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Macro Game And The Win Condition

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Macro Game And The Win Condition Empty Macro Game And The Win Condition

Post by Kine² 2018-04-05, 08:09

I'll start with simplified exercises.
I'd state now how EVERYONE will say to themselves how obvious the next few bits are but I'll revisit that assumption towards the end.

So lets do a mental 3v3 mirror match-up.
Assume IDENTICAL skill but not knowledge and place emphasis on Ult usage over individual tactics.
1 team will do everything right in terms of Macro while the other everything wrong.


First Case Study:
Soldier - DVa - Zen vs mirror comp

The victory condition in this 3 man comp is to DeMech enemy DVa, Soldier Ults and kill everybody. If enemy Zen has ults you prioritize him first before Demech'ing DVa. You don't even need to kill Zen prior to ulting. If he's low health enough, your Soldier should be able to kill Zen before he has time to react by counter ulting. When it is the enemy's turn to engage with Ults, your Zen needs to be ready for it and the team huddles together for the duration of enemy's Tac Visor. Your own DVa doing his best to manage his Matrix leading up to enemy Soldier's ult. Discord priotization should then be;
Enemy DVa when your Soldier has ults or Zen then DVa if enemy Zen has ults
On defense (ie. enemy's turn to fight with ults) discord should be over Soldier obviously. Heal orbs and biotic field reserved almost exclusively for your own DVa preferably used in tandem.

Easy stuff so far. Let's do a couple more. This time solve it in your head first before opening my spoilers.

2nd Case Study:
Pharah - Zarya - Mercy

Spoiler:

3rd Case Study:
McCree - Reinhart - Ana

Spoiler:

4th Case Study:
Reaper - Hog - Lucio

Spoiler:

This in no way devalues Macro planning. You'd essentially be saying real life pro's are dumb for doing it if you thought that.

So far easy stuff right ?
Obvious 101 shit ?

Lets move on to part 2:

This time a full 6 man composition
(Reinhart - Tracer - Zen) + (Zarya - Genji - Mercy)

I'm gonna save you the time and not even bother with answers. I have faith you probably know 100% what the win conditions are and all the other execution variables on pulling them off.

Easy.
Obvious.
Everyone should know them.
Some people might even consider the 4 case studies above too basic. Unworthy of their time.


Would it be a surprise then if I told you:

Ending in a positive tune:

1. There is evidence and concrete improvement in stabilizing as a team effort. Basic building block but extremely important. Props to that.

2. Misplays are easy fixes once win conditions are built into and expected from a team comp

3. Huge improvement surge once team moves get integrated into your games. Comms, prioritization, target calling, callouts etc will all NATURALLY fall into place.

From that point on Relative Positioning becomes more obvious since you've included MEANING into your efforts. Right now there isn't a wrong place to be since there is no common goal. Medics can't tell where to be at at any given time without this. Tanks make arbitrary decisions on where borders are or where they want them to be. DPS have no goals to achieve thus all targets are incorrectly weighed equally and no one can blame them.

Downside to the road of progress is that nothing substantial will be apparent until you start breaking down win conditions RELATIVE to your opponent.

Overwatch isn't Golf or Snooker. You don't win by beating the course. You need to dismantle the opposition. And this involves understanding Macro beyond basics. Knowing enemy's win conditions while having one of your own and deciding ad hoc how they interact dynamically on the fly with only seconds to scout then make correct calls on your target priotization + managing ults what pops in which order etc.

Relying on 'Man Marking' exclusively is (debatebly) fine in soloQ EU ranked.
But riddle me this - who the hell do you man mark in that match in the video ?
I can tell you chose the enemy Reinhart.
Was it correct ?
How can you tell ?
Did it work ?

Here's the sad thing. Your opponents weren't even that good.

And I'm not even judging them by their poor ult use. Simply from:
Your Reinhart performed better than their enemy Reinhart
Blocked more shatters, landed more charges, prolly won ult race too (cant tell for sure) but definitely scored more CC on ults.
Yet your Rein wasn't even that scary a tank (atleast in that vid)

Your Genji was a tier above enemy's Genji.
But he had no where to put his talent to meaningful use.

---

To summarize:

There is a difference between blindly playing a good composition and knowing why that composition is considered good in the first place.

Once win conditions are built into your game, alot of other things will begin to correct itself. So stay optimistic.

Consistent wins will only come about much much later when you start dissecting enemy teams in terms of Macro plays. Losing / winning while learning should not be used as a yardstick to measure progress.

