everyone tends to believe their "true skill" is always the highest SR they've reached (or higher if not for bad luck!!)

Just for the record, I never said anything about what my true SR is or what I believe it is. I can tell you that for the last few weeks of s1 I hovered between 56-62 and that for the first 40 hours of s2 I hovered between 2500-2900. According to Overbuff I am significantly above average w/ my main heroes DVa, Lucio, and Reinhardt overall and in most individual statistical categories and when my SR was ~2800 I was ranked top 5% or better w/ each.

There were two variables significantly different between the games constituting my huge decline and everything else. #1, I mostly solo and duo queued where I had previously 4-6 manned it. Admittedly, I made soloing an even more challenging experience b/c I didn't participate in team chat over 90% of these matches, mostly b/c I had it turned to "On", never heard anything, and just assumed people never talked or were in their own parties. As it turned out, switching to "Auto Join" when I had gotten down to 2200 made all the difference and I could finally hear people from time to time.

#2, my hero mains don't seem to work well in general soloing as opposed to being part of a larger party. I think it's true that DPS heroes tend to perform much better in solo play and can carry a team more easily. I felt like I was making more of an impact w/ Tracer than w/ heroes I am more skilled at playing.

Even so, these were the kinds of #s I was putting up consistently as DPS over that stretch (top 1% obj kills, top 1% obj time, top 4% elims) and we were still losing b/c of lineups that were close to drawing dead against any reasonable comp and/or random disconnects:



Finally, I had the worst luck I've ever had in 300 hours playing this game over my last 15-20 hours or so of comp play. I've never experienced so many random disconnect losses or watched people on my team selecting Torbjorn/Symmetra/Widow whatever on Attack and contributing nothing at best, trolling at worst.

Finally, if you lose enough games in a row Overwatch starts hitting your SR significantly harder and you can lose 40 points(maybe even more) from a match, and this seems to occur regardless of performance.

My whole point is, it's easier to drop from 2800 to 2000 than you might think.

you have to turn it to autojoin

Yeah this is 100% legit, it's a team game and if the team dynamics change drastically you could see a large change in your effective SR with little change in performance, no one is going to be equally skilled at all roles / situations.

I agree Reinhardt, Dva and Lucio choices are going to struggle a lot with bad teams.

This is my current for solo queue when skill seems below average, I'd pick 2-3 to focus on primarily:
* Zarya (attack, KOTH)
* Roadhog (defense, KOTH)
* Tracer (attack, KOTH)
* Pharah (attack, KOTH)
* Dva (stall)
* Mei (stall / chokes, KOTH)
* Junk Rat (certain sections)
* Reinhardt (payload attack only)

And only take support if there's not a single healer or it becomes clear having more healing would be impactful.

My ranking is basically:
I start with Hanzo
Zenyatta (if Hanzo taken from me)
Zarya (if already two healers and there is already a tank)
Reinhardt (if no tank at all)
I swap to soldier a lot to plink Pharah (too awful to plink with McCree)

I swap out of Hanzo if there is no tank or no healer, unless some dps pre-empts and TELLS me to swap. Then I go for salty Hanzo.

I just lost 7 straight games last night/tonight and went from 3090 or so to about 2880. Lost ~115 points in the 3 games today that I played. Had gold damage/elims in all 3, and 4 golds in two, despite playing Zarya for like 80% of the time. I'm sure there are things I could do to improve my performance in that game, but there's very little that even a marginal improvement would have done to impact the outcome of the games. I seem to be accruing a larger point loss/game, and it's frustrating. I can't make people want to coordinate a push or counter pick heroes, even if I try to in a friendly manner.

This is such a team game, and getting 6 people together who are willing/capable of working together with the roles they prefer is very random. It's frustrating.

So I could see losing a ton of points in a run of bad luck. That being said, I doubt I somehow end up another 500 below this. The people at that level are just very, very bad, to the point where I could hard carry as Zarya or a number of other heroes.

I've played Lucio and crushed in games with 3200 SR avg but it's just not a hero that allows me to carry at low levels now that I'm free falling. Used to think so but there's only so much lucio can do if nobody cooperates.

