaker might just, by chance, find other players who can cover up the lack of e.g. aim, and the team's chance of winning rises.
You can think of an individual player's MMR as the total light blue area covered, and matchmaking variance as the total light blue area covered when all 6 players are put together. With the much more 'specialised' layouts in low MMR, there's more of a chance that the entire team will be lacking in one or two skills. But by comparison, if you imagine 6 high MMR players, it's much more likely all bases will be covered, because all players above say, 3.5k, are decent at almost everything.
There are obviously other things I didn't include for the sake of simplicity (favoured characters and roles, harmoniousness, use of voice comms and appropriate knowledge, effects of character imbalances, and so on), but the general model of understanding has served me pretty well for the last 7 or so years of try-hard gaming.
Looks like in order to get out of low MMR you have to be really damn good or just not get placed there in the first place. Under this theory, wouldn't that mean that bronze is a chaotic slum with a thin strip of silver and most people gold and up?
Or improve. Or take steps to make up for your team's failings through things outside of direct play. If you're on a team of people without a lot of awareness, be proactive in shot calling and updating people's statuses. If you're on a team with deficiencies in aiming, try to focus on getting them to focus on the bigger targets.
Obviously, there will be a lot of pissy people who'll throw tantrums, but they would've done that regardless. You are the common factor in the games you play, and if you improve and better your team by being on it, your rank will naturally rise over time. That doesn't mean there won't be periods where things just aren't working or the other team is clicking perfectly. Shit happens. Make a quick note of what went wrong, what you could've done to mitigate it, and then get right back into matters and put that into practice.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Looks like in order to get out of low MMR you have to be really damn good or just not get placed there in the first place. Under this theory, wouldn't that mean that bronze is a chaotic slum with a thin strip of silver and most people gold and up?
I would describe bronze through gold (in almost any game) as wildly chaotic in terms of what you're going to see, yes. And you will find players yo-yoing in and out of their leagues. I've always found the meta and standards of play at higher skill levels - in multiple different games - to be much more consistent. It's also why finding a good group to play with can give you much better results; the more your play group covers those different skills, the more consistently you'll perform as a team.
I've had some of the most intense and stressful but also immensely rewarding gaming experiences in comp that I really haven't felt replicated anywhere else in my gaming career. The only thing I can really equate it to is the joys of unexpected hardfought wins in pickup basketball.
I'm going to do a quick post to try and explain why "MMR Hell" appears to exist.
The blurb is that the lower MMR you get, the more varied the skillsets become, and the harder it is for the matchmaking to pair people together because of their different strengths. By comparison, at high levels, because everyone is roughly similarly capable, it has a much easier time. I have wasted 20 minutes in paint making an awful visual aid:
To put it simply, there are different types of things to be good at. 6 is not an exhaustive number of skills, I just picked it because hexagons are cool and I could easily come up with 6 obvious skills.
Aim is self-explanatory.
Character knowledge indicates your knowledge of all characters and how well they match up. e.g. can a Symmetra beat a Winston, who is a good response to an enemy Pharah, which character is a good pick on this map, etc.
Movement & positioning both include micro-movement (knowing how to mini-strafe to make it harder for enemies to predict your movement) and knowing how to use mobility skills to your advantage.
Map knowledge is knowing which routes are optimal entries (especially with the comp you're running), which chokes are grindiest, which spots are good for certain characters like junkrot, widow, and so on.
Team awareness is things like not trickling, knowing where your healer is, recognising where your team is (or isn't) trying to push through, and generally understanding what your comp is trying to do (or not, at lower levels).
Role knowledge is tied into comp awareness, e.g. what is your character doing for the team. This is a constant hiccup for lower MMR players and is why you see 4-dps comps with Genji, Hanzo, Sombra and Symmetra, +tank&healer. Everyone wants to be the flashy +1 role, not the workhorse.
And you can see from the examples I've given that there are some low MMR players who have good aim, maybe even aim close to as good as a high MMR player. But that is not supported by other skills, and so they'll do things like run in solo and trade, or won't protect healers, etc. Or you've got people who can't really aim, but have good general knowledge (they read/watch a lot of higher MMR play, for example). Ultimately, however, while each player might have something they're good at, they're lacking in other areas. And the matchmaker can't determine this about a player, so what you'll often get is several of these players together who all can't really do well in one particular skill. When they get put in a group like that, where 2 or 3 members are lacking a key skill, their chance of winning is low. But equally the matchmaker might just, by chance, find other players who can cover up the lack of e.g. aim, and the team's chance of winning rises.
You can think of an individual player's MMR as the total light blue area covered, and matchmaking variance as the total light blue area covered when all 6 players are put together. With the much more 'specialised' layouts in low MMR, there's more of a chance that the entire team will be lacking in one or two skills. But by comparison, if you imagine 6 high MMR players, it's much more likely all bases will be covered, because all players above say, 3.5k, are decent at almost everything.
There are obviously other things I didn't include for the sake of simplicity (favoured characters and roles, harmoniousness, use of voice comms and appropriate knowledge, effects of character imbalances, and so on), but the general model of understanding has served me pretty well for the last 7 or so years of try-hard gaming.
Looks like in order to get out of low MMR you have to be really damn good or just not get placed there in the first place. Under this theory, wouldn't that mean that bronze is a chaotic slum with a thin strip of silver and most people gold and up?
Or improve. Or take steps to make up for your team's failings through things outside of direct play. If you're on a team of people without a lot of awareness, be proactive in shot calling and updating people's statuses. If you're on a team with deficiencies in aiming, try to focus on getting them to focus on the bigger targets.
Obviously, there will be a lot of pissy people who'll throw tantrums, but they would've done that regardless. You are the common factor in the games you play, and if you improve and better your team by being on it, your rank will naturally rise over time. That doesn't mean there won't be periods where things just aren't working or the other team is clicking perfectly. Shit happens. Make a quick note of what went wrong, what you could've done to mitigate it, and then get right back into matters and put that into practice.
Sounds like improving yourself is not as effective as improving your team mates.
To elaborate: At low MMR, playing the right way does not matter. If you play your character and role correctly but nobody capitalizes on it you're pissing in the wind. This would explain why people can consistently get gold medals and personally perform very well yet barely make any progress. This ultimately means bronze league is a twisted version of Overwatch. At low MMR your personal skill is less important than at mid tier and up, which is very counter intuitive. You have to have skill AND play off your team mates, even if they suck.
