Overwatch

Introduction

Welcome to Overwatch, the newest game from Blizzard! Some of us here at TeamLiquid have had the opportunity to participate in the closed beta and have been enjoying it greatly. With the upcoming open beta and eventual release, many of you will be entering the world of Overwatch for the first time. This article will hopefully help you understand some of the basics. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing more articles examining more advanced topics related to Overwatch.

Keep in mind that this article is written for the quintessential TeamLiquid forum goer. If you are reading this, you probably got your start in RTS like StarCraft, BW, or WC3 and may have experience in LoL or DotA and possibly some CS:GO. This article is not written for people with a lot of experience in class-based FPS games such as Team Fortress 2.

A class based FPS will focus on character picks and the use of different hero archetypes to effectively achieve a map objective. This game is not team deathmatch, chasing kills is not effective if they don't further the objective. In this kind of game everyone also has a more defined role on the team based on hero choice than in CS:GO or Halo for example. In a game like Counter Strike while some players have strengths every person is effectively the same and the income is the defining factor. In a class based shooter the differences between characters are defined by the characters themselves not the income generated or weapons picked up on the map.



Overwatch is a class-based First Person Shooter where two teams of six players fight to achieve a particular map objective. There are three types of maps.

Capture Point

Capture Point maps have two control points which must be captured one after the other by the attacking team (point A first, and point B second). The attacking team must have at least one player on the control point to begin the capture process. Control points have a persistent progress meter split into thirds. The attacking team must complete all three portions of this progress meter to fully capture a control point. Progress on incomplete thirds will slowly reverse if no attacker remains on the point, however completed thirds cannot be reversed.

The capture point maps are: Hanamura, Temple of Anubis, Volskaya Industries

Payload

Payload maps require the attacking team to move a vehicle (payload) from one side of the map to another. Some payload maps such as King’s Row and Numbani have a control point which must be captured prior to the payload appearing. When there is a control point it will behave exactly the same as those found in Capture Point maps. Attackers must be within a small range of the payload in order to allow it to move (referred to as “touching” the payload). Payloads will not move if no attacker is touching it. Payload maps have a time limit which is extended whenever a payload reaches a checkpoint on the map. The distance between checkpoints differs based on the map being played. Much like control points, defenders may contest the payload by also touching it, preventing the payload from moving. If no attacker touches the payload for a short time, then the payload will begin to reverse and move away from the defender’s side of the map.

The payload maps are: Dorado, King's Row, Hollywood, Numbani, Route 66, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar

King of the Hill

King of the Hill maps contain three different mirrored zones each with a single control point in the center. A team either controls the point and defends it or attacks the point to take it. The control point in each zone must be captured and then held until the control timer at the top of the screen reaches 100% to determine the winner of each zone. Capturing the control point in KotH differs from Capture Point maps in that the attacking team must fill a progress bar to capture the control point, however time to capture is shorter and progress is not split into thirds nor saved. Each zone of is played individually with the winning team determined in a best of three (or five in competitive) series. The first team to win two (or three in competitive mode) zones wins the match.

The king of the hill maps are: Ilios, Lijiang Tower, and Nepal.



There are four core mechanics in this game which exist outside of individual control and across all maps and heroes – Contesting, Overtime, Hero Abilities and Ultimates.

Contesting

When a player on defense touches a map objective it is put into a contested state. Whenever a map objective is being contested all attacker progress on the objective is stopped regardless of how many attackers are touching the objective. When a defender touches a control point all progress on the capture meter is halted and payloads will cease to move. This is an extremely important concept to understand as both a defender and attacker. On KotH maps, the progress bar will continue to charge even while the point is being contested.



As a defender, preventing your opponent from capturing a map objective by contesting it can buy valuable time forcing overtime or allowing for dead teammates to respawn and return (or prepare to defend an earlier point on the map).
As an attacker, knowing that being alone against three defenders won’t progress an objective means it may be better to back off and regroup rather than die in a 1v3 and losing time to do a full team push.

