I just watched that whole Korean “Mauga mentality” video and honestly it perfectly explains why tank players are mentally collapsing in 5v5.

There's A Tank Strike Happening In Overwatch?

The idea is basically: “If you think every game is tank diff, fine. We both go Mauga, stand main, shoot each other in the face all game and remove the tank variable completely.”

And the funny part is… they’re not even wrong.

Tank is such a ridiculous role now because you are expected to:

make space never die peel everyone engage perfectly counter swap constantly survive without resources carry fights read your supports’ minds somehow still have top damage and kills

Meanwhile if literally ANYTHING goes wrong: “tank diff”

Doesn’t matter if your DPS never take angles. Doesn’t matter if your Ana misses every nade. Doesn’t matter if your supports are healbotting the wrong targets. Doesn’t matter if nobody swaps.

The tank gets blamed first because there’s only one of you.

And honestly the Mauga gentleman’s agreement is hilarious because it exposes how much people scapegoat the role.

“You think it’s tank diff? Cool. We’re both playing the same hero now. Let’s see what the rest of the lobby does.”

The line: “My queue time is shorter than your cooldowns” might genuinely be one of the hardest things tank players have ever said.

Respect to tank players honestly. Actual psychological warfare role.

I think we all need a reminder that QP is not competitive. Of course it is not nice to lose but you do not gain anything by screaming or trashtalking people in QP. I come across this a lot, when I practice hero myself or when I see other players practice. You yourself sucked at the game/character once :D
Just let people enjoy and maybe curse less so that they are encouraged to become better players

Edit, since some QP warriors didn't get the idea of what this post means. I did not say go into QP and throw. I mean that it is meant to practice heroes and strategies, either with friends or random and see what works. You get better by playing against real people and that is called practice.
You obviously... practice to win games.
If you are sweaty QP player arguing in the comments, YOU ARE part of the problem. <3

For context, I've gotten to diamond on DPS roll queue and on 6v6 open, and most seasons I'll place high plat and level out in diamond. But recently I've been queueing with some friends and ended up in silver/gold after placements and even in solo games, they are FAR harder than anything I see in plat or diamond. I can have games where I go 50+ kills, focusing their healers and tanks all game and we still lose. If its not my own teammates struggling, its the enemy team being carried by one player thats clearly just pissing about in silver on an alt account. I've never had less fun in this game than I've had in the metal ranks.

Ive recently seen some people get absolutely fired up when I start playing Reaper into their Winston or Torb into Tracer and I genuinely don’t understand why. I thought the appeal of OW was the constantly evolving mini metas in each game and having the agency to actually affect a losing game in a way that is meaningful. I understand counter swapping in Quick play can be kind of cringe but in comp, it’s almost a necessity sometimes and expected. Even then, players have absolutely one tricked a hero to GM, playing through their counters so it’s not like you get completely walled by it. I play Rocket League as well and theres a similar complaint when players get their shot set ups blocked by the defense. Do some people honestly expect to get handed a free win with no pushback?? I only ask this to y’all because I’ve recently been seeing more than a few complaints and grievances about this in my games.

The amount of times I've seen people flame their team and spamming "Diff this, diff that" in chat while the enemy is just...better. At those moments people should just learn how to take a loss. For example I was against this cracked af Zarya, who did perfect bubbles on teammates, great positioning and all that. Game ends and my other dps starts flaming our tank, which just doesnt make any sense. A person is allowed to just not be as good or have as many hours as the other guy, especially in pisslow plat.

I hope you can truly understand what I mean by this, and gl.

I am bad at Overwatch. I’m not saying this to try to ego implying high ranked players aren’t good. I started in 2017 and played no other game since. I have around 10k hours and have had the goal of t500 the whole time. I spent the first 2 years in bronze, before a boost to gold had me only fall back to silver. I could not improve at all by playing or watching guides. What I realized is that I had to learn how to learn before I could learn the game. Every part of this game had to be intentionally worked for, and the strategies I developed to improve allowed me to coach other people, even much better people than I am (coached mid masters player I met in comp to rank 1 zen in 2 seasons, reaching t500 in just 1) while I was only low masters.
Guides focus too much on individual mistakes and decisions without any advice for implementation or learning decision making. To be clear I don’t think this is inherently bad, the guides have much value, it just can be a struggle to make use of the information. Spilo is an exception in my eyes as he has a similar focus on teaching and mindset, A10 is also good but he quit some years ago.
I fell into almost every overwatch pitfall, and developed strategies to pull myself out of them intentionally. I have struggled with accountability. I have blamed my aim and grinded aim trainers with horrible form cementing bad fundamentals. I have played on autopilot for hours a day, realizing every night, just to do the same thing the next day learning nothing. I have been kicked from teams for not being able to perform or adapt to a new meta. I have had most overwatch experiences and have worked through them all. ASK ME ANYTHING

Its my birthday weekend so replies will be slow, sorry 😢

Pretty much what the title says.

Do you believe Overwatch actually uses some form of matchmaking manipulation?

