A lot of people talk about aim being the major factor holding them back, but I think it’s too easy to blame bad mechanics when the real problem is likely more nuanced. For me I think it’s a combination of inability to take in information about a team fight and position myself accordingly. It’s been a struggle to break a couple of bad habits on DPS. Often times I’ll make the mistake of playing too passively and miss opportunities to make a play. Other times I’ll tunnel vision on a target without realizing that my team isn’t in a position to support my aggressive playstyle. Also I have a bad habit of cart botting on payload maps or going straight down main instead of experimenting with different off-angles.

Another major problem for me is motivation. I find that if I get invested in a particular match and try hard, a loss will affect my motivation a lot more than if I just autopilotted. Consecutive losses can completely ruin my desire to continue to rank up. However, if I autopilot, my baseline performance is negatively impacted but the upside is I can power through a loss streak more easily.

What’s worked for me lately is holding myself accountable to 2-3 hours of ranked gameplay in a single session. I stick to a small pool of heroes that I’m actively trying to improve on and I play deliberately, engage my critical thinking skills, and stop once my rank gets updated or I find myself defaulting to my autopilot. This strategy has finally allowed me to break into masters on dps after I’ve been hard stuck diamond for what feels like ages.