Overwatch 2 Ranking System Explained (And Best Tips To Rank Up)

Updated:

10 Nov 2024

Overwatch’s ranked system can be a little confusing, especially if you’re new to the game, so I’ll take the time to explain things- there’s lots of info the game misses out on telling you when you’re starting out.

Competitive Placements

When you first start playing the game, you need to win 50 games in either Quick Play role queue or open queue to unlock competitive.
If you’re on a new account, how you perform in your QP games before unlocking competitive affects the rank you’ll place in, because performing particularly well will make your MMR higher. If you’re lucky, you could potentially place in Platinum or Diamond.
Winning or losing streaks will change the percentage you gain or lose, increasing or lowering it the longer your streak is.
People with lower predicted MMR than their current rank will also find themselves losing more percentage than they gain, but playing and winning enough games should help even things out if you belong at the rank you’re in.
Newer accounts or old ones that haven’t played competitive in multiple seasons will have higher percentage gain and loss than regular players, which is what the calibration modifier does.

Ranks + Distribution

Bronze: 10%
Silver: 20%
Gold: 27%
Platinum: 26%
Diamond: 12%
Master: 4%
Grandmaster: 1%
Champion: Under 1%
Keep in mind these are estimates.

MMR

MMR means “matchmaking ranking”.
The higher your MMR is, the more likely the game’s system is to match you against high rank players.
If your MMR is low, you’ll probably place in bronze or silver.

Wide groups

In metal ranks and Diamond, wide groups are when two people are over 5 divisions apart, but it’s lowered to 3 for Master/GM and 1 for Champion.
You can also only 3 stack in a wide group, because 4 to 5 players of different ranks would make the queue times a lot longer.
Playing in wide groups lowers the percentage you gain or lose slightly.

How Modifiers Work

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Modifiers

Winning trend: Bonus for a win streak.
Losing trend: Penalty for losing streak.
Consolation: Your team wasn’t favored + lost.
Reversal: Your team was favored + lost.
Expected: Your team was favored + won.
Calibration: The system is unsure about your rank.
Demotion: You’ve been ranked down for losing.
Demotion protection: If you lose again, you’ll rank down.
Wide: You’re in a wide group, so you gain and lose less percentage.
Pressure: Your MMR is higher or lower than your visual rank.

Rank reset

There’s a rank reset every 6 months, although it’s more of a visual change most of the time, since winning most of your placements will end up in you being around where you were before it.
Your MMR doesn’t change, which is what determines where the game puts you once all 10 games are done.
Losing most of your placements will drop you though, and the drop will be especially harsh if you haven’t played competitive for multiple seasons despite your visual rank staying the same until the reset.

Seasonal ranked rewards

In Overwatch and early seasons of Overwatch 2, you used to get competitive points at the end of every season, but now it’s replaced with seasonal points.
You’ll get either 1 tick of progress for a loss/draw or 2 for a win, then you’ll get 100 comp points for every 10 ticks you get.
The seasonal points cap out at 6000, so once you’ve gotten all of them, you’re back to grinding for competitive points through winning or drawing games.
Competitive drives were added recently too, which are mini events during weekends that give competitive points and nameplates.

Weapon skins

Once you’ve gotten 3000 competitive points, you can get either a golden gun or the new weapon variant of the year.
The second weapon skin will rotate yearly and once it’s gone, they’re unlikely to come back, so you’ll want to get them before they’re gone.
Last year’s comp points are also turned into legacy ones, which you can only use to buy golden weapons.
Legacy points are a different currency to regular competitive ones, so you can’t combine them with any new ones you earn throughout the year to get a golden gun either. If you’re short, you’ll have to earn the extra 3000 again.

Bronze

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Bronze

The first rank in the game. Usually people that are new to FPS games or have out of date computers.

Tips for tanks: Bronze tank players can be either too aggressive or passive, although usually the second one. If you’re playing a hero like Reinhardt, you shouldn’t be standing still with your shield up all the time, you should be dropping it to swing your hammer whenever an enemy is in range. Mauga, Roadhog or D.Va players can also play too far away from the enemy team to do much damage, so try to take advantage of your hero’s range.
Tips for DPS: Characters that aren’t mechanically demanding are usually the best to pick when playing DPS in bronze, so going someone like Bastion or Junkrat will usually work well. The enemy are unlikely to know how to counter you, so even if you’re interested in playing other heroes, try using them if you think your team is struggling. Pharah is another good pick, but she’s slightly harder.
Tips for supports: Support players can develop a tendency to spend a bit too much time healing the tank, so you should also try to do damage and use abilities like Lúcio’s speed boost or Mercy’s damage boost unless you think the extra healing is needed. It can also be difficult to get out of bronze playing heroes like Lifeweaver or Mercy because of their team dependency, so if you’re willing to try someone else, Moira or Baptiste might be a good place to start.

Silver

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Silver

Slightly more experienced with the game than bronze players, but still have some brushing up on their mechanics to do.

