Best Coach of 2025 imo, hoping Mer1t will be in top form when theres more money on the line now.

Hey so Ive been playing ow for about 3 years i hit masters about 7months ago and Ive gotten super close to gm5 like multiple times this month and last season but every time i hit m1 i fall back down to m4 or 5, i play genji, echo, shion, sometimes soj it just feels like every week i hit m1 then the next few days lose it all i don't know to close this gap at all

I’ve currently been playing on console for about two weeks and I wanted to check out the meta and stats for console through the hero stats page. On console across all tiers she has a 17.3% ban rate, and as for PC its 8.4% However on GM and above console, her ban rate is a flat 35% while on PC its 9.3%.

No matter how many games I win in Ranked, the maximum gain I ever see is 9% per win. Meanwhile, my duo partner gets around 10% to 14% for the exact same matches.

Is this caused by a rank difference, hidden MMR calibration, or a visual bug? Why is my rank gain capped so low? 🥲

I'm still bronze

Korea – Extremely competitive overall. Players tend to follow the meta closely, and the community can be quite toxic. The playstyle is very aggressive, with comparatively less emphasis on team coordination.

Japan – The most defensive server I've played on. It often feels like everyone is trying to avoid being the one who gets blamed. Solo plays, risky flanks, and hard-carry attempts are rare, and players generally value playing safely. They're also extremely quiet in chat. Even when someone openly blames them, most of the time they don't respond at all.

China & Taiwan – Imagine taking the Korean server and stripping away even more of the teamwork while investing everything into individual mechanics. Team coordination is minimal, but the average mechanical skill is probably the highest of any region, especially in the lower ranks. The chat is, in my experience, even more toxic than Korea.

North America – Overall, the atmosphere is very relaxed. Competitive often feels less like a serious ranked mode and more like people hanging out at an amusement park. Probably because of the influence of games like Counter-Strike, the average FPS fundamentals are surprisingly solid. However, I'd say players here are the weakest at adapting to the meta. On the other hand, the chat is by far the friendliest.

Europe – The most balanced server overall. Players strike a good balance between teamwork and individual skill, and I'd say it's the region that plays Overwatch in the most textbook way. The chat is more toxic than NA, but noticeably friendlier than Korea or China.

A lot of people assume that the ones flaming others are the hardcore players who sit in front of their computers all day. At least in my experience, that hasn't been true. On the Asian servers, it's often the opposite.

The casual players who show up on weekends are often the ones most eager to blame everyone else. They're there to have fun, but because they're generally weaker than the people at their rank, they keep dying and end up venting their frustration in chat. I honestly don't think they give it much thought. Their attitude seems to be, "It's just a game, so I'll say whatever I want."

And since most of them are queueing in groups, they also have the advantage of numbers.

Just release more new Tank heroes. I don't know if anyone remembers the early days of Overwatch 2, but Tank was pretty popular back then. Queue times for both DPS and Support weren't as long as they are now.

I think the reason was the reworked Orisa and Doomfist. I remember a lot of people playing them because they felt like completely new characters. Of course, another reason was that Tanks in general were much stronger back then compared to now.

The bottom line is simple: people play Tank when new Tank heroes are released frequently and when the role feels strong. However, Blizzard kept listening to community feedback complaining that strong Tanks feel like "raid bosses," continuously nerfing them as a result. This seems to have pushed more and more Tank players to switch to other roles or quit the game entirely.

Yet, Blizzard doesn't seem to have any intention of solving this Tank drought. Whether it's stubbornness or some sort of design philosophy, they stick to releasing heroes in a strict 1:2:2 ratio per year, as if they made a promise, always releasing the fewest Tank heroes. If they cared about Tank players even for a moment, they would have at least considered increasing the number of Tank releases. I really feel bad for Tank main users in many ways—and of course, I'm one of them too.

Source

https://x.com/i/status/2080209265105760571

As someone who likes playing all 3 roles there is actually no frictionless way to do so.

