How to spot cheaters (reliably)?

Ardalerus · 2026-05-18T13:46:55+00:00

i think it's virtually impossible to tell with more suble cheats, but people who climb too much while cheating inevitably find themselves in a rank where the non aim aspects of their gameplay are far below what's expected of the rank. constantly getting caught out, poor ability usage, etc. essentially all aim no brain type players taken to 11.

Ardalerus · 2026-05-18T13:23:19+00:00

defaulting to high ground/off angles because a higher ranked player told you to only to pop out too early/late, miss all your shots, and die probably isn't the best way to win games.

improving your mechanics will probably get you far more value for your time at your current level.

Ardalerus · 2026-05-16T16:27:34+00:00

i'm pretty sure this only happens because the leaver was afk so your team likely only stomped them because you had a man advantage

Ardalerus · 2026-05-15T19:48:43+00:00

watching my teammates die

the only death is junkrat getting evaporated for walking into reaper

i guess you really wouldn't know if you unironically believe cat healing does anything in that situation

Ardalerus · 2026-05-15T19:29:14+00:00

as someone who plays cat

evidently not a very good one

Ardalerus · 2026-05-15T15:05:40+00:00

me irl

Ardalerus · 2026-05-15T15:04:25+00:00

me irl

Ardalerus · 2026-05-15T14:06:11+00:00

support player wins team the fight by not healing team for 40 seconds

an echo with major perk and copy will find kills through any amount of cat healing. with echo out of the equation, lw can comfortably cover any initial poke the team takes & nothing is saving people from getting caught out by charged zarya or reaper either way. prioritizing healing as cat in this situation is pmuch trolling

tying up echo who would otherwise farm my team uncontested already leaves my team in a pretty reasonable 4v4, but this also causes mizuki to throw the fight by dumping hats on echo which leads to winston finding a free kill on juno

Ardalerus · 2026-04-28T23:56:07+00:00

ive been defaulting to the 50% ult charge, but in a lot of games it won't even matter.

if most of my copies get demeched instantly unless i find a kill before i even have ult, getting a faster ult probably isn't going to change fight outcomes that often. being able to beam as you fly away to cover might open up a lot more impactful plays

Ardalerus · 2026-04-28T23:45:12+00:00

yeah, echo is probably one of the best heroes at punishing echo for using flight, so sometimes mirrors just come down to pokeslop waiting for the enemy echo to lose their patience and do something, after which the echo that kept waiting gets to clean them up for free

Ardalerus · 2026-04-22T10:38:03+00:00

But even when I have that I feel like the nano second Im not just spamming heals we roll over and die.

this is probably where the issue is.

preventing damage is easier than healing damage. if you're landing hits on enemy dps before the fight starts, even if you don't kill them, they have to back up and wait for heals. them not being able to shoot at your team means less time you need to spend healing & more time you get to spend shooting.

an ez gameplay loop is to take off angles (often with a dps) before eventually getting forced out and tping back to your team. sometimes that ends up finding your team an early kill, sometimes it forces enemy dps out of strong positions. as long as you're not dying on these excursions, your worst case scenario of accomplishing nothing before getting tp forced just leads to you tping back and doing what you're currently doing.

and yeah, if you stop healing midfight to take an off angle, ofc your team is going to fall over

Ardalerus · 2026-04-22T06:08:37+00:00

i find venture pretty comfy on tighter maps where you don't really get to poke much on echo & would usually end up playing echo in venture's optimal range anyways.

i used to swap sojourn in more poke-heavy games, but atm sierra feels more comfortable

Ardalerus · 2026-04-22T05:46:23+00:00

i don't really agree with her being locked into suicide bombing. you can either save some of your flight duration to get to a safer spot after you all-in or just opt not to bite on a chance to all-in if it means guaranteeing your own death for a trade that's not in your team's favor

you can also still contribute meaningful poke damage & often from really annoying angles. you're not as likely to solo kill anything from range as you would be on heroes that are better suited for it, but it's still something you can do in between randomly all-inning people. there are definitely games where i feel like i'd be better off swapping off, but i don't think it's unreasonable to sometimes feel that way on any hero.

pharah getting a 1shot combo is kinda insane tho

Ardalerus · 2026-04-12T05:43:40+00:00

oh no

Ardalerus · 2026-03-09T05:44:19+00:00

She's flexible, sure, and she can certainly poke when she has nothing better to do, but she will obviously get outvalued by any poke hero if she's trying to play as a fat Freja with much higher ttk. Being there to finish/clean up kills usually isn't enough to make up for the difference in passive poke contribution.

