So how are your games going lately? [megathread]

[Mormolyce]

I'm actually really enjoying this new season so far, possibly helped by the fact I'm dusting off my ex-Junkrat main skills... I used to say that Junkrat is actually good, so now that they've buffed him to the point that even regular players can get value out of him he's absolutely insane. To the point that he should probably get nerfed again, to be honest... but don't tell Blizzard that. Yet.

The D.Va changes have really shifted the landscape. No more ridiculous uptime matrix munching incidental damage means not only Junkrat is a lot stronger but several other heroes as well. Shit, even the garbage snipers are doing better.

One downside is that pharmacy counters are more vital than ever, so you better hope your team doesn't lock in Genji/Reaper every round. Though I have had some luck using D.Va to make up for lack of anti-air. Being able to charge Pharah/Mercy in the air while firing is brutal.

[Deleted]

Terribly...

[Jessicka]

Not played much comp past couple of weeks, but did some tonight and by Gods it was fucking horrible. Lost two more because some twat wanted to lock me out of Widow rather than win, didn't even pick Widow they just saw I mained her. Then finally won a match which was just a one sided stomp as Pharah.

It's just not fun anymore, they need to fix this retarded throwing, the match making, and well, fucking everything. Balance is a fucking shambles too. You have no chance without Mercy, and since both sides will have her it's basically down to who has the best one or can kill the other one more.

[Eapoe]

Not played much comp past couple of weeks, but did some tonight and by Gods it was fucking horrible. Lost two more because some twat wanted to lock me out of Widow rather than win, didn't even pick Widow they just saw I mained her. Then finally won a match which was just a one sided stomp as Pharah.

It's just not fun anymore, they need to fix this retarded throwing, the match making, and well, fucking everything. Balance is a fucking shambles too. You have no chance without Mercy, and since both sides will have her it's basically down to who has the best one or can kill the other one more.

I've won and lost games where the teams don't have Mercy. I've also won games where the enemy team Mercy was better than ours. Mercy is not the end all of the healing roster, she just does even better at solo healing than she did before. Funny thing is, there's still games where you can completely lock her down during her Ult, as well as killing her before she even has the chance to Ult.
Her changes seem to have effected the Meta a bit on Plat and lower, as well as affecting hero choices; but, before anyone blows their top about that, who's changes haven't affected the Meta in certain ranks.
It wasn't long ago that people were complaining in this thread, and making new ones, complaining about just how good Pharah is. Nothing has changed since those posts in the game, so what happened there? Maybe meta switches, as well as people learning how to shoot her out of the sky better, has caused her to not be so strong as people once thought.
Mercy's changes actually enforce a faster style game play, as it's much more effective right now to keep pressure on the enemy team and taking advantage of her Rez downtime. Very few teams so far so that. Most get a kill, let Mercy Rez, and then stand back and don't do much to pressure the team. There's also the issue where people ignore her during her Ult and just let her fly around freely. It's quite embarssing at this point.
The issue she causes is that you (more than likely) can't slow play as much as you used to. If you're going to pick little by little and build Ults for a big push, you need to be prepared for her Ult as well. This can be said for a lot of heroes.

[DeadmanWalking]

Frankly all mercy problems evaporate when teams start to properly target prioritize. When someone sees a mercy there should be a tunnel vision effect that happens and everyone just focus fires her. People do this for Bastion, guy can't walk into sight without attracting all the bullets but for some reason people try to kill everything but mercy, torb turrets and Pharahs. I've seen a death match game where a torb won because he put a turret on a floating pad and everyone tried to ignore it and constantly died to it. I've seen mercys go an entire game without dying and it has nothing to do with them being good at escaping and everything to do with people trying to kill the target she is healing first.
When I see a mercy that bitch gotta die die die. I will blow an ult just to kill her.

