u/Wboys

I'm tired of people treating tank players like a character they throw out to fight the enemy team. Even worse they treat counters like you are a Pokemon too. Oh fire beats grass types bro you gotta swap bro they are on Dva quick go Zarya go Zarya!

No thoughts or care on if you even play that character. No consideration of ult economy and if swapping is worth losing 90% ult charge. Didn't even look at the enemy team beyond their tank and the character they are telling you to swap to is countered by 3 of the other players.

Then they blame you for not swapping to whatever hero they thought auto wins the rock/paper/scissors fight in their mind and get mad when you explain you don't play that character. I legit had someone tell me to stick to QP and maybe avoid ranked until I learn more tanks in a match where I played 3 different tanks and my two mains were banned. But I didn't play the character they wanted up to the level of my tank rank so I didn't play them.

It's always generally pissed me off how in some progressive spaces you run into "allies" or even people genuinely trying to be supportive that support trans people but make weird comments about binary trans people.

You know the ones. "Oh plenty of cis women have body hair you don't have to shave", "plenty of guys have high voices you don't have to take T to be a guy".

I promise you cis allies, we know wearing the dress doesn't make us a woman. We figured that one out. I know plenty of cis women don't shave.

And of course there are the more combative comments people sometimes make insinuating you are somehow harming women's/men's social progress to wear/act in gender non-conforming ways without being seen as a man/woman. Since you are trying to conform to the gender binary or whatever.

What's really brought it to a head in making the horrific mistake of arguing with cis people about trans Jax Digital Circus. I know I know, it's basically self harm at this point. But these same people make the same argument in real life about real trans people too.

My replies are full of guys talking about how they had long hair and liked feminine things when they were young or dressed similarly to how "boymoder" Leeroy was depicted at the end of the show. Or how Jax wearing a dress and having a feminine room doesn't make them trans and everyone saying Jax is trans is like...not letting men be feminine without being trans or something.

Which is ridiculous because for one nobody is saying wearing a dress or being embarrassed about wearing a dress or having a feminine room as a guy makes you trans or is individually why people started to think that.

Like I don't know how to explain to these people that nobody thought Jax might be trans from any singular thing like wearing a dress or being self hating and misogynistic. It's the composition of all the small moments together combined with the much more explicit every non-subtle things in the finale. I promise you can wear a dress as a guy and not be trans.

Kinda like all the stories of people in history who were definitely gay but nothing was written down that literally says "lmao that mf was gay". But when you add together all the stories with the context them being "best friends and roommates" it's the most rational explanation for all their behavior.

I swear some of these people would react to someone coming out to them in real life by saying it's "bad character development" that it "came out of nowhere" and how they "should have dropped more ironic jokes and context clues in their youth".

So many people are stuck on Gender 102 and get that putting a bow on doesn't make someone a woman, but can't or don't want to understand why some women especially trans ones might enjoy wearing the bow. It's like the bell curve meme like:

"Barbies are girly and awesome" -> "Ew Barbies are girly and reinforce gender norms" -> "Barbies are girly and that's awesome"

Rant over. I needed to vent somewhere.

I'm a huge Ana main. I have more hours on her than nearly every other hero combined. But sometimes I find myself picking other supports not because I want to, not because they are better in that situation than Ana, not because Ana isn't working. Just I am just sick of people flaming or soft throwing games because they have decided we are losing because our Moira has more healing and damage than me.

I'm only Gold and so people care about raw stats especially healing a lot. And as soon as you start losing if you have either less healing than your other support or both you and your other support have less healing than the enemy supports, welp that's why you're losing.

Doesn't matter if the enemy team is playing Mauga and you're on Doomfist/tracer/genji. Doesn't matter if you were designated cart princess for 2 fights you won that your Kiriko farmed 2k healing on.

Sometimes it doesn't even matter if you are winning, have barely died, killed their tank on repeat with anti-nade, and only have like 30% less healing than your Lifeweaver. You lose one fight, people hit tab, "Ana you need to heal more stop trying to DPS".

I find myself playing a lot of Mizuki/Juno just because they farm much higher numbers than Ana and I rarely have to deal with any hate or blaming.

