I know the Audio isn't great. I used the Camera's Mic and my room is echoy and has reverb. Will get a better mic for talking videos like this in the future. Bad mic is better than no video.
@@Awkward2 You can mostly fix it in editing as well. There are peaks and dips to balance and it'll sound fine. Five minute process after you've done it once.
My criticism on your take on versing smurfs is that if they are let's say a gm player in plat, I'm sorry but you're not gonna learn much from getting absolutely smoked. There is a certain range where you can improve from better players.
make sure not to play too much to the point of tilt or exhaustion, after you start losing your edge either take a break or switch to qp and move on the ranked the next day
Yea this is so important. I lost 4 ranked games with mantis. Was so exhausted i had to go take a break and study. gotta remember that gaming isnt everything in life, dont stress so much if youre not getting significant improvements. Just play for fun and improve as you go.
Yeah sleep the night before is important too. I went to play after getting like 3 hours of sleep and my brain didn't have the capacity to think about position and engagement timing and I was just on auto pilot and was doing horrible. I'd be making mistakes and repeating them and wasn't focused enough to be tracking properly either. Of course if you're playing a character you're used to playing and have tons of hours on your auto pilot might just be at a playable level but we want our best not just good enough. Hydration and eating is part of that too
It sounds pretty and in principle is MOSTLY sound, but it's a lie. It's literally a contradiction of something he said earlier in the video, which was in fact the truth. Remember what he said about imposter syndrome? Firstly, he stated that it probably isn't true, but he also stated that if it is, you should focus on the positive not the negative. That positive being that playing in a higher rank will help you to improve because you're playing against people slightly better than you, i.e. improving IS a byproduct of ranking up.
@@overratedfool6900 what he says is true because ranking up doesnt mean youre getting better because getting better doesnt mean you cant still be throwing games that youd win.
I can vouch for the Aim mindset. I use to be stuck in Gold just a couple weeks ago. I thought, if my aim was only better and I hit my shots I would have won. Well, one day I started watching the match over from everyone’s perspective. I quickly learned that I had the best aim consistently in the lobby but it didn’t matter because the positions and the way I moved was so easy to hit etc. after taking this and trying to take better angles and make myself harder to hit. I climbed and currently at plat 1 pushing into that diamond rank. And currently there is 2 things I know holding me back right now. 1 rank anxiety because for some reason Diamond gets to me. And 2 my timing for engagements. Anyways that’s my current journey right now.
I did the self reflection thing every game a went from g2 to diamond 2 in marvel rivals on a 10 game win streak. Guys he isnt joking about the mental parts of this
I actually agree with the point about playing against smurfs. I'm a plat player and once played against a smurf Ashe. Although he destroyed me most of the time, that game I had to think A LOT more and actually took the best positions I ever had.
I stopped playing overwatch since season 9 but I always come back to your videos because they transcend to real life situations as much as games. Best life coach advice out there. And it's coming from a mid diamond casual player so I know nothing significant about the game anyways.
🔥 This is the rank-up reality check that most players NEED but don’t want to hear. 🔥 The biggest takeaways: 1⃣ It’s YOU, not your teammates - Blaming others won’t make you better. Every game is winnable if you focus on YOUR mistakes. 2⃣ Game sense > Aim - Decision-making ranks you up faster than mechanics ever will. Even cheaters with perfect aim struggle if they make bad plays. 3⃣ Peak ≠ Consistency - Hitting a high rank once doesn’t mean you "deserve" it. The real flex is playing at that level consistently. 4⃣ Playing to win is why you lose - If you only care about the W, you’ll avoid learning hard lessons. Long-term improvement > short-term wins. This video is a must-watch for anyone serious about climbing. Huge respect for the brutally honest advice! 🙌🏼
Really enjoyed this video! This expanded on the mindset shifts you've touched on before (if I win it's because of me, if I lose it's because of me). A lot of what you talked about I hadn't considered before. I definitely have found myself pointing to my aim as my weakest ability. Your approach makes sense, that focusing on decision making instead of raw mechanical skill will cause you to improve faster. Will be rewatching this one to let the advice sink in!
Mindset is so important, it's insanely underrated. After getting diamond for the first time, I took a two week break from the game because I had grinded it pretty hard to get better. When I decided I was ready to play again, I was obviously a bit rusty from that 2 week break. I lost some matches and dropped to plat, which really frustrated me. I just kept losing and destroying my mental. It got so bad I actually ranked all the way down to gold 1. At this point I take a couple days off the game to come back with a new mindset. I also stopped playing if I got a couple losses in a row to keep my mental in check. With a bit of patience and a calm mentality I pretty quickly climbed back to diamond and have now peaked diamond 3. Your mental is so important because the more tilted you get, the less you focus on your gameplay. Your mindset can keep you so far from your true peak, it's actually insane.
Yeah but how can I not lose interest in the game after learning that the matchmaking ai fixes teams and fights towards a 50% win rate? I made it to diamond but what is the point if every solo q er or duo I check has a 50% win rate. It's ridiculous in this game. Perform well, smash lobbies, rise over 60% and you will be rewarded with fixed match ups that are designed to put you into a lose streak to 50%.
