Now that the trading window has opened, many rookies and semi-pros are essentially dedicating their entire life for a shot at playing in the Overwatch League — I have some advice for aspiring players that might feel like all their opportunities come to nothing in one way or another.

I’ve encountered a lot of exceptional players in my practice whose biggest obstacle was to prove themselves in the Overwatch scene. They would wonder “why is it so hard for me to advance?”.

If you wanna show that you’re valuable as a player, you have to have your goals and vision well laid out and defined with a strategy for those goals; so that you know what you want and when you’re not getting it!

Let’s say that you know what you want, you’ve laid out a vision and a counter-vision so that you know what you want to avoid. You want to know what it can look like when you’re being taken advantage of. Otherwise you’re left with questions that don’t get answered and you’ll feel resentful and bitter about that. If you know what you want and why, you can make a plan for it!

A flexible and adaptive approach helps rookie players to deal with other rookie players and non-competitive players in ranked, Overwatch Open or Contenders. It is not a great strategy for dealing with complex organizations in professional Overwatch. A complex organization has many people, processes, rules and expectations. It’s also a part of the complex ecosystem in Overwatch.

In order to have the most success when starting out fresh in competitive Overwatch, many players have to pay the price of being highly flexible and adaptive. There’s a lot of variation in rookie teams with regard to culture and competitive experience that you have to be ready to work with, because if you don’t, someone else will!

You have to overcome that to some extent to advance and climb higher up. Have your vision established; the vision for the future and your counter-vision, so that you’re afraid of what will happen if you don’t prove yourself. Failing to do so can cause resentment and it can be hard to find the reason for why you feel like that, so here’s the most common ones:

When you need to grow up, learn to deal with it and stop whining. You have to know if you’re just feeling sorry for yourself. You can get to the conclusion by making a simple pro and con list and then talk about it with somebody you care about.

If you’re not just feeling sorry about yourself, that means you have something to say and something that you need. You have to figure out what that is and then you have to develop a strategy to put that forward!

Let’s say you’re negotiating for a raise, role/hero swap or a new position in a team. You have to put yourself forward to tell the person you’re working for/with why you need to be treated with a higher salary, trusting you on other roles and heroes or why you should have more resources or authority shifted to you in the team!

You have to make a strong reason for why they should hear you out first. Imagine that someone is so overloaded with work that they never notice what’s going right and only what’s going wrong. That’s when you can show them why you think you’re right.

You can get through to them by making a plan, having a strategy that goes along with that plan and have articulated arguments for why you should receive a certain form of treatment. You also need the courage to bring it up.

Remember that you owe as much to yourself as you owe to others. You need to take care of yourself just like you take care of others. You can do it if you practice it! A lot of that is related to telling people what you genuinely think and feel. There won’t be a better friend than truth, even if that friend can be very harsh short-term.

So if you’re feeling unhappy in your current team because you’re being taken advantage of, then you have to strategize yourself out of that situation. Learn how to negotiate for yourself and how to overcome the hesitancy to engage in conflict.

Think about it like this: it’s very hard to tell the difference between negotiation and conflict, which makes it very tempting to avoid either of them, but you pay a steep price in the medium to long-term if you avoid conflict. It’s better to face the conflict with a direct and clear approach in the present and make peace for the medium to long-term.

To sum it all up; prepare and strengthen yourself for what’s about to come and allow yourself to use that strength with courage and honesty. If you struggle a lot with this, try being as honest and truthful to yourself as possible. If your instincts tell you that you’re on the right path with something, don’t overthink it! Trust yourself and use your strengths to your advantage instead of hiding them because of shame or doubt!