Overwatch: Beginner’s Guide – Tips, Tricks, and Basics

The insanely competitive, character-based first-person shooter, Overwatch rewards player’s skill while still forcing team synergy in order to achieve true success. The critically acclaimed shooter hosts a wide variety of characters and character archetypes, hosting a character for every style of player. From long-ranged sniper characters to a hammer and shield tank Overwatch hosts a character for any player’s desired play style. The game provides such a large list of abilities and ultimates that to detail every one would be a humongous list. That being said the game, although approachable, has an extremely high skill ceiling and rewards technical skill alongside necessitating communication skills.

Given its 4-year long life span, the Overwatch meta continues to evolve and adapt to the prevailing strengths or weaknesses of the community. For a new player, these years of developed players may seem like too high a wall to hurdle. The reality is that this is the best time as any to join the ranks of the online Overwatch community. The huge cast of characters alongside the “two characters per archetype” lock makes the game extremely accessible for a new player. This guide will provide some essential tips to succeed in a new player’s Overwatch career.

Learning Each Role in Overwatch

Overwatch hosts three different roles: Tank, Damage and Healing. Each of these roles provided an important utility for a team to succeed in a competitive match. It is essential that a player becomes comfortable in each role as the be a flexible and vital part of a team’s success. Here are some tips to help new players learn how to play each archetype:

• Tank: The tank characters of Overwatch possess large sums of health and useful abilities to protect and assist in team fights. These abilities are generally designed to protect teammates from powerful enemy attacks (Reinhardt’s shield or Winston’s bubble) or even isolate key characters from your enemy’s team (Roadhog’s hook or DVA’s fly ability). Either way, these tank characters are the workhorses of any team and provide valuable coverage for their respective teams.
• Damage: These characters are low health and high damage output characters. These are generally the most difficult characters to use as their success relies on a player’s individual shooting capabilities. Strong but easy characters to use in this category are Soldier 76, Tracer or Bastion while some more difficult but higher skill ceiling characters include: Genji, Hanzo or Widowmaker. Regardless of who you choose a player should become comfortable with their Damage character in order to whittle away at their enemy’s team.
• Healing: Healers are the most essential part of a team. A good healer can keep a losing team in a fight and turn the tides of battle. Although not securing as many eliminations as the other archetypes, these characters provide essential support for a team and are key to succeeding competitively. A solid choice is the ever-present Mercy or the versatile Lucio.

Grouping Up in Overwatch

The single most important game philosophy inside of Overwatch is to stay close to your teammates. Unlike other first-person shooters Overwatch relies on a player working alongside their teammates and utilizing their strengths or weaknesses.

The most frustrating matches of Overwatch are rooted in a sporadic and separated team versus a well organized and close-knit group of enemies. The ability to bounce off of your teammate’s strengths and hold up any weaknesses they have is a crucial aspect of succeeding in online play. Sticking close to your Reinhardt provides free cover for a Damage player to shoot through and if close to a healer allows a player almost free pressure against an enemy.

That same damage player trying to face a well-organized team alone will certainly lead to a brutal and quick elimination. So above all else stick together, you would be surprised at the success a group of average players working together can have over a team of unorganized technically sound players.

Learning Synergy in Overwatch

One of the biggest lessons one can learn inside of Overwatch is what characters work well with one another and what grouping of characters can open up or decimate the enemy team. There are an almost unlimited supply of synergies inside of the game and learning these will certainly increase your success.

For example, let’s examine the powerful Pharah and Mercy combo. Pharah’s mobility allows for Mercy to have access to high altitudes, to scout out the battlefield and to supply her powerful healing beams or power up beams to the Pharah. Pharah’s high damage coupled with Mercy’s damage boosts makes for a combination that can obliterate an enemy team in a few smart plays. This is one of the most iconic synergies within the game and is just one example of character combinations.

Another good example is the infamous Reinhardt and Bastion. Being able to protect a turret mode bastion with a Reinhardt shield makes this combination a wall of elimination. If on the attacking team of a payload map, this will spell trouble for a defending team.

The important thing to learn and implement into a player’s gameplay is that there is an almost endless number of combinations in the game that can boost that pairing’s abilities. And learning these synergies can certainly boost a player’s success in matches.

Avoiding Toxic Behavior in Overwatch

The unfortunate reality of Overwatch is its infamously toxic community. It’s a common occurrence for a self-proclaimed pro player to harshly bash and criticize a teammate for his actions in a match. This provides nothing more than a crutch for a weak player to lean on as opposed to learning how they could excel as a player. Being toxic is only ostracizing potentially great players from the community with hateful language and behavior. Rather than frame losses as a blaming game, view them as lessons learned through failure. And watch as your style of play increases and people do not fear having you on their team.

Overwatch is available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.