I know people will say to just turn off chat and maybe I will when I play Ana but one of my favorite parts of the game is the social aspect, seeing the funny things people say, I like to say hi to my team at the start of games or talk about stuff in-between rounds. Just today I had someone named "ReinMain69" say in all-chat at the start of the round "STAND READY FOR MY ARRIVAL!!!" and when they started losing followed up with "AGH, I NEED TO INCREASE MY POWER LEVEL! YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!" and it was the highlight of my session. But the amount of negative comments I get when playing Ana is nearly the same as the amount of abuse you have to take when playing tank I swear.

After reading a lot of the reactions from the general and especially non-queer members of the fanbase to Jax being confirmed to be trans, it made me really appreciate that Jax was written how he was.

It's not bad writing that you didn't realize that Jax is trans until you saw a screenshot of a tweet. Within the context of the show the Jax that's in the circus never really realizes she is trans either. That's just writing a character that's an egg (now that apparently everyone knows what that means lol). The Leeroy in real life is even nearly the exact age and starts transitioning at about the same year (2017) as Gooseworks did in real life.

It's like saying it's "bad writing" if your friend came out to you but you didn't pick up on the context clues and their "ironic jokes" beforehand.

Almost all depictions of trans characters in media that have gotten as big as TADC are either:

1. Already transitioned. Either passing or at least clearly fitting into whatever gender they are.

2. Not transitioned but they know they are trans. Usually some heavy focus on body dysphoria.

I can't think of any other media that has written a trans person that is in the stage where even THEY don't know they are trans yet. Or what it's like to be trans before you know you are trans.

And a lot of the negative reactions to Jax being confirmed trans are...a bit distressingly familiar. Yeah sure there are the outright transphobic ones. Whatever.

But so many reactions are the kind of thing a lot of trans people are familiar with. The "there were no signs", "it's so unnecessary", "I just don't see him as a woman", etc. Or I've seen people that say it makes more sense if Jax was a trans man? Again somehow people only seem to be able to conceptualize trans people who have already transitioned.

Like sorry...but that's how it is in real life. When someone actually transitions especially later in life. Jax wasn't written as trans to be narratively satisfying. Just like how Jax abstracting off screen wasn't written to be a big spectacle but to reflect how abrupt and painful suicide is in real life. That's how it is, in real life, for real trans people, who haven't transitioned yet.

And very often that's how people react when you tell them you think you might be trans. Because they've known you this entire time just however you see Jax. And to them it "came out of nowhere" and now you're asking them to completely recontextualize their entire perception of you. But you still look the same. Everyone just knows you as "Jax" and doesn't know what to think besides that you (or Gooseworks) has told you you're trans now "suddenly".

Especially the people that are reacting that Jax being trans is an attack on them. Because they connected with other parts of Jax's trauma like the toxic masculine expectations or maybe had some shared difficulties with being gay. And seem offended that their interpretation of Jax's character and the character they connected with is wrong.

Which just makes sense? That doesn't make Jax not trans because you emotionally connected with some aspects of interacting with masculinity that a trans woman struggled with. And nearly any queer character is going to have things that are relatable to any "being in the closet" experience.

Jax is also written how people say they want queer characters written all the time. Where their identity is just a part of their character. Not a caricature. Not "shoved down their throats". Not the only important thing about them.

Jax's story and arc isn't even like...a "trans story". You don't need to realize Jax is trans to understand the important parts of Jax actions and character. It just adds another layer.

It's just a trans character existing in a very real and grounded way. And it's not the kind of trans character we get to see very often in popular media.

It's not glamorous. It's not a "celebration of identity". It's not a powerful story of someone "overcoming societal norms". Because being an "egg" is none of those things and definitely doesn't have a very satisfying story narrative that big media companies go for.

It just kinda sucks to be trans before you realize you're trans. You just hate yourself and you don't know why. It just sucks.

And Jax shows that pretty well.

For context I've been playing since 2018 but never seriously until last season. Last season I finally decided to put in the work to try to actively improve my gameplay by practicing specific skills in a match, VOD reviewing myself, watching VOD reviews of my mains (like Ana) from people like Spilo/Emongg.

If nobody had said anything I'd have felt pretty good about this game and was feeling like I was playing pretty solid. Not crazy over performing or carrying or anything but just a disciplined game I felt good about.

But halfway through our defense the enemy team started making fun of my stats and apologizing to my team for having to deal with a "thrower". I ignored it as mind games but every single person on my team bought into it and started blame me in team chat and all chat for the rest of the game after that. Saying I wasn't healing enough. That if we lost it was my fault. And other messages to that effect continuing into the post match.

This admittedly affected my mental state very much because it clashed so hard with my own self perception of my performance in that game.

At this point I have VOD reviewed myself to numbness and I can only really see individual mistakes instead of broader bad habits. Despite all the work I've put in and nearly 200h of intentional self improvement time since last season I'm still Gold which is exactly where I was when I was playing on autopilot and as far as I can tell I was playing a lot worse than I am now. But my rank hasn't changed despite a statistically significant number of games.

So clearly I'm still doing something horribly wrong. But at this point I cannot figure out what for the life of me. Did we really lose this match because of me?

Match code: ENGYRW

Username: FluffDragon

Rank: Gold

Hero's played: Ana

For context I've been playing since 2018 but never seriously until last season. Last season I finally decided to put in the work to try to actively improve my gameplay by practicing specific skills in a match, VOD reviewing myself, watching VOD reviews of my mains (like Ana) from people like Spilo/Emongg.

If nobody had said anything I'd have felt pretty good about this game and was feeling like I was playing pretty solid. Not crazy over performing or carrying or anything but just a disciplined game I felt good about.

But halfway through our defense the enemy team started making fun of my stats and apologizing to my team for having to deal with a "thrower". I ignored it as mind games but every single person on my team bought into it and started blame me in team chat and all chat for the rest of the game after that. Saying I wasn't healing enough. That if we lost it was my fault. And other messages to that effect continuing into the post match.

This admittedly affected my mental state very much because it clashed so hard with my own self perception of my performance in that game.

At this point I have VOD reviewed myself to numbness and I can only really see individual mistakes instead of broader bad habits. Despite all the work I've put in and nearly 200h of intentional self improvement time since last season I'm still Gold which is exactly where I was when I was playing on autopilot and as far as I can tell I was playing a lot worse than I am now. But my rank hasn't changed despite a statistically significant number of games.

So clearly I'm still doing something horribly wrong. But at this point I cannot figure out what for the life of me. Did we really lose this match because of me?

Match code: ENGYRW

Username: FluffDragon

Rank: Gold

Hero's played: Ana

I'm glad they are trying to make faster blaster more viable and at least the buff makes it so it actually has a chance to increase your HPS/DPS instead of literally doing nothing like it did half the time before.

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But there are so many reasons it's worse than triple jump that I have seen people say that the perk could give you full auto all the time without needing to use glide boost and they would still pick triple jump. And hell I probably would too most of the time.

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There is just so much going against the perk. To the point it is what I would call an anti-synergy with Juno's kit.

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For one the part that has been talked to death, it is just tied to too useful of an ability. It would be like if dire triggers was tied to Reapers fade. If you could only dire triggers for like 2 seconds after fade ended, requiring you to use fade to engage instead of escape, it would be so ass. And it's the same problem for Juno. Using glide boost as a button to get faster rate of fire is so so so bad. The absolute best case scenario for it is you already needed to use glide boost regardless of needing the rate of fire and you maybe put out more healing/damage pressure as you peel back. And most of the time when you can use glide boost to engage in and melt someone with faster blaster that is only because you were ALREADY winning the fight.

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Then there is the horrific opportunity cost of not getting triple jump. Not only does triple jump let you get better torpedos like everyone says, but a big part of it is it lets you get better torpedos WITHOUT using glide boost. It lets you escape a lot of situations where you would have otherwise needed to use glide boost to live. The result of this is you can basically always have glide boost off cooldown for when you actually need to it reposition whether that means to escape or go in.

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I've seen people make insane arguments like, "well against hitscan triple jump just gets you killed so in those situations I take faster blaster" "you fall to the ground too slowly and it gets me killed". What? Are you triple jumping straight up into the air right behind your tank on main? Triple jump is Juno's best asset AGAINST hitscan heavy comps.

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Without triple jump you are often limited in what angles you can take to fire off torpedos which is probably the most important part of Juno's offensive pressure. On a lot of maps you are forced into trying to get some slight off angle but still peaking from main where an Ashe can flick to you.

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With triple jump you can peak from insane angles that it is impossible for their hitscan to watch. Over weird walls barely exposing yourself and dipping back instantly. If you are forced to peak from main you can peak from a VERY different height everytime you go for torpedos. With glide boost you can jiggle peak a corner but from way higher than everyone else on your teams head. And that's ignoring all the maps, which is basically all of them, where triple jump lets you get to some insane high ground for free that is literally impossible to access without it making you both completely safe from 90% of the roster and giving you a lobby admin angle to shoot straight down onto heads getting way more headshots and free torpedos.

