It's a long, arduous slog out of Wood, let alone Bronze My 8 yr old Junkrat/ Torb main son placed 900-ish, and the games I watch him play are nightmares of team comp and situational awareness. Torb is OP way down there and my son moved into Bronze proper almost immediately.
Now if I can just convince him that imitating Muselk and singing the Torbjorn song (adapted for little kids) while using his sitting emote all match isn't the proper way to play Overwatch. His "Sexy Junkrat in a bush" stall techniques are on point as well, though, so I can't really hate on Muselk too much.
You can do almost anything at that level and as long as you're playing a character that deals damage you'll get out pretty quickly. I played a round (I'm ~3600) as Pharah and I'm not afraid to admit that those were some fun times; I could duel bastions in midair and ult the whole team with all of them looking right at me!
What I found interesting was that there were guys that were really trying -- making callouts, talking about their ult and whatnot -- but just seemed to have a combination of no mechanical aptitude for the game and no mental awareness of what was happening around them and what they were supposed to be doing. I saw a couple of times where they'd win the fight and then just neglect to move the payload, or they'd be on defense standing in insanely vulnerable positions. The team compositions I played with were not totally terrible and certainly not any worse than some shit I'd seen in plat.
I think it highlights something of a side-effect of this style of matchmaking where if you're not good the only players you're going to be exposed to are other not good players. The game that the people at this tier are playing is a totally different thing going on than even what the guys in silver and gold are doing. You play a game in gold and people seem to get conceptually that dying on defense is pretty serious so they should entrench themselves somewhat and use the landscape to benefit them; people in bronze may know that but they've likely never seen what that actually looks like. Similarly, they've probably never seen the advantages of waiting for your team when you die instead of running in or how communicating during a team fight can be a game-changer. That's not their fault, either, seeing as the matchmaking system just pushes them all together.
I have two friends who placed similarly. It is their first PC FPS so they had tons to learn.
One hit gold and and the other is mid-silver. With some hard work you can dig yourself out but man the stories they have told. That elo is a dark place.
This is also their first comp season.
I think anyone can get out of that range with a little bit of knowledge and skill but it's hard to acquire those things down there.
The strangest thing I saw was that a Reaper had holed himself up in a room in Dorado, killing people who came through the doorway. He was in a rather ignorable position far from the main stretch, but rather than ignore him (or bait him to come out by... moving the payload) people kept just going in after him and, predictably, dying.
