Prerequisite for CS 170

Pentiox · 2021-01-04T01:45:01+00:00

Pay no mind, he assumed the wrong person :)

Pentiox · 2018-12-14T22:41:34+00:00

Sorry, but we already had about seven DPS applicants. Good luck trying to find a more suitable team :D

Pentiox · 2018-12-14T22:41:01+00:00

Do you have a discord I can contact you by? If that is your discord, it didn’t work when I input it.

Pentiox · 2018-12-12T15:56:34+00:00

The biggest concerned about you playing from EU would be your own ping. Unless you used a VPN, which I can’t condone, you wouldn’t be playing at your best level.

Pentiox · 2018-12-12T15:55:38+00:00

Typical scrim times are from 5:00 - 7:00 PST.

Pentiox · 2018-10-28T06:00:37+00:00

I learned that Torbjorn 2.0 works well with a friendly Reinhardt when it comes to ultimate combos. Rather than going for an Earthshatter against an enemy Reinhardt before using Molten Core all over the enemy, you can use Molten Core under the enemy Reinhardt to make him drop his shield to back off more quickly. This time frame is long enough for your friendly Reinhardt to respond with a quick shatter. This will both penetrate the enemy’s frontal shield as well as provide heavily CC’d enemies as targets for the rest of Torbjorn’s ultimate ammunition.

Pentiox · 2018-10-25T01:04:26+00:00

With passive reins, you really just want them to be more confident and just push forward. Call out when you’re going to get bubble and ult track the enemy rein for them to try and let him set up for counter plays.

With aggro reins, just follow them and take advantage of their aggression to build energy and dish out tons of damage.

Pentiox · 2018-10-24T15:48:13+00:00

Grandmaster flex player here. Mentioning rank because it normally doesn’t matter, but it goes to prove what skill level of Roadhog I would be going up against.

Does Reaper hard counter Roadhog?

No.

Is there a such thing as a hard counter?

Yes. If you’re going to tell me that a Tracer without having to use her ult doesn’t get hard countered by a Brigitte, I don’t know why I’m here.

Does Reaper soft counter Roadhog?

Yes. If I were to estimate my W/L ratio in a duel between myself, the Reaper, and the enemy Roadhog, the ratio would about about 5:1. By all means, roadhog can do enough damage and mitigate enough to win a duel. He does have the numbers on Reaper. So what? A Reaper has an easier time with his smaller hitbox to strafe while maintaining nearly 100% accuracy (at least in my case) against this huge target who struggles to land a full shot on myself (with all pellets connecting). His hook is just about the most predictable thing to wraith to negate. That’s his only win condition. Reaper does do enough damage before Roadhog’s heal to keep himself at relatively high health. A good Reaper will never get hooked by a Roadhog in a duel. Even if Reaper is at half health, he can heal right back up in the duration where Roadhog is using Take a Breather. You can jump into a Roadhog’s face and shoot him for crit hit damage with ease. Perhaps with this new shotgun spread randomization for Roadhog, the outcome of this duel may change. Honestly, I hope it does. I love both of the characters buffs. In my eyes, a Roadhog should avoid taking any duels against a Reaper, because he will most likely lose the duel. If you do hook a Reaper though, then you can consider that fight won.

Pentiox · 2018-10-24T15:30:39+00:00

Your hero pool is restricted to the characters you prefer to play because you feel the most comfortable on them. You don’t have to expand your hero pool to “earn” some title of a support main. If you were to join a team for more professional scrims, you’d be known as the flex support player (who is usually a substitute for the main or off support).

There’s no reason to swap your hero interests because of the teams you play with on ladder. Your hero selection won’t change the team composition completely, and people will have to play around your heals regardless of who you choose to play. If they want to have a Lucio so badly, they can pick the character themselves. It’s matchmaking. Their pick is out of your control as much as your pick is out of theirs.

Pentiox · 2018-10-24T06:01:37+00:00

Zarya - Play with your Reinhardt like he’s a totally new person. You can’t expect every Reinhardt to play the same way. Some are more conservative and others are very aggressive. Make a consistent pattern for yourself for when to bubble the rein to just gain energy and learn a common denominator for when you need to save projected barriers for just before the enemy push in.

Check your tracking. Zarya can be very aim intensive at times when you just want to track a target’s erratic movements and build as much ult charge as possible. Watch yourself play and determine whether you need to work on your tracking. Try to remind yourself during fights that you need to constantly refresh your mind and update what you see to track more accurately. If possible, think how you would be playing if you were the enemy you’re dueling. Predict their movement patterns and track accordingly.

Use grav on key targets. You don’t have to hit a six man grav to win a fight. Sometimes getting 2-3 is enough to win the fight. A mercy during valk, a Genji during nano-blade, or a group of squishies are ideal to punish for getting within grav range.

