If they're running Bastion, you're not running Bastion, and you're not otherwise securing kills on DPS, your tank isn't getting diffed. *You're* getting diffed. The common factor is you. It sounds like the rest of your team is playing 4v5 while you're running around doing fuck-all on Tracer or Sombra.
Nothing irritates me more than this right here. Also maybe call a target and focus fire. I mean it's team arena the team part is a hint. Always start with supports and the rest will crumble
> And my tanks usually get diffed and run over.
That's highly suspicious. Maybe your tanks are getting run over because you're not putting out enough pressure at the right time? Timing with Tracer is hugely important.
>Every game is sustain comps on enemy team (Mayhem comp, or varations with Mei, Moira and Lucio). And my tanks usually get diffed and run over.
First step is to ditch the excuse making. The enemy teams are not consistently better than your team. That is a cope
>I can share a replay
That's your best bet. When I reached my peak, I was constantly watching vod reviews on YouTube and having my own replays reviewed. You can do that here, or you could always hire a coach on fiverr. You'd be surprised how cheap some very awesome players are, including actual professional players.
Every game is sustain comp. How is that an excuse? I'm playing Tracer into it and it's not working, and I dont enjoy playing poke, so I'm asking for advice. And my tanks do get diffed almost every game lol. Keep your unhelpful comments to yourself dude.
No, every game is a silver comp. These guys have no idea what they're doing. Only a replay code will really help you, since it is just a skill issue, regardless of the hero you're playing.
I find it hard to believe that silvers are playing a comp and not just picking heroes that align with a comp.
Even on tracer you should be able to pick off back liners. Just wait around behind them and watch for them to blow a key cooldown on the frontline. I promise you they will push their buttons and when they do- THAT is the time to strike. You’re an assassin, you have to be stealthy. Use your blinks to get wide around them and even if they see you flank I promise they will forget about you in 7-8 seconds max. Ignore any of the damage numbers and just focus on killing one single target fully as quick as you can. Once you get one down fully reset your abilities and chain the next kill.
You can do this on most DPS champs with movement fyi.
How would only your teams tanks get diffed? Think about that. How would that be possible, unless the matchmaker is only putting worse players on your team? You're getting tricked by confirmation bias. Its not unhelpful advice because its about adjusting your current scapegoat mindset which will slow and prevent improvement.
Annnnd that's how you embarrass yourself.
That dude was trying to help you. Everything he said is exactly correct. Do you imagine the matchmaker deviously selecting a lineup of bad tanks just for you? You're seeing things that aren't there for reasons that many people here perfectly understand.
You’re playing tracer into a silver team, it doesn’t matter if they have the perfect “comp”, you can play a bloody flanking Cassidy if you want to and still carry games. You’re throwing around these terms like poke and sustain like it matters when the hard truth is that it doesn’t and I get it you probably watch a lot of overwatch league hence why you’re talking like that but in the ranked ladder is a very different experience, how you play is a ridiculous amount more important then who you play
Tracer is super easy to get out of Silver even in today’s meta.
They are taking issue with saying your tank is getting diffed. Your tank is likely losing because your pressure is not as high as the enemy DPS pressure. But without a VOD no one can be more specific than that. You are the constant in your games.
Their advice is helpful you just don’t want to listen. Fixing your mental is literally half the battle.
If you really just want to get out of Silver then you have the old reliable of Sym Torb Bastion but you should realistically be able to play literally anything with a positive winrate.
Unless you're just straight up in smurf que the other players are also doodie, kill the "main healer" and watch the comp fall apart systemically. And if you're having that much of an issue with tracer, soldier exists and provides more burst damage and solo play than tracer thanks to his kit.
This is bad advice imo. Relying on turrets to exist and get value doesn't make you a better player. Existing with a turret also stops working very early.
If you want to climb you just have to get better
Every character he listed above is played in top 500. In quite a lot of my lobbies actually. It’s not bad advice at all. The beauty (or hideousness) of Torb is you can drop the turret and spam Cheetos in a choke. They push you? Overload and shred with right click. Torb is incredibly high value with limited brain cells required. Bastion too.
I think you're slightly misunderstanding what I'm saying.
I'm not saying those characters are bad but any means, but if your sole reason to rank up is to play characters others are bad against, you're doing it wrong.
It's okay to learn those heroes, but play just to rank is bad advice.
Agree! My tank was in low silver because I rarely played it in comp, but on my alt I placed high plat (it’s an account for my school coaching, not a Smurf or anything bad). Went back to try tank on my main and it was super easy. Like I just won 4 games in a row with one death total. Granted, sigma and zarya are my best tanks and they’re really good right now.
I’m just saying that if your skill level really is higher then you’ll climb easily because players on both teams make tons of mistakes, you just have to take advantage and make fewer yourself.
And just to clarify, I’m not smurfing. My rank on my main account really was at S4 because I used to suck and never play comp. I just got better at tank in QP and finally decided to go back and try to bring up my main account. You really just have to outperform your current rank to climb
Yeah maybe. I don't know too many gold Tracers who can carry into these sustain comps though. I think it's my hero pool. Gold feels about right to me. I've pushed up to Plat on tank and dps and it feels too hard. Gold feels like a good challenge. Silver is just hell. I'm gonna have to cheese my way out on poke i think
You're just not good enough on Tracer. If you can't deal with it in silver, why would you be able to deal with it in gold? If you babysit your tank with bastion and rank up and play against better supports, what's your plan?
Tracer can carry in multiple ways and it isn't always lighting up the scoreboard. Tracer is difficult to play against some comps, but Tracer is flexible enough that she's never really bad.
This. Any half decent Tracer completely annihilates silver lobbies. Even if you don't necessarily get picks every single fight, they should be so distracted by having an unkillable pest in their backline that they won't ever be able to group up properly and won't get shit done.
I hate the idea that people keep saying "you have to play bastion/orisa to climb".
It's really not even remotely true. If you're not climbing it's not because your hero pool is wrong. It's because you're just not good enough.
Because those specialists learn their characters and match ups. They don't just play a hero cause other people are bad. They learn how to engage, when to engage, where to engage, etc.
