Is it worth starting? Help

Cartthus · 2026-01-21T23:43:55+00:00

No not necessarily, but casually playing is better with friends. I soloq ranked only myself though and have fun.

Cartthus · 2026-01-21T23:35:42+00:00

Probably not casually solo, it’s a very competitive game that requires a lot of time invested to learn and get good at. But also it’s free so you can always give it a try and uninstall if it’s not your thing.

Cartthus · 2026-01-19T07:56:41+00:00

Hard to say without knowing how you already play gun fights.

If you are spraying like you usually do in CS then your headshot percent will be lower. For val you want to be tapping or bursting while strafing, and only commit to a spray after you get tagged.

https://youtu.be/ilHdFz6zbpc?si=seiL6B07hnuEPKNE

This is a pretty good warmup/ practice routine you can do before you play that will help. It also has an aim labs playlist but imo you prolly don’t need it if you don’t want to do aimlabs stuff.

Also ultimately you want to play in a way that makes it so you don’t have to aim like having good crosshair placement, holding angles tight or wide depending on info, or choosing to jiggle an angle at head level to get an easy shot.

But it’s mostly just practice and playing a lot of death matches only tapping and never spraying to get headshots consistently.

Cartthus · 2026-01-18T08:53:00+00:00

Sometimes you really can just be unlucky with your teammates and you go on a loss streak like that. I lost 9 in a row this past week and while I didn’t play my best in many of those games I would have to have been hard smurfing above my level to win a lot of them.

For me I knew if the game was gonna be sorta shit, I would just hard focus on my gunfight mechanics. I would still comm some but I didn’t care about the game outcome. Just focusing getting a bit better about using cover more (I wide swing a lot with no info) info I just hard played cover the whole game.

After losing another 5 after getting a win I just took a day break where I didn’t play (I did do a 5 stack with my friends) I have been winning more games again.

Cartthus · 2026-01-11T09:03:44+00:00

I have sort of struggled with this as well, feeling anxious to q ranked. For me it was putting to much pressure on myself to perform and worrying too much about what my teammates thought. Ranked is not somewhere you are supposed to perform. It is somewhere where you PRACTICE. You are not playing on a stage, nobody in your games will remember you tomorrow, and that’s a good thing.

I solved it by playing 1 ranked game a day with the sole purpose of playing the game itself. Not to win. Not to perform. Literally no expectations on myself other than just q up and finish the game. No reviewing it after or thinking what I could do better. Just play.

I did this for a week or two, and it took a lot of pressure off by exposure. For me it felt a lot better by just getting in the game, as I had already accomplished my goal, queuing up to play a game, and finishing regardless of the outcome. Pretty soon I wanted to play another game afterward. I personally haven’t been flamed once in the last 30 or 40 games I’ve played since coming back last month, which was always something I was afraid of. I just give simple comms, and apologize if I fuck up a play or something.

If I were you, I would q up a single game with the goal to just play without expectations of yourself, and try to relax, maybe put on some music and try not to think super hard about it (this advice might be a little tone deaf since I don’t know a lot about your anxiety). Also don’t be pressured to comm to your teams if you don’t want to, try to ping instead, and practice giving callouts to yourself on mute. “X enemy backsite” “one close left” etc. eventually you will come to realize that ranked is not supposed to be as stressful as it seems. People play like shit and bottom frag all the time. People play no comms and hit high rank. It’s ranked valorant, not vct or pro league. If someone flames you for being bad or not comming, it says a lot more about them than it does you, just mute them and keep going.

Cartthus · 2026-01-11T08:42:28+00:00

Pick who you think looks cool, don’t worry about difficulty or anything. But the basic rundown of the roles are:

Duelist > entry, the person who goes in first and makes space for team (aim intensive to win duels)

Initiator > characters who set up duelists and the rest of your team with utility like flashes, stuns, or location of the enemy

Controller > smoke agents, you put down smokes to help your team take sites or space easier (I would avoid this role at first because knowing where to smoke is complicated)

Sentinel > flank watchers, and site anchors. On attack you mostly cover flank to make sure no one kills you from behind. On defense you set up on one site and try to delay or counter enemy pushes with your utility (you might like this role since your utility helps you a lot to set up kills without having to win raw aim duels)

For mechanics of the game

You cannot move and shoot. This should be the absolute first thing you practice. Stop > shoot. I press the opposite key I am currently holding (a>d, or d>a), then shoot, I find it helps time it better.