Tips for tanks: You should try to save your engagements for when you’re sure your team can follow you, because if you go in too deep without your supports or DPS to help it’ll probably result in a quick respawn. Certain tanks can also take too much coordination to work, like Winston, Doomfist or Ball, so it might be best to save them for until you’ve ranked up a bit.
Tips for DPS: Try working on your target priority. The tank can be a tempting target because they’re easy to hit, but unless your team is shooting them with you or your character has high enough burst, it’s probably not going to do much other than give the enemy supports ultimate charge.
Tips for supports: Try to stop wasting important cooldowns like Suzu, Biotic Grenade or Immortality Field. Instead of using Suzu/Grenade to heal yourself (unless you’re about to die) or throwing down the field because you’ve taken a bit of poke damage, try to think about if you actually need to use the ability first. The cleanse, immortality or anti-healing can all win team fights if you time them right.

Gold

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Gold

Gold is about average. It has the highest amount of players in the game, so it’s where you’re most likely to place if you’ve played an FPS game before.

Tips for tanks: Gold is around the rank where the enemy team will start to punish you for your mistakes, so you need to be more thoughtful with where you position yourself. Try to kill the enemy DPS or supports if you catch them by themselves as well, since you have a large HP pool and it will either force the enemy team to turn around and help who you’re going for or get you a kill.
Tips for DPS: You’re going to want to try being more aggressive once you get to gold. Take high ground on characters that benefit from it like Soldier, Widow and Cassidy or spend more time harassing the enemy team’s backline. If you see an isolated support or DPS, you should go for the 1 v 1, even if you’re not confident in your mechanics yet.
Tips for supports: Use more natural cover and back off when your team’s at a major disadvantage. You should be trying to make yourself as hard to kill as possible because your life is more important than everybody else’s, so prioritise your own safety instead of going in after an overextending teammate. Try and avoid using shields to protect you if there are walls you can hide behind instead.

Platinum

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Platinum

Platinum is higher than over half of the playerbase, so you’re a bit above average. Work on a few mistakes and Diamond shouldn’t be too far off.

Tips for tanks: Try and pay attention to what heroes the enemy team are running, as well as what cooldowns they have up at the time that could catch you out when you push in. If you’re playing a tank like Mauga or Roadhog, for example, you should try and wait until the enemy Ana’s used her grenade because you don’t want to be out in the open while anti’d. Other good examples are Mei’s ice wall, Cassidy’s flashbang and Sombra’s hack, since you’ll be stuck in front of the enemy team or left without your abilities.
Tips for DPS: Coordinating with your other DPS, or tank depending on what you’re running, is important because people are less likely to be isolated from their team in Platinum and above. Since whoever you decide to pressure is more likely to have help, you’ll want to avoid committing to a flank by yourself unless you’re confident you can pull it off.
Tips for supports: Utility starts to become more important the higher you climb, but this is the rank it starts to show in properly. Just sitting back and healing won’t be as effective, so you need to try and be proactive. Use your grenades offensively on Ana, take off angles and try to do damage on more poke focused supports like Illari, Kiriko and Zenyatta or take the opportunity to 1 v 1 enemy supports/DPS if you see the opportunity on Lúcio, Moira and Baptiste. Also, try to avoid thinking high healing on the scoreboard means much, because a lot of the time just pocketing your tank can inflate your stats.

Diamond

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Diamond

The first non-metal rank, diamond is usually where the game starts to be taken more seriously.

Tips for tanks: If you’re playing a tank like Reinhardt, Orisa or Zarya, you can use your ultimate to try and set up combos with your DPS (or supports if you have one with an offensive ultimate). You can also use something like Cage Fight or Whole Hog to get an easy kill on an enemy squishy, because solo ulting one person can sometimes be a better play than trying to get the entire enemy team and dying because you got greedy.
Tips for DPS: Consistency is key. Instead of relying on playing overly riskily or pulling off something flashy, you’ll probably want to warm up in either QP or a custom aim trainer before going in to competitive. While overextending and trying to kill the enemy team’s squishies before dying can work, it’s better to keep yourself alive so you can pressure their backline for longer.
Tips for supports: Use your ultimate aggressively. Sometimes you’ll sit on it for too long waiting for the perfect opportunity to get a 5 man nanoblade, kill all of the enemies with Kitsune Rush or save your entire team from an ultimate combo with Transcendence but you can lose important team fights because of that. Ultimates like Captive Sun and Amplification Matrix should mostly be used for your own benefit, even if they can help your team.

Master

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Master

Under 10% of players have even gotten to Master, so reaching it is relatively impressive. The best tips I can think of once you’ve gotten this high are more general ones, like:

Try to communicate with your team more consistently.
Find someone you’re comfortable playing with, because solo queueing in higher elo is uncommon.
Ask someone that’s a slightly higher rank to look back at your games for you, just to be sure you can catch what’s preventing you from reaching GM.
Try to stay positive when playing, block and mute anyone that’s being distracting in chat or voice.

Grandmaster

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Grandmaster

Around 1% of the playerbase hits GM per season, so there’s only one tip I can really think of, which is to look back at your own gameplay and see what little mistakes you could be making if you’re interested in climbing to Champion. There won’t be anything particularly obvious, so you might not know what you’re doing wrong unless you check.

Champion

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Champion

The highest rank in the game, it takes a lot of time and effort to reach. No tips to give here, you’ll probably just need to spend hours playing Overwatch daily if you want to climb this high.