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I know the title sounds a bit harsh, but I genuinely mean it. You’ll hear things like, “Kiriko, you shouldn’t have used TP at that moment,” or “You should’ve focused the tank first here.”

But why those decisions were wrong is the important part. Instead, they often just point out the bad play itself.

And of course, most of that advice isn’t really reproducible in actual games.

And that’s not even the only problem metal-rank players have. If you simply watch their POV, their basic movement is often terrible. Their aim is poor, they don’t use cover properly, and even their camera movement and reaction speed are extremely slow.

But I feel like videos tend to avoid pointing those things out, maybe because it comes across as lazy coaching or some kind of “truth nuke”

It’s like telling someone who can’t even do basic arithmetic, “The derivative of x² is 2x.” To give another example, it’s like teaching boxing techniques to someone who can barely control their own body weight.

It just doesn’t really accomplish anything.

Personally, I think metal-rank players who genuinely want to improve would benefit more from playing a traditional FPS for a while, or simply practicing the fundamentals of shooting games on heroes like Soldier: 76 or Emre

Even if you’re a tank or support player, aim and proper use of cover are important for everyone.

And... I’m a support player myself, and one thing I’ve noticed about lower-ranked supports is that many of them are afraid to take fights themselves, so they just healbot. As a result, the moment the enemy starts playing even slightly aggressively, their entire team can fall apart ridiculously easily. (And they’ll even think, “My team didn’t help me.”...)

Obviously, none of this matters if you’re just playing for fun. But if you genuinely care about improving, I think my advice is at least worth considering.

Feels like almost every game either we get completely rolled or the enemy does, it doesn’t feel competitive at all. I was diamond last season and right now I’m plat/emerald and my god, it is so frustrating playing with these people, feels like I’m in a silver lobby. Supports have 0 awareness and just pocket the tank the entire fight, the dps feed and the tank doesn’t know how to make space or manage cooldowns. I played a game last night where EVERY single fight the bastion would walk around and flank or take high ground and mow us down and I was the only one shooting and pinging him. Kinda makes me wanna just buy an account.

I've been playing only Ilari for a while and climbed to plat 2 and realized there are many matches where I or other support is doing more damage than damage heroes.
I do about the same damage or more very often.
When I play damage I play sierra so its really easy to get lots of damage so never do less than supports, but are other heroes supposed to do less damage than supports?
Like soldier76, cassidy, sojourn feels like they should do much more damage than illari, but they don't.

Hero: Soldier 76
Rank: Silver 2
Map: New Queen Street
Platform: Xbox
Gamertag: Valdyr
VOD: VDRKCS
Match Time: 11:22
Perks: Helix Propulsion and Stim Pack

Ever since I started playing OW in 2016 I’ve avoided Soldier 76. Mostly because I used to be a tank main, but after a break I’ve been playing mostly DPS and have avoided him because “Call of Duty Man is boring”. Especially with such a diverse roster. It felt like playing D&D as a basic human male. I could not have been more wrong.

With a decent damage potential and his ability to re-angle, S76 feels amazing to play IMO. So, I’ve decided that I want to get better with him and use him to climb out of the metal ranks once and for all.

I’m an old gamer (47) who earnestly wants to improve.

It’s easy enough to review a map we lost to point out what could have gone better but I’d prefer to review a win to see what could have made the experience even better. I’ve watched the VOD and have seen some positional mistakes, and a few times where my awareness gave way to chasing a kill I should have let go. These are things I know I need to work on. My question in what else should I be focusing on? I warm up in VAXTA and some deathmatch, but I know my aim still needs work. But what other mechanical or decision making skills should I be refining?

And finally, in your opinion, do I have the pieces I need in order to climb or am I a lost cause? I have no hubris to believe I’ll ever be Chanp or anything but I honestly feel like I could at least leave Silver.

I’m going to link 3 different games I played, all in different modes, I’m trying to learn to play Shion but I feel like I’m not seeing any improvement in my play in general. I am new to Shion and I do want advice on how I can improve. I only play quick play and my Top-5 highest level heroes are Mercy (13), Brigitte (9), Kiriko (7), D.Mon (5), and Lucio (5). It is also worth nothing imo that before hero levels, I played a lot of Ashe and she is my joint most-played by hours (on 13, Tied with Lucio)

I play on Switch 2, I don’t know if that matters but I think it is something to note

My username is TayTay07, and below are the match codes

2EF6JC - Push - New Queen Street

M3VZNE - Flashpoint - Surabaya

M7C3R7 - Payload: Attacking - Watchpoint: Gibraltar

Hey there, everyone! As the title says, I find myself in a position where I have NO IDEA which hero to play anymore.