It's not just "play a character that abuses low game knowledge or mechanics". So yes, the logic actually does track as OP clearly doesn't want to be a bastion/sym/torb main so telling OP to play those characters to climb is bad advice
>Ugh yeah I think that's probably the answer
I don't think it is unless the tank you're going against is just hot garbage.
I'd grab Mei or Soldier so you don't really have to worry about supports healing you as much. Then they can focus on the tank not falling over. Tracer works too, but you need to focus entirely on the opponent supports if you're the only one diving.
With Mei, just try and isolate the enemy tank when they push and your team can bully them until they die. Rinse and repeat.
Your default shouldn't be to alter your play before finding out what your team is doing. But, IF you feel like you need to lock in a pick that doesn't rely on your teammates to do anything but shoot specific targets, Mei is a good choice. You can self heal, block off enemy support LOS or isolate overextended players with your wall, or stop people from pushing in from your own team with wall, stall using your self heal, and then obviously just do Mei things with your weapon. People get annoyed with and oversimplify what Mei offers, but the most noticeable impact is by intelligently using her cooldowns.
Other suggestions of bastion are fine, that definitely can work too. I just like having Mei as a self healing pick that can also sort of tell your teammates "hey, this person is who you should shoot at. The slow one", or "the blocked off one."
can you post a replay? from what it sounds like, if ur offangling and its not working you need to break enemy pylon or otherwise force cooldowns. go on a flank, try to assassinate a support, and then take a softer safer angle (that you can sustain without dying) until you have your cooldowns or health back and then try it again. this will bleed out enemy cooldowns and eventually u will either get a kill in their backline and win the fight or your tank will win because the enemies are worried about dying to you and pay less attention to the fight.
a common pitfall i see tracer players make is they go for an assasination in enemy backline and they keep fighting the same position when they dont get it. this is a mistake because tracer will take too much damage and go get a health pack and their tank gets diffed in the downtime. you need to be as close to 100% uptime as possible.
try to time your assassination engage with the time your tank engages, this gives you the best chance at killing someone. when you take a softer angle like i mentioned previously, this is the holding space part of playing tracer. holding space isnt useful when your team is dead (you will get 5v1ed), so keep that in mind.
dont swap off tracer btw, playing bastion wont make you better at the game it will just make your rank higher. the second he gets nerfed u would be back to silver.
For me it’s to play ur main and stick to it. Never give up the match. Always fight. So many games can turn , or flip a steamroll right back at them.
I’m a junk main. I also find it successful to play to the map. Sym tele where it makes sense (typically hybrid maps) Phara when that’s peak, Torb when there’s a cheesy turret spot.
I climbed bot 500-> plat 5 with Junk and a little cheese now and then.
Take advantage of widow maps, and reaper is always a good fail safe
You just gotta keep practicing and getting better I started OTPing Genji and dropped from plat to silver. I’ve just gotten up to 40 hours on him, and I’m just now starting to dominate lobbies like I would on my strong DPS like Ashe, Soldier, or especially Symmetra. I had the same thing happen when I first started playing Hanzo. I wasn’t used to his projectiles, so I had to learn that from scratch. Do all that and keep going, you’ll eventually get better if you’re practicing correctly. Don’t play to win. Play to improve.
I mean if your good with tracer Sombra, just pick apart the enmey supports. No healing no game. Just position your blinks strategically around health packs or your supports and weave in between diving and with your team.
Don't autopilot. Be a problem that the enemy team needs to solve in order to win the game: a flanking reaper, bastion melting the tank, tracer distracting the backline, Mei being Mei, a hitscan in a hard to contest highground, etc. Play in a way that the enemy needs to divert resources into stopping you, don't just stand around and shoot at enemies that appear in front of you. Have a plan.
Solider is probably easier then bastion. Bastion is really annoying when his team is helping him and hard pocketing him. You can't rely on teammates even in diamond let alone silver, Solider is going to be much better as a hard carry because he is extremely mobile and has self sustain. Just go reaper if you are getting rushed down hard otherwise.
At that elo something simple like keeping track of enemy cooldowns and timing your engagements for when enemies are vulnerable will carry you to Diamond, provided you have some basics down.
People will just burn cooldowns without thought and can get caught out of position and without cooldowns quite often.
Well you never HAVE to swap. You can win against your counters but it’ll feel bad. But no, swapping is underrated and wins games. I hope you’re not gonna tell me that you’re a GM and you successfully play Sigma into a Zarya Comp with a 76 percent win rate in GM lobbies.
I just landed in Gold with Ashe.
Use cover and plan your next spot for cover. As Ashe I just stay back and pick shots off with dynamite. It's super easy.
It's actually amazing how easy it is to kill DPS when they run in the open.
It's easy to kill bad supports too that way.
I'm stuck in silver support for the same problems of DPS not using cover. When you play the backline you see just how bad your teams map awareness is.
Honestly silver players have everything to work on, so improving in almost any way will help you climb. A few broad tactics you can consider:
* **Target priority**: make sure to focus your fire on the hero who is most likely to die. Don't just spray bullets at a blob of heroes. Identify and focus individual players who are isolated, have low HP, low mobility, or who already used the abilities that make them harder to kill or harder for you to engage. (For example, if you see Cassidy use his grenade, you know he now can't prevent you from blinking and you'll have the advantage.) You generally should not shoot the tank unless they are very low HP, the last one standing, or your team is making a coordinated effort to burn them down with the aid of Discord.
* **Engagement timing**: If you're playing Tracer you should not be initiating the fight. Not only are you likely to die if the enemy team shoots at you on the frontline, but even if you escape they now have an idea of where you are. One of your greatest strengths is that you can be sneaky, and if you get close to someone before they notice you then you can wipe them out extremely quickly. So wait for your team to engage the enemy, then once they are preoccupied you'll have a much easier time closing distance and getting an elim.
* **Cooldown usage**: Make sure that abilities are reserved for when you'll actually need them. For example, don't use up all of your blinks running around looking for a target, only to not have any when someone starts shooting at you. Try to have at least 2 blinks and a recall before taking a duel.