This is all just navel gazing theory, so don't take me too seriously.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
(Gold medals are purely comparative, and shouldn't really be used as an indicator of whether you're playing well for your MMR)
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
For the record, I am seeing almost verbatim comments I heard on the videos I regularly watch to try and improve my knowledge being given here. Which isn't a bad thing in any way, but like it kind of shows you are putting a lot of faith into what someone on the internet says.
Good players are good players and know their shit, but they might not always know how to explain why they are good. This is no way is meant to discount that advice, but try to also keep an open mind rather than recite that opinion as fact.
I was not joking though when I asked if anyone around my rating wanted to join me. I would both love to have a set of eyes to tell me what I might not be seeing in my games about my own play, but also just another person I can consistently count on. If anything, I would feel MUCH more comfortable playing support if I knew I at least always had one person worth supporting. Words cannot express the sadness that comes from playing a Mercy and hearing dead silence when you try to damage boost anyone on your team.
I'm going to do a quick post to try and explain why "MMR Hell" appears to exist.
The blurb is that the lower MMR you get, the more varied the skillsets become, and the harder it is for the matchmaking to pair people together because of their different strengths. By comparison, at high levels, because everyone is roughly similarly capable, it has a much easier time. I have wasted 20 minutes in paint making an awful visual aid:
To put it simply, there are different types of things to be good at. 6 is not an exhaustive number of skills, I just picked it because hexagons are cool and I could easily come up with 6 obvious skills.
Aim is self-explanatory.
Character knowledge indicates your knowledge of all characters and how well they match up. e.g. can a Symmetra beat a Winston, who is a good response to an enemy Pharah, which character is a good pick on this map, etc.
Movement & positioning both include micro-movement (knowing how to mini-strafe to make it harder for enemies to predict your movement) and knowing how to use mobility skills to your advantage.
Map knowledge is knowing which routes are optimal entries (especially with the comp you're running), which chokes are grindiest, which spots are good for certain characters like junkrot, widow, and so on.
Team awareness is things like not trickling, knowing where your healer is, recognising where your team is (or isn't) trying to push through, and generally understanding what your comp is trying to do (or not, at lower levels).
Role knowledge is tied into comp awareness, e.g. what is your character doing for the team. This is a constant hiccup for lower MMR players and is why you see 4-dps comps with Genji, Hanzo, Sombra and Symmetra, +tank&healer. Everyone wants to be the flashy +1 role, not the workhorse.
And you can see from the examples I've given that there are some low MMR players who have good aim, maybe even aim close to as good as a high MMR player. But that is not supported by other skills, and so they'll do things like run in solo and trade, or won't protect healers, etc. Or you've got people who can't really aim, but have good general knowledge (they read/watch a lot of higher MMR play, for example). Ultimately, however, while each player might have something they're good at, they're lacking in other areas. And the matchmaker can't determine this about a player, so what you'll often get is several of these players together who all can't really do well in one particular skill. When they get put in a group like that, where 2 or 3 members are lacking a key skill, their chance of winning is low. But equally the matchmaker might just, by chance, find other players who can cover up the lack of e.g. aim, and the team's chance of winning rises.
You can think of an individual player's MMR as the total light blue area covered, and matchmaking variance as the total light blue area covered when all 6 players are put together. With the much more 'specialised' layouts in low MMR, there's more of a chance that the entire team will be lacking in one or two skills. But by comparison, if you imagine 6 high MMR players, it's much more likely all bases will be covered, because all players above say, 3.5k, are decent at almost everything.
There are obviously other things I didn't include for the sake of simplicity (favoured characters and roles, harmoniousness, use of voice comms and appropriate knowledge, effects of character imbalances, and so on), but the general model of understanding has served me pretty well for the last 7 or so years of try-hard gaming.
Looks like in order to get out of low MMR you have to be really damn good or just not get placed there in the first place. Under this theory, wouldn't that mean that bronze is a chaotic slum with a thin strip of silver and most people gold and up?
Or improve. Or take steps to make up for your team's failings through things outside of direct play. If you're on a team of people without a lot of awareness, be proactive in shot calling and updating people's statuses. If you're on a team with deficiencies in aiming, try to focus on getting them to focus on the bigger targets.
Obviously, there will be a lot of pissy people who'll throw tantrums, but they would've done that regardless. You are the common factor in the games you play, and if you improve and better your team by being on it, your rank will naturally rise over time. That doesn't mean there won't be periods where things just aren't working or the other team is clicking perfectly. Shit happens. Make a quick note of what went wrong, what you could've done to mitigate it, and then get right back into matters and put that into practice.
Sounds like improving yourself is not as effective as improving your team mates.
To elaborate: At low MMR, playing the right way does not matter. If you play your character and role correctly but nobody capitalizes on it you're pissing in the wind. This would explain why people can consistently get gold medals and personally perform very well yet barely make any progress. This ultimately means bronze league is a twisted version of Overwatch. At low MMR your personal skill is less important than at mid tier and up, which is very counter intuitive. You have to have skill AND play off your team mates, even if they suck.
This is all just navel gazing theory, so don't take me too seriously.
First off, gold medals are meaningless and I wouldn't even consider them. Case in point: the Junkrat who always gets gold damage and yet is doing nothing valuable for the team. Also, to be blunt, at that level nobody is really playing their role 'correctly'. If one were to play a DPS role 'correctly' at low rank, they should be raking in the kills left and right regardless of what their team is doing.
Playing off your teammates is also important at high rank. At high rank this often means reacting properly to their good plays rather than their terrible ones, but those happen too.
Personally I never look at a game I played and say "I performed well," and leave it at that. I always look for the mistakes I made to try and correct them in the future. Every single death I try to look at the killcam and identify what I did wrong. Was I out of position? Did I need to land more shots? Did I miss an audio cue? Did I mismanage my abilities? Did I forget to check my flank? Or alternately: should I have actually fought to the death earlier in this scenario because our Mercy had res?
I would say that if you ever look at your own play and your only thought is, "I performed well," then you are simply deceiving yourself. Even professional players have room for improvement. Saying personal skill doesn't matter or matters less at low rank is both false and an ultimately unhelpful attitude, and will only lead to frustration and stagnation.
Blizzard threw up the warning that if anyone else quits, they'll be penalized with a loss.
Apparently Blizzard doesn't realize that 5 v 6 essentially is a loss.
God fucking dammit.
They have one minute (or maybe less, not sure) to reconnect, at which point the game becomes safe to leave
Still counts as a loss if you lose or if everyone on your team quits but it doesn't count against your season limit on quit matches
Someone quitting a couple minutes in shouldn't count as a loss. We were easily blocking the cart on Dorado and then it's a loss cause nuts to you someone on your team quit. Just end the game if that happens.
I don't care about the season limit because I don't quit matches. But now I'm having to make up ground because someone else did. That they'll have to work harder to do so means nothing at all to my own progression.
Blizzard threw up the warning that if anyone else quits, they'll be penalized with a loss.
Apparently Blizzard doesn't realize that 5 v 6 essentially is a loss.
God fucking dammit.
They have one minute (or maybe less, not sure) to reconnect, at which point the game becomes safe to leave
Still counts as a loss if you lose or if everyone on your team quits but it doesn't count against your season limit on quit matches
Someone quitting a couple minutes in shouldn't count as a loss. We were easily blocking the cart on Dorado and then it's a loss cause nuts to you someone on your team quit. Just end the game if that happens.
I don't care about the season limit because I don't quit matches. But now I'm having to make up ground because someone else did. That they'll have to work harder to do so means nothing at all to my own progression.
I get that it's frustrating but if the leave occurs after combat starts then just cancelling everything would be way more unfair and very abusable.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Yeah you kind of can't take a passive approach to leaving. If you did, there would be people out there who sacrifice a person to avoid a loss every time they are losing.
Blizzard threw up the warning that if anyone else quits, they'll be penalized with a loss.
Apparently Blizzard doesn't realize that 5 v 6 essentially is a loss.
God fucking dammit.
They have one minute (or maybe less, not sure) to reconnect, at which point the game becomes safe to leave
Still counts as a loss if you lose or if everyone on your team quits but it doesn't count against your season limit on quit matches
Someone quitting a couple minutes in shouldn't count as a loss. We were easily blocking the cart on Dorado and then it's a loss cause nuts to you someone on your team quit. Just end the game if that happens.
I don't care about the season limit because I don't quit matches. But now I'm having to make up ground because someone else did. That they'll have to work harder to do so means nothing at all to my own progression.
I get that it's frustrating but if the leave occurs after combat starts then just cancelling everything would be way more unfair and very abusable.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
Just ran into a Diamond Mercy/Master Ana pair down here in low gold. They were spending their times juking on the front line, constantly healing each other, yet when asked about it, their team (not grouped with them, mind you), at least two people on their team replied with flavors of "They're awesome," so I don't know if they were throwing, trolling, streamers doing a bit, or what. That strategy, while effectiveish for keeping them alive against people with poor aim, wasn't so good on Attack (Hollywood), even down here in the slums. And signficantly less so with a Bastion on our side, although one of them eventually switched off to Sombra and made life a living hell for me (Mercy). And an EMP/Self-destruct for a quintuple kill made for almost a walk onto the point for us while they were defending.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
I don't think that actually happens unless the player was afk prior to the start. It's a perception problem, you roll a team that only has 5 active players, the afker is booted and the match shuts down.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
iirc the match would be nulled if there was a leaver within a minute of the gates opening, there were definitely angry reddit posts about being punished for taking the first point too quickly because of that exact reason
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
did they get rid of the music when you just go into the gam following the selection countdown?
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
This actually does happen sometimes. I had a team where we just rolled into Numbani and took point A immediately. One of the enemy team immediately quit when the point was captured, and the match was disbanded.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
I don't think that actually happens unless the player was afk prior to the start. It's a perception problem, you roll a team that only has 5 active players, the afker is booted and the match shuts down.
Yeah I agree; they were either AFK before the match started or they dropped during Setup. It's honestly more likely; consider that how easily you took the first point isn't that you were stomping the enemy per se, but more that it was a 6v5 and the disconnect wasn't acknowledged by the server for a bit. Could be a legit disconnect.
I've been on the receiving end of that, where we got completely rolled and were all like WHOA WTF only to notice that one of our teammates is immobile between spawn and the point and we just didn't notice, and then they dropped and the match ended.
VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
edited March 2017
My top tip for rising through the ranks in comp is to do so with 1 partner, 2 at most. The idea is that you choose someone whose skill is about the same as yours if not slightly better and group with them regularly. Make sure you have compatible mains - if you're a Support main, they should be comfortable playing Tanks or DPS; grouping as a trio of Support mains doesn't get you very far (unfortunately). Or, where I'm a Zen/Ana/Mercy main and refuse to play Lucio, play with someone who likes playing Lucio but will otherwise play DPS or tank.
If you've never really grouped together before, you're going to lose a few at the outset. Just accept it as a fact and persist if you feel okay about it. But then as you get the feel for each other's style and strengths you can essentially contribute a lot together. Like with my main comp partner, who is a near-exclusive Zarya player, he is always looking for opportunities to use his Grav to set up a combo or to restrict an enemy ult (i.e., pinning an ulting Soldier into the Grav). This is much easier for him to do if I back him up by checking our ult economy (which I do a lot anyway so he counts on me to let him know what the go is) and/or shot-calling the team to coordinate (i.e., "Reaper has Blossom ready but he's still walking back from spawn, Reaper once you're back hold off until you hear the Grav connect"; or "let's use Tracer's ult in the combo because the enemy Zen can't negate it, if we can't get the Mercy and she reses then we'll pop Soldier's ult", etc).
The good thing about this is that there is no DPS player I've ever encountered who doesn't want to combo, cuz everyone wants to get those sweet sweet PotGs, so we have very few wasted Gravs when we play together. I actually thought he was just a really good Zarya player (he is), but he's also told me that he struggles without me playing with him cuz no one is filling him in on the ult situation, which means he has to check, which splits his focus.
4-, 5- and 6-stacks don't work out as well unless you know your level of coordination and mutual familiarity is high. This is hard to know and usually takes a few seasons to get into it. Plus, most of the 5- and 6-stacks I've played in have involved too many of a given class main (i.e., 3+ support mains, 2+ tank mains and no DPS mains).
My girl squad has 2 Support mains and 1 DPS main, where one of the Support mains is a Zenny/Ana/Mercy player (me) and the other is a Mercy/Lucio/Ana player. She'll usually take Lucio on the maps that need him and I'll swap to back her up depending on the situation. If someone else outside the 3 of us takes a healer, then she'll go D. Va or I'll go Pharah.