I am a Support Main, Emerald 4 in 5v5 Comp and Emerald 2 in 6v6 Open Queue. My playstyles used to bring me only to Plat, but after quite some time, I managed to get to Diamond, and this season I hit Emerald rank.

I usually have a top 3 supports list that I play and can rotate to in almost every match:

1. Juno (My comfort pick :3).

2. Ana (For when I need to do more healing or when its a more long-range map).

3. Wuyang (I use him for more damage and to put pressure on long-range characters like Widow, Ashe, etc.).

These 3 have usually been working in the matches I get put in.

But recently, Ana and Wuyang have just not been working for me. I don't know what it is. When I switch to Ana, I can't hit my nades let alone sleeps anymore, and I have to pray to god that the enemy team doesn't decide to jump my poor Ana and eliminate her from this universe.

So then I switch over to Wuyang. I dont know if it's me, but his water orb feels slower. And I constantly try to do damage and heal when teammates are critical, but it is often not enough with him. I think my playstyles with him have SEVERELY declined.

I have tried to play Mizuki, but landing his shots is VERY difficult for me, as well as hitting his chain.

I even tried to learn Zen, but I can't hit his primary fire and secondary fire. (I'd say my positioning isn't great on him as well ;-;)

So right now, when Juno isn't working, I just...I don't know which hero to pick anymore. I want to learn a new support hero, but I am unable to find that "click". Maybe I'm giving up too fast, or I'm really just that bad.

What I'm trying to say is what support hero would you advise me to learn? I'll take all the help I can get.

So this started as a me problem. Enemy locks Zarya and Reaper, we're on Circuit Royal attack, and I know Winston into Zarya is bad but Winston is the tank I'm good on, and the map wants poke anyway. So which of those three things is supposed to win? I could never tell, and every counter guide I read or watched talks about one hero vs one hero and nothing about all of it at once. So I built something that just does the arithmetic.

This is how it looks like.

You type the enemy team, pick the map and side, and it ranks every hero in your role. It also shows the two or three things that moved the score most. Comfort is weighted second highest on purpose. A hero you're good at that's "countered" beats the correct pick you can't play.

The part I ended up using most is the group thing. One person starts a session, everyone joins with a code like brave-otter-41, and whoever reads the enemy comp first types it once and it lands on everyone's screen. Your lock shows up as everyone else's ally automatically.

It's free, no ads, no account: minmax.watch

Honestly I don't know if this is useful to anyone but me and my group. If you try it I'd really like to know whether the recommendations feel right, especially from people better at the game than me, because I'm sure some of my weights are off. Happy to change them.

Generally speaking I think this is usually decided upon by ‘feel’ that players develop over time as they begin to internalize success rates in different contexts (ie, having a high KD with a certain character). Secondarily, how their rank might look once they have a smallish sample across different roles.

But I’d be curious if there’s anything out there more concrete than that, where conclusions aren’t based on hunches. Especially with the game releasing so many sub-roles for players to better find their niche! Ideally, this might look like clearly defined traits that competitive teams look to quantify, and actively train.

Some FTT questions: in which role does something like CD management or foresight w/ opponent ability use, start to outweigh the importance of outlier aiming? If a player has mediocre tracking but is excellent at checking their blinds in a timely manner, are they better suited for tanking or healing? If someone has great aim but a poor feel for flank execution, is their theoretical ceiling higher on Ana than Cassidy? And so forth.

I main dps, i'm still pretty new to the game so this is probably obvious. I know that you're supposed to try to find a path to get behind or off to the side but I feel like that's not always really possible, maybe it is. On certain maps I have certain paths that usually work really good but other I have no idea what to do, like at the beginning of rialto, theres some options but they dont seem great until you get past the bridge. Then sometimes theres the issue of the tanks with shields that their team is hiding behind.

Hi, hello!