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And it gets worse because in the messy reality of the game you almost always NEVER get anywhere close to the full increase to DPS/HPS. I'm not talking about aim. For you to get the full value the gameplay loop looks something like this. You have to kinda wait around, looking for an opening where constantly healing or dealing damage for 4 consecutive seconds is not just possible but also valuable in some way. In other words you couldn't have just healed your tank normally or killed the enemy anyway. Then you have to reload right before starting it or risk basically getting nothing from the ability. During this window I would say the opportunity to use the full auto often is gone. Because you needed to reload to get any value from it you often can't really use it to burst heal save your tank or get a kill on someone who is over extended. You almost need to predict ahead of time that the opportunity for healing/damage is there, reload, then stage for the ability.

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And after you do all that, not only do you now not have glide boost to escape, but you ALSO don't have glide boost to help you get big torpedos. And because you didn't take triple jump you can't use triple jump to help you get good torpedos without using glide boost. And if you use glide boost for torpedos now you only get a tiny second of faster blaster before the ability ends.

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I think what throws people off about the value of this perk is that despite all of that, especially after the recent buff, at the end of the day it isn't a *bad* perk. Some characters have some truly ass lvl 3 perks and this isn't that. Even if it actively goes against how Juno is optimally played it is still a decent power spike and gives you a bit more favorable matchup in specific 1v1 duels.

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IMO if they want the perk to be as good as triple jump...which is tough as it is probably a top 5 strongest perk in the game...they need faster blaster to extend the duration of glide boost. That would solve a lot of the problem with the bad opportunity cost of picking the perk. It would let you use it for both torpedoes and still have duration left to blaster. It would make glide boost better even when you don't care about blasting which is arguably the most important thing. And it would let you unload more of your bullets or maybe even your entire mag with the increased RoF effectively giving you better DPS/HPS uptime.

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I've been playing since 2018 off and on and always played on auto pilot. This season is the first one I've put deliberate effort into improving. Reviewing my own VODs, watching VOD reviews from people like Emongg/Spilo/apply for characters I play (Ana/Juno/Brig).

I've been gold/plat since forever basically and started Gold 1 at the beginning of my journey, did the thing where I ranked down a bunch (down to Silver 2) as I changed my habits, worked on fundamentals, and changed my play style.

And after all that I ended back up...right where I started. Bouncing between Gold 4-Gold 1 over dozens of games.

I can go back and look at my old gameplay when I started (at least before the patch) and see all the mistakes I'm not making anymore. I've really slowed down my sleep darts and noticable shoot off the ability less but probably sleep 2x as many people a match. And of the people I do sleep I save it more for when there is actual follow ups and it results it way more kills.

I'm thinking about stuff that never even crossed my mind before. Like taking the enemy team comp into account at the beginning of a match and mentally making a note of who my nano targets are so I can make the decision to nano faster, if I can be aggressive with my sleeps or will likely need to save it selfishly to help with flankers/divers and protect myself, checking ultimates on my team before I nano or even if someone is really close and if I can nano them and they will likely get to ult before nano ends, etc.

I used to be the classic gold Ana that was just lost. Always main behind my tank. Always low ground. Often seen jumping around in the middle of a chaotic fight panicking and throwing out utility just to save myself. Now I feel much calmer. Much more deliberate. I learned a lot of routes to high ground spots I didn't know existed. I play a lot further back while making sure I'm still close enough to land anti/sleep or push around the corner with my team if needed. I get caught out in the open less, dived less as I try to make sure I can see flankers approach and get a shot or two on them as they close to forced them out, etc. I try to be more conscious of getting off cart as soon as possible if my team lets me instead of mindlessly sitting there and getting caught out when the fight starts. Taking time when we win or lose fights to just reposition.

Just a small thing but I used to constantly get caught by Rein shatters and remember thinking "what are you gonna do, they had ult so I guess we lose the fight". And now between ult tracking and just positioning I rarely ever get hit with shatter and have saved multiple fights and teammates by being alive and being in a position to sleep the Rein or force his team back with anti to prevent follow up.

I fight way more now. I didn't understand how good Ana was at taking 1v1s. I play a lot less scared while also dying less. Especially once I get the 2x headshot perk I'll go for duels or force enemies off angels if I think I have the advantage or see they are ignoring me and can shoot an Ashe/Soldier/Cass whatever first. My stats are much closer to being 50/50 or 40/60 whereas before I'd be ending the majority of games with like 3k damage and 8k healing. I'm much more proactive with my ults and don't save them over them to change back to Overwatch 2 again.

