Guys, I'm in the exact same spot too! And would probably see myself as better than "average" as well, but unless you play your tryhard meta mechs every day and really play in groups for the most part, I don't think your SR can rise naturally just by solo queue and playing mediocre mechs (as much as we love them). Playing in group queue (before and after psr change) would give you better opportunity to either increase your win % or your rating, when playing in matches with overall higher mmr pool at stake.
As long as you're playing mostly solo, a good player will remain at mercy of the MM exactly at the middle, because that's the 50/50 good game odds that matchmaker is trying to provide for you and is also proof that MM works with a normal 1:1 win rate in a balanced mmr environment. And if you stay at this rating even with all the niche builds you sometimes play or take time leveling a Gargoyle or Black Knight, i'd say that in fact, you're doing pretty damn good.
Is it possible to raise to T2 this way? I don't think so, but if you would change focus to playing meta and groups only for a few months, that bar would surely start moving. But other than that, I think mid T3 is where I belong with my style as well. Not too happy with my "achievement" but that's the result of the effort that was put in, and I think it's fair. It's still good to know that you might be better than what your tier shows, and have the ability to pull your weight even against higher tier oponents. And as someone said, might even consider yourself in the lucky middle, because you can still shoot at noobs sometimes and get ridicolously high scores or even make viable use of lrm. Will still get your ass handed occasionally, tough. Yeah, I think that's good and fair enough.
edit: on second thought, it might be able to rise in rating a little more efficient with the new system now, because earlier we had a lot of games where we did up to 1/2 of all the team damage and kills in solo, but our rating dropping because of a loss. If the new system works, even games like that should help you stay higher. I only started playing a few days ago since the weekend event, so my tier is still mostly a guesswork from the past matches, tough I am confident that it can rise a bit if you do well even in the solo queue - that is if the system works correctly as they said, while before it really wouldn't ever be possible to go higher than T3 this way.
I think that the tier, tough this might be a bit controversial to say, represents the ammount of tryharding you do, and by that I mean the amount of group play and
quality of teamwork you do (and your group), as that is the most potent factor for the outcome, meta mechs second after that. I really don't believe there are many below average players in T3 on a micro level of skill. It's the macro - teamwork, that wins most matches, and playing with a good group raises that odds more than your personal piloting skill, tough that always helps, but we can't deny the fact that it's the team positioning and decisions that win the matches. A lot of us here might be very good micro players, but until you start playing as a team regulary, the nature of the MM will just balance your matches back to the 50% where everybody else is, which should be mid T3 *if* you are a good micro player and can work with your team.
So saying that.. the tier should not be understood as your personal "piloting" skill. It is not saying "you're slightly better than a noob". There's more to that, just look at it as your solo matchmaker rating for the system, because that's what it is, it cannot be an evalution of piloting skill by any means because there's just too many factors you have no influence over as a solo player, and thus should not hurt anyone's ego.
Edited by NeoCodex, 23 September 2015 - 12:17 AM.
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Bishop Steiner, on 22 September 2015 - 12:33 PM, said:
