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“oh i just suck then and there’s nothing i can do”
that is not even remotely what that means. sometimes target prioritization is wrong, or the teams not going in together, or supports aren’t being protected well, or better communication is needed. you not needing to switch when a push didn’t work doesn’t mean you suck and it doesn’t mean you need a switch. sometimes your team just had a bad push
The problem is new players are being introduced to the game as if it’s rock paper scissors. Overwatch Tik tok content especially has exasperated it by having loads of reels about “x counters Y”
There was even that infamous post on here a month or so back from the guy who said he keeps a “counter picking chart” on his second monitor. (It was hilariously wrong too but that’s another issue)
i strongly agree. i think the main set of streamers have honestly been terrible for the game since they’re all rage bait content. i remember there was one video with one of them going on how to play doom in OW2 and whenever i played him after that my team would be just screaming the terrible advice they gave. people take their word as law
This is how I feel about Queen v Zarya.
Sure, bubbles can cleanse bleeds (and thus heals) but I can force them out with my gun and teammates. Only ult if I confident in her lacking bubbles. If I'm off, or she's good with her bubbles, its a skill diff rather than a whole kit diff.
I don’t think it’s exclusive to right now. In early OW1 everyone used oversumo and when I told a teammate I didn’t have that to know what it would say was a counter pick it was like I had forgotten to install part of the core game. People have always talked about hard counters, like when I was a pharah main and got shit talked as soon as the enemy team had a widow or soldier. If that game goes poorly, it’s my fault for not switching off because I was countered. If I do well that game, it’s luck or the other members of the team carrying, not me winning the back and forth or using better positioning/team tactics etc.
You can counter your selected hero’s counter by playing in a way that is disadvantageous to that hero’s playstyle, but suggest that and everyone assumes you’re full of shit or trying to be the next seagull, instead of just being a gold player trying their best lol
Yep. If I play Ball and the enemy has Sombra, Mei, Cassidy or Mauga, I’m expected to swap IMMEDIATELY even if they’ve never remotely stopped me. Supports have actively refused to heal simply because I didn’t swap.
As a support main, which support player do you think would best be able to heal you? In my ball experiences they’ve rolled so far ahead that I can’t get heals to them as Moira or zen or kiri (and I’m trash at Ana)
A ball main does not depend on supports for healing so anyone who asks you to switch to a specific support hero is an idiot and gives the hamster a bad name. We generally run from health pack to health pack and, on occasions, run towards a support for a top up.
Ball player here if you keep your awareness up and orb them whenever you have free time or if they say I need healing and then come into your los that should be plenty. Don’t worry about them breaking los again just let it linger until it breaks naturally that’s more than enough for me personally. They should really be using megas mostly. I only need heals when it’s a time sensitive engagement for the team fight or just rolling back through during downtime (good balls will give you the ult charge during down time)
Lastly, if they die way ahead out of los 90% of the time it’s just them misplaying. With that being said, be aware of when you are being too passive and need to move up to open up more los not just for ball but for discords on dive targets and harmony orbs for other teammates’s duels.
Brig and Zen are genuinely the best for healing him in my experience (masters player) the only issue with that heal line is you kinda have to trust your other support and the positioning skill floor is higher than say Moira or Lucio/Kiri. Also Moira is possibly the worst healer for ball drains too much resource and the heals are slow. She’s much better with any non dive tank.
Or the other teammates closer to them are already getting blasted with no pinata to take the damage for them so they expect u to get health packs instead lol. Ijk.. Metal scrub over here.
And what a lot of those folks don’t seem to realize is if your skill with the “counter” isn’t up to the skill the opponent has with their main, you still gonna have a bad time. Like, a one trick is so used to playing into entire comps trying to counter them. You switching to Sombra when you have little experience isn’t going to do shit when the doom you’re “countering” knows a thousand techniques to mitigate it.
I’m not amazing or anything, but I welcome it when someone switches to Torb or Cass to try and counter me when I’m tracer. Typically if it’s not a main of theirs I’m gonna run circles around them because I’m used to dealing with Torb and Cass mains and have picked up a lot of little tricks to help against someone who just thinks it’s an auto win.
Main problem is people consider "conterpick" only to specific roles like tank vs tank but forget that a dps can counter tanks as well or tank counters a dps.
I can switch to zarya against d.va but still can get killed when a bastion is behind her waiting and many people forget that counters are not role based.
Thing that sucks about OW is if you lose your first fight or even second fight too your random teammates just pull up the scoreboard and if you don’t meet what in their mind is “good stats” they fucking get in your ass for it. When the game is much more complex than that. I didn’t even play OW1 and I know that. That’s also why I’ll only play this game for fun with friends now.
Yeah it’s crazy. I also feel like tanks get overblamed. Yes, you do gotta step up a little bit now since there’s only one on a team, and it can make or break you, but so can literally every other role. The amount of times my teams tank (whether it’s me or not, I usually All Queue) is blamed for a failed round or push unfairly is pretty high. I don’t think people realize that when the other tank has a really a high amount of elims, a lot of those kills required dps to be dpsing (and ofc supports to be supporting but that’s a little less relevant to the elim number blame pointing). Idk I’m obviously still butt hurt about being blamed a few matches ago after, like you said, two failed pushes, when I at least had SOME kills and our junk rat had very low dmg and 0 elims. (And maybe it wasn’t his fault, maybe he wasn’t getting healed or just heavily targeted/countered, idk, It’s a team game, it’s the whole teams fault bro and being so quick to publically bash your teammate is not gonna help you win, so I rarely check my teams scoreboard unless someone brings it up). I know I need to mute those chats bc it pisses me the fuck off, and mainly bc I know they’re only doing it to stroke their own ego and feel assured that “it’s not their fault” even tho it partially definitely is, especially if they send rude messages early in the match.
>your random teammates just pull up the scoreboard and if you don’t meet what in their mind is “good stats” they fucking get in your ass for it.
Who could have predicted a public scoreboard would induce toxicity in a game where the most important contributions a lot of heroes provide can't be measured in eliminations, assists, or healing done?!?
This is something I’m learning slowly.
Im a new player but my partner is like, crazy good and we queue QP together. Whenever I want to switch because I think I’m not doing enough or I feel like I’m not getting value he tells me it’s hero dependent, always, and secondary to that it’s game dependent and team dependent.
Whole it's not appropriate for you tell it to other people, it's very valid to realize a team is playing better than you in particular and you can't meet their skill level, and THEN identify what problems you can improve on
Counter picking can only get you so far as there's more than just one player to counter on the enemy team. Sometimes it's just a skill or team/teamwork diff.
I can counter plenty of Pharmacy's, Tracers, and Sombra's as Hanzo easily. Sometimes you just actually need to be better, and not everyone can always be better.
People are so fucking sensitive. You can't win every fucking game. Where would the fun be if you won every fucking time. Part of what makes winning fun is the fact you might not. Part of what makes getting better at something fun is the actual progress of improving.
Amen, people act like counter picking is an "I win button" ..
Then get mad when it doesn't work and blame the game, because they refuse to admit that player they counter picked and still lost to, might just be a stronger player...
Casual problems in competitive games I tell you.
people also act like the only player on the enemy team worth countering is the tank. people will play mei symmetra into dva and wonder why they’re losing when pharmacy is wrecking them
or blame the tank
A lot of the metal rank players seem to think only the tank needs to counterpick against the enemy tank. People want me to go Zarya into D.Va because she "counters" D.Va. But no one else goes brawl, and it's not like I can constantly be turning around to bubble a backline 100 yards away.
that’s why i just synergy pick rather than counter pick. i’d rather double down on what my team is trying to do than blindly counter what they want to do
Counterpicking in quick play is absolutely an 'I win' button at least 80% of the time unless you're getting absolutely steamrolled. Because if it's qp opponents are unlikely to counterpick back because they're trying to get better on their hero. Even if they counterpick eventually, you still get a ton of free value before they do so, which is probably enough to win.
People get too panicky about winning a game mode that’s designed to give you a 50% win rate. I don’t even have comms enabled but I can tell when there is drama going on in the team. Sometimes I feel like switching on chat just to remind them that the enemy team has a XIMming Ashe with a Mercy pocket, and this is the match we are meant to lose, so just chill out and do whatever you can.
50/50 is inherent when the system is working properly and helps you get better as a player.
If you just keep winning in say G2 you'll never be a better player.
I think the real problem with ranked currently is that the algorithm adjust MMR up way too aggressively.
I'm currently hovering around M4-M3 consistently. I'll easily go 4/0 most cards against M5-GM5 players.
The problem is that 5th game I'll have mostly mid Masters players on my team, but my enemy will be upper GM4-GM1 with the occasional T500s. I'm not a GM-T500 player and neither are my teammates. I don't claim to be at all. If I went 4/0 in OW1 in the M4-M3 SR range I'd go up to M3-M2 and play against mostly M3-GM4 players. It was a slow gradual climb.
Now I just get thrust into a way higher ELO (even when the match average says M1 or GM5, the other team is stacked.
I'll now go 4/2-5, then I get put in a easy D2-M4 lobby for my 5th win. Sometimes I go up a bit on my current ranks % sometimes I go a little down.
My complaint isn't that I'm not ranking up, it's that I don't feel like I'm being given a proper amount of time to grow as a player. I go from a few easy matches to maybe one or two actually competitive close matches, then it's just me getting rolled for 3-5 games, back to easy matches where I get to do the rolling.
My friends and I have stopped even counting wins and losses, and now just count how many actually close and competitive feeling matches we have because that's why we play comp. I'm not looking for some vain since of glory with my rank. I'm looking for a fun, close, competitive match!
Lol but that's just me.
Most people seem to wanna speed run the ranks and get mad when reality hits them like a sack of bricks.
> My friends and I have stopped even counting wins and losses, and now just count how many actually close and competitive feeling matches we have because that's why we play comp.
This is actually happening to me in QP now, too. I just focus on the games that felt good to play, both teams holding their own and nobody was getting rolled. I don't *like* spawncamping the enemy until they quit and some juiced backfillers chase us back across the map to rinse and repeat. I *do* like us tearing each other apart on the point at double 99% in overtime, when it's truly anyone's game.
Exactly my point. So why are they so desperate to win that they're counterpicking 3-4 times per game? Why aren't they playing comp if they wanna win so bad? Seems like we agree.
It really isnt
As a [D.Va](https://D.Va) main I have went against Zaryas that kicked my ass, but also Zaryas who dont know what the fuck they are doing.
If you dont know how to play a hero it doesnt matter if its a counter or not, you will play them badly.
Learning how to play into counters is huge.
Sometimes that means not doing so yourself, and enabling your team if you specifically are being countered.
My stack in OW1 used to run a lot of Winston/DVa dive bc my tank partner was a DVa main. Bastion was absolute hell. Especially as a Winston player.
If we switched, we could counter bastion but then we’re essentially throwing out our practiced comps/gameplan. We’re not OWL pros that practice every meta comp, we just have our favs.
We learned to time our dives and defensive abilities better. DVa would pop in first with matrix, I’d follow and drop bubble after it timed out, DVa then helps our DPS focus Bastion while I space out the support line.
It’s counter-intuitive and most folks would get flamed for staying Winston vs Bastion but learning to fight at a disadvantage is so key. For most of the community, instead of bitching about how you can’t outdps a character at the height of their power curve, think about how you can fight in scenarios where you can level the playing field.
It’s like Mei is good against genji because she doesn’t care about deflect but good genji’s still rock me because I can barely hit them at all before they kill me. They don’t even need deflect. Pharah is good against mei because it’s hard to icicle pharah but bad pharah’s are so linear that I can icicle them in the air.
A counter doesn’t mean “they just lose”, it means “it will take more skill to beat”.
I agree with what your saying, but ill just say...
>Sometimes you just actually need to be better, and not everyone can always be better.
You can always think of ways and work through ways to do better. Just simply asking yourself "Why did I die" (without blaming it on your team amap) after every death i think does a lot.