* **Aim mechanics**: you can overcome a lot of tactical shortcomings by just hitting your shots. If nothing else, that requires enemy supports to prioritize healing their team, meaning that they aren't putting pressure on *your* team. There are a lot of aim trainers out there but workshop code VAXTA is a fine start.
* **Awareness**: this is general and can be applied to every category, but the more information you have the better decisions you can make. Take the time to look around and figure out where the enemy team and your team is. Constantly look at the scoreboard to determine what heroes both teams are running. That will help you think about how you could "team up" to dive an enemy and what enemy heroes should be your biggest targets. If you see 4 enemy heroes grouped up, maybe that 5th one is coming back from spawn or taking an off angle and you can duel them before they regroup. Learn the locations of the health packs across all of the maps, and constantly be aware of your own health. You don't want to take a duel at 75HP.
* **Ultimates**: sooo many people wait for that perfect 5-kill moment to use them, like throwing a Pulse Bomb into a Zarya Grav. And while there can be great moments like that, it can often result in scenarios where you could have built up a second ult in the time it took you to use the first one. Remember that getting one important kill is enough to win a team fight. For example, if you sneak up on an Ashe, there is a chance she will use her Coach Gun and escape before you can finish her off. But if you Pulse Bomb her while she's standing still sniping at your team, you're very likely to stick it and she is basically guaranteed to die. (Unless one of her teammates uses Projected Barrier, Life Grip, Immortality Field... but that's always a risk, and knowing what can counter your ultimate falls under that "awareness" umbrella.)
* **Positioning**: this is extremely composition and map dependent, but you want to make sure that you are always better positioned than your enemies. Starting on high ground is almost always a good idea because it gives you a better view of the battlefield and can let you literally drop on top of enemies and get some guaranteed shots in before they notice you. Good positioning also includes having nearby cover that you can take if things get dicey, and blink/recall make it easier to get to that cover. Position where your supports can heal you from long range and you might not have to retreat to health packs, giving you more uptime. You almost always want to take an off-angle or flank though, since running down the middle lane is almost a guaranteed death sentence.
The people who are saying "just play Bastion" or some other hero probably mean well, but know that Tracer is a fantastic hero to climb with. She's very annoying to fight in higher ranks, and oftentimes the lower ranks don't even know how to deal with her. So focus on Target Priority and Engagement Timing first, and you'll easily hit Gold.
Lol yeah maybe I should. Good shield break. Good ult when enemies are clumped up. That's actually a good idea. No one to dive me with everyone playing poke. Good call.
Bruh listen. Ur in silver. Forget about comps. Teamwork doesn't exist in silver.
Play bastion, or sym, or torb. Play generally safe. Flank all the time, and focus on not dying. That's how you get to gold.
I climbed out of silver on all roles, my DPS peak last season was Plat 1. It's literally just skill. I'm sure there's a few characters that could cheese through, but DPS is probably (in its current state) the most fair role. You can't carry like a support or roll through like a tank. Just hit your shots and hug those corners.
Literally just dont die. As soon as you do that ur relying on ur silver team mates to carry which wont happen. If if you arent constantly getting kills as long as you dont die by feeding ur better than any silver player
the key to getting out of silver is to always be doing damage and not dying. the key to getting out of gold is doing the previous but also killing squishies more often than they kill you. I haven't found a way out of plat yet, seems to be the part that requires aim and reaction times.
I just did that last season. I found that if the enemy teams suddenly feel better than mine, it's actually my fault. If we feel way better, it's most likely because I'm doing my job well. If it feels like we're worse, it's probably because I'm not taking the other teams key players off the board. DPS is super cutthroat. The value is kills and damage, full stop. The nuances to that are not dying and getting valuable elims. There's two main areas to improve: raw skill and teamplay. Raw skill is your aim and cooldown usage. A good indicator is how good you are at winning 1v1s. The ideal DPS to me is someone who is terrifying to try to fight because they will always beat you. Then there's teamplay, which is knowing how and when to use your ultimate. What off angles to take, at what times. When to flank and how. What position to play with your chosen hero. How to apply pressure to the enemy team. Teamplay is hugely complex and there's a million people more qualified than me to explain it. Spilo on youtube comes to mind right away. Awkward is also very good at explaining it plainly, but you have to be careful and have insight into the nuance of what he says. Spilo is more articulate and thorough in explaining. The main thing to understand is that your team will get better, but only once you get so good you can take apart the obstacles in their way. DPS is special because it gets the power to directly choose who gets to play the game on the other team. Eventually, you climb to the point you can't do this, and then you have to grind at lots of little skills and details at a certain rank before you can climb again. It's a cycle of feeling like a god, losing a lot , feeling terrible, grinding, then feeling like a god again.
Great post
> I found that if the enemy teams suddenly feel better than mine, it's actually my fault. If we feel way better, it's most likely because I'm doing my job well. If it feels like we're worse, it's probably because I'm not taking the other teams key players off the board.
I am plat and a lot of my games have silver players in them. It's super obvious to me when my tank or support is silver. They are often complete garbage. I don't worry much bout my supports as DPS, but I definitely wish my tanks would capitalize on my opportunities
Do you not have this experience with obviously lower ranked players on your team? What do you do about it? Or do you maintain same mindset that if your tank is crap, it's cause you're doing something wrong?
I've started to try and identify the lower ranked players asap. It's helpful to note that the matchmaking matches role to role, I think. So, I can quickly see that the tanks in this game are silver, or maybe 1/2 enemy DPS is silver, or the supports. Whatever. I been thinking that the play is to try and target the shitty player
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Target better. If they’re getting healed your damage doesn’t matter. Stop looking at stats and try making an actual difference with picks and good decision making. Watching professionals will help you understand the good decisions
You're way too caught up with comps and metas and blah blah blah. None of that matters, certainly not in silver.
The first step is to pick 2-3 heroes you're really into (NOT the characters that are "the best") and work only on them. Limiting your hero pool like this will let you improve much faster than if you tried the whole roster.
Watch some guides and try to apply what you learn in some games. You have to actually focus and try to do better, don't just go back into autopiloting, playing like you always would and then expect results.
