The fundamental shortfalls faced by mid-tier teams

Having been a part of a mid-tier team myself, I have come to appreciate the hard work that many of the top teams need to put in to make it on an international level. I use the phrase 'make it' loosely in terms of a team's ability to at least compete with the top 10, 20, 30 ranked international teams rather than getting completely run over. For a newcomer to the game, or even a semi-competitive player who has experienced ranked play, the importance of teamwork can often be underestimated based on how chaotic and sometimes unpredictable the game can seem to be.

Despite not having much personal experience with talking to the top teams, I can say with fair certainty that synergizing team play is no easy task and requires a great deal of patience. Many teams theorize how to play as a team but often this idealistic scenario is overcome by a few key shortfalls during the game. I'm going to summarize what I think some of these may be, and potentially shed some light on the skill gap that has naturally arisen as a result.

1) Having the right mix of shot calling

There's a fine line here between a slick machine and an overcrowded, confused set of individuals. 

There absolutely needs to be a shot caller in the team. Without someone to quickly brush over ultimate charges and make the decision of whether the time is right to engage or disengage, and which ultimates to make use of in the coming fight, control can rapidly be snatched from you, leaving your team scrambling to survive. This transcends the need for intra-team synergies, such as the two supports making a decision together on who should use their ultimate first. A shot caller should not need to micro-manage individual ultimate uses during a fight, but rather give an overview of which offensive ultimates to use beforehand. I refer to offensive ultimates as they of course establish lock-down and damage output, whereas support ultimates tend to be reactive in nature, with exception of a premature support ultimate to breach an area.

This 'overseer' job is not an easy one. Make no mistake it requires significant competitive experience to pull off well, but equally this experience cannot be attained unless this sort of mindset is adopted early on and worked on. The shot caller needs to be able to formulate and adjust methods of attack on the fly, and this does not only apply to offensive postures but defensive ones too. Often the feeling of being overrun can be attributed to a team that does not possess a shot caller with the capability of rallying his teammates away from certain death before the necessary tools are in place, individual skill gaps notwithstanding.

Bear in mind it may also be helpful to use one of your support players as the shot caller, rather than a DPS player who is often in the thick of the fight. Supports often have a broader view of the team fight, a good example being Zenyatta who tends to sit behind his team or Lucio who, whilst not positioning as defensively as Zenyatta, can control the timings of the speed boost plays with the strategic calls.

Combining these shot calling abilities from a single person with the more nuanced teamwork between individuals in terms of ultimate timing is a well-rehearsed skill in itself.

2) Playing to the current meta

The issues around this can be divided into two branches. First is a team that does not respect the value of sticking to the meta; second is a team that understands the value of playing to the meta, but incorrectly applies their knowledge of it. 

The former precedes the latter in a team's improvement cycle, and is more easily recognizable/fixable. It's a fairly straightforward case of picking from a small pool of heroes per map at present given the team-fight oriented style of play that the game requires and has leaned towards based on recent balance changes. The issue is easily rectifiable by watching top-tier match VODs and making use of stats websites that give you a sense of the popular picks on each map, a good one being http://overwatch.rivsoft.net/.

The latter is one we need to investigate more carefully. How often do we hear calls in-game to pick certain heroes because they're 'meta', only for a carefully crafted composition to perform very poorly once in action? This is not to say meta heroes should not be picked, but they need to be used in the correct circumstances, and in a way which helps them synergize with the team. The exceptions are the likes of Reinhardt and Zarya, which tend to work well regardless of team synergy on many maps, but heroes like Winston will have a tough time when not grouped with active support in the form of Zarya shields and/or Zenyatta harmony orb. The same can be said for picking a McCree in the hands of a player which is overly aggressive and who is tunnel-visioned into focusing purely killing the opposition in front of him rather than assisting his support players. 

The primary sources of getting picked off before a team fight really sets in are a) players selfishly chasing what they think are easy kills on their own and b) allowing too much room for aggressive postures by enemy heroes to go unpunished. They both boil down to gaps being created between the lines of your team, gaps which lead to a misalignment of target focusing and unnecessary deaths outside of your 6 man safety net. Overcoming these weaknesses requires careful analysis of replays - studying professional player movement and teamwork alongside your own is often an underestimated past time.

3) Unspoken target prioritization

In a perfect world we'd be able to call out every target in every engagement and align both the offensive and defensive objectives of the team amongst every member. However communication can easily become cluttered, and in context of a fast-paced game like Overwatch there often isn't time to even think of communicating in this way. Calling out targets is important at times when the team is not on the same page but ideally a team will need to establish a set of ground rules where target prioritization is agreed upon in principle based on likely heroes to be faced on particular maps. 

Some of this comes with individual experience but if communicated between members of a team can add an extra layer of synergy without the physical need to communicate every target in every fight. If the players have a basic understanding of how to prioritize targets when moving together it can add fluidity to the team's movement and open up room for comms to be used for more strategic purposes, or the intra-team communication mentioned earlier on. An example of some high priority targets: an unsupported/unshielded tank or DPS player that splits up from their team to jump your supports, a support that is not heavily defended, or a non-tank target not sitting behind a shield. Often before choosing to engage the enemy team there will be an idea of their composition and this information can be used to prioritize targets rather than everyone running in and shooting at the first thing they see.

4) Accepting responsibility of making mistakes, but keeping morale up

Although the intention in this article has been to cover some specific shortfalls, once we are able to recognize more of these mistakes there remains an onus not only on the captain but on every player on the team to take responsibility for their own. If an individual is unable to recognize their own weaknesses, too often they will fall into the trap of making the same mistakes in high pressure situations. 

Teams do however need to be careful in calling each other out, and this is best reserved for post-game discussions and in a constructive manner. In-game communication should be reserved for brief, relevant shot calls. Equally, many teams perform better when they can share in the positive moments rather than in the negative during the game. A light-hearted, fun mood in-game should not be mistaken for a team not playing seriously to win, it just needs to be followed up by a critical, constructive environment post-game.

Final words

There are a multitude of topics we can explore when it comes to this subject, but from my own experience those I have covered tend to stand out the most. 'Going pro' is never an easy feat in any spectrum of esports but with focused application the end goal can certainly become more well defined and potentially attainable to those who are dedicated enough. My hope is to provide at least one person with enough to think about to make the decision to begin or continue their journey this way. I have confidence that Overwatch is set to deliver us an exciting time ahead in the esports realm as more teams develop their competitive toolset.