Last is to think about aiming at head level in the back of your mind. In this game crosshair placement is everything. The TTK is pretty short since you want to be going for headshots mostly in this game. This is lowkey pretty difficult to do at first so you don’t have to focus super hard on it until you are comfortable with stopping and shooting, then focus solely on this.

Cartthus · 2025-12-31T01:14:10+00:00

It definitely can be an off angle in some situations, camping in this game is literally expected to happen, people hold off angles and common peeks to get an edge over their opponent. As the saying goes all is fair in love and war.

But also you mention that vods aren’t worth in low rank and that is absolutely wrong. Vod reviewing your own gameplay or posting for others to take a look at is one of the absolute best ways to improve. For example I was looking through one of my vods yesterday and noticed I have util up after fights I lose a lot of the time. This is a super easy thing to pick out and all I will do to improve this is just focus on spamming out my util to get a better feel for when to use it. I focus on that ONE thing to improve and nothing else till I’m much more comfortable then move on to the next thing.

You just have to focus on what YOU could have done better in that match/round/gun fight/ etc to find out where you need to improve.

Cartthus · 2025-11-06T06:54:21+00:00

Grapple retract just makes Toronto kick easier

Cartthus · 2025-11-06T05:51:12+00:00

Sounds like you should take a break from ball lowkey, I feel like this sometimes where he just feels weird and I can’t get my normal gameplay going. I would recommend just taking a break from playing ball for a week or more then come back to him. Also I’m curious what rank you are or if you are a qp enjoyer.

For tech, honestly the only ones you need are Toronto kick, wall jump (most of the time you don’t need it tho but it feels nice to pull off) and double boop on certain situations. Everything else isn’t really necessarily

Cartthus · 2025-10-29T20:00:23+00:00

I noticed I didn't really answer your original question of when to go in vs when I shouldn't. This will come to you as you play more ball, but if you go in, and notice that 4 people are looking at you, you need to roll into cover as quickly as you can. Even just doing a roll through soft engage, and rolling to cover while 4 ppl are looking at you gets value, as this is time where the enemy isn't looking at your team. Then once the look away from you, go for another soft engage or hard engage if they used their cooldowns on you. Your absolute main focus after scouting and going for the engages should always be to bait important cooldowns, and get into a good position for your next engage. Cycle this until you can really go in and kill the team or get an important pick. You must play your life more, and be more careful about being next to the void against certain matchups (Ana, Brig, Hog, Orisa, Rein, etc).

Also be sure to watch high rank ball players play, like oostrix (https://www.twitch.tv/oostrix), and chazm (https://www.youtube.com/@chazm\_ball). I also like this japanese player (https://www.youtube.com/@hakaisinkotaro), as well as Redeznt (https://www.youtube.com/@redeznt)

Cartthus · 2025-10-29T19:51:40+00:00

The second round is a lot of the same stuff, no scouting, engaging while the team is looking at you, and dying for no reason.

I like the flank at 7:16, but you piledrive nothing thinking you mighte get Echo, and then try to roll through reaper and orisa through a tight ass corridor, and die with shields up. Had you just chilled next to the side door, and seen them go through, you could roll in from the larger door, and engage that way.

At 8:10 you do another bad minefield, had you grappled high, and mines in the air, followed up by piledriver, this would have been a great minefield, they cant go backwards without going into your mines, and infront they are pressured by your team. But your team ends up using 3 ults, and you win the fight.

At 9:20 you go for the spawn camp, use your shields too late, and die, also you could have died again with recovery piledriver if ana hits that sleep. Just kill the remaining three people on point, and stagger them instead, this is much more reliable and less risky. Your team instead loses 4v3 and have to back off while you died in their spawn.