[Eapoe]

I will never understand this SR until Blizz comes clean about it. Had a 1 round game, playing Mercy, had 2 kills, 2 deaths, 4K healing, 5 assist kills, and gained 37 SR. How is that possible? That means that on a 2 round game, if we doubled that, I'd have 4 kills, 4 deaths, 8k healing, and 10 assist kills. I've had games with much better stats than that and gained 10 points.
I know people say it's based on your play vs other people of your level, but even going off the 1 round where I gained 37 where the enemy team left seems to go against that.

[A-sayo]

Playing Mercy even more before the nerf-hammer drops to her....Which, in my opinion, would bring her back to a "Hide-and-seek"-ish gameplay. >_<

[Eapoe]

Playing Mercy even more before the nerf-hammer drops to her....Which, in my opinion, would bring her back to a "Hide-and-seek"-ish gameplay. >_<

As far as I know, isn't the nerf just that using Ult won't immediately reset the Rez CD? Not really a huge nerf, just requires a little more forethought, like seeing the enemy team getting set up or if they are obviously going to charge in, using it to get rezzes off quicker. Is there more to the nerf I haven't heard about yet?
Honestly, the hide and seek hasn't ended yet. There have been plenty of times I wait around a corner, peak a little bit for healing if I think it's safe, then come out for a Rez, Ult, Rez. Yeah, maybe it will put her more back to that style so you can Rez easier when not close to an Ult, but who knows right now?

[Jessicka]

The game at this level is a shit show. Lost 6, won 4, lost 3SR in the process. Like I said earlier, I've not played a lot last few weeks, but coming back to this mess every time I do is just reaffirming that these past few patches since Doomfist haven't done anything to improve the game.

[Advent]

Play with friends? That's what everyone else told me to do. But getting out of bronze/silver... I cant get good enough to put a dent in enemy teams, despite all the higher echelon of players saying you can "easily" carry at this level. I can't help but think they're all a bunch of liars spoonfeeding us good feelings that are a load of BS.

[Endus]

I will never understand this SR until Blizz comes clean about it. Had a 1 round game, playing Mercy, had 2 kills, 2 deaths, 4K healing, 5 assist kills, and gained 37 SR. How is that possible? That means that on a 2 round game, if we doubled that, I'd have 4 kills, 4 deaths, 8k healing, and 10 assist kills. I've had games with much better stats than that and gained 10 points.
I know people say it's based on your play vs other people of your level, but even going off the 1 round where I gained 37 where the enemy team left seems to go against that.

37 isn't unusually high. I started last season about 500 points below where I should have been, and was earning 40+ points per win for a while, consistently.
It isn't about the stats, absent context. It's about your performance overall, including factors that aren't evaluated in those stats for your perusal, as compared to other players;
1> Of your rank or near to,
2> Of your particular hero,
3> On that particular map, and
4> On that particular side (whether attack or defense).

And that value is further adjusted based on the difference between your team's average SR, and the enemy team's average SR (if you're ranked higher than they are, your wins are less and losses greater, and vice versa).

It may also adjust further based on an internal MMR, pushing you closer to where it "expects" you should be, but that may be accounted for in the performance eval above; this is where we have a lack of clarity.

Track your stats. Get a spreadsheet (there's a bunch already set up you can download for this), track your SR gains and losses, and play enough matches, and you'll see it's fairly consistent. I tracked well over 100 matches last season, and you can easily see in those numbers how my SR gains/losses adjust based on my rank; if my rank dipped, I'd win bigger and lose less, until that trend corrected. It eventually balanced me out around 2550-2600 or so, after starting at 2050; I made that shift in the first 30 matches or so, and the rest I waffled around within a couple hundred point range. The outliers I had in those were games where I knew I'd played exceptionally well (for me), or had shat the bed and did awfully (for instance, playing Zen and getting picked off by enemy snipers regularly). Didn't see a single unusual SR result that shocked me.

Most of the cases where I hear of that, it's people in high or low SRs (low silver or below, high diamond or higher), where there's fewer teams and the potential SR gap between teams is greater, and thus has more effect on SR outcomes. In gold/plat, where I play, that's where most players are, and there's never much of an SR difference (so little I don't bother tracking it).

