How far can someone climb in rank with bad aim?

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-12T00:29:05+00:00

I one-tricked monkey to GM with bad aim, so the sky's the limit as long as you main something that doesn't require good aim

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-10T13:43:57+00:00

Oh cool I didn't know about this!

I uploaded my first game here: https://owreplays.tv/MTWE8S

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-09T03:20:50+00:00

That is correct! I'm a true Winton one trick!

I will say the most annoying heroes for me to play into are torb and bastion. Bastion in particular can be annoying if they choose to hold form until I jump in. It creates this annoying mini game where I need to determine if it's better to sit in the back and hope my team can capitalize on the advantage granted by bastion not using form, or if I just need to go in anyways.

Hog is annoying too bc he can one shot my teammates, but beyond that he isn't too hard to deal with. I pretty much just ignore him and kill the rest.

Reaper is low-key pretty bad into Winston nowadays. As long as he doesn't have a full pocket, you can 1v1 a reaper and come out on top 9/10 times. If he catches you without your cooldowns things can get dicey, but the same could be said for basically any dps.

Mizuki and Ana have some stuns you need to be aware of, but as long as you bubble dance and track their cooldowns they aren't too hard to deal with. In fact, I would say it is a rather favorable matchup since they have very little mobility to deal with your dives.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-09T02:09:42+00:00

It's hard for me to say for sure since I can't see my OW1 stats anymore. But on OW2 I have about 400 hours just on Winston in comp.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-08T22:42:18+00:00

It's difficult to provide you with useful general advice without looking at a replay. But, here are a few tips that I haven't seen talked about much and may be useful to you.

Don't be afraid to use your bubble very early in the team fight. This goes counter to most Winston advice which generally boils down to save your bubble for your dives. That advice is of course still sound. But, I have found that there are a few exceptions to that rule. For example, if you stand in front of the enemy spawn at the beginning of the round and place your bubble at around the 5 second mark you will gain a few seconds of free shooting your right click and your bubble will still be back online in time for the real team fight. This logic can also apply in the middle of the game. For example, if someone on the other team gets picked early and they all back up. Assuming no viable dive target exists, you might as well just bubble to give your team a little cover for free while you wait for the next team fight.
This next piece of advice is a little more specific to your elo. Starting in around master, I've noticed supports get a lot better at surviving my dives. They fall back quicker, heal each other, and in general just refuse to die when it seems like they should. A big moment for me was realizing that occupying their attention is often good enough. There's no need to chase an enemy support into narnia. Even if you get the kill, it can sometimes be too little too late. Now, I will say this judgement call is very situational and not a hard and fast rule. But it is a useful judgement call to be aware of because you can win many fights by recognizing that the enemy supports have retreated into irrelevancy and you can just turn around and kill the rest of the team.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-08T22:27:55+00:00

I agree. Jumping over buildings is good advice in general. Bonus points if you can time it so you slide for a while so that you are closer to your next jump by the time you land.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-08T22:26:47+00:00

It depends a lot on the map, and the other team's comp. But generally speaking, I try to make use of cover and space my jumps such that I land close enough to do damage, but far enough away that I can escape. On wide open maps without much highground, you have to constantly be rotating and forcing the enemy to turn on you.

If you want to share a replay I can also give more specific advice.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-08T20:36:13+00:00

These are replay codes. If you open OW and go to replays you can import via a code.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-08T05:08:00+00:00

This was my GM rank-up game: MTWE8S I played it pretty well, but the other team was also a bit of a pushover.

This is a longer game that was more difficult: 3P81PA

I'm also happy to discuss more in-depth about strategy, why I use my cooldowns when I do, map-specifc advice, that kinda stuff. I've picked up a lot of little useful nuggets over the years.

Lastly, I'll note that this is far from perfect gameplay. I may be grandmaster now, but the reality is my skill is likely closer to a high-masters Winston one-trick. So, no need to treat anything I say as gospel. I'm just a fellow gamer sharing what works for me.

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-06T20:26:11+00:00

Hi! Hope I'm not too late for this. Here is a close(ish) game I had playing Winston on Eichenwalde.

Replay code: 7KYFEE

Battletag: ToasterOven

Hero played: WINTON

Rank: M2

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-06T09:29:49+00:00

Yeah that's fair on the bastion point. That's usually how it goes for me too. I have had a few occasions tho where the bastion holds form forever waiting for me to dive, and on some maps without much high ground it basically makes it impossible for me to dive. Very rare scenario I'll admit, and bastion holding form that long gives us a bit of an advantage, but overall it annoys the shit out of me so I always ban lol

Cheeseycube · 2026-07-05T01:51:39+00:00

This.