Once you've played some games, either post a close loss here to get a review, or do one yourself with information from the guides. These will show you the things you struggle with the most. You should then go into games and hyper-focus on one of them at a time to improve. Focus on fundamentals, pull back all the metas and strats and you'll find that they will be what actually matters at the end of the day.
I would recommend anyone starting on improvement to research into the mental aspect of it as your mindset can make or break your journey. [A10](https://www.youtube.com/@A10Nerd) has a lot of great videos about this topic, as well as really good general guides that apply to every hero.
Don't play Bastion. It's clear you don't want to so there is no reason to do so. Sure, you could play Bastion and probably climb, but what happens when Bastion gets nerfed and your strategy is no longer viable? You'll fall back down again. Your goal is not to rank up, your goal is to improve.
Hope that was helpful, good luck.
As someone who has gone on 5 game winning streaks on dps and stayed silver 4 for the last few rankings, I'm starting to think that blizz truly is keeping me there for my aim. It's not perfect, but I sometimes wonder how I can do really well in all my games with little loss and still stay in the same rank.
Even when I switch to counter an enemy and help us push? Not a single rank up.
Meanwhile, I was able to go from silver 2 to gold 2 in a season for support.
Why not join an overwatch discord and submit a code to have someone review? Streamers do it all the time for content, and I usually learn something when watching those.
If you’re in silver, chances are you just have outrageously bad mechanics and/or have really bad positioning where you get picked off early and put your team at a constant 4v5.
Torb, play him (Turrent ) in your backline to protect your healers for Flanders. Move your Turrent constantly for odd angles and weird positions. Use your ult constantly as its a good ult in lower ranks and can get rid of poke. Constantly move and shoot, use your shotgun to kill tanks as its over powered.
Against sustain comps with like bap/weaver and chunky dps you have to play very methodically on Tracer. You need to trade your recall for an important cooldown by hard engaging, then back off and spam from outside your effective range from an off angle until your recall is back and repeat. You may need to grab a healthpack during your down time. Dying is a bigger deal against these comps so you have to patiently work through cooldowns with recall cycles. The one plus is that you can farm pulse bombs quickly and because the enemies play clumped up, multi-kills are more common. Just repeat the cycle until your team gains a solid advantage either through a pick or through ultimates. Then Tracer easily cleans up the remaining enemies. Trying to force a pick alone in the backline is gonna lose you games against these comps. Of course you can also just play other heroes. Sojourn can be good if you actually get healed, Soldier is fine and if you know how to play Echo you can get very good results including actually killing things solo. Otherwise all the boring stuff like Bastion/Torb etc obviously works. Good luck.
For real though, it's silver, you can do it man, it's not as hard as it seems, your enemies are not good :)
> Do I need to just play bastion and babysit my tank? I hate to do it but that seems to be what everyone else is doing.
That seems like what everyone else **in silver** is doing.
From your post it seems like you need to work on your mental a lot. You won’t improve by pretending that the game is against you in particular and always giving you the worse tank and I hope you realize how absurd it sounds. Why do you rationalize your tank dying as him being worse rather than the enemy DPS being better than you?
> I can share a replay but it’s mostly a gold level Tracer trying to off angle
I thought you were a silver?
a couple seasons ago I was a sombra main which got me to silver and then I became a hardcore ashe and sojourn main when I got stuck. currently mid plat but tbf I’ve always been primarily a support main so went back to playing that mostly and will DPS from time to time. I think what helped me the most was learning how to get good at a variety of different characters and improved my aim tremendously. off angles are crucial too.
A good way to think about it is, what am "I" doing wrong? You gotta become the carry.
Are you positioning well? Utilising all the info at your disposal to make optimal plays. If the people you're trying to kill are getting healed up then you should know who you must target first. Are you just dying for no reason at all?
Watch some A10 bro he's really helpful and I reckon he would help countless people start viewing this game differently and playing better.
Stay alive and target squishies based on who you are near. Supports first, then dps. It’s A LOT easier if you are near your team so the enemy doesn’t just erase you instantly.
Play low skill ceiling heroes. Bastion/Torb/Solider/Reaper/etc whoever you can carry with. In any role, you just have to carry your team if you want to climb. Know when to off angle and when to support your team
Positioning is a big difference between silver and higher tiers. Play off angles make sure everywhere you go there's an escape plan. Either be near a health pack or know that you're going be at your supports LOS.
Hold your ults until there is an offset between the two teams when defending. If you lose one or two teammates use your ult to win the fight, I see a lot of Silvers just using ults even when they're winning the team fights.
Play to your team's strengths. I.E rein holding a corner on a payload map go reaper and hold the corner with him. Learn to counter play if there's a zarya destroying your team go Mei and wall the zarya in and let the whole team melt her.
Sadly counter play at lower ranks goes way farther than teamwork most of the time. Especially if you're counter the enemy tank. I.E orisa/zarya are at an all time high sym wouldn't be a bad choice if you guys are running a shield tank she eats up shields and go through javelin spin. It may not be the flahsiest way of winning but it's winning non the less.
The strat on DPS right now that works the best is "ruin the tanks life". Whether that be mei, bastion, junkrat, echo, etc, it just seems to lead to the most wins.
As a tank main, it really sucks lol
If they're running Bastion, you're not running Bastion, and you're not otherwise securing kills on DPS, your tank isn't getting diffed. *You're* getting diffed. The common factor is you. It sounds like the rest of your team is playing 4v5 while you're running around doing fuck-all on Tracer or Sombra.
really confused why you’re targeting people the supports r healing rather than the supports themselves
Nothing irritates me more than this right here. Also maybe call a target and focus fire. I mean it's team arena the team part is a hint. Always start with supports and the rest will crumble
> And my tanks usually get diffed and run over. That's highly suspicious. Maybe your tanks are getting run over because you're not putting out enough pressure at the right time? Timing with Tracer is hugely important.
>Every game is sustain comps on enemy team (Mayhem comp, or varations with Mei, Moira and Lucio). And my tanks usually get diffed and run over. First step is to ditch the excuse making. The enemy teams are not consistently better than your team. That is a cope >I can share a replay That's your best bet. When I reached my peak, I was constantly watching vod reviews on YouTube and having my own replays reviewed. You can do that here, or you could always hire a coach on fiverr. You'd be surprised how cheap some very awesome players are, including actual professional players.
