Whether you’re new to Blizzard’s hero shooter or a grizzled returning veteran, the Overwatch 2 ranks system for competitive will probably be a little unfamiliar and confusing at first sight. New account holders will also have to do a little grinding to unlock competitive modes– which is probably a good thing unless you want to get bashed around in your first dozen matches.
Once you’ve unlocked Overwatch 2 ranks, there are two competitive modesyou can choose from in order to ascend in the free PC game: classic Open Queue, where you can choose any hero in any role, or the more comp-friendly Role Queue, in which you choose a role to queue for as part of a set team composition. Effectively, Open Queue is pure mayhem and Role Queue is actually competitive. Thankfully, both modes have their own associated ranks, so you don’t need to engage with Open Queue at all if you don’t want to.
As with many competitive games, you’ll need to play some placement games before your Overwatch 2 rank can be determined, but Blizzard’s sequel does things a little differently than the original. Rather than playing a set number of placements and then getting a rank based on how those went, you instead get your rank only after reaching either five wins or 15 losses. That five wins or 15 losses formula is also how you’ll get your rank updated – no more match-by-match updates. Blizzard says the aim for this is to make your skill more about consistent performance rather than your match-by-match result.
But don’t worry, you’ll still have an Overwatch 2 competitive rank and skill tier to either shamefully hide away or proudly boast about. Join us in this comp guide as we detail all the Overwatch 2 ranks in order.
All Overwatch 2 ranks in order
There are seven Overwatch 2 ranks, or skill tiers, plus the top 500 leaderboard that is separate from your rank (but does still grant a shiny badge). Within each rank there are five divisions, so to jump from the bottom of bronze to the bottom of silver, you’ve got to progress through five divisions.
Here are all of the Overwatch 2 ranks in ascending order:
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Platinum
- Diamond
- Master
- Grandmaster
Please note that your skill tier and division progress is measured for each role that you queue and that Competitive Points are rewarded separately for each role’s skill tier.
If you’re queuing with friends then there are some limits on what ranks you can play with. From bronze through to diamond, there can be a two-skill tier difference between the lowest- and highest-ranked players. In Master rank, you can group within one skill tier, and in Grandmaster, you can group within 3 divisions.
Overwatch 2 Competitive Points
You can earn Overwatch 2 Competitive Points by completing games and achieving certain ranks for each role at the end of a competitive season. Currently, these can be spent on golden weapons for each hero, but we’re hoping for more options later down the line. These golden skins do cost 3,000 CP a pop though, so you’ll need some serious game time to get them.
Here’s every way you can earn Competitive Points in Overwatch 2:
- Win a game: 15 CP
- Draw a game: 5 CP
- Bronze: 65 CP
- Silver: 125 CP
- Gold: 250 CP
- Platinum: 500 CP
- Diamond: 750 CP
- Master: 1,200 CP
- Grandmaster: 1,750 CP
You can also earn titles at the end of each competitive season and you don’t have to buy them with points. Instead, these are earned through playing a set number of matches, with the highest title of ‘Expert Competitor’ being rewarded only after you complete 1,750 matches.
How to unlock Overwatch 2 competitive modes
If you’ve made a new Overwatch 2 account on or after October 4, 2022, you need to play through what Blizzard calls the First-Time User Experience and win 50 Quick Play matches before you unlock competitive modes and their associated ranks. Your performance in these Quick Play matches will contribute to matchmaking for your early comp matches, too, although we’re not sure to what extent it will influence the players you go up against.
Why is my Overwatch 2 rank so low?
You might not have suddenly turned to dust and lost both your aim and game sense between the first game and its sequel. Blizzard has revealed that there was a bug affecting the rankings for some players and causing them to be a lot lower than they should be. It’s since been fixed and your rank should accelerate back to its rightful place, but you’ll need to complete your next set of competitive matches to see that.
On a related note, if you’ve ever felt personally victimised by the multiplayer game‘smatchmaking system, you’re certainly not alone. Blizzard has responded to the community’s concerns surrounding win-loss ratios and low ratings via a blog post outlining their plans for competitive matchmakingin Overwatch 2 season 3 and beyond, which may go some way to putting those anxieties to rest for the time being. Game director Aaron Keller provided data that illustrate just how broken matchmaking is right now,and gave assurances that the Overwatch team is working to close the skill gap in high and low MMR matches.
We also have confirmation in a furtherdeveloper blog post that seasonal rank decay will be removed forOverwatch 2 season 4. This extends toprevious effectscaused byrank decay, ensuring that your skill tier and division matchyour performance going into the new season and beyond.
And there you have it, a complete guide to Overwatch 2 ranks and competitive points. It’ll be interesting to see how core Overwatch players take to the new system, as well as newcomers, and if Blizzard shakes things up as the season progresses. For more guides like this, you can check out our Overwatch 2 tier list or our roundup of the current Overwatch 2 characters dominating the meta, so you can always pickthe right heroes and strats for the competitive grind.