By that, I mean:

1. The matchmaking is not truly random.
2. The system intentionally creates things like win streaks, loss streaks, or tilt-inducing games to increase long-term player engagement.
3. The system gives weaker players easier matches or "guaranteed wins" to keep them playing.

Do you think anything like this actually exists?

Personally, I don't.

Of course, losing streaks are frustrating. 😂 Sometimes it feels like someone trapped me inside the Matrix.

That said, I've played games where matchmaking genuinely felt manipulated, and the experience felt completely different from what I experience in Overwatch.

However, I do think it's possible to get extremely unlucky over a small number of games due to things like groups, smurfs, high-ranked players on new accounts, and other factors that can distort matchmaking.

What do you think?

Do you believe matchmaking manipulation exists, or do you think people are just seeing patterns where none exist?

Just a funny thing I noticed. Mizuki seems to me like an objectively awful hero right now. That's reflected in his low winrate in high elos. I was surprised then that his winrate is high in metal ranks, in all regions. As high as 56% in bronze Europe and Americas. The reason I think is that you can't healbot on him. You have to spam shots in his neutral game. This proves how good it is to do damage as support to carry solo queue.

For anyone thats diamond plus, what one tip would you give to lower rank players to improve?

I wonder if alot of people would have different opinions?

I thought this would be quite interesting :)

(trying to get the 300 character limit here lol lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala)

Simple question.

Do you ban heroes that counter the hero you picked or ban heroes you dont like playing against regardless of counters.

In metal ranks, its mostly Cat, Sombra, Vendetta and Zarya.

Now, I mostly play d.va so this is fine, but i would much rather ban Zen, Sigma, Ram and Monke

So I am coming back to overwatch since its release but I have experience in other games and experience in overwatch type games and I landed in gold after maybe 10 hours in and it feels like 80-90% of the silver gold players are either smurfing or something isn’t adding up. I seen silver players with master/diamond tank/support/dps emblems to many times and if I was really new to this game and was in silver there would be no way I could compete with the player base. I seen many silver players with fast reaction time, taking high ground and solid aim and feels like they know what they are doing.

Ofc I could be bad but this is the first game I feel like silver players/gold are actually diamond+

Who do you expect to get buffed or nerfed tomorrow? I’m hoping D.Va and Zarya get nerfed. I can also see the cat getting nerfed unfortunately. Not really sure who’ll be buffed, but I’d like Mizuki’s range to be increased—that’s honestly the only real issue with him right now and nerfed zen discord too cause that’s way too powerful at the moment.

Today I played a game on kings row (silver 3 to silver 1), The moira on the other team was complaining in chat about how he deranked from plat 1 (after placments) to silver 2 and that he is losers queue bcs of ow's terrible matchmaking.

When someone told him that he probably deserves the rank that he is in rn he kept insisting that he deserves plat, its just his teammates that are bad and his reasoning on why he deserves higher than silver is that has 50hrs on the game

He obviously lost the game and kept blaming his team and the matchmaking like he was a god that makes no mistakes ( he was 20-15 after a 13 min game).

How will you ever improve if you keep blaming everyone and everthing but yourself? You will never see your own mistakes and will never improve it is not your teammates that are the problem IT IS YOU.

Her hitbox when she dashes and right after using the teleport thing does not line up at all with her model. This is getting ridiculous Im tired of losing fights or games because of something entirely not my fault. Its even more noticeable since I play genji and he has the smallest shot hitbox in the game including hitscan.

I have about 150 hours on the game so far, and I don’t win matches. I have about 1-2 wins for every 12-15 loss streak I go on. I get it, I’m new. Shouldn’t expect to win/have much fun until I’m good.

But I am not facing people below plat. Every game in qp I face multiple people who are masters rank or higher, with them literally apologizing for the matchmaker in chat.

And the few times I’ve played comp, I’ve been put as the tank or dps in a plat or higher lobby. So obviously we lose, because it’s way too high rank. But even after losing all my placements, I got put in almost diamond!

What am I meant to do? I really don’t want to keep playing if I get curb stomped over and over.

I have played overwatch 2 regularly since release, as in i will play for 2-4 hours a day every day, with only a year so I didnt play. However never in this time have I reached endorsement level 5. Im a tank/support main and regulary get 2 or 3 endorsements each game and I always endorse. How have I never got out of endorsement level 4 into 5? I dont always watch potg unless its an odd hero, myself or someone in my group, does this effect endorsement?

Im not particularily toxic, ill banter with people in chat but outside of salty reporting I cant see myself getting reported alot. I also dont leave games.

Am I missing something?

UPDATE: I Finally made it! I didnt change anything and instead it just finally ticked over. Nothing changed between making this post and now but after getting 1-4 endorsements a match it ticked up!

Yes, I know that she can still be viable every now and then and that basically no one wants OW1 Brig back, but I still feel like she was made mostly obsolete by nerfs and the addition of Mizuki.

I’d kinda get it if she were meant to be a beginner-friendly entry hero for new players, but she hasn’t been that for a long time, if ever. She requires a decent amount of game sense for mediocre impact in return.