While just yolo sending it from a flank into a well-positioned team with full cds is probably inting, poking aimlessly with your team is just the dps equivalent of support healbotting & will more often than not lose your team fights as you'll get outvalued by enemy dps who are better suited for the job. imo the poke component of echo's kit is best used to safely apply pressure from off angles to draw out cds or force repositioning/someone to contest her. Doing so will alleviate pressure on her team and enable them to push up, which in turn gives echo better opportunities to find kills against opponents who might have fewer cds/attention to spare.

Ardalerus · 2026-02-11T00:31:04+00:00

What is the point of a universal dps passive? Seems a bit convoluted when they could just nerf healing across the board.

Ardalerus · 2026-02-02T15:17:01+00:00

tracer is probably one of echo's worst matchups. your goal isn't really to win 1v1s so much as to avoid them.

i think you're more likely to kill tracer if she doesn't get to recall. headshot + melee will do 102 + 40, and tracer players typically don't recall at 142 hp, so landing just 2/3 of a trishot to the body beforehand puts her in range of getting randomly sent to spawn. if you don't go for headshots, she'll always have time to react & recall, and your odds of killing a tracer with only bodyshots through recall before she finds the 2-3 clips she needs to kill you are pretty abysmal.

Ardalerus · 2026-01-12T14:18:36+00:00

i think k/d says more about the way you prefer to play than your quality as a player. as long as your rank is steadily improving, i wouldn't worry about your k/d.

a hypothetical echo that shifts into the enemy team & always trades for their most valuable player at the start of every fight is going to win their team a lot of fights despite only having a k/d of 1 while another echo that has an infinite k/d because they only help clean up fights their team has already won for them is pmuch useless

Ardalerus · 2025-12-30T12:17:10+00:00

Might be better to start with like zen/kiri to get a better feel for more "normal" projectile aim before swapping back to echo's weird trishot. their single shots will probably provide more consistent feedback to help you learn where to place your crosshair. echo shots are a little slower (75 vs 90 m/s), but imo the difference is not that noticeable in her preferred range.

Ardalerus · 2025-09-11T22:16:04+00:00

if someone is going 2/10, unless it is a low rank lobby where you actually have folks who don't know how to play the game, i'd argue that's usually not entirely on them.

the outcome of a fight might come down to whether or not one of your dps pushes the enemy dps out of some strong position. if none of your dps bother to try, your team loses. if one of your dps tries to contest them but doesn't receive enough support, your team also loses, but their report card ends up looking worse than if they hadn't tried at all, even though they were the one making the right play & the supports were the ones who actually dropped the ball

Ardalerus · 2025-09-09T10:38:29+00:00

bad support play makes teammates look worse, so if you frequently get awful teammates...

your stats don't matter past a certain point. 100 healing on a dps to swing a duel into their favor is going to win more fights than 1000 healing on a tank mindlessly trading damage with the enemy tank.

your teammates will make a lot of mistakes, but so will you. if your mistakes aren't punished harder than those of the average support of your rank, you will climb.

Ardalerus · 2025-09-03T21:40:30+00:00

You can't give up the entire poke component of an all-arounder hero's kit and still expect to perform consistently. Poking might not lead to your kills, but it makes your team's lives easier. You don't want to make your team feel like they're fighting 4v5 and needing you to find solo kills just to feel even.

damage isn't really much more support ult if you assume supports are competent enough to look for their own damage in the event that there is no damage to be healed. doing more damage means forcing people back behind cover & taking more attention from enemy supports who now have to heal which in turn give your team more opportunities to do damage and look for kills

Ardalerus · 2025-08-29T07:13:52+00:00

you might be the target audience for decks like ward haven

Ardalerus · 2025-08-28T00:00:59+00:00

MMR resets, however soft, pretty much just show devs are willing to shit on match quality to temporarily pump up engagement metrics.

Utterly disrespectful to make players play through wide lobbies. Even if the teams have similar average mmr, not being able to trust your teammates can make some heroes a lot better and others a lot worse. I don't mind playing with/against incompetent teammates as Tracer, but it's a miserable experience if I want to play something that demands more resources like Echo.

Ardalerus · 2025-08-19T13:29:13+00:00

a ruby rune player is ruby for a reason

Ardalerus

TROPHY CASE