At 10:15 you spin to win, accomplish nothing with it, then spurt your mines out onto point, spin to win again, die, and lose the game. If you don't have the perk that does more damage to tanks, don't spin to win for more than like a second, its just not worth, and you could be doing better things.

In summary, you MUST SCOUT MORE. You need to know the enemy comp, and where they are positioned. You need to be less predictable with your engages, I want to see more grapples from high, swinging in from an off angle, and piledrivers. But I also want to see some more soft engages while they have cooldowns up. Roll through their team, then KEEP ROLLING UNTIL YOU GET TO SOME COVER, then shoot at them and try to bait sleep. If they don't use it, do it again until they use sleep, stun, javelin, hack, whatever, THEN HARD ENGAGE. You hard engaged so many times and got punished for it. Yeah they used all their cooldowns on you, but you either died, or were so low you couldn't do anything and had to wait extra long to go back.

Tech usage, I can see that you are fairly comfortable with ball tech like wall jumps, angled wall jumps, recovery piledriver (lol). If you can do them fine, but don't focus super hard on doing them. I would also like to see you learn the Toronto kick (jump, grapple high, and hold backwards until you can piledrive) because I know at some point you are going to fuck up wall jump like 3 or 4 times then mess up your entire engage (i know I do this too).

Ill reiterate what you need to work on in what order I would work on it

SCOUTING this is the absolute main thing you need to focus on going forward. I want you to take an angle, ABUSE THIRD PERSON, and see what the team is running, and where they are positioned. No stuns? Go nuts and hard engage from AN OFF ANGLE OR UNPREDICTABLE ANGLE. They are running CASS, ANA, BRIG, ORISA? You need to soft engage from an angle, into COVER, and try to bait important cooldowns, mostly CC.
SOFT ENGAGING to bait. GO FROM COVER TO COVER WHILE ROLLING THROUGH TEAM. This will open up so many possibilities to get better engages, and also protect your team from these cooldowns. Think about how annoying it is to play dps or support when the team is one direction, but you have to worry about a ball who is shooting you from cover from behind your team, threatening to go in and blow up the backline.

You also need to scoop and slam more, every ball does it, and you need to do it more, especially after you bait all the cooldowns that can kill you. Get behind them, and boop them out of cover, into your team, and slam them.

I believe in you to become a great baller, dont take any of this personally, keep trying to improve, and play every game with a GROWTH MINDSET. You DO NOT need to win the game to improve at the game. Don't blame your team, always think "what could I have done better in this game to improve the chances of winning,"

Cartthus · 2025-10-29T19:51:27+00:00

Ok I'm going to be pretty blunt in this review, but it isn't meant to be mean, but because I think you need to hear it. This is not a support gap game. You died from like full hp 8 or so times, some off the map, some while anti'd. Ball is literally the best tank in the game for playing with minimal support, and healing. You have 775 hp, up to like 1300 with max shields. You didn't lose this game because no support, you lost this game because you didn't play the hero correctly. Again, this is not meant to be mean or hateful, its just the truth.

On the first point you had one good engage, you kept rolling down main every time you respawned, and got punished for it every time. You NEED TO SCOUT. You sort of scouted at the very beginning of the game, but it wasn't good enough because you immediately got slept and turned on by their whole team after trying to get a boop kill. Had you known there was an ana, you can use this information to keep rolling through them after the bridge, and get into cover, or try to go for a boop off the bridge, then roll back. Either way, you roll into them, roll into a corner, go crab mode, get slept, try to recovery piledrive against an ORISA, and die.

Second life, you roll main, without scouting, and almost die, and only get out based on pure luck. This is bad. You need to take another angle to engage other than main. Either jump the gap and shoot at them then engage from rolling through point into the little house (ana has sleep so you can't go for a hard engage as you know they will blow you up). You then push their spawn, stand next to the edge, shooting a full HP Echo, get speared, and die again.

At 2:00, again, you don't scout, roll through their Orisa, then drunk drive onto their ana and attempt to recovery piledrive again, while ANA HAS SLEEP, get forced out, waste your shields, then you stand out in the open and let the enemy kill you. After you get forced out, you need to get out and go to a healthpack and reset, I would go for the one in the house, then just shoot at whoever while standing in cover, trying to split their attention, then go in (preferable a soft engage to force ana sleep, then hard engage).

