Many players struggle with climbing the ladder, it can be difficult and sometimes it seems like the whole world is against you. This article will give some tips on how to climb the ladder to the best of your ability.

Positivity

It can be hard to always stay positive in an environment where players are being competitive and are invested in the game trying to climb the ladder. This can lead to times where people may be rude/impolite, which is more commonly known as being toxic. If you ever do come across someone who does take part in this behavior, dont get angry or be rude back to them, as this will only escalate the situation.

If you are having a tough time in a game and are struggling to get win a team fight and feel you need to change your team composition, simply say in voice chat/team text chat something along the lines of We need to switch something up. This can more effective than singling out one player and saying PLAYER NAME can you switch.

In the event that the team doesn'tt want to switch the composition for whatever reason, do not get tilted at it. Instead, try to work the best you can with what you have and try to combo ultimates together and get the win. It wont be easy, but you will gain experience of how different heroes can relate and gel with each other, which will increase your knowledge of the game and game sense in general for the future.

Don't Write Off Losses

A loss can teach you more than a win. If you win you know you did well, but may not spot a mistake you made in the game because you are not looking for mistakes.

With a loss, you should look for any mistakes you, or possibly your teammates, may have made and learn from them to better yourself as a player. An example would be if you are playing as Reinhardt and you are dying by yourself a lot of the time, because Your team is never with you. Try to record your game if possible and look back at it, it might be that you were often overextended or didn'tt tell your team you were about to push in, so they were not ready to follow you.

So long as you take a loss without getting upset or tilted, they will always teach you more than a win ever could.

Duo Queue

Play with a friend who you know is around your skill level. This means you will always have someone in the game you can count on and know will switch heroes and try a strat you call. Way back in Season 1, I did this with a friend. For about 2 weeks, we played together and played a lot of Reinhardt and Zarya. He knew if he got a big Graviton that I would be there to swing into it with my hammer and get the kills. I knew I could charge in and get a Barrier to ensure I got the pin on whomever I targeted uninterrupted. We knew that going into every match we played that we had a level of consistency in our play to plan around.

Play to Improve

While playing a game be sure to try out something new you learned or saw on a hero you play, try to get a deeper understanding for that hero and learn the small tricks you can do with them. Don't try something too risky in a competitive game that may lead to the enemy team turning the tides on yours, as you are playing 5 other players that want to win. Don't ruin their games just because you wanted to see if you could make a jump across the gap on Lijiang Tower Garden as Reinhardt. Keep your senses about you and play the best you can.

If you want to try out really strange or "out there" strategies what I recommend that you get a custom game going with 12 players and try these strategies out with them. This is essentially a risk-free environment for you to practice and you can easily see what strats and heroes will work together and what won't. Just try to keep the skill levels balanced on all teams, if you are playing against players much better than you, you're gonna have a rough time getting any strategy to work. If you play against people not as good as you then you have a very easy time getting any strategy to work and this will not give you an accurate representation of the effectiveness of the strat.

Set a Goal

For this season, set a goal to reach for yourself. Whether that goal is to get out of gold or to break into the top 500, this can encourage you and incentivise you to play and win.

Warmup

If you really want to climb the ladder, then don’t launch the game and go straight into comp. Launch it and either do a quickplay game or two to warmup or alternatively go into the practice range and practice your aim on the bots for about 5 minutes. It will benefit you in the end because you won’t be spending the first 5 minutes of your game trying to get in the zone and ready to play properly. If you are not playing at your best for even 5 minutes in Overwatch the enemy team can very easily take advantage of this and break your teams defense or swat your offense.

Take Breaks

If you start off with a bad couple of losses, take a break and do something to take your mind off of it. Go grab a drink of water, go for a small walk or something. Once you can distract yourself and stop thinking about the game. Don’t worry about the rank points you lost, you can get them back later. This is only a game, there isn’t a reason to get overly upset about a loss here and there.

Have Fun

The main reason all of us are playing this game is for fun. From casual players to ladder climbers, Bronze to Top 500, Streamer to Professional player, everyone single one of us is here to have fun and maybe unwind from a rough day or have some good times with a friend. Once the game stops being fun because you focus on winning too much is the second that the game will seem pointless to play. You won’t see the point in launching the game because you are in a slump and keep losing. Don’t care about the loss, care about enjoying yourself and the game. It can be hard sometimes. Personally, I groan whenever I have to play Volskaya Industries or Temple of Anubis, yet after I start the match I forget about the map and start looking at the good things about the match at that moment. We have a good team comp, we have good players, I am playing with my friends, I could get a good shadow play clip this game. If you are tilted that you are losing, just remember: Once you don’t enjoy yourself, you will start losing.

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