Overwatch: Zero to Hero

My Overwatch journey began as most early adopters. I got a weekend invite to the beta. I was an avid player of Blizzard games. I played WoW off and on for over a decade, as well as rotating through a sequence of other blizzard titles. I am a certified blizz fan boy. Overwatch launches onto the scene; and I dive in full tilt.

I play a ton of quick match, and I am terrible. Really bad. I have ZERO skill, but its a blizzard game so its newbie friendly. I learn to play mercy, sem, torb, then work my way into soldier and more challenging heroes. The first competitive season arrives and I play my 10 placement matches to get placed. Woot I am 2002sr! Gold! This is awesome I am so much better then I thought...

Little did I know I had just jumped off a cliff. My rank decayed all the way down to 700 as I was punished for having zero game sense, terrible aim, and bad positioning. It took rock bottom to realise I needed to change.

So I bought a new computer. It must be the frame rate! It helped a bit, but that was not it. I still felt frustrated and blamed others at the rank for dragging me down with them. I started adding friends I met in ques that were friendly, because at this point I was like a leper to my battle net friends list. At 700rk I would surely drag them down in the que. This helped a little, at least I wasn't alone. A rag tag group of baddies working together could surely influence the match enough to pull ourselves out of the muck! I am better then this I am a gamer! I played countless hours of DiVa her character gave me the forgiveness I needed to stay alive, and help the team. Lesson #1 stay alive!

I had my play group I was specialising, but I was still only 16% of the team. I couldn't carry the win, and we weren't immune to the rogue Hanzo trolls. So I started branching out. I found sites and apps like Overbuff, and Oversumo. These stat sites allowed me to pinpoint technical skills I was lacking. The min maxing wow player in me finally had something to work with. I started looking at stats such as hero win rates, or %of soldier 76 helix shots hit. This allowed me to focus on what I was good at, and what I needed to improve on. It gave me a quantifiable gauge of improvement, regardless of my current SR. I would check the stats on my break at work the next day. Review what I was doing well with, and what I lacked. Keeping Overwatch on the brain, and reflecting on my thought process as a player.

By this time I had moved to silver. Greatly improved, but still was only playing my 16% of the team. Technically I was improving, but I was not there yet. I started listening to Omnic lab a competitive Overwatch podcast. This stepped up my game big time. In this podcast they do hero deep dive episodes where they interview top 500 players who have mastered each character. These podcasts allowed me to learn how a pro thinks. Allowing me to take the foundation of skill I had built, and utilise it in the proper way. When I turned a corner I looked for an enemy. When a pro turns a corner they put their cross hairs on the doorway at head height where the enemy would be standing 70% of the time. As the great Wayne Gretzky once said "don't skate to where the puck is, but where the puck is going to be". This allowed me to focus on my positioning and decision making abilities, and keep my finger on the pulse of the ever evolving meta.

Finally I was back in gold where I had began, but the final objective lay ahead. Hitting Plat. Hitting platinum means your above average. This may not be a big goal for everyone but for someone who started at 700sr it was like making it to a base camp on the side of mount Everest. To do this I stopped queuing ranked with my regular play group. I new I could only do it on my own. To truly climb I couldn't play support and aid the efforts of those greater skilled then myself. I couldn't tank and defend the objectives others had gained for me. I had to play DPS. So I took the last plunge I needed to take. Getting a massive mouse pad and changing my high mouse sensitivity that felt so comfortable. I dropped my mouse sensitivity and took the time to reprogram my brain to the lower settings so that I could overcome the plateau I had reached in gold.

Great sports players take up more space on the court. Intercept more passes, block more shots, pull focus on to them to allow teammates to receive a pass. They have an ability to push beyond the zones of space occupied by their peers, and make plays. In gaming this is called carrying. To push to gold I had to reach beyond my 16% influence on the team, I had to pull the stats of two men, pull 32% and become a god among golds and rise to the upper echelon! Using all I had learned I shed the skin of an MMO, MOBA, and RTS player, and became an FPS player and ascended to Platinum. I achieved my goal, and it felt good.

Sure it took awhile. I have a silver border now. Some people hold it against me that with the amount I have played I still hover around 2500sr, but they don't know the 1800sr climb it took get there.

-Barakar