My second top tip for rising through the ranks is to pick a few heroes and play them almost exclusively as you're trying to rise. Flex-picking adds another variable to your roster that will not always reflect good performance. Be a bit stubborn if you have to, though let your team know what other heroes you main if you want to give them options. I played 90% Zenny, 5% Mercy and 5% Ana during my push into Diamond. I did have a partner there to back me up on my pick, too, but there are also anchor heroes that no one is going to complain about you choosing - Rein, Zarya, Soldier:76, Ana, Lucio.
All this conversation mostly is making me quite happy about my decision to never touch competitive with a ten foot pole.
If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have gotten involved with competitive mode. But I was driven to try it because at the time I thought I was a REALLY good player with my win rate and such.
unfortunately win rate in QP is definitely not translatable in comp
QP is a mish-mash of people practicing new heroes, practicing new comps, checking out maps, and generally figuring things out in their own way; winning is not the priority
plus, it doesn't have the mirrored rounds; you don't always get to play the second round of a given 2CP/Hybrid/Payload map, and even if you do it's not always with or against the same team, so you don't actually know if you would've "won" that game because you didn't actually finish it in a comp match format
attack != defense and all that
so really, using QP to inform your hidden MMR for comp has always completely confused me; like, last night I won 3/3 comp matches but then lost like 6 QP games in a row before I finally won one
All this conversation mostly is making me quite happy about my decision to never touch competitive with a ten foot pole.
If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have gotten involved with competitive mode. But I was driven to try it because at the time I thought I was a REALLY good player with my win rate and such.
unfortunately win rate in QP is definitely not translatable in comp
QP is a mish-mash of people practicing new heroes, practicing new comps, checking out maps, and generally figuring things out in their own way; winning is not the priority
plus, it doesn't have the mirrored rounds; you don't always get to play the second round of a given 2CP/Hybrid/Payload map, and even if you do it's not always with or against the same team, so you don't actually know if you would've "won" that game because you didn't actually finish it in a comp match format
attack != defense and all that
so really, using QP to inform your hidden MMR for comp has always completely confused me; like, last night I won 3/3 comp matches but then lost like 6 QP games in a row before I finally won one
They have systems in place to account for those things. Part of your MMR adjustment is based on your hero pick, how your perform with them compared to the average at your rank, and what is "expected" of you according to your history with that hero. If you are the type of player to test out and learn new heroes in QP, it will be accounted for in your MMR. Generally speaking, people are consistent with their QP style, so it would work out even without these extra systems.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Do you like, have proof of all these "systems" people make all these remarkable claims about?
Pretty sure MMR is just taking your team average, their team average, and adjusting it to wins and losses based on how projected you are to win or lose based on those averages.
I mean I think there was confirmation that in comp they do base it slightly on performance, but this stuff about QP having some massive set of algorithms to perfectly account for exactly how you are choosing to play at that moment is a little out there.
I know for sure as shit I am not consistent in QP at all. Sometimes I go in to test, some times to win, some times to do whatever. The level of seriousness ranges from playing as well as we can when we form groups, to me entering it deciding I am playing junkrat no matter what because its QP and I can. I play it as it literally is; when I want a quick game just for the sake of playing a game and nothing more.
Do you like, have proof of all these "systems" people make all these remarkable claims about?
Pretty sure MMR is just taking your team average, their team average, and adjusting it to wins and losses based on how projected you are to win or lose based on those averages.
I mean I think there was confirmation that in comp they do base it slightly on performance, but this stuff about QP having some massive set of algorithms to perfectly account for exactly how you are choosing to play at that moment is a little out there.
I know for sure as shit I am not consistent in QP at all. Sometimes I go in to test, some times to win, some times to do whatever. The level of seriousness ranges from playing as well as we can when we form groups, to me entering it deciding I am playing junkrat no matter what because its QP and I can. I play it as it literally is; when I want a quick game just for the sake of playing a game and nothing more.
Pretty long post with a lot of info, but the relevant quote
(how much rating goes up and down)For example, what map you’re playing on and whether you were attacking or defending is factored in. We know the win rates on attack/defend on all of the maps and we normalize accordingly. Not all wins and losses are equal. We also look at your individual performance on each of the heroes you played during the match. Everyone has better and worse heroes and we have tons of data showing us what performance levels should be like on those heroes.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that QP adjusts moment to moment, or instantly adjusts if you are learning a new character (could only happen if you could lock a hero in before you go into matchmaking). Let's say you take QP seriously, play the meta, have a solid hero you can play in each category, communicate with your team, etc. One day you decide to become a Hanzo main and (understandably) avoid voice chat. Clearly, you are going to go on a losing streak. Thanks to the way winning/losing streaks work, you are going to quickly drop your QP rating to the point where you are getting matched with/against people that you can win with this style of play. However, your overall, account MMR isn't going to be adjusted that much because it knows you haven't played Hanzo much, and Hanzo isn't really meta, so you are in line with the average Hhanzo at your rating, etc. This is important because when you go start a new season and go back to your old characters, it's going to use your overall, account MMR because you still have those standard, meta characters you are good at.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I think the best attitude to take towards competitive is that you're just there to find more serious games, and to discover in the long run where you fall in the ranks. Don't attribute more importance to winning/losing a given game than you would in QP (other than trying your best to win). If you enter it with the mindset of "I want to increase my rank right away" then every loss is a setback from your goal and you're going to get frustrated when you have a bad luck steak and your night was wasted. Just play the game and have fun. Rank is a nice high level goal but don't make everything about that. Or if you must, focus your energies on how best to improve your play, not just on winning games.
Further to this - I'm back up to 2878 as of last night and I'm not feeling too shabby about it, even though I'd still prefer to be back in 3000+. But that preference easily translates into pressure to perform and as a hypercompetitive athlete as well as a hypercompetitive gamer, that almost always works against me. So I had to figure out various ways to work around my stupid brain flaws.
Like, my Zarya-main comp partner has imparted a good habit to me. At the end of a loss in comp, wait to see if either of you gets PotG. If not, just drop and requeue straight away. Don't look at your rank, don't worry about it, just requeue and play. Resist the urge to look at your rank. Just PLAY.
