the idea of placements seems a little pointless if they aren't going to substantively move your rank from the previous season.

i have more fun in comp cuz people talk and theres teamwork. random heroes is a great change of pace too.

how in the world is that what you took from that post

he said the placements are a waste of time but they aren't any different than all of the other games you play.

is a number going up or down afterwards that big of a deal?

sure there doesn't seem to be a good reason to count your first ten games in a different manner, but what does it actually impact?

I don't know what it impacts, but he definitely never said anything that amounts to 'playing competitive games is a waste of time.'

this is a stupid derail but that is literally what he said since the placement games are just more competitive games. if all he meant was that its a pointless system then fine I agree

Competitive is fun. Placements are mostly fun. For people who care about improving their rank, placements are obnoxious, especially if 10 games is a significant percentage of the total games you will play each season. If, as I asked before, MMR is fuzzier in placements, it is 10 games that are comparatively less fun because they are less evenly matched.

I never argued that placements are a big deal. I'm not some kid on reddit making a mountain of a mole hill. They just seem to have zero benefit, so even a minor cost is enough to justify throwing them in the trash heap.

Hello all, I've started a PGC of sorts re: my adventures in Overwatch and streaming the same: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/7...-wsop-1706171/

Streaming dat high plat/low diamond life currently, hopefully masters within time!

Gl on building the stream.

Thanks, GGI! Unfortunately, the mods of 2p2 have decided my thread is fit for neither the Video Games forum nor the House of Blogs forum, so it's been deleted. If you'd like to check out the stream, there's a link in my profile.

Anyone still play this?

Been playing again a lot, playing random heroes with friends has really made my competent hero pool quite large. I feel very comfortable with all heroes except moira (although I'm picking her up), mei, mccree (unless I'm having a really good day) and doomfist.

this hasn't been reflected in my competitive winrate but my QP winrate just picking whatever role the team needs has been like 80+%. I can't seem to translate this success into competitive though, which makes sense, but man it just feels like if I don't go DPS the team has absolutely no chance.

Roadhog seems to really shine in lower ranks when you have a ****ty comp. It's so easy to get picks and there are no ana's to nade you so you basically can't die. You're completely self sustaining and can rack up crazy amounts of damage/kills.

if i play comp this season i may focus on him.

I've finally started cooling off. I like parts of the Brigitte concept, but the hero is oppressively OP and makes playing nearly all of the most fun heroes less fun. This incarnation of the hero should never be seeing the light of day in competitive but it appears no nerf is incoming before next season starts. Not at all surprising given Blizzard seems reluctant to nerf heroes until well past the point people are crying bloody murder (see: Mercy, moth meta, which went well beyond the point of absurdity).

It's disturbing that Blizzard continues to go in that direction since Moira is cut from a similar cloth. Both heroes require relatively low skill but can have a big impact and are simply not fun to play against.

This game could be the GOAT but between Blizzard's questionable decision-making (tbf they've made plenty of good decisions, too, but way many decisions have been in the vein of 'too little too late' or acting way too late with regard to a lot of other stuff) and a pretty toxic community I don't think it's ever going to reach anywhere close to its potential. The game needs more people to be more flexible; there are way too many DPS instalocks and I don't see that ever changing. I'm not sure role queue would be a viable solution, either.

By this point I doubt a lot of people who've already stopped playing will give it another chance and tbh even as someone who has played the game for over 1000 hours I'm not sure that they should.

I feel brigitte as a concept is really good for the game, but her numbers could probably be tweaked. I feel the ranking system is as janky as ever though, it’s what makes me quit every time.

Not only does the experience just objectively suck, the toxicity makes it truly unenjoyable. It feels like blizzard is handing out bans a little more liberally though.

roadhog is rated pretty low in the meta report usually but man i swear i just **** all sorts of **** up with him. I never really "got" the hero until i realized how insane he is when you can force 1v1's. basically the only hero you dont want to toe to toe with is reaper or mei. but reapers generally suck and mei is a bad hero overall at low ranks.

usually go gold damage/elims and sometimes healing if the team really sucks. the thing I'm working on right now is not feeding ult so i usually just peek corners and try to get hooks when i can or pick off people that overextend or are staggered from spawn.

his point blank shots against rein are disgusting. if rein goes too far, which they usually do, you can just walk past his shield and obliterate him.

I still play most days and have a lot of fun. I only play Mystery Heroes and QP. I haven't played competitive mode in three or four seasons.

I play comp almost every day for 2-4 matches still dunno why. Its easy? I have all communications off tho.

What SR are you guys? I know the ELO hell thing is largely considered a myth but i swear i’m in it. I think i’m doing something fundamentally wrong - every season i post a positive WR but still magically get placed in the same SR every single season and cant climb out of it.

