mint hare
I'm pretty new to overwatch and i've been trying to get out of gold. In this game, we pushed to second with 5 minutes left and lost. I know my aim isn't good, and bad ult timing/usage. I also had some avoidable deaths. But besides that, I was wondering what else I could work on?
Code: YG1QSH
jaunty folio
I can take a look at this if you'd like, preferably I'd like to do vod review together of it, but if you want written that's fine too. Are you EU, and what times would suit you best?
mint hare
I think written would be better thanks. I'm NA
jaunty folio
0:50 Regardless of reaper forcing you out, you dont need to peek here, if you're setting up there its to have the intention to wait for them to push past the corner infront of you and then drop and attack from behind, by peeking you don't add any meaningful damage but making them aware of where you are.
1:03 Forcing out winston here is alright, but honestly you should just be preparing on your own angle, whenever you play tracer you dont want to play stacked on your backline if you can help it, all that happens is that you're forced to be caught in whatever push they make to your backline, you bring attention to your own supports, and you'd much rather be pressuring out the zen and ana, forcing them to look at you. Rotating together with your backline through subway isn't the right play here either, you just want to get away from where your supports are and not care so much about what winston is doing but wreaking havoc on their backline. Even if you don't kill zen or ana, forcing them to look at you makes them unable to support whatever push is happening on your team.
1:21 This is just meaningless to try to spam at the reaper like this from this distance, you need to take this time to stop being so stacked with your own team and go on your own angle
1:30 you blink nicely to safety but you recall, you just need to go straight for mega here and not waste recall if you don't have to
1:39 this is exactly what you don't want to be doing. Forget the concept of how much damage you do when you press tab. Peeking from 30m away spamming at the enemies and at bubble does nothing of any value, your team is waiting to regroup with their supports the only thing you want to focus on is setting up for your next dive. The fact that you shoot screams to them that you're over there and so they're aware of you and you will struggle getting value once they push, as they will either now clear out where you are, or be aware that you're behind them and will react much faster to dealing with you.
1:47 and just like that, Winston forces you out by walking up and zapping you once, you waste every single blink you have and no longer have a good angle onto their backline
1:58 you're going into them from directly where they're looking at and pushing into, this is extremely bad as you are very squishy and will struggle to handle the attention of 5 of them whilst you're trying to shoot directly at someone who is completely aware of you. Now imagine that instead of all of what you were doing earlier you positioned hidden away on mega on right side, waited for them to push and the moment you see doom going in you start going directly for their backline. This would have been so much easier, you would be able to preserve more blinks, get more damage off, not forced out so early, and had a better chance of landing pulse
2:08 you still have this mindset that when you need to survive you go straight back to your backline, forget your backline. The fight is over whilst doom is dead, you just want to grab mega from building next to point and wait for your team to regroup. Once regrouped you have set yourself up in a very good angle to contest point, and if anyone tries to force you out before this happen you're able to deal with it. (running away from reaper and winston, and you win against sombra forcing sombra to translocate and you can just stabilise with healthpacks) Even if they chase you, that means your team is able to go to point and contest much easier.
2:15 this push for the reaper is extremely greedy to do, all you want to do is set up for recontest, doom going in 1 v 5 is irrelevant because even if you go in its 2 v 5 and you just force recall for no value gained. You could instead be setting up wider and try to quickly go past them under subway car if you do plan to recontest, but honestly the point is over and you just need to set up on your own angle again thinking about next fight.
Even though I've only covered 2 minutes, the mistakes you make are the same big ones throughout the entire vod just in different ways.
The 4 big pillars and fundamentals of overwatch (in my opinion) are the following:
Angles - (I go in much more depth here about angles, #1105124061778026506 message the end paragraph of first message, but basically its unfavourable for you to play stacked on your team in the majority of cases unless you're specifically playing brawl where you're giving value you to the fact that you're stacked (bap heals/immo, lucio aura, rein shield, mei wall etc)
Timing - The easiest way to think of this, is to understand are you creating unfavourable numbers with your team. If you go in first go 1 v 5, then recall, your team is now forced to play 4 v 5. Ideally you want to ensure that you only go for fights where either the enemy is so isolated that you aren't at a numbers disadvantage (trying to harrass a backline as tracer 1 v 3 whilst your team is waiting for them to push), or the times that you push your team is able to be in the fight, so even if you go 1 v 3 on the backline, your team is 4 v 2 and so as long as you survive your team is at a big advantage and will usually win out.