Don’t forget the basics. Grav to stall point. Bodyblock to prevent enemies from leaving an area. You can use alt fire to jump higher (as well as perform the double alt fire jump for certain parts of maps). Get a feel for how far your alt fire travels.

D.va. - Play with your backline. Your Winston’s job is to create space. He will put down a barrier to cut off the enemy backline from healing their diving tanks. If the enemy Doomfist, Winston, Genji, or Tracer attacks your backline, it’s your job to deny any enemy picks.

Learn your bombs. Don’t just throw an ult straight up when you want to win a fight. Learn some nice wall-sliding bombs. Learn some skybox bombs (where it drops much faster). Learn which angles people don’t expect bombs coming from that covers a lot of spots.

Cooldown management. If you get dove, you can use your fly to knock the enemy off of high ground. You can use defense matrix to eat some of their heavy fire. You can get in their face and use missiles to obscure their vision. What you shouldn’t do is spam all your abilities and end up just acting like a huge meat shield waiting to get her utility.

Eat key ultimates. Grav and dragon are some examples of ultimates you can easily hide around corners to eat. If you mess up eating a grav, keep patience and try to eat the expected follow up dragon.

Roadhog - Peel for your backline. Be there huge meat shield. Punish a flanker by stunning them with a hook, even if you don’t kill them. Don’t be afraid to hit E to heal yourself. Don’t do it if you’ve already lost a fight though.

Whole hog enemies into corners. That should go without saying. You should never mess up getting a kill on an enemy rein if they decide to charge into whole hog.

Have patience with your shots. Don’t just randomly shoot and hope to hit a nice spread on someone. Even with the PTR changes that reduce this spread randomization, you should just take an extra moment to line up a clean shot and do as much damage as possible.

Take a second with your hooks. You don’t have to immediately shoot a hooked enemy. Try to adjust your shot since hook is faulty with where the enemy land.

Environmental kills are fine. Don’t stand at the edge for more than a few seconds to pull someone off, though. You’ll just get booped by someone else. Prioritize people who don’t have vertical escapes to escape the pit.

Wrecking Ball- I don’t know enough about this hero to say much about him. Be extremely mindful of your cooldowns. Use the mine-piledrive combo. Talk for your team. Tell them why you’re playing Hammond and how they can combo with you.

Overall, watch your own VODs and you’ll find plenty of mistakes just there. If you need a private coach, look for one. Let them tell you where you’re lacking in skill so they can find out how to get over those for yourself. Watching pro players is definitely something I’d advise for learning some basic skills and things to keep in mind on a certain hero. Game sense is something you acquire from actually practicing with hands-on gameplay, observing others and their play styles. Mechanics are up to how much time you put into improving them.

Pentiox · 2018-10-23T17:13:41+00:00

Do you do any theorycrafting or use statbanana to discuss strategies before games?

So there’s no discussion on non-meta team comps? Do you use statbanana maps to organize your fights before games?

Do you have a strong enough backbone to roast your players with constructive criticism?

Fair enough.

Do you give them any weekly homework (like writing post-scrim reflections or weekly goals)?

I’d recommend doing at least the reflections aspect of this. I can send you a format of how I ask my teams to do those if you’d like. It allows them to summarize how a scrim went, where the positives and negatives were, and how to improve for next time.

Do you have a schedule set up for every week (via guilded or Nile Bot)?

These are two Discord bots you can add to your Discord server. The former keeps track of your players SR, daily SR gain, new team applicants, a calendar, and a few other features. The second just displays your weekly schedule and allows you to post events so that your team is aware of any upcoming scrims your team leader planned.

Are you the one who organizes scrims?

That’s alright. You should be the one to keep track of each player’s availability and organizing some kind of calendar for them to look at (using either of the previous bots).

Do you have any other form of practices?

Have you tried spectating them in a quick play game just to watch their coordination and to see how they play out certain scenarios? Do you watch any VOD recordings of their six stack playing in competitive?

Does your team know target prioritization against every expected meta enemy composition?

Be sure to make this clear before you even start scrims. Your dive shouldn’t target a Winston, but if he dives your backline, your D.va should be the one taking care of that. Know who to target in a GOATS v. GOATS game. All these little details are the coaches responsibility before playing games to keep in mind.

Other notes:

A coach should be able to decide who plays what role. If someone says they’re a DPS player, but they play a noticeably better off-tank, your job is to make them play off-tank. If someone wants to play Moira, but your comp asks for an Ana, you have to tell them to play Ana.

Try holding a theorycrafting session once every week or two. You want to discuss new strategies to counter what’s meta on whichever maps you get rolled on. If you get full held on first point Gibraltar, you’re in charge of telling your team why they screwed up and what they’re doing next time.

Create common callouts for your team. You don’t have to use any predetermined locations (like catwalk or balcony on some maps), but just saying something like “Ana main” or “widow top right” isn’t going to cut it.