@@Yatagarasu-b9w This is a massive misunderstanding of how a ranked system works. You reach a 50% winrate when you are at the rank you deserve. You aren't good enough to rank up, so you lose games against slightly better players, but you're also not bad enough to rank down, so you win games against slightly worse players. If you have a 60% winrate that means you're ranking up, and that also means you play against better players. If you can't keep up with those players you obviously rank down. The matchmaker looks at people's rank and tries to balance the lobby so that each team has roughly the same average rank. That means each team in theory has a 50% chance of winning. If you want to rank up, you need to tip the scales in your favor by playing better than the other team to win. The matchmaker isn't out to keep you in a low rank. Its job is to put you in a balanced lobby with each team being equally likely to win. Play better than your rank, and you will rank up. That's why you see streamers being able to do unranked to gms and hard carry games that are below their actual rank. If you actually care to learn how the system works, look up Spilo's interview with the developers responsible for the ranked system. They go pretty in depth with how matches are created and how ranking up and down works, and that the matchmaker isn't actively keeping you in a low rank. Or you can continue to believe in your conspiracy that the evil matchmaker is forcing you to stay in a lower rank (which makes absolutely no sense why it would do that).
youre the reason why i became a better moira player in overwatch and i ranked up because of it, same goes for your mantis video on rivals. Love your vids man, keep throwing these types of vids out there, SOOO many people need to hear this
He’s not lying tho. When I first started watching Awkward, I was absolutely dominating in my lobbies in various games, to the point where I would get hard focused by the enemy team. At first, it was annoying but I started to enjoy 1v5ing a team lol
I feel like it depends on the game. There are some games where I’d absolutely carry and play well usually (like gears of war where you have to rely less on your team) But on Overwatch 2, I just can’t seem to get higher than diamond. Solo Q is difficult when you get leavers and afks all the time or people who just spend all game typing
@@ThePilleroflightning People are leaving your games and going afk and typing all game because you are so bad that they give up. You can’t make your team have a better mindset, but you can carry them and prevent them from getting upset if you suck less
@@Jc123jcjc what? How does that even make sense? People leaving the game has nothing to do with my own performance🤦🏽♂️ some people leave because they chat with the enemy team and get their feelings hurt, or they know they’re getting destroyed so they get frustrated and decide to not wanna play anymore. People type in chat to ego the enemy team and throw insults around. I just find it funny is that your first instinct is that it’s my fault that I’m amidst all of this, not typing, playing the best I can, yet you can’t do much if the enemy team is just more coordinated on attacks… Something you don’t really have to deal with in something like Call of Duty, Halo or Gears.
@ your team has 4 chances of having leavers if you never leave. The enemy team has 5 chances to have a leaver. 90% of the time when people throw its because they are mad at their team for sucking or for not helping them. I have made several fresh accounts to do unranked to gms by myself, and sometimes when I am hard carrying, my team gets mad at me and throws the game because I’m not playing it the way they want me to… so like yeah I understand that sometimes people will throw, but if you just keep playing and you are genuinely better than everyone in the lobby, then you will steadily climb until you are in a rank where you are equal skill level as everyone else in the rank. Even if you have a thrower 1 out of 5 games, you can still easily win 3/5 games. I don’t have any trouble at all winning 95% of my games through diamond. By the time I reach GM my winrate is usually above 85%. If you simply just play better you will win more games. If you are content with staying in diamond then keep blaming the AFKers. I assure you, nobody will care if you whine and cry in comment sections. If you don’t want to take the advice and actually improve then go watch a different channel.
@@Jc123jcjc literally nobody is acting out except for you. Stop projecting your feelings into TH-cam comments. All I did was state my opinions on the fact that some games are different when it comes to these scenarios. I’ve reached top ranks in the other games that I’ve mentioned, but Overwatch is more team oriented, therefore it’s alot harder to climb. It’s no different than DBD, TF2, Marvel Rivals, Evolve etc. All of these have something in common, roles to play.
Had a game today where my team tried to FF twice and I didn’t let them. I stopped paying attention to them and just tried to play my best / make callouts whether the heard me or not…We ended up winning.
To get better in F1 eSports. I always wanted to race ppl faster than me. And i did. It helped me to see the racing lines they use. Show me i can carry more speed in the corner. And racing with faster drivers made me faster.
Awkward mentality is the goat mentality. Your team is never the reason why you are hard stuck at a rank. Reviewing your own gameplay, gameplay of top players using your heroes, and making small improvements over time is the way to do it. Also found it helpful to look at my performance on specific maps on rivalsmeta, take my weakest maps and look at how better players with high win rates on those maps play them
9:20 This never made sense to me, many of the people who cry about smurfs in their lobbies believe they're a higher rank than they are. So if there's a smurf surely it's just evening out the playing field? Surely if you're better than your rank, you're technically smurfing too right? And I refuse to believe smurfs are as common as reddit makes them out to be. A player performing 5% better than the rest of the lobby can appear as a smurf when in reality they're just having a good game...
So true people want to whine about their rank being held back by uncontrollable forces yet when they face an increased challenge immediately fold under pressure.
Ironically, just had a coaching session. They asked why I wasn't doing more flanks. I said bc of my aim. But they looked at my aim. And said its actually not bad. Not great. But not bad. It was other parts of my game.
Took the time to learn spiderman in marvel rivals, with an open mind to learning and improving, as an ow vet it was truly humbling to pick up such a complicated, and difficult hero and get absolutely dumpstered on every game, until I noticed improvement, I went from average spidey player, to 80% Win rate and carrying games with an average 30-35% accuracy, I'm able to take every 1v1 with confidence, even against heros considered my counter (infact these are usually easier because they assume their hero auto wins) It was like relearning from 0 how to play the game, and that ground up approach to just doing better myself resulted in me needing 7 accounts across ranks to play with all the cool friends I made ranking up carrying games. To the point where I can often just turn off comms and 1v6 in a diamond/gm rank lobby. I then noticed because spidey is so hard to use, and so fast, that getting good at this difficult & fast hero massively improved my mechanics, focusing so much on hitting my shots with spidey because they are so limited a resource, my consistency in chosing the correct target and finishing the kill is so much higher than it ever was in years of overwatch gameplay, I've never felt like I had the power to single handedly take over a lobby like I do now, don't get me wrong, I don't win them all, and can still improve, but you cant argue with 80%
I remember that one ranked match on marvel rivals, a hawkeye teammate always ridiculed our healers (me n a random Loki player) for being nub. I saw this hawkeye died many times and ridiculed him back until we failed to deliver the payload. After cooled my head down for a moment, I decided to mute his chat n voice to fully focus on the match. Then I realized that hawkeye seemingly never get any heal from our Loki so I started to focus more on healing him n our tanks since the other dps was a diver who kept feeding. We ended up winning with the Hawkeye as the MVP with most KO n dmg, and me with most assist n heal. And turned out, that damned Loki never bothered to heal his teammates (only 4k heals rly?). Man
Awkward is working on getting better audio quality for you guys. He sits at a corner so there's tons of echo/reverb so bear with is until we make the improvements 🫡
The truth is, the more chill, locked in and focused on the game you are, it is 200% more likely for you to win as opposed to looking at your team stats and arguining with these tards
It’s just really really hard not to tilt though. Like some of the things you see people doing in Overwatch is really tough to take. 16-20 death dps when you’re sat on 8 deaths as tank etc. Having said that, I have been playing much better on Zarya recently, managing bubbles very well and being patient with engagements and waiting for someone to make a mistake. As long as I don’t die and keep probing, I’ve noticed my supports pay more attention to me, I am able to enable plays and peel for my teammates. Everything is less rushed and more calculated and as a result, games I thought were sure losses have turned in to intense victories.
