Overwatch

[Marquis]

max damage is 1000. at a certain distance there is falloff; i've survived with symmetra and zenyatta before

[Bins]

got dat 5 man dva kill



i "trolled" my first 5 games of placements. i played with someone who has had the game for 4 days (yes hes been playing nonstop) and a rank 70 so like we lost because the balance was just off and we ended up matching with some rank 60s and getting rekted.

but then i played the rest with some guy and we won 5 in a row so yayyayay im not bad

[PokerFace]

^Do you need similar levels as those you play with to get balanced competitive matches?

I'm currently level 32-34 can't remember where I was when I stopped playing quickplay last night

[hitogoroshi]

I've found a gap of 10+ ranking in a premade in competitive seems to correlate decently strongly with losing. In particular, I think it's strongly against them if they don't join team chat and especially if no one on the premade is on support.

[PokerFace]

Then do I need people roughly my level to play ranked with me to get good placement in my 10 games?

[Bins]

^Do you need similar levels as those you play with to get balanced competitive matches?

I'm currently level 32-34 can't remember where I was when I stopped playing quickplay last night

like level or rank? i'm level 33 i think and my rank 70 friend is level 70? we were playing with people about my level other than him

we were just getting matched with people rank 60 so it was like a team of rank 60s versus a rank 70, two rank 40s and three unrankeds

[Bins]

I've found a gap of 10+ ranking in a premade in competitive seems to correlate decently strongly with losing. In particular, I think it's strongly against them if they don't join team chat and especially if no one on the premade is on support.

yaaa like tbh we would of done better without the rank 70 just because of balance

[Bins]

also for the first 5 games i played support all 5 and then for the last 5 i switched to offense and tank so maybe i should not doubt how good i am at stuff other than support

[PokerFace]

I was asking if those I play with shound be same level as me. I have not played any competitive yet only quickplay

based on what you said I should not play with someone level 70 on my tream or I will get put against people I can't beat and thus get bad placement

Jahudo and I have been considering running Zarya and Zenny, pocketing each other with good support and dps to see how that works in comp. I forget what level Jahudo is. If he is too high by comparison it might be better for me to party up with you to do ZZ fighting. You good at Zarya or Zenny?

[Marquis]

there's level which you seem to be around 30 for. that's just gametime and xp based

then rank is competitive-only. a bell curve around 50 that focuses on individual skill in games and win/loss

[Bins]

yeah i get matched with people of all levels

level really isnt that big of a determinant of skill, just experience

we were playing against and with anywhere from 25 - 125

[PokerFace]

I realize rank is comp only

If I want to get a good rank, do I need to play with a team of people similar to my level?

Based on what you said earlier it sounded like you were saying yes and now it seems like you are saying no

If level does not matter at all, then why require a 25 level to enter comp in the first place? Feels like they should be requiring something else as a better measurement of skill than expierence

[Bins]

level does make some difference because USUALLY experience correlates with skill but it can differ greatly

i was saying early dont play with someone rank 70 and someone rank 40 with your placements
i said nothing about level

[Bins]

a level 125 can be rank 30 and a level 50 can be rank 70

[hitogoroshi]

^Do you need similar levels as those you play with to get balanced competitive matches?

I'm currently level 32-34 can't remember where I was when I stopped playing quickplay last night

like level or rank? i'm level 33 i think and my rank 70 friend is level 70? we were playing with people about my level other than him

Rank; level is pretty much meaningless. The 25+ requirement is just to make sure you're vaguely familiar with the heroes and maps before you do comp.

For placements, I just did solo queue so I had a better idea how I stacked up in isolation and knew who I could queue with productively. If you don't want to do that, you just have to accept the risk that you could be in a Bins situation: where your "true rank" is X, but you get into ranks above your paygrade for placements, so you do nothing but lose and get a rank even lower than you should. You would have won games of a lower rank, but you don't get to play those games because the presence of your friend delays the time when the game ratings decline.

[PokerFace]

I get that

Is there a certain group of people I should play competitive with? Yes or No/does not matter?

If yes, then who are those people and why?

P-edit: So you say no/does not matter hito?

[PJ.]

If League of Legends rank system is any indicator, duoing your placements is only gonna put you in a less likely scenario to win. I would recommend playing them solo.

Edit: And I'm pretty sure that while it will help your initial rank, I'm sure your placement won't be nearly as high as you would expect from the games you'd be playing in, even if you win all 10. By your 10th game, you'll probably being playing against rank 70s, but the placement might still cap you at 60 or something. On top of that, your post placement games are volatile and are going to try to move you closer to the mean. I've heard a lot of stuff where you'll lose far more points for an l than a W. I'm mostly specualting from other games, but I think the cons far outweigh the pros of partnering up in your placements(i'd even expect that to be true of partnering up in ranked play at all).

