just ignore all that. people think the ranking is important for itself but its not, its just a tool for fair matchmaking. competitive gives you a better match format

"Competitive" is just a way for evenly matched games where people try.

It's the real game.

Yeah if my friends invite me to play QP at this point I just decline. Comp or die

Another good session tonight. I'm 14-8-1 in season 3 so far and have climbed 400 SR. Just main support and the climb is free

god i ****in suck. i'm at like 1330 after being up to 1700 (lol) 2 days ago. my buddies are at about 2900-3200 so i can't even play with them

i am not good at all but i was at like 2200 last season (prob cuz of them!) but i feel like i have improved a lot over last couple weeks. can someone give me a quick line check here...i am a lucio main but like someone said earlier it's hard to take over game with him like reinhardt v my team loses 80% of the time if we don't have a reinhardt too


widowmaker- worthless, should never be used at this level when hanzo is superior
hanzo-basically worthless for most people who play him
pharoah- very useful at these levels! but i suck with her unfortunately
sombra- useless
tracer-mostly useless here for the vast majority of players playing her but can be quite effective if used well
genji- mostly useless except to kill turrets and help kill bastions
~every tank- good!
lucio- way superior to the other healers pretty much always
soldier- useful in every game
mei- useful in every game when used well which most people are decent with her at this level (i'm not)
torborn/bastion- can be useful at this level on quite a few maps on defense
zenyata- i have no idea, never play her


is that about right? pm me if you are close by my rank on xbox one. i ****in suck and can't get any higher it is tilting the **** out of me. seems like every time we have a lucio and like 2 tanks we win but there is always some annoying ass players

At 1330, I imagine you are basically correct. Tanks are strong because DPS can't kill them due to missing a lot. Lucio is strong because he doesn't need huge mechanical skill in order to heal. Bastion is strong because people don't move or aim very well, and even if his aim is poor, he still shreds people quickly.

I suspect Rein is actually quite bad though, because the team doesn't stay behind his shield much. But if Lucio manages it, I imagine it helps.

Zen is a he though

Everyone has idiots , but people still end up at 3k etc. the difference isn't luck in who you get on your team, it's how you communicate to them ( 5% ) and your aim ( 10 % ) and your decision making ( 85% ).

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp0T_1ObKEs and see what he's doing differently to you. He's a 4k lucio.

Basically your probably doing dumb **** like ulting 2 people, having the wrong aura on, trading and dying pointlessly after your teams already lost a fight and donating ult charge and costing res time, etc.

You should consider playing him. His orbs are really powerful. He doesn't have a lot of abilities so you can focus mainly on your orbs and healing. Don't be afraid to pick only one hero. Be the best at that one.

My journey to 25 is proving long and slow. I want to play competitive and hope to get into the bottom tier from the start. Seems like the last 5 levels are super slow.

Something it's important to understand is that when you play a really supportive hero like Lucio. If you play a standard passive / stay alive Lucio style you're basically giving yourself a small advantage, say 3-5% more wins then losses if done really well. If you do the variance calcs on this you can see it will take hundreds if not thousands of games to climb from say silver to plat / diamond with plenty of massive downswings.

Perfect example of this, I am a very good Ana. She's the first hero I played and the one I'm absolutely the best at. Top 10% healing, elims, sleeps, etc.. I'm the guy who knows how to lead his unscoped shots across the map, hits sleeps on ulting Genji, etc.. My other two heroes are Zenyata and Zarya which I'm only above average at.

These are my winrates last season (mostly at high plat / low diamond >20 hours on each):
-Ana 50% (5% more wins than losses including draws)
-Zarya 55% (10%)
-Zenyata 60% (15%)

This was at the height of Ana's supposed overpoweredness. She was OP, just for pros and not competitive queue.

Hero picks have the biggest impact on whether you climb or not. You know which hero to pick by understanding the meta you're playing at, how to solve common problems / situations / maps and what's the most important jobs that you could do in those situations. For example, if you pick your usual stuff on Hanamura attack, you probably aren't playing correctly. I don't think Rein is generally necessary at low SRs (however blocking spam when attacking into chokes is very high value... Dva, Zarya and Rein are good here).

Contrary to popular belief, OW isn't a pure FPS, it's also a MOBA. You need to understand the flow of the game objectives and then figure out how to have a big impact. If you're just generally 'good', you won't climb fast enough to notice. It's been proven you can climb fast with Lucio by playing a super aggressive DSPstanky type style, but just being a generally good Lucio who doesn't die probably won't cut it.

A simple way to learn this is ask yourself after each loss, why did we lose? **** heals? Missing Rein? Spam at the choke? Symmetra TP? Then the next time it's applicable learn to do that job yourself. Both teams at your SR deal with the same issue (for example ****ty Hanzos will be less frequent on your team than theirs, not a reason your team loses). Also consider that if you take a popular hero that is hard to mess up (Lucio, Dva) you might want to encourage your teammates to pick it first before you grab it so you could have a higher skill job (for example I'd often pick Tracer in silver on attack anticipating a Symmetra TP problem).

