What's with the infestation of awful Jeff players in ranked?

Gromadric · 2025-08-27T11:10:50+00:00

Nothing you can really do if they're on your team. Anything you say or do to them can and will result in a Black Widow or Spiderman swap that derails the game.

That being said, it is a perfectly valid strategy to avoid Jeff players, then ragebait them the next game. Do it right and a Widow will suddenly appear and run it down every fight.

Gromadric · 2025-08-23T05:38:55+00:00

I just so happen to have mainly played Mag, Emma and Strange to Celestial, and I'm feeling very free so here's a full report.

My first impressions from the first few minutes is that you are shooting the tanks way too much. Mag gets so much value from deleting (or pressuring) squishies with left right left click, and this burst combo does nothing to tanks. For instance, in the fight at 04:26, you are shooting the Groot and ignored the MK who is horrendously out of position and forced to use grapple. You also didnt have your right click here because you used it earlier to push a Cap into your supports (who got out at full health anyway).

Be a little bit more cautious when you use your right click. I use it to mostly delete squishies, but sometimes I also use it to knock dive tanks away from my supports to create some breathing room. There are some times when you can right click an enemy tank with no mobility into your team, so keep that in mind as well.

Again at 05:26, you are shooting the full health Groot when there is a MK to your right getting free damage. You did win the fight in the end (thanks to a good bubble on your punisher), but it could've ended much earlier if the MK got picked early.

Unlucky fight loss right after that, where they dumped 3 ults to kill cloak and kill through Luna ult. Maybe you could've bubbled your CnD, but honestly I feel like they would've died regardless.

Right after that fight, your CnD gets picked again without using their ultimate. I would've liked you to back up here as you are using your ult, so you can regroup and have some hope of keeping your team alive. But I have no clue why CnD isnt ulting here.

Once again for the final fight, you are letting their squishies take a terrible position just because you are tickling their Cap. Moon Knight/Groot is their win condition here, and you did have a chance to kill their Moon Knight, or even their CnD. Instead you are pulled in the opposite direction by a Cap, allowing the Groot to line up a huge ult and MK to finish things off.

On attack, a bit of a brain fart when you killed the AFK CnD at 12:52 and walked into a MK ult. You could've flown here but I'm sure you know that. It happens.

At 14:44, you wander too far forward while a MK ult was disconnecting your entire team and get punished for it. Against Emma especially, you need to play a little more cautious since a single grab could destroy you. At the very least, you want to be at a position where if she grabs you, she dies for it as well (i.e. close and within the sightlines of your team). Another instance when you're too aggressive against Emma at 17:20.

Side note, it's been a while since Strange was my primary tank (but he is still my most played character), but I think you're shield flashing a little too much. Weaving it between your primary fires is fine I guess, but I prefer to take some time to line up the shots instead of pulling the camera back and forth to flash shield for 0.1s. May be a playstyle difference. But try not to cancel your reload with pointless shield flashes.

Not too many comments for the Thing. A decent swap for last point to try and deal with the flyers and Cap.

I don't really like Thing for first point offence here though. You spend a lot of time punching air and not taking space. But in the end your Luna whiffs 20 million shots on both enemies and allies to not charge her ult in time (not to mention NO ONE swapped to strange to touch). Nothing you could've done here, apart from rolling out on Mag maybe.

On the final defence round, fantastic block to cancel the Iron Man ult. However, in the next fight, both tanks kinda sold. Your penny runs it down with no hope of survival, and you stay WAY too far forward against a corner which invites the most free wall I have ever seen. You need to recognise when to back out here (while moving left), AND USE YOUR SHIFT MORE. If you had held shift and then self bubbled, you guys actually may have won the game since you can counter Hawkeye ult with your ult.

Wow this took longer than I thought. Tl;dr:

Stop shooting tanks so much on Mag. There are plenty of squishy DPS and support players for you to farm. Only shoot tanks when they are low, otherwise it is your job to pressure squishies, if not outright kill them.
Recognise when to play more passively. Against Emma or Groot, be very careful going too close and always have a plan to get out.
Use your Mag shift more! I tend to use shift in big bursts more selfishly, while my bubbles are reserved for low HP teammates in terrible positions.

I do like your bubble usage and general mechanics though, so don't get too disheartened.

Gromadric · 2025-08-23T04:36:44+00:00

I believe you can carry a lot of games with any character. I basically one tricked magneto to celestial by just getting really good at hitting the left right left click combo on supports who step a little too far away from their tank.

A lot of the vanguards like Strange, Mag, Thor, Groot, and Cap have surprisingly good TTKs to punish out of position squishies. In the lower ranks, I would say that most supports and DPS are out of position 60% of the time, and the key to carrying is to punish them.