[hitogoroshi]

Level, as in how much you've grinded, matters very little.

Rank matters a lot in that a skewed premade seems (ancedotally!) to do worse. But since you aren't ranked yet, you don't know where you sit. Which is why the safest option is to solo queue until your rating is decently accurate and you know who you can productively queue with. Playing with good friends does help, but the dangerous scenario is that, if they're significantly better than you, your rating will crater.

@Panzer: I think the duoing penalities for this game are a lot less severe than League, so having a friend is probably a help if they're around your level. If they're ranked highly, it's a problem.

[hitogoroshi]

Or to put it another way, suppose alone you'd have a rank X game. I think teaming with friends of rank X is better than going solo. But the way you want to reach a team rank of X is to have a team of players who are all about rank X. If you have a team of, say, X-10, X-3, X, X+3, X+10, I think you're less likely to win with that team than you are solo. Again, haven't found a good OW stats site and this is anecdotal.

The bad impacts of skew are lessened by a.) all six in team chat b.) the biggest premade group in the game fielding the support and c.) the best player in the game being good at and playing McCree or Tracer.

[PJ.]

I had to research a bunch because I'm not even high enough level to play competitive, but isn't rank ridiculously volatile in OW? like 50 is average. but 57 is actually tremendously good and 43 is tremendously bad? Like if you go by LoL percentages 56 would be considered Gold. and 46 would be considered bronze. So just 2-3 ranks is actually a big deal. 3 ranks can be a 15 percentile points difference toward the middle of the bell curve.

Also to quantify what Hito was saying. If you take exactly what he said X, x-3, x-10, x+10, x+3 into a game, and make X=50(40 47 50 53 60), you'll a have a player in the bottom 8% of all players, a player in the bottom 29%, a player hovering around the 50% mark, a player in the top 43%, and your rank 60 will be in the top 17%. There's no matchmaking in the world that's gonna fix that man. the two players that are just absolutely abysmal are gonna negate any and all advantage you get from the guy that is pretty good and the two average players MIGHT be over their head too, because matchmaking will have no idea how to handle that.

[PokerFace]

Ok I got it all now. Level in QP means less than Jack not just Jack as I had thought

It would be best to queue with people the same rank as me. As I have no idea what my rank is, its best to solo queue through placements. (x=?)

Then after I get a rank (after I know what X is), its best to queue with people of same rank to get good. All is figured out

Should be noted as stated before Overwatch is the first blizzard game I have ever played, never played league of legends

Thanks for info hito, bins, panzer

[Bins]

Solo or duo your placements with someone unranked.

I'm never going to play rank solo so I just duo'd.

[Clumsy]

Couple changes incoming/have hit (not sure which). Mcree's recent buff with his damage falloff at range being reduced has been reverted. His fan the hammer SPEED (not damage) has been increased, and apparently can land about the first 5 before flashbang ends. I think there were other changes but this was the big one.

Also, has anyone been following the Sombra hints hidden in videos? So far we have the following information

She is tied to Dorado, most likely Spanish. Def knows Spanish.
A decrypted code of hexadecimal entries found in the Ana reveal gives us: "Ra. She who has the information, has the power". This was decoded using a constant of 23, which implies that Sombra is next (Ana is character 22)
A second code was found in a developer video. This is a doozy. Barcodes were found within a flash of images. Running these bar codes gave a series of hexadecimal. Converting that into binary, laying it out in a square, making 1's black and 0's white gave a QR code. Scanning the code gave the message (in Spanish) "Was that easy? Now that I have your attention, let's make this harder."
All of this combined with "Authorization Invalid, Protocol: Sombra" on the terminals of the power plant in Dorado suggest a hacker/information based character.
Datamined voicelines talk about a stealth character in the area. Mccree: "I can't see ya, but I know you're there".
Could be self only or teammate applicable. Ult I'm betting.

Identity of Sombra is theorized to possibly be Alejandra in the short "Hero". Other theories say her unseen mother. Couple of things supporting:
-Time jump visible because of the power plants seen on the map
-Mom's bakery seen in Dorado map
-Near the end, she takes the S76 poster. Only thing legible behind the poster is a 23.
-Mom's bakery is Spanish for Darkness, odd for a bakery, huh?
(Sombra is Spanish for Shadow)

Is there anything I missed? Thoughts?

[PJ.]

Couple changes incoming/have hit (not sure which). Mcree's recent buff with his damage falloff at range being reduced has been reverted. His fan the hammer SPEED (not damage) has been increased, and apparently can land about the first 5 before flashbang ends. I think there were other changes but this was the big one.

The change hasn't been reverted, it was just tuned down. The effective range is still longer than it was.

[PokerFace]

I don't think you missed anything with regards to sombra leaks

A support stealth character would be cool as long as its not OP or a ripoff of something from game reck don't want me mentioning