I went 5-5 in my placement matches last week.

Since then I'm 3-15, it's absolutely ridiculous.

How is it possible that I'm getting stomped so badly on a consistent basis, shouldn't the ranking be putting together fairly even teams?

Sounds like you're just experiencing something that's pretty common in competitive team games. It's hard to comment without knowing exactly what's happening in your matches though.

It's possible that you got placed higher than you actually are, or that your teammates got placed higher than they actually are, or that your opponents got placed lower than they actually are. That being said, I'm reluctant to blame it on 'lol matchmaking always gives me bad teammates wtf,' because 18 games isn't a tiny sample size.

I was and am very frustrated with Overwatch's seating method. I started out with a rank 49 and ended up getting destroyed in a series of matches until I reached about 40. Now I'm getting even matches that are fun until some inevitably leaves. Now, I'm not claiming I'm better than rank 40, my complaint is that those seating matches should have put me there in the first place. I would have quit if not for my friend encouraging me to keep at it.

I've had a lot of the same frustrations when solo queuing in the mid-upper 40s, and I think a lot of it comes down to just how poorly distributed players are across the 1-100 rankings.

There is such a massive concentration of players in the mid 40s through the mid 50s that the rankings just feel kinda meaningless until you start to fall well below that range or manage to somehow climb out of it. The matches are wildly inconsistent in terms of the balance, skill levels, and attitudes (there are a lot of people that just don't give a shit about coordination or team composition that shouldn't be playing competitive at all).

I'm hoping the adjustments they're making in season two, including reintroduction of tiers and a 1-5000 ranking scale, will help to better differentiate player skill and help sort out some of these match balancing issues. If you haven't seen the recent dev video about season two competitive changes, here it is:

I don't know what rank you are, but one of the simple ways to improve your winrate is to start following the metagame in terms of team composition.

Right now the standard strategy is having 2 Attack heroes, 2 Tanks (Reinhardt +1), and 2 Supports (Lucio +1). Defense heroes are pretty worthless, I wouldn't even bother playing them in competitive if your goal is to win. If your goal is to win, then I suggest filling in whatever your team needs from the above comp. Yes, you will spend a lot of time playing supports and tanks. No, you cannot control your teammate's hero choices so you'll have to make do with what you can. Composition is a big deal and usually the team with the better one wins.

Another way to gain rank is by communicating with your team. I don't know what platform you're playing on, but on PC a lot of people actually seem open to talking once you get the ball rolling. Stick to simple things like calling out enemy flankers, and maybe throw a, "Hey, (x hero) isn't working here, maybe we should think about a change" if you're feeling bold.

Here's a short list of heroes that are the best at each role if you have trouble choosing who to play:

• Attack: Attacking heroes seem to be fairly balanced, with Mcree topping the group in damage and range. Weakest is Pharah, if only because a good Mcree hard counters her while she's hovering.
• Tanks: Reinhardt seems to be a must on most maps, but every other hero here can serve as an effective off-tank depending on your comp. Roadhog is great for securing pickoffs, D.va is great at disrupting the enemy's backlines, and zarya is great at keeping teammates alive and comboing ults. Winston is... well Winston is pretty much just a worse D.va right now, unfortunately.
• Supports: Lucio is a must, all the time. Zenyatta is also a must, most of the time. These two are the supporting duo of the meta right now. Ana can sometimes be a worthwhile substitute for Zen, but she's also harder to play. Mercy is very weak compared to these three; they made her ult charge more slowly and now she's underwhelming. Symettra is situational by design--use her on the first point or not at all.

Hope this helps. I also get some ungodly losing streaks in this game for some reason. Sometimes you just have to power through.

I would really echo the poster above. Try your best to follow the 2 tank 2 attack 2 support setup. Obviously you can't pick for your team mates but try to fill whatever role is needed, usually 2nd tank or 2nd support.

It sounds like you may have placed a bit too high after placements, which is absolutely frustrating for you and not much fun. Keep plugging away and hopefully soon you reach you sweet spot in rank where every match is a tense battle. It's tough to when you drop into the 40s because I would assume those people aren't looking on fourms about the best team comps or the best strategies etc, so you're just relying on being much better than the enemy.

I had some awful placement matches and landed at 49. It took me a while to claw my way up, battling as much against my own team as the enemy but once you reach the mid 50s it gets a lot better as you start to see some decent composition. Less bastions and Hanzo and Torb etc. I'm currently sitting pretty at 69 and it's great, your team actually waits at the spawn for everybody before rushing in, you get the good group compositions, your supports actually save their ults to counter enemy ults etc. Keep going and hopefully you start having more fun.

You pretty much can not let it bother you too much. The lower ranks are awful. It astounds me how many people have put hundreds of hours into the game and yet fail to understand the basic mechanics of it. Group up for attacks. Ideally 2 tanks, 2 support, 2 DPS (there is some leeway here but it is a basic structure that works). When you are playing defence, play defensively. Yet I am constantly matched with groups who never choose healers or tanks so I basically have to choose which one we are going to get. People who spawn, run in for a 1 v 6, die, and then do it all over again. People who set up right outside the enemy spawn and die leaving the rest of the team at a disadvantage. It would be one thing if the team was set up correctly and we got outplayed, but most of the time that is not the case. 9 times out of ten I can call a loss before the match even starts based solely off of team composition.

Yeah, it's hard to give good advice without knowing what platform you are on, if you're using a mic, etc. It's not uncommon to be placed a little too high, but it might also be because you're playing solo queue for instance. What characters have you been playing? When you move from QP to competitive, team composition is much more important. And it's hard to stay on the same character from game to game. For instance, on defense, Reinhardt is the tank of choice. But on KOTH, the Winston/Zarya combo right now is dominating the meta. Tracer is a KOTH specialist, and your team is just in general probably in for a rough time if you're sacrificing a spot to something stupid like an offensive Bastion (there are exceptions though!). As others have said, 2 DPS, 2 tanks, 2 supports is the current meta of choice (it's hard to sub in any of the defenders or Symmetra right now without careful consideration to what you're doing).

I started rank 57 on PS4 and ended the season rank 56, so I did okay (didn't get the PC version until a few weeks back, and I only just hit level 25 today). And that was after eating a couple of disconnect losses. But from observation, there have been people in the games I've been in you would suspect got overranked (that or they were intentionally trying to get de-leveled).

@werupenstein: I was going through the same thing, what helped me was improving your MMR through individual performance and knowing when to quit when your performance starts to slip for the day. Otherwise you better roll deep with some friends.