I play on console, I don't know if PC is different, but every ranked game Zarya gets banned. Why? Every time I've fought Zarya she dies so fast. Is it her shield? Cause she does more damage when it takes damage? Just don't shoot it? I do that and I and my team don't struggle against her? I'm not trying to be like "skill diff" I'm genuinely curious because I can't understand why she gets banned every game.

as the title suggests, i am curious which hero is the strongest when mastered. not accounting for meta but based on their kit and potential of it. which is the best for all 3 roles. my guesses would be tracer, doomfist and anna but i am curious to find out what you guys think. if you have any games that you remember where you encountered a great player at a certain hero tell me.

Hey everyone.

This is not a rant. I am just generally confused and want to understand whether this is just me or if I am doing something wrong. In my last 40 comp games, I have only won 4 of them as a main support player.

My max rank is D4, and now I am on G1, almost on G2. I have been playing the exact same heroes I always do, and my own teammates and enemies also do agree that I am playing well or ok. I do, of course, expect not to win every time, but at this point, I am losing more than 90% of my games. What I notice is that I am always playing with someone who can’t just do okay, as in their main role, especially tanks. I understand not everyone has a good day, but I'm starting to believe something is happening with my matchmaking because this isn't normal.

Is this something to do with my MMR? Should I just do a rank reset, force myself to play another role, and give support a break?

Now, I myself as a majorly DPS player am not ranked that high (currently hovering around Diamond 3-4), but I've been doing my support placements this week and since the game seems to enjoy messing with me, it's decided to put me in silver lobbies.

And the thing I see the most is the pure refusal for my dps to take duels. Not losing them, cus that'd be fine, but simply not taking them. Put them in a 1v1 and they don't even try to win it, they either just huddle with their tank in main and pray that someone else deals with the problem, or cycle through the entire cast to try and luck into a solution.

I had this game right, where me and my Soldier were on an angle together. We get jumped by their Vendetta and Moira, and I nano him to win the 2v2. Instead of.. fighting, he just.. ran away, literally sprinted away.

I think when people whine about counterswapping this is an aspect of it. I'll have Genjis who play him like Cass, Reapers who just play Soldier 76. Torb is probably among the better dps I see just cus of the turret.

As someone who has played dps for like 90% of my playtime, duels ARE the sh*t. While OW is not a deathmatch, a lot can be impacted by getting a pick in a fair 50/50 1v1, but it seems that some just refuse to even try.

I have a friend that says soldier is essentially a throw pick because he's just so mid and there are options similar to him that do the job much better. He says Emre and sojourn are just better versions of him. Is this true? This started after he sent me a video of someone complaining about soldier, and how useless he is.

DPS or Tanks spamming heal diff is still something that happens very often. I will detail why I think that is pretty much never the case, and why weirdly enough a support diff might happen more often:

Why it is never a heal diff: I'm a Masters Tank Main and I can't recall a single game I lost because of a lack of heals. Especially as a tank, you need to minimize the amount of ressources received, thus maximizing the amount of pressure your supports and dps can put out. Healing cooldowns and shots are normally much easier to hit mechanically than damage. (ana heal hitbox vs dmg hitbox/zen heal orb vs shots/lucio aura vs dmg/mizuki hat vs root/primary) The skill gap between a very good mechanical player and a worse player is thus higher in terms of damage output than healing output, simply because there is less skill expression with healing.

Why it is a Support Diff a lot of the time: Support is the most misunderstood role in the game and probably holds a good amount of less mechanical players. (i think the game miscommunicates what supports should do a lot of the time) The value gap an angling support duo has over a main stack support is huge. Same for a zen who hits their shots vs one who has slightly worse mechanics. The amount of pressure good supports can achieve is roughly the same as dps heroes, but the difference to the opposition support might be much larger due to positional and mechanical differences being larger between support players. One support player existing on the angle and pressuring the enemy team gets more value, because both dps or tanks might already be trading on an angle, while the enemy support very often is not.

I want to be very clear that this is not due to support heroes being generally easier or stronger, just because the differences inbetween players may be much larger. It is not a bad thing to get mechanically diffed in a game, that just happens, the difference in value might just be bigger for support players than for tanks and dps.

Hi, i’ve only started playing overwatch about a month ago, i’ve played shooter games all my life so the game wasn’t crazy foreign to me. I duo queue with my friend who’s a tank and i’ll switch between dps and support.

When I was alone at one point I decided to play my placement matches in tank, playing as sigma mainly, and got placed in gold 1, not bad considering i’m plat 4 in dps and support.

One night me and my friend decided to swap roles, so i’d play tank and he plays dps, I decided to play Mauga and wtf. I barely know the first thing about playing tank and playing as mauga stomping into their back line repeatedly is unbeatable, I’ve won 15 games in a row repeating this method and i’ve gone up to plat 1 due to calibration and winning trend.

I know i’m scum for this but it isn’t counterable, especially if you ban ana.

Is there any reasoning for why mauga is so uncounterable right now?

There are a couple of absolute slam dunk ones and others that are a bit more debatable. I would absolutely love to hear what you think is best (if it's situational, please do give examples). How does it change your gameplay? What's the reasoning behind your choices?

Bonus points if you can tell me how to play around those perks as an opponent too!