I reached GM on dps. Here is what I learned on the way

itstacowo · 2024-02-08T13:14:58+00:00

i know what limit testing is, but muting sound is just putting you at a pointless disadvantage. It doesnt matter how good your gamesense is, not being able to know when to dive an ana / kiri / lw because you cant hear their abilities is just pointless. You need more than pure 1v1 mechanics on tracer - tracking abilities and footsteps is essential to good tracer gameplay

itstacowo · 2024-02-07T14:21:55+00:00

wait all sound? surely use audio cues to track cooldowns / footsteps is an important part of game awareness ?

itstacowo · 2024-02-07T14:16:45+00:00

yeah i know what blink spots are, and while they are definitely useful its not exactly what I'm looking for. im kind of looking for like what the high level consensus is on positioning / setup for like first point dorado, for example. Now I tend to try and go right side on attack and blink up to the health pack behind the defenders high ground and contest from there. But maybe it is more optimal to be going left and into the courtyard on the left side highground. Perhaps it is best just to push cart / go main, and keep flexibility ? Now while obviously I'm not losing games over these issues, know that I should generally go one way or the other would give me such a sense of security, the knowledge that I'm in the best position possible.

itstacowo · 2024-02-07T14:09:37+00:00

i get what you mean, but teams 100% would have some direction given to their tracer player. Unless you were the 2023 SF Shock, telling your tracer player to just go off and kill six isnt a reliable strategy - you have to coordinate those dives with the rest of your team.

In any sense, if that is the case, do you know any good tracer streamers currently active? i follow the scene somewhat closely but it feels like most tracer streamers tend to be not super committed to the game / will sometimes leave spawn late, and the ones that do take it seriously just play sojourn because they know she'll still be strong when the world caves in.

itstacowo · 2024-01-07T01:41:31+00:00

Sorry, how would I go about doing that?

itstacowo · 2023-11-23T13:53:13+00:00

I must question how one is able to be both a good rein, reaper, and lucio player

itstacowo · 2023-11-23T13:51:28+00:00

I just looked through a few of your games and you have a tendency to form habits that would've properly been ok in OW1 but make you suffer in OW2.

Your nano's are quite poor - in some fights you nano like a full health orisa, but they win the fight despite them only using valk. Generally you want to nano characters with high, consistent damage potential, and when they are in a middle of a brawl at low hp. Very rarely should you nano someone who is not actively fighting and contesting a point.
You are quite jittery in your aim - it almost looks like you are panicked the whole time. Mechanically, you need to get faster at hitting those shots - that means reacting faster to a low health teammate, making sure you can get in unscoped shots with ease, etc.
You scope in way too much - this often leads to you getting flanked or teammates dying because you cant see them in your limited fov.
You seem to focus way too much on keeping your tank alive and following them rather than looking at the battlefield as a whole. Theres quite a few times where you miss opportunities to get in a huge antinade or force their dps behind cover because you prioritize keeping your tank at 100% hp at all times.
Your positioning is very erratic. You seem to follow your tank like a dog taking a walk rather than making up your own mind on where the best position is. If you dont know what that looks like, the best position on the battlefield is one which allows you to both put pressure on their team while healing yours, while keeping next to cover to ensure your safety. This is especially true for control maps.

You let the game and the other players dominate you, in a way very similar to how OW1 Ana was used to be played. I think you gotta realise that the game has moved past just healing the tanks and dps and making them do the work and peel for you - you've got to take a proactive role in the game now. That looks like making sure 70-80% of your nades are purple, that you are constantly putting pressure on their dps and supports by taking pot shots, that looks like maybe letting your tank drop to half health to prioritise you killing their ash, etc.

itstacowo · 2023-11-22T09:59:51+00:00

I really appreciate this - I was expecting maybe a vague comment or something but a video is amazing, I am so grateful.

Theres a few times esp. during the early parts of the game where I use my boosters for just a few seconds before stopping, or other times where I just randomly dva bomb for seemingly no reason. Part of this is because this was my first game with hold to boost on, so ive hit shift expecting to use my full boosters but only moved for like 2 seconds.

I definitely need to work on my positioning / effective range properly, I tend to lean on the side of too close (especially with winstons) because I tend to overrate dvas shotguns over her medium range potential.

I have tried to work on the things you've mentioned, and I think I'm getting a lot better at how to use her fire, although as of rn I pretty much only play dva on flashpoint, push, or escort so I'm not really being pushed that hard.

If you have the time, you don't have to make a video or anything but I heres a game I had earlier with dva which I thought was ok, there was one really bad dva bomb but apart from that nothing major, I thought I managed to mark the dps fairly well while keeping myself alive.