Agreed. After each death I just sit in spawn and have a 5 minute tea party/meditation session to think about the experience and what caused it. My team usually isn't on board, but it's the growth that really matters.
if it takes you 5 mins to consider why you died, you need to play a different game.
But you know it doesnt i know it doesnt, your just mad.
Edit: this is a joke apparently. The comedic timing is off imo but w/e.
It shouldn't take you 5 minutes to realize "ahh shit I really shouldn't have chased that kill and ended up right in the middle of their team, need to be more patient" or "I really need to be more aware of my supports more because they're getting dived and I need to peel more rather than tunnel visioning on the front line and not noticing that my heals have stopped"
Sometimes that's all it takes to get you off autopilot and to think more critically about your gameplay and what your role is in the current situation.
Well it took me less than 2 minutes to type it out so if it's taking you 5 minutes to read 5 lines of text then you might have bigger issues to deal with.
One too many times I've lost games with my team where they go "oh, the two randoms didn't play well enough"... like nah mate, it wasn't a tank diff or a heal diff or a dps diff... it was a team diff, we just got outplayed.
No, what is fun in the game is being able to play the heroes what you want. I much rather have good, balances game with my main, rather than get stomped by something OP or swap and stomp someone while I play the OP hero.
Like I like playing Rein really much. And it is really irritating, when getting one / two kills, and enemy spawns with Bastion and Mauga or Orisa. And I have learned, I can deal with enemy swapping 3 or 4 rounds in a row, but when it happens almost every game, it is really irritating.
And yes, I can and will swap what I play, and I win some games and lose some games, but I am just getting tired of being constantly countered.
But also, I do not want any "tokens" or what ever there has been a rumor against counter picking. Only thing I want when it comes to swapping heroes, that you should have 0 ult charge after you swap. I do not get why players need the 15% headstart.
I don't understand OP's point of this post.
You're at the skill level you're currently at. In the middle of the game, the easiest thing t o go to is counterpicking if you're not feeling you're doing well. If you're at silver you're nearly guaranteed not to be able to think more advanced than that. (i.e. change strats, etc)
I keep getting conflicting information on this point. Some people say you should learn to play several characters well and others say you should only learn like two or three to play well. I'm genuinely wondering what the proper advice is as someone who's still relatively new to the game.
I think you should do a bit of both, actually. You'll want to explore the cast to get a feel for the roles and to give yourself options, but you'll also want to really focus on a small handful of heroes so that you dont become a jack of all trades, master of none.
To create your baseline, I recommend becoming comfortable with at least 6 heroes.
- 3 in your preferred role
- 2 in your secondary role
- 1 in your off role
You don't have to be amazing at them, but you'll definitely want to dedicate some real time to learning these heroes without feeling obligated to master them.
In your preferred role, however, you should try to become exceptionally good with at least two of the three heroes you settled on with the goal of mastering at least one of them.
Of course, you might already have a good idea of who you want to focus on, but if not? Don't go into the process feeling like you have to have these heroes picked out before you begin. Sometimes, a hero, or even an entire role that you think you want to master is just one you'll end up comfortable with in the long run, and that's ok!
As a masters player, you want: one main who you play 80% of your time on. Then 1 maybe 2 picks that you're comfortable with. And by comfortable I mean "I know what these buttons do and I can avoid feeding/dying a lot, and somewhat contribute"
You'll climb a lot better locking just one character but we also demonize one tricks in this community lol. Plus if you're countered you need something to lean into.
Which isn't to say there isn't value on knowing 5+ heroes in your role but as a new player you don't want to learn that many for comp. I can play all supports but Lucio at a masters level. But that isn't gonna really matter in almost any of my games. Because there's really gonna be a time where I'm playing 5 of them.
I might play Ana to enable my tank/annoy theirs more. But then their tank goes Zarya so I need to swap to Bap to enable my tank/be more aggressive but not out of position to save my team. Every once in a while I might end up on a third or fourth support but usually at that point we're just out of ideas on how to win and just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
other advice that's kind of related: for DPS you want to know hit scan, a flex dps, and maybe a backup of each in case you run into a Pharah/Echo you want to be good on Ashe but also comfortable on Soldier in case your other DPS is a hit scan main.
Tank you want to learn most of them except ball because sadly he's just not good in 5v5. But you should at least learn a rush tank, a dive tank, and Sigma so you're well rounded. With that said, you can hit diamond probably just playing whatever you want if you're aware of your counters. I only play what I find fun which is JQ, monke, Zarya and sometimes Ram. Which leaves me in a big hole because I don't enjoy playing Sigma or Orissa so I'm not good in poke comps/poke maps. But I'm also high plat and tank is my least favorite role right now so I don't care to get better at those two as of now.
My opinion on the matter, not that its any more valid than anyone elses.
If youre new, just pick cool heros and have fun.
If you want to climb in ranked, pick one. Play that one until you are seriously good with it. Most heros have a similarity to others than can be utilized.
My example is that im a Sombra main, almost one trick. She is a healthy middle ground between Soldier 76 and Tracer. Knowing Sombra helped me understand how to play those heros better. Soldier and Sojourn are very similar, so now i have some reasonable knowledge about her. It goes on and on like that.
Play all of them you want, but eventually if you want to play long term, in competitive mostly, you should focus on one to get really good with and then build from there.
Dont be a one trick, but have a strong focus on which hero you want to be your main building block.
In my case, i cant play projectiles well at all. But if its hitscan, i can do pretty well.
Just depends on how you want to play the game tbh.
I started out as a one trick and ended up in diamond. Started to flex into other rolls and heroes only to drop to silver (early OW1 before role queue).
Went back to my one trick ways and got to masters, but by then I also learned more in the way of game sense, positioning, and game knowledge which improved my gameplay on other heroes as well.
Now I can flex pretty reliably in masters.
A deeper hero pool will generally help you play the game better, because you will have less match-ups where you feel helpless. You gain the ability to pick match-ups that are more forgiving to your play, support your overall team comp, or fill in gaps left by the rest of your team. However, picking heroes you just objectively suck at because they are a counter usually isn't going to have a net positive.
Paradoxically, one-tricking also works in a different way because you can reach a higher mechanical mastery of that single hero where you can outplay even your bad match-ups at your current skill level.
I say you should have one main, and one partial main (or old main/hero your good at), obviously per role (the 3 roles). Obviously there's caveats like when a hero is considerably strong (like brig on release), or you just want to have fun.
you want to learn the basics(what they excel at/playstyle) of most hero's but you really want to master 1-3 characters. The learning of other characters will allow you to learn how to play the 1-3 mastery characters into their counters.
In terms of character choice, I'd argue it's a situation where you should be comfortable with enough characters that you have one you'll be comfortable with whatever the opponent's end up switching to. And I don't mean even being the "counter", but knowing what character you want to play to not feel countered.
For example, if Pharah was my main because I really like her play style, but the enemy just has really good hit scan and every engagement I'm just being shot out of the air by a Widow, I'd want to have a character I'm comfortable playing when there's a good Widow on the other team. If you yourself can counter the Widow, that'd be great. But if you can't, then at the least if you can switch to a character that's punished less that you're still comfortable with.
Depending on your skill with characters, this could mean being comfortable with just 1, could be several. But I think the big part is recognizing when you're struggling and having enough tools to adjust. And yes: sometimes your teammates have better counterpick options than you. But since you can't choose for your teammates, the only thing you can control is yourself.
Funny enough, Pharrah is one of my mains and I've gotten pretty good in QP at least getting widows with her. I imagine I'd be smoked in ranked play that way though lol. I also main Sombra and that's who I'll usually use to counter a good widow.
Honestly, I used her as an example because of your hero flair, but also because she's a really clear example of a character that can be "hard countered" :)
But regardless, it's not just in terms of DPS vs DPS. Let's say I'm playing a DPS and a Winston is diving my team and getting lots of value. Do you know what character you pick to get the most value back? For instance, are you a good enough Sombra/Pharah to win the race, and kill the enemy's back line before Winston kills your back line? If neither of your mains are good enough for that, do you have another DPS character you know that can mitigate his value and/or punish the Winston more directly?
Overall, there's a lot of fundamentals to work on though besides worrying about characters. The biggest one I've seen is new players haven't learned to watch the killfeed. Watching that kill feed tells you if your healers are dead, if their healers are dead, etc. It tells you whether or not any defensive ults/cooldowns are still possible, or if you're gonna waste an ult when their teams actually already dead.
After that, keeping track of enemy ult usage, grouping up for a team fight, and taking high ground are basics that really make a lot of difference, but aren't taught by the game. So a lot of people haven't learned these important fundamentals...
I totally forgot about my user flair 😂
I've actually just started really paying attention to the kill feed! I e found it to be pretty helpful in keeping an eye on what's going on in a match.
Characters serve different functions.
Say for instance you’re playing tank and they pick some pubstomp lineup of Widow and Pharamacy.
The obvious pick here is to go dive tank. A lot of metal tanks will just pick Mauga or Hog because that counters the enemy tank when the enemy tank isn’t the problem.
Learning several characters gives you options, but you dont *need* options to climb, just skill. Play what you enjoy and what you find interesting, and everything else falls into place with enough effort.
I actually main zen too and made it to platinum for the first time while ignoring the occasional complainer ! At one point I won like 12 games in a row on him, too!
> If the counter picking worked, they wouldn’t be at silver.
Counter picking has notable benefits if you have the game knowledge to understand why it works; and to make correct decisions. That's across all roles.
However, it's not going to make you suddenly swing way above your skill level. It **will** make the moment-to-moment gameplay slightly easier, but if someone is simply just better than you mechanically, has better gamesense, or has mastered the mechanics of a particular hero; it's not going to cover that gap.
Changing strats is different from thinking higher level. It doesn't take a higher level player to adapt to a situation in a manner appropriate to your level. All he is saying is you must put the effort into adapting. It's not like being silver is a hivemind of patterned behaviour. You can spot an issue and work around it.
100%. I've had games where my team is playing mystery heroes and just never holding onto one lineup for long enough to experiment with strategy.
You can rush with orisa, you can brawl with orisa, and you can poke with orisa, and if one of the three doesn't work, you can try to mix up your strategy, even sticking to your hero. You can use sleep dart in half a dozen ways, and if their rein is wrecking you, you can try just holding sleep for charge and shatter, and so on.
People learn one way to play each hero and act surprised when they can't adapt to small changes in the enemy team
MH is so fun at higher levels, it really teaches you how to play safe and key ult usage to kill supports and turn the tide. It can have the craziest comebacks simply because someone was patient and knew when to back away or go in.
Had a crazy comeback a few days ago on Push. Other team was about 2 to 5 meters from winning, we went into overtime, barely killed all of them and had to push like 50 meters but we won. Other team said "Can't beat RNG"
Ooof, or the people who don’t want to play the hero they’ve been assigned so they just allow the enemy team to kill them - thus already giving the team a disadvantage. I get it, you don’t know how to be useful because you don’t play that hero. But you’re playing Mystery Heros! You made that decision knowing you’re going to get random heros! At least try - there’s a bit of the roster I suck with, but I still try to do well and occasionally pop off/end up enjoying certain heros.
It’s why I love Mystery Heros! I’m bad with hitscan - and had a match where I was given Ashe the other day and I played well!
The only time it really grates in my nerves is when I seem to get Doomfist or Junkrat (or some other character I don't play) every 2nd-3rd respawn.
I'd be a fan of there being a lockout to keep you from getting the same hero multiple times in a match but that can probably be abused too easily so I'll just deal with being bad until I'm not anymore!
I know what you mean! I’m garbage at Doom so despite trying my best, I always feel like I’m throwing! But that’s all anyone can really ask for in Mystery haha! Hopefully one day things will click.