Unfortunately only dps I play decently well is reaper

Yes but you probably would have to switch to Zarya (or other carries) to guarantee that.

I think if you like the supportive type champions it's really good to have a DPS you trust. I can dominate with Ana all day with my duo queue partner but I have to be really careful bringing it out solo.

Ya it's really hard to solo carry on a ton of heroes. Something like Rein/Ana are very dependent on team comp. If you're a really good Rein, but your team is just letting your shield get demolished while not getting picks, you're almost completely nullified. If you have a modicum of team help, you can then find plenty of opportunities to outplay the other Rein, hit your firestrikes, and do a ton of damage with your charge/earth shatter. Ana is similar in that your abilities are still relying on others to capitalize.

I think Zen is the best solo carry support, since he's capable of dealing a lot of damage/taking care of himself against flankers (to a large degree). I win the vast majority of my fights against tracers since they aren't expecting to get 2-3 shot so quickly. That being said, if you're playing Zen, you should really focus on calling out discord targets. He's probably the most capable of facilitating focus fire on heroes since everyone can see the discord orb and attempt to focus that target (particularly if you're calling it in voice chat).

Zarya is probably the biggest solo carry hero at not super high ranks since she's so unbelievably hard to kill. She's a lot like Mei in that you need to burst her down as a team, or she'll survive seemingly forever... often building up huge energy supplies. My tracing aim has also gotten way better over the past month or so, which makes it way easier to dish out a ton of damage. I had predominantly played games like cs/tf2 that was more flick based aim, so it has been an adjustment on certain heroes.

I'm also starting to think that Roadhog is an awful tank in a 2/2/2 setup. He's a damage dealer with more survivability. I get very frustrated when he's picked on non koth maps since he just doesn't bring a ton to the table in terms of tank. I've been trying to convince more people to play a 3 tank setup with a zarya/rein if someone locks roadhog. He's good for picking off flankers/pharah, protecting the healers, as well as being a good distraction target. Zarya/Rein are just sooooo good, particularly together. Zarya's blackhole is really hard to justify replacing when it can so easily facilitate a team kill.

Is there anyway to see your win percentage on certain types of maps? If not, I should just start recording that manually. My win percentage on koth is almost certainly the highest by a mile, since people tend to spread out more. Definitely enables more 1 on 1 fights, which I am quite good at, since I have a ton of FPS experience/solid aim and movement mechanics. I definitely think I'm impatient/not the best on more team based game modes, which is something I need to work on.

So I'm 9 for 10 wins in my recent KOTH history, have to assume my positioning or strategy in payload / assault maps is really bad right if I'm hovering in SR?

Ya, that's what I'm thinking. In koth, it's way more just death match style aim battles, which I do very well in. Payload/Cap point maps require way more team coordination in general, which is probably more random, and something I'm prolly worse at.

I've found a new type of bad player: When I use transcendence, they RUN AWAY FROM ME. Also had one who complained I used my ult for nothing after I did a 1k heal, because he only saw the end when I went to help him. It's frustrating to heal sometimes.

In their defense, I generally run away from random people that come up to me and tell me to "experience tranquility."

This happens sooooo much.

anyone else in the moonmoon sub tourney?

Competitive play on the weekends is the worst.

Does blizzard count ties as a loss? I'm up 450 points from placements with a well under 500 record according to their API.

http://masteroverwatch.com/profile/pc/us/Nchabazam-1981

The tracking sites definitely do, your profile should be accurate however. You can also climb with below a 50% winrate in my experience (winning your underdog scenarios).

blizz has a performance element in mmr changes

you are also 30 wins/losses

Halloween update out.

Anyone know why I cant find my name on any of the overwatch tracking sites? I play on PC ive put in the number after my name and all that it just always said not found.

They're usually case sensitive.

Some nice halloween skins out.
You can buy them with regular currency now but 3x the price, so purps = 750 and gold = 3000.

The Reaper Halloween skin is amazing.

try ""http://masteroverwatch.com/profile/pc/us/XXXXX-####"" without the quotes

where XXX is your case sensitive screen name and ### is your number

this is presuming you play in north america, if not then switch 'us' to diff region