The way to avoid tilt is to completely ignore how well or how bad your team is. Your DPS may be terrible sometimes, but that's not stopping you from making the right decisions and learning. Sometimes people just have bad games. Ignore them and focus on yourself. You will not get better if your mindset is "Oh well I only lost because my Soldier died every 30 seconds." That's not productive. You learn nothing, you get tilted, and that only leads to more losses.
this concept was starting to seep in, thanks for nailing it home. I have 500 hours on kovakks but until im actually mcree with a kiri in front of me im not under the hoop yet.
brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit.
for the mechanics part necros attempted a u2gm on genji with controller and he couldn't made it past gold, a guy with 1000's of hours mechanics are way more important than most ppl say it is maybe not on every hero but on dps or tank i'd say 80% of the roster
I honestly think what you say is true. But the real question is it worth it. Being a t500 player in any game is literally one of the most selfish things i can think of, you offer absolutely nothing meaningful to society and at the same time consume resources.
If you make a living out of something then that thing is obviously not useless, if you are a videogame professional player your contribution to society is entertainment same as athletes or actors, if you are not a pro player then you probably don't make a living out of it and have another job.
@ranaepica7051 I didn't say unless I said meaningless. When you look at the most successful streamers , the xqc types who stream to 60k viewers it's statistically insignificant in the broader terms of the world. Absolutely meaningless. Comparing it to sports that entertain multi millions of people is intellectually dishonest. Your point is not only wrong but irrelevant.
I liked the other points, but 3:31 doesn't apply in some cases in my experience. I am a mid masters widow/cass twotrick. I was hardstuck diamond for like 3 months. The only way I started to improve was grinding aim training (kovaaks vdim and vaxta), and I eventually climbed to masters. I think this point is true, but once you get to like top 5%, it becomes more of a difference of mechanics, especially in the hitscan dps role.
i like that awkward changed his stance from "no, if you lose ITS ALWAYS your fault" to "you can perform exceptionally but your teammates couldnt pull their weight" also, i like the constant mistake of "what could have i done" instead of "what could i have done" haha
Yeah pretty much, focused to much one “what I am doing”,instead of “where am I”most of the time. Like I am playing, shooting, but am I actually in a good position? Where am I mentally; Do I want to even play right now? Why am i getting picked out so easily?
I agree with everything and thanks for sharing it as well. However, when it comes to playing against smurfs, well.. When there's a masters smurf playing in a gold lobby versus low gold players, no one on the gold team learn anything from playing against the masters smurf because they never get a chance to learn anything. On the other hand, had the lobby been filled with high plat players i would've agreed. It's also not risk free. You risk ruining your mentals if you're a low gold player playing against a masters smurf because regardless of what you do, you'll never win a single encounter against them unless you get lucky. Very lucky. This is why we have ranks to begin with in most FPS titles (Kind of like in martial arts as well) but the issue here is that the rank system in Overwatch is outrageously bad just like the rank progression system.
I'm usually situated in the right spots at the right time. I just can't hit my shots (i know he covered that). I don't know why but i just have terrible aim (widowmakee only)
12:27 say it louder for the people in the back. I’m so tired of people that whine and complain to swap in ranked, it’s like they forgot how they got good on their mains in the first place.
Awkward and his mentality and philosophy on gaming helped me reach GM5 wrecking ball only despite being fairly new to the game. Although I don’t play comp video games anymore. His philosophy and attitude could be applied to your daily life with only positive effects. Thank you Awkward for your help
I'm hardstuck in diamond since ow2, but I perform better on gm scrims and it's not because I'm getting carried by my team. I think it's because on gm scrims when sth is happening you know how both your team and enemy team will react and you don't expect enemies to make mistakes, but when I play in diamond I lose a lot of games because just like in gm I don't expect enemies to make mistakes, but then they actually do sth stupid and that catches me off guard and I'm loosing games not due to my, but to enemy missplays 😂 Ofc it's not the main reason why I'm stuck in diamond and I'm not using it as a cope, but it is a real thing. And recently I started playing ranked more and I ranked up all roles by 5-3 divisions so no coping and actually learning is paying off
I did all that, went from gold 3 to gold 4 XD - joking- i did try to apply your advices, it worked but i did not improve too much, my biggest improvement was on tracer when i went from gold 4 to platinum 5 ( wich i am currently at) and the most important thing to improve is consistency, by not swaping, improving timings and positioning, consistency is key; thank you for your time :D
Want to point out that G4-P5 is a big improvement. Might not seem that way because anything lower than GM gets called "bad" but the skill difference between those ranks is night and day. Most players are Gold, so ascending beyond is significant.