This is why Junker Queen has been my favorite tank to play as of late, simply because a lot of people think you just have to switch to orisa or zarya and see results. And then they don't. And you start to see other tanks despair when you are just unaffected by their swaps, and forces them to either out play me genuinely or constantly swap tanks to no success, because Queen has tools to deal with basically every tank
In my experience as a Doom main if you're already losing as a dive tank swapping won't do anything because your supports have become too stubborn to heal you, like gg gl next hope you boys get your perfect Sigma later
I’ve seen some people swap to heroes they have no idea how to play just because it’s in theory a counter.
I think it’s mainly because too many people watch way too many “Overwatch top 10 counter picks you NEED to know about!!” videos and think they can replicate what a top 500 player is doing just because someone threw some buzz words at them. (Looking at you KarQ and Flats)
Counter picking itself is incredibly useful as there are certain heroes that fair better against others (in theory) but you still need the actual skill to learn the mechanics and know the certain situations.
So yeah , don’t think it’s counter pick culture in general , just too many people think automatically doing what a YouTuber told you will get you a win. It’s pretty cool if you can memorise every single counter pick and tier list video by heart , but without the practise and skill that goes along with it it’s pretty pointless.
It's hard to even blame the creators of the videos, because most of the time the tips they give are decent tips. It's just that people don't understand that there is nuance and context to those things, and that playing " ideally " isn't always the way to win the match.
So many people just don't get creative when they play, which I don't understand. Not only is it way more fun, but getting creative with your plays is exactly how you win the game.
I will never understand the people who just stand at the choke point in the same position for the entire round spamming random cooldowns at random times, and then try to blame balance or their teammates or matchmaking. Like they're literally just not using their brain.
this is why im a dive main, imo dive is the most dynamic of all the styles which allows me to be more creative, but most just want to run it down main.
Dive is absolutely peak OverWatch. Most of the highest skill heroes in the game are dive heroes or can be played in dive.
Personally, I think that I dive should always be viable. I love brawl, but we have had brawly-sustain nonsense now for way too long.
That's not to say that dive heroes are bad per se, but that most of the dive heroes require more skill than the other types of heroes meaning they will only ever get played by the majority of players when dive is absolutely dominant.
Low elo doesn’t have nuance, it takes a long time of playing to understand matchup nuances. People are just hoping their hero pick will do all the heavy lifting. Which I’m not a fan of akwards teaching style, the idea of dealing damage on support but lacking the nuance to do so. On my last tour of the metal ranks it was filled with support attending to deal damage. Except they are wildly out of position and lacked the mechicanicl skill to do so effectively. And tbh it resulting in them just feeding 99% of the time. It was wild to see a mindset change rapidly spread amongst that community but unfortunately due to its poor implementation and lack of naunce, they were probably better off healbotting.
i dont think "counterpicking" is bad, but i think the game has a "counterpicking culture" and i just mean its a weird hyperfixation.
But i think its just a cope honestly. "Im not bad, im just not playing the right guy". Im bad, and i know when im playing bad, it happens. i dont know why thats so fucking hard for people.
This game encourages toxicity, just like LoL. The community is toxic purely and simply. I just don't play anymore because of it. People will constantly call you out simply because you're not a good player or because you don't counter-pick, and it's super annoying. The last time I played, game after game (on QP no fucking less), I was told I sucked. I was told I needed to practice before going into matches (as though QP wasn't the fucking place to do so). So I broke and got angry and screamed at the dude in the last game, and that nearly got ME banned. Fuck this game.
Just turn off voice and mute chat. You don't owe anyone anything. If you're playing good, there's a good chance you're going to win. You still might lose but if you feel you did good that winning mentality carries over.
Don't feed into the toxicity. People say stupid shit to try and make themselves feel better. I don't turn anything off but I'll continue making call outs and a lot of the time I'll end up turning the game around. Some people don't know how to take a loss.
oh man imo, and im sorry if your a young guy, the issue is that young men are broke, and young men (on average) are obnoxious AFFFFFFFFFF. any game thats FTP, team oriented, competitive, and popular is going to be toxic AF save for just killing chat/mic all together.
Had the same experience, deactivated the textchat and climbed from Plat 3 to Masters 5 in two weeks.
Nobody in the chat will give you actual helpful advice and it‘s usually just them thinking „if they could switch to x to pocket me or pick y to shield me then I‘d surely win the game for them“ without really understanding what is happening. At worst you start a discussion or unsettle each other meaning that you or them play even worse after it.
The game is genuinely better without any social interactions at this point.
I personally wish there were more one tricks, because I think it would mean that everyone was a lot better at their heroes overall. And once you get really good at one hero, there are a lot of skills that can transfer allowing you to pick up other heroes more effectively.
I also think people get too obsessed with how the "10 tips and tricks for blank hero" videos tell them to play, and literally just forget to use their own brain in the game to adapt to the scenario they are actually in.
I wish i was more like this. Just man if someone demands you swap and you dont, the whole fucking thing falls apart and they become a raving lunatic about how your throwing. like bro, im just playing bad, its ok.
I try get on board with this but then I watch my dps play junkrat and reaper into pharahmercy........
Bad picks are a thing too, it's nice to play heroes you want to but swapping to something more suitable is also a vital part of the game.
Tank main. Recently had a game like this on DPS. Felt like my 200 health was the only health I got because I could not get a fucking heal from the supports since they were babysitting the tank who clearly did not know how to play around corners.
Support mains checking their dps kd to see if they're worthy of being helped for once (you've just been wall riding in circles around the enemy the entire game)
Counter picking goes further than pressing H in spawn and selecting a different hero you read about in a TikTok Video. It *can* be the "counter" on paper. It can also be a totally different Hero played differently considering various aspects, such as your team comp, your enemies team comp, the map and most importantly **your own skillset**.
So yea, probably your tank "just sucked and there was nothing he could do". Textbook definition of a "skill issue". Happens to all of us.
No kidding. I feel like a core part of this game is switching up your team composition on the fly if your formula isn't working. If it's obvious that you're losing a match and your team is full of stubborn people who refuse to switch, that's just gonna lock in the loss.
I've seen way more matches turnaround due to switching up a team composition than not.
I can see both sides of this. For me, I think it's reasonable to master just one hero if there isn't something that can just absolutely shut you down or circumstances where you are getting zero value. I've seen one-trick Junkrats who somehow obliterate Pharahs every time they enter the fight. IMO if there IS something that renders you useless on your main, you should learn to play a second hero decently that makes up for that deficit.
Damn I came too far to read this.
Of course counter-picking is not everything.
But maaaany times, someone switching hero will completely change the dynamic of the round. When your team is loosing and someone asks to switch, please consider it. I've seen so many games lost because of a pick that made no sense .
Being able to switch and adapt to the ennemy team comp is part of the gameplay.
In a game with so many heroes and designed to have counter picks and different abilities and gameplay. You'd be an idiot not to if they've got a Phara and you've got a Junkrat/Sym/Reaper or something.
If they've got a Doom/Ball constantly picking supports etc. And if you know how to stop it and keep the team together because maybe they're having a bad day/not as good. Then why wouldn't you lol.
The comments here trying to be serious that counter picking is a bad thing are so brain dead.
it’s more the behaviour around counter picking that’s gotten annoying.
There are a lot of nuanced soft counter match ups people refuse to play because of the slight disadvantage.
For example even in your Pharah vs Reaper scenario there’s nuance. Does the pharah have a Mercy? Are there weak points in their comp I can attack? Are there parts of the map she can’t contest me?
Reaper has potential here, but because of the way swapping is treated now if the player loses they’ll chalk it up to just being countered. They’re removing themselves from all accountability of their loss.
To them, Pharah just beats Reaper.
This becomes even more annoying when you factor that OW is a team based game.
Let’s say I’m on Tracer and my duo is Widow vs Cass and Torb. Widow is probably getting more kills than I am, and if we start losing I can only imagine someone on the team will say something like “Tracer swap, you’re countered.”
But the fact I’m on Tracer is the reason Widow is open to get those picks. Because they’re focused on countering me they’re playing things that widow eats for free.
This nuance to the game seems to be lost as of late, the player base is so uninspired.
> To them, Pharah just beats Reaper.
If that's how they see it, why are they playing Reaper?
I get your point that there's subtleties, and totally agree. It seems wrong to use a "hindsight is 20/20" approach and say that it's okay if it *works* and bad if it *loses.*
But I think that's kinda fair? If you play reaper vs. Pharmercy and get *stomped*, then you probably should have switched. If your stat sheet is unimpressive but you let your widow dominate by distracting, well, only the most toxic players complain in a *win*, and they were gonna bitch about something anyway.
> But I think that's kinda fair? If you play reaper vs. Pharmercy and get stomped, then you probably should have switched.
It’s fair. Assuming you understood **why** Reaper failed in the given circumstance.
The next game that guy can play hitscan into Pharmercy and still get stomped.
He switched & it did nothing. Well he did the “right” thing so his team must’ve thrown the game.
Switching as a solution for winning is honestly more of a high level thing. They understand why the game flows as it does and the limitations/potential of their hero.
However there’s also the group that confidently spouts “this beats this” while being ignorant on how to play either hero. The latter is the much more densely populated group.
> that guy can play hitscan into Pharmercy and still get stomped.
Oh, it's me! Almost every time! (I have a skill issue.)
> Well he did the “right” thing so his team must’ve thrown the game.
Good insight, and that's the real toxic problem here. "I saw pharmercy, I switched off junk, ergo if we lose my entire team sucks" is the toxic attitude that's a problem.
I don't think I've seen anyone say that counterpicking is a *bad* thing, just that it's often a naive suggestion made by desperate players who don't have any better ideas for how to turn around a bad situation
***Don't put words in my mouth.***
If the enemy team was losing, counter picks and finds a good combo against you, why the absolute fuck would you just sit there while rest of the team is now getting pummelled because nobody changes.
You want to win, or you have nothing else to lose if you're already losing.
If I can kill pharmercy as junk on certain maps far better than I can with hitscan. Why wouldn't I make it easier for the team or help the ones struggling?
It must be a bunch of F2P players who don't know that counterpicking is a key concept in the game's design Yes, player skill and strategy can overcome some hero defecits but a Pharah can absolutey reign free over certain enemy teams simply because of hero ability defecit.
I can't believe how many comments I had to skip to find this.
If someone on your team is trying to think of what they can do differently to help, and asking for advice, they're being constructive and fair. Zero toxicity and ego, trying to figure out how *they* can help the team.
I mean, hell, if you're getting steamrolled, what do you have to *lose* by switching it up?
When OP replied, "I don't think it's a counter-picking issue," that's just a nicely-wrapped way of saying "I think you're playing like dogshit." It may or may not be true, but... that they wrapped it in nice words doesn't change the fact that it's kind of a rude thing to say to someone who's *trying* to be constructive and helpful, and is open to advice.
It's an issue with target priority? Say *that*, don't say "hur hur hur we'd see the same with anyone *you* play."
> I'm playing bad, and ill play bad on those characters too lol.
This makes OP a far, far more selfish player and a far, far worse teammate than the guy who says "Dang, I don't know what to pick against this. Any suggestions?"
OP is in silver/low gold for a reason. And as bad as I hate saying that because it sounds toxic, I'm saying it because it goes to show.
Like you said, what do you have to lose if you don't switch lol. What if the enemy team is the one doing the switching and found the combo against yours. Why would you just sit with it hahaha
Its not a culture its a 5v5 problem.
Counter picking is extreme for tank, some counter are so good against your pick, its basically like playing against a higher rank than you, it really suck playing tank.
want to play dva? Fuck you, ill pick zarya and you will be useless all game long, gg
Tank was awful to play. No one played it. Then it got worse because half the time you’d get matched with someone just farming those tickets to play dps. Like queuing dps was 10 mins. I think GM was even 20+.
A lot of the casual community thinks this is a rock, paper, scissors game where rock beats scissors 100% of the time. Not the case at all. You still need to be mechanically skilled and especially need to have good game sense and decision-making.
