Everyone wants to improve, but the process can be a daunting task if not tackled correctly. I plan to breakdown the steps for each rank with what to focus on and the things people struggle with, outlining what you need to work on you can go into each game with a mindset improvement, which will drastically increase your improvement.
People have things they can improve upon regardless of rank. It is irrelevant what rank you are currently at; you can benefit from at least one thing from this guide. The easiest way to improve is to know exactly what you want to work on, so you can isolate certain weaknesses that you might have.
It is vital to understand the importance of utilizing the replay codes (also known as VODs, video on demand) for Overwatch, this will be the primary way you will recognize your mistakes, given it is much harder to recognize them on the fly in-game.
Taking advantage of custom game modes made by people in the community is just as important.
When looking at my own gameplay I like to apply some ideas from the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath. I will provide you with a breakdown of the ideas I utilize and how they are relevant to improving your gameplay.
Avoid, or try to recognize these four “villains” of decision making.
1. Narrow framing - Not giving yourself enough options.
2. Confirmation bias - Finding things that reinforce what you already believe to be true.
3. Short term emotion - How you feel in the moment of making the decision. Maybe your feelings right now are getting in the way of making a better decision?
4. Overconfidence - Think about a time when you made a decision you knew was a bad idea, but you did it anyway.
Whether you are struggling with blocking Earth Shatters, sticking Pulse Bombs, or landing Sleep Darts, there is someone else who has struggled too. Look at some replay codes and find the ones that you would need, isolate the mechanic, and practice it.
There are four steps outlined below to optimize improvement, which are repeatable and applicable for whatever you find yourself needing to work on.
This will be a starting point. You will save this replay, watch it, and be extremely critical of your own gameplay. A very important key to watching your own gameplay is that you need to focus only on what you can control. Take note of the mistakes when you're dying, if you do not know how to identify the mistakes just start with every death. Think of the value you could have gotten if you would have lived, or the potential value does not have to be just kills. An example of this would be playing Tracer. You do not have to get an elimination to provide value to your team. You create pressure just by being on the map and the potential that you could get that elimination. A good way to understand this is just by thinking about it from the other team’s perspective. If you are playing Zenyatta and you know there is a Tracer behind you, you will have to choose where to put your attention. Do you give it to your team that needs to be healed or the enemy team Winston that needs to have the Discord Orb on him?
Write a few mistakes that you are making down on a notepad, and we will move onto the next step.
Now that you understand some mistakes you are making, pick one of those mistakes to isolate and improve within your gameplay. You know your skill, as well as the time you can dedicate to improving better than anyone else. Outline how much time you have, do you have only an hour a day? Keeping in mind that the average game is around fifteen minutes, not including time spent in queue and the time you will spend in replays watching your VODs.
If you notice you die a lot, try to notice patterns of when you die and where.
Is there high ground you can utilize? Are you pushed too far forward? Are you staying with your team?
This is an example of my Tracer statistics for season 27
If I want to work on lowering my deaths, it is important to know what is realistic, and to do this I look at Overwatch League Player Danteh’s in-game statistics and compare them to myself.
Danteh dies about 1.25 times less than I do in 10 minutes. Context around statistics is always important, if I play Tracer every game, but Danteh only plays it at optimal times our statistics could be drastically different. This is a good place for me to at the very least understand that I am dying too often, and I can pay attention to every death from this point forward.
So how would I work on this? These are some questions I would ask myself; in addition to thinking about each death and looking for patterns. Are my recalls bad? Am I dying with no blinks? What other options did I have that could provide more value?
This one is relatively straight forward, creating a way for you to track progress as well as a point where you will be ready to move onto the next thing. Finding something that is realistic is important.
I would first try to get my deaths per ten minutes to 7.6 from 8.6.
One less death per 10 minutes is do-able and I can track my results outside of just watching my replays.
The steps should be straightforward, and you should know how you are working towards the goals.
If reviewing your own gameplay is something you have not done a lot of, I would recommend starting at the bronze tier to fix the fundamentals.
I would recommend ignoring the result of the game. This is easier said than done obviously, but just because you won the game does not mean you played well or improved. You can play poorly and win games, just like you can lose games and play well.
