Open is open to everybody. There is no such thing as being good enough for open. Once you find a team, and get over your "fear" of using your mic, you'll start getting better in no time. Your voice is one of the most important things you have to offer.

Good luck, homie!

having a unique voice actually just makes it easier for your teammates to know who's talking :) this will be very useful for you as a demo because when you scream "SOLDIERS BOMBING ME" your team wont rush to your medic instead.

When you are doing comp make sure that you enjoy yourself, this is a videogame with magic healing beams and rocket jumping, if you get mad remember that even the best players win and lose matches left and right, make friends, be confident in your teammates, learn from people who are better than you, develope a gamesense, and remember competitive gaming requires experience and a lot of thought, to sum this up have fun. ;)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrUhQGNCUAAm4j5.jpg

Seriously though, you're already ready. The best way to get started is to find a team of people that you'll actually talk to. Don't just post on the UGC LFT forum and find some group of randoms you'll never communicate with except during a match. Find friends, or make friends. Talk to these people outside of just matches, and your entire experience will be a hell of a lot more fulfilling.

While everyone hates that Pyro main that never shows up to practice and only shows up to a match two minutes before it starts, everyone also pities him because he's missing out on one of the best experiences in eSports.

One good way to learn as a beginner is to watch POVs of the pros through STVs or streams.

They lost S17 to elevate :P

not when it mattered :P

If you want to get into 6v6, this list of guides can help you get started and includes many helpful tips. Good luck :)
also, as with everything, practice makes perfect. don't get discouraged if you're not doing as well you'd like to at the start, if you try to turn every defeat into a learning experience and work on your mistakes, you'll get better in no time

I wish I had started playing ESEA first season. As long as you learn something from each scrim and have a dedicated team you will improve miles. Marxist's guides can help tons, even rewatching them now I pick up bits and pieces. Also play pugs. Newbie mixes are probably gonna be really helpful if you aren't confident about your play. Don't worry about your voice, as capnfapn said, it'll make you easier to identify (sounds corny, but it's actually true). If someone makes fun of you over it they don't deserve to be on a team with you

You can absolutely start competitive at any level. You will struggle dm wise and with the 6s mechanics at first, but there's no better thing you can do to improve than actually play a season of competitive.

If you pubstomp pubs as of now, imagine with a few competitive seasons on your belt.

You are gonna get stomped plenty of times in competitive, but don't let that discourage you. Practise your dm, be it MGE, dm or whatever you prefer and practise your gamesense/mechanics by playing tf2center/pickups, at the begining your improvement is really noticeable so it's gonna be very rewarding when you start hitting shots and making plays you would never be able to make before you got into competitive.

Also don't be afraid to use your mic, good communication is an absolute must in high levels of competitive and practising good calling and letting go of that little fear is the best thing you can do.

Also if you wanna read up on some basic mechanics / tips, guides etc, drop by Comp.tf which is a competitive focused tf2 wiki which should help you clear up some doubts you might have

just dont get discouraged when you get rolled, because that first win as a team will make it all worth it.

Newbie Mixes because they haven't been mentioned yet are helpful as well

stop stealing my memes

but i linked it :^)

What does that even mean?

only lan matters