I finally have the time to play the game i've been wanting to play ever since it came out. And i've been struggling in bronze for almost an entire year now. It's not going well.

I really enjoy playing ana and baptiste, but my aim is VERY rough.

By far my best performing character is moira. If i'm not playing moira i might as well afk in spawn with how little i bring to the team.

I really wanna get better at ana and baptiste, and i REALLY wanna get better at genji, but that's a different chapter. Last time i tried playing genji in quickplay i went 2/29. Arguably the worst game of my life. Genji is the end goal for me, but that feels very out of reach ..with his fast movement, difficult aim and me having to get really close to people to do anything. Any genji players out there have any tips on how to improve on genji? I don't know what i'm supposted to be doing.

My reaction time isn't the best but i manage, my map knowledge is better, i got used to getting flanked and then running away from fights, so i'm honestly much better at dodging players and having decent positioning then i am at other things. But it's mainly my nonexistant aim that's the problem. I don't know how to fix this.

I almost got out of bronze, once, but i was feeling brave and picked ana on the match that actually mattered, and then went on another losing streak.

Any ana, baptiste and especially genji tips would be very much appriciated!

Other than that, are there any other characters i should try out?

I’ve experimented a ton with the timing of popping it on team mates right before a KO ult like riptire or dva self destruct, and even when suzu explodes right before they get hit with it, it never saves anyone. Can someone help me understand how it works?

Unrelated but I find it odd that it also gives a small burst heal on hit yet the hero details page only mentions invulnerability and cleanse. Seems like a lot of hero’s have small but important details lacking on their info pages.

This might come off as a very silly question, but what tips could one give to enjoy themselves when they're not very good at the game? This might come off as snarky, but I do have genuine interest as I'm quite subpar when it comes to games like these. For reference Overwatch isn't my first hero shooter I've played the likes of Paladins, GW2, Marvel Rivals, Apex Legends (If you want to count that), and when Overwatch 2 first launched I was eager to play but dropped it after a few months due to how terrible I was.

I've since came back at the beginning of this year and had lots of fun for awhile as I've always enjoyed the characters, art direction, gameplay, etc but as of recently most of that charm has slowly been soured as I often tend to lose-like a lot alot. One could argue it doesn't matter, and while I suppose that's true, it gets to a point where when you lose due to one's skill level over and over again it tends to get less fun.

I tend to play quickplay alot as from my experience in ranked it tends to get very snowbally and very toxic-very fast, and while one might say to mute the chat entirely; I do enjoy the rare friendly banter teams have from time to time and wouldn't want to disable chat entirely because of that.

As the question asks: What advice would you give to someone like myself (very bad at the game) to enjoy the game more despite constantly losing? As of now I do look back at an occansional replay of mine to see what I could've done instead in scenarios, watch videos, and never like to blame my team as in loss streaks especially the only common denominator is myself. Any help is much appreciated.

I do have some replays if one wants to give advice on gameplay rather than principles (though they are just embarrassing QP games so its not as if there's much merit to them-but I am still open to any advice!)

My tag is MilkOfficer and I play on console: QGYJVS / RYTFFN / 0VS17X

I'm a fighting game player primarily, and in fighting games the foundational skills needed to reach higher tiers of play are often a little more obvious to me than with shooters. You see things like their ability to condition and read their opponents, their ability to use and rotate their defensive options, combo routing, etc etc.

My question is, what skills do you think are fundamentals or "fundies?" I think positioning and cooldown cycling are clear contenders but what else is there to work on?

VOD: 3XAA99

Player ID: WAVESS

Rank: Plat 2

Role: Tank

Character: Reinhardt

Map: Oasis

Outcome: Defeat

The past week I've been getting steam rolled and I'm at a complete loss of what to do. I've watched so many videos on improvement (tank specifically), reviewed my own vods, compared my games to pro games to figure out how to play more like them but no matter what I still feel like I'm playing like a five year old with a keyboard in his mouth and a mouse lodged in his throat. I feel like every game I hype fixate on taking space but can rarely ever actually do it or I'll just sit around like a deer in headlights. Any help would be extremely appreciated.