Finally, the Macro game makes sense even intuitive most times and easy to figure out once you've developed the habit of reading the game in terms of win conditions. It isn't some arcane mystical knowledge. Even your grunts can pick it up with minimal effort. Don't write people off so easily nor dumb down your game worrying it might be too complex to execute.

Overwatch Devs designed the game to be deep BUT easily picked up. Trust them that they've done a good job and achieved that goal.

And finallly finally:

Despite my long rant (and I do miss my text walls on this forum)

All you need to do to win that match was drop a sweet Grav when your Genji was up
(instead of the both of you getting baited into 2 different things each push)
While ALL your medics do their best help win the Rein vs Rein matchup.
Your Zarya failed vs enemy DVa (who was actually their carry)
ironically Zarya counters DVa. Talk to Azh or give him the link.
If he simplifies which he often does, pick his brain for more. There were a dozen sub-optimal habits immediately apparent from that VOD.

During your attack turn, you lost out on composition.
Ran an almost traditional Dive comp. But who do you dive ?

Hog behind Orisa/Rein shields pocketed by Mercy
Soldier off somewhere to the side in a crossfire
Zen + Genji

You dive Zen, everyone dies to Hog Orisa on the follow up
You dive Genji, he dashes away
You cannot dive Mercy
You might get a lucky pick on an isolated Soldier but that team has 5 guns, losing a Soldier is recoverable.

Your team
DVa Winston, Tracer Genji, Mercy Moira
what was the win condition ?
Blade into Valk ? Strong but isn't the end of the world for a 6 stack defending against it.
Unless your Genji can team wipe per blade, which is a tall ask.
DVa Winston Tracer jumps someone and gets a pick after pick ? How do you protect your healers in all that ?
Was your Tracer good enough to get that pick off a dive ?
How many dives did you pull off with all 3 focus firing the same target ? Zero.

It isn't Dive is a weak comp.
It is the case where people didn't understand what was needed to win a team fight with that composition AGAINST that specific enemy composition.

---
---

Spoke with Xyccah the other day.
I sorta recommended him to run small side drills in custom
There are advantages to Full team scrims but there are disadvantages as well.

1. It takes effort to organize and get 12 player matches going
2. Full team scrims are like exams or mock exams.
- everything is tested across the board but only by a little per each aspect
3. Drills focuses on less things but are simulated more in-depth.

So I'll recommend it here:
Run small sided drills. Stuff like the case studies above
Soldier-DVa-Zen vs mirror comp.
Talk about win conditions for that drill and watch your team gradually pick it up
Then move on to different compositions
Try out experimental ones even like Symmetra-Brigitte-Mercy just so you can accurately make informed opinions on niche heroes
When this becomes part of your team's routine start running sectional drills in asymmetrical compositions

Can DVa Winston Tracer beat a Hog Reinhart Mercy 3v3 for example ?
Try different matchups of common compositions.

You'll naturally nurture good comms habits and start talking about the game in terms of macro out of it.

If you're unaware of it, this is what we've actually been doing in our Molo-Ginro-Kine sessions. Small sided drills in a 6v6 environment with little control over what our allies and enemies chooses. Imagine in a controlled environment with all 6 players cooperating.


Last edited by Kine² on 2018-04-25, 05:05; edited 1 time in total
Kine²
Kine²
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Macro Game And The Win Condition Empty Re: Macro Game And The Win Condition

Post by azh 2018-04-08, 20:39

Guess I'll make some comments.

Not sure if you have a moira one trick or something, but moira is bad with dive because of her short range healing. Zen would have been better.