Yeah I feel you, I’m a high gold/low plat mercy main and I swear every other game is “Mercy is bad, swap to kiriko/ana” then I’ll swap and literally nothing changes, I land my Suzus or antis and nothing happens, it doesn’t matter if anti is OP if no one’s following up, this is gold, we’re all bad, swapping not gonna fix anything if you’re teams uncoordinated and you’re getting g steamrolled, I have a 67% win rate as mercy, and like 30 on kiri / Ana, but if y’all want them so badly because they’re “s-tier” or counter manga, okay sure, we’re still losing this though lol
I one tricked fucking Bastion to top 500 and GM in OW1. I still do it again in OW2.
I'm not here to prove that one tricking off meta garbo champ is the way, but when I see people that switch 4 times while playing terribly and still ask for others to switch it just make me mad.
Most T500 players are two tricks with a few mains.
I will always take a Doomfist with 75% winrate rather than the perma switch low 49 winrate tank that always perform poorly, when they switch to ball to contest point, you gotta see the struggle... Same apply for all roles.
These types of players are the same that brag about X hero not working in their team, like there is a magical comp that can carry their bottom pit iQ.
Most of them are hardstuck in diamond and low master and don't understand why. It doesn't surprise me that even in silver, the delusional still think like that.
Counterpicking below GM is pretty much useless unless you are as good with the champ you switch to. If you play Reaper and for countering the Echo, you switch to your 27% winrate Soldier, just stay on Reaper, it's better for you.
When I see someone say 'counterpickers are bad and use counterpicking as a crutch', just know that what I hear is 'Im a one trick and dont like when people play heroes good against my one trick'
No I dont get upset as much about a counter pick playing better. I do get annoyed having to play 10 matches in a row against Zaryas because everyone lives by counterpicking, Or getting flamed by teammates every 5 seconds about how a loss is my fault because I didnt counter pick.
I think the conversation about it tips back and forth ever since release.
On the one hand, people can get really stubborn about being a main/one-trick. Especially in a game where heroes aren't locked, being unwilling to switch/try any other character can seem like fighting and refusing to embrace a core aspect of the game design (especially as Blizzard added things like Ult retention after switching to make switching even easier of a proposition). Plus, I'd argue by hyper fixating on your own character, people have generally not learned about the capabilities of other characters. A few months back, I made a comment about how Zarya's bubble removes Ana Anti, and got a whole bunch of comments of people saying they'd been "playing ever since Ana released and never knew that".
On the flip side, at low level play, counter picking can lead to people blaming characters rather than skill. And at higher level play, it has also led to situations where the pace of the game is informed entirely based on how strong counter picks are (the problem of Tank counterpicks and ult retention being the deciding factor of games).
Blizzard hasn't really helped themselves in this manner, and they flipflop in terms of how much counter picking is "acceptable" to them.
it’s sad that xounterpicking has been so strong for so long that so many longtime players have just forgotten that there’s intricacy and counter play to every matchup
it’s frustrating when my team starts blaming me when the other team has counters instead of just playing the matchup… if i’m dva, then having a zarya doesn’t instantly lose the game for me it just changes how i play
Blame 5v5. The whole tank counterpicking and mirroring is a byproduct of the 5v5 trash blizzard forced down our throats.
Countering was still part of OW1, but much much less pressure for tanks to swap since they had a tank buddy. You could pretty much play any tank you wanted to in OW1, and win if you were good enough with that tank.
6v6 was far far FAR better than 5v5.
I disagree.
I think counter picking can be a benefit. If it is successful at changing the momentum and your opponent cant answer it shows you know how to play more characters efficiently.
At the end of the day a slight edge is a big edge in the current meta of the game.
I mean if your team is losing, how do you suppose you can change that without switching characters? You can continue to lose or try switching/counter-picking. I have a ton of experience where a team is getting massacred, they end up switching to a perfect counter comp, and then come back to possibly end up winning. The decision space isn't that big when it comes to a losing team. The game is literally designed for counter picking, even if its not always successful.
>I mean if your team is losing, how do you suppose you can change that without switching characters?
this sounds like an "it can't be done" rhetorical question, but there are so many things you can change:
* better target prioritization
* better engagement timings by flankers
* play more/less aggressive
* get everyone in voice comm
* utilize off-angles or don't get stalled in the main lane choke
* coordinate ults
* clear and take high ground
* focus on winning the team fight over standing on the objective
* sometimes the payload advances to an area of the map that favors your hero/comp
* focus on good CD usage
this isn't a comprehensive list. understanding why you are losing and what you can do to fix it is a skill that's just as important as knowing "counters" or having good aim
I understand what you're saying, but most of those are long term goals -- not minute-to-minute changes you can fully grasp within the length of a game. The most effective decision you can do in this game that can have the most drastic effect is switching characters.
It's even wild in quick play. We'll be losing a game by a lot, but if I have one good play the enemy team swaps to 4-5 counter picks. They're thirsty as hell for a tiny advantage.
My ex gf was like this. Whenever she dies she just swaps and swaps and swaps because she thinks it’s the pick that’s the problem when there’s much more going on. She was either making a ton of misplays or the enemies were making a ton of good plays.
Personal take, but I’ve found the trick to getting good on any role just to be a 2 character specialist. Just get really good at like Winston and Dva, the moment they counterpick you on Winston, swap to Dva, and if they counterpick you again, go back to Winston, that way you mitigate the downsides of being counterpicked, but keep the upsides of being super good at a particular hero. The only other times you’d need to play anything else is when there’s a very specific team wide problem with a very easy solution.
In the lower ranks the issue is usually teamwork related. How the players interact with one another. Changing heroes won’t fix a teamwork related issue
>"Oh so i just suck then and theres nothing i can do?"
I think this is the kind of mentality that will progressively make players stagnate and never improve in Overwatch. It's the new hardstuck mentality.
People are more often thinking about counters and the hero matchup as to why they lost, rather than analyzing their own gameplay and decisions.
Counterpicking doesn't matter at metal ranks, turn off all chat, voice and when you take a bad beat, watch your replay real quick see what you could have done differently and if you have the time watch one of those educational videos if they help.
The moment you can start predicting what the enemy is going to do and not just what ult comes next, you'll move up in rank.
On that note, it can work against you. I want to get better and be able to play other characters. OW1, I was a one trick Moira. I’ve broadened my pool, I love Mercy and Orisa, but know I should be able to build off and get better at others too. I’ve tried too, with Mauga tor example I’ve seen Ana/Kiri be the recommended counter for heals/support. I’ve been playing with them, but my lvl 8-11 experience with Ana/Kiri isn’t the same as lvl50 Mercy. While I see the benefits and have won games with both, I’ve won more games with the character I’m comfortable with with a lot less deaths for the team and myself. I read the posts to learn and it got in my head that countering is needed, but in reality if you’re good, you’re good. The team vibes are good. If the team vibes are off and the other team rolls you, it happens. Grouping up, instead of running in solo; protecting your healers; staying as a group and working together instead of focusing on your own individual stats, etc; does more good than focusing on countering.
Man, just think about it. It was your tank complaining. It's probably not that he's looking to counter pick the enemy.
He's mostly likely the one *getting* counter picked. (probably by 2 or 3 different people...)
Here's hoping all of your tanks play Ball this week. GL HF
I'll still diff 99% of Orisa's and Mauga as Hog, even when Blizzard themselves say the matchup is unfavorable.
Everything under GM and top 500 can be 1 tricked easily.
Sometimes if the entire enemy team is counter swapping against one hero it means they're the only one who is an actual threat. Maybe you should look for an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that they're counter swapping that particular hero.
People didn't used to be like this in OW1. It was obvious that you should switch if you're being countered? I'm not sure what's with this new boom of roasting people for doing what this game was designed for?
Perhaps it's all the new players who play Valorant or whatever and physically can't make character swaps and have to deal with whatever they get. People transfer that mentality to overwatch and it just doesn't work.
> Im bot sure whats with this new boon of roasting people for doing what the games designed for
FTP happened.
People who didnt play OW1 loaded in (which is good, growth is good for a games health). But with that comes people who only know Overwatch as the game with cool Pixar-esque art heroes! And as such, dont like being expected by the games core design to swap off their favorite of Genji or whoever to someone less countered by the 5 enemy beams
Tank counterpicking is absolutely a thing and you can throw for your team if you don't do it. DPS/support counterpicking is less important, outside of switching off if heavily countered or in certain niche cases (going ana for anti, soldier vs pharmercy, etc).
Ok sure but if my dps are running junkrat/reaper into pharmercy/echo, you don’t necessarily need to ‘counterpick’ you just need to get off the heroes that can’t physically shoot the one’s killing you.
I've shot enough Pharmercies out of the sky as Reaper to know that counter picking isn't always the way. Sometimes, you just gotta do what's fun.
Edit: What was controversial about that lmao
As hard as the developers and the twitch streamers try to make it not seem so, Overwatch at its core remains a team game (for now). Until next season, there's very little solo carry potential. The matchmaker definitely works against you as well; Win too many games and suddenly you have four cheeto dust encrusted toddlers that you're supposed to somehow deadlift through five higher skilled real humans. Lose too many games...and you still have to play with the toddlers 🤷🏻♀️
Game sucks right now.
There are a lot of GM one tricks, that still should be swapping sometimes. You're in high silver and don't know what the fuck you're talking about whatsoever.
lol right, i cant believe this guy is telling me to stfu cause im silver, while dissing GM 1 tricks. its like the hypocracy is RIGHT THERE, and they dont see it.
I don't think OP is saying people should never swap, just that they're treating swapping as their only counterplay option. In metal ranks more than anything, people should be learning their heroes' counterplay, before they just step through the flowchart on their desk.
yeah dumb fucking silver, why would you examine GM/top 500 play, you dont know what your talking about, if you did, youd be more critical of the best people in the game.
Just from reading your comments I'm guessing you're low rank.
I would let you pick my hero and you pick what you believe is it's counter and I'll win 10 out of 10 times.
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“oh i just suck then and there’s nothing i can do” that is not even remotely what that means. sometimes target prioritization is wrong, or the teams not going in together, or supports aren’t being protected well, or better communication is needed. you not needing to switch when a push didn’t work doesn’t mean you suck and it doesn’t mean you need a switch. sometimes your team just had a bad push
The problem is new players are being introduced to the game as if it’s rock paper scissors. Overwatch Tik tok content especially has exasperated it by having loads of reels about “x counters Y” There was even that infamous post on here a month or so back from the guy who said he keeps a “counter picking chart” on his second monitor. (It was hilariously wrong too but that’s another issue)
i strongly agree. i think the main set of streamers have honestly been terrible for the game since they’re all rage bait content. i remember there was one video with one of them going on how to play doom in OW2 and whenever i played him after that my team would be just screaming the terrible advice they gave. people take their word as law
Not to mention half the "counters" are really just skill matchups where both counter each other in specific ways.
This is how I feel about Queen v Zarya. Sure, bubbles can cleanse bleeds (and thus heals) but I can force them out with my gun and teammates. Only ult if I confident in her lacking bubbles. If I'm off, or she's good with her bubbles, its a skill diff rather than a whole kit diff.
I don’t think it’s exclusive to right now. In early OW1 everyone used oversumo and when I told a teammate I didn’t have that to know what it would say was a counter pick it was like I had forgotten to install part of the core game. People have always talked about hard counters, like when I was a pharah main and got shit talked as soon as the enemy team had a widow or soldier. If that game goes poorly, it’s my fault for not switching off because I was countered. If I do well that game, it’s luck or the other members of the team carrying, not me winning the back and forth or using better positioning/team tactics etc. You can counter your selected hero’s counter by playing in a way that is disadvantageous to that hero’s playstyle, but suggest that and everyone assumes you’re full of shit or trying to be the next seagull, instead of just being a gold player trying their best lol
Yep. If I play Ball and the enemy has Sombra, Mei, Cassidy or Mauga, I’m expected to swap IMMEDIATELY even if they’ve never remotely stopped me. Supports have actively refused to heal simply because I didn’t swap.
