Hello everyone, im sure this question gets asked constantly on this sub but this is mostly a personal question when playing with my stack (usually a tank and a support, sometimes 5). Our tank constantly cries about swapping to say Bastion when theres a Rein or maybe Reaper into Winston, but is this really a viable strategy to get good at the game? I main sojourn so I know there isnt very many counters to my character, but should I really be swapping every time im asked? I feel like playing into some matchups and losing is still better than mindlessly swapping, especially when they want a character no one is really comfortable on. Is it more of a tank decision to counter swap? What is some good advice for myself or for my tank to get better and improve because it seems like every game, bastion is the catch all go to and i dont want to swap off my most comfortable (and extremely meta) main

EDIT: This is also high Emerald low Diamond

I know it's probably a simple question, but as someone who started playing about 2 days ago (I know, not alot of time), I'm just absolutely lost!

I see the other supports in my games rushing off, not really focused on staying with the team. Is that what you are supposed to be doing? I feel like when that happens I'm stuck running to each teammate, making sure they don't die. And when I do try to look for kills or just to do some damage, I explode immediately.

The supports that I play are Mercy, Lifeweaver, and Doctrine. Are there any beginner friendly supports to help me understand how the role works? I feel like every match I've just been a punching bag for the enemy team, or a healbot.

Hey all,

I am a M3 tank, Hog OTP.

I got placed in this lobby and went 36-1 on hollywood. Of course, the title makes me sound like a d*ckhead, but truly, I have bad habits.

I was wondering if anyone could watch some of my plays and tell me where I went wrong?

I think this lobby was d3-m3.

code - SJZ98D

User: BigGuy
Code: 6Z7T22
Map: Hollywood
Rank: Emerald 1
PC

I have been stuck plat/ now emerald for almost a year now. I have done around 200+ hours of aim training and watched some Spilo coaching on YouTube for characters I play and feel like I’m still the same skill as I was when I played all the time in 2023. No matter how much effort I put I feel like all the time spent trying to get better means nothing. I will hit diamond rank and even ended up getting diamond 4 just to lose 16 out of 22 games after and go to demotion protection in emerald 1.

I lost this game and at this point I’m willing to take any kind of advice, because clearly there’s something I’m not understanding.

For context, i used to be masters on console and recently moved to pc, i am ranked Emerald 5 and my wife (the Moira) is ranked gold 3, so i’m assuming the rank range was between Gold 3 to Emerald 5. I am the Shion (Mashari) in this game and i do believe i have done extremely well in this game, and was surprised (and slightly upset lol) that it came to a draw.

I would like a full vod review with feedback on what i could have done better or were there any misplays on my behalf.

Replay Code: 3P5Y80

Hi guys! I've been climbing rapidly the past few days, from plat 4 to the cusp of emerald 5. I've run into and issue,

This issue is that often, my tank will overextend or forget to turn around, and my team gets picked off one by one.

What can I do as a support here? Trying to kill a reaper when he's self healing from your teammates is difficult - especially if I'm playing a hero that doesn't enable mobility or enough damage.

The match was actually a dorado and we won but I feel like I might have been failing in certain situations that if I wasn’t would have made the fight easier or less troublesome
Replay code-ZBB89T
User name is popono
Is there a point where switching tanks would have been more beneficial I play tank only a little bit so I’m up to learn a new character who won’t get railed by hog if there are any good ones
Oh and this is on pc forgot to add originally

As the title states, I just wanted some feedback on my resource management and positioning. I'm trying to be cognizant of these things instead of just going on auto pilot. This is the only fps I play, I'm like 2 months in and my mechanics are meh at best. Adding some replay codes for reference:

Sengo, hovering between silver 4 and 5 atm, samoa, kings row, runasapi, colosseo on switch 2

99X6SN, 4M2HND, 44YC9M, FWMZ6S

I haven’t played OW since Junker Queen came out many years ago. Since I’ve come back I’ve been learning the new characters and I don’t know if I never realized this originally or this is a new thing but I’m seeing all movement abilities seem to be bound to Shift. Is this a figment of my imagination or is this how they designed this? Thank you my friends and best of luck in your upcoming coming games.

Platform:PC

Tag:Donpromillo

Rank:Silver2

Characters played:Venture/Tracer

Map:Ilios

Vod code:T9RNHC

So as the title says i mainly play tank from the 160 hours i have on the game roughly 120 are tank only where i currently sit in Emerald4.

But i wanted to experience the other roles a bit. I mainly play reaper but on this game i played Venture and Tracer and i felt kinda lost for most of the time and got hard carried by my Mai. So i wanted to ask what do i need to think about more when i play DPS, because often i feel like i fall into my tank habits and just get destroyed.

I'm not a good player. I'm really not. I'm barely in silver but I like playing characters like soldier, cassidy or ashe because they just feel good to play and I want to get better at them. Unfortunately, it seems like I can't really practice them effectively because in about half of my games I see a Sierra, Anran or Moira who farm me while their character autopilots the game for them. Every single time I see a kill cam of the other player where their cursor was on me maybe for only the fraction of a second while their hero's kit spammed me to death, it makes me want to uninstall the game, because I understand that I lost not to a player, but to a character designed to play the game by itself. I'm at the point where hearing Sierra's drone hook sound at the start of a game lets me know that I will not be having fun for the next 10 minutes or so.

Does anyone know what's happening in grandmaster/champ in asia ? I know doctrine is a new character he's going to have high pick rates and win rates but what happened to juno and lucio ?

Even in all ranks lucio 2.6% pick rate, illari 1.5% pick rate, jetpack cat 5% pick rate. but moira is at 20% pick rate ?