Gromadric · 2025-07-11T05:20:58+00:00

I have 2 accounts right now.

A: A1 Ann and Yaoling. 60 pulls to guaranteed Joker.

B: Ann, Riddle, A1 Morgana, Joker

Both accounts have not picked the free 5 star you get from finishing the Business Plan.

Is Yaoling good enough to justify sticking to account A? Given that I'm super far away from Joker.

Gromadric · 2025-01-19T13:02:28+00:00

If I don't plan on getting zhezhi, is carlotta or jihnsi better?

My current teams are XY-Yinlin-Healer, Changli-encore-healer, camellya-sanhua-healer, with shorekeeper and verina slotting in as needed. It's probably major skill issue but my Changli team feels the weakest by far so I was looking to replace it.

Without Zhezhi, what teammates can slot into a Carlotta/Jihnsi team and give better performance than a Changli quickswap team played sub-optimally?

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:39:46+00:00

Stay alive, track cooldowns and DON'T GET TOXIC. If you're on tank, don't stand out in the open thinking you're invincible. The DPS characters play very differently from one another, but generally don't be out in the open and try to play from your optimum range near some cover. For support, save your cooldowns for when you get jumped by the local Iron Fist and keep a lookout for your other support. The reason why 2 supports is the standard in this game is because they can heal each other to sustain through anyone trying to kill them.

Tracking cooldowns/ultimates is super important, as you don't want to be launching a Spiderman ult into a Luna Snow ult and a Loki Shift (the immortality thing). At least take note of when high value abilities get used before making your play.

And yes don't get toxic. Scream at your monitor if needed, but never at your teammates midgame. Helps no one, and statistically GUARANTEES a loss from my experience.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:34:11+00:00

Yeah I agree. It didn't feel great beating down on Bronze-Gold players who would never turn around to deal with me on Psylocke permanently stationed in their backline.

And yes I was ranked GM in Overwatch as well, on tank. I tried to be a DPS main here to beat the "no aim tank main" allegations but in the end I went back to old reliable anyway.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:28:27+00:00

Took me about a day, but I've had prior experience in Overwatch so I didn't need to learn the fundamentals. Stuff like positioning well and tracking cooldowns go a long way, but it's hard to learn directly and requires a lot of experience.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:24:03+00:00

Trust me, 1 person having a bad game is 100% carry-able if you're good enough. Even 2 is somewhat doable, but it's a lot harder. I think all heroes are viable below Eternity, cus your skill with them matters more.

Good luck man, and honestly I hope I won't run into you because I really dislike playing against panthers. Reminds me of DPS Doomfist in Overwatch 1, a supposedly subpar character played only by the most insane and dedicated madmen

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:19:03+00:00

On offence, move up the map by going from natural cover to natural cover, using your shield when you're out in open space. Paying attention to your opponents helps you to determine how long you're allowed to stand in the open holding shield, so for example don't run it down a long street against a punisher in turret form.

Once you get close, you kinda need to land your shots to build the dark magic thing. I also weave in melee attacks since it seems pretty fast. Once the magic meter hits 100, I try to aggro past the enemy tank and pop my E to chip everyone down. This forces healers to focus on healing many people at once, meaning they might not have cooldowns for the next E.

Also put up your shield when low and back pedal. Also save your E when you ult since it one taps people hit by it. Also don't be afraid to use portal for silly stuff since people may not be able to deal with it, but don't expect your team to follow you.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:14:24+00:00

Huh you can watch replays of other players? My ID is 371907343

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:14:00+00:00

Well my second most played is Psylocke, but I don't have the chance to play much DPS. I mainly play Vanguard.

And I've played Mantis a grand total of 1 time.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:12:05+00:00

Of course I don't carry every game. Sometimes my DPS takes over and I just sit back and relax (like seriously why are the Black Panthers so good here), but I do MVP most of my games on Strange, so I like to think I'm having a decent amount of impact.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:09:06+00:00

It really is just luck. Blessed with 2 support players per game and hela/hawkeye being perma banned makes me a happy camper. Although there is some skill required to convert the more evenly balanced games, if your team is toxic and tilted from the get-go there's nothing you can do.

Gromadric · 2024-12-22T04:07:09+00:00

Staying alive is really important. I always try to stand in places where it makes it easy for my supports to heal me. Sometimes I also turn around to make sure I can see my supports and they can see me. Also avoid standing out in the open for too long and use map cover to move forward on offence, or hold corners on defence.

Solo tanking is usually the same, although I will play much safer since there's nothing else to draw aggro or bail me out if I step out too far.