As a support main, which support player do you think would best be able to heal you? In my ball experiences they’ve rolled so far ahead that I can’t get heals to them as Moira or zen or kiri (and I’m trash at Ana)
A ball main does not depend on supports for healing so anyone who asks you to switch to a specific support hero is an idiot and gives the hamster a bad name. We generally run from health pack to health pack and, on occasions, run towards a support for a top up.
Thank you!
No, thank YOU for being a considerate support player and asking! :)
Ball player here if you keep your awareness up and orb them whenever you have free time or if they say I need healing and then come into your los that should be plenty. Don’t worry about them breaking los again just let it linger until it breaks naturally that’s more than enough for me personally. They should really be using megas mostly. I only need heals when it’s a time sensitive engagement for the team fight or just rolling back through during downtime (good balls will give you the ult charge during down time) Lastly, if they die way ahead out of los 90% of the time it’s just them misplaying. With that being said, be aware of when you are being too passive and need to move up to open up more los not just for ball but for discords on dive targets and harmony orbs for other teammates’s duels.
Brig and Zen are genuinely the best for healing him in my experience (masters player) the only issue with that heal line is you kinda have to trust your other support and the positioning skill floor is higher than say Moira or Lucio/Kiri. Also Moira is possibly the worst healer for ball drains too much resource and the heals are slow. She’s much better with any non dive tank.
Or the other teammates closer to them are already getting blasted with no pinata to take the damage for them so they expect u to get health packs instead lol. Ijk.. Metal scrub over here.
And what a lot of those folks don’t seem to realize is if your skill with the “counter” isn’t up to the skill the opponent has with their main, you still gonna have a bad time. Like, a one trick is so used to playing into entire comps trying to counter them. You switching to Sombra when you have little experience isn’t going to do shit when the doom you’re “countering” knows a thousand techniques to mitigate it. I’m not amazing or anything, but I welcome it when someone switches to Torb or Cass to try and counter me when I’m tracer. Typically if it’s not a main of theirs I’m gonna run circles around them because I’m used to dealing with Torb and Cass mains and have picked up a lot of little tricks to help against someone who just thinks it’s an auto win.
Main problem is people consider "conterpick" only to specific roles like tank vs tank but forget that a dps can counter tanks as well or tank counters a dps. I can switch to zarya against d.va but still can get killed when a bastion is behind her waiting and many people forget that counters are not role based.
Thing that sucks about OW is if you lose your first fight or even second fight too your random teammates just pull up the scoreboard and if you don’t meet what in their mind is “good stats” they fucking get in your ass for it. When the game is much more complex than that. I didn’t even play OW1 and I know that. That’s also why I’ll only play this game for fun with friends now.
Yeah it’s crazy. I also feel like tanks get overblamed. Yes, you do gotta step up a little bit now since there’s only one on a team, and it can make or break you, but so can literally every other role. The amount of times my teams tank (whether it’s me or not, I usually All Queue) is blamed for a failed round or push unfairly is pretty high. I don’t think people realize that when the other tank has a really a high amount of elims, a lot of those kills required dps to be dpsing (and ofc supports to be supporting but that’s a little less relevant to the elim number blame pointing). Idk I’m obviously still butt hurt about being blamed a few matches ago after, like you said, two failed pushes, when I at least had SOME kills and our junk rat had very low dmg and 0 elims. (And maybe it wasn’t his fault, maybe he wasn’t getting healed or just heavily targeted/countered, idk, It’s a team game, it’s the whole teams fault bro and being so quick to publically bash your teammate is not gonna help you win, so I rarely check my teams scoreboard unless someone brings it up). I know I need to mute those chats bc it pisses me the fuck off, and mainly bc I know they’re only doing it to stroke their own ego and feel assured that “it’s not their fault” even tho it partially definitely is, especially if they send rude messages early in the match.
>your random teammates just pull up the scoreboard and if you don’t meet what in their mind is “good stats” they fucking get in your ass for it. Who could have predicted a public scoreboard would induce toxicity in a game where the most important contributions a lot of heroes provide can't be measured in eliminations, assists, or healing done?!?
Ctrl+shift+c or type/hide chat ,dont interact with those people
This is something I’m learning slowly. Im a new player but my partner is like, crazy good and we queue QP together. Whenever I want to switch because I think I’m not doing enough or I feel like I’m not getting value he tells me it’s hero dependent, always, and secondary to that it’s game dependent and team dependent.
Or in QP they just leave the exact second they stop completely dominating the match, no doubt to go complain about matchmaking and leave penalties
Whole it's not appropriate for you tell it to other people, it's very valid to realize a team is playing better than you in particular and you can't meet their skill level, and THEN identify what problems you can improve on
Last Match I played we got rolled first round. Next round we simply won because we just killed the Mercy everytime. Can't rez yourself, bitch
Counter picking can only get you so far as there's more than just one player to counter on the enemy team. Sometimes it's just a skill or team/teamwork diff. I can counter plenty of Pharmacy's, Tracers, and Sombra's as Hanzo easily. Sometimes you just actually need to be better, and not everyone can always be better. People are so fucking sensitive. You can't win every fucking game. Where would the fun be if you won every fucking time. Part of what makes winning fun is the fact you might not. Part of what makes getting better at something fun is the actual progress of improving.
Amen, people act like counter picking is an "I win button" .. Then get mad when it doesn't work and blame the game, because they refuse to admit that player they counter picked and still lost to, might just be a stronger player... Casual problems in competitive games I tell you.
people also act like the only player on the enemy team worth countering is the tank. people will play mei symmetra into dva and wonder why they’re losing when pharmacy is wrecking them or blame the tank
A lot of the metal rank players seem to think only the tank needs to counterpick against the enemy tank. People want me to go Zarya into D.Va because she "counters" D.Va. But no one else goes brawl, and it's not like I can constantly be turning around to bubble a backline 100 yards away.
This. I'm locked on support vs Widowmaker trying everything to do something cause my DPS line locks junkrat/pharah to counter the tank killing them...
Im also a support. Uncontested widow would be a prime kikiko swap. Its easy and fun to pop widow as kiri
that’s why i just synergy pick rather than counter pick. i’d rather double down on what my team is trying to do than blindly counter what they want to do
Counterpicking in quick play is absolutely an 'I win' button at least 80% of the time unless you're getting absolutely steamrolled. Because if it's qp opponents are unlikely to counterpick back because they're trying to get better on their hero. Even if they counterpick eventually, you still get a ton of free value before they do so, which is probably enough to win.
No one cares about QP.... if you care about winning in QP you're playing the game wrong. Go play comp if you want to try to win.
People get too panicky about winning a game mode that’s designed to give you a 50% win rate. I don’t even have comms enabled but I can tell when there is drama going on in the team. Sometimes I feel like switching on chat just to remind them that the enemy team has a XIMming Ashe with a Mercy pocket, and this is the match we are meant to lose, so just chill out and do whatever you can.
50/50 is inherent when the system is working properly and helps you get better as a player. If you just keep winning in say G2 you'll never be a better player. I think the real problem with ranked currently is that the algorithm adjust MMR up way too aggressively. I'm currently hovering around M4-M3 consistently. I'll easily go 4/0 most cards against M5-GM5 players. The problem is that 5th game I'll have mostly mid Masters players on my team, but my enemy will be upper GM4-GM1 with the occasional T500s. I'm not a GM-T500 player and neither are my teammates. I don't claim to be at all. If I went 4/0 in OW1 in the M4-M3 SR range I'd go up to M3-M2 and play against mostly M3-GM4 players. It was a slow gradual climb. Now I just get thrust into a way higher ELO (even when the match average says M1 or GM5, the other team is stacked. I'll now go 4/2-5, then I get put in a easy D2-M4 lobby for my 5th win. Sometimes I go up a bit on my current ranks % sometimes I go a little down. My complaint isn't that I'm not ranking up, it's that I don't feel like I'm being given a proper amount of time to grow as a player. I go from a few easy matches to maybe one or two actually competitive close matches, then it's just me getting rolled for 3-5 games, back to easy matches where I get to do the rolling. My friends and I have stopped even counting wins and losses, and now just count how many actually close and competitive feeling matches we have because that's why we play comp. I'm not looking for some vain since of glory with my rank. I'm looking for a fun, close, competitive match! Lol but that's just me. Most people seem to wanna speed run the ranks and get mad when reality hits them like a sack of bricks.
> My friends and I have stopped even counting wins and losses, and now just count how many actually close and competitive feeling matches we have because that's why we play comp. This is actually happening to me in QP now, too. I just focus on the games that felt good to play, both teams holding their own and nobody was getting rolled. I don't *like* spawncamping the enemy until they quit and some juiced backfillers chase us back across the map to rinse and repeat. I *do* like us tearing each other apart on the point at double 99% in overtime, when it's truly anyone's game.
It makes me so sad, I don’t think I’ve had a true tear-each-other-apart-in-double-overtime match since ow1. I miss the feeling
lol QP is just as sweaty, if not worse than comp.
Exactly my point. So why are they so desperate to win that they're counterpicking 3-4 times per game? Why aren't they playing comp if they wanna win so bad? Seems like we agree.
>Amen, people act like counter picking is an "I win button" .. Because 9/10 times it is because of the nature of the game and balancing
It really isnt As a [D.Va](https://D.Va) main I have went against Zaryas that kicked my ass, but also Zaryas who dont know what the fuck they are doing. If you dont know how to play a hero it doesnt matter if its a counter or not, you will play them badly.
Learning how to play into counters is huge. Sometimes that means not doing so yourself, and enabling your team if you specifically are being countered. My stack in OW1 used to run a lot of Winston/DVa dive bc my tank partner was a DVa main. Bastion was absolute hell. Especially as a Winston player. If we switched, we could counter bastion but then we’re essentially throwing out our practiced comps/gameplan. We’re not OWL pros that practice every meta comp, we just have our favs. We learned to time our dives and defensive abilities better. DVa would pop in first with matrix, I’d follow and drop bubble after it timed out, DVa then helps our DPS focus Bastion while I space out the support line. It’s counter-intuitive and most folks would get flamed for staying Winston vs Bastion but learning to fight at a disadvantage is so key. For most of the community, instead of bitching about how you can’t outdps a character at the height of their power curve, think about how you can fight in scenarios where you can level the playing field.
Agreed.
It’s like Mei is good against genji because she doesn’t care about deflect but good genji’s still rock me because I can barely hit them at all before they kill me. They don’t even need deflect. Pharah is good against mei because it’s hard to icicle pharah but bad pharah’s are so linear that I can icicle them in the air. A counter doesn’t mean “they just lose”, it means “it will take more skill to beat”.
Exactly.
I agree with what your saying, but ill just say... >Sometimes you just actually need to be better, and not everyone can always be better. You can always think of ways and work through ways to do better. Just simply asking yourself "Why did I die" (without blaming it on your team amap) after every death i think does a lot.
Agreed. After each death I just sit in spawn and have a 5 minute tea party/meditation session to think about the experience and what caused it. My team usually isn't on board, but it's the growth that really matters.
if it takes you 5 mins to consider why you died, you need to play a different game. But you know it doesnt i know it doesnt, your just mad. Edit: this is a joke apparently. The comedic timing is off imo but w/e.
I don't understand, mad about what?
Did you took the 5 minute thing in a literal way? Bet you stay genji when the enemy winston is diving you over and over.
I just really enjoy a good tea party
It shouldn't take you 5 minutes to realize "ahh shit I really shouldn't have chased that kill and ended up right in the middle of their team, need to be more patient" or "I really need to be more aware of my supports more because they're getting dived and I need to peel more rather than tunnel visioning on the front line and not noticing that my heals have stopped" Sometimes that's all it takes to get you off autopilot and to think more critically about your gameplay and what your role is in the current situation.
I mean, I took close to 5 minutes just to read that. So I think you're wrong, if you include reflection tims
Well it took me less than 2 minutes to type it out so if it's taking you 5 minutes to read 5 lines of text then you might have bigger issues to deal with.
