When you make the decision to hop onto the ladder in any competitive game, you are doing so with the aim of discovering where you rank against other like-minded players. It can be easy to become demotivated when that number isn't quite what you aspire to achieve, but it's important to remember that ranking up is an ongoing process. Like any other skill, your in-game prowess and ability to climb can be trained and improved on, so today I'm bringing you five golden rules that you can use to unlock your potential and give you that push you need to reach greater heights.

1. You're Not Communicating Enough

There’s a lot of stigma attached to voice chat in competitive games. On one hand, teams that actively communicate are always going to be favored over teams that do not as being able to declare your intentions to your team means they don’t have to be constantly aware of what is happening, and removing that more reactive element allows for much more coordinated play. On the other hand, voice chat can act as a platform for the less friendly elements of the multiplayer experience to shine through in the form of toxic behaviour. I know a handful of players who have team voice chat permanently disabled to avoid those situations, but for a team based game it’s absolutely going to put you at a tactical disadvantage. Remember that there are tools in the game to help you deal with the less amicable people in the community. Ranked play requires a healthy amount of optimism, and refusing to communicate from the start will not allow you to get the most out of your team. Unmute your microphone and join team voice - even if it’s just for the first few minutes while you get a feel for if your team is going to communicate in a productive manner or not. If things start going sour, you can mute individual players, or leave the voice channel completely. It’s always worth giving your team a chance, though!

If you are actively communicating and still struggling to climb, you may find that you aren’t communicating the right things. If you’re playing a flanker that is heading towards the backline, it might be a good time for you to call your team to engage to take the focus away from you. Or perhaps you have a hero on your team that is going to really struggle on a particular section of the map or against the enemy team composition, so you could advise a swap. At the very least, you should call out when you intend to use your Ultimate so that your team can try combo with you - it’s the most effective way to use them.

2. You Don't Use Your Ultimate

Since we’re on the topic of Ultimates - remember to actually use them! There’s nothing more painful than seeing a row of dead teammates with their Ultimates unused. Overwatch is a game of teamfights, and Ultimates are the most powerful methods available to swing those teamfights to your advantage. Some are definitely best used in conjunction with other Ultimates, especially if they have long charge times such as Zarya’s Graviton Surge. For cases like these, makes sure you actively check which teammates have their Ultimates available that you could combine with for a more powerful effect, and communicate those intentions to your team. Just don’t make the mistake of taking too long, waiting for the perfect combo - it’s better to use them and start charging up your next than to only use your Ultimate once or twice in a game.

Certain heroes charge so quickly that you should almost never be waiting to combine with others, for example the Ultimates of DPS heroes like Tracer and Soldier 76 or Ana’s Nano Boost. These Ultimates can be charged so quickly that you will often have access to them before anyone else, so just using even one of them can be enough to make the difference in a fight. You shouldn’t necessarily rush to use them either - but if you see a good opportunity to pick up a couple of kills or influence a fight, get stuck in and fire that Ultimate off, especially in the first minute or so of each match. Once the game has played out a little and more players gain access to their Ultimates, start pinging your Ultimate charges and let the combos fly.

3. You Die Too Much

This one can actually be hard to take, especially in those games where you feel like you have no support from your team, where your tanks are out of position and your healers aren’t keeping line of sight or are too focused on poking. Staying alive in a fast-paced 6v6 game with so much damage flying around is not an easy task, but doing so is massively important. The ‘numbers advantage’ is very important in Overwatch, it’s a big part of why flankers are played at all; taking out a support and escaping leaves you in a great position to a win a fight.

Defending on 2CP or Hybrid maps is where it matters most, as losing one player can be the difference between holding a point or conceding it. While playing Attack, trading one life for the life of one of the defending team’s players is actually a great deal, so this must be avoided at all costs when you’re trying to hold the objective. Every non-KOTH map has a spawn advantage for the Attacking side, meaning they respawn closer to the point. Let’s say you are on Defense on a map like Volskaya Industries, and you trade your life for one of the players on the Attacking team. If both teams stop fighting to wait for their 6th player to return, the Attackers will be reinforced way earlier than the Defending team, so they can proceed to take an advantageous 6v5 fight. Staying alive is always critical to success, but the effects are most obvious in these situations.

4. You Aren’t Switching Heroes

Every player has their favorite hero, and usually a small pool with which they feel like they can carry a game. The problem is that every hero in the game has team compositions they fit into, and work against. If you are an amazing Genji player, naturally you want to play Genji every game - but unfortunately, no matter how good you are with Genji, if your team has 3 stubborn DPS players, you’re going to be stuck with an awful team composition where you struggle to shine, as even if you play well your team won’t be able to capitalize on your success. Sometimes you need to be the person to bring a bit of balance to the team, and swapping into a support or tank hero when necessary is something that everyone will have to deal with at some point.

There are also situations where you don’t even need to change from DPS to another role - but your hero might not be working. Every hero in the game has counterpicks, and some team comps can shut down certain picks - this occurs a lot with DPS heroes especially, and it’s important to recognise when you will struggle to be useful. Take Pharah for example, a DPS hero with huge potential to dominate a game. It’s great in the triple tank meta, and it punishes the lack of a strong hitscan DPS player on the enemy team. But what about when the enemy team has a solid Widowmaker, or double hitscan in the form of McCree and Soldier? Your effectiveness will be cut in half or less, and it’s important that you recognise as soon as possible that you may be of more use to your team on another DPS hero. Blizzard added hero switching mid-game over the option to have a pre-game draft pick for this very reason, so learn to be as flexible as possible and remember that the hero you start with doesn’t have to be the hero you end with.

5. You Haven’t Played Enough

Ask any mathematician about sample sizes, and they will tell you that increasing the sample size will make results more valid. This can be applied to Overwatch competitive too, especially when talking about Skill Rating. It’s incredibly unlikely that you will find your true skill rating after 10, 20, even 50 games. In fact, you’re more likely to find a range of values that best defines your current rating, and it’s not going to be an accurate count until, say, 100 games into the season. The important thing to take away here is that you can’t let yourself be demotivated because you lost a few hundred skill rating in your first bunch of game after your placements.

Sometimes, anomalies happen. Maybe you have a troll that just wants to spend all game sat in spawn as Torbjorn, or perhaps you unfortunately had someone leave your game. It’s important to distance yourself from these anomalies, and not let them hinder you by leaving you feeling negative. The more games you play, the less relevant these anomalies games will matter to your rating - they will simply be drowned out by wins and losses that are actually representative of your current place on the ladder - and in fact, the odds are naturally higher that these anomalies will occur for the enemy team than you. The same can be said for win streaks and loss streaks - the more games you play, the more your winrate will even out until you find your true rating, and you can get started discovering what you need to improve on. Once you’ve played enough hours of competitive to have confidence that your skill rating is a fair representation of your ability, it’ll be easier for you to see improvement when it happens.

Armed with this new information, it's now up to you to put what you've learned into practice! Whether it's becoming comfortable on a few new heroes, becoming more liberal with your Ultimate usage or just hopping into voice chat and leading your team, all paths can lead to the victory screen. With the right approach and mindset absolutely anyone can improve as a player; just stay optimistic, keep yourself focused and off auto-pilot, and allow those wins to rack up.

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