I know I mostly talked about Ana here because she is my main but a lot of the positioning, ult tracking, being less sloppy with abilities etc translate to my backup picks (Juno/Brig). Like not wasting speed ring and figuring out who my primary ring targets will likely be, having speed ring ready for my Bastion when I know he is about to turret form and watching him speed and run down the enemy tank, slowing down and taking the time to hit my whip shots, etc.

And yet...I'm right back where I was. Still holding a solidly 50% win rate over my last 20h of comp gameplay. I sometimes have a win streak and rocket up to Gold 1 just to inevitably fall back to Gold 3/4. At this point I don't really know what to do. I know if I was actually better at the game my rank would go up. So clearly whatever I think playing better is isn't actually better and I'm just playing just as well but with a different play style or something.

EDIT: adding a replay code if anyone is gracious enough to go over it

Code: R0DHSJ

Username: Wboys

Characters played: Juno/Mizuki/Zen

I sadly don't have a code with Ana gameplay right now as I'm moving and don't have Internet. This is just a game I shared with a friend so I already have the code generated. But Juno is very much my second main and representative of my general skill level and execution of the concepts I discussed in my post. I don't know why I decided to play Mizuki.

I've always been Gold/Plat since I started and I'm trying to put actually effort in improving for the first time since the game released.

I have been watching a lot of Ana VOD reviews from people like Spilo/Emongg etc. A lot of the review especially for Spilo are for Diamond+ players. And I've had a few higher level Ana players be kind enough to VOD review some of my games and they often struggle to give advice for the biggest thing I struggle with which is positioning when my tank is playing insane.

Like I've gotten a lot of advice to be stubborn with my positioning, not put myself at risk to save teammate out of position, or in a lot of Spilo videos he talks a lot about Ana playing a lane/positioning and in the gameplay the Ana is basically ignoring their team mates and even tank and pretty much is expecting the tank/team to understand where they are playing and come to them for healing.

But on the other hand there is the whole "5 people doing a dumb plan is better than 1 person playing smart" thing. Like if 3 people including my tank are just pushing and pushing and pushing way past what is safe or where I even have a choice to play high ground, if I push with them at least there is a chance we win vs a near 100% chance we lose the fight because I'm functionally AFK by being "stubborn" with my positioning?

Like in Gold it is very common for fights to happen in places that make no sense. Team with long range comps literally not taking high ground on Gibraltar first point and I'm watching as my Dva/Ashe/Juno are all just...on cart underneath high ground and the entire enemy team is still high ground. Or the opposite on defense we are all high ground but as soon as cart goes under the entire team loses their minds and leave high ground to try to contest under the tunnel rather than wait for cart to push through and just shoot them from high ground. So now everyone is dying underneath the tunnel and I have to choose to either jump down and fight in melee range brawl or let them die and rotate back for when they respawn and stay high ground.

In gold if my tank pushes past a safe angle and I don't push with them because it is suicidal even if we both would have died they won't start throwing the game because of "no heals". A huge part of winning in gold is just making sure your team mental doesn't collapse especially tank.

So far when higher level players watch my games after I started trying to improve a lot of the advice on positioning has been "well you are in the right spot but your team is just playing whoever" which isn't really helpful. It's gold, obviously they are playing wherever. But it feels like the right spot is the wrong spot when my team is also all in the wrong spots. I don't know.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I have lost a lot of rank since I started to work on positioning because I feel like even when I was too close and low ground and the classic gold Ana who is just in the middle of the fight panicking and jumping around and throwing out random cooldowns at least I was panicking with my team.

I'm only Gold but like...the number of scoreboard merchants is genuinely insane.

I've won games where every single person on our team is negative and has worse healing/damage than their counterpart on the enemy team. I've lost games where I've healed more than both enemy supports combined.

You'd think enough people would have had similar enough experiences to understand how little raw numbers matter.

Especially raw healing numbers. As a support main it drives me insane. People will say support diff if there is even a tiny difference between you and the enemy supports. But they genuinely cannot seem to comprehend the idea that you can only heal as much damage that came in. Your tank could be playing Sigma/Domina and the enemy tank could be on someone like Mauga the entire time, and people will act like you threw the game for having like 20% less healing than the enemy support lineup. Or maybe you were just made to push cart for a while so your other support farmed numbers, etc.