Overtime

Overtime is triggered whenever the map objective is contested and the map timer reaches zero. This provides the attacking or defending teams a final chance to reach the next checkpoint or win the map.

On Payload and Capture Point maps overtime is triggered by the attackers touching the payload (or being on the control point) as the timer reaches zero. Overtime allows the attacking team to reach the next checkpoint adding additional time to the map timer or winning the map (on the final checkpoint or control point).

On KotH maps overtime is triggered by the attackers touching the control point before the control timer reaches 100%. Overtime gives the attackers an opportunity to capture the control point and attempt to progress their control timer to 100% in order to win the map. On these maps there is an opportunity for double overtime. If the first team to reach 99% loses control of the point in overtime, they then become the attackers and may force overtime in order to retake the control point.
In the above scenarios if the defenders successfully prevent the attackers from touching the objective during overtime or before overtime they will win the map.



Don't be afraid to die in order to force an overtime! Your in game life is not more valuable than trying to win.

Hero Abilities

Each hero in this game has a different set of abilities and understanding these abilities is core to playing this game. Learning these abilities is very easy! There aren’t too many heroes and Blizzard has made it simple to learn as you go.



In a game if you press F1 as your chosen hero you will see a screen overlay which describes all your hero abilities. Outside of a match, if you go to the Hero Gallery you may click on the Ability Info Icon and be provided with a similar screen overlay. An added bonus in the hero gallery is that you can view a small video for the abilities (which you cannot do in game). I suggest that if this is your first time in Overwatch you spend about 15 minutes on the hero gallery reading all the abilities with the videos. You won’t memorize everything immediately but it will help you begin to recognize the abilities as you see them.

All basic hero abilities are on cooldown timers which apply after the ability is first used.

Ultimate Abilities

Ultimate abilities are the only hero abilities which are not gated by time based cooldowns. For this reason I have decided to describe them separately from basic Hero Abilities. In Overwatch ultimate abilities are highly impactful abilities which can either provide a benefit to the team (Widowmaker’s Infrasight) or do damage to the opposing team (Pharah’s Rocket Barrage).



Ultimate abilities all charge at different rates and charge in one of two ways. The first is passive charge based on time, the second is active charge based on damage or healing done to hero HP. Please note that shooting barriers does not provide ultimate charge – there are other reasons to shoot barriers such as those provided by Winston or Reinhardt but gaining ultimate charge is not one of them.

Ultimate abilities are also announced whenever they are cast by the characters themselves. When an ultimate ability is cast by a teammate the voice line will always be in English and will be announced in low volume. When an ultimate ability is cast by an opponent, the voice line will be in the character's native language and will be very loud. For example an opposing Soldier:76 will yell "I've got you in my sights" when ulting and Zarya will yell "Ogon po gotovnosti" (or Fire at Will in Russian).

Other Things to Consider

Hit Point Types

In Overwatch there are three hit point types – Health, Shields, and Armor.



– basic hit point type represented as white on the HP bar. Any damage done to Health can only be recovered through health packs or healing abilities.


– the second hit point type represented as blue on the HP bar. Any damage done to shields will regenerate if you are out of combat for a short time. Shields can also be recovered through the use of health packs or healing abilities.


– the third hit point type represented as yellow on the HP bar. Any damage to armor is reduced by five points for each hit (but never less than ten). This means that armor is more effective than Health and Shields at absorbing damage. It also means that armor is more effective at reducing damage from high rate of fire low damage weapons than low rate of fire high damage weapons. Base HP Armor can only be recovered through the use of health packs or healing abilities.

Health Packs

Of special mention are health packs. Sprinkled across maps in Overwatch are health packs which will heal the hero that walks over and collects them. This article will not detail the position of all health packs; this is something you must learn on your own. However please note there are two types of health packs. Small health packs will restore up to a maximum of 75 HP and large health packs will restore up to a maximum of 250 HP.