Or, if you're like me and occasionally can't help but peek at your career profile even when you don't mean to (hypercompetitive): I dropped down to ~2700 last week and was getting really sad with the game. Even playing my mains wasn't getting me very far and I began questioning if I was a good Zenny cuz I was losing so much (this is obvs nonsense cuz I'm a great Zenny, but my aforementioned brain can be a bit of a dick). So, I just decided "fuck it, let's play some hero I haven't played before" cuz I wanted to expand my comp roster anyway (my Pharah/Symm games from the weekend just gone), happened to yank some wins, and instantly felt more positive about games going forward. Then when I did lose (playing Winston, incidentally), I was all "eh was just trying folks I don't play usually, so it's fine".
I also try to play in spurts of 3 matches; i.e., play 3 comp matches and then take a bit of a break (either in QP or just from OW all together), win or lose. I'm not great at sticking to this and I endeavour to follow this rule more strictly than I do, but I've noticed when I do it that I feel a lot less bad about losing.
Like, 0-3 is frustrating and most people will tilt regardless, and if you're blaming other folks for that loss (i.e., trash DPS or whatever), best to take a break so that they're going through different queue cycles than you are. I can't stress enough that I'm REALLY BAD at adhering to my own rule, but when I do I haven't regretted it.
New season high tonight...off the back of two games where the opposing team had leavers and someone suiciding in spawn
The last one was really weird. Half the time their rein was ripping us to shreds, the other half he was exiting spawn and jumping off a cliff.
The first one one person left round 2, then round 3 all but 1 did. At that point it's just...why even continue the match Blizzard? 6v1 is a foregone conclusion.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Yeah no, active leavers happen, they aren't common but they consist of the majority of times I've seen an auto-end to the match
Had a team half wipe to Symmetra turrets at London spawn and right after that someone left. It's a completely real thing that exists
My second top tip for rising through the ranks is to pick a few heroes and play them almost exclusively as you're trying to rise. Flex-picking adds another variable to your roster that will not always reflect good performance. Be a bit stubborn if you have to, though let your team know what other heroes you main if you want to give them options. I played 90% Zenny, 5% Mercy and 5% Ana during my push into Diamond. I did have a partner there to back me up on my pick, too, but there are also anchor heroes that no one is going to complain about you choosing - Rein, Zarya, Soldier:76, Ana, Lucio.
I agree with this for when you're in super-serious ultra tryhard rank-up-or-bust mode, but the season is long enough that it's actually inadvisable to play like this all the time. Skyline talks about it in one of his videos, but the main gist is that you should devote a large part of the season to experimenting with different strategies and characters you don't normally play. Sure, you'll lose more than you usually do and tank your rank a little bit, but in the long run you'll learn way more than if you had only stuck to a handful of heroes all season. It will even help you on your mains because you will have a better understanding of what other heroes can do and how to play around them, as well as (hopefully) a broader and deeper understanding of map strategy.
You might argue that this is better done in QP, but as is being discussed the environment in QP is very different from competitive and extremely inconsistent. It's not bad to play a few QP games to learn the basic mechanics of a character, but for any sort of serious practice it is best to bring them into competitive. I've definitely lost some games I wouldn't have otherwise lost as I learn how to play Genji properly, but overall it's been a huge boon as I can now pick him reasonably for a dive composition and have a better understanding of his playstyle and damage breakpoints.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
My second top tip for rising through the ranks is to pick a few heroes and play them almost exclusively as you're trying to rise. Flex-picking adds another variable to your roster that will not always reflect good performance. Be a bit stubborn if you have to, though let your team know what other heroes you main if you want to give them options. I played 90% Zenny, 5% Mercy and 5% Ana during my push into Diamond. I did have a partner there to back me up on my pick, too, but there are also anchor heroes that no one is going to complain about you choosing - Rein, Zarya, Soldier:76, Ana, Lucio.
I agree with this for when you're in super-serious ultra tryhard rank-up-or-bust mode, but the season is long enough that it's actually inadvisable to play like this all the time. Skyline talks about it in one of his videos, but the main gist is that you should devote a large part of the season to experimenting with different strategies and characters you don't normally play. Sure, you'll lose more than you usually do and tank your rank a little bit, but in the long run you'll learn way more than if you had only stuck to a handful of heroes all season. It will even help you on your mains because you will have a better understanding of what other heroes can do and how to play around them, as well as (hopefully) a broader and deeper understanding of map strategy.
You might argue that this is better done in QP, but as is being discussed the environment in QP is very different from competitive and extremely inconsistent. It's not bad to play a few QP games to learn the basic mechanics of a character, but for any sort of serious practice it is best to bring them into competitive. I've definitely lost some games I wouldn't have otherwise lost as I learn how to play Genji properly, but overall it's been a huge boon as I can now pick him reasonably for a dive composition and have a better understanding of his playstyle and damage breakpoints.
oh yeah I totally agree with this, hence why I qualify it with "rising through the ranks", not "getting better at this game".
I should also qualify this by saying that I'm working on expanding my roster as a way to take some of the seriousness out of comp, too, by playing just cuz I wanna play someone new in that sort of setting; I reference that in my other post re: comp attitude (my reply to Zek a few posts up)
Yeah no, active leavers happen, they aren't common but they consist of the majority of times I've seen an auto-end to the match
Had a team half wipe to Symmetra turrets at London spawn and right after that someone left. It's a completely real thing that exists
I don't think anyone was necessarily denying that? My argument was more that you can't always definitively say that this is happening, nor can you attribute stomping on Point A to being the direct cause of someone dropping. Sometimes you stomped BECAUSE someone had already dropped, the game just didn't know about it yet.
Yeah, it absolutely happens. It's just not as easy to tell in some situations, as was being claimed by others.
And to me active leaving doesn't make sense, in much the same way that deliberately tanking because their team lost round 1 doesn't make sense. Like, by leaving early you don't even save time because you're suspended for a bit anyway, plus you get the SR loss while the rest of the players in that match don't cuz the match is cancelled.
And to me active leaving doesn't make sense, in much the same way that deliberately tanking because their team lost round 1 doesn't make sense. Like, by leaving early you don't even save time because you're suspended for a bit anyway, plus you get the SR loss while the rest of the players in that match don't cuz the match is cancelled.
Someone clearly hasn't had the true solo queue Bronze experience.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I have some Mercy thoughts after the change to her ult.
The fact that Resurrect grants invulnerability to Mercy and everyone else she resurrects has changed the way I've seen it used. So like, most of the time Mercy hides away while the other healer takes on the load, usually when you see the enemy making a push or dropping preparatory ults (i.e. Sound Barrier on approach, Rein charging in, etc). Ironically, Mercy hiding away is often part of what causes the wipe, but it's fine cuz she can res, so who cares.
