Climbing in Overwatch is a tough job, and there's one known rank in particular where most players tend to get stuck: Platinum. According to lead designer Jeff Kaplan, this is the second-biggest rank in terms of the number of players. It's a diverse rank, and players tend to have a wide variety of small problems that they should focus on fixing.

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While there's no set answer for every player, there are a few general things that anyone in Platinum can try to achieve in this season. Even if that won't translate to ranking up to Diamond, it will definitely prepare players for a future rank up to the next level. Here are 10 things to focus on when grinding for that sweet, sweet Diamond.

10 Learn More Heroes

The more heroes a player understands, the better prepared they will be to face skilled opponents. That doesn't mean everyone should automatically become a flex god. It's impossible to master every hero in the game, but knowing how to play one or two from each role is a massive advantage.

Another option is specializing in one role, such as tank, DPS or support, and knowing as many heroes from that role as possible. This makes the player incredibly versatile in their respective role, and is more realistic given the existence of role queue. The bottom line is: one-tricking a hero will rarely rank up a player.

9 Practice Ultimate Tracking

Overwatch Dva Ultimate Bomb in volskaya

Sometimes, games are won based on who's most mechanically skilled. However, more often, games are won based on who has the better ultimates and the better timing for them. This is why tracking what ultimates the enemy has is a skill that is absolutely necessary.

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Knowing this will also making predicting what the enemy will do in the next fight much easier. This alone will significantly increase how many battles a player can win, and ultimately result in victorious games. There's really no excuse not to do this.

8 Stack With Passionate Friends

One of the major complaints that most players have is that their teammates are throwing the games for them. It's true, sometimes there are days when the player will just be placed with uncooperative teammates with no microphones or will to win. It happens at every rank.

To counter that, it's best to stack with one or two friends. The reason why smaller stacks are better is because the matchmaking will mirror the enemy team and the amount of stacks it will have as well. Hence, it's easier to win those games than win against a six stack of players who might be much more coordinated and deadlier. Players with no friends in Overwatch should consider joining the forums or any Discord servers to find like-minded players to queue with.

7 Practice Callouts

Via: Blizzard

Communication is a key component of Overwatch, and one of the many aspects of the game that can win or lose a fight. Great callouts include communicating any of the enemy's cooldowns, such as Ana's sleep dart, Genji's deflect or Baptiste's immortality field.

Other callouts should be about potential flankers or any rotations the enemy's trying to pull off. It can also be helpful to call out when a fight is still winnable or if the team should pull back and regroup for another push. Players without a microphone should definitely invest in one if they want to rank up, since good communication is the real carry in most games.

6 Join A Casual Team

This ties into finding friends to play with. However, it's greatly underrated how much playing with the same people and practicing with them long-term can change the way a player perceives the game. A casual team can set up scrims just like pros, with other casual teams to practice their synergy in a low-stakes environment.

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Casual teams can be easily found on any Overwatch Discord servers, as well as the Overwatch subreddit. Keep in mind that joining a team will require more time and dedication from the player, but that's a given if they want to rank up and get better.

5 Pay Attention To Enemy Patterns

Knowing one's enemy is equivalent to being halfway to victory. There are many ways to read the enemy, to detect any patterns of behavior. Players should ask themselves what the enemy is trying to achieve every fight, and what the different members of the enemy team are doing.

Is there a healer standing at the back, uncontested, keeping the enemy team alive? Is a DPS hero constantly flanking the player's team during every push and distracting them? These are just a few examples of patterns of behavior, which, when countered, can be turned into winning conditions.

4 Take Advantage Of The Meta

It would be nice if Overwatch was a perfectly balanced game. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case, and naturally, some heroes will be stronger than others. Keep an eye on the balance patches developers release, as well as any heroes that professional players are practicing. This usually reveals the state of the meta.

Once the player knows what the meta is, running that objectively superior composition successfully will give them an edge against other players. This is why finding friends to play with is important too, because making strangers play the meta isn't always possible. There's no shame in playing the meta and ranking up. If anything, it shows that the player understands what's good in the game and how to take advantage of it.

3 Study Pro Players

Pro players are up there in the Overwatch League for a reason. Their grasp of the game's mechanics is without equivalent, which is why studying their strategies is a great way of learning more about the game in general.

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Of course, games at the Overwatch League level are much different from regular Platinum competitive games. That being said, pro players are highly organized, and the way they move as a unit and take different angles to solve a problem can be surprisingly enlightening. So, don't miss out on watching the OWL games.

2 Understand A Hero's Job

There are many misconceptions about what each role should do at every rank. Players might often moan about having gold medals on their hero, but just because a healer reached 20K in healing, or a tank has gold damage, doesn't mean they're not at fault for a lost game. Medals do not in fact mean anything in the long run.

Generally, tanks should be making space for their DPS by pressuring the enemy front line. DPS can either play the flank role, dive role or sniper role. They can also play by their tanks and pressure enemy shields. Supports are not only tasked with healing: they should bring in other forms of utility in terms of damage boost, stun abilities, speed, defensive ultimates or resurrection. Through this, players can build up a powerful team composition that makes sense.

1 Identify Win Conditions

The win condition is essentially what the player's team must do in order to win the next fight. This changes with each fight as the enemy changes different ultimates or potentially changes their heroes or play style. Each composition has a weakness, which the player's team should seek to counter or exploit.

For example, if a sniper is constantly dominating the high ground, it means the player's team will have little space to work with. Therefore, the win condition for the next fight is to dive that sniper, remove them from high ground, and then exploit high ground to dominate the enemy team in turn.

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