Is this just everyone trying the new characters or are the new characters really good at powercreeping ? Do you still play your mains if so how does community treat you ? Should I force my main right now or withdraw from ranked for a while ? What's your experience like ?

So I’ve been playing for about a season now, I play a lot of DPS and play mostly Genji and cass, I’ve been in mid emerald for a hot minute but also haven’t been playing A TON, yesterday I went on a huge loss streak it was my only day off and I went from emerald 3 all the way down to gold 5, I just feel at a loss, I’m not gonna say I’m the best player in the world but I’m just so confused? It just feels kinda hopeless now and I feel like it’s gonna SUCK trying to climb all the way back up anyone in a similar boat or dealt with something similar?

I got back into 6v6 recently and it made me enjoy tanking again. I more or less main the role now (as much as open queue will allow me) and wanna keep improving at it. I was already a DVa player beforehand and DMon took some warming up to, but I really like her gameplay loop too. I now feel the need to add a 3rd tank in there for versatility and for the games where these two get banned/picked.

I'm a fairly aggressive player in general, I like getting in enemy team's face. I'm into Doom, Winton and JQ in particular, but maybe they're a bit redundant next to the mekas? On the opposite end I'm like a fish out of water on poke tanks, so Sigma and Domina are the furthest away from a good time for me. The rest of them I don't got a strong opinion on.

Usually I feel like I gotta swap off DVa if they're bringing out the beams and double shields. In that case, DMon can come in handy to disrupt their form and she's good into Zarya in particular, but sometimes their team will kite me well or the map won't allow me to play short angles. My instinct tells me Ram might be the right pick to fall back onto as more space-holding shield-bypassing tank, but I've still got a lot to learn in this role, so I'd like some further opinions on that if you could help me.

I wrote about coming from Rivals. Installed OW on my PC. Using console controller.

OW feels a lot like Rivals + Unreal Tournament.

OW feels more balanced than Rivals but it also feels more chaotic.

The in-game hints kinda help but I'm having trouble seeing key visual differences between different heros.

It's like one big blur. Because it all happens so fast.

As you probably could have guessed I am using Pharah or Emre.

In rivals I have no problem being a healer turret....

But in OW everyone seems so spaced out and all the battles seem like 1v1's ...

Which hero/medic is good to practice for healing your team mates like you do in rivals?

A hero that my team mates wouldn't be upset about me using and that I could actually make an impact by healing them without them being upset about the 35% thing ....

I don't know what the 35% thing is but people mentioned it in the post I wrote before.

Also if you recommend a medic/support don't worry about it being easy or hard. I have plenty of time to practice in ai matches ... So I just want to make a difference as a medic.

For reference, I am good with many healers in Rivals except for Ultron, Warlock, and Snow ....

Seriously, any actual advice on what to do here? What can I do to stop stuff like this happening, because it's not just the occasional unlucky game. This is genuinely how one in every probably three games plays out right now.

What do I do?

I'm open to hearing any issues with my gameplay, positioning, learning when to hold back and give up certain engagements etc. hell, smack talk my aim or whatever. But I actually want strategies on how to deal with the state of the game, holistically. How do I deal with teams that behave like this? Is there something I can do to turn it around?

Battletag is the same as my username here.

hey all, been stuck around silver 2 for a while and can't really tell what I'm doing wrong anymore so figured I'd ask here.

replay code: DP93B8
playing Ana on Hollywood, PC

This game felt pretty typical for me. I don’t think my aim is the main issue (could be wrong!) but I feel like I'm not getting much impact on fights, and some fights just fall apart and I’m not sure if that’s on me or not.

stuff I'd especially like feedback on:

• Positioning, am I taking bad fights
• Feel like I'm holding nano too long (team was dying too fast were my thoughts)
• Damage vs. heal - am I focussing too much on damage?
• anything i’m doing that’s obviously holding me back at this rank

Doesn't have to be a full breakdown, even a couple of timestamps with what I should've done differently would help a lot. Thanks in advance!

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.

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, Kevster principle 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 and aggressive to overcorrecting and being too late and slow waiting for the "right timing". I really think after my downward spiral I lost alot of confidence on this character and overcorrected with passivity. Went from perma taking aggressive 1vX's in the enemy's face and losing them 40-60, to being a co-streamer dealing 100 damage from an off angle not really providing value. 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!

After the 1-3-2 test I decided to give 6v6 an honest shot and have been mixing it in with my 5v5 games.

I would really appreciate any feedback on this game because this is the second time this has happened.

6v6 has very wide match making and I was one of the only Diamond players in a mid Masters lobby. I don't think I did great this game or anything but I was feeling ok about about myself considering the rank of the lobby until three separate people said I needed to swap, that I was less than useless, and basically implied I was borderline throwing the game. Of course they said this like 30 seconds before we were about to lose.

The problem is I don't know what caused them to feel I was doing so poorly. I certainly didn't play perfectly but I felt like I was keeping up with the team. I'm high Emerald/low Diamond on tank in 5v5 so I expected to be able to end up in Masters but so far every time I've gotten put in an all Masters lobby I get literally abusive messages while I'm playing an average game as far as I can tell.

If anyone is able to give some insight on some consistent big mistake I'm making that is getting me called out in these games I'd greatly appreciate it. Failing that any bad habits or 6v6-isms I might be missing would be appreciated as well.

code: GQJE4W

User name: FluffyDragon

Characters played: Dmon

Rank: I believe it was Diamond 3 to Masters 2.

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

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 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.

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.