Holding my rank in Overwatch

[Clanscorpia]

Okay so I was playing at gold around 2100, and I consider myself a platinum player for my mechanical skills but I always get god awful teammates, and when I que I lose. Even when I carry and have all gold, my teammates will always let me down and now Im down to 1700. I main Pharah and Im relatively good at her, but she requires a decent bit of teamplay and after dipping below 2000 its basically non-existent. Now its extremely hard to get myself back up and its stressing me out. I know Im not this bad and if you've seen my streams you know Im pretty decent. What can I do to get my rank back up to gold, and once Im there, how can I keep it and go up? Here are my stats:https://www.overbuff.com/players/pc/SnowyWill-1489?mode=competitive

[xLmarley]

play a hero that can look after themselves.     i was always a reinhardt main around 2400, had a bad losing streak went as low as 1800ish and playing rein is pointless at that level.      I decided to start maining dps (soldier and tracer) and have been climbing ever since, now ive reached a career high 2650 or so.    Tracer is the way to go,  at lower levels it is real easy to carry as her. Once you get the hang of it, with her rewind she rarely needs help from teammates.

[Clanscorpia]

13 minutes ago, xLmarley said:

play a hero that can look after themselves.     i was always a reinhardt main around 2400, had a bad losing streak went as low as 1800ish and playing rein is pointless at that level.      I decided to start maining dps (soldier and tracer) and have been climbing ever since, now ive reached a career high 2650 or so.    Tracer is the way to go,  at lower levels it is real easy to carry as her. Once you get the hang of it, with her rewind she rarely needs help from teammates.

Im a good tracer, but when she needs healing noone ever heals her. Same with Soldier

[xLmarley]

press e

[Clanscorpia]

Just now, xLmarley said:

press e

Trust me, I do more recalls per game then anyone I know, but when its about to run out its a pain in the ass when your healers dont do shit

[xLmarley]

Theres nothing else you can do about it really,   being more vocal in voice chat is always helpful, but if you arent getting any heals then being a hero that can heal themselves is all you can do.  

[Rimi]

playing for fun instead of rank helps you relieve this stress

[DocSwag]

4 hours ago, Rimi said:

playing for fun instead of rank helps you relieve this stress

Orrrr you could be too low level like me to even be able to play comp so you play quick play instead  

[IrshaadH]

I started playing as Mercy and am having a ton of fun with it.  Everyone appreciates an effective healer and you won't have the stress of just going for kills :). 

[Clanscorpia]

6 hours ago, IrshaadH said:

I started playing as Mercy and am having a ton of fun with it.  Everyone appreciates an effective healer and you won't have the stress of just going for kills :). 

I used to main her but noone protected me

[IrshaadH]

Just now, Clanscorpia said:

I used to main her but noone protected me

Yeah, that can be problem.  I just hide behind whomever chooses Bastion

[IrshaadH]

6 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

I used to main her but noone protected me

Also, her gun is surprisingly effective in 1v1 situations.

[Clanscorpia]

1 minute ago, IrshaadH said:

Also, her gun is surprisingly effective in 1v1 situations.

I know

[ZimFreak]

Don't just blame bad teammates. Sure you get a bad team sometimes but remember the 20/40/20 rule. About 20% of games will be lost from the start thanks to your shit team. Another 20% should be easy wins thanks to the enemy team getting shafted (it happens). The other 40% are the matches where your personal skill and performance can mean the difference between a win and a loss. Focus on those 40%.

[ivan134]

Play soldier 76. Unit gaming (I think that's his name) has videos on how to properly push and defend maps. Study those. Rank up.

[crystal6tak]

Eh, you can record a video of a match and put it up here for us to review. I'm only a diamond but I'm sure I can give you some advice to climb.

