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Competitive Overwatch players of Tildes: What's a tip you'd love to share?
Whether it be team comps, strategies, or even a nifty thing about a hero. Who are our competitive Overwatch players who might be missing a place to chat about it?
Omg, finally a tildes thread perfect for me to geek out on! I don't think Overwatch is a great game to play competitively because of its balance, but it's the only multiplayer game that satisfies my ADHD brain, so I've spent a ton of time learning it.
Here's a list of notes I developed while learning to play Echo at a GM level.
One tip I think that everyone should know is to learn how to take angles. A lot of players, myself included, fell into the trap of stacking with their team in Overwatch 1. In Overwatch 2 splitting the enemies team's attention is crucial for success since there's one less tank to soak up damage and deny off-angles.
Ideally you want to create a situation where the enemy team spending resources on you will result in your team being able to push them, or where the other team focusing your teammates opens up opportunities for you to make a play.
You don't want to isolate yourself so much that the enemy can just turn on you and kill you, but learning to control angles is a fundamental part of how Overwatch plays.
This is slightly off topic, there are two books that I would like to recommend to anyone looking to improve. Reading books to get good at video games is pretty tryhard, but I believe the process of becoming good at video games can teach skills that apply to many aspects of life.
The first book is called "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey. This book was probably one of the biggest factors in my mechanical improvement in Overwatch. It uses the medium of tennis to teach you about how to achieve a state of relaxed concentration, what athletes call "in the zone", and gives really good insights on how we can often impede our own success in life. It primarily applies to learning motor skills, but it does touch on psychological factors.
The second book I'd recommend is called "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. It follows the life of the author, a GM chess player, and the experiences that lead him to his success. The biggest takeaway I got from this book was the value of a growth mindset. Whenever I'm able to focus on the learning and improving at the game, rather than the results of it, I find my experience with Overwatch to be incredibly fun and rewarding regardless of my teammates or whatever cheesy things I encounter.
Masters Echo player here, I'm curious if you have any tips for Duplicate!
My experience with Duplicate is about 50% of the time I'm insta-killed, and I probably only build an ult with it about 1 in every 5 copies (especially after the ult built nerf). I try and use it as a fight engagement tool via copying the tank but in my experience this leads to a quick death. I find I'm able to extract more value from it by copying DPS heroes to tilt a 1v1 heavily in my favor.
As a bonus, my scrim team has started receiving VOD reviews from Natter, and the number one thing he harped on for my Echo play specifically is flight/high-ground usage.
Essentially, the school of thought is to always use Flight with a strong purpose - using the momentum to finish off targets, taking a better high ground, as a temporary off-angle - and not using Flight outside of that. The idea is to maximize time on high ground while still having Flight available to escape/engage/peel - and also Flight time is heavily correlated with the amount of damage Echo takes, so less flight means less damage taken. This is a very hard lesson for me to incorporate, being a Pharah main who instinctively takes to the skies at the slightest chance!
Heya, I have lots of thoughts on dupe, I think one of the smartest ultimates in the game.
The first thing to know about dupe is that it’s extremely cheap on current patch, so it’s better to use it to gain an advantage in a fight rather then to waiting for the perfect time to use it. As long as it gains your team an advantage it’s a good copy, excluding into last fight / OT scenarios.
Being insta-killed in dupe is pretty common, usually when that happens your timing or positioning is off. If you’re duping and your team isn’t drawing aggro, then the enemy team can focus and just burn you. Often when you copy someone a sniper will delete you mid-animation, so it’s important to track who has sightlines on you and to try to dupe around some cover.
There's also some niche tech where you can move your camera to hide your critbox after casting dupe so you can't just get one-tapped, but that's only saved me like once.
The ult charge rate nerf did hurt coping for ultimates quite a bit. I now find myself trying to copy for powerful abilities, or as a get out of jail free card after investing all of my cooldowns. The most consistent way I’ve found to build ults while in copy is by copying supports and spamming their cooldowns.
Two things here
First thing I’d say is that duping at the start of a fight isn’t usually the best option since the enemy team is likely to have all their cooldowns and their attention is going to be focused on the first threat available. When I do use dupe aggressively, I usually wait for the early mid-fight where my team has force out some cooldowns. I also like to have had invested my cooldowns trying to get a pick or force a key cooldown (suzu, lamp, etc.) before duping aggressively.