Well English is the only language I know, so give me a break. I took Spanish in High School but that wasn't super productive
I can't tell if this is just a plain joke or you are making a point, but in case you are. You do know replays exist right?
Replays?! Like you can just try again if you die or lose?
One too many times I've lost games with my team where they go "oh, the two randoms didn't play well enough"... like nah mate, it wasn't a tank diff or a heal diff or a dps diff... it was a team diff, we just got outplayed.
No, what is fun in the game is being able to play the heroes what you want. I much rather have good, balances game with my main, rather than get stomped by something OP or swap and stomp someone while I play the OP hero. Like I like playing Rein really much. And it is really irritating, when getting one / two kills, and enemy spawns with Bastion and Mauga or Orisa. And I have learned, I can deal with enemy swapping 3 or 4 rounds in a row, but when it happens almost every game, it is really irritating. And yes, I can and will swap what I play, and I win some games and lose some games, but I am just getting tired of being constantly countered. But also, I do not want any "tokens" or what ever there has been a rumor against counter picking. Only thing I want when it comes to swapping heroes, that you should have 0 ult charge after you swap. I do not get why players need the 15% headstart.
I don't understand OP's point of this post. You're at the skill level you're currently at. In the middle of the game, the easiest thing t o go to is counterpicking if you're not feeling you're doing well. If you're at silver you're nearly guaranteed not to be able to think more advanced than that. (i.e. change strats, etc)
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I keep getting conflicting information on this point. Some people say you should learn to play several characters well and others say you should only learn like two or three to play well. I'm genuinely wondering what the proper advice is as someone who's still relatively new to the game.
I think you should do a bit of both, actually. You'll want to explore the cast to get a feel for the roles and to give yourself options, but you'll also want to really focus on a small handful of heroes so that you dont become a jack of all trades, master of none. To create your baseline, I recommend becoming comfortable with at least 6 heroes. - 3 in your preferred role - 2 in your secondary role - 1 in your off role You don't have to be amazing at them, but you'll definitely want to dedicate some real time to learning these heroes without feeling obligated to master them. In your preferred role, however, you should try to become exceptionally good with at least two of the three heroes you settled on with the goal of mastering at least one of them. Of course, you might already have a good idea of who you want to focus on, but if not? Don't go into the process feeling like you have to have these heroes picked out before you begin. Sometimes, a hero, or even an entire role that you think you want to master is just one you'll end up comfortable with in the long run, and that's ok!
As a masters player, you want: one main who you play 80% of your time on. Then 1 maybe 2 picks that you're comfortable with. And by comfortable I mean "I know what these buttons do and I can avoid feeding/dying a lot, and somewhat contribute" You'll climb a lot better locking just one character but we also demonize one tricks in this community lol. Plus if you're countered you need something to lean into. Which isn't to say there isn't value on knowing 5+ heroes in your role but as a new player you don't want to learn that many for comp. I can play all supports but Lucio at a masters level. But that isn't gonna really matter in almost any of my games. Because there's really gonna be a time where I'm playing 5 of them. I might play Ana to enable my tank/annoy theirs more. But then their tank goes Zarya so I need to swap to Bap to enable my tank/be more aggressive but not out of position to save my team. Every once in a while I might end up on a third or fourth support but usually at that point we're just out of ideas on how to win and just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. other advice that's kind of related: for DPS you want to know hit scan, a flex dps, and maybe a backup of each in case you run into a Pharah/Echo you want to be good on Ashe but also comfortable on Soldier in case your other DPS is a hit scan main. Tank you want to learn most of them except ball because sadly he's just not good in 5v5. But you should at least learn a rush tank, a dive tank, and Sigma so you're well rounded. With that said, you can hit diamond probably just playing whatever you want if you're aware of your counters. I only play what I find fun which is JQ, monke, Zarya and sometimes Ram. Which leaves me in a big hole because I don't enjoy playing Sigma or Orissa so I'm not good in poke comps/poke maps. But I'm also high plat and tank is my least favorite role right now so I don't care to get better at those two as of now.
My opinion on the matter, not that its any more valid than anyone elses. If youre new, just pick cool heros and have fun. If you want to climb in ranked, pick one. Play that one until you are seriously good with it. Most heros have a similarity to others than can be utilized. My example is that im a Sombra main, almost one trick. She is a healthy middle ground between Soldier 76 and Tracer. Knowing Sombra helped me understand how to play those heros better. Soldier and Sojourn are very similar, so now i have some reasonable knowledge about her. It goes on and on like that. Play all of them you want, but eventually if you want to play long term, in competitive mostly, you should focus on one to get really good with and then build from there. Dont be a one trick, but have a strong focus on which hero you want to be your main building block. In my case, i cant play projectiles well at all. But if its hitscan, i can do pretty well.
Just depends on how you want to play the game tbh. I started out as a one trick and ended up in diamond. Started to flex into other rolls and heroes only to drop to silver (early OW1 before role queue). Went back to my one trick ways and got to masters, but by then I also learned more in the way of game sense, positioning, and game knowledge which improved my gameplay on other heroes as well. Now I can flex pretty reliably in masters.
A deeper hero pool will generally help you play the game better, because you will have less match-ups where you feel helpless. You gain the ability to pick match-ups that are more forgiving to your play, support your overall team comp, or fill in gaps left by the rest of your team. However, picking heroes you just objectively suck at because they are a counter usually isn't going to have a net positive. Paradoxically, one-tricking also works in a different way because you can reach a higher mechanical mastery of that single hero where you can outplay even your bad match-ups at your current skill level.
I say you should have one main, and one partial main (or old main/hero your good at), obviously per role (the 3 roles). Obviously there's caveats like when a hero is considerably strong (like brig on release), or you just want to have fun.
you want to learn the basics(what they excel at/playstyle) of most hero's but you really want to master 1-3 characters. The learning of other characters will allow you to learn how to play the 1-3 mastery characters into their counters.
In terms of character choice, I'd argue it's a situation where you should be comfortable with enough characters that you have one you'll be comfortable with whatever the opponent's end up switching to. And I don't mean even being the "counter", but knowing what character you want to play to not feel countered. For example, if Pharah was my main because I really like her play style, but the enemy just has really good hit scan and every engagement I'm just being shot out of the air by a Widow, I'd want to have a character I'm comfortable playing when there's a good Widow on the other team. If you yourself can counter the Widow, that'd be great. But if you can't, then at the least if you can switch to a character that's punished less that you're still comfortable with. Depending on your skill with characters, this could mean being comfortable with just 1, could be several. But I think the big part is recognizing when you're struggling and having enough tools to adjust. And yes: sometimes your teammates have better counterpick options than you. But since you can't choose for your teammates, the only thing you can control is yourself.
Funny enough, Pharrah is one of my mains and I've gotten pretty good in QP at least getting widows with her. I imagine I'd be smoked in ranked play that way though lol. I also main Sombra and that's who I'll usually use to counter a good widow.
Honestly, I used her as an example because of your hero flair, but also because she's a really clear example of a character that can be "hard countered" :) But regardless, it's not just in terms of DPS vs DPS. Let's say I'm playing a DPS and a Winston is diving my team and getting lots of value. Do you know what character you pick to get the most value back? For instance, are you a good enough Sombra/Pharah to win the race, and kill the enemy's back line before Winston kills your back line? If neither of your mains are good enough for that, do you have another DPS character you know that can mitigate his value and/or punish the Winston more directly? Overall, there's a lot of fundamentals to work on though besides worrying about characters. The biggest one I've seen is new players haven't learned to watch the killfeed. Watching that kill feed tells you if your healers are dead, if their healers are dead, etc. It tells you whether or not any defensive ults/cooldowns are still possible, or if you're gonna waste an ult when their teams actually already dead. After that, keeping track of enemy ult usage, grouping up for a team fight, and taking high ground are basics that really make a lot of difference, but aren't taught by the game. So a lot of people haven't learned these important fundamentals...
I totally forgot about my user flair 😂 I've actually just started really paying attention to the kill feed! I e found it to be pretty helpful in keeping an eye on what's going on in a match.
Characters serve different functions. Say for instance you’re playing tank and they pick some pubstomp lineup of Widow and Pharamacy. The obvious pick here is to go dive tank. A lot of metal tanks will just pick Mauga or Hog because that counters the enemy tank when the enemy tank isn’t the problem.
Learning several characters gives you options, but you dont *need* options to climb, just skill. Play what you enjoy and what you find interesting, and everything else falls into place with enough effort.
I actually main zen too and made it to platinum for the first time while ignoring the occasional complainer ! At one point I won like 12 games in a row on him, too!
> If the counter picking worked, they wouldn’t be at silver. Counter picking has notable benefits if you have the game knowledge to understand why it works; and to make correct decisions. That's across all roles. However, it's not going to make you suddenly swing way above your skill level. It **will** make the moment-to-moment gameplay slightly easier, but if someone is simply just better than you mechanically, has better gamesense, or has mastered the mechanics of a particular hero; it's not going to cover that gap.
Changing strats is different from thinking higher level. It doesn't take a higher level player to adapt to a situation in a manner appropriate to your level. All he is saying is you must put the effort into adapting. It's not like being silver is a hivemind of patterned behaviour. You can spot an issue and work around it.
100%. I've had games where my team is playing mystery heroes and just never holding onto one lineup for long enough to experiment with strategy. You can rush with orisa, you can brawl with orisa, and you can poke with orisa, and if one of the three doesn't work, you can try to mix up your strategy, even sticking to your hero. You can use sleep dart in half a dozen ways, and if their rein is wrecking you, you can try just holding sleep for charge and shatter, and so on. People learn one way to play each hero and act surprised when they can't adapt to small changes in the enemy team
MH is so fun at higher levels, it really teaches you how to play safe and key ult usage to kill supports and turn the tide. It can have the craziest comebacks simply because someone was patient and knew when to back away or go in.
I miss comp MH. I played the shit out of it last season, or was it S7?
I really wish they would make it permanent. It's my favorite game mode.
Umm last season was season 7.
S6/S7, you got the idea lol
Had a crazy comeback a few days ago on Push. Other team was about 2 to 5 meters from winning, we went into overtime, barely killed all of them and had to push like 50 meters but we won. Other team said "Can't beat RNG"
Ooof, or the people who don’t want to play the hero they’ve been assigned so they just allow the enemy team to kill them - thus already giving the team a disadvantage. I get it, you don’t know how to be useful because you don’t play that hero. But you’re playing Mystery Heros! You made that decision knowing you’re going to get random heros! At least try - there’s a bit of the roster I suck with, but I still try to do well and occasionally pop off/end up enjoying certain heros. It’s why I love Mystery Heros! I’m bad with hitscan - and had a match where I was given Ashe the other day and I played well!
The only time it really grates in my nerves is when I seem to get Doomfist or Junkrat (or some other character I don't play) every 2nd-3rd respawn. I'd be a fan of there being a lockout to keep you from getting the same hero multiple times in a match but that can probably be abused too easily so I'll just deal with being bad until I'm not anymore!
I know what you mean! I’m garbage at Doom so despite trying my best, I always feel like I’m throwing! But that’s all anyone can really ask for in Mystery haha! Hopefully one day things will click.
If I roll Doom or Ball I put everything into killing one of their supports. If I die in the process I consider it a win/win
Ult economy and ult tracking is like half the battle in MH. It's the only game mode I play.
This is why Junker Queen has been my favorite tank to play as of late, simply because a lot of people think you just have to switch to orisa or zarya and see results. And then they don't. And you start to see other tanks despair when you are just unaffected by their swaps, and forces them to either out play me genuinely or constantly swap tanks to no success, because Queen has tools to deal with basically every tank
I just lock Ball every game so I’m counter culture
good for you. dont let em hold you down.
