As Overwatch 2 Competitive transitions to a new game, a few changes have been made. You’re ranked differently and you’re updated at different times, so it’s understandable why you feel lost. There’s a reason people grind Overwatch 2 (or rank if you prefer). You’ll get lots of experience from Overwatch 2, but you’ll also get competitive itch scratches by improving your rank and skill.
With Overwatch 1, your character’s rank always displayed, and it rose when you won and fell when you lost. Overwatch 2 losses no longer matter as much, or Blizzard at least hides the impact from you. It’s a little confusing at first, but it’s pretty cool. Since you don’t know much about it at first, we’re here to explain how it works, how you get your rank, and how you climb. Here’s how Competitive works in Overwatch 2 and how you can get better.
Competitor 2.0: What does it mean?
Compared to Overwatch 1, Competitive 2.0 is a lot more fun. It’s all about getting better and winning in competitive matches. Values represent how good you are at the game. In an effort to make the mode less frustrating, Blizzard changed how you get your rank and rise up the leaderboards.
In Overwatch 1, your Skill Rating (SR) determines your competitive value. It goes up and down with wins and losses. After each match, Blizzard’s SR went up and down, just like a test where the teacher graded you based on each question, not your whole work. For a better idea of how you’re doing in Competitive, you can look at the last seven or 20 games as a whole instead of each match. Our goal is to make you feel like you’re improving from the very first day you play Competitive.
Likewise, Overwatch 2 offers four Competitive ranks. You can rank up based on how well you play your Tank, Damage, and Support roles in Role Queue (check out Overwatch 2 Hero changes to see what’s new). The Open Queue rank, however, lets you have more characters in one role, which removes the character limit. The team can roll out with four tanks and a healer.
What’s the deal with Competitive 2.0?
How does it work if you don’t have a number that goes up after every game? After you reach a win or loss threshold, you’ll be updated on your placement, and your rank won’t move until you reach one or the other. To start, you need seven wins or twenty losses. As soon as you do that, it’ll place you where it thinks you belong. From then on, your wins and losses will reset, and your rank will be updated every seven wins or twenty losses.
Now that SR is gone, the tier system is vaguer. From Overwatch 1, you can choose from all the main skill tiers, from Bronze to Grand Master:
It’s the divisions within the skill tiers that’s new in Overwatch 2. In each tier, there are five sub-tiers. From lowest to highest, these are represented by numbers. To get to Platinum, you’d have to ascend past Gold 5.
As Blizzard confirmed, divisions loosely translate to 100 SR each, if you’re still tied to SR. In Gold 4, a player would be around 2300 SR if you used the old standard.
How to handle low Overwatch 1 placements
No worries if you’ve been ranked lower in Overwatch 2 than you were in Overwatch 1. Silver players who used to be Diamond players, don’t worry – everyone gets placed this way.
Blizzard has hit everyone’s accounts with a soft reset for Competitive 2.0. Although your previous history still matters, expect Blizzard to place everyone a little lower than they were in Overwatch 1. Anecdotally, I was a low Platinum player who placed in Silver 4.
You’ll start seeing pretty rapid progress once you get your seven wins to get placed again, especially with your first few placements. In your first few rankings, it’s common for the game to place you higher than where you were as it adjusts to where you fit in the community. Don’t give up, grind through the wins, and you’ll rise.