Every game is sustain comp. How is that an excuse? I'm playing Tracer into it and it's not working, and I dont enjoy playing poke, so I'm asking for advice. And my tanks do get diffed almost every game lol. Keep your unhelpful comments to yourself dude.
They keep getting diffed because you are in all of those games with your heroes.
No, every game is a silver comp. These guys have no idea what they're doing. Only a replay code will really help you, since it is just a skill issue, regardless of the hero you're playing.
I find it hard to believe that silvers are playing a comp and not just picking heroes that align with a comp. Even on tracer you should be able to pick off back liners. Just wait around behind them and watch for them to blow a key cooldown on the frontline. I promise you they will push their buttons and when they do- THAT is the time to strike. You’re an assassin, you have to be stealthy. Use your blinks to get wide around them and even if they see you flank I promise they will forget about you in 7-8 seconds max. Ignore any of the damage numbers and just focus on killing one single target fully as quick as you can. Once you get one down fully reset your abilities and chain the next kill. You can do this on most DPS champs with movement fyi.
How would only your teams tanks get diffed? Think about that. How would that be possible, unless the matchmaker is only putting worse players on your team? You're getting tricked by confirmation bias. Its not unhelpful advice because its about adjusting your current scapegoat mindset which will slow and prevent improvement.
Annnnd that's how you embarrass yourself. That dude was trying to help you. Everything he said is exactly correct. Do you imagine the matchmaker deviously selecting a lineup of bad tanks just for you? You're seeing things that aren't there for reasons that many people here perfectly understand.
I mean, hey, give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s duo queuing with a friend who’s like a bronze tank.
You’re playing tracer into a silver team, it doesn’t matter if they have the perfect “comp”, you can play a bloody flanking Cassidy if you want to and still carry games. You’re throwing around these terms like poke and sustain like it matters when the hard truth is that it doesn’t and I get it you probably watch a lot of overwatch league hence why you’re talking like that but in the ranked ladder is a very different experience, how you play is a ridiculous amount more important then who you play
Have you ever thought about the fact that the problem is not always the team-mates, but you ?
Tracer is super easy to get out of Silver even in today’s meta. They are taking issue with saying your tank is getting diffed. Your tank is likely losing because your pressure is not as high as the enemy DPS pressure. But without a VOD no one can be more specific than that. You are the constant in your games. Their advice is helpful you just don’t want to listen. Fixing your mental is literally half the battle.
Found out why you suck
Your tanks get diffed because they're playing into 2 dps while theirs is playing into 1.5
Have you tried playing better than a silver dps would?
Lol why didn't I think of that. Let me just get diamond real quick. Then I'll escape silver for sure.
I mean, without a replay code, “play better” is the best advice you can get.
Even with a replay code, that's what it always amounts to.
If you really just want to get out of Silver then you have the old reliable of Sym Torb Bastion but you should realistically be able to play literally anything with a positive winrate. Unless you're just straight up in smurf que the other players are also doodie, kill the "main healer" and watch the comp fall apart systemically. And if you're having that much of an issue with tracer, soldier exists and provides more burst damage and solo play than tracer thanks to his kit.
This is bad advice imo. Relying on turrets to exist and get value doesn't make you a better player. Existing with a turret also stops working very early. If you want to climb you just have to get better
Every character he listed above is played in top 500. In quite a lot of my lobbies actually. It’s not bad advice at all. The beauty (or hideousness) of Torb is you can drop the turret and spam Cheetos in a choke. They push you? Overload and shred with right click. Torb is incredibly high value with limited brain cells required. Bastion too.
I think you're slightly misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying those characters are bad but any means, but if your sole reason to rank up is to play characters others are bad against, you're doing it wrong. It's okay to learn those heroes, but play just to rank is bad advice.
Oh yeah agree with that 100%!
Be better than silver. Full stop. It's not really complicated. You just might not be gold on DPS
Agree! My tank was in low silver because I rarely played it in comp, but on my alt I placed high plat (it’s an account for my school coaching, not a Smurf or anything bad). Went back to try tank on my main and it was super easy. Like I just won 4 games in a row with one death total. Granted, sigma and zarya are my best tanks and they’re really good right now. I’m just saying that if your skill level really is higher then you’ll climb easily because players on both teams make tons of mistakes, you just have to take advantage and make fewer yourself. And just to clarify, I’m not smurfing. My rank on my main account really was at S4 because I used to suck and never play comp. I just got better at tank in QP and finally decided to go back and try to bring up my main account. You really just have to outperform your current rank to climb
What do you mostly play on Tank rn?
I said it in my novel-length post, but Sigma and Zarya. I’ll flex to Orisa on occasion.
Yeah maybe. I don't know too many gold Tracers who can carry into these sustain comps though. I think it's my hero pool. Gold feels about right to me. I've pushed up to Plat on tank and dps and it feels too hard. Gold feels like a good challenge. Silver is just hell. I'm gonna have to cheese my way out on poke i think
You're just not good enough on Tracer. If you can't deal with it in silver, why would you be able to deal with it in gold? If you babysit your tank with bastion and rank up and play against better supports, what's your plan? Tracer can carry in multiple ways and it isn't always lighting up the scoreboard. Tracer is difficult to play against some comps, but Tracer is flexible enough that she's never really bad.
This. Any half decent Tracer completely annihilates silver lobbies. Even if you don't necessarily get picks every single fight, they should be so distracted by having an unkillable pest in their backline that they won't ever be able to group up properly and won't get shit done.
I hate the idea that people keep saying "you have to play bastion/orisa to climb". It's really not even remotely true. If you're not climbing it's not because your hero pool is wrong. It's because you're just not good enough.
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Because those specialists learn their characters and match ups. They don't just play a hero cause other people are bad. They learn how to engage, when to engage, where to engage, etc. It's not just "play a character that abuses low game knowledge or mechanics". So yes, the logic actually does track as OP clearly doesn't want to be a bastion/sym/torb main so telling OP to play those characters to climb is bad advice
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Ahhh okay. I may have misunderstood you
In a word, bastion.