There are four Hero Classes in Overwatch – Attack, Defense, Tank, and Support. If you are new to FPS then I suggest staying away from characters who rely heavily on aim when first learning the maps, game modes and hero abilities. Suggested heroes for beginners will be found towards the end of the article.

Offense

The offense class specializes in doing fairly high consistent damage at different ranges. Heroes in the offense class are: Pharah, Soldier: 76, Genji, Tracer, McCree, Reaper

Defense

The defense class generally specializes in controlling space and have more specific uses than their offensive counterparts. Heroes in the defense class are: Hanzo, Widowmaker, Junkrat, Mei, Torbjorn, Bastion.

Tank

The tank class specializes in taking a beating and protecting teammates or disrupting the opponents with their high hp pools and abilities. Heroes in the tank class are: Reinhardt, D.Va, Roadhog, Winston, Zarya.

Support

The support class specializes in keeping their teammates out of the spawn point by providing healing or the ability to return to the fight quickly. Heroes in the support class are: Mercy, Lúcio, Zenyatta, Symettra.



The most basic hero composition which in my opinion will provide the best results while providing the biggest opportunity to learn all heroes and their respective abilities is as follows:

Two offense heroes, two tank heroes, two support heroes.

Keep in mind that for the offense heroes, you want to have at least one hitscan hero if the opponent has a Pharah in the sky or high mobility heroes. Hitscan refers to the fact that the hero does not use projectiles. Hitscan heroes such as Soldier:76, McCree, and Tracer will hit anything their crosshair touches if you are accurate enough.

“But ZeromuS, what about the defense heroes?” you might be asking. I say that the defense heroes are a flexible choice in the above core composition. You can replace any one of the double classes with a single of that class and a single defense hero to still explore and learn while being generally effective as a team. I believe it is easier as a new Overwatch player to begin by replacing one tank or one healer with a defense hero. As you gain more experience you can begin to replace an offense hero with a defense hero based on map, portion of map, etc.

In the future we will be creating more articles on team compositions and more information on hero archetypes which differ from hero class in game. Concepts such as hero counters, map positions that benefit certain heroes over others, composition counters are more detailed and honestly not important for release exploration in quick play.
Help!! I have no aim!!

If you are new to FPS or aren’t confident in your ability to shoot other people and kill them quickly don’t worry Blizzard has put in a number of characters who don’t require top level FPS skill to enjoy in Overwatch. In fact, I suggest if you are new to FPS you do not play heroes that require a lot of skill to kill others at range.

You will need to learn to play them eventually but like any game, lets start with the basics – the mechanics I identified earlier in this article: Contesting, Overtime, Hero Abilities and Ultimates. In Overwatch good team play and focusing on map objectives will go further than straight aim and learning how to do this is easier if its all you really have to worry about!





Soldier:76 is the quintessential shooter hero. He has a machine gun, can heal himself using his Biotic Field, and has the ability to run (unlike all the other heroes in Overwatch) by pressing shift. While S:76 does require a fair amount of aiming ability he can spam down Reinhardt and Winston barriers very effectively as well as provide consistent damage from medium range, and his helix rockets provide a lot of burst if you can get them to land. With S:76 you want to poke at your opponents and try not to commit too hard to any engagements. Use your range and mobility to your advantage, lower Reinhardt barriers if the opponent is hiding behind them and poke from mid range. Remember that your Biotic Field allows for strong trades to be made you can run around a corner and heal up without a support freeing them up to take care of less self reliant heroes on your team.



This Swedish builder loves his turret and believes that hard work pays off. Put down a turret in a choke point and watch your enemies melt as it does all the aiming for you. It has a max range but with good positioning on defense this won’t be a problem. As your enemies die around you collect scrap and provide a bonus 75 armour hit points in the form of armour packs to teammates. Your main weapon has two modes, a left click which fires a slow projectile (great at spamming down a choke point) and a shotgun like right click for when anyone gets close. The shotgun does a ton of damage and is much easier to aim if you get up close so don’t be afraid to catch people around corners if necessary.