Let's say I get into Competitive, never played before so I have no history. I play my 10 placement matches and I do absolutely terrible. I'm the worst on my team, I can't hit anyone, and I die over and over. But, we win all 10 games.

Am I going to be placed higher because I won? Or does it take into account your stats and the fact that, individually, I'm not that good?

Quick play performance and general performance seem to matter the most for your first placement, I had a friend go 1-9 and get placed 2700 last season and I went 5-5 and placed 2k SR.

Ok, I jumped into competitive. I'm 2-3 in my first 5 placement matches. My two wins bookend a 3-game losing streak. I think in my losses our tanks weren't good enough; I was one of those tanks in one match.

In the last loss of the streak, I started as Lucio on offense on the wild west map, but switched to Zen when I realized my team wasn't staying together. I think if I would've been Zen from the start, we would've done better, as my healing was more effective with him and I contributed more offensively.

Did have a huge moment in my last win as Lucio. Capturing the payload, my whole team is there. Opposing Junkrat sends his ult tire bomb thingy at us and I activate my shield ult just in time to prevent our whole team from getting wiped. That was fun.

See, this is why I want to live forever. My day can be crap, but just that little enjoyment from a good play in a video game is one of the little things that make life worth living.

Went 8-2 in placements, finished +175 from S2 final ranking.

What exactly is the Christmas event people are talking about? Just new skins and such from loot boxes? I know Blizzard makes a big deal of Holidays (Hearthstone already decorated their boards and SC2 does something for Xmas, I think (I definitely recall the party hats for the anniversary, but I vaguely remember gift boxes somewhere also.)

Nobody knows yet.

Christmas themed kings row, apart from that nobody knows.

Prob a bunch of skins like olympics and halloween, maybe an event map.

dont care as long as everyone gets a "happy fest of winter veil!" voice line

OK, I was wondering why all the articles were being vague about what the Christmas Winterveil event was.

I'm getting pretty frustrated with the teams I've been on. Everyone wants to **** around with long range characters and don't go for the objectives. Then, you do a tiny push, and they all die and leave you stranded by yourself. The other team is constantly paired up together, as a group, and can seal off chokepoints and dominate the objective. I just don't understand it.

Really informative video showing the future of sombra at the pro meta

tl;dr take advantage of healthpacks to get the first ult



can be a very good situational pick on attack (kings row, anubis) with the advantageous first healthpack, but right now the meta is so firmly [triple tank + soldier] that its sorta hard to break through

If YOU never trickle in to a fight, on average, your team will do it less than theirs. So if you constantly feel your team is at a disadvantage in a fight, and you can honestly say that's more often the case than the other way round (instead of confirmation bias), it has to be your fault that it's happening. You are the constant.

Yup, you've correctly identified the dynamic of low level games. Very important to understand how to beat, part of your OW education. Remember, the game is NOT a pure FPS, breaking chokes is a core part of the game you shouldn't approach it as normal.

Best options to beat it:
-Dva is god tier on attack for this reason. Block the spam so your team can move through and/or dive on their Hanzo and ruin him
-Flanking. Go the back route on Pharah / Tracer and pressure them from two directions or pull them back to the point. Tell your team to take advantage.
-Rein + Lucio speed boost. Hard to organize at low SR but works great if everyone will follow a planned path.
-Winston + Zarya or Dva dive plan. Start by jumping your tanks onto their supports to mitigate your concave / positional disadvantage. Takes even more coordination than Lucio + Rein.
-Poke to charge ults then engage, maybe bait out enemy ults to get an advantage by doing a dry run. Nearly impossible to coordinate except at highest levels.
-Poke for picks, then run through when you have a 6v5. Hanzo, Roadhog, Widow. Doesn't work well at low levels.

On the flip side, spamming into the choke on defense is very easy value, good picks for this:
-Pharah
-Junk
-Zen
-Soldier

Eichenwald attack I'd strongly recommend Pharah particularly if you're seeing a lot of Symmetra, float the right flank route and nuke the turrets to get your team through.

Hollywood, Volskaya, Anubis, Hanamura I think attack Dva is especially important. Any time you need to attack into a Junk Rat (or any spam heavy defense including KOTH) it's wise to have Dva if not also a Rein.

an amazing bad string of luck that 5 random people at your skill level on your team are always bad while the 6 random people at your skill level on the other team are always coordinated!

It does seem like when I go on losing streaks in this game it's just because I'm in mute/toxic teams with no coordination. Pretty easy to get 5 or 6 of those in a row (but I get 5-6 really good teams in a row on other days).

Definitely a confirmation bias people see.

does anyone not want to live forever

Selection bias too: you can rarely tell if your opponent's team have the same problem.