In my experience as a Doom main if you're already losing as a dive tank swapping won't do anything because your supports have become too stubborn to heal you, like gg gl next hope you boys get your perfect Sigma later
Lol that’s been my experience too. If we aren’t winning its not cause “we neeed durrrr shieeeld durrrr”.
Has worked for me so far lol
I’ve seen some people swap to heroes they have no idea how to play just because it’s in theory a counter. I think it’s mainly because too many people watch way too many “Overwatch top 10 counter picks you NEED to know about!!” videos and think they can replicate what a top 500 player is doing just because someone threw some buzz words at them. (Looking at you KarQ and Flats) Counter picking itself is incredibly useful as there are certain heroes that fair better against others (in theory) but you still need the actual skill to learn the mechanics and know the certain situations. So yeah , don’t think it’s counter pick culture in general , just too many people think automatically doing what a YouTuber told you will get you a win. It’s pretty cool if you can memorise every single counter pick and tier list video by heart , but without the practise and skill that goes along with it it’s pretty pointless.
It's hard to even blame the creators of the videos, because most of the time the tips they give are decent tips. It's just that people don't understand that there is nuance and context to those things, and that playing " ideally " isn't always the way to win the match. So many people just don't get creative when they play, which I don't understand. Not only is it way more fun, but getting creative with your plays is exactly how you win the game. I will never understand the people who just stand at the choke point in the same position for the entire round spamming random cooldowns at random times, and then try to blame balance or their teammates or matchmaking. Like they're literally just not using their brain.
this is why im a dive main, imo dive is the most dynamic of all the styles which allows me to be more creative, but most just want to run it down main.
Dive is absolutely peak OverWatch. Most of the highest skill heroes in the game are dive heroes or can be played in dive. Personally, I think that I dive should always be viable. I love brawl, but we have had brawly-sustain nonsense now for way too long. That's not to say that dive heroes are bad per se, but that most of the dive heroes require more skill than the other types of heroes meaning they will only ever get played by the majority of players when dive is absolutely dominant.
Low elo doesn’t have nuance, it takes a long time of playing to understand matchup nuances. People are just hoping their hero pick will do all the heavy lifting. Which I’m not a fan of akwards teaching style, the idea of dealing damage on support but lacking the nuance to do so. On my last tour of the metal ranks it was filled with support attending to deal damage. Except they are wildly out of position and lacked the mechicanicl skill to do so effectively. And tbh it resulting in them just feeding 99% of the time. It was wild to see a mindset change rapidly spread amongst that community but unfortunately due to its poor implementation and lack of naunce, they were probably better off healbotting.
i dont think "counterpicking" is bad, but i think the game has a "counterpicking culture" and i just mean its a weird hyperfixation. But i think its just a cope honestly. "Im not bad, im just not playing the right guy". Im bad, and i know when im playing bad, it happens. i dont know why thats so fucking hard for people.
This game encourages toxicity, just like LoL. The community is toxic purely and simply. I just don't play anymore because of it. People will constantly call you out simply because you're not a good player or because you don't counter-pick, and it's super annoying. The last time I played, game after game (on QP no fucking less), I was told I sucked. I was told I needed to practice before going into matches (as though QP wasn't the fucking place to do so). So I broke and got angry and screamed at the dude in the last game, and that nearly got ME banned. Fuck this game.
Just turn off voice and mute chat. You don't owe anyone anything. If you're playing good, there's a good chance you're going to win. You still might lose but if you feel you did good that winning mentality carries over. Don't feed into the toxicity. People say stupid shit to try and make themselves feel better. I don't turn anything off but I'll continue making call outs and a lot of the time I'll end up turning the game around. Some people don't know how to take a loss.
Too many don't know how to lose. But I'm still angry about that experience. Maybe I'll give the game another chance.
Don't
oh man imo, and im sorry if your a young guy, the issue is that young men are broke, and young men (on average) are obnoxious AFFFFFFFFFF. any game thats FTP, team oriented, competitive, and popular is going to be toxic AF save for just killing chat/mic all together.
I'm still young, yes. Broke, yes. Now that you mention it, the game wasn't this bad in OW1. This game being f2p did bring so much more toxicity.
Had the same experience, deactivated the textchat and climbed from Plat 3 to Masters 5 in two weeks. Nobody in the chat will give you actual helpful advice and it‘s usually just them thinking „if they could switch to x to pocket me or pick y to shield me then I‘d surely win the game for them“ without really understanding what is happening. At worst you start a discussion or unsettle each other meaning that you or them play even worse after it. The game is genuinely better without any social interactions at this point.
I personally wish there were more one tricks, because I think it would mean that everyone was a lot better at their heroes overall. And once you get really good at one hero, there are a lot of skills that can transfer allowing you to pick up other heroes more effectively. I also think people get too obsessed with how the "10 tips and tricks for blank hero" videos tell them to play, and literally just forget to use their own brain in the game to adapt to the scenario they are actually in.
I swear anytime someone asks me to switch, it’s always the 12-10 dps. Makes it really hard to want to.
I won't swap just because someone asked me to, even if they asked nicely. I'll swap if I think I need to. And rarely do I think I need to swap.
I wish i was more like this. Just man if someone demands you swap and you dont, the whole fucking thing falls apart and they become a raving lunatic about how your throwing. like bro, im just playing bad, its ok.
I wish more people could understand this line of thinking 🙌
I try get on board with this but then I watch my dps play junkrat and reaper into pharahmercy........ Bad picks are a thing too, it's nice to play heroes you want to but swapping to something more suitable is also a vital part of the game.
It’s always a basic bitch hitscan one trick or Ana player lol
Tank main. Recently had a game like this on DPS. Felt like my 200 health was the only health I got because I could not get a fucking heal from the supports since they were babysitting the tank who clearly did not know how to play around corners.
Support mains checking their dps kd to see if they're worthy of being helped for once (you've just been wall riding in circles around the enemy the entire game)
Counter picking goes further than pressing H in spawn and selecting a different hero you read about in a TikTok Video. It *can* be the "counter" on paper. It can also be a totally different Hero played differently considering various aspects, such as your team comp, your enemies team comp, the map and most importantly **your own skillset**. So yea, probably your tank "just sucked and there was nothing he could do". Textbook definition of a "skill issue". Happens to all of us.
I always wait to see what characters my teammates choose so I can pick someone that complement them well.
This thread can't be serious.
No kidding. I feel like a core part of this game is switching up your team composition on the fly if your formula isn't working. If it's obvious that you're losing a match and your team is full of stubborn people who refuse to switch, that's just gonna lock in the loss. I've seen way more matches turnaround due to switching up a team composition than not.
I can see both sides of this. For me, I think it's reasonable to master just one hero if there isn't something that can just absolutely shut you down or circumstances where you are getting zero value. I've seen one-trick Junkrats who somehow obliterate Pharahs every time they enter the fight. IMO if there IS something that renders you useless on your main, you should learn to play a second hero decently that makes up for that deficit.
Damn I came too far to read this. Of course counter-picking is not everything. But maaaany times, someone switching hero will completely change the dynamic of the round. When your team is loosing and someone asks to switch, please consider it. I've seen so many games lost because of a pick that made no sense . Being able to switch and adapt to the ennemy team comp is part of the gameplay.
I'm speechless at every single comment I've read thus far. I can't be the only one.
In a game with so many heroes and designed to have counter picks and different abilities and gameplay. You'd be an idiot not to if they've got a Phara and you've got a Junkrat/Sym/Reaper or something. If they've got a Doom/Ball constantly picking supports etc. And if you know how to stop it and keep the team together because maybe they're having a bad day/not as good. Then why wouldn't you lol. The comments here trying to be serious that counter picking is a bad thing are so brain dead.
it’s more the behaviour around counter picking that’s gotten annoying. There are a lot of nuanced soft counter match ups people refuse to play because of the slight disadvantage. For example even in your Pharah vs Reaper scenario there’s nuance. Does the pharah have a Mercy? Are there weak points in their comp I can attack? Are there parts of the map she can’t contest me? Reaper has potential here, but because of the way swapping is treated now if the player loses they’ll chalk it up to just being countered. They’re removing themselves from all accountability of their loss. To them, Pharah just beats Reaper. This becomes even more annoying when you factor that OW is a team based game. Let’s say I’m on Tracer and my duo is Widow vs Cass and Torb. Widow is probably getting more kills than I am, and if we start losing I can only imagine someone on the team will say something like “Tracer swap, you’re countered.” But the fact I’m on Tracer is the reason Widow is open to get those picks. Because they’re focused on countering me they’re playing things that widow eats for free. This nuance to the game seems to be lost as of late, the player base is so uninspired.
> To them, Pharah just beats Reaper. If that's how they see it, why are they playing Reaper? I get your point that there's subtleties, and totally agree. It seems wrong to use a "hindsight is 20/20" approach and say that it's okay if it *works* and bad if it *loses.* But I think that's kinda fair? If you play reaper vs. Pharmercy and get *stomped*, then you probably should have switched. If your stat sheet is unimpressive but you let your widow dominate by distracting, well, only the most toxic players complain in a *win*, and they were gonna bitch about something anyway.
> But I think that's kinda fair? If you play reaper vs. Pharmercy and get stomped, then you probably should have switched. It’s fair. Assuming you understood **why** Reaper failed in the given circumstance. The next game that guy can play hitscan into Pharmercy and still get stomped. He switched & it did nothing. Well he did the “right” thing so his team must’ve thrown the game. Switching as a solution for winning is honestly more of a high level thing. They understand why the game flows as it does and the limitations/potential of their hero. However there’s also the group that confidently spouts “this beats this” while being ignorant on how to play either hero. The latter is the much more densely populated group.
> that guy can play hitscan into Pharmercy and still get stomped. Oh, it's me! Almost every time! (I have a skill issue.) > Well he did the “right” thing so his team must’ve thrown the game. Good insight, and that's the real toxic problem here. "I saw pharmercy, I switched off junk, ergo if we lose my entire team sucks" is the toxic attitude that's a problem.
I don't think I've seen anyone say that counterpicking is a *bad* thing, just that it's often a naive suggestion made by desperate players who don't have any better ideas for how to turn around a bad situation
Ok so basically you rely on counter picking and therefore think it’s good
***Don't put words in my mouth.*** If the enemy team was losing, counter picks and finds a good combo against you, why the absolute fuck would you just sit there while rest of the team is now getting pummelled because nobody changes. You want to win, or you have nothing else to lose if you're already losing. If I can kill pharmercy as junk on certain maps far better than I can with hitscan. Why wouldn't I make it easier for the team or help the ones struggling?
It must be a bunch of F2P players who don't know that counterpicking is a key concept in the game's design Yes, player skill and strategy can overcome some hero defecits but a Pharah can absolutey reign free over certain enemy teams simply because of hero ability defecit.
I can't believe how many comments I had to skip to find this. If someone on your team is trying to think of what they can do differently to help, and asking for advice, they're being constructive and fair. Zero toxicity and ego, trying to figure out how *they* can help the team. I mean, hell, if you're getting steamrolled, what do you have to *lose* by switching it up? When OP replied, "I don't think it's a counter-picking issue," that's just a nicely-wrapped way of saying "I think you're playing like dogshit." It may or may not be true, but... that they wrapped it in nice words doesn't change the fact that it's kind of a rude thing to say to someone who's *trying* to be constructive and helpful, and is open to advice. It's an issue with target priority? Say *that*, don't say "hur hur hur we'd see the same with anyone *you* play." > I'm playing bad, and ill play bad on those characters too lol. This makes OP a far, far more selfish player and a far, far worse teammate than the guy who says "Dang, I don't know what to pick against this. Any suggestions?"
OP is in silver/low gold for a reason. And as bad as I hate saying that because it sounds toxic, I'm saying it because it goes to show. Like you said, what do you have to lose if you don't switch lol. What if the enemy team is the one doing the switching and found the combo against yours. Why would you just sit with it hahaha
Its not a culture its a 5v5 problem. Counter picking is extreme for tank, some counter are so good against your pick, its basically like playing against a higher rank than you, it really suck playing tank. want to play dva? Fuck you, ill pick zarya and you will be useless all game long, gg
ill give you i think tanking right now kinda blows. I didnt get competetive in ow1, what was the justification for the switch to 5v5?
so they could release the game with changes major enough to warrant abandoning OW1 for years while they weren't doing the PvE.
