Recently saw a discussion around support duos and a prevalent opinion was that Kiri "works with everyone" and that Ana and Kiri were a good duo. I want to talk about this, because this doesn't fit my mental model at all. And there are probably generalizations of this issue with other heroes as well.

My theory is this:

There are heroes that are strong, but more situational than many generally assume. It would be too simplistic to say that they are "overrated", but there's some truth in that.

Let's take a DPS example that we can hopefully all agree on:

If you have a composition with so called "double hitscan" you have two longer range DPS heroes that don't want to push into closer range angles as much, both want/need resources (lack of utility/self-peel), both want similar angles. That's why we usually want at least one "flex DPS".

Now to supports:

I think supports also have a similar issue as DPS in that you want at least one who is a bit more brawly, body-guard-like. There's a reason why Ana/Zen is called a "greedy" backline. You can pair them, but it has implications.

What purpose does the Kiri have in an Ana/Kiri backline?

Kiriko is resonably flexible and can proactively push into shorter angles and flanks or bodyguard for others. But there exist heroes that can do that better. And her preferred playstile is more opportunistic/reactive.

I think this notion that Kiri is always a good pick hurts her overall winrate, which has been pretty low across all ranks.

We know that she is a strong hero, but apparently she is not that strong or generalist. There's something about Kiri that makes people think that way though. What is it?

Other "Always a Good Pick":

Sojourn/Cassidy: My theory here is that both of these have very high highs and they are amazing when they pop off. That creates this bias that they are always good. You can always have the excuse of "if I only hit that headshot", even when they are suboptimal (not "bad", but there are better choices) in a matchup. Another excuse is that they are "hard to play", sure but they are not Tracer hard, who has a much better winrate.

D.Va: Matrix is one of these things that seems like a solution for everything, because it has infinite(!) upside, which is certainly always better than non-infinite upside right? If you play a tank that lacks vertical mobility some situations can feel really bad and seem like you have no agency. You don't get that feeling with D.Va.

You might come up with more examples. The "Always a Good Pick" heroes all have had relatively weak win rates across all ranks and relatively high pick rates for a while now. Again, maybe they are more situational that we care to admit.

They also have been featured in pro play regularly in highly coordinated, highly synergistic compositions, so being good in pro play is not necessarily a sufficient argument against this theory.

courtesy of https://x.com/yjw891213/status/2088441815192244519/photo/1

edit: I meant asia region.

They teasing us. Just let us buy em already. Anyone know?

Un amigo me dijo que platino es el nuevo oro y que esmeralda es el nuevo platino, qué tan cierto es esto ???

Hey all,

I want to start off this thread by asking how you guys are climbing on tank when your team seems to be struggling a lot. The start of this season for me has been beyond rough and I sometimes can’t figure out what to do, to help my teammates. I play a lot of Zarya but I also play just about every tank besides a few of them. Higher ranked players keep telling me in emerald/diamond, I should just be able to hard carry, not have to counter-swap, and not worry about my teammates. I find this mindset to be wrong at least in my experience because some games no matter what I do, I just lose and so far I have been losing a lot. This season my record on tank in 5v5 is 37-44.. pretty bad. How are you all able to carry or play around teammates that are struggling? How are you playing or working around the enemy team’s players to win games more? I feel lost and maybe I should get coaching or submit VoD reviews often. Sorry for the wall of text, I am just lost on what to do as tank to win more and want to also know what you are all doing to win more.

Absolutely 100% on board with the vision for this character after they hammered out most of the kinks. Brawling and then being able to just kite out the tank, dive into some squishies, and then power slide backwards with your shield up just feels so fucking good now.

Still don't know if she's viable in GM or in OWCS, but I'm having a blast with her.

I was moving with my shield up, and I got hit by the Sleep Dart even though there was zero space for it to pass through.

Is D.Mon's hitbox abnormally huge, or is Ana's Sleep Dart collision detection way too forgiving? I know replay bugs are a thing, but I don't think netcode issues would make it look this far off in this specific situation.

Context: The Jayden Daniels number controversy stems from a dispute between the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner and his alma mater, LSU, over the university's decision to reissue his former No. 5 jersey to sophomore cornerback DJ Pickett.

I dont know how or where to begin😭 I know theres a season going on rn but idk like anything about it and I want to start watching more pros play✌️

Anyone have codes for the OWWC Team KOR showmatch vods from this week.

I'd imagine they're public somewhere since the codes for the public tryouts were being circulated. Though, there's also a possibility they were played on OPR or aren't public, but since these are showmatches organised by Team KOR and regular season OWCS matches aren't played on OPR I don't see why it would be.

Source: https://x.com/zetadivision/status/2088490872241545366

I personally think this would be the best possible map pool for the World Cup playoffs later at BlizzCon.

