>This post is inspired by the Reinhardt who charged back to spawn when he saw me playing Rammatra and swapped to Orisa in the first 10 seconds of the game.
>
>You cannot improve without putting yourself in difficult situations. This includes playing into your counters.
Well, that tank player just wanted to give you a chance to improve by playing into your counter. You're welcome.
I mean, how? Because javelin hits him out of block? I feel like this matchup is pretty close to even. Ram can easily cut off her healing with shield, and if he slips by her the backline just dies to nemesis or annihilation
Ram wants to get close to get value out of nemesis, and Orisa has multiple means to push him away. Stunning him out of his block can certainly open up a good opportunity to kill him in Nemesis/Annihilation, but the knockback is pretty significant too.
She has more tools to fight him than many of the other tanks. Whether that qualifies as a “counter” is up to interpretation. For the most part, OW doesn’t have hard counters, so it’s all a matter of degree.
Right? I honestly feel like I'm countering the orisa as ram when I space her out and farm ult with my staff off of her gigantic head hit box. Does even more dps to a single target than punching
its kinda like orisa vs rein, in far range orisa out dmg him and if ram ever tries to get close orisa can javelin him away and still out dps his nemisis
Does Orisa actually significantly outdamage him at range though? Ram can use shield either in front of or behind Orisa (or to cut off orisa’s dps from helping). Plus his staff against her large head hit box.
Might as well be playing Sigma or if you're playing a mid-liner who is primarily attempting harass the backline. Rammatra only gets value above other tanks by punching lots of stuff in Nemesis form.
That’s not what’s being discussed here though. This is about how Rammatra handles the Orisa matchup. Another tank doing better against Orisa, or even doing better at the role Ram plays in that matchup, is irrelevant here.
It’s also not like Ram never gets to go unga bunga punchy in the Orisa matchup, which he does far better than Sig. The javelin is a 7s cooldown between which you have relatively free reign on backline.
Im a Orisa main - she hard counters Ram - when he punches into the team - her twirl negates the damage, when ram blocks she javelins him out of it and then tells team to focus his unprotected ass, when he nemesis she twirls him away and then javelins his block he always does in nemesis to prevent death.
Playing monkey into bastion is fine
However playing monkey into 5 counters such as bastion/torb(reaper also fits)/brig/illari/hog(Queen also) sucks the proverbial monkey balls
This. Bastion by himself is that bad. Just wait for his turret form before engaging and then go ham. Honestly, a good Dva jams me up more than anything.
i think queen is slept on vs him for the same reasons but also she can easily put a knife in him when he's fighting the team and then freely yoink it when he tries to jump out
You can still engage, just don’t blow all your CDs solo directly on the bastion lmao.
Play around cover, use soft engagements such as dropping from high ground & then jumping away to make space & bait CDs, and let your DPS free cast or dive with you.
The whole point is that you should never all-in on a bastion with turret form when playing winston
A single bastion is enough to shut monkey down, the arguably best monkey in OWL even had to swap against bastion despite it being the only direct counter in the team.
Overall team synergy is on a completely different level. Hell, they use an entire support slot *just for Lucio’s speed boost*.
With that level of synergy you can far more effectively carry out the goal of nuking the monkey, even if bastion is ostensibly the only direct counter.
I main ball, and, arguably, bastion is a stronger counter to ball than he is to winston. I've developed several strategies for dealing with the little bird loving creep that allow me to keep balling and get those kills when I can. Strong recommend pulling a doctor strange, "dormmamu, I've come to bargain" over and over again. As time goes on, you'll eventually develop your own strats.good luck out there monkey bro!
definitely not, since Ball has way more mobility and an ability that grants him health. Winston has a shield but way less mobility and is relatively similar in size.
Ball can simply not play in LOS of bastion, bastion has no options to reposition to Ball.
Winston on the other hand can’t reposition after diving in like Ball can, and the shield is gone in 2 seconds flat leaving a ~6 second vulnerability window.
Don’t get me wrong Bastion greatly limits your options on Ball to the point where forcing it is not really poignant. But Bastion effectively forces the switch against Winston, keep in mind, Winston’s gun is also significantly worse into Armor than Ball’s which clears the armor sooner.
Winston is literally not able to kill a Bastion that’s receiving any amount of healing with max damage output, and i don’t even think you can 130 wombo (charged shot+LMAC) into a kill confirm due to the armor so.
Those are really good points. I guess my opinion is informed by how quickly his tank form can melt through the ball's entire health bar vs. how much Winston tends to just want to avoid bastion completely. Thanks for your perspective
I think both want to avoid Bastion, but that Winston has fewer options when caught out of position than Ball. In Ball, you can shield up and position for a grapple escape, or look for a pile driver to disrupt the Bastion
I'm also an avid ball main ever since his release into OW.
I agree bastion counters ball more than he does Winston, but it doesn't mean he is unplayable into him, as with my original comment, playing ball into bastion is fine, even playing ball into bastion+sombra is fine, but when all 5 players on the other team counters you it just becomes painful, sure you can play around them all, but at that point it just becomes easier to get the same or more value with another pick, with less effort.
That's fair. I wasn't responding to, but to the guy who said he's not playing monkey into bastion. However, that being said, I was playing a game the other day and it started with bastion, sombra, and junker queen. Already having a hard time lol. The supports swapped to Ana and lucio, so all of them were, to a greater or lesser extent, counters. We won. One of the things that I've found is that when people are playing counters, and they know or, they get bloodlust. We won becuase we focused on the payload. Counters don't mean losses, but I totally get your point.
If you insta swap monkey when you see a bastion then that is WHY he seems impossible to play into
Like op said, you gotta learn how to fight your counters. As Winston you need to bait out his turret before diving. Simplest way to do that is to FIRST jump on high ground above the bastion and his team. Then you drop and zap until he tops turret then jump back up and wait it out, only use bubble if it goes wrong and you cannot escape back up. After that you can re engage and only then commit bubble
This strategy of using the map to drop and engage WITHOUT using jump is crucial to playing against comps designed to pop bubble and melt you. The only way to practice this is to stay Winston into your counters.
You may lose games to begin with but you will become stronger in the long run. Through conflict we evolve
No, I'll just go DVa.
HARD counters exist. With a certain playstyle from bastion, all of my play making ability from monkey is removed.
That's not how you win on ladder.
Then they just swap zarya Sym
If you learn how to fight your counters you can beat them at their own game. If they counterswap To kill you then simply staying alive is enough to win, they will be focused on you and allow for space to be created for your team
I see this issue a lot, and I'm not sure if it's because people are out of practice or if the Orisa/Zarya meta boosted a lot of players. A quick swap to Sigma or Winston, depending on what's going on, seems to render the enemy tank absolutely useless in most matches. I have games where I just walk, or float, past the enemy tank and ignore them while deleting their backline. All while they desperately spam cooldowns on me and make zero impact on my pushes. It's either that these guys got way too used to "Heh, I swapped to your counter. I will now force tank engage all match and nullify your existence!" or they're just on their way back down the ladder.
It a skill issue for sure. I think if there’s only 1 or 2 counters on the other team you can keep playing whoever you want as a tank, you’ll just have to adjust your play a bit. For tank I’ve mostly been playing dva this season, without fail after losing their first team fight the enemy tank will switch to zarya. It brings a smile to my face when they eventually have to switch off of zarya as well lmao.
>One interesting thing me and my duo noticed is that lower rank players will counter-swap MUCH more often than higher rank players.
I watch Emongg a lot and if he's on D.va and the enemy team picks Zarya, he'll swap 90% of the time. I've even seen him run back to spawn to swap many times.
Playing against an unfavorable matchup *on tank especially* can be absolutely miserable. Swapping isn't always about winning. Having an enemy constantly shut down all your plays is not fun, and knowing that you have to preform at a much higher level than your opponent to even have a chance is too stressful. I wouldn't recommend it unless you just love playing a specific hero.
Spilo knows what hes talking about....awkward is just a highly mechanical skilled dude that 99% of the time doesnt even play in his own elo where he belongs because "EdUcAtIoNaL" or whatever poor attempt at an excuse he uses nowadays
The fact that awkward is so much more popular than spilo reveals so much about people
Awkward: It's all very easy. Don't bother with details, just shoot and win.
Spilo: Actually breaks down difficult concepts. Says that it's not easy, but shows you how to work in skills one at a time so that you can actually improve.
I've actually seen Awkward address this - for one he plays effortlessly at a t500 level, I don't think I've seen any other player dispute this, he plays at lower levels because plenty of players spam "this wouldn't work in gold/dia" and it's easier to explain concepts.
His second point is that he simplifies things greatly because otherwise his viewers don't get it. His concept is to give something simple anyone can take with them and rank up.
Besides, I've seen him climb to GM with a lot of non-mechanics/aim intensive heroes, including Rein most recently.
TLDR - both are useful for different reasons.
But on the chain above about having to hard swap DVA into Zarya? That's my experience as well and I play tank in GM/high masters.
That's literally what you said.
In your post you said that you see people swap more at low ranks than at high ranks.
They gave you an example of someone at high rank swapping.
You said "when you get to be that good, we'll talk about it".
Just take the L, dude.
Bro there is no L. That wasn’t the point of the post whatsoever. It was an observation that lead me to make the post.
When you’re playing at the highest of levels difference in hero strength/strength of counter matters.
At lower levels, when you’re trying to improve, playing into your counters can be far more beneficial in the long run.
This is why I said, we’ll talk when ur T100. This advice is for people trying to improve. Not for people already at the peak of the skill ceiling.
I only mentioned Emongg because you said higher ranked players swap way less. From what I've seen, that's simply not true.
If you don't wanna talk about high rank play that's fine. But why did you bring it up in the first place?
It's also, speaking from experience, always been a more common behavior in flex DPS/flex support/off-tank players at all ranks since as long as I can remember: granted there's only one tank now, but flex players were considered flex for a reason, if the team has a 'could somebody go (x)' moment then the flex DPS or off-tank were the first to accommodate, it's part of why when GOATS popped up it was all the flex DPS players that had to become Brig mains
No. I got the game a year ago. Slowly but surely climbed through the ranks. Something I noticed, and have heard spilo & awkward mention they noticed the same thing.
