Sometimes you’ll find yourself on losing streaks when you’re playing Overwatch, queueing over and over hoping for another win, so I’ll give you a few tips for how to try and get more consistent results when you’re playing.
1. If you’ve lost more than two or three games in a row, take a break, especially if you’re starting to get annoyed. Playing competitive when you’re in a bad mood is almost always a bad idea, so going to quick play or opening up another game can help you relax before you continue.
2. Avoid queueing when sick, tired or in pain. You might not notice it, but your performance will be worse than normal, since you aren’t able to concentrate properly. Stick to playing casually until you feel better.
3. Try and keep a positive mindset when you’re playing, even if your teammates are annoying you. Complaining about how badly they’re doing in chat won’t help, since if they reply, it will just make both of you feel worse. Either be nice or turn off chat and focus on your game.
4. If you have any friends to group with, playing in a two or three stack with people you think play well can help make things more enjoyable. It also makes your games a bit less random, since you know their playstyles and what heroes they like.
5. Warm up before queueing. Going straight in to competitive can be tempting, especially if you don’t have much free time, but spending a little while in a custom or finishing one QP game should usually be enough for more consistent results.
6. Don’t be overly reliant on the scoreboard. Sometimes your stats can look good, but your pick isn’t working. If you have high damage on Junkrat but the enemy team is running pharmercy, or you have high healing on Moira but your tank is constantly anti’d, maybe consider if the pick is actually working.
7. This tip doesn’t really matter until you get to around gold or platinum, but re-watching your gameplay once you’re done can help you notice mistakes you didn’t while you were playing. If you can’t tell what you did wrong, sometimes asking for a higher ranked friend’s opinion can work too.
8. Pay attention to your own gameplay, not your teammates’. Everyone will get a tank that runs in alone or a second support that refuses to heal now and then, but spending too much time focusing on what they’re doing will end up making you play worse.
9. Make more use of the block button and avoid anyone you don’t want to play with. Sometimes people will spend too long blaming each other back and forth in chat when the game was still winnable, so everyone else in the team starts to be distracted by it. In situations like that, muting them is probably best, since it’s unlikely they’ll have anything useful to say later.
10. Try and find someone on your team to coordinate with. If you’re a DPS, going with your other DPS or tank depending on who you’re closer can help you get kills. The same applies to tanks, especially dive ones like Winston or Ball, since your DPS can apply kill pressure faster than you.
11. For supports, try and stay close to your other support or a backline DPS, since they’re going to have an easier time protecting you than a flanker or sniper. Your tank is probably going to struggle with coming back to help you too, since they need to make space for everyone else.
12. For each role, try to main only two or three heroes. It’s okay to counterswap now and then, but if you play too many characters, you’ll end up having too many you’re okay at instead of multiple you’re good at.
13. If someone is trying to tell you how to play, if how you’ve been playing has been helping you climb, ignore them. As long as it’s working, it shouldn’t really matter if it’s not what your teammates want you to do. For example, if you’re playing D.Va in to a Zarya and you’re still getting value, you don’t need to change until other people counter you too.
14. In lower ranks, try to avoid heroes that’re team dependent. Characters like Doomfist, Sombra, Mercy and Lifeweaver need coordination to work that you won’t get in bronze or silver, so maybe play heroes you’ll have more independence on.
15. On DPS or support, don’t rely on your tank’s shield for protection, if you have someone like Reinhardt or Sigma. It might break while you’re standing behind it, so use natural cover like walls instead.
16. Don’t overextend. Sometimes going in by yourself can work, but only if your team is distracting the enemies and you have the abilities to bail yourself out if you’re noticed. Unless everyone is alive, just wait for them and regroup instead of dying early.
17. When playing support, your life is more important than everyone else’s, so you should prioritise keeping yourself alive. If there’s only one or two people alive after you’ve lost a teamfight, you should back out instead of getting yourself killed trying to heal them. Same thing for if your tank overextends, because following them in will probably get you killed.
18. For tanks, try to avoid taking unnecessary damage. If your supports spend too much time focusing on you, your DPS might not be healed as much or they might not have time to protect each other.
19. Don’t hold on to your ultimate for too long. It’s nice to kill everyone on the enemy team or save your teammates from something like Dragon Blade, but sometimes you could have won a fight that you ended up losing if you had used it instead of saving it.
20. Try to keep track of what cooldowns or ultimates the enemy team might have. It can be a little difficult to try and remember everything, so start off small, by focusing on important things like Ana’s grenade or Kiriko’s suzu.
21. When you die, you can see the ult charge of who killed you in the killcam, so it’s worth checking to see how much they have.
22. If you want to combo ultimates with one of your teammates, press tab to see if they actually have it first, so you avoid wasting yours while they don’t have theirs.
23. Voice chat can be helpful if you’re comfortable talking over mic, but if you’re not, try and ping often. You can also press your mouse wheel to ping where the enemy that killed you is after you died.
24. Be proactive. Try and find an out of position enemy or follow up on a play your teammates are trying to make, don’t sit around and wait for things to happen.
25. If you want to rank up instead of playing casually, make time for the game multiple days a week. You won’t be able to climb unless you’re queueing consistently, because you won’t be playing enough to try and get better.
26. When playing mobile heroes, consider getting healthpacks instead of going back to your supports for healing unless you really need it, because it’s safer and doesn’t distract them from helping someone else. You’ll die less often on flankers or dive tanks if you use them properly.
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