Overwatch Competitive Game Tactics

Even though Overwatch is a very young game, believe it or not, it has already seen quite some competitive gameplay. It‘s very interesting to see how the competitive scene is growing from 0, especially as a person who follows all kinds of competitive games. What tactics will the teams use? How will they decide who won? What will the game format be? Which team will be the best? Everything is so new, fresh and very interesting! Below you will find speculations, tactics and predictions on the ever popular Overwatch – written by our Overwath Boosting team.
 

Team Compositions

If you‘ve tried or watched casual Overwatch games you might have seen different random team compositions that work very well and you might think they’re over powered. The truth is, just like in many other games, compositions that are strong in casuals don’t always work in competitive games. The best teams played a lot of scrims versus each other and found out what works the best in high level matches. At the moment there are 2 heroes that always get picked. It’s Pharah and Mercy. Every single team always picks these 2 heroes, because they bring so much to the game. Pharah deals insane area (AoE) damage and her ultimate can single handedly wipe the whole enemy team. She also has a jetpack which makes her the perfect character to control high ground with. The AoE attacks also help securing ground by pushing enemies away and it’s easy to do it when you’re flying high above them and they can’t reach you. Mercy works perfectly with Pharah, because she can be with her in the air and boost her damage and heal her, making it even easier to control high ground. Furthermore, Mercy has the highest single-target heal in-game and it’s amazing on tanks with a lot of health when they’re absorbing tons of damage. Not to forget her ultimate ability that can resurrect all dead allies in a particular range, making it one of the most impactful abilities in-game, as it can easily turn the tides of the battle.

 

The Other 4

There are always at least 2 tanks in one team. One of them is often providing shield so his team would be able to hold ground/push and the other tank is often an offensive tank that stands in front to absorb damage while dealing tons of damage himself. All 5 of the tanks are being used quite a lot and that is great, because that means none of them are over powered and the game is balanced very well. The 5th spot goes to another healer, often Lúcio, because he brings a lot of mobility for the team with his speed boosts and he can also do mass-heals that heal everyone in the team. His ultimate ability that gives massive shields to all of his teammates are great for pushing as well as defending and it makes him a great addition to every game. The last spot is another damage dealer, often an assassin like Reaper or Genji.

 

Not Always

This doesn’t mean all teams follow this stuff, there are players that are amazing at particular character and play it even though others might think it’s not strong. Also, different maps might make a character stronger therefore teams will adjust their team composition and make it work with different characters. For example, melty eSports Club team likes having a Symmetra on a few maps and therefore they are often left with only one healer, but that doesn’t make them weak, because they know how to useSymmetra efficiently. In some maps you can see teams playing 3 offensive heroes and only 1 tank or 3 tanks and only 1 offensive hero.
Overall Overwatch is very fast paced and teams can adjust their compositions mid-game, therefore they can try out many different styles if one isn’t working and therefore a lot of different characters and team compositions are being used.

 

Tactics

Casual games don’t really have any tactics, people just run on their own and often die for no reason, just trying to get more kills, so it’s very cool to see a competitive game where teams work as a unit and have unique tactics to win the game. So far there weren’t any very special tactics that blew viewers minds, but it’s still extremely interesting to see teams try and do stuff in different ways. Normally teams engage with Pharah flying into the sky with Mercy flying right behind her and these 2 heroes try to win air battles while the tanks push up on foot with the other healer trying to keep them alive. The last damage dealer might stay behind tanks and deal damage from afar or if it’s an assassin type of hero, it might try to sneak behind and flank the enemies to pick up easy kills for the team.
 

End-Game

That’s the tactics for the majority of the game, but when the attacking team is about to get the payload onto the last point, defending team nearly always switches to 6D.Va’s. This is because it’s a hero that can survive for a very long time and make the game last longer therefore giving more chances to win. D. Va can absorb infinite damage with her force field so when there’s 6 of those it’s very hard to kill them. Also, her ultimate is insanely good for defending, because it makes all enemies run away from the payload or they would die to the explosion. Furthermore, after her HP reaches 0, she doesn’t really die – she only exists the robot suit. That means she will survive even longer and give the defending team even more time. All of these things make her an amazing character to spam at the very end of the game and it often helps the defending team to get so very needed extra few seconds.

 

Last Thoughts

We can’t wait for Overwatch servers to come online again so we can see more and more unique tactics and team compositions being used from the best teams in the world. The game is still very young and we believe the best tactics haven’t been found yet.