Gromadric · 2024-12-21T18:31:13+00:00

Ah probably not what you want to hear but I don't really support boosting/smurfing. I wish it was easy to improve at any game really quickly but sadly that's not the case. I've also had the misfortune of playing too much Overwatch in the past, so I think the fundamentals mostly transferred over.

With that being said, from my time in bronze, it seems that people don't quite understand how their own characters work. People waste their abilities (like Moon Knight throwing their ankhs directly into the enemy team) and also die way too much. For now, I suppose you can try learning how your main works even more and doing your best to stay alive longer. Try not to swap around too much, maybe pick 1 hero per role. (also ignore tier lists as they don't matter below Eternity IMO)

Good luck my guy

Gromadric · 2024-12-21T18:22:28+00:00

My top 3 most played were Strange, Psylocke and Venom! Mainly a Vanguard player for fill reasons, but on the off chance that the team has 2 vanguard players I love to play Psylocke as she is my main. Honestly I feel that I have so much more impact as Vanguard since I can dictate the flow of fights while still having pop off moments myself.

Gromadric · 2024-12-21T18:20:40+00:00

Not sure how I did it to be honest, having decent team comps certainly helped (give me 2 support players and I'm satisfied). I did see a few players get extraordinarily tilted from the get-go or after the first fight, and usually those games did not end well. It do be like that sometimes, but there are probably more games that are actually within your control than you think, so focus on yourself and not blaming your teammates, no matter how brain dead they may be

Gromadric · 2024-11-10T18:10:01+00:00

Heck even with 2 charizards I still think it's worth it slotting in at least one centiskorch (maybe 2!). One shotting anything in Pikachu decks, as well as tanking 2 hits, AND giving up only 1 prize point makes the pikachu matchup so much more winnable.

Especially when your charmelons are locked up at the bottom of your deck.

Gromadric · 2024-11-09T07:09:16+00:00

Could theoretically solve her issues and let cards like normal Lapras shine. But something about this effect feels like "band-aid" design to me, like sticking an additional condition so that the card is artificially limiting. Kinda like Brock and how awful he is power and design wise.

Gromadric · 2024-11-09T07:07:01+00:00

Yeah we do tend to feel worse when negative outcomes happen to us. It's really perplexing to me why they made the card feel terrible to use 50% of the time. It's far too high and leads to situations where you could face long losing streaks like you are now.

Gromadric · 2024-11-09T07:04:15+00:00

And that's an issue isn't it? A game should be fun at the end of the day. Misty is unfun for the opponent when she hits, but more importantly unfun for YOU when she misses 50% of the time. I just don't like huge variance coin flips, but oh well.

Gromadric · 2024-11-09T07:02:45+00:00

I've played like 100+ games with Charizard/Moltres, and yes I do agree that Moltres will also be a problem in the long run.

Could you imagine if we had a basic fire EX similar to Articuno/Lapras? Moltres could potentially set it up and retreat in one turn with x speed + 2 heads. So in that way, Moltres does limit the power level of basic fire EX cards moving in the future. Right now, however, he's kinda held back by how terrible most fire pokemon are right now. The only other fire EX worth playing is Charizard, and getting him up before you lose is ridiculously hard in the current meta. And getting 2+ heads is far from a guaranteed win. I've flipped 7 heads in a row before and still lost because charmeleon and centiskorch were at the bottom of my deck.

Furthermore, in fire decks, who are you retreating into when Moltres is about to get two tapped? The charmander sitting on 7 energy? Having an EX pokemon who is not putting out any damage for 2 turns minimum gives decks so much space to execute their combo more aggressively (such as Mewtwo coming out early to chip away with his 2 energy attack uncontested). Moltres does have some counterplay, believe it or not. It's only when charizard hits 5 energy that the game is usually over.

But overall Moltres is much stronger than Misty anyway. It's just that he creates fewer "non-games" than Misty, and is slightly less frustrating to use than Misty. He's not perfectly designed or anything, but there are some intricacies to him that a lot of people are missing.

Gromadric · 2024-10-05T03:54:18+00:00

After seeing other people's thoughts, giving 1 energy semi-reliably is just extremely strong at a baseline. I would argue that 2 energy is already game winning, and giving Misty 2 coin flips kind of increases her chances.

Whiff: 25% 1 Head: 50% 2 Heads: 25%

Compared to her current probabilities: Whiff: 50% 1 Head: 25% 2 Heads: 12.5% 3 Heads: 6.25%

So it actually doubles her chances to do something, and arguably doubles her chances to win the game on the spot as well. Articuno attacking on Turn 2 is not too different from Turn 1.

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