I feel like it especially drives me insane because I main Ana and Moira is very popular in Gold. They will generate some arbitrarily large healing/damage/kill number and people act like they hard carried the team and are the second coming of Christ.

I would argue that tank as well is a very scoreboard irrelevant role. Obviously if they are just feeding then they are feeding. But even just having more deaths than the enemy tank doesn't mean you played worse. Usually playing tank well creates opportunities for your team to pop off. I lost a push game where I went 27/6 on Orisa and the enemy Mauga just W keyed into our team every fight and went like 16/14. But he just made so much space and forced a support to pocket me to save me that they won a lot of fights off it.

I don't play DPS as much, but the biggest thing I notice there is people really value K/D over the actual impact of kills or deaths. One DPS might get the majority of the kills cleaning up won team fights, but somehow they are always the first one to die every team fight leading to us losing the entire fight. Meanwhile the other DPS is peeling for the supports, playing good off angles, pressuring the enemy supports etc but don't have nearly as many kills.

It really drives me insane. I feel like you fundamentally have to not understand how the game works to say some of the stuff I see people saying. Another certified classic is "we need a shield tank" lol.

Usually if I go back and watch a game the majority of games are won/lost because of better ultimate use or getting early picks/dying first in the neutral team fight.

Battletag: Wboys#1730

Replay Code: HKMXK4

Rank: Gold

Heroes Played: Ana

I've been playing since 2018 but only this season decided to actually play seriously and try to improve.

I feel like I've gotten a lot better but I recently ranked down to Silver 2 which must mean I'm making some kind of major constant mistakes.

This game specifically I felt I played well, but my entire team blamed me for the loss because every other support at at least 17k healing and I only had 9k. But watching it back I feel like I healed when it mattered and did damage when it mattered. I can't figure out what to do much different which makes it hard to improve if I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Did I really not heal enough?

If I'm doing something really wrong I don't want to form any bad habits now.

Obviously Ana isn't the only hero and POTG is kinda wack right now in general and will always favored for characters like Rein shatters Moira coalescence Junk tire etc.

But like I feel like there is something crazy going on with Ana. You can get a clean 3k with 6 consecutive headshots and a sleep dart ult shutdown and the POTG with be like Rein getting a 3k just swinging with no ult shutdown or a Junk tire 3k.

Like there has to be some way to incorporate how hard it is to sleep a nano blade Genji and kill him solo compared to Mauga holding fire and killing 3 Squishies in his ult.

I have over 100 hours just on Ana and I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten POTG. Especially since the buffed headshot perks ive had so many times where I thought for sure I'd get it but didn't.

At this point I have to pretend the person I nano who got POTG is me getting it.

I've been playing Overwatch nearly since it released and have always played on autopilot and sat around gold. Finally decided to put thought into what I'm doing and try to improve. I mostly have been trying to one trick Ana as she is my favorite character but when I can't play her my second favorite has always been Brig. The problem is I sucked at Brig and have trying to learn the right play style for her and have been just testing different midesets to have while playing her.

As far as I understand the theory behind how to play Brig is basically just like how you used to play off tank almost? Body guard your other support. Shield bash around between cover to try to stay alive. Sneak in whip shots to keep inspire uptime. And when absolutely necessary if you are full health and full shield you can bash in and play frontline tank for just a few second to help get your tank or over extended DPS space to retreat.

That's the concept I was trying to execute this game and it *felt* right. But I want to make sure I have the right idea of it before I rebuild any bad habits. It started off as a bit of a roll and their Cass was flaming their entire team in all chat saying no heals. But on attack their tank really played well in my opinion and Cass got over whatever issues he was having letting them almost come back. In general this seemed like a good game to go over because as far as I could tell with my Gold mind everyone was playing really really well. It felt like I got punished when I was out of position. Won fights when I was playing well. Lost fights when I played badly because the team skill balance was close enough that one person making a mistake did matter. Etc.

It also became a Rein duel at one point which is always interesting when playing Brig. And honestly it was one of the best Rein duels I've ever seen so the game is certainly entertaining from that angle at least.

Username: Wboys

Match code: VSVZBC

Rank: Gold - Plat lobby

Map: Havana

PC

For context I've mostly been playing Ana.

I've been playing Overwatch basically since the game came out. I have nearly 500 total hours and over 300 competitive hours.