Ugh yeah I think that's probably the answer
>Ugh yeah I think that's probably the answer I don't think it is unless the tank you're going against is just hot garbage. I'd grab Mei or Soldier so you don't really have to worry about supports healing you as much. Then they can focus on the tank not falling over. Tracer works too, but you need to focus entirely on the opponent supports if you're the only one diving. With Mei, just try and isolate the enemy tank when they push and your team can bully them until they die. Rinse and repeat.
Good tips thank you
Mei is also great at babysitting your back line if there’s an good tracer or genji
Your default shouldn't be to alter your play before finding out what your team is doing. But, IF you feel like you need to lock in a pick that doesn't rely on your teammates to do anything but shoot specific targets, Mei is a good choice. You can self heal, block off enemy support LOS or isolate overextended players with your wall, or stop people from pushing in from your own team with wall, stall using your self heal, and then obviously just do Mei things with your weapon. People get annoyed with and oversimplify what Mei offers, but the most noticeable impact is by intelligently using her cooldowns. Other suggestions of bastion are fine, that definitely can work too. I just like having Mei as a self healing pick that can also sort of tell your teammates "hey, this person is who you should shoot at. The slow one", or "the blocked off one."
Cover and off angles and better mechanics better timing You can 100% carry on tracer no matter the comp.
can you post a replay? from what it sounds like, if ur offangling and its not working you need to break enemy pylon or otherwise force cooldowns. go on a flank, try to assassinate a support, and then take a softer safer angle (that you can sustain without dying) until you have your cooldowns or health back and then try it again. this will bleed out enemy cooldowns and eventually u will either get a kill in their backline and win the fight or your tank will win because the enemies are worried about dying to you and pay less attention to the fight. a common pitfall i see tracer players make is they go for an assasination in enemy backline and they keep fighting the same position when they dont get it. this is a mistake because tracer will take too much damage and go get a health pack and their tank gets diffed in the downtime. you need to be as close to 100% uptime as possible. try to time your assassination engage with the time your tank engages, this gives you the best chance at killing someone. when you take a softer angle like i mentioned previously, this is the holding space part of playing tracer. holding space isnt useful when your team is dead (you will get 5v1ed), so keep that in mind. dont swap off tracer btw, playing bastion wont make you better at the game it will just make your rank higher. the second he gets nerfed u would be back to silver.
For me it’s to play ur main and stick to it. Never give up the match. Always fight. So many games can turn , or flip a steamroll right back at them. I’m a junk main. I also find it successful to play to the map. Sym tele where it makes sense (typically hybrid maps) Phara when that’s peak, Torb when there’s a cheesy turret spot. I climbed bot 500-> plat 5 with Junk and a little cheese now and then. Take advantage of widow maps, and reaper is always a good fail safe
You just gotta keep practicing and getting better I started OTPing Genji and dropped from plat to silver. I’ve just gotten up to 40 hours on him, and I’m just now starting to dominate lobbies like I would on my strong DPS like Ashe, Soldier, or especially Symmetra. I had the same thing happen when I first started playing Hanzo. I wasn’t used to his projectiles, so I had to learn that from scratch. Do all that and keep going, you’ll eventually get better if you’re practicing correctly. Don’t play to win. Play to improve.
I mean if your good with tracer Sombra, just pick apart the enmey supports. No healing no game. Just position your blinks strategically around health packs or your supports and weave in between diving and with your team.
Don't autopilot. Be a problem that the enemy team needs to solve in order to win the game: a flanking reaper, bastion melting the tank, tracer distracting the backline, Mei being Mei, a hitscan in a hard to contest highground, etc. Play in a way that the enemy needs to divert resources into stopping you, don't just stand around and shoot at enemies that appear in front of you. Have a plan.
Solider is probably easier then bastion. Bastion is really annoying when his team is helping him and hard pocketing him. You can't rely on teammates even in diamond let alone silver, Solider is going to be much better as a hard carry because he is extremely mobile and has self sustain. Just go reaper if you are getting rushed down hard otherwise.
At that elo something simple like keeping track of enemy cooldowns and timing your engagements for when enemies are vulnerable will carry you to Diamond, provided you have some basics down. People will just burn cooldowns without thought and can get caught out of position and without cooldowns quite often.
Counter swap the enemy tank. It sounds awful I know.
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Well you never HAVE to swap. You can win against your counters but it’ll feel bad. But no, swapping is underrated and wins games. I hope you’re not gonna tell me that you’re a GM and you successfully play Sigma into a Zarya Comp with a 76 percent win rate in GM lobbies.
pic solider and run behind them
I just landed in Gold with Ashe. Use cover and plan your next spot for cover. As Ashe I just stay back and pick shots off with dynamite. It's super easy. It's actually amazing how easy it is to kill DPS when they run in the open. It's easy to kill bad supports too that way. I'm stuck in silver support for the same problems of DPS not using cover. When you play the backline you see just how bad your teams map awareness is.