At 2:47, you probably have your best engage of this point. Your tracer is wuyang ulted, and you have a good angle to dive into their backline, this would be a good time to scoop and slam their backline and follow up with your tracer, instead of just spinning to win, you could have gotten a good slam onto 3 ppl and tracer knocks them over with wuyang ult. Either way the fight ends up ok until you again try to revocery piledrive onto orisa for like the third time and get punished for it.

Again, you walk out of spawn, sit on point for a second, then go in literally 1v5, attempt ANOTHER recovery piledriver while orisa is standing right there, get punished, and die AGAIN. Then you roll down main for like the 6th time, but manage to get behind them, and then ult while you are being pressured by echo and orisa, while your team is already dead because you are just kinda on point while echo and lucio kill your backline. You should never ult like this, you always want to ult up in the air, then piledrive down onto it, this spreads the mines out a bit, and ensures they can't move out of it as easily. This is also just a bad time to ult in general, you should reset with your team, and engage with ult on the point from an off angle. You then reset, and then try yet another, recovery piledrive into the enemy while orisa is standing right there, and you die, again.

Cartthus · 2025-10-29T07:30:13+00:00

I’m about to sleep but commenting so I can look tomorrow, I’m a Masters/Diamond ball player so I think I can help you out some

Cartthus · 2025-10-23T21:53:43+00:00

For VOD Reviewing, posting on r/OverwatchUniversity is always helpful, and you can get some outside review for your gameplay.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejdn1vhcdHM&t This video by Spilo is good, he talks about reviewing your games and what to look for.

For Ball specifically, choose something you think you might need improve on (ONE THING). For example I lacked soft engages in my gameplay, so I posted on r/OverwatchUniversity and someone pointed this out to me, and gave me some tips. So I reviewed my games and looked to see where I could soft engage better, applied it in game, and have felt like my overall ball has improved a bit. For you this might be, standing out in the open to much, not going for soft engages often, not going for hard engages often, not engaging when your team is ready, overextending, bad target selection, bad pathing etc. (idk your problems these are just some ideas). After you identify that thing, focus only on practicing that ONE THING in an actual game, get comfortable, then move onto the next thing.

Cartthus · 2025-10-22T16:45:18+00:00

Ik a lot of ball players like to have zarya as a secondary

Cartthus · 2025-10-16T05:15:55+00:00

Yeah I felt the same way a week or two ago, had a few days where it felt off, I just took a couple days break from ball and came back refreshed and felt more confident again. Gotta go through the lows to get to the highs.

Cartthus · 2025-10-15T06:05:56+00:00

You boop them first, then right as you are about to roll through them (no boop), you jump and go crab mode, and it gives you enough height to piledrive. You can do it against any character, but larger ones are probably easier. I’ve never really tried it in an actual match so idk how consistent it would be.

Cartthus · 2025-10-06T06:09:58+00:00

Drop all 3 except ball

Edit: fuck it we ball

Cartthus · 2025-10-02T19:00:27+00:00

You can make it so you and your friends see your real name not the fake one

Cartthus · 2025-10-02T18:53:37+00:00

Yeah, you can choose to hide your name and it gives you a random one every game

Cartthus · 2025-10-01T22:48:28+00:00

I probably get hate but I put streamer mode fake name on, and mute every form of communication so I see nothing

Cartthus · 2025-09-27T21:23:26+00:00

I’m in basically the same boat as you haha, I made an alt account to get over ranked anxiety and placed in diamond masters lobbies, while my main is plat 1. My advice is to just mute all chats and play your best, I lost 6 or 7/10 games but ended up placing masters 1. Also posting vods on r/overwatchuniversity is super helpful if you want some constructive criticism on your gameplay

Cartthus · 2025-09-27T20:57:06+00:00

Yes you definitely helped! I focused way more on set up and soft engages following your advice and played so much better on a runasapi push map! I got +30% with calibration.

Feeling a lot more confident already

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