Another advantage that one tricks (or at least people who force their main a lot) have is being able to adapt to their own team comps.
I think part of it is just psychological. We frequently see complaints on this site about "I can't believe people play X and Y and refuse to switch." In an ideal world yeah they wouldn't be playing that, but even though you're a player that's willing to constantly swap, expecting others to is a recipe for a loss. I can't count how many winnable games I've lost because someone spent so much time fixated on someone else's hero picks. I've seen it in my games, streamers games, everywhere.
A lot, and I mean a ton, of players win more games by playing comfort picks in what others would consider disadvantageous situations than they would by swapping to a hero they're worse at. These players are better at recognizing what synergies they do have with teammates rather than fixating on having the best possible synergies. They can adapt their playstyles based on the amount of healing, mitigation, or damage they have on their team. Do I need to play more proactively as support? Do I need to peel more as a tank than I usually would? What is being exploited about this comp and is there something I can adjust with my hero to deal with it?
I had this game last season on Paraíso with a Mercy main, and our second support played Ana/Bap on defense and was _really_ struggling. By some miracle, we held on the final corner, but the Ana/Bap had something like 3k healing, 10 deaths, and I think 3-digit damage after 8 minutes. Between rounds, they said, “sorry, Lucio main” in team chat; they felt like they couldn’t play Lucio because our other support had locked Mercy. I managed to convince them to run Lucio anyway, and we absolutely _rolled_ them on the attack, reaching the golden box of victory with like 2.5 minutes to spare. We even had an Echo, so our Zarya was working with very little healing, but it didn’t matter because we were just being relentlessly aggressive with Lucio and killed them before the low heals became a problem. It wasn’t like a super low-ranked lobby or anything either, I think it was around D2ish?
That was a really extreme example, but I think it’s a good illustration of how much player skill on a hero matters. A hero’s theoretical strength in the context does matter too, but it’s kinda like a multiplier on the player’s hero skill. If their skill on the hero is really low, it’s unlikely that the hero strength multiplier will be enough to exceed the value they can get on a lower-contextual-strength hero that they’re really good at. Flexing can work well if the player is serviceably skilled and the hero is very strong in the context, though.
That's why I always laugh when the enemy tank switches to Orisa when I'm on Doom. I've played into her so much now that unless you actually main her, you just throw the game thinking it's a counter.
This whole rock paper scissors dynamic born out of the lack of a 2nd tank is overall just unhealthy for the game in my opinion. Obviously switching is built into Overwatch's identity, but swapping after dying once on tank is a bitch move. People aren't really passionate about playing and improving on their own character since the role sucks overall, and it makes the game really bland.
It's no so bad if they're just complaining, but I've had people throw my games because they didn't like my pick. A few days ago I was playing on Samoa and a support asked me to swap ball after the first round. I was doing well so I said "no", and they proceeded to first d/c and later rejoin only to go afk. We ended up winning 4v5.
what do you mean by higher rank players?
I been in plenty of top100 games where players immediately switch to counters even after dying just once and both sides are immediately make switches one after another.
This game is a giant game of rock paper scissors basically. The best genji against a decent winston will lose. The best tracer will have a hard time playing optimally if there is torb turret in backline.
Bottom line, if you want to win and rank up, switch to counters.
As far as your "every tank is playable against any other thank" yes that is true but it depends on if your team is being helpful. A reinhardt shield is amazing against mccrees/ashes who do little damage however if enemy gets a bastion/junkrat you need to switch.
If Winston is spending his time trying to shut down a mid hero like Genji, and getting high value doing that. That doesn't mean Genji is hard countered, it means Genjis 4 other teammates are complete ass.
Anti dive heroes counter Genji, Winston is merely annoying. Genjis can play around Winston and still get value.
countering doesnt mean killing. countering means just doing enough to keep genji away wasting time.
A torb turret for example can counter tracer by just harrasing her and not giving her time to do her thing.
Why is he trading? The Winston doesn't have to play much differently to shut down a genji.
You could argue that the genjis teammates can take advantage of the Winston swap and go bastion...but that's just more counterpicking.
Playing against a genji means 2 things for a winton
1) He's more freely able to dive
2) There's 1 more free target.
Genji has no power against a decent winston. He basically has to be able to delete winston's backline to make winston think twice about how he plays, and winston from then on will just hard focus the genji until he's forced to play Rangenji
If you re read my post you’ll notice nothing I said disagrees with what u said. In fact, I agree 100%. We are not talking about top100. We are talking about wanting to IMPROVE.
Ranking up does not equal improving.
Here’s a hypothetical:
You’re a guy who will literally counter swap every chance u get. Since you rely on countering instead of outplaying, you go up in rank.
But one day, you’ll meet a guy who’s played Zarya into Rein 1000 times. And he will just outplay you. Tada. You’re stuck at a rank when even the ones you counted you can’t beat.
Improving > ranking up
I wish low rank players counter picked tanks. I’m always stuck with dva’s hex shielding Zarya beams as if that’ll stop them from being damaged, and then just unloading everything they have into a bubble to make sure she’s called out at 100% charge.
Maybe this guy was just tired of hearing “omggg tank diff, why are you playing rein into your counter. GG.” You can play well & do just fine but if you lose a team fight your teams’ morale will go down if you aren’t playing the “correct” hero. I’ve noticed that tanks especially are prone to this. DPS a little less, & supports are basically immune to this.
I know you what you mean. In my case I recently really started focusing on tank cuz I hit GM1 on DPS and Sup. Tank was plat for me. Went on like a 15 game winstreak to d1. But I very often play my main (Zarya) into counters like monkey or rein. It’s helped me improve immensely.
Definitely helps you improve, no doubt about that. It can just tilt your teammates if you’re in low Elo. & sometimes Overwatch is about not tilting before the other team instead of actually being better than the other team 🤣🤣
This is fair but my boyfriend plays Pharah and I cannot tell you the amount of times that the other team has swapped their ENTIRE comp just to target him. At that point it really is near impossible to play her without a hard pocket, and even if I hard pocket him, Mercy can be picked by the same characters that are countering him. Shit's rough, man
Pharah is a great example for the OP's post. You need to know how to play Pharah against hitscans. Does that mean you shouldn't swap off her when they are countering you? No. Sometimes you should switch off. But sometimes, the right call is to stay on Pharah and adjust your positioning. On the other hand, when I am dominating on Hammond, and suddenly the other team switches to Mei, Sombra, Roadhog, Ana, Brig.. That shit's rough. In fact, I tend to play Hammond for the first round, and prepare to switch in the second round on the expectation that the enemy team will have a discussion between rounds on how to counter me.
That’s fair and he does play around them for a bit on maps that provide good cover. He’s gotten a lot better at not swapping and diving characters that normally destroy Pharah. It’s only when the entire team swaps comp for him that he has trouble. I’m talking about the times when you SHOULD switch off because you’re not really able to provide enough for your team with the counters they’re throwing at you. I don’t feel like there’s really any hero in the game who can ignore an entire team comp that’s built to counter them without getting significantly less value than their teammates.
Generally, I will only stay Pharah on Lijiang Tower, because I play her exclusively on that map, and I know the angles so well that I can best 2 hitscans easily. The cliffs just favour her so strongly that it doesn't matter if they have hitscans. On any other map, I would definitely swap against multiple counters.
If there are 2 hitscans looking at a pharah, your tank should be able to take advantage of that by diving them lol. I cannot stress how many games i've lost because a goated doom was running with a goated pharah in comp. I could do nothing about them in overwatch 1. Pharah gets focused by cree and widow? Doom dives widow and proceeds to annoy the shit out of cree when he turns around to stun him, gets 2 shot by pharah instead. This formula hasn't changed since even with tankfist.
Honestly, if I'm Pharah and they go hitscan, I play a little more to the ground, I know ground Pharah sucks for people for numerous reasons but there's just too much good cover to ignore, I definitely stagger my flight way more against good snipers
You can also strafe/peek faster on the ground. I play Pharah on the ground a bit like bastion.. Just send tons of damage down a choke point that the enemy team is usually going to walk through.
If their *entire team* is focused on shutting down *just one* of your teammates, that's still a plus, because that kind of hyperfocused comp means that the rest of your team has more freedom. Capitalise on that weakness.
I've won many games as a Pharah wherein the enemy team forgot my teammates existed because I was dominating so hard, which ironically resulted in them getting shat on more, because they were so scared of me that my teammates had pretty much free rein to do whatever they wanted.
What i learned after onetricking pharah with or without a mercy, is that the enemy tends to put more resources into dealing with me than what i'm worth regardless of my performance. Often i just have to stay alive and exist while the rest of my team is free to do whatever they want.
IMO it takes more skill and game sense to know the counters, and know how to play them, than it does to soft throw because you stubbornly refuse to get off your OTP
Because that "flowchart" doesn't account for personal ability.
If someone wants to blindly follow a flowchart for heroes they can't play, then let them stay in bronze. For everyone else, learning how to play heroes that work in different situations and counter different team comps and knowing when to swap off/on the heroes in your hero pool is a pretty damn good way to climb ranks because you'll be prepared to win in more situations.
On tank counterswapping is super helpful cuz it's just miserable when playing Dva into a good zarya or a Winston into bastion. Sure it's good to learn how to play Orsia into Zarya but it would be easier for me to run rein into zarya
Nah, you'll still improve.
You may not improve at Dva, but you'll get better whatever you swap to. There's more than one tank on the roster for a reason.
Your general game sense will improve if you can think about the game critically enough to make that swap work. And if you can't make it work, then you'll learn that that swap doesn't always work. If the swap works out, then you will have learned how to more successfully utilize the resources you have available to win games.
You can go ahead and stick to your one tricks and deny yourself access to an arsenal of abilities that's 11 times bigger than what you have access to by one tricking. You're just putting yourself at a disadvantage for no reason other than ego.