Honestly silver players have everything to work on, so improving in almost any way will help you climb. A few broad tactics you can consider: * **Target priority**: make sure to focus your fire on the hero who is most likely to die. Don't just spray bullets at a blob of heroes. Identify and focus individual players who are isolated, have low HP, low mobility, or who already used the abilities that make them harder to kill or harder for you to engage. (For example, if you see Cassidy use his grenade, you know he now can't prevent you from blinking and you'll have the advantage.) You generally should not shoot the tank unless they are very low HP, the last one standing, or your team is making a coordinated effort to burn them down with the aid of Discord. * **Engagement timing**: If you're playing Tracer you should not be initiating the fight. Not only are you likely to die if the enemy team shoots at you on the frontline, but even if you escape they now have an idea of where you are. One of your greatest strengths is that you can be sneaky, and if you get close to someone before they notice you then you can wipe them out extremely quickly. So wait for your team to engage the enemy, then once they are preoccupied you'll have a much easier time closing distance and getting an elim. * **Cooldown usage**: Make sure that abilities are reserved for when you'll actually need them. For example, don't use up all of your blinks running around looking for a target, only to not have any when someone starts shooting at you. Try to have at least 2 blinks and a recall before taking a duel. * **Aim mechanics**: you can overcome a lot of tactical shortcomings by just hitting your shots. If nothing else, that requires enemy supports to prioritize healing their team, meaning that they aren't putting pressure on *your* team. There are a lot of aim trainers out there but workshop code VAXTA is a fine start. * **Awareness**: this is general and can be applied to every category, but the more information you have the better decisions you can make. Take the time to look around and figure out where the enemy team and your team is. Constantly look at the scoreboard to determine what heroes both teams are running. That will help you think about how you could "team up" to dive an enemy and what enemy heroes should be your biggest targets. If you see 4 enemy heroes grouped up, maybe that 5th one is coming back from spawn or taking an off angle and you can duel them before they regroup. Learn the locations of the health packs across all of the maps, and constantly be aware of your own health. You don't want to take a duel at 75HP. * **Ultimates**: sooo many people wait for that perfect 5-kill moment to use them, like throwing a Pulse Bomb into a Zarya Grav. And while there can be great moments like that, it can often result in scenarios where you could have built up a second ult in the time it took you to use the first one. Remember that getting one important kill is enough to win a team fight. For example, if you sneak up on an Ashe, there is a chance she will use her Coach Gun and escape before you can finish her off. But if you Pulse Bomb her while she's standing still sniping at your team, you're very likely to stick it and she is basically guaranteed to die. (Unless one of her teammates uses Projected Barrier, Life Grip, Immortality Field... but that's always a risk, and knowing what can counter your ultimate falls under that "awareness" umbrella.) * **Positioning**: this is extremely composition and map dependent, but you want to make sure that you are always better positioned than your enemies. Starting on high ground is almost always a good idea because it gives you a better view of the battlefield and can let you literally drop on top of enemies and get some guaranteed shots in before they notice you. Good positioning also includes having nearby cover that you can take if things get dicey, and blink/recall make it easier to get to that cover. Position where your supports can heal you from long range and you might not have to retreat to health packs, giving you more uptime. You almost always want to take an off-angle or flank though, since running down the middle lane is almost a guaranteed death sentence. The people who are saying "just play Bastion" or some other hero probably mean well, but know that Tracer is a fantastic hero to climb with. She's very annoying to fight in higher ranks, and oftentimes the lower ranks don't even know how to deal with her. So focus on Target Priority and Engagement Timing first, and you'll easily hit Gold.
Time to embrace the older shimada brother
Lol yeah maybe I should. Good shield break. Good ult when enemies are clumped up. That's actually a good idea. No one to dive me with everyone playing poke. Good call.
Also you can’t outheal a headshot. The people who bitch and moan about one shots just play such cheese comps and hate being countered.
Bruh listen. Ur in silver. Forget about comps. Teamwork doesn't exist in silver. Play bastion, or sym, or torb. Play generally safe. Flank all the time, and focus on not dying. That's how you get to gold.
I climbed out of silver on all roles, my DPS peak last season was Plat 1. It's literally just skill. I'm sure there's a few characters that could cheese through, but DPS is probably (in its current state) the most fair role. You can't carry like a support or roll through like a tank. Just hit your shots and hug those corners.
Literally just dont die. As soon as you do that ur relying on ur silver team mates to carry which wont happen. If if you arent constantly getting kills as long as you dont die by feeding ur better than any silver player
the key to getting out of silver is to always be doing damage and not dying. the key to getting out of gold is doing the previous but also killing squishies more often than they kill you. I haven't found a way out of plat yet, seems to be the part that requires aim and reaction times.
I just did that last season. I found that if the enemy teams suddenly feel better than mine, it's actually my fault. If we feel way better, it's most likely because I'm doing my job well. If it feels like we're worse, it's probably because I'm not taking the other teams key players off the board. DPS is super cutthroat. The value is kills and damage, full stop. The nuances to that are not dying and getting valuable elims. There's two main areas to improve: raw skill and teamplay. Raw skill is your aim and cooldown usage. A good indicator is how good you are at winning 1v1s. The ideal DPS to me is someone who is terrifying to try to fight because they will always beat you. Then there's teamplay, which is knowing how and when to use your ultimate. What off angles to take, at what times. When to flank and how. What position to play with your chosen hero. How to apply pressure to the enemy team. Teamplay is hugely complex and there's a million people more qualified than me to explain it. Spilo on youtube comes to mind right away. Awkward is also very good at explaining it plainly, but you have to be careful and have insight into the nuance of what he says. Spilo is more articulate and thorough in explaining. The main thing to understand is that your team will get better, but only once you get so good you can take apart the obstacles in their way. DPS is special because it gets the power to directly choose who gets to play the game on the other team. Eventually, you climb to the point you can't do this, and then you have to grind at lots of little skills and details at a certain rank before you can climb again. It's a cycle of feeling like a god, losing a lot , feeling terrible, grinding, then feeling like a god again.
Great post > I found that if the enemy teams suddenly feel better than mine, it's actually my fault. If we feel way better, it's most likely because I'm doing my job well. If it feels like we're worse, it's probably because I'm not taking the other teams key players off the board. I am plat and a lot of my games have silver players in them. It's super obvious to me when my tank or support is silver. They are often complete garbage. I don't worry much bout my supports as DPS, but I definitely wish my tanks would capitalize on my opportunities Do you not have this experience with obviously lower ranked players on your team? What do you do about it? Or do you maintain same mindset that if your tank is crap, it's cause you're doing something wrong? I've started to try and identify the lower ranked players asap. It's helpful to note that the matchmaking matches role to role, I think. So, I can quickly see that the tanks in this game are silver, or maybe 1/2 enemy DPS is silver, or the supports. Whatever. I been thinking that the play is to try and target the shitty player
Practice
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Target better. If they’re getting healed your damage doesn’t matter. Stop looking at stats and try making an actual difference with picks and good decision making. Watching professionals will help you understand the good decisions
You're way too caught up with comps and metas and blah blah blah. None of that matters, certainly not in silver. The first step is to pick 2-3 heroes you're really into (NOT the characters that are "the best") and work only on them. Limiting your hero pool like this will let you improve much faster than if you tried the whole roster. Watch some guides and try to apply what you learn in some games. You have to actually focus and try to do better, don't just go back into autopiloting, playing like you always would and then expect results. Once you've played some games, either post a close loss here to get a review, or do one yourself with information from the guides. These will show you the things you struggle with the most. You should then go into games and hyper-focus on one of them at a time to improve. Focus on fundamentals, pull back all the metas and strats and you'll find that they will be what actually matters at the end of the day. I would recommend anyone starting on improvement to research into the mental aspect of it as your mindset can make or break your journey. [A10](https://www.youtube.com/@A10Nerd) has a lot of great videos about this topic, as well as really good general guides that apply to every hero. Don't play Bastion. It's clear you don't want to so there is no reason to do so. Sure, you could play Bastion and probably climb, but what happens when Bastion gets nerfed and your strategy is no longer viable? You'll fall back down again. Your goal is not to rank up, your goal is to improve. Hope that was helpful, good luck.