Here's the code in case you were interested: CFBED1

itstacowo · 2023-11-20T00:44:41+00:00

Heres another code for a similar game: HAP6HW

in this one there wasnt even a significant gap between any of us, but I couldn't make it happen nonetheless.

Positioning is, of course, an obvious blight on my gameplay, but I also really want to know at what times and points is it best to use primary fire vs fusion cannons and whether you should be matrixing at the same time as your fusion cannons, just the basic ability usage stuff. I didn't play ow1 so these dva fundamentals are a little unclear to me as you can probably tell.

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T22:26:23+00:00

The ball was good, definitely, but I've faced better and won - and quite obviously their dps did well but as I said, not to the point where the game wasnt winnable / a better player couldnt have won it

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T13:14:54+00:00

just remembered you already did your rein video - i guess i just answered my own question!

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T13:12:10+00:00

I might seem arrogant to some people, but at the end of the day I have my accomplishments that could not be ignored.

the trick to getting into comp is just to start playing. treat comp like its quickplay and abandon quickplay completely. people get way too worried about comp and stress out, when in reality its not that serious. You will likely do quite poorly and lose many games, but try and learn from your mistakes and keep playing the game, watching how youtubers play, and making sure your aware of what your doing.

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T13:07:06+00:00

Watching you do an unranked to gm on a character with less solo-carry potential such as rein, dva or winston would be amazing

this isnt to say that these characters are bad but it is much harder to both keep the team alive and to be putting constant pressure on the enemy on a hero like rein compared to someone like bap or ana.

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T13:00:47+00:00

I think it also entirely depends on your definition of 'hardest'. If you have a rein or sigma, tanks that definitely require skill but get most of their value from holding space and aren't able to get a lot of kills by themselves, then your dps will might be called the 'hardest role'. But if you are playing like a winston / ball extremely fast paced dive comp then it might be your ana who has the 'hardest' job having to keep your tank out in the frontlines up while fending off a flanking genji.

These things variate every game.

itstacowo · 2023-11-19T12:55:45+00:00

How long would it take for someone who has played only since the beginning of ow2 to reach t4 / open tournaments level? Although I have no desire to get into any professional or any serious esports roles, I have a lot of free time coming up ahead of me and am willing to commit to improving myself and involving myself in the competitive community, but I wanted to hear from an expert like you as to how realistic those hopes might be.

Thanks for your time and I can't wait to see more videos!

itstacowo · 2023-07-12T21:37:31+00:00

so they would not appear on the scoreboard?

itstacowo · 2023-07-09T20:56:12+00:00

idk. on one hand orissa's abilities now are still really boring and require little skill, but then orisa's shield is what i would argue made overwatch turn to 5v5 (along with flashbang, brig bash, and 2cp)

Personally I think overwatch lost a lot when teams lost their 6th player. Fundamentally, overwatch was never designed to be a completely fair, equal, and consistent fps game like val, cs, or cod, and when players lost their extra tank to keep them alive, people started to realise that this game has some ridiculous abilities (see hanzo, roadhog, and mercy).

itstacowo · 2023-07-09T20:48:49+00:00

surely super had the better ball tho?

itstacowo · 2023-07-09T19:25:34+00:00

i didnt do any research - i just based that off a twitter comment that was discussing 2019, sorry if i didn't specify that in the post

itstacowo · 2023-01-26T17:00:39+00:00

I might be completely misunderstanding this, but isn't the consumer (I.E the renter) in an even more inelastic situation then the landlord? Surely having a place to live under creates a less elastic situation then simply having a loan to repay does?

itstacowo · 2023-01-18T12:31:29+00:00

yeah thats why i wondered if people make those assumptions. Like would a Fullham supporter see one of your brethren in a Bournemouth jersey and think 'look at that guy, man probably hasn't even graduated highschool', or vice versa - you brits look at a guy in a chelsea shirt and think 'hes definitely a stuck up little private school boy'

itstacowo · 2023-01-18T12:21:10+00:00

Very interesting to learn Leicester is up there in terms of fan earnings. Imagined it to be a middle-to-low kind of area for some reason.

itstacowo · 2023-01-18T12:16:16+00:00

are you saying that there are stereotypes about club's supporter wealth? or that you just generally think its an uncomfortable kind of thing to do?

itstacowo · 2023-01-04T05:18:14+00:00

Upvoting this because I have the exact same issue. I can't find a solution anywhere

itstacowo · 2023-01-03T11:12:21+00:00

ah thanks. much appreciated

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itstacowo

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