[Jessicka]

Comparing with last season doesnt work. They intentionally inflated your SR awards early on to help catch up after deliberately placing you low. That ‘bonus’ wore off after a couple of weeks and it returned to normal awards. That’s gone now because it was shit.

Anything above 35 now does seem very much an outlier, although I have got 50 a couple of times. Literally twice. Usually in the 25-35 region. If only I could win games, right?

[Eapoe]

37 isn't unusually high. I started last season about 500 points below where I should have been, and was earning 40+ points per win for a while, consistently.
It isn't about the stats, absent context. It's about your performance overall, including factors that aren't evaluated in those stats for your perusal, as compared to other players;
1> Of your rank or near to,
2> Of your particular hero,
3> On that particular map, and
4> On that particular side (whether attack or defense).

And that value is further adjusted based on the difference between your team's average SR, and the enemy team's average SR (if you're ranked higher than they are, your wins are less and losses greater, and vice versa).

It may also adjust further based on an internal MMR, pushing you closer to where it "expects" you should be, but that may be accounted for in the performance eval above; this is where we have a lack of clarity.

Track your stats. Get a spreadsheet (there's a bunch already set up you can download for this), track your SR gains and losses, and play enough matches, and you'll see it's fairly consistent. I tracked well over 100 matches last season, and you can easily see in those numbers how my SR gains/losses adjust based on my rank; if my rank dipped, I'd win bigger and lose less, until that trend corrected. It eventually balanced me out around 2550-2600 or so, after starting at 2050; I made that shift in the first 30 matches or so, and the rest I waffled around within a couple hundred point range. The outliers I had in those were games where I knew I'd played exceptionally well (for me), or had shat the bed and did awfully (for instance, playing Zen and getting picked off by enemy snipers regularly). Didn't see a single unusual SR result that shocked me.

Most of the cases where I hear of that, it's people in high or low SRs (low silver or below, high diamond or higher), where there's fewer teams and the potential SR gap between teams is greater, and thus has more effect on SR outcomes. In gold/plat, where I play, that's where most players are, and there's never much of an SR difference (so little I don't bother tracking it).

It is unusually high when you get that increase from a game where the entire enemy team leaves after round 1. It's unusually high when I finish a 2 round game with 17k healing, 12 elims, 4 deaths, 15-20 assists, and 3 mins of objective time and I gain 10. It's unusually high when I have a game like what I just described on a loss and I lose 20+.
I've also been on a slightly higher win:loss ratio the whole season, being roughly 20 wins higher out of 250+ games. It's fairly constant to gain/lose about 15-30 a game.
The 1st issue comes directly from my post, where I gained 30 points for a 1 round game with minimal stats for a Mercy.
The 2nd issue comes from experiencing this and realizing you actually feel punished for playing better. Higher stats over 2+ rounds on a win gained me less than subpar stats over 1 round.
We lack clarity over much more. Blizzard has never even really hinted at how SR is determined per game. Stating it's based on my performance vs others on that character on that map is a best guess scenario based on the data people have collected and the conclusions they have drawn. This would also mean that if I looked at trackers and see a low pick rate hero and stick to them and do well I should gain more than picking a popular hero and doing subpar. This doesn't always hold true.
It also doesn't add up as I've picked multiple heroes over the course of a payload match, won that game, and gained 30+, where if I stuck to the same hero full time I might have only gained 10.

[Player Twelve]

Play with friends? That's what everyone else told me to do. But getting out of bronze/silver... I cant get good enough to put a dent in enemy teams, despite all the higher echelon of players saying you can "easily" carry at this level. I can't help but think they're all a bunch of liars spoonfeeding us good feelings that are a load of BS.

Bronze/silver is stupidly easy to get out of. People can't even aim there, they don't know to take cover when Mccree ults, they don't know how to kill roadhog, playing symmetra you can just jump around people and they'll be unable to kill you while you beam them to death.