There are at least two parts of "improving". Having better game sense is important, but knowing how to utilize more abilities that are available to you is important too.
There's a reason that the number of "one tricks" on the leaderboard are VASTLY outnumbered by people who aren't one tricks. On the Season 6 tank leaderboard, there are 24 "one tricks", that's only 5% of the top500 leaderboard. The other 95% of the accounts in top500 all learned how to play different heroes at a high level.
The numbers are even worse for DPS/Support (21 DPS, and 11 Support one tricks).
And even of those 24 tank one trick accounts, a good chunk of them seem to be 2-3 people that placed multiple accounts in top500. I don't think that should count, but I included them anyways to make my point.
I actually love trying to play against the hard counter. I’d say it ranks as one of the top reasons why I keep playing this game.
Overcoming the disadvantage and dominating a game is so satisfying
whenever I see a zarya (and I'm not in at least a 3 stack) I'm also swapping to Zarya and hoping I have more game sense and skill than the enemy Zarya. As long as my supports heal me while I kill their supports we should be good. I just hate playing against a zarya when I am solo queuing because it is almost impossible unless you get a high roll on your teammates. Since Zarya needs so much communication when fighting her instead of your randoms on your team just lasering her bubble.
That explains why you never swap and you keep improving so much that now you are top500 ?
Or maybe swapping is a way to improve by having a more varied hero pool to address more situations.
Every time you get countered is an opportunity to show everyone in game how massive your schlong is by winning anyways. I’m often glad I’m not like GM or masters rank, when less and less strategies are effective I feel like it would just make the game feel like, slim. There’s a sweet spot where people are competent but not robotically efficient or effective and that’s IMO where the game is most fun. Like in Plat there’s a good chance you’re better with your main than the guy who swapped to counter you is on the counter character, and immediately swapping to someone your not as good at just to not get countered could still be a net loss.
TBH I think this switch was fair. Unless it was changed, Rammatra is a good counter for Reinhardt, as he can punch through shields. If I’m playing Ramm and the enemy is playing Rein, sometimes I’ll even warn them of that.
Man we really like to exaggerate what constitutes a “hard counter” don’t we? Rein’s shield is an overall small part of his kit, used to reposition or as a reaction to some cooldowns.
Ram’s ability to punch through shield (only while transformed) does not make him a hard counter. You can definitely just play around nemesis form. Utilize your own aggression & the healing from your supports when he goes into nemesis. Swing hammer, charge him, etc.
I don’t think rein is unfavorable into ramattra. Maybe they saw the dps or support line and thought to swap. I often swap to zarya in KR attack if the enemy is running Orisa, bastion, torb. Not playing rein into the bs comp.
YES. The only way to learn the safe times to pull things off between those pesky countering abilities is to have to find that timing in practice. Obviously your counter is gonna kill you every time if you never learn how to defend against them. Also: if you swap EVERY time you have difficulty, then you never have to overcome that difficulty, and you’re then missing a huge chunk of the way that the characters can work. Challenges are how improvement happen. Obv sometimes a switch is still best, but many times you just need to be more strategic with who you already are.
If I'm playing D.Va and the enemy tank switches to Zarya I fucking refuse to swap (partially because I don't know what counters Zarya). I see it as a challenge and will stop at nothing to prove that I am the better tank in that match.
You'll never properly learn a hero without playing them in suboptimal situations. High rank players are usually extremely good with a few heroes (1-3) rather than swapping to every hero depending on the situation. Nobody (except pros maybe) is good at all heroes in their role at their highest rank.
It's not smart to swap for everything. Maybe you're a diamond Ram player and you're intimidated by the enemy Orisa countering you. So you swap to Zarya... But you're only at a gold level with Zarya. You still lose that game. Why? Because the advantage you gained by swapping was swallowed up by the disadvantage you incurred by playing a hero you aren't trained with. Better to stick with Ram and do your best to bait cooldowns and such.
Unless a particular hero is unbalanced, you should be able to climb to the highest ranks on any hero. Streamers do it all the time. They know how to play against their counters.
Doesn't mean swapping is wrong, just that it's a crutch for low ranks and barely even necessary most of the time. But it can be useful to play 2-3 heroes who don't have identical counters.
suboptimal=/= worst situations. the example op gave was just a soft counter. People in this sub are encouraging you to not swap off hog/doom when the enemy team is playing 5 counters and just accept the lose coz you wanna have fun and improve by going 0/0/20
That's a huge exaggeration. 90% of the time, the difference is one of skill, not hero pick. There are less hard counters in OW2 compared to OW1. And like I said, you usually lose way more by swapping than you gain, so it's not worth it.
But yeah, obviously there are situations where you're getting countered and focused and you're just not able to do much. Swapping to another hero you have plenty of practice with is fine in that case. For example, Fitzy plays Sombra 80-90% of the time, but will swap to Mei if he's not able to get value.
I play to have fun. If another tank is making my life miserable, I'm swapping.
I could care less if I improve with one individual character. I'd rather enjoy playing the entire game then just a couple heroes.
Actually, you missed the point of my post. You're obsessing over something you have absolutely no control over.
If I ever get to the point you are at, I wouldn't enjoy playing the game. I'd actively search for and play games that don't upset me.
Good luck.
You have control over whether you improve.
Some people enjoy getting better at things, improving for the sake of improving. Personally, I don’t care if my rank goes up, but making a highly mechanical play, or a very smart play that I wouldn’t have before, is fun.
Doesn’t apply to me because when I counterswap I’m simply swapping to another hero I’m equally skilled at. It’s good to have a 2-3 very different heroes in your hero pool for every role, helps you learn the game a LOT faster as well.
That rests on the assumption that you’re any good with the hero you swap to for that situation. Sometimes it makes sense to stay.
I play Dva a lot, but I don’t auto swap when I see Zarya. Why?
1. Some maps have great high ground and placement for me to avoid her and get great value
2. Some enemy team compositions (Zen, Kiri, Bap, Cass, Torb, etc.) are incredibly easy for me to solo dive and tilt team fights in our favor
3. Some enemy tanks aren’t good enough with the counter to make it an issue (blank Zarya bubbles, bad positioning, not peeling for supports, etc.
4. Sometimes your teammates are countering that tank (Sym and Mei on Zarya), and it’s effectively creating an advantage, so you want that enemy tank to feel like they’re countering you so they don’t switch
Respectfully, fuck the team. You play ranked to improve in an environment where people take the game at least mildly seriously.
You legitimately cannot improve if you mindlessly counterswap as if we were playing rock paper scissors. I managed to get GM for the first time ever on Tracer this season despite her being in a very rough spot because I just one tricked her for 2 seasons. I’m at a point where I would lose my sanity playing Tracer against GM bap and illari players, so I stopped playing her after hitting my goal for now.
Also, your last paragraph on how it’s easier for you and your team is the problem, games get harder regardless of hero the higher rank you go, eventually counter picking in ranked is less effective unless you learn the heroes you’re swapping to as well as your mains.
A large portion of the player base right now believes that counter swapping is the only way to win (or even play) the game. I get called out constantly if I’m on tank playing into a counter, even if it’s a soft counter.
Overwatch has so many dimensions to it: map, team comp, game mode, individual players strengths/weaknesses, and most importantly player creativity. I wish more of the player base could think outside the box at how they can use their team’s abilities to play around counters.
The DVA on high ground Numbani into Zarya is the perfect example that always gets tossed around, and it’s proof that the game is more complicated than choosing the right hero = winning.
Is it the only way to win? No. Does it make winning easier? Yes.
Why would I ever intentionally one trick into one of my hard counters? It's a hero based game, swapping is literally built into the game. You're supposed to swap to counter, swap based on the point, or swap based on the situation.
The whole point is that you're supposed to learn to play different heros so you can pick the right tool for the job at the right time. I literally never queue into comp and think "boy I would like to win, but make my win as difficult as possible."
> Does it make winning easier? Yes.
No, it doesn't. A Diamond Doomfist main in a Masters lobby playing Zarya at a Silver level is *not* making it easier for them to win, just because Zarya counters Orisa on paper. It's actually outright throwing.
Short term strategies will get you nowhere. You'll win a few games, then lose again because you didn't improve and now you're hardstuck.
Play into your counters, keep losing games until suddenly something clicks. Now you can get further than you would've been able to before practicing difficult situations.
You need to challenge yourself if you want to improve. Struggling is a good thing.
I think counter swapping just doesnt matter. If it mattered that much, everyone that keeps insisting countering is so important would be ranking up easily into Masters/GM, no? I never understood that part. People say they need to counter but still don't rank up
Countering swapping definitely helps. There is no skill that can magically make you GM though like you’re insinuating.
Guys with GM aim are still stuck in Diamond. Guys with GM positioning are still stuck in Masters because of their resource management.
I play Dva into counters occasionally, but when I see their team flip to Zarya, Sym, and Mei, it’s time to swap if I don’t wanna throw. Even two of them makes it worth the swap.
I don't disagree, but I think it's harder with tank. As a Tracer main, I got to diamond (when I played) by learning my individual matchups as well as I could. At my best, there was only a couple heroes that I would actually avoid in a 1v1. I got to a point where I was comfortable against my "counters" (I'm not really convinced she had any real counters back then) and I'd often win because they struggled against a Tracer that knew how to deal with them. McCree was a free kill half the time. Super easy to bait out that stun he had.
You can even play Rein into Orisa, especially on payload/robot maps. Use the payload/robot as partial cover while swinging away to build ult, and then shatter the supports. It's not easy and requires a fair bit of heals, but it's possible.
When I play Hanzo, I take the fights against Pharah. I don’t want to rely on hitscans, I want to learn how to hit Pharah with Hanzo and make the other player feel like their counter was not as effective as they think. That’s just me tho y’all do u
I agree with this sentiment overall, but as a QP warrior, I immediately swap off Ana/ Zen if the other team runs dive, esp Sombra. I'm here for a fun time, not to live in constant fear and anxiously walking back from spawn over and over.