@chrisgraham252 indeed, right now i am working to improve my support rank. I find support to be the hardest role so i want to improve at that first, atm i'm gold 2, my peek is gold1, slowly i will do it 😇😇
12:25 That's true, when Ow2 Launched i started to main Sombra(in Ow1 i was main lucio but i always liked to play Sombra, and dude i was bad with Sombra...), i started to train with her in Comp even if we lost, i didn't care about changing the character just to win, and because of that i learned how to play with Sombra and against her "counters" (Mcree & Hanzo at that time), in a level that i started not only not dying but i could also solo them, and after some seasons i reached Master, and sadly the queues in SA server stop finding matches in this ELO. But anyway i was stuck in Plat in Ow1 and i reached Master just persisting in my goal that was just having fun playing Sombra =)
This is all well and good, but it's still super annoying to have your short term rank changes decided almost entirely by the other 9 people in your lobbies. In about a week and a half when I was off work I went from gold 1 to gold 5, then back to gold 1 and then back again to gold 5. All that in a little over a week. None of the swings were due to me playing particularly differently. I literally feel like a smurf in gold 5 lobbies lol. I shouldn't be there and it's obvious. The gold ranks are particularly terrible for this (which is why I believe good players don't understand the extent of the problem) because Blizzard inexplicably actively force new players into gold, and they almost never justify that rank. You know how easy it is to predict when somebody in your gold lobby is going to be level one endorsement? Anybody who is obviously too good or more commonly too bad for the lobby has around a 60% chance of being endorsement level 1, compared to around a 2% chance otherwise. It's a terrible design decision and it ruins gold games disproportionally.
I agree with everything except for maybe playing against a smurf. I know you barely play against smurfs realistically but if a challanger player is placed in a silver lobby in league of legends, assuming they aren't handicapped somehow, they will dominate. 💀 You see this scenario all the time in X "unranked to masters" videos...
How does one actually improve aim tho. Cause i know its cause i pushed or had a bad angle but i have bad eye sight and my aim is that of a potato. While i know its not the only thing to improve to help me get better im just wondering what are actually ways to practice aiming itself outside of a match. Im a controller player i feel that matters in terms of my question lol
Idk about controller, but for mnk I’ve had a lot of success with aim training. I bet you’d also see some improvement doing eye warm ups for aim even on controller. Sounds weird but it actually helps. Search FPS eye training and watch the video by ottr. Make sure your sensitivity isn’t too low or high for your characters too
@@andrewgross1835 I'll look that up thank you. It's always my biggest quest how do I actually improve my aim and I never really get advice for that so thanks for the suggestion. I'll look that up now
I like all of the points except the last one, I dont understand how swapping off a hero that isnt working to play something that would work better is counter productive, you are basically saying that all the one tricks should just stay their hero and lose instead of trying to adapt to help win the game..
I completely agree with his point, it's not about winning or losing. Sure, if you swapped you might've won the game, but did you improve? If you take the lazy option when facing a challenge you are never going to improve. Almost every character can be played in every scenario, people just don't know how.
The point is that you keep your hero pool small so you can actually master those heroes, and playing into suboptimal comps means u gotta problem solve mid game and adapt/play more correct and therefore improve faster
@ yeah that is a good point. But for example I was playing MR yesterday and was flexing playing tank for team but it wasn’t working so I swapped to another support and because of this we ended up bringing the game back and winning, I think it was the right move and I’m glad I did it
I know the Audio isn't great. I used the Camera's Mic and my room is echoy and has reverb. Will get a better mic for talking videos like this in the future.
Bad mic is better than no video.
protip, for "bad" or echoey audio try adobes free tool called Enhance Speech v2 (drag and drop) its actually insane how good it is
@@Awkward2 You can mostly fix it in editing as well. There are peaks and dips to balance and it'll sound fine. Five minute process after you've done it once.
Just get those things that you put on the wall and it kills sound. These things can make a room sound proof.
My criticism on your take on versing smurfs is that if they are let's say a gm player in plat, I'm sorry but you're not gonna learn much from getting absolutely smoked. There is a certain range where you can improve from better players.
Your audio is still very easy to hear. It didn't turn me off from watching the video by any means.
audio quality need to rank up
bro was off-angling his webcam mic
🤣🤣🤣
@@Chrome_Rotationthose emojis are so good 😂
Nah I like it. Raw audio much bettet
You have 0 videos big guy
make sure not to play too much to the point of tilt or exhaustion, after you start losing your edge either take a break or switch to qp and move on the ranked the next day
Yea this is so important. I lost 4 ranked games with mantis. Was so exhausted i had to go take a break and study. gotta remember that gaming isnt everything in life, dont stress so much if youre not getting significant improvements. Just play for fun and improve as you go.
Yeah sleep the night before is important too. I went to play after getting like 3 hours of sleep and my brain didn't have the capacity to think about position and engagement timing and I was just on auto pilot and was doing horrible. I'd be making mistakes and repeating them and wasn't focused enough to be tracking properly either. Of course if you're playing a character you're used to playing and have tons of hours on your auto pilot might just be at a playable level but we want our best not just good enough. Hydration and eating is part of that too
"Winning is a byproduct of improving, improving is not a byproduct of winning"
Damn.
My goat, philosopher, genius, playboy Awkward.
@@Chrome_Rotation "I'm gay and ugly"
true philosophy right there, so touching...
😭
@ pick a struggle man
It sounds pretty and in principle is MOSTLY sound, but it's a lie. It's literally a contradiction of something he said earlier in the video, which was in fact the truth.
Remember what he said about imposter syndrome? Firstly, he stated that it probably isn't true, but he also stated that if it is, you should focus on the positive not the negative. That positive being that playing in a higher rank will help you to improve because you're playing against people slightly better than you, i.e. improving IS a byproduct of ranking up.