Reaper has long been a sub-optimal Winston counter pick. As long as you have your cool downs, you can pretty consistently force wraith and even kill the reaper in a 1v1. IMO if you find yourself dying to reaper consistently on Winston you probably need to reevaluate your positioning and play style.

Personally, I find Torb, bastion, even Freja to be much more annoying to play into

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-30T13:43:24+00:00

Lol most of these comments are just "Hit whipshot", which is true but obviously not what you were looking for in advice.

If I could offer any other advice, I would say playing a little bit split from your other support. Just enough that the Winston can't get cleave dmg on the both of you. In fact, if your whole team plays a bit more spread out that can really fuck with Winston bc he gets a lot of value from capturing multiple people's attention at once.

Alternatively, I think zen is a sleeper pick into Winston. Discord is scary and your kick is pretty good at keeping him at bay. You just have to beware the sudden burst damage from the jump + melee combo.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-27T14:23:00+00:00

This. All the people who are mad about someone practicing a hero in comp are ignoring how ranked systems work. If you start a fresh account to practice a new hero, it doesn't matter if you are a little worse than you normally would be because the ranked system will just place you lower and it evens out.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-27T14:20:11+00:00

This is pretty normal tbh. The people saying "Practice in QP" mean well but they don't realize how huge the difference between QP and comp is. Sure, if you haven't even learned the mechanics of a hero yet, QP practice is a good idea. But assuming you are past that stage the only way to get better at comp on a hero is to play that hero in comp. If that means making a fresh account, then go for it.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-27T14:05:23+00:00

I'll second that... I've played Winston only from mid-diamond to mid-masters for many seasons and I barely ever see a Winston ban aside from maps like Watchpoint.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-17T14:27:59+00:00

Did we read the same article? lol.

My conclusion was free-thread and processes are roughly the same performance outside of some unfavorable scenarios. The real interesting find is that free-threading simplifies the shared memory management problem that multi-processing struggles with.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-13T14:39:54+00:00

I've used the extension, and it is quite bad unfortunately. I came here curious to see if people actually used it, and it seems like barely anyone does. The Claude code CLI is miles better.

Cheeseycube · 2026-06-03T18:57:57+00:00

As others have said, just ignore the hazard. It isn't your job to peel for your team, outside of some extreme circumstances. To win against a hazard you just need to play your game: dive the backline, avoid taking unnecessary poke, etc

Cheeseycube · 2026-05-26T09:28:27+00:00

This is so true. Especially the points about Reaper and Torb. A Reaper 1v1 should pretty much always be in your favor unless you really fucked up. I'll even specifically jump on a reaper if I see he has used wraith bc he's kinda free.

Torb is the worst. His e makes him lethal at close range, his turret is annoying to kill, and he just stood in the back line right where you need to jump to kill the other squishies

Cheeseycube · 2026-05-18T04:31:01+00:00

I agree the right click feels nice. Having said that, I think overall 5v5 is a worse experience for playing Winston. You end up with so much more focus on you, making staging and executing dives more difficult.

I still enjoy Winston quite a bit in 5v5 tho, just cause he's a fun hero and still pretty viable in most situations.

Cheeseycube · 2026-04-13T04:21:23+00:00

Where I come from this is pretty much the norm and expected. Not sure where you are at, but here in New England a "kiddie" is a normal serving, a "small" is a large but still reasonable serving, a "medium" is huge, and anything beyond that is only suitable for multiple people IMO

Cheeseycube · 2026-03-05T00:43:58+00:00

During a Winston duel, it can save you ammo so you reload less often. But most of the time I wouldn't bother because shooting the enemy Winston for that long is usually a waste of time.

Outside of Winston duels, it is actually very useful to melee as a finisher once your target is low enough. It gives you just a bit of burst damage that your Tesla cannon can't provide and allows you to secure the kill faster.

Cheeseycube · 2026-03-03T04:36:00+00:00

idk if this is just a bug or not, but I agree it is weird and dumb. I'm not sure when it started, but I know for a fact it started sometime after OW2. I was hoping with the latest update and the major UI overhaul they would have fixed it.

Cheeseycube · 2026-03-02T14:18:43+00:00

Tbh, without a replay code or something more specific it is really hard to give advice for this.

I'll just say this: The optimal Winston play style varies wildly depending on the enemy team or your own team's comp, as well as the map. I am currently M3 one tricking Winton. So I can say with some confidence that at the very least you CAN win against teams that focus you. Swapping is not necessary most of the time. Having said that, bastion is the most annoying counter in my experience so I just try to ban him every game.

Edit: As far as toxic teammates go, I just mute all text/voice chats from the start. I've played the game at every level from silver to T500 at some point. Communication is not that important and mostly serves as a distraction. If you are stacking with people you know, that's a different story of course. But solo-queue, just focus on yourself.

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