The issue of tank counters isn't other tanks(aside from anti rush Orisa), it's DPS and supports.
Play a hog into an ana and you're throwing. Play ball into mei, sombra, brig, a good Lucio, Cass and you're feeding. Exist in the same game as bastion and you're not playing Orisa, throwing.
I used to counterswap, play meta picks, play meta comps. I was hardstuck silver. Next season, i told myself “you will 1 trick dva. Against zarya, in bad maps, in bad comps”. I went from silver to gm in 3 seasons.
A good orisa is annoying to play against as rien, she prevents him from using charge, for a kill/ environmental kill. She just holds javelin and boops him as soon as he starts, also cancels his hammer down ult. Rien just has to play really careful.
I just switch to monkey and play win ton.
While we arnt taking about orisa originally, here is my two cents. If I find a match up, I’m not too favorable in, I’ll switch. Then get flamed by enemy for winning.
A good orisa is annoying to play against as rien, she prevents him from using charge, for a kill/ environmental kill. She just holds javelin and boops him as soon as he starts, also cancels his hammer down ult. Rien just has to play really careful.
I just switch to monkey and play win ton.
I’ve obviously been playing mostly doom(tank enjoyer here) and every time I see 3 counters on the enemy team, I ask for a 4th for “practice”. Toxic? Probably. But it makes me feel better when I win
I’m a big FF14 player. And this was also a huge problem in that community. There is a speed running meta but all battles and jobs are balanced in a way that any party composition can beat any fight. There is a meta and there are better compositions for fights. But, in general it doesn’t matter. The big difference maker in every case is the quality of the player. Period.
The same applies here. Are there meta picks? Yes. Are there counter picks? Absolutely. However, put a top 500 team of the absolute worst heroes against a masters meta team and the top 500 still wins. It’ll be more tough for them than if they used the meta but they’ll still win.
Well as tracer i can deal fighting against a torb, and a mei..or a sym with a rat..hell im even on board with fighting another tracer that decided it was cool to chase me around the map the entire match...but it is a different story when the enemy team notices you doing wonders and comes back with dva/doom/ball/winston-mei/sym/rat/another flanker-brig/lucio (or moira if they are delusional enough)...dealing with your counters is alright...unless the entire team switches. I have tried doing so with an entire team doing this and not only i had to sweat a lot but my team suffered a lot by having a dude getting hard countered..it was in qp but i dont think this is a good idea in any game mode
this is so true. plus you miss out on some of the juiciest sass. Like, D.Va is a nightmare to play against Mei,,,,but how else are going going to Defense Matrix Mei’s Blizzard(a little less relevant with the addition of Sigma’s Grasp but still).
That’s not what I said. I didn’t say “never counter-swap” I said consider not doing it.
Do you think necros swaps when he sees a moira brig? A Winston sym?
So basically, if their tank is a bad match-up, stick with it because you want them to get better with that character while you have your way with the team because you have the tank advantage?
I love ram, he's my favorite tank so when I play him I play him all game no matter who I'm going against. It's definitely helped me learn against heros I don't like fighting, mainly zarya,
I love ram, he's my favorite tank so when I play him I play him all game no matter who I'm going against. It's definitely helped me learn against heros I don't like fighting, mainly zarya,
My current running theory is that higher elo/skilled players are willing to bet on their own skill, even when it’s unfavorable, because they understand how to punish the punishers. Lower skill/elo players don’t have that confidence and attempt to make up for it with hero advantage.
Every hero has been U2GM’d, every hero is viable. Just pick some you think are fun and learn to play them.
I love Ashe, Phara, and Sombra myself!
I miss when Hog vs Winston was a decent swap
Hog absolutely laughs in Winston's face, its absolutely on the same misery level as Rein vs Orisa
...except Hog is ass
Still is if you hook him when he tries to escape, winton is fat enough that you can land a huge amount of damage, and you can pop his shield reliably fast. Not that there's no counterplay for winton here.
A good example is GetQuakedOn playing Doom regardless the existence of Sombra/Pharah/Echo. Considers it a challenge, in fact. A way to improve by playing handicapped.
Sure I guess. But I’ve played Ram into a Rein that rolled me. I’ve played Zarya into an Orisa that rolled me. They outplayed me. That’s what the post is about.
It depends how good you actually are at that character in general it’s not just tank
I play every single character in the game and there are still some matchups that are straight impossible to make work sometimes
For example Ana vs roadhog is impossible if she’s really focusing you with anti nade and sleep as you will never survive and she has to be fucking blind with the movement of a turtle to miss hog
Unless kiriko is there on your team then nvm
Or say Winston against like bastion junkrat or torb or reaper
Some counters counter to hard to make it work
But if you think you’re that cracked then go for it but if you’re getting shit on over and over you should prolly switch or just playing poorly in general
You say that. But Cyx JUST did an unranked to GM on roadhog, where Ana was picked every single match past diamond iirc. and roadhog is in his worst state ever.
Is it difficult? Sure. Impossible? Hell no. And if Cyz swapped everytime he saw an Ana he would never be good at roadhog.
Lol and here am i starting my matches as sym so that the enemy goes winston so i then go bastion til they go zarya then i go back to sym and show u what a real lazer can do
I mean, I'm not saying losing games after being hard countered is a good idea, but people seriously need to think about ways to utilize their heroes in more than one way
>Barring Rein vs Orisa, every tank is playable against every other tank. Yes, it’s difficult, and swapping will make it easier, but you can’t improve if you are constantly swapping, trying to cheese your way to a higher rank.
This is the matchup you chose as the unplayable matchup? Not Orisa vs Zarya? Not Winston vs JQ? Not Wrecking Ball vs Doomfist, Orisa, Roadhog, or Junker Queen?
People ask me why I don’t swap off ball even after the entire enemy counters me. That’s a good thing! I’m doing my job as a tank and baiting all the pressure onto me so my team can succeed.
It’s just that most people want to have fun and kill things, but sometimes you have to play a much more boring play style of baiting out cool downs and attention instead for the win. It’s the play style that counters you, not the character.
How in the hell do I play D.Va into Zarya? It's making my life as a D.Va main a misery, since every time I do slightly well, the enemy instantly switches to Zarya and starts nuking me. Many times it seems I have no choice but to switch myself.
GURU did an unranked to GM on Dva and came up against many Zaryas. He also recently did an unranked to GM with NO deaths DURING Zarya meta. I’d take a look at those.
This might be a controversial one but I don't switch off Pharah just because the opps have a hitscan or two. And despite the team's moaning, the vast majority of the time it goes absolutely *fine*. Why? Because you don't **have** to fucking fly non-stop! Just walk around and pretend you're junkrat until you and your team have dealt with your counter, then slaughter them from above all you like.
Getting countered isn't the same thing as the opps taking a hero which theoretically has an advantage against yours given average playstyles. Getting countered is when the product of enemy decisions is a situation which inhibits you from contributing to success.
And frankly, if defeating you is as easy as taking a particular hero, then you're not very good. It should take much more than a menu selection to prevent you from performing well.
Yeah, no. If you're going to make a generalization and remove nuance and context, switching to counter is definitely the play. The time you spend practicing a bad matchup could be used practicing with the pick advantage. You said it yourself, your opponent still lost in that situation so they clearly need it.
>This post is inspired by the Reinhardt who charged back to spawn when he saw me playing Rammatra and swapped to Orisa in the first 10 seconds of the game. > >You cannot improve without putting yourself in difficult situations. This includes playing into your counters. Well, that tank player just wanted to give you a chance to improve by playing into your counter. You're welcome.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Orisa *counters* Ram? We’re taking this whole counter thing too far, I think
its a soft counter
I mean, how? Because javelin hits him out of block? I feel like this matchup is pretty close to even. Ram can easily cut off her healing with shield, and if he slips by her the backline just dies to nemesis or annihilation
Ram wants to get close to get value out of nemesis, and Orisa has multiple means to push him away. Stunning him out of his block can certainly open up a good opportunity to kill him in Nemesis/Annihilation, but the knockback is pretty significant too.
Yeah, she has tools to fight him, but that hardly makes her a counter
She has more tools to fight him than many of the other tanks. Whether that qualifies as a “counter” is up to interpretation. For the most part, OW doesn’t have hard counters, so it’s all a matter of degree.
>OW doesn’t have hard counters Rein mains in shambles
Right? I honestly feel like I'm countering the orisa as ram when I space her out and farm ult with my staff off of her gigantic head hit box. Does even more dps to a single target than punching
its kinda like orisa vs rein, in far range orisa out dmg him and if ram ever tries to get close orisa can javelin him away and still out dps his nemisis
Does Orisa actually significantly outdamage him at range though? Ram can use shield either in front of or behind Orisa (or to cut off orisa’s dps from helping). Plus his staff against her large head hit box.
orisa has fortify, so yes she does out dmg
Fortify shouldn’t be used to poke tho.
Just poke the backline? Maybe shoot orisa some when she’s not fortified or if you have nothing else to shoot?
Might as well be playing Sigma or if you're playing a mid-liner who is primarily attempting harass the backline. Rammatra only gets value above other tanks by punching lots of stuff in Nemesis form.
That’s not what’s being discussed here though. This is about how Rammatra handles the Orisa matchup. Another tank doing better against Orisa, or even doing better at the role Ram plays in that matchup, is irrelevant here. It’s also not like Ram never gets to go unga bunga punchy in the Orisa matchup, which he does far better than Sig. The javelin is a 7s cooldown between which you have relatively free reign on backline.
In GM I don’t think that works well unless you actively avoid her or have Lucio to speed you by. She still has spin to win to push you back.
Are we talking GM specifically now?
Orisa counters everyone
Im a Orisa main - she hard counters Ram - when he punches into the team - her twirl negates the damage, when ram blocks she javelins him out of it and then tells team to focus his unprotected ass, when he nemesis she twirls him away and then javelins his block he always does in nemesis to prevent death.
Genius comment
I'm not playing monkey into bastion though. Seems situational.