@@overratedfool6900 what he says is true because ranking up doesnt mean youre getting better because getting better doesnt mean you cant still be throwing games that youd win.
As a OW coach of 7 years, i approve of this message (and i will start sharing it with every student i get from now on!)
I can vouch for the Aim mindset. I use to be stuck in Gold just a couple weeks ago. I thought, if my aim was only better and I hit my shots I would have won. Well, one day I started watching the match over from everyone’s perspective. I quickly learned that I had the best aim consistently in the lobby but it didn’t matter because the positions and the way I moved was so easy to hit etc. after taking this and trying to take better angles and make myself harder to hit. I climbed and currently at plat 1 pushing into that diamond rank. And currently there is 2 things I know holding me back right now. 1 rank anxiety because for some reason Diamond gets to me. And 2 my timing for engagements.
Anyways that’s my current journey right now.
This is not just how to rank up in video games this is how to rank up in life
It's funny cause the same logic can be applied to your daily life 😂.
Literally what people have been stressing since the beginning, ig their team must've threw idk?
I did the self reflection thing every game a went from g2 to diamond 2 in marvel rivals on a 10 game win streak. Guys he isnt joking about the mental parts of this
I actually agree with the point about playing against smurfs. I'm a plat player and once played against a smurf Ashe. Although he destroyed me most of the time, that game I had to think A LOT more and actually took the best positions I ever had.
I stopped playing overwatch since season 9 but I always come back to your videos because they transcend to real life situations as much as games. Best life coach advice out there.
And it's coming from a mid diamond casual player so I know nothing significant about the game anyways.
🔥 This is the rank-up reality check that most players NEED but don’t want to hear. 🔥
The biggest takeaways:
1⃣ It’s YOU, not your teammates - Blaming others won’t make you better. Every game is winnable if you focus on YOUR mistakes.
2⃣ Game sense > Aim - Decision-making ranks you up faster than mechanics ever will. Even cheaters with perfect aim struggle if they make bad plays.
3⃣ Peak ≠ Consistency - Hitting a high rank once doesn’t mean you "deserve" it. The real flex is playing at that level consistently.
4⃣ Playing to win is why you lose - If you only care about the W, you’ll avoid learning hard lessons. Long-term improvement > short-term wins.
This video is a must-watch for anyone serious about climbing. Huge respect for the brutally honest advice! 🙌🏼
Really enjoyed this video! This expanded on the mindset shifts you've touched on before (if I win it's because of me, if I lose it's because of me). A lot of what you talked about I hadn't considered before. I definitely have found myself pointing to my aim as my weakest ability. Your approach makes sense, that focusing on decision making instead of raw mechanical skill will cause you to improve faster. Will be rewatching this one to let the advice sink in!
Auto-piloting has the same definition as insanity. Remember that guys
Mindset is so important, it's insanely underrated.
After getting diamond for the first time, I took a two week break from the game because I had grinded it pretty hard to get better. When I decided I was ready to play again, I was obviously a bit rusty from that 2 week break. I lost some matches and dropped to plat, which really frustrated me. I just kept losing and destroying my mental. It got so bad I actually ranked all the way down to gold 1. At this point I take a couple days off the game to come back with a new mindset. I also stopped playing if I got a couple losses in a row to keep my mental in check. With a bit of patience and a calm mentality I pretty quickly climbed back to diamond and have now peaked diamond 3.
Your mental is so important because the more tilted you get, the less you focus on your gameplay. Your mindset can keep you so far from your true peak, it's actually insane.
Yeah but how can I not lose interest in the game after learning that the matchmaking ai fixes teams and fights towards a 50% win rate? I made it to diamond but what is the point if every solo q er or duo I check has a 50% win rate. It's ridiculous in this game. Perform well, smash lobbies, rise over 60% and you will be rewarded with fixed match ups that are designed to put you into a lose streak to 50%.
@@Yatagarasu-b9w This is a massive misunderstanding of how a ranked system works. You reach a 50% winrate when you are at the rank you deserve. You aren't good enough to rank up, so you lose games against slightly better players, but you're also not bad enough to rank down, so you win games against slightly worse players. If you have a 60% winrate that means you're ranking up, and that also means you play against better players. If you can't keep up with those players you obviously rank down.
The matchmaker looks at people's rank and tries to balance the lobby so that each team has roughly the same average rank. That means each team in theory has a 50% chance of winning. If you want to rank up, you need to tip the scales in your favor by playing better than the other team to win. The matchmaker isn't out to keep you in a low rank. Its job is to put you in a balanced lobby with each team being equally likely to win. Play better than your rank, and you will rank up. That's why you see streamers being able to do unranked to gms and hard carry games that are below their actual rank.
If you actually care to learn how the system works, look up Spilo's interview with the developers responsible for the ranked system. They go pretty in depth with how matches are created and how ranking up and down works, and that the matchmaker isn't actively keeping you in a low rank. Or you can continue to believe in your conspiracy that the evil matchmaker is forcing you to stay in a lower rank (which makes absolutely no sense why it would do that).
This is probably the greatest educational video I’ve watched! Thank you awkward!
Thank you for your valuable advice, you really improved my day and days to come!
youre the reason why i became a better moira player in overwatch and i ranked up because of it, same goes for your mantis video on rivals. Love your vids man, keep throwing these types of vids out there, SOOO many people need to hear this
He’s not lying tho. When I first started watching Awkward, I was absolutely dominating in my lobbies in various games, to the point where I would get hard focused by the enemy team. At first, it was annoying but I started to enjoy 1v5ing a team lol
I feel like it depends on the game. There are some games where I’d absolutely carry and play well usually (like gears of war where you have to rely less on your team)
But on Overwatch 2, I just can’t seem to get higher than diamond. Solo Q is difficult when you get leavers and afks all the time or people who just spend all game typing
@@ThePilleroflightning People are leaving your games and going afk and typing all game because you are so bad that they give up. You can’t make your team have a better mindset, but you can carry them and prevent them from getting upset if you suck less
@@Jc123jcjc what? How does that even make sense? People leaving the game has nothing to do with my own performance🤦🏽♂️ some people leave because they chat with the enemy team and get their feelings hurt, or they know they’re getting destroyed so they get frustrated and decide to not wanna play anymore. People type in chat to ego the enemy team and throw insults around.