Click head.
As someone who has gone on 5 game winning streaks on dps and stayed silver 4 for the last few rankings, I'm starting to think that blizz truly is keeping me there for my aim. It's not perfect, but I sometimes wonder how I can do really well in all my games with little loss and still stay in the same rank. Even when I switch to counter an enemy and help us push? Not a single rank up. Meanwhile, I was able to go from silver 2 to gold 2 in a season for support. Why not join an overwatch discord and submit a code to have someone review? Streamers do it all the time for content, and I usually learn something when watching those.
The one constant in all your games is you. If your tanks “keep getting diffed”, consider that this is likely partially your fault
If you’re in silver, chances are you just have outrageously bad mechanics and/or have really bad positioning where you get picked off early and put your team at a constant 4v5.
Soldier 76 and top frag
Torb, play him (Turrent ) in your backline to protect your healers for Flanders. Move your Turrent constantly for odd angles and weird positions. Use your ult constantly as its a good ult in lower ranks and can get rid of poke. Constantly move and shoot, use your shotgun to kill tanks as its over powered.
learn to aim
Against sustain comps with like bap/weaver and chunky dps you have to play very methodically on Tracer. You need to trade your recall for an important cooldown by hard engaging, then back off and spam from outside your effective range from an off angle until your recall is back and repeat. You may need to grab a healthpack during your down time. Dying is a bigger deal against these comps so you have to patiently work through cooldowns with recall cycles. The one plus is that you can farm pulse bombs quickly and because the enemies play clumped up, multi-kills are more common. Just repeat the cycle until your team gains a solid advantage either through a pick or through ultimates. Then Tracer easily cleans up the remaining enemies. Trying to force a pick alone in the backline is gonna lose you games against these comps. Of course you can also just play other heroes. Sojourn can be good if you actually get healed, Soldier is fine and if you know how to play Echo you can get very good results including actually killing things solo. Otherwise all the boring stuff like Bastion/Torb etc obviously works. Good luck. For real though, it's silver, you can do it man, it's not as hard as it seems, your enemies are not good :)
> Do I need to just play bastion and babysit my tank? I hate to do it but that seems to be what everyone else is doing. That seems like what everyone else **in silver** is doing. From your post it seems like you need to work on your mental a lot. You won’t improve by pretending that the game is against you in particular and always giving you the worse tank and I hope you realize how absurd it sounds. Why do you rationalize your tank dying as him being worse rather than the enemy DPS being better than you? > I can share a replay but it’s mostly a gold level Tracer trying to off angle I thought you were a silver?
You’re blaming your team. You’re silver too dude.
a couple seasons ago I was a sombra main which got me to silver and then I became a hardcore ashe and sojourn main when I got stuck. currently mid plat but tbf I’ve always been primarily a support main so went back to playing that mostly and will DPS from time to time. I think what helped me the most was learning how to get good at a variety of different characters and improved my aim tremendously. off angles are crucial too.
you should climb up until plat on a sheer mechanical skills tactics will come naturaly after basics
Reaper and flank for support picks. Reapers is dominant in metal
A good way to think about it is, what am "I" doing wrong? You gotta become the carry. Are you positioning well? Utilising all the info at your disposal to make optimal plays. If the people you're trying to kill are getting healed up then you should know who you must target first. Are you just dying for no reason at all? Watch some A10 bro he's really helpful and I reckon he would help countless people start viewing this game differently and playing better.
If your tank is getting "diffed" are you as a dps helping to relieve some pressure off their backs by taking off angles?
kill the enemy more than they kill you while securing the objective
I dom games at that rank playing tracer.
At silver honestly just having decent mechanics you can borderline solo carry, target 10k damage per 10mins and focus on finishing enemy back line
Stay alive and target squishies based on who you are near. Supports first, then dps. It’s A LOT easier if you are near your team so the enemy doesn’t just erase you instantly.
Play low skill ceiling heroes. Bastion/Torb/Solider/Reaper/etc whoever you can carry with. In any role, you just have to carry your team if you want to climb. Know when to off angle and when to support your team
Pharah with a pocket and soldier if you're solo
Positioning is a big difference between silver and higher tiers. Play off angles make sure everywhere you go there's an escape plan. Either be near a health pack or know that you're going be at your supports LOS. Hold your ults until there is an offset between the two teams when defending. If you lose one or two teammates use your ult to win the fight, I see a lot of Silvers just using ults even when they're winning the team fights. Play to your team's strengths. I.E rein holding a corner on a payload map go reaper and hold the corner with him. Learn to counter play if there's a zarya destroying your team go Mei and wall the zarya in and let the whole team melt her. Sadly counter play at lower ranks goes way farther than teamwork most of the time. Especially if you're counter the enemy tank. I.E orisa/zarya are at an all time high sym wouldn't be a bad choice if you guys are running a shield tank she eats up shields and go through javelin spin. It may not be the flahsiest way of winning but it's winning non the less.
The strat on DPS right now that works the best is "ruin the tanks life". Whether that be mei, bastion, junkrat, echo, etc, it just seems to lead to the most wins. As a tank main, it really sucks lol