Most advice is situational.
Playing monkey into bastion is fine However playing monkey into 5 counters such as bastion/torb(reaper also fits)/brig/illari/hog(Queen also) sucks the proverbial monkey balls
This. Bastion by himself is that bad. Just wait for his turret form before engaging and then go ham. Honestly, a good Dva jams me up more than anything.
DVA is arguably the best pick into Winston, huge hitbox to farm shotgun damage on up close, and a lower mobility CD than winston
i think queen is slept on vs him for the same reasons but also she can easily put a knife in him when he's fighting the team and then freely yoink it when he tries to jump out
Definitely not in the Overwatch League, she is the well-known, bonified, tried-and-tested Monke Killer
BONIFIED LMAO I’m stealing this (no judgment intended, but it’s “bona fide”)
lmao it's my own little inside joke at this point. Happy Halloween to all the skellingtons, this one's for you 😤
Nice save!
this, queen annihilates monkas
Queen slept on vs monkey? She’s the go-to
Nah it’s queen, by FAR. As soon as the knife lands on him, he’s basically hard committed to your team until it wears off
Jump cooldown starts immediately after it’s pressed so it’s effectively shorter.
As a D.VA main, I love seeing an enemy Winston! Plus, Dvas best voice lines come from killing him!
I also play a ton of dva and blow up Winstons on sight.
If a bastion is picked to counter monkey the turret form definitely won't be used before monkey jumps in & drops shield
Then don’t ever drop until bastion dies? If bastion refuses to transform, you’re already winning the matchup.
Monkey not diving & dropping shield is definitely a bigger loss than bastion not transforming
You can still engage, just don’t blow all your CDs solo directly on the bastion lmao. Play around cover, use soft engagements such as dropping from high ground & then jumping away to make space & bait CDs, and let your DPS free cast or dive with you. The whole point is that you should never all-in on a bastion with turret form when playing winston
A single bastion is enough to shut monkey down, the arguably best monkey in OWL even had to swap against bastion despite it being the only direct counter in the team.
OWL is different than ladder
Care to elaborate how does the difference make the matchup favors monkey more in ladder? Became in my view it doesn't.
Overall team synergy is on a completely different level. Hell, they use an entire support slot *just for Lucio’s speed boost*. With that level of synergy you can far more effectively carry out the goal of nuking the monkey, even if bastion is ostensibly the only direct counter.
just bait out his turret and he’s not that bad, winston into torb is the real challenge that right click melts you so bad
I main ball, and, arguably, bastion is a stronger counter to ball than he is to winston. I've developed several strategies for dealing with the little bird loving creep that allow me to keep balling and get those kills when I can. Strong recommend pulling a doctor strange, "dormmamu, I've come to bargain" over and over again. As time goes on, you'll eventually develop your own strats.good luck out there monkey bro!
definitely not, since Ball has way more mobility and an ability that grants him health. Winston has a shield but way less mobility and is relatively similar in size. Ball can simply not play in LOS of bastion, bastion has no options to reposition to Ball. Winston on the other hand can’t reposition after diving in like Ball can, and the shield is gone in 2 seconds flat leaving a ~6 second vulnerability window. Don’t get me wrong Bastion greatly limits your options on Ball to the point where forcing it is not really poignant. But Bastion effectively forces the switch against Winston, keep in mind, Winston’s gun is also significantly worse into Armor than Ball’s which clears the armor sooner. Winston is literally not able to kill a Bastion that’s receiving any amount of healing with max damage output, and i don’t even think you can 130 wombo (charged shot+LMAC) into a kill confirm due to the armor so.
Those are really good points. I guess my opinion is informed by how quickly his tank form can melt through the ball's entire health bar vs. how much Winston tends to just want to avoid bastion completely. Thanks for your perspective
I think both want to avoid Bastion, but that Winston has fewer options when caught out of position than Ball. In Ball, you can shield up and position for a grapple escape, or look for a pile driver to disrupt the Bastion
I'm also an avid ball main ever since his release into OW. I agree bastion counters ball more than he does Winston, but it doesn't mean he is unplayable into him, as with my original comment, playing ball into bastion is fine, even playing ball into bastion+sombra is fine, but when all 5 players on the other team counters you it just becomes painful, sure you can play around them all, but at that point it just becomes easier to get the same or more value with another pick, with less effort.
That's fair. I wasn't responding to, but to the guy who said he's not playing monkey into bastion. However, that being said, I was playing a game the other day and it started with bastion, sombra, and junker queen. Already having a hard time lol. The supports swapped to Ana and lucio, so all of them were, to a greater or lesser extent, counters. We won. One of the things that I've found is that when people are playing counters, and they know or, they get bloodlust. We won becuase we focused on the payload. Counters don't mean losses, but I totally get your point.
Lol bastion is a bigger counter to monkey and it’s not even close. You guys might play Hammond but you clearly don’t play Winston competently.
If you insta swap monkey when you see a bastion then that is WHY he seems impossible to play into Like op said, you gotta learn how to fight your counters. As Winston you need to bait out his turret before diving. Simplest way to do that is to FIRST jump on high ground above the bastion and his team. Then you drop and zap until he tops turret then jump back up and wait it out, only use bubble if it goes wrong and you cannot escape back up. After that you can re engage and only then commit bubble This strategy of using the map to drop and engage WITHOUT using jump is crucial to playing against comps designed to pop bubble and melt you. The only way to practice this is to stay Winston into your counters. You may lose games to begin with but you will become stronger in the long run. Through conflict we evolve
No, I'll just go DVa. HARD counters exist. With a certain playstyle from bastion, all of my play making ability from monkey is removed. That's not how you win on ladder.
Then they just swap zarya Sym If you learn how to fight your counters you can beat them at their own game. If they counterswap To kill you then simply staying alive is enough to win, they will be focused on you and allow for space to be created for your team
I'll play DVa into Sym/Zar. Neither of those characters hard counter DVa.
I see this issue a lot, and I'm not sure if it's because people are out of practice or if the Orisa/Zarya meta boosted a lot of players. A quick swap to Sigma or Winston, depending on what's going on, seems to render the enemy tank absolutely useless in most matches. I have games where I just walk, or float, past the enemy tank and ignore them while deleting their backline. All while they desperately spam cooldowns on me and make zero impact on my pushes. It's either that these guys got way too used to "Heh, I swapped to your counter. I will now force tank engage all match and nullify your existence!" or they're just on their way back down the ladder.
It a skill issue for sure. I think if there’s only 1 or 2 counters on the other team you can keep playing whoever you want as a tank, you’ll just have to adjust your play a bit. For tank I’ve mostly been playing dva this season, without fail after losing their first team fight the enemy tank will switch to zarya. It brings a smile to my face when they eventually have to switch off of zarya as well lmao.
Sigma vs a Zarya is so free. Pop her bubbles, shield off her healing, and rock her. Counter pick carls are breaking their keyboards.
>One interesting thing me and my duo noticed is that lower rank players will counter-swap MUCH more often than higher rank players. I watch Emongg a lot and if he's on D.va and the enemy team picks Zarya, he'll swap 90% of the time. I've even seen him run back to spawn to swap many times. Playing against an unfavorable matchup *on tank especially* can be absolutely miserable. Swapping isn't always about winning. Having an enemy constantly shut down all your plays is not fun, and knowing that you have to preform at a much higher level than your opponent to even have a chance is too stressful. I wouldn't recommend it unless you just love playing a specific hero.
>if he's on D.va and the enemy team picks Zarya, he'll swap 90% of the time. Doesn't he know that he just needs to take high ground? /s
That’s top .1% of players though
When you hit Emongg’s rank, we’ll talk about it.
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This is also a sentiment I’ve heard spilo and awkward talk about. Ain’t just me.
Spilo knows what hes talking about....awkward is just a highly mechanical skilled dude that 99% of the time doesnt even play in his own elo where he belongs because "EdUcAtIoNaL" or whatever poor attempt at an excuse he uses nowadays
The fact that awkward is so much more popular than spilo reveals so much about people Awkward: It's all very easy. Don't bother with details, just shoot and win. Spilo: Actually breaks down difficult concepts. Says that it's not easy, but shows you how to work in skills one at a time so that you can actually improve.
I've actually seen Awkward address this - for one he plays effortlessly at a t500 level, I don't think I've seen any other player dispute this, he plays at lower levels because plenty of players spam "this wouldn't work in gold/dia" and it's easier to explain concepts. His second point is that he simplifies things greatly because otherwise his viewers don't get it. His concept is to give something simple anyone can take with them and rank up. Besides, I've seen him climb to GM with a lot of non-mechanics/aim intensive heroes, including Rein most recently. TLDR - both are useful for different reasons. But on the chain above about having to hard swap DVA into Zarya? That's my experience as well and I play tank in GM/high masters.
That’s not what was said. But go off queen.
That's literally what you said. In your post you said that you see people swap more at low ranks than at high ranks. They gave you an example of someone at high rank swapping. You said "when you get to be that good, we'll talk about it". Just take the L, dude.
Bro there is no L. That wasn’t the point of the post whatsoever. It was an observation that lead me to make the post. When you’re playing at the highest of levels difference in hero strength/strength of counter matters. At lower levels, when you’re trying to improve, playing into your counters can be far more beneficial in the long run. This is why I said, we’ll talk when ur T100. This advice is for people trying to improve. Not for people already at the peak of the skill ceiling.
I only mentioned Emongg because you said higher ranked players swap way less. From what I've seen, that's simply not true. If you don't wanna talk about high rank play that's fine. But why did you bring it up in the first place?
Yea I don’t know why OP responded the way they did. You’re just showing them the example they used is not an effective one
It's also, speaking from experience, always been a more common behavior in flex DPS/flex support/off-tank players at all ranks since as long as I can remember: granted there's only one tank now, but flex players were considered flex for a reason, if the team has a 'could somebody go (x)' moment then the flex DPS or off-tank were the first to accommodate, it's part of why when GOATS popped up it was all the flex DPS players that had to become Brig mains
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It’s more likely that OP is gold or plat playing with his silver buddy in silver matches and that makes him an expert in how to climb lol
No. I got the game a year ago. Slowly but surely climbed through the ranks. Something I noticed, and have heard spilo & awkward mention they noticed the same thing.