I just find it funny is that your first instinct is that it’s my fault that I’m amidst all of this, not typing, playing the best I can, yet you can’t do much if the enemy team is just more coordinated on attacks…
Something you don’t really have to deal with in something like Call of Duty, Halo or Gears.
@ your team has 4 chances of having leavers if you never leave. The enemy team has 5 chances to have a leaver. 90% of the time when people throw its because they are mad at their team for sucking or for not helping them. I have made several fresh accounts to do unranked to gms by myself, and sometimes when I am hard carrying, my team gets mad at me and throws the game because I’m not playing it the way they want me to… so like yeah I understand that sometimes people will throw, but if you just keep playing and you are genuinely better than everyone in the lobby, then you will steadily climb until you are in a rank where you are equal skill level as everyone else in the rank. Even if you have a thrower 1 out of 5 games, you can still easily win 3/5 games. I don’t have any trouble at all winning 95% of my games through diamond. By the time I reach GM my winrate is usually above 85%. If you simply just play better you will win more games. If you are content with staying in diamond then keep blaming the AFKers. I assure you, nobody will care if you whine and cry in comment sections. If you don’t want to take the advice and actually improve then go watch a different channel.
@@Jc123jcjc literally nobody is acting out except for you. Stop projecting your feelings into TH-cam comments. All I did was state my opinions on the fact that some games are different when it comes to these scenarios. I’ve reached top ranks in the other games that I’ve mentioned, but Overwatch is more team oriented, therefore it’s alot harder to climb. It’s no different than DBD, TF2, Marvel Rivals, Evolve etc. All of these have something in common, roles to play.
Had a game today where my team tried to FF twice and I didn’t let them. I stopped paying attention to them and just tried to play my best / make callouts whether the heard me or not…We ended up winning.
He isn't wrong. Climbed two whole ranks since following his advice.
To get better in F1 eSports. I always wanted to race ppl faster than me. And i did. It helped me to see the racing lines they use. Show me i can carry more speed in the corner. And racing with faster drivers made me faster.
Awkward mentality is the goat mentality. Your team is never the reason why you are hard stuck at a rank. Reviewing your own gameplay, gameplay of top players using your heroes, and making small improvements over time is the way to do it. Also found it helpful to look at my performance on specific maps on rivalsmeta, take my weakest maps and look at how better players with high win rates on those maps play them
I was hardstuck plat as support for years. When my mindset changed .. well it took me a few months but my peak was GM2?!
9:20
This never made sense to me, many of the people who cry about smurfs in their lobbies believe they're a higher rank than they are. So if there's a smurf surely it's just evening out the playing field? Surely if you're better than your rank, you're technically smurfing too right?
And I refuse to believe smurfs are as common as reddit makes them out to be. A player performing 5% better than the rest of the lobby can appear as a smurf when in reality they're just having a good game...
So true people want to whine about their rank being held back by uncontrollable forces yet when they face an increased challenge immediately fold under pressure.
Well said sir. Thanks for putting this together
Ironically, just had a coaching session. They asked why I wasn't doing more flanks. I said bc of my aim. But they looked at my aim. And said its actually not bad. Not great. But not bad. It was other parts of my game.
Thanks for reminder. Stuck in high diamond for 7 months. Forgot things that brought me here. Thanks for advices, they're work
This is eye opening, thank you
Started applying the not autopiloting advice. Good one.
Took the time to learn spiderman in marvel rivals, with an open mind to learning and improving, as an ow vet it was truly humbling to pick up such a complicated, and difficult hero and get absolutely dumpstered on every game, until I noticed improvement, I went from average spidey player, to 80% Win rate and carrying games with an average 30-35% accuracy, I'm able to take every 1v1 with confidence, even against heros considered my counter (infact these are usually easier because they assume their hero auto wins)
It was like relearning from 0 how to play the game, and that ground up approach to just doing better myself resulted in me needing 7 accounts across ranks to play with all the cool friends I made ranking up carrying games.
To the point where I can often just turn off comms and 1v6 in a diamond/gm rank lobby.
I then noticed because spidey is so hard to use, and so fast, that getting good at this difficult & fast hero massively improved my mechanics, focusing so much on hitting my shots with spidey because they are so limited a resource, my consistency in chosing the correct target and finishing the kill is so much higher than it ever was in years of overwatch gameplay, I've never felt like I had the power to single handedly take over a lobby like I do now, don't get me wrong, I don't win them all, and can still improve, but you cant argue with 80%
I remember that one ranked match on marvel rivals, a hawkeye teammate always ridiculed our healers (me n a random Loki player) for being nub. I saw this hawkeye died many times and ridiculed him back until we failed to deliver the payload. After cooled my head down for a moment, I decided to mute his chat n voice to fully focus on the match. Then I realized that hawkeye seemingly never get any heal from our Loki so I started to focus more on healing him n our tanks since the other dps was a diver who kept feeding. We ended up winning with the Hawkeye as the MVP with most KO n dmg, and me with most assist n heal. And turned out, that damned Loki never bothered to heal his teammates (only 4k heals rly?). Man
Awkward is working on getting better audio quality for you guys. He sits at a corner so there's tons of echo/reverb so bear with is until we make the improvements 🫡
The truth is, the more chill, locked in and focused on the game you are, it is 200% more likely for you to win as opposed to looking at your team stats and arguining with these tards
It’s just really really hard not to tilt though. Like some of the things you see people doing in Overwatch is really tough to take. 16-20 death dps when you’re sat on 8 deaths as tank etc. Having said that, I have been playing much better on Zarya recently, managing bubbles very well and being patient with engagements and waiting for someone to make a mistake. As long as I don’t die and keep probing, I’ve noticed my supports pay more attention to me, I am able to enable plays and peel for my teammates. Everything is less rushed and more calculated and as a result, games I thought were sure losses have turned in to intense victories.