I’ve played with my plat friends plenty lately and i can totally hang in those games. I think maybe it’s a volume thing, but it’s hard for me to put in a ton of comp games because at some point the tilt is way too real and people are obnoxious and dumb and ragey.

play meta heroes (winston, zen, genji, tracer, mercy, dva) or map specific heroes. dont instalock dps. use voice chat a lot.

instalock dps and dont use voice chat -> 2200 sr

play meta heroes and chat a lot -> 3000 sr

imo

next season i think there is gonna be merit in just instalocking brigitte. its gonna be like the mercy moth meta. get good at her and pillage everyone until they nerf her.

one thing blizzard could do is get rid of the stall mechanic where touching the point gives you a few seconds. they could make it where c9's (accidentally be off point and lose) are way more common. makes dive tanks a little less valuable when they cant just have winston hop on point, stall, hop off, have dva hop on, stall, dive off, have tracer warp in, doodle around, etc etc. sometimes v easy to get an extra 10% on koth just from stuff like that.

problem with this game is map design, its too good for mobility. only thing i can think of that make alternative options better is increasing hp for heroes like rein and soldier, even if its only a little bit.

i think the game will be fine in long run, they will keep introducing new heroes and eventually there will be a meta thats fun for everyone. i actually liked the mercy meta; even tho mercy was mandatory it opened up a ton of options for the other 5. getting rid of OP mercy makes dive mandatory again. introducing brigitte could have a similar effect where she is mandatory (and not fun to play against), so like a bad version of mercy moth meta. but eventually they will accidentally strike gold with a new pool of heroes or a new map rotation.

The Sym rework seems like it's gonna be pretty radical and possibly meta-changing, that she can build turrets at a distance and the new teleporter will make everyone into a dive tank, you'll be able to do the stall dive with Orisa and Rein and ****.

this was the boat i was in when i stopped playing.

first 4 seasons i hovered around 3000-3600. took a season off and when i came back started messing around more with off meta heroes to have some more fun, dipped down to gold and couldn't believe the stuff i was seeing/hearing on mic. people are just clueless. everytime i put a win streak together i find myself throwing a few games to troll some morons or rage quitting. probably don't have the dedication to climb back again.

ELO hell def is a myth (sorry)

One thing I have noticed though - that doesn't mean that your playstyle at a low ELO might translate better to a higher lvl game.

I main tank - and if I play the same style as when I'm at my actual SR as I play with a much lower rated friend it won't work well, and vice versa. I tend to play a lot more risky at the low SR bc you get punished less and you can carry the game easier. With DPS, probably go 'less risky' and just stay alive. If you're a soldier who sits on high ground at low ELO and can actually aim, you're going to win a lot of games, no matter what your teammates are doing.

If you're truly better than your rank, you'll climb out, although it's a lot like poker. You're going to have a ton of variance so it might take awhile. Tilting or playing when you're not really trying matters.

There is also definitely something to what character you pick. You can get out with anything for sure, but if you are good at hog/soldier/zen, a lot of the time you're less reliant on your team to actually enable you. You're going to climb best if you just play the 2-3 characters you're best with, though.

I'm not good at those three - so for instance, I was stuck a long while back, and climbed out 1-tricking lucio, arguably the most team oriented character. If I generate 1.5-2x more sound barriers than the enemy lucio/off heal, and shut down DPS ults on the other time every single time I use one, I'm going to generally win.

I played the first 7 seasons on PS4 and was generally around high plat and low diamond on both my main account (mostly tank) and alt account (mostly dps). Made the switch to PC at the beginning of season 8, placed at 2760ish (way higher than I expected given some discomfort w/ mkb at the time) playing exclusively tank and eventually hit 3100 my first season on there and then hit it again the next season and constantly hovering between 2900-3100. Started playing exclusively dps on an alt account midway through the season and actually was rolling people in mid-plat hard and shot up to 30 points shy of diamond quickly w/ Hanzo as my most played hero (72% win % feels good man) followed by Tracer, Soldier, and McCree.

I think I'm probably a masters Lucio and maybe Zen and Reinhardt (if meta doesn't make him terrible), mid to high diamond with every tank but Hog, and high plat to low diamond with everyone else. Fine w/ me as I'm in my mid-thirties and feel like a G.

If I played as much volume this previous season as I did nearly any previous season or played exclusively on my main I think I could have hit top 1000 as Orisa on overbuff.

My main account I usually take the role of shotcaller and am very active in comms and formulating strategy. My alt account I talk much less frequently and just focus on killing people. If anyone starts annoying me I just leave team chat or mute them. I care more about having fun on that account than my SR. Ironically I won like 70% of my games on that account and am certain it would have been lower if I participated more in team chat. IMO team chat is important for tanks + supports, not as important for dps other than communicating about wombo combos.

ELO hell is definitely a myth. Watch streamers and try to figure out why they're doing what they're doing if you automatically think to yourself 'I'd probably be doing something different here.' Pay especially close attention to their positioning and target focusing and prioritization.

If you have some game sense (ult awareness, when team fight is lost, when to be more aggressive and more cautious, etc.), good positioning, and communicate at least a little bit you will succeed.

Also, PC Overwatch is infinitely better than console. I wish I had bought a PC much sooner and been able to enjoy the triple tank meta on PC rather than PS4, since Ana has basically always been terrible on PS4. By the time I left PS4, the high plat/low diamond tier was completely overrun by smurfs and people who DGAF with way less communication (and even less % quality communication) than on PC. Comps tend to be much more reasonable on PC.

i take back what i said about playing brigitte, she's not even that fun to play.

seeing some suggestions that this may be the new brigitte meta... triple support

front line: brigitte/orisa/either lucio or zen
back line: ana + 2 DPS or ana + DPS + flex tank

have brigitte be the linebacker, flexing to support the orisa sheild and diving whoever dives the front/back support. combo with mcree flashbang and roadhog hook and orisa hook.

its gonna be the most frustrating meta ever, just constant stuns.

I've had a lot of fun playing Brigitte. Her two big weaknesses are 1) lack of mobility and 2) ranged opponents.

She's like Reaper in that you have to get up close and person to really do anything with her. If the other team is running, say, Pharah-Mercy, Widow, Orisa, Zarya, some healer, you're in trouble.

Moira is my favorite right now.