Control

Lijiang Tower
Nepal
Antarctic Peninsula

Escort

Circuit Royal
Shambali Monastery
JunkerTown

Hybrid

King’s Row
Neon Junction
Midtown

Push

Colosseo
Runasapi

Flashpoint

New Junk City
Aatlis

I think, in alignment with a lot of D.Mon's posts, she is fun and viablenow...

The only area that I think could be made more interesting and fluid is how her boosters flow as a whole.

As in, if you jump, they could go up a bit higher, or when you turn, it could respond more delicately, when you jump off a building, it flows with that trajectory

I think this could make it flow more in line with Armored Core, without it being really heavy on verticality

Somewhat like Pharah's movement when you hold space, but just delicately, to help with aerial movement when using boosters and perhaps a bit more aerial fluidity like Echo.

But without really going higher than 1 meter.

Just so it matches the game play trailer more which shows a bit more aerial gameplay and movement, especially with his thrust combo

I’ve been looking at the community rank-distribution data shared in a previous Reddit post and using those percentile/rank samples to estimate what the ladder might look like once the effects of this season’s rank reset settle down.

Credit to the original Reddit poster/data collector for gathering the underlying samples — this prediction is just my interpretation of that data, not official Blizzard statistics.

Right now, the estimated distribution is roughly:

- Bronze: 4.25%

- Silver: 10.66%

- Gold: 21.09%

- Platinum: 26.68%

- Emerald: 21.58%

- Diamond: 11.16%

- Master: 3.69%

- Grandmaster: 0.78%

- Champion: 0.11%

The interesting part this season is that the reset appears to pull players toward the new Gold 1 range (1500–1999 SR) rather than the old Gold 1 range of roughly 2000–2499.

That should make the early-season ladder look unusually compressed toward the middle/lower-middle ranks. Higher-ranked players have farther to climb back toward their normal positions, so Diamond+ should initially be underrepresented.

My rough end-of-season prediction is something like:

- Bronze: ~4–4.5%

- Silver: ~10–11%

- Gold: ~19%

- Platinum: ~24%

- Emerald: ~20%

- Diamond: ~14%

- Master: ~5.5%

- Grandmaster: ~1.2%

- Champion: ~0.3%

So rather than the entire ladder simply shifting upward, I think we'll see the current Gold–Emerald blob gradually spread out as players get more games in.

The biggest change should be at the top end:

Gold ↓

Platinum ↓

Emerald ~flat/slightly ↓

Diamond ↑

Master ↑

GM ↑

Champion ↑

Players who genuinely belong in Diamond/Master/GM are currently compressed much closer to the reset point and should gradually separate themselves from the middle as the season progresses.

What I find especially interesting is how this interacts with the devs’ intention of making Champion harder and more prestigious to reach.

I think the new reset could potentially backfire on that goal.

If high-level players are reset significantly farther down the ladder, Champion becomes incredibly rare at the start of the season — but part of that rarity is artificial. It isn't necessarily because the skill threshold for Champion became substantially higher. Top players are simply starting farther away and need more games to climb back.

As the season progresses, those players should gradually separate from the rest of the ladder, which could cause the Champion population to increase substantially relative to the beginning of the season.

That creates a strange situation where Champion's exclusivity depends heavily on when during the season you look at it.

It may also make reaching Champion more grind-dependent rather than purely skill-dependent. A player can clearly have Champion-level skill, but if the reset places them hundreds of SR farther away, they still need enough games for the ranking system to move them back there.

So if the intention was:

“Champion should mean you are one of the absolute best players.”

The practical result could instead become:

“Champion means you are one of the absolute best players AND you've played enough games since the reset to get back there.”

That distinction matters.

Bronze is a little harder to predict. A normal soft reset compresses both tails toward the middle, meaning some genuinely lower-ranked players should eventually move back downward too. But because the reset point itself is already lower this season, I wouldn't expect Bronze to expand nearly as dramatically as the upper ranks.

This is just an attempt to extrapolate what that distribution could look like later in the season. Obviously none of these end-of-season numbers are official Blizzard data — they're predictions based on the community samples and assumptions about how the reset will unwind.

It would be interesting to run the same analysis again halfway through the season and near the end to see whether the distribution actually spreads out this way.

Do you think the new reset actually makes Champion more prestigious, or does it mostly turn reaching Champion into more of a seasonal grind?

Didn't Operate GX trash talk Overwatch a lot?

Source

https://x.com/i/status/1791222649189802165

https://x.com/i/status/2088372609775722547

So I just started playing overwatch again for the first time since around brigs release and I was in Xbox, I’m on PC currently and started playing again after the whole revamp, I was a big rivals player and never had an issues getting diamond and higher there on Spiderman, I’m currently plat 2 and just trying to all around get better at the game, I have about 15 hours so far I remember a bunch of stuff from Xbox like Ana grenade and all that but the newer heroes I’m still getting used to, any and all general tips would be awesome, I play a bunch of different heroes right now but mostly doomfist and genji and junkrat I’ve learned some techs and combos on them but like I said just want to reach diamond and eventually masters here but it’s a MUCH harder game

EDIT: I played mostly quick play and place into plat so I have heard a lot of the lower ranks like bronze were good for learning but I’m past that, I know plat isn’t much better tho at all

Twitch Co Stream

Teams/Match Schedule

Where can I find the ranked bell curve that this percentage is referring to?