Thing is, with her new Resurrect I've seen it used really effectively in the middle of an enemy ult. Specifically, during Grav/Barrage or Grav/Death Blossom wombo combos.
Mercy isn't always the first to die during those combos and a big part of this is down to positioning. If a tank or two are also caught in the Grav, then they're likely body-blocking the hits. If Mercy isn't the first to die, she can pop her Resurrect on whoever HAS died. This immediately makes her unkillable (though she's probably at low health) just long enough for her self-healing to kick in as well as for the Grav/combo to end, allowing her to get out of dodge. On top of that, whoever she reses is also immune but are solid objects; they continue to body block for the teammates who haven't yet died (but are probably about to).
It's like a hybrid tempo-defensive res, where she not only keeps people on the point but negates the tail end of the combo AND keeps herself alive by doing so, and by being alive she is able to sustain the folks still on the point.
I've also wondered if it's worth dropping a single res if all the following are true:
a) I'm about to die to a flanker;
b) there's a glowy dead-person light in range of me;
c) the glowy dead-person has an ult ready;
d) everyone else on point is alive and not in danger of dying just yet;
e) I have a safe place to Guardian Angel to once I pop the res; and
f) I'm reasonably certain the enemy - especially the flanker from (a) - does not have offensive ults to spend OR our team's other healer has a defensive ult ready to go.
Cuz what I can then do is res that glowy dead-person, become invulnerable, and go zipping away from whoever is shooting at me. I'll go back to healing my teammates (they were either the safe place or near it) while my regen ability is kicking in, with my teammates able to protect me from the flanker. It's dropping an ult from our bank if I do this and the net gain is me still being alive as well as the ult from the res'd person being available; basically, trading my res ult for my previously-dead teammate's ult being available.
And to me active leaving doesn't make sense, in much the same way that deliberately tanking because their team lost round 1 doesn't make sense. Like, by leaving early you don't even save time because you're suspended for a bit anyway, plus you get the SR loss while the rest of the players in that match don't cuz the match is cancelled.
Someone clearly hasn't had the true solo queue Bronze experience.
I don't think I've ever actually left a game ever, but I sure as shit have felt that urge to simply up and leave when the rest of the team is completely unresponsive and stubborn to change, or when it's clearly going to be an uphill struggle. Definitely empathise with the rationale behind taking a several minute timeout in favour of having to endure an unfun 5-10 minute roflstomp
By the end of tonight's session (at which I'd lost another 100SR or so) I was so done with people that when a team told me to fuck myself post-Round 1 when I suggested that maybe we needed another tank other than Roadhog and a healer other than me, I seriously considered just leaving them to their devices and virtually guarantee them the loss (thankfully 2 players actually decided to do just that midway through Round 2 and we scraped a 3-2 comeback)
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Or improve. Or take steps to make up for your team's failings through things outside of direct play. If you're on a team of people without a lot of awareness, be proactive in shot calling and updating people's statuses. If you're on a team with deficiencies in aiming, try to focus on getting them to focus on the bigger targets.
Obviously, there will be a lot of pissy people who'll throw tantrums, but they would've done that regardless. You are the common factor in the games you play, and if you improve and better your team by being on it, your rank will naturally rise over time. That doesn't mean there won't be periods where things just aren't working or the other team is clicking perfectly. Shit happens. Make a quick note of what went wrong, what you could've done to mitigate it, and then get right back into matters and put that into practice.
Imma get platinum god dammit
Sounds like improving yourself is not as effective as improving your team mates.
To elaborate: At low MMR, playing the right way does not matter. If you play your character and role correctly but nobody capitalizes on it you're pissing in the wind. This would explain why people can consistently get gold medals and personally perform very well yet barely make any progress. This ultimately means bronze league is a twisted version of Overwatch. At low MMR your personal skill is less important than at mid tier and up, which is very counter intuitive. You have to have skill AND play off your team mates, even if they suck.
This is all just navel gazing theory, so don't take me too seriously.
Good players are good players and know their shit, but they might not always know how to explain why they are good. This is no way is meant to discount that advice, but try to also keep an open mind rather than recite that opinion as fact.
I was not joking though when I asked if anyone around my rating wanted to join me. I would both love to have a set of eyes to tell me what I might not be seeing in my games about my own play, but also just another person I can consistently count on. If anything, I would feel MUCH more comfortable playing support if I knew I at least always had one person worth supporting. Words cannot express the sadness that comes from playing a Mercy and hearing dead silence when you try to damage boost anyone on your team.
First off, gold medals are meaningless and I wouldn't even consider them. Case in point: the Junkrat who always gets gold damage and yet is doing nothing valuable for the team. Also, to be blunt, at that level nobody is really playing their role 'correctly'. If one were to play a DPS role 'correctly' at low rank, they should be raking in the kills left and right regardless of what their team is doing.
Playing off your teammates is also important at high rank. At high rank this often means reacting properly to their good plays rather than their terrible ones, but those happen too.
Personally I never look at a game I played and say "I performed well," and leave it at that. I always look for the mistakes I made to try and correct them in the future. Every single death I try to look at the killcam and identify what I did wrong. Was I out of position? Did I need to land more shots? Did I miss an audio cue? Did I mismanage my abilities? Did I forget to check my flank? Or alternately: should I have actually fought to the death earlier in this scenario because our Mercy had res?
I would say that if you ever look at your own play and your only thought is, "I performed well," then you are simply deceiving yourself. Even professional players have room for improvement. Saying personal skill doesn't matter or matters less at low rank is both false and an ultimately unhelpful attitude, and will only lead to frustration and stagnation.
Blizzard threw up the warning that if anyone else quits, they'll be penalized with a loss.
Apparently Blizzard doesn't realize that 5 v 6 essentially is a loss.
God fucking dammit.
They have one minute (or maybe less, not sure) to reconnect, at which point the game becomes safe to leave
Still counts as a loss if you lose or if everyone on your team quits but it doesn't count against your season limit on quit matches
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Someone quitting a couple minutes in shouldn't count as a loss. We were easily blocking the cart on Dorado and then it's a loss cause nuts to you someone on your team quit. Just end the game if that happens.
I don't care about the season limit because I don't quit matches. But now I'm having to make up ground because someone else did. That they'll have to work harder to do so means nothing at all to my own progression.
I get that it's frustrating but if the leave occurs after combat starts then just cancelling everything would be way more unfair and very abusable.