High rate of fire and high damage. While positioning is important in sentry mode if you put yourself in a good choke point and have a Reinhardt to help protect you with a barrier you can lock down an avenue of attack without having to have the strongest aim due to having such a high rate of fire. Just spam down the corridor if you see someone and reload when no one is around. If you do take damage you can always heal yourself with the repair ability so while not as forgiving as Torbjorn you can definitely do well with Bastion once you find a couple places to enter into your Sentry configuration. Running around in recon mode however will be more difficult if you have a hard time with your aim as he turns into a more traditional FPS character when not a turret.



High Big barrier to protect your friends? Check. High HP pool to soak up damage? Check. High levels of crowd control? Check. Reinhardt is the quintessential tank in Overwatch. While there is a lot of subtlety to strong Reinhardt play, your main goal is to position yourself on the payload and protect your friends. Cast your ultimate when you get engaged upon and use your hammer while the enemy is lying on the ground to melee them for 75 damage per swing as an AoE in front of you.




Winston is a gorilla, not a monkey! Winston can do two things really effectively – jump on people who are squishy and alone, sit with the payload and put up barriers and use his tesla cannon to peel for the back line Mercy or Lúcio. Winston’s tesla cannon weapon will deal damage to all enemy heroes within a short range directly in front of him. No need to aim, the tesla cannon will do all the work for you. Winston’s ultimate provides him a full 1000 HP (even if cast when Winston has only 1 HP left) and a melee attack that knocks all enemies away from him while dealing damage as well as a super low CD on his jump pack during the ultimate duration.

If you have a hard time aiming then Winston can be very effective against highly mobile heroes such as Genji or Tracer since they can’t dodge an attack that doesn’t need to be aimed. Winston can also hurt any Widowmaker if he gets the jump on her so he’s a great pick against a pesky sniper that is tearing up your team.


Mercy doesn’t need to have much aim to be effective, but she does require positioning since she does tend to get focused a lot. The core to playing Mercy is finding someone low and healing them to full, if they are doing well for HP provide them with a damage boost so that their attacks do extra damage. Once your ultimate is charged, you need to play safe, stay back and then resurrect your team if things go wrong.

Mercy does have a pistol and don’t be afraid to use it to protect yourself. However using your guardian angel to fly to a teammate in a safer position may just be a better option.

Mercy is a straight forward, if somewhat more passive support player who doesn’t need any specific aim to do well.



If you find yourself dying a lot as Mercy, it might be best to try someone who can peel for themselves. Lúcio has a ton of tools to help his team out starting with a speed boost or passive AoE healing on his Crossfade ability. Your amp it up ability doubles your effectiveness for a short period based on the tune you are playing – either speed boost or healing. Generally speaking with Lúcio you want to stand in the middle of your core team and the objective on whatever map you are on. Try to save your amp it up on healing for when your teammates are taking damage since your base healing is the lowest in the game (tradeoff being it is AoE). If you find yourself caught you can always crossfade and speed boost to run away, or amp it up and heal while backing off. Lúcio’s strongest self-peel tool is his right click which knocks enemies in front of him away a short distance. You can use this ability to knock people off ledges as well! The community lovingly calls the knockback a Lúcio “boop”. Grow to love the boop. It’s a great tool.

Lúcio’s ultimate Sound Barrier provides an extra 500 hp to all heroes within his AoE range that deteriorates over six seconds. Use this to engage or counter engage. It’s a simple ultimate that requires no aim and can turn games in your favor if timed well. Sound Barrier is especially useful if you get caught in a Zarya Ultimate, hear a McCree begin to challenge his or any other number of situations. The key to Lúcio is trying to stay safe while ensuring the max number of heroes are in your AoE aura (identified on screen as a number in the centre of your HUD).



I really hope that this article helps all those new players who enter the world of Overwatch to get their bearings and begin learning about Overwatch! In the future we will cover more advanced topics and examine each hero in more detail. For the time being however, have fun on the new forum, contribute to the Wiki and hopefully we can build a great community for this fantastic game!