When you queue up for a competitive match it is important to think about winning and gaining SR (Skill Rating) compared to improvement.
Once you have gotten to a point where you are happy with the goal you have previously worked on, now it is time to go back to the drawing board. Find the next thing you want to improve and get after it.
Here are some things that I recommend you work on for whatever rank your at, starting with Bronze.
Fundamentals
· These are questions to ask yourself and things to consider when you are trying to improve, the higher rank you get the more isolated you will have to get with improvement.
· What killed you?
· Was your positioning optimal? What alternative positions could you have taken? (High ground)
· Was the death avoidable? How could the fight have gone if you lived?
· Did your death provide value? Could you have provided more value by living?
· What were you doing when you died?
· Most important things to focus on are mechanics, game sense, positioning and focus.
· For mechanics, think about things like landing a sleep dart or landing a pulse bomb.
· Game sense is like a prediction or anticipation, think about what the enemy might do with the resources they have.
· Positioning goes with game sense and mechanics but needs to be separate from them because of how important it is. Always be conscious of your positioning, and how you should improve it.
· Focus. Do you have outside factors that could be distracting you while you play? If you are procrastinating something you will not be able to put your full effort into improvement.
Teamfighting
· Were you in a good position? What other options did you have?
· How much damage were you taking? Was it avoidable?
· What is your job in the team? Should you flank? Should you pressure the backline? Should you break shields?
· How is your target selection? Are you choosing the highest value target?
· Ultimate Value – How much value did you get from your ultimate? Was that enough value to justify the use?
· Ultimate Usage – If you notice your ultimate value is not as high as where you might want it to be.
· It is good to think about general scenarios, or create an idea of when you would want to use your ult.
Game knowledge
· Hero selection, does it add to what the rest of your team is trying to do?
· Can it provide value by shutting down someone on their team?
· Are you using your ult correctly? How could you have gotten more value?
· Thinking about overwatch as a push pull game with ult/cooldown usage
· How is your aim? Could it be the thing holding you back? If so check out my aim training guide
· Map knowledge, damage foresight
Resource usage
· Abilities and Ultimate
· Are you using your abilities well?
· Could you use a cooldown to bait out more cooldowns? (Using flashbang to get a recall, dynamite to get out zarya bubbles, using biotic grenade to get an immortality field)
· Analyze every ability you use for around 30-60 seconds and look for common mistakes with it.
· Are you landing your abilities or are you missing them poorly?
· How often are you supposed to get your ult?
· How often are you getting your ult?
· What could be causing you to get your ult faster or slower? Example, McCree into double shield or dive, which would cause you to charge your ult the fastest?
· Would using your ult with your teammate improve your chances of a fight win?
· Are you able to think about what ults the enemies will have? Have a general understanding of what you want to do each fight.
Player specific problems
· How focused are you? Are you in the right mindset to be improving? Are you prone to going into autopilot? What can you do to improve your focus?
· What mechanical issues are you running into? Maybe you need to work on blink-melees on tracer.
· Are you prone to tilting? When something goes wrong what is your initial reaction? How can you train yourself to turn the subconscious reaction into something you can recognize and control?
· Are you toxic in-game? How could your attitude reflect the result of the game?
Optimization
· Fine Mechanics (aiming, movement, ability and ult usage)
· Line of sight
· Predictions (movement, ability usage, enemy character, enemy team, allies)
· Character related knowledge, warmups, best practices
· Role related knowledge (zoning, shield management, peeling, pocketing)
· Tempo control, understanding advantages and disadvantages.
· Situational awareness
Starting from Scratch
If you are a Grandmaster, I would recommend going over every rank. This can be brief, but you would be surprised at how many small things in your gameplay you can iron out.
Maybe start from scratch, pick a new hero to play, even learn another role.
If you only play DPS you will be surprised how much you might learn from playing tank or support. The perspective you could get from playing from another point of view will help you in-game.
There’s always something to work on, so find a way to make it enjoyable and you will improve even faster.
By working on just a few of the things listed above, you will start to notice more consistency within your gameplay and you might even just have more fun.
