Originally Posted by AdreNaLiNe

Who's still playing? Thinking of picking it up again. I stopped in season 2, maxed out at 3350 before not feeling like grinding my way to masters (or maybe incapable of nowadays).

Are the new changes good? Balance OK?

Law#12953

I'm playing between 3100-3300 this season.

It's amazing how many people throw right beneath Master! As soon as I hit 3300, here comes the Hanzo lock! LOL!

my fav is the sperglords around 2600 who say **** at the beginning of the game like "lets do a dive comp"

thats when i know we're going to lose

Originally Posted by jerry

I'm playing between 3100-3300 this season.

It's amazing how many people throw right beneath Master! As soon as I hit 3300, here comes the Hanzo lock! LOL!

Yep. That was why I stopped. There's a ton of diamond trolls -- good players who just don't give a ****.

For the grind, I wrote a lot of forum posts 'debunking' the myths. I'm not sure where most of you are at, and I can't read 200 pages anymore.

For the most part, a big part of 'working as a team' relegates just you to working with your teammates. It was a lot of spam for me. I started at 2800, dropped to 2600, and solo queued my way up to 3350. I found playing with people who didn't improve/progress as fast became tedious, frustrating.

If you're 'stuck' at a particular rank, it is because you're not good enough to carry out of it, despite the fact that you may be better than it. In that case, it is a lot of games to get to your actual ranking.

My win rate all the way to mid-diamond was 49.5%. I generally lost less SR than I won. I'm not sure if they ever became more transparent with it, but when I played, it was apparent to me that personal performance matters. I'm not sure if anything has changed since, so take it with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by AdreNaLiNe

For the grind, I wrote a lot of forum posts 'debunking' the myths. I'm not sure where most of you are at, and I can't read 200 pages anymore.

For the most part, a big part of 'working as a team' relegates just you to working with your teammates. It was a lot of spam for me. I started at 2800, dropped to 2600, and solo queued my way up to 3350. I found playing with people who didn't improve/progress as fast became tedious, frustrating.

If you're 'stuck' at a particular rank, it is because you're not good enough to carry out of it, despite the fact that you may be better than it. In that case, it is a lot of games to get to your actual ranking.

My win rate all the way to mid-diamond was 49.5%. I generally lost less SR than I won. I'm not sure if they ever became more transparent with it, but when I played, it was apparent to me that personal performance matters. I'm not sure if anything has changed since, so take it with a grain of salt.

Personal performance does, I think that is why I got so stuck in ranks playing support most of the time. Zen was easier to climb because of all the elims as well as healing. Mercy is about making up for mistakes other people make, they take damage you remove that damage, they die you bring them back to life. Ana works well but you are doing a little of everything, healing getting some elims, using nano, but she is very hit or miss at the lower ranks I found because the value from the nano gets lost.

Playing phara I find it easy to carry a team at this level, and it seems like I get more SR for a win. It makes sense though, blizzard has said they want you play at a rank where your win rate is as close to 50% as possible. If you play a dps and get 70% of the kills for your team they want you out of that rank, but if you play support and just heal your impact is much lower. It is probably why people that are really good at lucio and ana climb to the top 500 because they are healing but also getting way above average elims. Makes sense why I lost a lot of rank trying to play Ana, a player with nano getting kills gives you assists, but if they die right away the system considers you gave a bad nano.

It is probably based on averages of your rank, if you use abilities and are more accurate than people are your rank they give you more SR for a win and remove less for a loss.

No, what I mean is it has nothing to do with elims/stats/damage, at least not straightforward.

I cannot put my finger on it, but the same applies when I play healer. Many of my wins was as Lucio/Zen too, and a lot of times, I am just Silver Healing. I have played 5 gold Zen (in Diamond, yes that's how bad some of my teams are) and have won little SR, lost more SR than normal.

When I played with Shallah for example, who has high plat, even SR. I completely dominated the game, and I would gain 35. He barely died as Lucio, top heal, and got 4.

Is it more complex like maybe consistently killing the other teams highest SR? I wanted more transparency, but I understand they want to ensure people can't game it.

yeah and I am sure they are adjusting it constantly, but that is why their statement of wanting to have people as close to a 50% win rate as possible is the biggest insight. Like you say it is probably more complex, maybe even factors like if you are chasing people back to their spawn and then holding the team there, or completely shutting them out on from capturing a point at all, you get more SR.

I think most people found that solo queue is the best way overall, unless you just want to play with friends which people sometimes have an account for solo and one for playing with friends.

Early on in the game people seemed to be more about adding people that were decent at the game to their friends list so they could to 3-4 stacks, that seems to have dropped off in this season and last season. Even with the TW people we were often playing together, but once we started to land in our ratings it became more difficult, having people 500 SR apart was too big of a game in most cases.

I pretty much solo q exclusively for that exact reason.

Originally Posted by DeadlyRabbit

yeah and I am sure they are adjusting it constantly, but that is why their statement of wanting to have people as close to a 50% win rate as possible is the biggest insight. Like you say it is probably more complex, maybe even factors like if you are chasing people back to their spawn and then holding the team there, or completely shutting them out on from capturing a point at all, you get more SR.

I think most people found that solo queue is the best way overall, unless you just want to play with friends which people sometimes have an account for solo and one for playing with friends.

Early on in the game people seemed to be more about adding people that were decent at the game to their friends list so they could to 3-4 stacks, that seems to have dropped off in this season and last season. Even with the TW people we were often playing together, but once we started to land in our ratings it became more difficult, having people 500 SR apart was too big of a game in most cases.

The key to 'wanting a 50%' win-rate is the result of the system, not the process. To them, the rating system works when it ends up being there.

Yeah and that is the point, if someone isn't winning more than 50% of the time it is impossible to climb.

the thought of having to coordinate in a blizzard game hurts

That is simply not true. I climbed 750 points on a 49.5% win rate. That was my original point.

That is interesting so that is where the other factors come into play, you are right around 50% but they give you enough SR so that each loss is less impact than each gain.

The amount of SR you gain/lose is based on the rank of your opponents and how well you played your character individually. If you're winning matches vs higher ranked opponents and/or playing your character exceptionally, you'll gain SR even with a sub 50% win rate.

It's still a grind though.

Originally Posted by DeadlyRabbit

That is interesting so that is where the other factors come into play, you are right around 50% but they give you enough SR so that each loss is less impact than each gain.

Yep.

Like I said, I started at 2800, dropped to 2600 (teamed with others) and then solo'ed my way to 3350.

I knew I was better than plat and low diamond. However, I was not MUCH better than low diamond. So while my 2600 games were complete carries, I would still lose due to the team. It was a huge crap-shoot. The difference between Plat and Diamond is more to do with understanding fundamentals and being more aware, and not necessarily aim (at least this was the case in Season 1-2).

I started winning a lot more games once I hit high plat, then teetered between 3100-3300. I found a lot more trolls around 3300 than anywhere else from Plat to there.

I only play Pharah bcs its the closest thing to Tribes

The wait time to join a quake closed beta server was 800 ppl so I exit .

I like to play Trogdor on offense and turreNt the enemy position.

i'm on like a 15 game losing streak, good times

I'm quitting until the next event. I ****ing hate the idiots in comp, mrraahhhh

I got drunk and dug myself down from 3000 to 2800 before the end of last season and have been paying for it since

I hope they reset elo before season 5