Maintain a healthy state of mind with our tips for tilt prevention.
In this guide you’ll find tips and tricks to help you avoid tilt for Season 5 of competitive play.
A state of tilt in Overwatch is an emotional response of increasing frustration when the effort you’re putting into the game isn’t being rewarded, or if one particular moment (say, someone intentionally griefing) drives you up the wall and you just can’t let it go.
Tilt’s certainly not an invisible force that’s causing you to lose games though. Break it down into its fundamental parts instead and you’ll find that it’s a perfectly natural human reaction that can affect anyone.
Now that Competitive Season 5 presents us all with a fresh start, it’s time to start climbing the ranks in as calm and enjoyable way as possible. So if you’re struggling to identify when you’re tilting and how to combat it effectively, you’ve come to the right place.
We’ve got all the information you need to help spot tilt when it occurs, understand why it happens in the first place, and even how you can use it to your advantage to get better at Overwatch.
What is tilt?
Overwatch is a team based competitive shooter, and like all such games it has it’s fair share of tilt-inducing moments. Tilt can best be described as a state of mind where your emotions are in charge, and your performance is suffering as a result.
You can find yourself in this situation for a number of reasons. Maybe you’ve just had a bad run of luck and you’ve lost several games in a row. You might be finding it hard to switch off from a mistake of your own that you’ve acknowledged, or you may be focusing too hard on minor misplays by your team.
What can it do to your game?
Getting put on tilt can lead you to playing a lot worse even if you don’t notice it. Seeing red dampens your decision making, heightens recklessness and shuts down communication with your team.
What happens if I don’t deal with it?
Constantly queuing into matches when you’re on tilt could result in major loss streaks. It can force you into this strange limbo where you don’t feel like playing any more because you’re not enjoying yourself, yet feel compelled to do so. The trouble is, that only compounds the problem.
All of our Season 5 coverage:
- 1. Guide – Overwatch: Season 5 guide
- 2. Start Times – Overwatch: Season 5 start times – US, UK and Europe
- 3. Skill Ratings & Ranks- Overwatch: Season 5 Skill Ratings & Ranks
- 4. Rewards – Overwatch: Season 5 rewards
- 5. Solo Queue – Overwatch: Best Heroes for Solo Queuing in Season 5
How do I avoid tilting?
Queue with mates and keep it positive.
Playing with friends always makes for a more enjoyable experience as it promotes jolly cooperation. It’s also a great way to joke about mistakes and have a laugh about the game if things aren’t going your way. On the flipside, it’s also fun celebrating little victories with everyone too.
Try switching it up
Find that you’re dying over and over? Does something seem off with your current team composition? Voice it in the chat and encourage your team to make some hero switches. If there’s no response, try and switch hero yourself.
It’s a way of actively taking matters into your own hands, rather than sitting there stewing angrily at your team. You never know, sometimes one hero swap can really upset the enemy team’s momentum.
Make it work
Somewhat a continuation of the point made above: go into each lobby with the mantra: “I’m going to make the comp work no matter what”. It’s a healthy way of approaching each game if you’ve found yourself with a very questionable selection of heroes who aren’t cooperating in the slightest. It also ensures you’re not entering the match with a negative attitude right off the bat, and it’s surprising what hero mixes can be successful in Overwatch.
We recommend learning Ana who’s the most capable when it comes to solo-healing, so you can lock her in if no one else wants to play a supporting role. She can provide main healing and also help deal with particularly bothersome enemy heroes like Pharah and Mercy.
Remind yourself that it really is, above all, just a videogame
We know, we know. This turn of phrase gets thrown around a lot, but it really is true. Overwatch is a videogame created by Blizzard Entertainment, hence it is meant to be played for entertainment purposes and isn’t something to get mad at. If you’re having a bad game, don’t get riled up, just look at it from a different perspective. There are more pressing matters in life after all.
Grab a notebook
We reckon the best way to avoid tilt is to take your mistakes and losses, and use them as ways of improving our game.
Mendokusaii (a pro player for Cloud 9) gives a really handy bit of advice in the video below, and talks about maintaining a tally chart with sections like, ‘Team composition’, ‘Positioning’, and ‘Mechanics’. Every time you lose, you tick it off on the tally chart until you can easily identify what aspect of your game is causing you the most trouble. If most of your problems lie in positioning, that’s your cue to go away and improve on it.
What if I start tilting?
Sometimes, and no matter how hard we try, tilt can strike at any time. So here’s our top tips on how to stop it in its tracks.
Analyse your play
Very much like the last point we made, the best way to stop tilt is to focus on improving your own play. Approach each game with a relaxed mindset and try to analyse each sequence of events leading up to key passages of play.
There’s nothing to be gained from getting angry, but there’s so much to be gained from a mindset that’s prepared to learn and improve. Believe us, if you go into every game with the intention of improving no matter if it’s a win or a loss, you’ll start climbing the ranks rather than slipping down them.
Take a break
Just go and take a break, either by playing a completely different game, hopping into Quick Play to let off some steam, or just peeling yourself away from your computer for a while. Have a coffee, do some stretches, maybe go for a walk outside.
As long as you detach yourself from the vicious cycle of queuing into matches, you’re doing something right. Taking a moment away from Overwatch allows you to cool off mentally, and can even give you the much needed thinking space to assess why you lost those games and made some questionable plays.
Losing is good
Yes you read that right. Going on a huge win streak doesn’t teach you much, but going on a loss streak does. View losing as a positive to be learned from, rather than a negative, and you’ll go far.
For more on this, here’s a great video on why losing is actually good for you.