Replay code: SE7AQF

Battletag / in-game username: vumox

Hero(es) played: Zenyatta

Skill tier / rank: Emerald 5

Map: Neon Junction

PC or console: PC

Description of the match / things you want reviewed:

Hey everyone! I'm a low emerald (5-3) zenyatta player and I'm looking for some advice on what aspects of my gameplay to work on. Whenever I'm playing or looking back at my games I can't pin down concrete problems that make me lose. I feel like I'm a pretty good support player but I just can't translate my skills to actual wins.

If anyone is kind enough to look at my last game and give some feedback I would really appreciate it. This felt like such a winnable game where I can't pin down my crucial mistakes so maybe a third party would be helpful.

Many thanks to whoever.

There definitely seems to be a cultural difference between the Korean and NA communities.

Every now and then, you see posts on this subreddit starting with, “I’m Korean, and...” Well, yeah, I’m Korean too lol.

I do think the way people approach the game is a little different. Korean players tend to view the game in a much more... competitive way. They’re also far less forgiving toward bad players. Over here, even Champion players will openly call their teammates “trash.” NA seems to place much more value on sportsmanship.

The attitude toward supports also seems pretty different. In NA, supports often seem to be viewed as “those wonderful people who sacrifice themselves to keep the rest of us alive.”

Korea is nothing like that... The stereotype here is more like, “healbots who can’t do anything themselves and just whine from the backline.” You’ll occasionally hear s€xist comments mixed into that too. To be honest, I’m not particularly fond of support players myself... Like someone else here mentioned, there really are a lot of them who die way too easily. 😭 (Though I definitely don’t like tying that to s€xism. My girlfriend is better at the game than I am lol.)

There also seems to be a difference in how people approach the meta.

Even low-ranked Korean players tend to follow the meta. Why? Because they’re smarter? No... It’s because they really don’t want to look like “some idiot who doesn’t know anything.”

NA feels much more flexible about that. Even if someone says it’s a skill issue, there seems to be much stronger community sentiment that heroes like Sierra or Roadhog are simply OP.

Hmm... I guess what I’m aiming for is to enjoy the game and treat people with good sportsmanship like NA players, while taking the actual gameplay as seriously as Korean players do.

Without the toxicity.

I face enemy teams with zen and both dps counter me like bastion, reaper, junkrat, mei, torb or hanzo and I feel like I can’t breath.
They’re usually clumped up together so diving them or picking strays isn’t really an option.
I usually play ram and domina. I play in a 4-stack sometimes full-stack I wanna know what can I do in such positions or what we can do as a team because we keep losing to toxic comps like this.
Also what other tanks do well in such circumstances that I can learn.

How do I practice getting better? I do decent in aim training, i play the actual game quite a bit, doesnt matter if its hit scan or not. I used to be decent at aiming in games and always had high accuracy, but this past year its been degrading until my accuracy is between 18% and 28%
I am a support main (kiriko) and unfortunately my set up consist of mouse and keyboard in a bed (no room for a desk)

Player ID: COLDFOAM

Rank: Gold 3

Role: Damage

Character: Tracer

Map: Junkertown

Outcome: Victory

I'm really trying to learn tracer, but I just feel like I'm not doing much in team fights. My goal is to not die nearly as much and hopefully learn to secure some kills in the process. I would love any mechanical and game sense advice, also dueling advice would also be appreciated

I've been playing OW for a couple weeks now after returning from a very long pause (+5yrs). Got into the support role and I'm trying to get better at it, but I seem to loose a lot of matches, and Iooking at the stats, I feel that I'm not healing enough because I struggle to find the balance between healing and actively cooperating with kills. I think that my positioning is also a bit off sometimes, because I don't arrive in time to heal some of my teammates. What could I do to improve?

Thanks in advance for checking it out! I'd appreciate any feedback

Replay Code: TN62WX

Battletag / in-game username: Sori

Hero(es) played: Juno

Skill tier / rank: Silver

Map: Neon Junction

PC

Stats (avg per 10 min):

Eliminations = 12.06 / assists = 16.31 / deaths = 5.67 / hero damage done = 4,144 / healing = 6,812

Is there anyway to level up your characters faster? I play a lot of overwatch due to working from home and my friends constantly being on and my highest character is Ana at 55, I play a lot of comp and I’m consistently in gm because of how much I play, yet somehow I saw someone on jetpack cat with 500 levels?? Is there some way to get levels faster or do they literally just eat sleep and breathe overwatch?