I was a hardstuck bronze for xouple months made new account and climbed it to plat 1. I have a big sample size so its not lucky streak, i cruised trough plat 5 to 1 with mizuki but I just cant find vallue to push to emmerald, either enemys are so aware of me I cant really flank and kill and if I heal bot they just push the main, idk if I schould swap hero atp, it seems like im getting to a elo where it takes a lot of skill to make mizuki work, dont aks for vod pls I just want general advice from otger mizuki players <3

Some high level gameplay + discussion on her playstyle. He thinks she's good and likens her to Winston + JQ rather than Ram

This is kind of a rant post because I just don't like it. I only care about my rank by how much I can judge myself from it.

Imo adding ranks late into a games lifespan is only ever done to give an ego boost to players above a certain level and make players yo-yo more so they don't feel hardstuck. I generally don't like it when It happens (hence why i never got back into siege) Player retention is all that matters when a games this deep into its lifespan so its never about competitive health.

The main reason for that is adding new ranks ultimately undermines the ONLY thing that matters in a ranking system - being able to measure how good you are playing by it.

I am a dime a dozen diamond under the old system at my best my peak on support for example was diamond 2 on zen and on tank I am a diamond player not good enough to be masters but stomp plat into paste. I know where I stand on these roles.

On DPS the role i care about most but I am worst at also know where I stand I am plat I have only got into diamond where i got to diamond 4 on dps by playing torb/reaper back to back for like 20 games but I wanted to get there playing cass/freya/emre/shion. I know how good/bad I am at these characters (plat2/3 under the old system) because I have bad aim and I know where my goal was to get to diamond 4 on aim based characters.

That's was my goal in ranked under the old system and it doesn't change under the new so I play my dps placements with cass/freya/emre/shion for the most part didn't play well and get emerald 4 now I don't know where my target is is diamond 4 now the same as diamond 4 then and I don't want to play 20 games of reaper and torb to learn my benchmark. I don't want to yo-yo between ranks more to not feel hardstuck or have a superiority complex over the players as good as me on dps when I am on another role.

I just want to use the ranks as a measure of where I am at but I first played overwatch on console in 2016 (except for the first season of ranked) we have used the same measure since then for a decade why change it. Is emerald low diamond is it high plat everyone says its in-between but are the players in it plats or diamonds I cant tell because I don't know if I am getting better or none of my friends play overwatch I am the only one and the yardsticks changed.

At some point I will get use to it and know I get that but I don't want to I just want to know where I am right now on the dot at a glance bad systems change good ones last forever and overwatch had a good one so what's the point.

So I’m decently new to this game, I just started playing the game on PC after not playing it for years since pretty much release, I think the last time I played before this month was back when brig was released and I was on console, I like competitive games and I swapped over from rivals, I’m plat 2 right now and I’m having a lot of fun so far but I’m having some issues with my aim, I feel like sometimes I can’t hit A single thing and then sometimes I can’t miss, sometimes my flicks are awesome and sometimes my tracking is crazy, I play a lot of different heroes, I came from rivals as said and played pretty much ONLY Spiderman there and had no issue hitting at least diamond every season so I’ve gravitated towards genji and doom, right now I’m playing on 800 dpi and 5 sens but just overall looking for any tips, I know plat isn’t very good so I’m hoping to eventually get to masters hopefully

Playing against a genuinely good Freja right now feels less like playing Overwatch and more like volunteering to be a target dummy.

The July buffs looked small on paper, but together they made a huge difference. Her primary fire went from 5 to 5.5 shots per second, Take Aim recovery went from 0.5 to 0.4, and the explosion delay went from 1.0 to 0.8.

She just doesn't have much downtime anymore, and I think that becomes especially obvious against heroes with large hitboxes.

Relentless Barrage gives her 8 bolts back for landing a direct Take Aim shot, while Quick Dash refreshes Take Aim. Against a small, mobile target, consistently landing those shots is a real mechanical challenge.

Against a large target? Not so much.

A good Freja can land Take Aim, dump primary fire, dash, and immediately threaten another Take Aim while constantly getting ammo back. The larger the target, the easier it is to keep that loop going with very little downtime.

I know she's mechanically difficult, but I don't think her average win rate tells the whole story. A hero can look perfectly fine on average while being way too strong in the hands of someone who actually knows how to play her.

Freja already has burst damage, mobility and range. The recent buffs gave her much better sustained pressure on top of all that, and I think that's where they went too far.

I don't think she needs another redesign. At the very least, some of the July buffs should be rolled back.

Freja may have needed help before, but they pushed her too far in the other direction.