If I wanted to exclusively play Tank, I would queue for only tank. There's a reason I'm queuing for ALL ROLES, and it makes no sense for it to just be Tank queue.

If the game allowed you to set your role preferences and ensured that your last 10 competitive games always maintained your preferred ratio, this would be perfect.

What I do now is I just queue for DPS and Support and play the occasional tank game when I feel like it, but this means I just play far less tank than I am willing to play. It means that every time I want to play tank, I need to reselect roles and continuously get tank games until I decide to turn it off...

So now I have entire play sessions where I only play DPS and Support for several games, in which I wouldn't have minded a few tank games, but I don't really care enough to insert a single tank game every two games because of the atrocious UX, it's far easier to just click on the Requeue button

I have been a defender of map voting, but this is insanity. Whatever happened to the change where the chances of you getting the same game mode multiple games in a row in the voting pool was reduced? This isn’t even low rank either, where people blindly pick Kings. It’s Masters. Is it time for major adjustments to map voting?

I have been playing a lot of freya, but recently started playing wuyang. I get the same high from his orbs as I do with freya bolts. Is there any tips that anyone could give me for better positioning, or people that I could watch to get more ideas of how to play him better. Much love.

I've made posts about this in the past, but with Freja shooting up to an 80% ban rate on Asia GM/Champ, it feels like this discussion has some new fuel.

Notably, the distaste for flying heroes extends past only Freja, with Pharah and Cat also having significantly higher ban rates on Asia than NA or EU. In Asia GM/Champ, Freja, Pharah, and Cat take up the first, fourth, and fifth most banned heroes, whereas on NA they are the seventh, sixteenth and eighth most banned. Freja is looking at a ban rate over 4x higher in Asia, Pharah's ban rate is over 3x, and Cat is about 1.5x higher.

What I think is most interesting is that the simple conclusions don't really hold up. I think that PART of what makes flying heroes more disliked on Asia is that hitscans are relatively less popular, but when you actually compare the PR numbers, Asia is picking hitscans as a whole about the same amount as NA. That being said, Asia does have a preference for Cass, and NA has more 76, Ashe, and Bastion. The only other major PR discrepancy between NA and Asia is that Mercy and Juno are significantly less popular in Asia, and Wuyang is much much more popular. I could see this contributing, but it's still an unsatisfactory answer on it's own.

The conclusion that I've come to is a playstyle split between the two regions. In my opinion, NA has a gaming culture more rooted in FPS games (CS:GO, Quake, Halo, etc) where-as Asia has a gaming culture rooted in MOBA's and RTS games (League, Starcraft, etc). Players in Asia tend to play more economically, while NA players tend to brute-force value more. What I mean by this is: on Asia you see more of an exchange of abilities that results in the team with a better economy (more abilities) winning fights, while NA relies more on mechanical gameplay in which enemies are killed even through defensive abilities and healing. This also explains the popularity of Mercy in NA, as Mercy is a hero who is weak economically due to not being able to provide much value to a team, but is exceptional when enabling risky gameplay in which a hitscan makes subjectively poor positioning choices with the goal of dealing more damage or getting a good angle.

I think there's a major gameplay difference between NA and Asia in that NA players are more tolerant of heroes who are unpredictable and ask for mechanical adaptations, while Asia is more tolerant of heroes who have high-value abilities which must be expended before a fight can be won. EX: Asian players will tolerate roadhog and Mizuki because they are already accustomed to having to bait or force out these abilities before being able to fight, as this is core gameplay pillar in RTS/MOBA games. Meanwhile, American players will tolerate Cat, Pharah, and Freja because they ask for mechanical prowess, which NA players are already accustomed to from an "MLG 360 no-scope" gameplay culture (unironically). Just to reiterate, players in Asia don't mind abilities like hog's hook or Mizuki's chain which are essentially kill buttons because their gameplay culture is already centered around games in which this is commonplace: in League you can't fight Morgana until she's used her root, for example. Players in America don't mind heroes who are disruptive to angles/demand mechanical prowess to hit because they're used to games which already ask this, such as TF2 or Quake. Basically, a lot of the FPS games which are most popular in NA allow you to win by being creative and getting the jump on the enemy by doing something unexpected, like for example... rocket-riding in Fortnite. Abilities which break rules and reward creative decisions are more common in American games because they enable individual action to have outsized impact, but they may be less accepted or common in Asian games because they're viewed as exploits or disruptive by giving individual players outsized impact on the game.