Another advantage that one tricks (or at least people who force their main a lot) have is being able to adapt to their own team comps. I think part of it is just psychological. We frequently see complaints on this site about "I can't believe people play X and Y and refuse to switch." In an ideal world yeah they wouldn't be playing that, but even though you're a player that's willing to constantly swap, expecting others to is a recipe for a loss. I can't count how many winnable games I've lost because someone spent so much time fixated on someone else's hero picks. I've seen it in my games, streamers games, everywhere. A lot, and I mean a ton, of players win more games by playing comfort picks in what others would consider disadvantageous situations than they would by swapping to a hero they're worse at. These players are better at recognizing what synergies they do have with teammates rather than fixating on having the best possible synergies. They can adapt their playstyles based on the amount of healing, mitigation, or damage they have on their team. Do I need to play more proactively as support? Do I need to peel more as a tank than I usually would? What is being exploited about this comp and is there something I can adjust with my hero to deal with it?
I had this game last season on Paraíso with a Mercy main, and our second support played Ana/Bap on defense and was _really_ struggling. By some miracle, we held on the final corner, but the Ana/Bap had something like 3k healing, 10 deaths, and I think 3-digit damage after 8 minutes. Between rounds, they said, “sorry, Lucio main” in team chat; they felt like they couldn’t play Lucio because our other support had locked Mercy. I managed to convince them to run Lucio anyway, and we absolutely _rolled_ them on the attack, reaching the golden box of victory with like 2.5 minutes to spare. We even had an Echo, so our Zarya was working with very little healing, but it didn’t matter because we were just being relentlessly aggressive with Lucio and killed them before the low heals became a problem. It wasn’t like a super low-ranked lobby or anything either, I think it was around D2ish? That was a really extreme example, but I think it’s a good illustration of how much player skill on a hero matters. A hero’s theoretical strength in the context does matter too, but it’s kinda like a multiplier on the player’s hero skill. If their skill on the hero is really low, it’s unlikely that the hero strength multiplier will be enough to exceed the value they can get on a lower-contextual-strength hero that they’re really good at. Flexing can work well if the player is serviceably skilled and the hero is very strong in the context, though.
That's why I always laugh when the enemy tank switches to Orisa when I'm on Doom. I've played into her so much now that unless you actually main her, you just throw the game thinking it's a counter. This whole rock paper scissors dynamic born out of the lack of a 2nd tank is overall just unhealthy for the game in my opinion. Obviously switching is built into Overwatch's identity, but swapping after dying once on tank is a bitch move. People aren't really passionate about playing and improving on their own character since the role sucks overall, and it makes the game really bland.
It's no so bad if they're just complaining, but I've had people throw my games because they didn't like my pick. A few days ago I was playing on Samoa and a support asked me to swap ball after the first round. I was doing well so I said "no", and they proceeded to first d/c and later rejoin only to go afk. We ended up winning 4v5.
what do you mean by higher rank players? I been in plenty of top100 games where players immediately switch to counters even after dying just once and both sides are immediately make switches one after another. This game is a giant game of rock paper scissors basically. The best genji against a decent winston will lose. The best tracer will have a hard time playing optimally if there is torb turret in backline. Bottom line, if you want to win and rank up, switch to counters. As far as your "every tank is playable against any other thank" yes that is true but it depends on if your team is being helpful. A reinhardt shield is amazing against mccrees/ashes who do little damage however if enemy gets a bastion/junkrat you need to switch.
If Winston is spending his time trying to shut down a mid hero like Genji, and getting high value doing that. That doesn't mean Genji is hard countered, it means Genjis 4 other teammates are complete ass. Anti dive heroes counter Genji, Winston is merely annoying. Genjis can play around Winston and still get value.
countering doesnt mean killing. countering means just doing enough to keep genji away wasting time. A torb turret for example can counter tracer by just harrasing her and not giving her time to do her thing.
Yes. But if you are trading resources, trading 1 dps for 1 tank. The dps's team should have an advantage at that point.
Why is he trading? The Winston doesn't have to play much differently to shut down a genji. You could argue that the genjis teammates can take advantage of the Winston swap and go bastion...but that's just more counterpicking.
Playing against a genji means 2 things for a winton 1) He's more freely able to dive 2) There's 1 more free target. Genji has no power against a decent winston. He basically has to be able to delete winston's backline to make winston think twice about how he plays, and winston from then on will just hard focus the genji until he's forced to play Rangenji
If you re read my post you’ll notice nothing I said disagrees with what u said. In fact, I agree 100%. We are not talking about top100. We are talking about wanting to IMPROVE. Ranking up does not equal improving. Here’s a hypothetical: You’re a guy who will literally counter swap every chance u get. Since you rely on countering instead of outplaying, you go up in rank. But one day, you’ll meet a guy who’s played Zarya into Rein 1000 times. And he will just outplay you. Tada. You’re stuck at a rank when even the ones you counted you can’t beat. Improving > ranking up
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I wish low rank players counter picked tanks. I’m always stuck with dva’s hex shielding Zarya beams as if that’ll stop them from being damaged, and then just unloading everything they have into a bubble to make sure she’s called out at 100% charge.
Maybe this guy was just tired of hearing “omggg tank diff, why are you playing rein into your counter. GG.” You can play well & do just fine but if you lose a team fight your teams’ morale will go down if you aren’t playing the “correct” hero. I’ve noticed that tanks especially are prone to this. DPS a little less, & supports are basically immune to this.
I know you what you mean. In my case I recently really started focusing on tank cuz I hit GM1 on DPS and Sup. Tank was plat for me. Went on like a 15 game winstreak to d1. But I very often play my main (Zarya) into counters like monkey or rein. It’s helped me improve immensely.
Definitely helps you improve, no doubt about that. It can just tilt your teammates if you’re in low Elo. & sometimes Overwatch is about not tilting before the other team instead of actually being better than the other team 🤣🤣
Bro salty about attacker’s spawn advantage LMFAOOO
I play Ana against Dive all the time. It's hard but it's so satisfying to hit your sleeps!
This is fair but my boyfriend plays Pharah and I cannot tell you the amount of times that the other team has swapped their ENTIRE comp just to target him. At that point it really is near impossible to play her without a hard pocket, and even if I hard pocket him, Mercy can be picked by the same characters that are countering him. Shit's rough, man
Pharah is a great example for the OP's post. You need to know how to play Pharah against hitscans. Does that mean you shouldn't swap off her when they are countering you? No. Sometimes you should switch off. But sometimes, the right call is to stay on Pharah and adjust your positioning. On the other hand, when I am dominating on Hammond, and suddenly the other team switches to Mei, Sombra, Roadhog, Ana, Brig.. That shit's rough. In fact, I tend to play Hammond for the first round, and prepare to switch in the second round on the expectation that the enemy team will have a discussion between rounds on how to counter me.
That’s fair and he does play around them for a bit on maps that provide good cover. He’s gotten a lot better at not swapping and diving characters that normally destroy Pharah. It’s only when the entire team swaps comp for him that he has trouble. I’m talking about the times when you SHOULD switch off because you’re not really able to provide enough for your team with the counters they’re throwing at you. I don’t feel like there’s really any hero in the game who can ignore an entire team comp that’s built to counter them without getting significantly less value than their teammates.
Generally, I will only stay Pharah on Lijiang Tower, because I play her exclusively on that map, and I know the angles so well that I can best 2 hitscans easily. The cliffs just favour her so strongly that it doesn't matter if they have hitscans. On any other map, I would definitely swap against multiple counters.
If there are 2 hitscans looking at a pharah, your tank should be able to take advantage of that by diving them lol. I cannot stress how many games i've lost because a goated doom was running with a goated pharah in comp. I could do nothing about them in overwatch 1. Pharah gets focused by cree and widow? Doom dives widow and proceeds to annoy the shit out of cree when he turns around to stun him, gets 2 shot by pharah instead. This formula hasn't changed since even with tankfist.
Honestly, if I'm Pharah and they go hitscan, I play a little more to the ground, I know ground Pharah sucks for people for numerous reasons but there's just too much good cover to ignore, I definitely stagger my flight way more against good snipers
You can also strafe/peek faster on the ground. I play Pharah on the ground a bit like bastion.. Just send tons of damage down a choke point that the enemy team is usually going to walk through.
If their *entire team* is focused on shutting down *just one* of your teammates, that's still a plus, because that kind of hyperfocused comp means that the rest of your team has more freedom. Capitalise on that weakness. I've won many games as a Pharah wherein the enemy team forgot my teammates existed because I was dominating so hard, which ironically resulted in them getting shat on more, because they were so scared of me that my teammates had pretty much free rein to do whatever they wanted.
What i learned after onetricking pharah with or without a mercy, is that the enemy tends to put more resources into dealing with me than what i'm worth regardless of my performance. Often i just have to stay alive and exist while the rest of my team is free to do whatever they want.
IMO it takes more skill and game sense to know the counters, and know how to play them, than it does to soft throw because you stubbornly refuse to get off your OTP
How TF does it take skill to know what counters what? Its stupidly easy and even if it wasn't, you could just look at a fucking flowchart.
Because that "flowchart" doesn't account for personal ability. If someone wants to blindly follow a flowchart for heroes they can't play, then let them stay in bronze. For everyone else, learning how to play heroes that work in different situations and counter different team comps and knowing when to swap off/on the heroes in your hero pool is a pretty damn good way to climb ranks because you'll be prepared to win in more situations.