The way to avoid tilt is to completely ignore how well or how bad your team is. Your DPS may be terrible sometimes, but that's not stopping you from making the right decisions and learning. Sometimes people just have bad games. Ignore them and focus on yourself. You will not get better if your mindset is "Oh well I only lost because my Soldier died every 30 seconds." That's not productive. You learn nothing, you get tilted, and that only leads to more losses.
this concept was starting to seep in, thanks for nailing it home.
I have 500 hours on kovakks but until im actually mcree with a kiri in front of me im not under the hoop yet.
you don't shoot a 3 to make it you shoot it 2 watch the ball.
HAND TO EYE COIDINATION ISNT CREATED THROUGH PERFECTION BUT FAILURE.. IDC IF I GO FROM PLAT 1 TO GOLD 1 IF I KNOW I IMPROVED
Nice video also applies to outside gaming in life. Ignore haters. (Also be humble in general)
W video, I really needed to hear these things. Awesome advice
Great video because these principles are so relevant to many things besides video games.
Awkward did damage to the mic before the video. This man truly does what he preaches 👏
These are life advices not just for gaming.
brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit. brutally honest, no bullshit.
preach brother preach
love this video, thank u
for the mechanics part
necros attempted a u2gm on genji with controller and he couldn't made it past gold,
a guy with 1000's of hours
mechanics are way more important than most ppl say it is
maybe not on every hero but on dps or tank i'd say 80% of the roster
That is true but some heroes need way more mechanics than others like tracer, genji
Noticed the Metroid prime music right away!
Thanks awkward I really appreciate the review and the tips and the black panther tips
zeeno sigma clips bro is goated
😂 ty
The only guy i take advice from
I honestly think what you say is true. But the real question is it worth it. Being a t500 player in any game is literally one of the most selfish things i can think of, you offer absolutely nothing meaningful to society and at the same time consume resources.
If you make a living out of something then that thing is obviously not useless, if you are a videogame professional player your contribution to society is entertainment same as athletes or actors, if you are not a pro player then you probably don't make a living out of it and have another job.
@ranaepica7051 I didn't say unless I said meaningless. When you look at the most successful streamers , the xqc types who stream to 60k viewers it's statistically insignificant in the broader terms of the world. Absolutely meaningless. Comparing it to sports that entertain multi millions of people is intellectually dishonest. Your point is not only wrong but irrelevant.
Good vid man!
I liked the other points, but 3:31 doesn't apply in some cases in my experience. I am a mid masters widow/cass twotrick. I was hardstuck diamond for like 3 months. The only way I started to improve was grinding aim training (kovaaks vdim and vaxta), and I eventually climbed to masters. I think this point is true, but once you get to like top 5%, it becomes more of a difference of mechanics, especially in the hitscan dps role.
This video makes me rethink my whole gaming process. Thank you, oldman 🤔
So we're doing the try to use an xbox 360 mic challenge
i love your mindset
agree except with the not swapping part
i like that awkward changed his stance from "no, if you lose ITS ALWAYS your fault" to "you can perform exceptionally but your teammates couldnt pull their weight"
also, i like the constant mistake of "what could have i done" instead of "what could i have done" haha
Yeah pretty much, focused to much one “what I am doing”,instead of “where am I”most of the time. Like I am playing, shooting, but am I actually in a good position? Where am I mentally; Do I want to even play right now? Why am i getting picked out so easily?
thank you awk
I agree with everything and thanks for sharing it as well. However, when it comes to playing against smurfs, well.. When there's a masters smurf playing in a gold lobby versus low gold players, no one on the gold team learn anything from playing against the masters smurf because they never get a chance to learn anything. On the other hand, had the lobby been filled with high plat players i would've agreed.
It's also not risk free. You risk ruining your mentals if you're a low gold player playing against a masters smurf because regardless of what you do, you'll never win a single encounter against them unless you get lucky. Very lucky.
This is why we have ranks to begin with in most FPS titles (Kind of like in martial arts as well) but the issue here is that the rank system in Overwatch is outrageously bad just like the rank progression system.
What happen to the audio quality man
We had to use the on camera mic which isn't bad, but he sits at a corner with tons of echo and reverb
I'm usually situated in the right spots at the right time. I just can't hit my shots (i know he covered that). I don't know why but i just have terrible aim (widowmakee only)
12:27 say it louder for the people in the back. I’m so tired of people that whine and complain to swap in ranked, it’s like they forgot how they got good on their mains in the first place.
After this video I improved immediately
just grind, system wants you to
Thanks for the advice I'm hardstuck silver / gold hopefully looking at replays more will help
For rivals, I got to plat by just switching roles when my team needed it keep grinding lol
I wonder on which other games, apart from overwatch and marvel rivals, he has achieved the highest rank?
40 seconds in and it's already a based take
Wireless mic on your shirt dude
Bro is off angling the main mic
Almost everyone I know that is hardstuck on the game they play is hardstuck in their mentality.
What are the other 2 titles?
CSGO and CS 1.6, and if it's not 1.6, i will guess GunZ
He showed rivals and valo
@Schmoqyyy but he said 5
@@danmcmuffin3026 yea that's true I forgot about CS
@@danmcmuffin3026 wait wym GunZ? awkward plays it?