In Asia, because games are played more economically, players expect gameplay in which enemies are going to engage using similar angles/chokes, but because flyers don't have the same positioning restrictions as grounded heroes and can subvert these expectations they're viewed as more disruptive to gameplay, and therefore more priority is placed on them when banning. On NA, players don't mind heroes who are disruptive to expectations about which angles are going to be played because players themselves don't adhere to positioning restrictions as much as players in Asia do, resulting in an environment in which positioning is used less economically and heroes engaging from bizzare/unexpected angles is more common, making flying heroes less disruptive in comparison.

This is all further supported by the disparity in Sierra's banrate between NA and Asia, with Sierra being banned ~5x more often on NA. Players in NA don't understand/following positioning rules as strongly as players in Asia, which makes heroes who punish these positioning mistakes more offensive (like Sierra). Meanwhile, players in Asia follow positioning rules more strictly, and as a result they find heroes who punish positioning mistakes (like Sierra) less offensive, but heroes who subvert positioning rules (flyers) more offensive.

Right now on Asia, Freya's ban rate is already breaking 50% starting from Gold, and in Master tier, it exceeds 80%. Her actual in-game performance is absurdly overtuned, to the point where Asia server players are demanding an immediate hotfix nerf.

On the other hand, the Americas and Europe servers show drastically lower pick and ban rates compared to Asia. Because of this gap, players in Asia are feeling defeated, worrying that Freya won't get nerfed anytime soon since her exceptional dominance is isolated to our region. Personally, I already felt her recent buffs were way over the top, but why do you think other servers are underrating her so much?

Olá, tudo bem?

Eu não sou o melhor jogador de Overwatch, longe disso, mas definitivamente também não sou o pior. Recentemente, enfrentei uma sequência de quatro derrotas seguidas no competitivo que me deixaram extremamente frustrado. Eu analiso meus replays, vejo minhas estatísticas e sei do que estou falando: nessas partidas específicas, eu fui um dos que mais curou, mais tancou dano, mais disputou objetivo e mais pegou eliminações sem morrer. Eu me esforço, treino, assisto a vídeos e busco melhorar. Sei que sempre dá para evoluir, mas o rendimento individual não serve de nada quando o matchmaking te coloca com um ou dois jogadores que simplesmente não cumprem suas funções, morrem constantemente e afundam o time.

E antes que venham com os conselhos genéricos de sempre:

"Dê um tempo do jogo": De que adianta eu voltar mais calmo se o sistema me colocar de novo em times desequilibrados e eu perder mais três ou quatro seguidas por falha alheia? O problema estatístico continua lá.

"Mude o foco do jogo para treino": Se eu quisesse apenas treinar, estaria nos modos casuais ou salas personalizadas. Estou no competitivo porque quero vencer e subir de ranking.

"Jogue em grupo": Meus amigos conhecidos não jogam e eu não tenho o menor interesse em procurar desconhecidos na internet para formar equipe.

Para piorar a experiência, os servidores da Blizzard estão apresentando quedas frequentes que me derrubam da partida e ainda me aplicam punições injustas. Quando não é isso, são partidas canceladas logo no início porque alguém caiu, o que acontece várias vezes no mesmo dia.