[Clanscorpia]

 

Eh, you can record a video of a match and put it up here for us to review. I'm only a diamond but I'm sure I can give you some advice to climb.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJMdZK204izW5weAxKtz2Xw

[crystal6tak]

3 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJMdZK204izW5weAxKtz2Xw

Ok, watched this one

 

2:00, 17:50 - As pharah, try to expose yourself as less as possible. Your jetpack, booster, and concussion aren't for you to fly yourself in the middle of the air and be a target practice. Just like on foot where you don't shoot out in the open, but next to a wall so you can duck for cover, the same applies to pharah. Position yourself so you'll have access to cover whenever you need one. (e.g. fly onto roofs, around pillars, around statues). On foot, you'll go left right left right to pop in and out of cover to fire shots. For pharah, while in the air in front of a cover, fly up down up down to fire shots. You get what I'm saying?

 

4:18 - Their lucio ulted, your team was too far behind to back you up, don't ult. Use ult in team fights to ensure you win the fight, not as a way to clutch win a losing fight.

 

Generally, bastion doesn't work well if the team isn't playing around him. The rein wasn't cooperating with you and healers weren't paying enough attention for you to hold your ground.

 

5:04 - What are these lag spikes? Are these normal?

 

8:00~, 20:57 - You're dealing damage as tracer, but you aren't targeting anyone. As a tracer, your primary targets are healers. If you see non healers being healed by healers, go for the healers, not the non healers. Once healers are down, then target others. Keep the enemy healers away and their team will slowly crumble without heals.

 

23:28 - Welp, guess you noticed as well lol

 

13:36 - You guys should have won that fight... Yea your teammates are really bad.

 

23:50 - Why did you challenge a ulted 76 as tracer?... You may have pulse bomb, but the chance of you getting him before you die is very slim, just stay alive. You're better alive then dead (with a few hits on 76)

 

I stopped watching at 25:22 (had to wrap this up and go to bed)

 

Actually, just realized, this is a good video you should watch. Gives lots of good tips (some I mentioned here). (side-note: Ana is not as strong as the video said anymore after the nerf)

[aithos]

The first thing you can do is stop lying to yourself about your skill level, everyone plays with the same good/bad/stupid teammates and it's never teammates why you're not climbing.  Ever.  I've been playing online competitive games for 20 years (Quake TF in 1997 was my first) and the one thing I have consistently seen over and over, from game to game (and genre to genre) is that people always blame others for their faults instead of accepting them.  If you really want to make meaningful improvement (at anything in life) then the first step is admitting what you don't know and taking a good hard/honest look at your strengths and weaknesses.

 

Once you've done that you need to figure out what you can address on your own and what you're going to need help with.  Read that again, because it's the absolutely KEY to improvement.  Some things you can fix on your own, like if you notice that you have a tendency to be overaggressive when retaking a site... you can watch replays and self-identify that sort of thing and work on it during practice matches.  On the other hand there are things you can't fix on your own, like if you don't realize that when you're moving around the map your angles and crosshair placement are off a little and it's slowing down your reaction time and putting you in bad situations.  Those sort of things only a more advanced player would spot.

 

The takeaway is this: figure out what you're doing wrong, get help from someone better than you to identify OTHER things you're doing wrong, and then work on improving one step at a time.  Also, make sure you set realistic goals for yourself, because improvement is a long and frustrating process and the fastest way to ensure you never reach your potential is to set absurd goals that discourage you and make you want to give up. 

 

Oh, and FPS games are a lot less about aim than people think.  Focus more time on getting good at timing, map movement, predicting what your enemies are going to do, and analyzing the information available to you (sound/visual) to figure out the proper course of action... those things will make you a high level player FAR faster than having amazing aim or reflexes.

 

Source: high level competitive CS 1.6/Source player, high MMR MOBA player, low single digit golfer...

 

edit: also... expectations and frustration are your enemy.  The more pressure you put on yourself and the more frustrated you are that you aren't at your perceived skill-level... the worse you'll play and the more it will affect your mental game.  I took a season off of golf because I was doing that and I needed to mentally reset my attitude and start fresh.  You need to stay calm, work hard, be honest and make sure that practice is FUN or you won't get better.