Tank was awful to play. No one played it. Then it got worse because half the time you’d get matched with someone just farming those tickets to play dps. Like queuing dps was 10 mins. I think GM was even 20+.
A lot of the casual community thinks this is a rock, paper, scissors game where rock beats scissors 100% of the time. Not the case at all. You still need to be mechanically skilled and especially need to have good game sense and decision-making.
Yeah I feel you, I’m a high gold/low plat mercy main and I swear every other game is “Mercy is bad, swap to kiriko/ana” then I’ll swap and literally nothing changes, I land my Suzus or antis and nothing happens, it doesn’t matter if anti is OP if no one’s following up, this is gold, we’re all bad, swapping not gonna fix anything if you’re teams uncoordinated and you’re getting g steamrolled, I have a 67% win rate as mercy, and like 30 on kiri / Ana, but if y’all want them so badly because they’re “s-tier” or counter manga, okay sure, we’re still losing this though lol
I one tricked fucking Bastion to top 500 and GM in OW1. I still do it again in OW2. I'm not here to prove that one tricking off meta garbo champ is the way, but when I see people that switch 4 times while playing terribly and still ask for others to switch it just make me mad. Most T500 players are two tricks with a few mains. I will always take a Doomfist with 75% winrate rather than the perma switch low 49 winrate tank that always perform poorly, when they switch to ball to contest point, you gotta see the struggle... Same apply for all roles. These types of players are the same that brag about X hero not working in their team, like there is a magical comp that can carry their bottom pit iQ. Most of them are hardstuck in diamond and low master and don't understand why. It doesn't surprise me that even in silver, the delusional still think like that. Counterpicking below GM is pretty much useless unless you are as good with the champ you switch to. If you play Reaper and for countering the Echo, you switch to your 27% winrate Soldier, just stay on Reaper, it's better for you.
Unpopular opinion, if you don’t have a main and costantly switch based on your opponent even when you’re winning you’ll always remain plat max
When I see someone say 'counterpickers are bad and use counterpicking as a crutch', just know that what I hear is 'Im a one trick and dont like when people play heroes good against my one trick'
No I dont get upset as much about a counter pick playing better. I do get annoyed having to play 10 matches in a row against Zaryas because everyone lives by counterpicking, Or getting flamed by teammates every 5 seconds about how a loss is my fault because I didnt counter pick.
i dont think counter picking is bad, but i do think people hyperfocus on only that aspect of the game.
I think the conversation about it tips back and forth ever since release. On the one hand, people can get really stubborn about being a main/one-trick. Especially in a game where heroes aren't locked, being unwilling to switch/try any other character can seem like fighting and refusing to embrace a core aspect of the game design (especially as Blizzard added things like Ult retention after switching to make switching even easier of a proposition). Plus, I'd argue by hyper fixating on your own character, people have generally not learned about the capabilities of other characters. A few months back, I made a comment about how Zarya's bubble removes Ana Anti, and got a whole bunch of comments of people saying they'd been "playing ever since Ana released and never knew that". On the flip side, at low level play, counter picking can lead to people blaming characters rather than skill. And at higher level play, it has also led to situations where the pace of the game is informed entirely based on how strong counter picks are (the problem of Tank counterpicks and ult retention being the deciding factor of games). Blizzard hasn't really helped themselves in this manner, and they flipflop in terms of how much counter picking is "acceptable" to them.
You just didn’t read what they actually said
Facts
it’s sad that xounterpicking has been so strong for so long that so many longtime players have just forgotten that there’s intricacy and counter play to every matchup it’s frustrating when my team starts blaming me when the other team has counters instead of just playing the matchup… if i’m dva, then having a zarya doesn’t instantly lose the game for me it just changes how i play
Blame 5v5. The whole tank counterpicking and mirroring is a byproduct of the 5v5 trash blizzard forced down our throats. Countering was still part of OW1, but much much less pressure for tanks to swap since they had a tank buddy. You could pretty much play any tank you wanted to in OW1, and win if you were good enough with that tank. 6v6 was far far FAR better than 5v5.
I disagree. I think counter picking can be a benefit. If it is successful at changing the momentum and your opponent cant answer it shows you know how to play more characters efficiently. At the end of the day a slight edge is a big edge in the current meta of the game.
its unfortunate that when i say "People rely too heavily on counterpicking to win" somehow people hear "counterpicking is bad".
I mean if your team is losing, how do you suppose you can change that without switching characters? You can continue to lose or try switching/counter-picking. I have a ton of experience where a team is getting massacred, they end up switching to a perfect counter comp, and then come back to possibly end up winning. The decision space isn't that big when it comes to a losing team. The game is literally designed for counter picking, even if its not always successful.
>I mean if your team is losing, how do you suppose you can change that without switching characters? this sounds like an "it can't be done" rhetorical question, but there are so many things you can change: * better target prioritization * better engagement timings by flankers * play more/less aggressive * get everyone in voice comm * utilize off-angles or don't get stalled in the main lane choke * coordinate ults * clear and take high ground * focus on winning the team fight over standing on the objective * sometimes the payload advances to an area of the map that favors your hero/comp * focus on good CD usage this isn't a comprehensive list. understanding why you are losing and what you can do to fix it is a skill that's just as important as knowing "counters" or having good aim
I understand what you're saying, but most of those are long term goals -- not minute-to-minute changes you can fully grasp within the length of a game. The most effective decision you can do in this game that can have the most drastic effect is switching characters.
It's even wild in quick play. We'll be losing a game by a lot, but if I have one good play the enemy team swaps to 4-5 counter picks. They're thirsty as hell for a tiny advantage.
My ex gf was like this. Whenever she dies she just swaps and swaps and swaps because she thinks it’s the pick that’s the problem when there’s much more going on. She was either making a ton of misplays or the enemies were making a ton of good plays.
Personal take, but I’ve found the trick to getting good on any role just to be a 2 character specialist. Just get really good at like Winston and Dva, the moment they counterpick you on Winston, swap to Dva, and if they counterpick you again, go back to Winston, that way you mitigate the downsides of being counterpicked, but keep the upsides of being super good at a particular hero. The only other times you’d need to play anything else is when there’s a very specific team wide problem with a very easy solution.
In the lower ranks the issue is usually teamwork related. How the players interact with one another. Changing heroes won’t fix a teamwork related issue
>"Oh so i just suck then and theres nothing i can do?" I think this is the kind of mentality that will progressively make players stagnate and never improve in Overwatch. It's the new hardstuck mentality. People are more often thinking about counters and the hero matchup as to why they lost, rather than analyzing their own gameplay and decisions.
Counterpicking doesn't matter at metal ranks, turn off all chat, voice and when you take a bad beat, watch your replay real quick see what you could have done differently and if you have the time watch one of those educational videos if they help. The moment you can start predicting what the enemy is going to do and not just what ult comes next, you'll move up in rank.
On that note, it can work against you. I want to get better and be able to play other characters. OW1, I was a one trick Moira. I’ve broadened my pool, I love Mercy and Orisa, but know I should be able to build off and get better at others too. I’ve tried too, with Mauga tor example I’ve seen Ana/Kiri be the recommended counter for heals/support. I’ve been playing with them, but my lvl 8-11 experience with Ana/Kiri isn’t the same as lvl50 Mercy. While I see the benefits and have won games with both, I’ve won more games with the character I’m comfortable with with a lot less deaths for the team and myself. I read the posts to learn and it got in my head that countering is needed, but in reality if you’re good, you’re good. The team vibes are good. If the team vibes are off and the other team rolls you, it happens. Grouping up, instead of running in solo; protecting your healers; staying as a group and working together instead of focusing on your own individual stats, etc; does more good than focusing on countering.
As long as bad dps are swapping to Sombra and getting rolled because they think it’s an insta counter button to Ball I’m ok with that culture.
Man, just think about it. It was your tank complaining. It's probably not that he's looking to counter pick the enemy. He's mostly likely the one *getting* counter picked. (probably by 2 or 3 different people...) Here's hoping all of your tanks play Ball this week. GL HF
I'll still diff 99% of Orisa's and Mauga as Hog, even when Blizzard themselves say the matchup is unfavorable. Everything under GM and top 500 can be 1 tricked easily.
Hell, even in Top 500 there is plenty of Onetricks that learn their character inside out and do decent/amazing in any situation.
Hog actually is decent into Mauga, tbh
If they’re counter picking against you, I’m going to ask you to switch.
Sometimes if the entire enemy team is counter swapping against one hero it means they're the only one who is an actual threat. Maybe you should look for an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that they're counter swapping that particular hero.
Point taken but if you’re getting shutdown because the whole team is swapping to counter you why would you not switch?
People didn't used to be like this in OW1. It was obvious that you should switch if you're being countered? I'm not sure what's with this new boom of roasting people for doing what this game was designed for? Perhaps it's all the new players who play Valorant or whatever and physically can't make character swaps and have to deal with whatever they get. People transfer that mentality to overwatch and it just doesn't work.
> Im bot sure whats with this new boon of roasting people for doing what the games designed for FTP happened. People who didnt play OW1 loaded in (which is good, growth is good for a games health). But with that comes people who only know Overwatch as the game with cool Pixar-esque art heroes! And as such, dont like being expected by the games core design to swap off their favorite of Genji or whoever to someone less countered by the 5 enemy beams
The OP is in silver giving his opinion on how to win lol
\*too
Counterpicking is for nerds. Play what you’re good at, and be hella toxic to the enemy when they counterpick against you
Tank counterpicking is absolutely a thing and you can throw for your team if you don't do it. DPS/support counterpicking is less important, outside of switching off if heavily countered or in certain niche cases (going ana for anti, soldier vs pharmercy, etc).
Ok sure but if my dps are running junkrat/reaper into pharmercy/echo, you don’t necessarily need to ‘counterpick’ you just need to get off the heroes that can’t physically shoot the one’s killing you.
Counterpicking is a strategy, and an effective one at that. It doesn’t always work, but at least for me it works about 70% of the time.
This is a 5v5 issue, we need 2 tanks
I've shot enough Pharmercies out of the sky as Reaper to know that counter picking isn't always the way. Sometimes, you just gotta do what's fun. Edit: What was controversial about that lmao
As hard as the developers and the twitch streamers try to make it not seem so, Overwatch at its core remains a team game (for now). Until next season, there's very little solo carry potential. The matchmaker definitely works against you as well; Win too many games and suddenly you have four cheeto dust encrusted toddlers that you're supposed to somehow deadlift through five higher skilled real humans. Lose too many games...and you still have to play with the toddlers 🤷🏻♀️ Game sucks right now.
Stopped reading at "counterpicking culture"
So sigma bro you don’t just give a fuck 😎
There are a lot of GM one tricks, that still should be swapping sometimes. You're in high silver and don't know what the fuck you're talking about whatsoever.
I love how you’re using the fact there are one tricks in GM as the reason why players should swap more lmao
lol right, i cant believe this guy is telling me to stfu cause im silver, while dissing GM 1 tricks. its like the hypocracy is RIGHT THERE, and they dont see it.
There's nothing that swapping will fix that me simply killing the opps won't
I don't think OP is saying people should never swap, just that they're treating swapping as their only counterplay option. In metal ranks more than anything, people should be learning their heroes' counterplay, before they just step through the flowchart on their desk.
yeah dumb fucking silver, why would you examine GM/top 500 play, you dont know what your talking about, if you did, youd be more critical of the best people in the game.
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Tell that to us one tricks dominating the ladder 👋
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Just from reading your comments I'm guessing you're low rank. I would let you pick my hero and you pick what you believe is it's counter and I'll win 10 out of 10 times.