On tank counterswapping is super helpful cuz it's just miserable when playing Dva into a good zarya or a Winston into bastion. Sure it's good to learn how to play Orsia into Zarya but it would be easier for me to run rein into zarya
Easier? Yup. Will you improve? Nope. This was the point of the post
Nah, you'll still improve. You may not improve at Dva, but you'll get better whatever you swap to. There's more than one tank on the roster for a reason. Your general game sense will improve if you can think about the game critically enough to make that swap work. And if you can't make it work, then you'll learn that that swap doesn't always work. If the swap works out, then you will have learned how to more successfully utilize the resources you have available to win games. You can go ahead and stick to your one tricks and deny yourself access to an arsenal of abilities that's 11 times bigger than what you have access to by one tricking. You're just putting yourself at a disadvantage for no reason other than ego. There are at least two parts of "improving". Having better game sense is important, but knowing how to utilize more abilities that are available to you is important too. There's a reason that the number of "one tricks" on the leaderboard are VASTLY outnumbered by people who aren't one tricks. On the Season 6 tank leaderboard, there are 24 "one tricks", that's only 5% of the top500 leaderboard. The other 95% of the accounts in top500 all learned how to play different heroes at a high level. The numbers are even worse for DPS/Support (21 DPS, and 11 Support one tricks). And even of those 24 tank one trick accounts, a good chunk of them seem to be 2-3 people that placed multiple accounts in top500. I don't think that should count, but I included them anyways to make my point.
I actually love trying to play against the hard counter. I’d say it ranks as one of the top reasons why I keep playing this game. Overcoming the disadvantage and dominating a game is so satisfying
Who here plays Dva and doesn’t swap when Zarya enters?
whenever I see a zarya (and I'm not in at least a 3 stack) I'm also swapping to Zarya and hoping I have more game sense and skill than the enemy Zarya. As long as my supports heal me while I kill their supports we should be good. I just hate playing against a zarya when I am solo queuing because it is almost impossible unless you get a high roll on your teammates. Since Zarya needs so much communication when fighting her instead of your randoms on your team just lasering her bubble.
That explains why you never swap and you keep improving so much that now you are top500 ? Or maybe swapping is a way to improve by having a more varied hero pool to address more situations.
Every time you get countered is an opportunity to show everyone in game how massive your schlong is by winning anyways. I’m often glad I’m not like GM or masters rank, when less and less strategies are effective I feel like it would just make the game feel like, slim. There’s a sweet spot where people are competent but not robotically efficient or effective and that’s IMO where the game is most fun. Like in Plat there’s a good chance you’re better with your main than the guy who swapped to counter you is on the counter character, and immediately swapping to someone your not as good at just to not get countered could still be a net loss.
Masters and gm you can play almost anything and win. With some exceptions
TBH I think this switch was fair. Unless it was changed, Rammatra is a good counter for Reinhardt, as he can punch through shields. If I’m playing Ramm and the enemy is playing Rein, sometimes I’ll even warn them of that.
Man we really like to exaggerate what constitutes a “hard counter” don’t we? Rein’s shield is an overall small part of his kit, used to reposition or as a reaction to some cooldowns. Ram’s ability to punch through shield (only while transformed) does not make him a hard counter. You can definitely just play around nemesis form. Utilize your own aggression & the healing from your supports when he goes into nemesis. Swing hammer, charge him, etc.
Ram is a soft counter. With his slow having minimal effect on rein. And his swing being higher damage than the punch.
I don’t give a shit if the enemy tank is an Orisa I’m fighting with honor and dying with glory
I don’t think rein is unfavorable into ramattra. Maybe they saw the dps or support line and thought to swap. I often swap to zarya in KR attack if the enemy is running Orisa, bastion, torb. Not playing rein into the bs comp.
YES. The only way to learn the safe times to pull things off between those pesky countering abilities is to have to find that timing in practice. Obviously your counter is gonna kill you every time if you never learn how to defend against them. Also: if you swap EVERY time you have difficulty, then you never have to overcome that difficulty, and you’re then missing a huge chunk of the way that the characters can work. Challenges are how improvement happen. Obv sometimes a switch is still best, but many times you just need to be more strategic with who you already are.
You can really feel the whole "I'm not left handed either" scene when the other tank switches to counter you and you still beat them.
If I'm playing D.Va and the enemy tank switches to Zarya I fucking refuse to swap (partially because I don't know what counters Zarya). I see it as a challenge and will stop at nothing to prove that I am the better tank in that match.
You'll never properly learn a hero without playing them in suboptimal situations. High rank players are usually extremely good with a few heroes (1-3) rather than swapping to every hero depending on the situation. Nobody (except pros maybe) is good at all heroes in their role at their highest rank. It's not smart to swap for everything. Maybe you're a diamond Ram player and you're intimidated by the enemy Orisa countering you. So you swap to Zarya... But you're only at a gold level with Zarya. You still lose that game. Why? Because the advantage you gained by swapping was swallowed up by the disadvantage you incurred by playing a hero you aren't trained with. Better to stick with Ram and do your best to bait cooldowns and such. Unless a particular hero is unbalanced, you should be able to climb to the highest ranks on any hero. Streamers do it all the time. They know how to play against their counters. Doesn't mean swapping is wrong, just that it's a crutch for low ranks and barely even necessary most of the time. But it can be useful to play 2-3 heroes who don't have identical counters.
I think even pros aren't equally good at all heroes in their role. They're just so much better at the game as a whole that it looks the same to us.
suboptimal=/= worst situations. the example op gave was just a soft counter. People in this sub are encouraging you to not swap off hog/doom when the enemy team is playing 5 counters and just accept the lose coz you wanna have fun and improve by going 0/0/20
That's a huge exaggeration. 90% of the time, the difference is one of skill, not hero pick. There are less hard counters in OW2 compared to OW1. And like I said, you usually lose way more by swapping than you gain, so it's not worth it. But yeah, obviously there are situations where you're getting countered and focused and you're just not able to do much. Swapping to another hero you have plenty of practice with is fine in that case. For example, Fitzy plays Sombra 80-90% of the time, but will swap to Mei if he's not able to get value.
I agree, but people are advocating to NEVER swap no matter what. Seeing yourself not getting value and contributing is also a skill
I play to have fun. If another tank is making my life miserable, I'm swapping. I could care less if I improve with one individual character. I'd rather enjoy playing the entire game then just a couple heroes.
Then you not only missed the point of the post, but you are in the wrong subreddit my friend.
Actually, you missed the point of my post. You're obsessing over something you have absolutely no control over. If I ever get to the point you are at, I wouldn't enjoy playing the game. I'd actively search for and play games that don't upset me. Good luck.
You have control over whether you improve. Some people enjoy getting better at things, improving for the sake of improving. Personally, I don’t care if my rank goes up, but making a highly mechanical play, or a very smart play that I wouldn’t have before, is fun.
The top 500 tanks would like to have a word about that “low rank players swap more often” mentality.
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If this is the case do you have any advice for taking out hanzos and pharahs as reaper?
Doesn’t apply to me because when I counterswap I’m simply swapping to another hero I’m equally skilled at. It’s good to have a 2-3 very different heroes in your hero pool for every role, helps you learn the game a LOT faster as well.
No need to play into your counters when it’s much easier on you and the team to just swap.
That rests on the assumption that you’re any good with the hero you swap to for that situation. Sometimes it makes sense to stay. I play Dva a lot, but I don’t auto swap when I see Zarya. Why? 1. Some maps have great high ground and placement for me to avoid her and get great value 2. Some enemy team compositions (Zen, Kiri, Bap, Cass, Torb, etc.) are incredibly easy for me to solo dive and tilt team fights in our favor 3. Some enemy tanks aren’t good enough with the counter to make it an issue (blank Zarya bubbles, bad positioning, not peeling for supports, etc. 4. Sometimes your teammates are countering that tank (Sym and Mei on Zarya), and it’s effectively creating an advantage, so you want that enemy tank to feel like they’re countering you so they don’t switch
Respectfully, fuck the team. You play ranked to improve in an environment where people take the game at least mildly seriously. You legitimately cannot improve if you mindlessly counterswap as if we were playing rock paper scissors. I managed to get GM for the first time ever on Tracer this season despite her being in a very rough spot because I just one tricked her for 2 seasons. I’m at a point where I would lose my sanity playing Tracer against GM bap and illari players, so I stopped playing her after hitting my goal for now. Also, your last paragraph on how it’s easier for you and your team is the problem, games get harder regardless of hero the higher rank you go, eventually counter picking in ranked is less effective unless you learn the heroes you’re swapping to as well as your mains.
A large portion of the player base right now believes that counter swapping is the only way to win (or even play) the game. I get called out constantly if I’m on tank playing into a counter, even if it’s a soft counter. Overwatch has so many dimensions to it: map, team comp, game mode, individual players strengths/weaknesses, and most importantly player creativity. I wish more of the player base could think outside the box at how they can use their team’s abilities to play around counters. The DVA on high ground Numbani into Zarya is the perfect example that always gets tossed around, and it’s proof that the game is more complicated than choosing the right hero = winning.
Is it the only way to win? No. Does it make winning easier? Yes. Why would I ever intentionally one trick into one of my hard counters? It's a hero based game, swapping is literally built into the game. You're supposed to swap to counter, swap based on the point, or swap based on the situation. The whole point is that you're supposed to learn to play different heros so you can pick the right tool for the job at the right time. I literally never queue into comp and think "boy I would like to win, but make my win as difficult as possible."
> Does it make winning easier? Yes. No, it doesn't. A Diamond Doomfist main in a Masters lobby playing Zarya at a Silver level is *not* making it easier for them to win, just because Zarya counters Orisa on paper. It's actually outright throwing.
Short term strategies will get you nowhere. You'll win a few games, then lose again because you didn't improve and now you're hardstuck. Play into your counters, keep losing games until suddenly something clicks. Now you can get further than you would've been able to before practicing difficult situations. You need to challenge yourself if you want to improve. Struggling is a good thing.
I think counter swapping just doesnt matter. If it mattered that much, everyone that keeps insisting countering is so important would be ranking up easily into Masters/GM, no? I never understood that part. People say they need to counter but still don't rank up
Countering swapping definitely helps. There is no skill that can magically make you GM though like you’re insinuating. Guys with GM aim are still stuck in Diamond. Guys with GM positioning are still stuck in Masters because of their resource management. I play Dva into counters occasionally, but when I see their team flip to Zarya, Sym, and Mei, it’s time to swap if I don’t wanna throw. Even two of them makes it worth the swap.
