1. There is a misconception between doing well in DM and doing poorly in ranked.

DM is more or less a thoughtless aim duel battleground. So certain players are going to thrive, and others are going to be gasping for breath as they die yet again after another respawn. This isn't necessarily going to determine whether you'll perform amazingly or poorly in a ranked match.

There are a multitude of factors being taken out from a regular match, in DM you're not dealing with utility usage hunting you down or preventing you from entering certain angles, you're not pressured to hold down a site or retake a site, and overall you're just not dealing with the same realistic circumstances you are during a match.

While DM is a great place for players to warm up their aim, it's not the end all be all of them performing well in a ranked match. It's a little confusing to hear when people get frustrated and vent about their uncorrelated performances between the two different game modes.

My unasked-for-suggestion in improving your performance in a ranked match is to take note of why you're losing battles. Why did you lose x y z duels - was it due to a bad spray pattern, a bad crosshair placement resulting in you dying before shooting them, was it due to a poor positioning, were you over-peeking, were you not peeking enough, and etc.

There are a multitude of ways a player can improve, and it's not going to come down to just winning a few DM games. Yeah, you could certainly use DM to fix a bad spray pattern or bad crosshair placement, but you'd need to be more conscious on how you're playing in general in order to improve in the other cases.

2. It's still a team game, yes, take this with a grain of salt.

Ft. Are you not getting the points you deserve?

It's a team game. Yes, yes it is. The chances of winning are increased by the different utility types that comes from a Duelist player, an Initiator player, a Controller, or a Sentinel. The chances of winning are increased with communication among players and there's an advantage in trading a player.

The rr you gain at the end of a game doesn't change the fact that you should be playing for the team.

If you truly believe that fragging the most is going to be the quickest way for you to climb the ranks so be it, but I don't really understand the discourse over gaining less rr playing a support player == not wanting to be a team player.

Because at the end of the day, you can't gain rr in the first place without winning a game.

Yeah, I sometimes still have a bone to pick with when it comes to how much I should've earned after a game, because I main sentinel and I wish I were gaining 30+ for my contributions. But I really can't argue that a lot of my rounds were won due to the higher fragging teammates on my team. Except for you lurkers who get kills at the end of a round, sigh.

It's quite impossible to really distribute the rr in the ideal way to take into account every scenario of where one kill mattered or certain scenarios where utility usage alone won the round.

But hey if that's what's happening, then that's amazing. And you're going to climb eventually, because if you're playing your role and winning those rounds, hence more wins for you, and the more ranks you'll climb.

So, is having good utility usage enough for a player to rank up? Unfortunately no, because then we'd have a lot of people in higher ranks who can use their utility, but losing rounds due to unaccounted for poor aim duels / unfulfilled trades. And this would further increase the annoying popular insults of people being "boosted" or whatever is trending nowadays.

3. You're not bad if you're hardstuck.

It sucks. It really does.

Hopefully it's just a small rut you're in, and you'll be gaining rr again in no time. We all have red carpets proceeded by the rows of green and vice versa.

Yes, any person who is playing ranked is playing because they want to be constantly improving and climbing the ranks. And that will happen, so keep playing and learning. And don't sweat about it. This is me repeating this to myself as well! Have fun, seriously!

And if it so happens that after a bit of time that you feel like you're still hard stuck?

May try a different approach - maybe try to pick up some slack that you notice is going wrong in your games. Getting destroyed on flank? Watch it, or ask your teammates too, politely. Getting killed on over-peeking? Play a different angle.

The point is - just don't give up.

To all of us all improving. See you on the battlefield, good luck in games