Awkward and his mentality and philosophy on gaming helped me reach GM5 wrecking ball only despite being fairly new to the game. Although I don’t play comp video games anymore. His philosophy and attitude could be applied to your daily life with only positive effects. Thank you Awkward for your help
damage damage damage
But awkward, VALORANT doesn't have a replay system yet to look back at my games?
Record them.
@Awkward2 🫡
You lose rank from smurfs and they troll lower rank lobbies that take about smurfs was horrible
I'm hardstuck in diamond since ow2, but I perform better on gm scrims and it's not because I'm getting carried by my team. I think it's because on gm scrims when sth is happening you know how both your team and enemy team will react and you don't expect enemies to make mistakes, but when I play in diamond I lose a lot of games because just like in gm I don't expect enemies to make mistakes, but then they actually do sth stupid and that catches me off guard and I'm loosing games not due to my, but to enemy missplays 😂
Ofc it's not the main reason why I'm stuck in diamond and I'm not using it as a cope, but it is a real thing. And recently I started playing ranked more and I ranked up all roles by 5-3 divisions so no coping and actually learning is paying off
Thank you oppa🙏
Not your oppa, only the oppa stoppa
I did all that, went from gold 3 to gold 4 XD
- joking- i did try to apply your advices, it worked but i did not improve too much, my biggest improvement was on tracer when i went from gold 4 to platinum 5 ( wich i am currently at) and the most important thing to improve is consistency, by not swaping, improving timings and positioning, consistency is key; thank you for your time :D
Want to point out that G4-P5 is a big improvement. Might not seem that way because anything lower than GM gets called "bad" but the skill difference between those ranks is night and day. Most players are Gold, so ascending beyond is significant.
@chrisgraham252 indeed, right now i am working to improve my support rank. I find support to be the hardest role so i want to improve at that first, atm i'm gold 2, my peek is gold1, slowly i will do it 😇😇
12:25 That's true, when Ow2 Launched i started to main Sombra(in Ow1 i was main lucio but i always liked to play Sombra, and dude i was bad with Sombra...), i started to train with her in Comp even if we lost, i didn't care about changing the character just to win, and because of that i learned how to play with Sombra and against her "counters" (Mcree & Hanzo at that time), in a level that i started not only not dying but i could also solo them, and after some seasons i reached Master, and sadly the queues in SA server stop finding matches in this ELO.
But anyway i was stuck in Plat in Ow1 and i reached Master just persisting in my goal that was just having fun playing Sombra =)
This is all well and good, but it's still super annoying to have your short term rank changes decided almost entirely by the other 9 people in your lobbies.
In about a week and a half when I was off work I went from gold 1 to gold 5, then back to gold 1 and then back again to gold 5. All that in a little over a week. None of the swings were due to me playing particularly differently. I literally feel like a smurf in gold 5 lobbies lol. I shouldn't be there and it's obvious.
The gold ranks are particularly terrible for this (which is why I believe good players don't understand the extent of the problem) because Blizzard inexplicably actively force new players into gold, and they almost never justify that rank. You know how easy it is to predict when somebody in your gold lobby is going to be level one endorsement? Anybody who is obviously too good or more commonly too bad for the lobby has around a 60% chance of being endorsement level 1, compared to around a 2% chance otherwise. It's a terrible design decision and it ruins gold games disproportionally.
I agree with everything except for maybe playing against a smurf. I know you barely play against smurfs realistically but if a challanger player is placed in a silver lobby in league of legends, assuming they aren't handicapped somehow, they will dominate. 💀 You see this scenario all the time in X "unranked to masters" videos...
Echo echo echo echo
How does one actually improve aim tho. Cause i know its cause i pushed or had a bad angle but i have bad eye sight and my aim is that of a potato. While i know its not the only thing to improve to help me get better im just wondering what are actually ways to practice aiming itself outside of a match. Im a controller player i feel that matters in terms of my question lol
My aim doesn’t ‘lock in’ until about 6-8 games in. By then im not thinking about it
Idk about controller, but for mnk I’ve had a lot of success with aim training. I bet you’d also see some improvement doing eye warm ups for aim even on controller. Sounds weird but it actually helps. Search FPS eye training and watch the video by ottr. Make sure your sensitivity isn’t too low or high for your characters too
@@andrewgross1835 I'll look that up thank you. It's always my biggest quest how do I actually improve my aim and I never really get advice for that so thanks for the suggestion. I'll look that up now
@@andrewgross1835tried out the video. Been trying psylock today started with 9-11% after video 19-22%
say first if you're bronze
Damn
Just tell me which mouse to buy bro
It's "What Could I Have Done Better," not "What Could Have I Done Better"
what happened to mic
1:45 playing overwatch
I like all of the points except the last one, I dont understand how swapping off a hero that isnt working to play something that would work better is counter productive, you are basically saying that all the one tricks should just stay their hero and lose instead of trying to adapt to help win the game..
I mean a Junkrat otp (Gurkmeister) was champ3
I completely agree with his point, it's not about winning or losing. Sure, if you swapped you might've won the game, but did you improve? If you take the lazy option when facing a challenge you are never going to improve. Almost every character can be played in every scenario, people just don't know how.
The point is that you keep your hero pool small so you can actually master those heroes, and playing into suboptimal comps means u gotta problem solve mid game and adapt/play more correct and therefore improve faster
@ yeah that is a good point.
But for example I was playing MR yesterday and was flexing playing tank for team but it wasn’t working so I swapped to another support and because of this we ended up bringing the game back and winning, I think it was the right move and I’m glad I did it
the mic was off angling
90% of players wont understand this
You look like gru in the thumbnail
"its not ur team" literally throwin and 2-15 stats
You played valorant, what is the peak over there ?
Around 900 RR
What a god aweful mic Akward. What happened to the quality
What happened to him, why does he look like he just got out of chemo
audio coming from an off angle this video
hey man, I resent the video of the 80 year old guy walking when referring to a 50 year old man....
Good video, bad audio quality