Got a Winston t-shirt in my Loot Crate delivery today, so that was a nice surprise.

Loot crate delivery?

I'm Sciolist#2890 if anyone wants to add me. I'm EU but ping ought to be OK to NA.

Zz. Took two Ls and a disconnect around 4pm pst today. Instant negative 100 sr.

lootcrate.com. Fun little box delivered each month with gamer and geeky junk. Have fun opening it each month with my kids.

Not to be confused with Overwatch loot boxes.

siiiiick. Hope I get one.

after a long slog where i got as low as 970 or something i'm finally up over 2000

feels good man. i don't really know how to play any character other than reinhardt, lucio, soldier, or dva though. decided to get the golden rein hammer. got over 60% win rate with him but still feel like i kind of suck pretty bad. my ults are awful

lol - I was playing Mystery Heroes last night and after a game, two players said I was a great Tracer.

I suck at Tracer. I just had a good game. I didn't even do anything special except have good aim and stay out of trouble. I don't think I got a single elimination with my ult.

It was very nice of them to say, though. You don't normally see people give complements and be such good sports.

I've had games like that where I've been forced to switch to mccree and end up actually hitting stuff

Ha. I played Hanzo today and was like, "Whoa! So that's what a headshot snipe looks like! I should try that more often."

Hanzo is like a drug, probably heroin.

Mystery Heroes is so odd. I'll have games where I play terrible as one of my "main" characters, then just dominate with a character I suck at. I've always believed that my worst character is Zarya. I know she's a strong character, I just have no idea how to keep her charge up. Had a game where I was terrible with Roadhog and DVa (the two tanks I usually play), then just racked up a bunch of kills with Zarya and we won easily. I don't even know how I did it. Next game, I ended up with Zarya again and played my usual terrible way. But that one game, I felt like a Zarya god.

finally climbed to plat after spending the last two seasons in gold on console. definitely feels different this season, been playing much better games. i placed at 2200 but then every match I was in averaged 2500+ SR. would gain about 40 per win and only lose 15-20 per loss

Obviously, we all have bad games, but I think it has a lot to do with team comp. If you get the short end of the comp RNG and end up with a ****ty team, it's sometimes hard to do much with any character.

I've actually been practicing with Zarya so I can get good with a tank. To keep her charge up, you have to get good at using her bubble. Don't "pre-shield" yourself in anticipation of trouble. Wade into the firing line and then bubble - if they don't stop shooting, you'll get 30-40 charge right there.

Same thing with bubbling teammates. There are times you need to bubble someone if they are about to die, but mostly try to hit an attacker with a bubble when he is heavy into the action. A Winston when he is jumping into the opponent's line, a D-va, Soldier, Genji, etc.

I had a RIDICULOUS QP game last night when I average 72% charge. Got the POTG and when my card came up, other players were gasping. Now, that was a huge outlier, but the game was a textbook example of a) how to build charge and b) what not to do if you are going against Zarya.

We were defense on Anubis. I was the lone tank. The other team had Bastion, Orisa, and Phara. Bastion and Orisa camped out at the first choke, so I just went in front of them, took a couple hits, then bubbled. They didn't stop shooting, so insta-40 charge. I backed off, bubbled a teammate who was taking fire, then went in again when my bubble recharged. If I didn't have to take cover when backing off, I was lobbing right-clicks at them.

After a short time, my energy was so high that I just melted everyone. One thing that helped a lot was that I had a pocket Mercy, so I didn't have to find cover a lot.

Of course, my next game I averaged 18% charge.

Basically, you want to get aggressive and make them fire into your bubble. The tricky part is finding that balance between being aggressive and getting too deep into the muck that you can't get out. In my 18% game, I often ended up low on health with no bubble with an enemy on me. GG for me at that point.

Win streaks can be such a tease. Got to +60 sr per win off a streak and could taste master rank even though I was at 3200 lol.

Then had a match where I was gold dmg as Zenyatta on attack Eichenwald... not because we were doing so well but because my team decided to go 3 tank and the only dps kept switching and switching and switching and ended up on 4th tank. Goodbye sweet win streak hope to see you again real soon.

I was so optimistic finally breaking the 2000 mark a while back. Back down into the 1700's now. Haven't played much competitive lately, actually. Just jumped back in today and went 1-3.

One loss was a toxic team, one loss was because of a leaver (we would've won otherwise - we held the final point until 30 seconds remaining with just 5 players), one was just a typical loss where the other team was just better.

I honestly didn't play too great in the losses. Went tank and DPS in a couple of them because others took support. Did alright, I think, with Soldier for most of the match, but had a bad start and end. Was pretty mediocre with Zarya.

I've actually been enjoying QP more lately, since I can just play whomever I want without any pressure.

With Zarya focus more on saving the bubble for when it is REALLY needed. Unless you are doing a coordinated play like bubbling a Winston jumping in, or bubbling someone during their ult, you should kinda save your bubble only for saving your teammates when they are under heavy fire / about to die. Basically make sure all your bubble uses are high value and block a lot of damage. If you waste your bubble then it may still be on cooldown when you really need it to save someone.

Wut. Don't save your bubbles like that, use it regularly as long as it builds charge. 0% zarya is useless.

This.

I'm no pro (I'm not even very good at all), but every video/piece of advice I've seen by a top level player advises what I said earlier and what Grue said much more succinctly.

Obviously, you sometimes want to bubble someone who is in trouble or combo it with Winston/Genji or an ult, but "saving" it is a bad idea. You want to build energy so you can destroy everyone.

Use your personal bubble to try to get charge IMO. And if you're using your projected bubble to save people that's actually the fastest way to build charge because you're using it on people who are getting shot. The point is don't waste it.

I think there is some merit to saving, but for specific events, such as an enemy roasting or a tracer that keeps diving your healers, rein when he charges, someone ulting like genji/soldier, but otherwise you want to be annoying the enemy by bubbling the people taking damage to build charge and protect your people.

Shortly after I posted that I have no idea how to play Zarya, Your Overwatch posted this guide to Zarya. He gets Zarya to 70 with just one Rein bubble and self bubble. Then does it again to get full charge at the choke:

Yup, you can gain 40 energy from each particle barrier, so if the timing and positioning is perfect and the opponent doesn't stop shooting, you can get up to 80 (both barriers combined) in a second.

Then the challenge is keeping the energy high and taking advantage of it. I've been having a lot of fun practicing with her in QP.

It used to be 100 pre Zarya nerf. Free 100 charge from bad Reinhardts at the start of every game.

Zarya used to be so ridiculously OP. 100 energy from one flame strike was so godly. I miss being able to solo entire teams with 100 energy.

She's still good... but I find myself on super low energy so often now that you can only get 20 charge from a flame strike. I have an account that's ~3500, and one that's ~3k (that I play with my friends on), and find it's much easier to do well as Zarya at 3.5k. On the 3k account (which is often like 2.8-9k games), people are way more spread out, so getting energy is often more inconsistent.

Rented this for ps4. Anyone wanna play with me?

K1ller_k1ll on ps4. Noob so be pub stomping.