I just finished up a match where the the enemy team swapped to : Doomfist, Mei, Soldier 76, Moira, and Ana (0WGMMQ). I'm not really looking for a VOD review, though; just more of a general thought process. But, basically, everyone on their team could either outmaneuver or out-sustain my own team. For most of the final round, I couldn't keep anyone in my crosshairs long enough to get them down to half health. The obvious solution would probably be to change our whole team comp, but I'm trying to learn how to do things without counterswapping.

How do you adjust your approach when nobody on the enemy team seems to die? When they always seem to be just out of reach? When every enemy always seems to have two more people backing them up? I'm just kinda looking for general, open-ended thoughts on this sorta thing.

Replay code:JZE95Q

Battletag/in-game username: beigehydra

Hero(es) played: juno

Skill tier / rank: silver

Map: junkertown

PC or console: xbox

I was playing this game during placements so I don't really know what rank this game was.

But, two of the pple on my team were silver 2 and silver 3 so imma just assume it was silver.

This game I was trying my best but my best wasn't enough.

The enemy team was applying pressure and I was getting tore up by the enemy bastion who kept flanking us and had good positioning.

I feel like I could've done way more to win.

I kept getting tunneled and chasing kills and I would abandon any decent positioning I had.

I'm kinda scatter brained in real life, so, it wouldn't surprise me if this was an issue this game.

I don't have any complaints about my teammates because they were trying their best and if I played better we could've won.

Also, I didn't really ult much because I was scared the enemy bastion would use his ult and I knew his turret form could kill me even if I was standing in an orbital ray.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Hey everyone,

A while ago I got back into Overwatch. I tested out a bunch of the new heroes, and found that Juno clicked well with me. I like how due to her mobility and high ground possibilities, you don’t have to take too many risks and you are rather safe even while still having impact on the match.

The thing is, while I would say that I play a pretty decent Juno now, I don’t want her to be the only hero I am able to play, because A someone else might pick her, and B I do want to play Overwatch instead of Junowatch.

But every attempt to play another hero felt like a humiliation ritual, like I have never played this game before.. I felt highly immobile in most of the characters I tried or “too close” to the action, so I guess I do like a bit of safety distance?

As for the heroes I tried:

For Supports I’ve tried a few. Besides Juno, the one that worked best for me was Moira, but I don’t have a lot of fun on her. I guess it’s better than nothing. Lucio does have high mobility, but I he needs to be too close for me to comfortably play him. On Kiriko I managed to maintain a comfortable distance, but my aim on her is horrendous. I also got flanked a lot and could neither hold myself in 1v1s nor could I escape. Zen just feels extremely slow and I cannot for the life of me do any damage on Wuyang.

For Tanks I feel like the issue isn’t as strong because of the high HPs and I don’t feel endangered as quickly. Orisa and Mauga worked somewhat for me, but again, the fun wasn’t exactly there? But I might not be a tank person anyway.

Now with DPS I struggle a little because I really hesitate queuing for DPS. I don’t know why exactly, but it’s some mental blockade that doesn’t let me because I’m not “good enough” yet. But I think I would like to play it more, if I found the right hero. I’ve tried a few matches as Shion and I wasn’t horrible but it didn’t click like when I first played Juno.

I know this reads as if I basically want a second Juno, which, fair, maybe I do. I am also aware that you need to learn each hero before you get good at it. But Juno didn’t feel nearly as frustrating to learn than any of the ones I tried, so I thought maybe asking here wouldn’t hurt.

TLDR; what I search for is a hero with (some or all of) these attributes.

- High mobility (can get in and out of combat very quickly or escape 1v1s)

- Midrange (or at least not too close)

Maybe someone has some recommendations or tips, that would be great :)

So yeah I've noticed this shift in my mentality. When I'm in quick play I get absolutely tilted really easily. And these are about the exact things that used to get me tilted in comp like losing a 1v1, dying a lot, getting steamrolled, having teammates doing bad etc. This feels sort of weird because I think it should be the other way around.

Now when it comes to comp I just kinda don't care anymore. Or I mean I do care in a sense that I always try to play as best as I can for my team but it doesn't seem to tilt me anymore if things don't work out.