Imagine if it happened the other way around, you crush their first attack then one of them leaves and the match is abandoned. You get nothing for a match you should have had an edge on.
I feel like it's fairly easy to code a prevention for that rather than solely relying on a time-based system.
Happened to me alot last season.
I don't think that actually happens unless the player was afk prior to the start. It's a perception problem, you roll a team that only has 5 active players, the afker is booted and the match shuts down.
it's a console bug, peeps in the se++ thread were talking about it
Yeah I agree; they were either AFK before the match started or they dropped during Setup. It's honestly more likely; consider that how easily you took the first point isn't that you were stomping the enemy per se, but more that it was a 6v5 and the disconnect wasn't acknowledged by the server for a bit. Could be a legit disconnect.
I've been on the receiving end of that, where we got completely rolled and were all like WHOA WTF only to notice that one of our teammates is immobile between spawn and the point and we just didn't notice, and then they dropped and the match ended.
If you've never really grouped together before, you're going to lose a few at the outset. Just accept it as a fact and persist if you feel okay about it. But then as you get the feel for each other's style and strengths you can essentially contribute a lot together. Like with my main comp partner, who is a near-exclusive Zarya player, he is always looking for opportunities to use his Grav to set up a combo or to restrict an enemy ult (i.e., pinning an ulting Soldier into the Grav). This is much easier for him to do if I back him up by checking our ult economy (which I do a lot anyway so he counts on me to let him know what the go is) and/or shot-calling the team to coordinate (i.e., "Reaper has Blossom ready but he's still walking back from spawn, Reaper once you're back hold off until you hear the Grav connect"; or "let's use Tracer's ult in the combo because the enemy Zen can't negate it, if we can't get the Mercy and she reses then we'll pop Soldier's ult", etc).
The good thing about this is that there is no DPS player I've ever encountered who doesn't want to combo, cuz everyone wants to get those sweet sweet PotGs, so we have very few wasted Gravs when we play together. I actually thought he was just a really good Zarya player (he is), but he's also told me that he struggles without me playing with him cuz no one is filling him in on the ult situation, which means he has to check, which splits his focus.
4-, 5- and 6-stacks don't work out as well unless you know your level of coordination and mutual familiarity is high. This is hard to know and usually takes a few seasons to get into it. Plus, most of the 5- and 6-stacks I've played in have involved too many of a given class main (i.e., 3+ support mains, 2+ tank mains and no DPS mains).
My girl squad has 2 Support mains and 1 DPS main, where one of the Support mains is a Zenny/Ana/Mercy player (me) and the other is a Mercy/Lucio/Ana player. She'll usually take Lucio on the maps that need him and I'll swap to back her up depending on the situation. If someone else outside the 3 of us takes a healer, then she'll go D. Va or I'll go Pharah.
My second top tip for rising through the ranks is to pick a few heroes and play them almost exclusively as you're trying to rise. Flex-picking adds another variable to your roster that will not always reflect good performance. Be a bit stubborn if you have to, though let your team know what other heroes you main if you want to give them options. I played 90% Zenny, 5% Mercy and 5% Ana during my push into Diamond. I did have a partner there to back me up on my pick, too, but there are also anchor heroes that no one is going to complain about you choosing - Rein, Zarya, Soldier:76, Ana, Lucio.
unfortunately win rate in QP is definitely not translatable in comp
QP is a mish-mash of people practicing new heroes, practicing new comps, checking out maps, and generally figuring things out in their own way; winning is not the priority
plus, it doesn't have the mirrored rounds; you don't always get to play the second round of a given 2CP/Hybrid/Payload map, and even if you do it's not always with or against the same team, so you don't actually know if you would've "won" that game because you didn't actually finish it in a comp match format
attack != defense and all that
so really, using QP to inform your hidden MMR for comp has always completely confused me; like, last night I won 3/3 comp matches but then lost like 6 QP games in a row before I finally won one
Or would be if I wasn't immediately tackled by the angry Rein half a second later.
They have systems in place to account for those things. Part of your MMR adjustment is based on your hero pick, how your perform with them compared to the average at your rank, and what is "expected" of you according to your history with that hero. If you are the type of player to test out and learn new heroes in QP, it will be accounted for in your MMR. Generally speaking, people are consistent with their QP style, so it would work out even without these extra systems.
Pretty sure MMR is just taking your team average, their team average, and adjusting it to wins and losses based on how projected you are to win or lose based on those averages.
I mean I think there was confirmation that in comp they do base it slightly on performance, but this stuff about QP having some massive set of algorithms to perfectly account for exactly how you are choosing to play at that moment is a little out there.
I know for sure as shit I am not consistent in QP at all. Sometimes I go in to test, some times to win, some times to do whatever. The level of seriousness ranges from playing as well as we can when we form groups, to me entering it deciding I am playing junkrat no matter what because its QP and I can. I play it as it literally is; when I want a quick game just for the sake of playing a game and nothing more.
Post from Blizzard
Pretty long post with a lot of info, but the relevant quote
Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that QP adjusts moment to moment, or instantly adjusts if you are learning a new character (could only happen if you could lock a hero in before you go into matchmaking). Let's say you take QP seriously, play the meta, have a solid hero you can play in each category, communicate with your team, etc. One day you decide to become a Hanzo main and (understandably) avoid voice chat. Clearly, you are going to go on a losing streak. Thanks to the way winning/losing streaks work, you are going to quickly drop your QP rating to the point where you are getting matched with/against people that you can win with this style of play. However, your overall, account MMR isn't going to be adjusted that much because it knows you haven't played Hanzo much, and Hanzo isn't really meta, so you are in line with the average Hhanzo at your rating, etc. This is important because when you go start a new season and go back to your old characters, it's going to use your overall, account MMR because you still have those standard, meta characters you are good at.
Further to this - I'm back up to 2878 as of last night and I'm not feeling too shabby about it, even though I'd still prefer to be back in 3000+. But that preference easily translates into pressure to perform and as a hypercompetitive athlete as well as a hypercompetitive gamer, that almost always works against me. So I had to figure out various ways to work around my stupid brain flaws.
Like, my Zarya-main comp partner has imparted a good habit to me. At the end of a loss in comp, wait to see if either of you gets PotG. If not, just drop and requeue straight away. Don't look at your rank, don't worry about it, just requeue and play. Resist the urge to look at your rank. Just PLAY.
