Overwatch 2 Season 4’s Rank Upgrades Elevate Some Players to Grandmaster

As a result of the significant changes to the ranking system implemented in Season 4 of Overwatch 2, several players have been promoted from Platinium to the highest tier of Grandmaster. Overwatch 2’s Season 4 kicked off with a dramatic event. The ranking upgrades took the community aback, despite introducing a new hero in the form of Lifeweaver and including a rework for Brigitte in the patch notes.

In spite of assurances that rank decay will be eliminated in future versions of Overwatch, a significant number of players noticed a decline in their standing after the latest patch went live. Some significant final ranking modifications needed to be done to represent players’ true SR. Because of this, a select few players were elevated to far higher positions on the ladder than previously.

The progression path in Overwatch 2 takes players directly from Plat to GM

A streamer by the name of Guru disclosed in a post on Twitter that during the previous season, his smurf account was competing against Top 500 players despite the fact that it was in Platinum. However, when season 4 began, his account was suddenly upgraded to GM1, and he is not the only one whose rank has increased in this manner.

just to put things into perspective, last season i did an unranked to gm mmr and by my 17th game i was in a top 100 lobby as a plat1

i just checked the update rank on it for season 4 and its gm 1 lmfao pic.twitter.com/PcGVPAKLdI

— GURU (@Gurululz) April 11, 2023

Another streamer, Kephri, said that many of his friends had their matchmaking system modified and were placed into GM from Smurf accounts significantly lower than their actual skill level. Kephri noted that this happened to a large number of his friends. The adjustments were addressed, and Senior Engineer Morgan Maddress outlined why the game should not be displaying your actual skill level based on your matchmaking rating.

The MMR system is essentially going away & just using a Rank system. Sounds good, but it feels more like an anti-smurf measure? I am seeing almost all of my friends (myself included) go to GM1 on our DPS accounts regardless of where they were. Though somehow I see others demoted?

— Brian St. Pierre (@Kephrii) April 11, 2023

“Your ranks should now reflect your true MMR,” he stated to the players. “Except in the case where you logged in during the first hour of the patch and we inadvertently decayed S4 ranks as well, that problem will be resolved on that rank when you get your first rank update.”

For top GM players there had been some unintended inflation prior to S4 that S4 fixed.

— Morgan Maddren (@SrslyPaladin) April 11, 2023

It’s wild to see such dramatic jumps on the Overwatch ladder, but for some people, you’ll need to win five games before you can find out their actual MMR rank.