Planning - This is where you take the down time between fights (whether a fight is won, or lost or even if your team is just stabilising) you want to take these moments to try to get as much value as possible when the fights happen. (The other half of planning is deciding ult/resource usage but this is more for a coordinated environment)
Effective range -At what distance are you favoured over whoever your target is? If its against widow as tracer you want to be as physically close as possible, if its against a rein you want to be out of their effective range which is wherever they're able to swing or even however far you need to be to be able to not get hit by shatter as an example. Playing outside of whatever effective range you need to be playing in means that you're forced out more easily or that you wont force out the enemy easily at all. Truth be told this is something that comes with practice and higher ranked players understand this intuitively without needing to think. Thinking of this for yourself constantly speeds up you learning this intuitively.
jaunty folio
Now that I've go on a lengthy rant for these, the reason why I brought it up is that every single one of the issues I talked about before stems from each of these being misunderstood.
Angles
As tracer the depth to how far on your own angle you should take is at the most extreme end of any in overwatch, by playing stacked on your team and being reliant on your backline to heal you is decreasing how much value you gain significantly. It's not always the case where you can take an angle very far from your team, if you're into another tracer then playing a bit closer to your backline gives you a safe buffer and if you're caught out isolated from your backline, the enemy tracer matches your mobility to punish if anything goes wrong. Sombra too is an issue, Learning to adapt to how isolated you can play from your team as tracer to squeeze as much value as you can is important. Just because you can't set up directly behind behind them as tracer doesn't mean that you can't easily get your own angle either. Understanding that the enemy are looking to push somewhere and setting up in advance knowing them is how you can easily and safely get these strong angles (like waiting around the corner at mega under subway car for them to push past)
Timing
At the moment the way you're playing is not in regards to whether your team is ready to go in and do damage, its whether you yourself were able to do damage no one else. Tracer is not just so difficult because she is incredibly mechanically demanding, but playing on your own angle away from your team is a lot more difficult and demands a lot more game sense to time engages than sitting stacked with your team and engaging together with your team as your team pushes forwards. Being patient and understanding when the moments are that your team is going in allows you to get the most value out of tracer.
Planning
That takes me to planning, since the best way to ensure that you have correct timing, is to actually set up and recognise the moments that you need to set up better and instead of just constantly going in you stop engaging with the enemy and prepare for the next fight. The better your preparation as well the easier it is to have good timings. If you try to run out to get an angle behind them too slow and they see you do this then you'll be forced out early, and if you're forced out early its very difficult for you to suddenly engage again even if your team is all going in.
Effective range
For the most part you are keeping to the correct effective ranges, however it goes far deeper than this. Ideally if you could choose you would want to be point blank to your targets and shoot at them in this range whilst they dont shoot back at you. However this rarely happened in the gameplay I watched except for on winston. It all comes down to choosing when you want the enemy to be aware of you with tracer. If you do play on a good angle, even if they are 15m away from you, shooting from this distance immediately alerts them to your presence, so even though you'll be doing damage a lot sooner, the damage you're doing isn't going to be very lethal as they're going to run away as soon as they can. So instead take the time to get closer to your targets, dont shoot at them to make them aware of you, but shoot them when you're ready to play in what is the most beneficial effective range for you.
@mint hare Hopefully this helps and gives you a lot to think about, I know it's strange I only cover the first 2 minutes, but hopefully I make it clear the extent of how much you can change inside of the playstyle choices you make of those 2 mins. A good exercise I'd recommend for you is testing yourself if you understand what I've put down. If you have understood what I'm getting at then look again at the vod and think about if you'd now do things differently and how you'd do them differently. Are there things now that you feel are obvious in hindsight. If you are struggling to see what changes you had to make I can go over more of the vod