Over that time any season I put in a statistically significant number of games I always ended up somewhere in gold. I always just kinda played on auto pilot and never put any real effort into improving.

I watched some Emongg videos and it made me want to really try to improve my gameplay. I started watching my own vods. Thinking about why I died and what I could have done differently every time I die. Going into matches with a clear idea of one specific skill to focus on improving like positioning/ult tracking/cooldown usage etc.

With about 250 games I have nearly a 40% with rate this season. And even now in Silver 2 I'm still trending down. That's a borderline actively sabotaging the team tier win percentage.

At least when I was in gold I could have fun even in games I lost. Games were structured enough that even ones where we got kinda rolled I could point to specific decisions I made that I could change.

Now in Silver like 80% of games are hard stomps one way or another. About half of players on both teams don't even have ranks yet and are clearly either Plat skill or higher or Bronze and just haven't been placed yet leading to insanely one sided games. It's gotten harder to improve when most games end up super unstructured and are hard stomps either as a win or loss.

The worst part is not knowing what to do differently. I can go back to my older vods and see what I think were mistakes I wouldn't make now. I die noticably less from being out of position. I've gotten much better at ult tracking. I actually use hard cover instead of jumping around in the middle of the street.

And yet I was much higher rank when I was playing on auto pilot, dying preventable deaths from very telegraphed shatters, putting myself in desperate positions where I'd be forced into close ranges unscoped fights for my life.

Edit: Some people were asking for a replay to help. Here is a longer game that was also very close so hopefully there is more learning points there. I was Gold 5 when this game happened.

Code: PMDVMR

User name: Wboys

Nearly a year ago I posted this thread to, I would say, largely negative feedback.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/1m6eorw/if_300_elo_is_beginner_why_doesnt_it_feel_like_it/

I haven't constantly grinded chess during this time. But I have played at least a few games a week consistently and gone through bursts of playing for hours a day or learning some new concept for a week or two.

In my most recent high activity spurt, I'm now 700 Rapid and have a 86% Rapid win rate over the last 90 days and a 62% win rate over the last year.

I still stand by a lot of what I said in that post. Especially that the vast majority of people between 300-400 if you actually go look at their accounts are not even close to new players usually with hundreds of games at that ELO. But there was one very critical thing I was missing that I think led to a lot of the frustration I was feeling at the time. Time management.

At that time I was mostly playing 10m Rapid games. And even with 10 minutes I was consistently and constantly making mistakes because of being short on time or losing on time. Or going hard in the other direction and playing to quickly and making mistakes because I didn't think about moves for long enough because I had just lost 3 games in a row on time.

Why this was frustrating me was that like, I knew I could do better. I could find the pins and the forks and the discovered attacks and point out the mistakes etc. But I just didn't have the muscle memory down on playing enough games to get a "feel" for when I should spend a lot of time thinking about a move and when I could just make a move in a few seconds during the early and mid game.

A lot of people reached out to help me because of that thread and I played a lot of Daily games with them. Mostly against people rated around 1200 in both Daily and Rapid. And I felt like I did very well which only compounded how frustrated I was.

So over the last year I slammed a lot of Blitz games. Mostly 3+2 games. And with 722 games I have a....51% win rate in Blitz and actually have slightly worse ELO than I did a year ago. Even my 90 day win rate is exactingly 50%.

But when I went back to playing Rapid games I was doing so much better. I felt like I could finally apply my skills and not just get obliterated on time every game. I also switched to playing more 15+10 games. I don't even really feel that I am significantly "better" at chess than I was then. I don't see moves I wouldn't have seen before. I still make the same mistakes. I'm literally the same Blitz rating.

But through sheer volume of Blitz games what I did get a feel for is when it is "safe" to move quickly and save time and when to spend that saved up time. Especially the opening spamming Blitz games eventually you'll have played the same sequence of openings enough times that you don't have to spend time to think either. I do this they do that so I do this etc. This helped massively in my Rapid games because I generally pick up a lot of time in the first dozen or so moves that I would have had to spend previously thinking about literally every move past the first one if my opponent didn't play a very specific line.

It kinda feels like how with running one of the best exercises you can do is to do sprints and then walk then sprint then walk. Playing Daily games against players better than me helped me improve my actual skills and play more consistently. And playing Blitz games helped my apply those skills under time pressure.

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone else who feels stuck and I want to thank all the people that reached out to me and helped me <3