[Post]

Play with friends? That's what everyone else told me to do. But getting out of bronze/silver... I cant get good enough to put a dent in enemy teams, despite all the higher echelon of players saying you can "easily" carry at this level. I can't help but think they're all a bunch of liars spoonfeeding us good feelings that are a load of BS.

This is my first fps and I've carried games at gold/platinum...

It really is just about practice and playing things that you know will counter the enemy team.

[DeadmanWalking]

Bronze/silver is stupidly easy to get out of. People can't even aim there, they don't know to take cover when Mccree ults, they don't know how to kill roadhog, playing symmetra you can just jump around people and they'll be unable to kill you while you beam them to death.

Except that those kind of players are on your team too.

[Player Twelve]

Except that those kind of players are on your team too.

Yeah, so? I'm not reliant on them if I play at that rating. I helped a friend get to gold by playing on his account because he didn't want to deal with the people down there. I could come running with roadhog and just wipe the floor with 3-4 of their players before I died, playing pharah nobody even bothered to shoot me. Playing widowmaker on attack in Kingsrow I killed the entire team within 20 seconds of the game starting. In a koth map I soloed the entire enemy team playing tracer. People at that rating are bad. Some cheating accusations and a lot of people whining about smurfing. I'm not even that good of a player, I've reached 2900 max this season, but the people playing at bronze... Bots are playing better than many of them.

[Advent]

Yeah, so? I'm not reliant on them if I play at that rating. I helped a friend get to gold by playing on his account because he didn't want to deal with the people down there. I could come running with roadhog and just wipe the floor with 3-4 of their players before I died, playing pharah nobody even bothered to shoot me. Playing widowmaker on attack in Kingsrow I killed the entire team within 20 seconds of the game starting. In a koth map I soloed the entire enemy team playing tracer. People at that rating are bad. Some cheating accusations and a lot of people whining about smurfing. I'm not even that good of a player, I've reached 2900 max this season, but the people playing at bronze... Bots are playing better than many of them.

That's you. Not everybody can do that, and you have to be at that level to do anything. You are so reliant on your team, otherwise you have to solo the whole other team. Idk about you, but I can't do something that crazy or reckless, or I'm DEAD. I mean, you can surely leverage that kind of skill when you already have it, but it's a long, arduous process and progress is slow.That's why I feel ranking up is a lie, or it's only for the people who already have inherent skill that just needs refining. If you don't have it, you're stuck with the people that just don't care whether they win or lose. I gave up on competitive with a 39% win rate. And those wins happened because the enemy team had leavers, or throwers. I had a couple myself, in fact.

[Jessicka]

Yeah, so? I'm not reliant on them if I play at that rating. I helped a friend get to gold by playing on his account because he didn't want to deal with the people down there. I could come running with roadhog and just wipe the floor with 3-4 of their players before I died, playing pharah nobody even bothered to shoot me. Playing widowmaker on attack in Kingsrow I killed the entire team within 20 seconds of the game starting. In a koth map I soloed the entire enemy team playing tracer. People at that rating are bad. Some cheating accusations and a lot of people whining about smurfing. I'm not even that good of a player, I've reached 2900 max this season, but the people playing at bronze... Bots are playing better than many of them.

Got to love these phenomenally blinkered "I'm AMAZING" posts. Also, I hope they fucking ban you for boosting, you're part of our problem.

[Fenzha]

play my first Comp game in ages. Everyone insta locks dps and i get stuck on Mercy. Defending on Dorado and we stop them under the bridge near the start, easy win for us now right? lol no.
Everyone instalocks dps again and someone takes Rein So i take Mercy again. The dps do nothing but run into the enemy team 1 by 1, the Rein just runs at the enemy team hammer swinging as he goes and im there on the Mercy having to try and heal everyone. I cant rez because everyone dies on top of the enemy team and Im forced to switch to pistol to take out Torb turrets because everyone else just ignores them. In the end i just went soldier with about 45 seconds left because we had no competent damage and killed a bunch allowing us to push forward a bit but we fell just short of the goal and lost.

Closed the game and probably wont be playing again until Arcade boxes reset.