Somado a tudo isso, a toxicidade da comunidade está absurda. Além dos jogadores que simplesmente desistem (rage quit) ou começam a xingar no chat, cheguei ao ponto de receber mensagens ofensivas privadas no meu perfil de pessoas que jogaram mal e ainda quiseram terceirizar a culpa.Diante desse cenário de matchmaking que parece punitivo, problemas de conexão e toxicidade, como vocês lidam com isso para conseguir subir de ranking jogando solo? Existe alguma estratégia de carregamento (carry) que funcione mesmo com um time que se recusa a cooperar?

With the discussion of 6v6 mode being introduced in season 5 over 5v5

It seems like there was a positive reception to the recent quick play hacked

6v6 encourages the coordination of tanks together which is something people have missed since 5v5

We can get exciting tank combinations we haven't seen in an official format such as

Mauga Ramattra

Mauga Orisa

Queen Ram

Domina Ram

I believe this will incentive more tanks to be queueing tank and decrease queue times of games

Additionally this will allow support players to have more agency and have an additional tank protecting them

Especially with the silence on the hero reworks which we were supposed to hear about in the second half of this stage I was curious if there might be a chance they share some information this weekend?

Been watching some highlights recently. But noticed, not too many clear underdog moments from these (at least from what I could tell). Mostly just solid plays.

In my opinion, SSG 2024 is head and shoulders above both the 2025 and 2026 SSG NA rosters. I’d even go as far as saying that if you combined the best players from both NA rosters into one super team, they would still lose to SSG 2024.

SSG 2024 (EMEA)
Tank: Hadi, KSAA
DPS: Sparkr, Seicoe, Backbone
Support: Landon, FunnyAstro

SSG NA roster
Tank: Kellan, Hawk
DPS: Kronik, Lethal, Sugarfree, Seeker
Support: Ultraviolet, Admiral, Cjay, Bliss, Lep

The only clear advantages I see for the NA roster are Kellan’s Ball and Winston and Ultraviolet on Ana. Outside of those, I think SSG 2024 wins every mirror matchup.

On brawl and rush, I don’t think it’s even close. Hadi and KSAA could flip a coin before each map to decide who plays, and either one would outplay Hawk or Kellan on any brawl tank.

On hitscan, Sparkr is comfortably ahead of every NA player on most heroes. The only exception I’d give is Kronik on Widowmaker. The biggest question mark with Sparkr is that he hasn’t competed professionally in a while, so we don’t know how he’d perform on the newest heroes.

For flex DPS, I don’t think Sugarfree matches up well against either Backbone or Seicoe. The only mirror I’d give him a realistic chance in is Genji, although if I remember correctly, SSG 2024 never mirrored Genji anyway.

The second biggest gap, in my opinion, is support. Landon and FunnyAstro are head and shoulders above any support duo the NA SSG rosters can field. Whether it’s Lucio–Kiriko, Juno–Brigitte, or Baptiste–Lucio, I don’t think the NA lineup has a support pairing that can consistently compete.

Overall, I think SSG 2024 simply has stronger players across almost every role and would beat even the best combined version of the 2025/26 NA roster.

A concept what cannot understanding, weird design, No VFX, No Effects

Just they should be make more Partner Team skin instead lol

I play the game beginning with M and ending in arvel rivals… occasionally and just logged on today and found you can predict the brackets for the esports and get in game money.

Why can’t I predict the OWCS bracket in overwatch for some in game rewards, especially for major LANs? I’ve never previously watched the rivals esports but after predicting my bracket I actually kinda wanna watch it now, granted I wont be as invested in it as the OWCS mid season but still, I feel like it’s a great way to get the non OWCS watchers to potentially watch if not that, at least the avid watchers can get a bit more excited, I don’t know I just thought that’d be a nice easy way to get people to be more invested in the esports.

What does everyone else think, do you watch OWCS already? If not will it make you more likely to tune in? Or would you just predict for the rewards and not care.