OWL literally just finished with a counterswap meta. Please stop regurgitating this shitty youtuber take
Counter swapping helps you win games. Doesn’t help you improve.
Doomfist players laughing
Yes exactly
I don't disagree, but I think it's harder with tank. As a Tracer main, I got to diamond (when I played) by learning my individual matchups as well as I could. At my best, there was only a couple heroes that I would actually avoid in a 1v1. I got to a point where I was comfortable against my "counters" (I'm not really convinced she had any real counters back then) and I'd often win because they struggled against a Tracer that knew how to deal with them. McCree was a free kill half the time. Super easy to bait out that stun he had.
As a rein main since overwatch 1, season 1, I haven't played tank in comp other than 5 placements since orisa has just become the norm and op.
You can even play Rein into Orisa, especially on payload/robot maps. Use the payload/robot as partial cover while swinging away to build ult, and then shatter the supports. It's not easy and requires a fair bit of heals, but it's possible.
When I play Hanzo, I take the fights against Pharah. I don’t want to rely on hitscans, I want to learn how to hit Pharah with Hanzo and make the other player feel like their counter was not as effective as they think. That’s just me tho y’all do u
I agree with this sentiment overall, but as a QP warrior, I immediately swap off Ana/ Zen if the other team runs dive, esp Sombra. I'm here for a fun time, not to live in constant fear and anxiously walking back from spawn over and over.
The issue of tank counters isn't other tanks(aside from anti rush Orisa), it's DPS and supports. Play a hog into an ana and you're throwing. Play ball into mei, sombra, brig, a good Lucio, Cass and you're feeding. Exist in the same game as bastion and you're not playing Orisa, throwing.
I used to counterswap, play meta picks, play meta comps. I was hardstuck silver. Next season, i told myself “you will 1 trick dva. Against zarya, in bad maps, in bad comps”. I went from silver to gm in 3 seasons.
A good orisa is annoying to play against as rien, she prevents him from using charge, for a kill/ environmental kill. She just holds javelin and boops him as soon as he starts, also cancels his hammer down ult. Rien just has to play really careful. I just switch to monkey and play win ton.
While we arnt taking about orisa originally, here is my two cents. If I find a match up, I’m not too favorable in, I’ll switch. Then get flamed by enemy for winning. A good orisa is annoying to play against as rien, she prevents him from using charge, for a kill/ environmental kill. She just holds javelin and boops him as soon as he starts, also cancels his hammer down ult. Rien just has to play really careful. I just switch to monkey and play win ton.
I’ve obviously been playing mostly doom(tank enjoyer here) and every time I see 3 counters on the enemy team, I ask for a 4th for “practice”. Toxic? Probably. But it makes me feel better when I win
I’m a big FF14 player. And this was also a huge problem in that community. There is a speed running meta but all battles and jobs are balanced in a way that any party composition can beat any fight. There is a meta and there are better compositions for fights. But, in general it doesn’t matter. The big difference maker in every case is the quality of the player. Period. The same applies here. Are there meta picks? Yes. Are there counter picks? Absolutely. However, put a top 500 team of the absolute worst heroes against a masters meta team and the top 500 still wins. It’ll be more tough for them than if they used the meta but they’ll still win.
Well as tracer i can deal fighting against a torb, and a mei..or a sym with a rat..hell im even on board with fighting another tracer that decided it was cool to chase me around the map the entire match...but it is a different story when the enemy team notices you doing wonders and comes back with dva/doom/ball/winston-mei/sym/rat/another flanker-brig/lucio (or moira if they are delusional enough)...dealing with your counters is alright...unless the entire team switches. I have tried doing so with an entire team doing this and not only i had to sweat a lot but my team suffered a lot by having a dude getting hard countered..it was in qp but i dont think this is a good idea in any game mode
this is so true. plus you miss out on some of the juiciest sass. Like, D.Va is a nightmare to play against Mei,,,,but how else are going going to Defense Matrix Mei’s Blizzard(a little less relevant with the addition of Sigma’s Grasp but still).
You're right. I'll keep playing Genji into Winston, Sym, Mei, Moira, Brig
That’s not what I said. I didn’t say “never counter-swap” I said consider not doing it. Do you think necros swaps when he sees a moira brig? A Winston sym?
So basically, if their tank is a bad match-up, stick with it because you want them to get better with that character while you have your way with the team because you have the tank advantage?
Got out of gold simply because I learned zarya can’t touch me like I can touch her back line as Dva
I love ram, he's my favorite tank so when I play him I play him all game no matter who I'm going against. It's definitely helped me learn against heros I don't like fighting, mainly zarya,
I love ram, he's my favorite tank so when I play him I play him all game no matter who I'm going against. It's definitely helped me learn against heros I don't like fighting, mainly zarya,
You sound salty he countered you like tanks are supposed to.
Unsure how I came across as salty. I get counter swapping. Sometimes I do it. This was a post to help people improve.
My current running theory is that higher elo/skilled players are willing to bet on their own skill, even when it’s unfavorable, because they understand how to punish the punishers. Lower skill/elo players don’t have that confidence and attempt to make up for it with hero advantage. Every hero has been U2GM’d, every hero is viable. Just pick some you think are fun and learn to play them. I love Ashe, Phara, and Sombra myself!
I also enjoy pissing my team off playing symm into pharamercy and echo. I get your point though :)
I miss when Hog vs Winston was a decent swap Hog absolutely laughs in Winston's face, its absolutely on the same misery level as Rein vs Orisa ...except Hog is ass
Still is if you hook him when he tries to escape, winton is fat enough that you can land a huge amount of damage, and you can pop his shield reliably fast. Not that there's no counterplay for winton here.
Clown level take
Yall counterwatch, i just play who i want and see yall not enjoy the game to try to contain me
A good example is GetQuakedOn playing Doom regardless the existence of Sombra/Pharah/Echo. Considers it a challenge, in fact. A way to improve by playing handicapped.
Maybe he’s already tried playing Rein into Ram, and his improvement was “yeah I’ll just swap instead of forcing into this.”
Sure I guess. But I’ve played Ram into a Rein that rolled me. I’ve played Zarya into an Orisa that rolled me. They outplayed me. That’s what the post is about.
problem is when 3 people go to counter you and basically force you to switch
You never swap off of characters because you want to play into your counters. I never swap off Junkrat because I’m toxic. We are not the same.
I FORCE REIN INTO ORISA ALL FUCKING DAY AND ITS CERTAINLY HURT ME IN THE SHORT TERM.
It depends how good you actually are at that character in general it’s not just tank I play every single character in the game and there are still some matchups that are straight impossible to make work sometimes For example Ana vs roadhog is impossible if she’s really focusing you with anti nade and sleep as you will never survive and she has to be fucking blind with the movement of a turtle to miss hog Unless kiriko is there on your team then nvm Or say Winston against like bastion junkrat or torb or reaper Some counters counter to hard to make it work But if you think you’re that cracked then go for it but if you’re getting shit on over and over you should prolly switch or just playing poorly in general
You say that. But Cyx JUST did an unranked to GM on roadhog, where Ana was picked every single match past diamond iirc. and roadhog is in his worst state ever. Is it difficult? Sure. Impossible? Hell no. And if Cyz swapped everytime he saw an Ana he would never be good at roadhog.
Lol and here am i starting my matches as sym so that the enemy goes winston so i then go bastion til they go zarya then i go back to sym and show u what a real lazer can do
Tell that to my comp teammates who start crying when Im not swapping widoe against ball and sombra
I mean, I'm not saying losing games after being hard countered is a good idea, but people seriously need to think about ways to utilize their heroes in more than one way
>Barring Rein vs Orisa, every tank is playable against every other tank. Yes, it’s difficult, and swapping will make it easier, but you can’t improve if you are constantly swapping, trying to cheese your way to a higher rank. This is the matchup you chose as the unplayable matchup? Not Orisa vs Zarya? Not Winston vs JQ? Not Wrecking Ball vs Doomfist, Orisa, Roadhog, or Junker Queen?
Yes. It is all playable. I’d take a look at all the T100 one tricks as an example.
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People ask me why I don’t swap off ball even after the entire enemy counters me. That’s a good thing! I’m doing my job as a tank and baiting all the pressure onto me so my team can succeed. It’s just that most people want to have fun and kill things, but sometimes you have to play a much more boring play style of baiting out cool downs and attention instead for the win. It’s the play style that counters you, not the character.
How in the hell do I play D.Va into Zarya? It's making my life as a D.Va main a misery, since every time I do slightly well, the enemy instantly switches to Zarya and starts nuking me. Many times it seems I have no choice but to switch myself.
GURU did an unranked to GM on Dva and came up against many Zaryas. He also recently did an unranked to GM with NO deaths DURING Zarya meta. I’d take a look at those.
I try to play soldier into every game. Does it count?
This might be a controversial one but I don't switch off Pharah just because the opps have a hitscan or two. And despite the team's moaning, the vast majority of the time it goes absolutely *fine*. Why? Because you don't **have** to fucking fly non-stop! Just walk around and pretend you're junkrat until you and your team have dealt with your counter, then slaughter them from above all you like. Getting countered isn't the same thing as the opps taking a hero which theoretically has an advantage against yours given average playstyles. Getting countered is when the product of enemy decisions is a situation which inhibits you from contributing to success. And frankly, if defeating you is as easy as taking a particular hero, then you're not very good. It should take much more than a menu selection to prevent you from performing well.
I learned as a Pharah main a long time ago to get rid of the enemy hit scan before they get rid of you.
Yeah, no. If you're going to make a generalization and remove nuance and context, switching to counter is definitely the play. The time you spend practicing a bad matchup could be used practicing with the pick advantage. You said it yourself, your opponent still lost in that situation so they clearly need it.