Or, if you're like me and occasionally can't help but peek at your career profile even when you don't mean to (hypercompetitive): I dropped down to ~2700 last week and was getting really sad with the game. Even playing my mains wasn't getting me very far and I began questioning if I was a good Zenny cuz I was losing so much (this is obvs nonsense cuz I'm a great Zenny, but my aforementioned brain can be a bit of a dick). So, I just decided "fuck it, let's play some hero I haven't played before" cuz I wanted to expand my comp roster anyway (my Pharah/Symm games from the weekend just gone), happened to yank some wins, and instantly felt more positive about games going forward. Then when I did lose (playing Winston, incidentally), I was all "eh was just trying folks I don't play usually, so it's fine".
I also try to play in spurts of 3 matches; i.e., play 3 comp matches and then take a bit of a break (either in QP or just from OW all together), win or lose. I'm not great at sticking to this and I endeavour to follow this rule more strictly than I do, but I've noticed when I do it that I feel a lot less bad about losing.
Like, 0-3 is frustrating and most people will tilt regardless, and if you're blaming other folks for that loss (i.e., trash DPS or whatever), best to take a break so that they're going through different queue cycles than you are. I can't stress enough that I'm REALLY BAD at adhering to my own rule, but when I do I haven't regretted it.
It's the opposite of the usual calldown teleport on slopes.
The last one was really weird. Half the time their rein was ripping us to shreds, the other half he was exiting spawn and jumping off a cliff.
The first one one person left round 2, then round 3 all but 1 did. At that point it's just...why even continue the match Blizzard? 6v1 is a foregone conclusion.
Had a team half wipe to Symmetra turrets at London spawn and right after that someone left. It's a completely real thing that exists
I agree with this for when you're in super-serious ultra tryhard rank-up-or-bust mode, but the season is long enough that it's actually inadvisable to play like this all the time. Skyline talks about it in one of his videos, but the main gist is that you should devote a large part of the season to experimenting with different strategies and characters you don't normally play. Sure, you'll lose more than you usually do and tank your rank a little bit, but in the long run you'll learn way more than if you had only stuck to a handful of heroes all season. It will even help you on your mains because you will have a better understanding of what other heroes can do and how to play around them, as well as (hopefully) a broader and deeper understanding of map strategy.
You might argue that this is better done in QP, but as is being discussed the environment in QP is very different from competitive and extremely inconsistent. It's not bad to play a few QP games to learn the basic mechanics of a character, but for any sort of serious practice it is best to bring them into competitive. I've definitely lost some games I wouldn't have otherwise lost as I learn how to play Genji properly, but overall it's been a huge boon as I can now pick him reasonably for a dive composition and have a better understanding of his playstyle and damage breakpoints.
oh yeah I totally agree with this, hence why I qualify it with "rising through the ranks", not "getting better at this game".
I should also qualify this by saying that I'm working on expanding my roster as a way to take some of the seriousness out of comp, too, by playing just cuz I wanna play someone new in that sort of setting; I reference that in my other post re: comp attitude (my reply to Zek a few posts up)
I don't think anyone was necessarily denying that? My argument was more that you can't always definitively say that this is happening, nor can you attribute stomping on Point A to being the direct cause of someone dropping. Sometimes you stomped BECAUSE someone had already dropped, the game just didn't know about it yet.
Yeah, it absolutely happens. It's just not as easy to tell in some situations, as was being claimed by others.
And to me active leaving doesn't make sense, in much the same way that deliberately tanking because their team lost round 1 doesn't make sense. Like, by leaving early you don't even save time because you're suspended for a bit anyway, plus you get the SR loss while the rest of the players in that match don't cuz the match is cancelled.
Someone clearly hasn't had the true solo queue Bronze experience.
The fact that Resurrect grants invulnerability to Mercy and everyone else she resurrects has changed the way I've seen it used. So like, most of the time Mercy hides away while the other healer takes on the load, usually when you see the enemy making a push or dropping preparatory ults (i.e. Sound Barrier on approach, Rein charging in, etc). Ironically, Mercy hiding away is often part of what causes the wipe, but it's fine cuz she can res, so who cares.
Thing is, with her new Resurrect I've seen it used really effectively in the middle of an enemy ult. Specifically, during Grav/Barrage or Grav/Death Blossom wombo combos.
Mercy isn't always the first to die during those combos and a big part of this is down to positioning. If a tank or two are also caught in the Grav, then they're likely body-blocking the hits. If Mercy isn't the first to die, she can pop her Resurrect on whoever HAS died. This immediately makes her unkillable (though she's probably at low health) just long enough for her self-healing to kick in as well as for the Grav/combo to end, allowing her to get out of dodge. On top of that, whoever she reses is also immune but are solid objects; they continue to body block for the teammates who haven't yet died (but are probably about to).
It's like a hybrid tempo-defensive res, where she not only keeps people on the point but negates the tail end of the combo AND keeps herself alive by doing so, and by being alive she is able to sustain the folks still on the point.
I've also wondered if it's worth dropping a single res if all the following are true:
a) I'm about to die to a flanker;
b) there's a glowy dead-person light in range of me;
c) the glowy dead-person has an ult ready;
d) everyone else on point is alive and not in danger of dying just yet;
e) I have a safe place to Guardian Angel to once I pop the res; and
f) I'm reasonably certain the enemy - especially the flanker from (a) - does not have offensive ults to spend OR our team's other healer has a defensive ult ready to go.
Cuz what I can then do is res that glowy dead-person, become invulnerable, and go zipping away from whoever is shooting at me. I'll go back to healing my teammates (they were either the safe place or near it) while my regen ability is kicking in, with my teammates able to protect me from the flanker. It's dropping an ult from our bank if I do this and the net gain is me still being alive as well as the ult from the res'd person being available; basically, trading my res ult for my previously-dead teammate's ult being available.
I don't think I've ever actually left a game ever, but I sure as shit have felt that urge to simply up and leave when the rest of the team is completely unresponsive and stubborn to change, or when it's clearly going to be an uphill struggle. Definitely empathise with the rationale behind taking a several minute timeout in favour of having to endure an unfun 5-10 minute roflstomp
By the end of tonight's session (at which I'd lost another 100SR or so) I was so done with people that when a team told me to fuck myself post-Round 1 when I suggested that maybe we needed another tank other than Roadhog and a healer other than me, I seriously considered just leaving them to their devices and virtually guarantee them the loss (thankfully 2 players actually decided to do just that midway through Round 2 and we scraped a 3-2 comeback)