1:00, I'm garbage at tracer but she should have blinked past all of them and went to point, drag the enemy away from the choke.
1:35, you use shield and then jump in and die really fast, probably should save shield if you're going to go in soon.
2:40, not sure how to play monkey but I would've jumped straight into the air after getting hooked, kinda like you did at 5:50. Don't you have a dva? Why isn't she matrixing you as you jump in?
4:15, not sure why your mercy is DPSing, guess the fight was lost anyways.
6:12, your rein doesn't know how to play rein. He's holding shield when nothing's happening, and when you jump in as monkey his shield is dead. Also, monkey rein is not very good.
6:25, your mercy says soldier using ult on her makes her a dumbass. What?
7:40, your rein doesn't know how to play rein, he's backing up even though you guys are on offence. Also he's walking forward with shield instead of jumping + shielding to get to point faster/conserve shield.
7:50, you die because your rein isn't playing near you.
10:00, you keep bubbling soldier, not sure whose fault that is. Maybe try lowering your barrier sensitivity, mine is at 70.
10:10, completely pointless personal shield
10:16, your rein is just holding shield yet again. I'm sure when they jump in his shield will be already dead.
10:24, they jump in and rein's shield is dead. Hm....
10:40, you guys just got fucked.
11:25, your rein is playing completely out in the open, he's holding shield up yet again, hmm.
11:40, good personal bubble, awful team bubble. Personal bubble is for gaining energy, team bubble should be used carefully.
12:59, what is rein doing? Also really bad team bubble. You and rein should be communicating. Rein should be pushing forward and swinging at the winston/dva while you bubble him instead of AFKing with his shield dying.
13:08, not sure if you had time to react, but you should have tried to grav them outside of the winston bubble by shooting the floor. Also, should have said something before you grav'd.
13:13, don't shoot the moira, shoot the dva. Even with amazing tracking you won't hit moira all the time. Dva = free ult.
13:20, you die with your rein far away again.
14:13, bad personal bubble.
14:25, bad personal bubble. Move forward and get in their faces, then bubble, then back up to rein while bubble is still up. Creates space for team, and gets you energy.
15:15, bad team bubble and bad personal bubble. You need to be pushing the enemy with your personal. Not making space at all.
15:25, very good save.
15:50, good discipline with not using grav.
16:50, i'd say that's a bad grav. If you're low energy like that, you need to pay attention to the enemy rein's shield. WHen you grav with low energy and get behind them, their rein will simply ignore your 10 AOE dps and shield the rest of your team.
17:40, you should be beaming the rein shield instead of playing back. Look at your rein's shield, it's getting pooped on compared to theirs.
17:50, you should be focusing dva as zarya. Focus tanks.
18:00, you get tac visored because your rein doesn't have shield left. I feel like this is a reocurring theme...


Your rein had no clue on how to save his shield. He swung his hammer way too little. He didn't play far up enough. The enemy team could move around as they pleased, no pressure. He should have just played Orisa if he was going to play a immobile barrier tank.
Don't think you played your zarya aggressively enough, you play her like a dps. Also messed up on over half of your bubbles, and consequently didn't have energy, which meant not too many gravs. Needed to pressure rein shield more with beam. Record your zarya gameplay and pay attention to every bubble you do. If any one of your bubbles isn't getting energy, it was a bad bubble (unless you're doing something like bubbling an ulting teammate/charging rein/low teammate). If you're serious about teamplay, you need to tell your team that you have grav, you need to check your teammates' ult % and try to coordinate ults. You also need to know what good gravs are. It's actually better to get a 2-3 man grav with key people in it than a 6 man grav.
In general, tanks were too afraid of walking forward. It's better to walk forward and die than to sit back and let the other team do whatever they want. I'm pretty sure you can get masters just by playing main tank and pressing w.
I'm not sure what your DPS were doing because they were behind you, not in front. Soldier shouldn't have been low ground for sure. Mercy could've sat with soldier if soldier was high ground.
Zen wasn't calling out discords/who to focus.

I think a lot of Kine's thoughts were on point. I disagree with him on one major point - i think he implies that you guys will get better by discussing teamplay/strategy. However, I think general teamplay can be improved by simply improving individually. How can you guys execute advanced teamplay when your rein doesn't know how to conserve shield, and your zarya has 0 energy 1 minute into the fight? How can you guys teamplay well when each of you don't understand what your heroes' roles are, how to position each hero, etc. Comboing ults and other "teamplay" like things come with improving individually imo.

I'd say if you want to get good with that 6 stack, you guys each need to learn 2-3 heroes well (one for dive comp, one for deathball). I'm not sure why you're playing main tank when your dps is very good, but if you're committed to that you should watch videos on how to play main/off tank and shit.

Also this video is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuIGs-9k22s&t=5s
I think most of my shields were on point. We lost first point because of feeding + I focused the pharah/mercy instead of dva. Pay attention to rein (pistola's) and kasnune's positioning. When I move forward, especially when I'm vulnerable after I bubble, one of them is ALWAYS right next to me/in front of me. I also play right in their faces when I have my personal barrier up. Pistola's rein + kas enabled me so hard, and I don't discuss anything with them - they just understand to position like that.
azh
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