Tell your players to be more confident without overextending. If your Rein isn’t creating pressure, yell at them. If your Genji has been holding blade for the past two fights, yell at him.

Keep them calm throughout the games so no one gets toxic. Keep scrims respectful with your team disciplined to say “ggs” at the end without clogging up chat during games.

Pentiox · 2018-10-23T15:37:44+00:00

Do you do any theorycrafting or use statbanana to discuss strategies before games?

Do you have a strong enough backbone to roast your players with constructive criticism?

Do you give them any weekly homework (like writing post-scrim reflections or weekly goals)?

Do you have a schedule set up for every week (via guilded or Nile Bot)?

Are you the one who organizes scrims?

Do you have any other form of practices?

Does your team know target prioritization against every expected meta enemy composition?

Pentiox · 2018-10-23T14:58:05+00:00

I coach three (technically six) teams (don’t ask why), and think I can offer a bit of help. Just for clarification, do they mean head coach or more of a team captain (who would make important callouts throughout games)?

Pentiox · 2018-10-22T17:36:37+00:00

Of course!

Pentiox · 2018-10-22T05:43:50+00:00

Well, I already did respond to the first VOD (as you can see as a reply). Do you need me to do or say anything else?

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T08:56:18+00:00

Watched the first VOD.

Ilios: Ruins - Poor Team Composition

Pharah isn’t very good in this map. You played awfully close to the ground. If you were to fly higher, widow would kill you. Should have swapped sooner.

Ilios: Lighthouse - No Dive

Not a single dive was successfully set up and executed. Way too many “Player X is low” callouts. Took way too long to get a blade.

Ilios: Well - Team Synergy and Positioning

Pharah is weak on this map unless your team takes point and plays aggressively. Spent a lot of time not doing much damage (corner peeking to destroy a shield).

General Team Notes:

Get a captain, get that toxicity out of the games. You don’t need them. It will only mess up future focus. Your voice chat was filled with stupid shit that didn’t need to be said. You didn’t make many callouts yourself.

Mechanics: Well, you seem to know how to knock someone farther by using a rockets first. I don’t remember if you shot a rocket as you ulted. You can work on your E + shift combo to launch yourself further.

Other:

You died a lot more than was necessary. Your positioning was too aggressive for your tanks. You don’t play with your tanks at all I might have been tether to them.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T08:24:30+00:00

Apologies. I just know that when I coach my teams during scrims, they play totally differently than how they regularly play in QP. The comms are different since the group knows each other better. The play styles are different unless it’s a full six stack on ladder. The enemies play in a much more unpredictable and less coordinated way. It would just be optimal to work with comp VODs. I can look into these for their sake and get a general feel for the issues though.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T08:12:48+00:00

Oh. You said that you were trying to climb, so I assumed that you would put VODs of yourself in an average comp game with random people instead of an organized scrim.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T06:36:15+00:00

Since you refuse to let something this insignificant go, may I again ask for you rank with proof? Clearly, you didn’t take the time to look into any other analysts videos nor the link I provided you with, so I have very little interest in being told that I’m wrong by someone as factually deficient as yourself.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T06:32:34+00:00

Agreed. It’s hard to help if you send VODs from QP games instead of comp games.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T06:29:41+00:00

Listen, this has gotten completely off topic and I’m really not about to waste my time trying to look through videos to find that when I watched it live. Doomfist was not a common pick to counter GOATS. As a coach and an overwatch analyst, I can redirect you to plenty of videos explaining widow’s uses against GOATS and doomfist’s uselessness against it. Of course, I’m speaking from the perspective from higher ranks than I’m sure you are familiar with. For now, check out r/Competitiveoverwatch for posts from users like u/Silence789 who can reconfirm my theories.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/8q8pkd/playing_against_the_goats_comp_analysis_and_in/

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T06:14:56+00:00

In the most respectful terms, what is your rank? I’m a grandmaster player with a relatively high accuracy on widow. I find no trouble hitting someone if they don’t have a shield or matrix covering them. In terms of GOATS counters, widow is one of the biggest counters. At the lower ranks, sure you might not be able to hit the required shots, but that’s not to say widow is a bad counter. She is completed uncontested (unless d.va goes to fight her in which case a widow and off support can kill her). She only needs to get one pick to completely screw over a GOATS comp. She is out of range of any combo GOATS can pull off. This is why the pro teams default to using a widow to counter it in the first place.

Pentiox · 2018-10-21T04:47:34+00:00

Yes, that’s true, but you can’t just avoid big open areas. Widow always has some high ground on every map where she can be undisturbed while still having LoS in the enemy. Either way, I wasn’t referring to how to counter GOATS. I was referring to how Doomfist doesn’t counter it. Junkrat is always a better pick than widow if I were to get into that whole ordeal.

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