The second thing I’d say is that duping tanks aggressively usually isn’t that good due to the 300hp cap. There are exceptions like Ram, Zarya or JQ, but tank copies are just really easy to burn if your trying to engage with them.
This is definitely the best way to use it aggressively imo, just make sure to force a cooldown advantage before copying.
The next piece of advice I’d give for dupe is to not always use it aggressively. This requires good situational awareness, but looking at what cooldowns you have available to you via dupe opens up a plethora of ways to use the ult.
While I do think copying tanks is bad for engaging, copying a tank to sustain the enemy teams powerspike, like copying Zarya for nano blade, can let you win fights that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
In addition support abilities tend to be very strong, and if you use dupe for cooldowns like anti-nade or rez you can change the tempo of a fight to be in for favor even if you get deleted right after using them.
Overall the biggest tip I'd have to improve your dupe usage is to VOD every fight where you have dupe available and do some theory crafting. Look at the space you have available to you, and play what-if with each copy target. Think about the impact of X ability, where your enemies attention is at, or what cover you could have played. Just thinking about how you can use it will cause you to subconsciously make better decisions when you're distracted during a match.
Natter is a great coach, I used to watch him for a bit when he made content. I'd also recommend egoistcat if you want macro tips and spilo for general hero advice.
Patience, you’re never gonna win a 1 v 5 so don’t rush in and feed the opponent. Instead actually group up and go in.
I've been getting back into Overwatch despite the... questionable decisions Blizzard keeps making. I only really have a couple of hero specific tips, and they're kinda basic anyway.
As Mei, when you ult, try to put your wall up behind the enemy team - when they instinctively try to backpedal, they won't be able to escape.
As Echo, I never see people using beam well. It does ridiculous damage to anything under half health - this includes shields. Echo is an amazing tank melter.
Maybe a hot take, but unless you are in masters or above, ignore the meta and specialize in few heroes.
In metal ranks, most people don't know why certain compositions and heroes are meta and therefore lock themselves in a composition or hero even when it is not optimal for their current match.
Specializing in a small number of heroes means you can better understand the limits of those heroes and maximize your effectiveness. It's good to be flexible, but it's better to first master a few heroes then expand.
Don't blame teammates, take personal responsibility. Don't be disheartened by throwers. Your team has 4 players who can be throwers (assuming you're not throwing). Enemy has 5 potential throwers.
My advice is slightly different than the other comments in this thread. This is coming from a gold/plat level support main (OW1), so I'm no expert in gameplay.
My main tip is to remember that it's a game, it's supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, stop playing until it feels like it'd be fun again. This will not only help you stop deranking, but it will be a boon to your teammates. Imagine if your tilted teammate had gone to take a rest instead of trying "one more match" when they're infuriated. If they'd returned with a clear head instead of berating your Hanzo with gold elims to switch because "he's a bad hero."
Now imagine that you have the power to make that happen by not being that teammate. That's the lesson I didn't learn. I quit Overwatch because I saw myself becoming toxic. And like, I'm a kittens and rainbows person. I'm very positive and strive to always improve the days of the people around me. But when I played comp, I was different, full of finger-pointing and negativity. I was taking it too seriously and it was beginning to affect how I saw myself. I would review my footage to try to see how I could improve my positioning and target prioritization etc - and I'd hear back all the times I lost my temper with myself, my teammates, the enemy team. I hated it. That's when I quit comp, and soon Overwatch for good. It took a long time for me to forgive myself for being "that bitchy Zenyatta" (a streamer on my team once told me their chat was calling me that, haha).
So that's my tip. Have fun playing your game, and don't let it turn you toxic.
I'd love to share, but I haven't been playing the game competitively seriously. I used to get around plat-diamond but now I have a few ranks in Gold, so I really don't have much to add other than: Where the hell are people on the voice chat? Do communicate! Tell your mates about stuff that's happening!
Use the ping! I love the ping. Out of all the fuck ups Blizzard crammed into OW2, the ping was not one of them. It is such a fantastic tool, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one using it. It's so useful for tracking enemies, warning allies, etc. etc.
and of course, if you're a rein main, just charge into the middle of the enemy team and pray to a minimum of 7 gods and hope for the best 🙏
I haven't been "competitive" since the original launch but one piece that I imagine is still relevant: sometimes it's better to suicide to the environment or enemy team than slip away and die later and force your team to make and odd man push.
Stop giving money to them if you want the game to stop going to hell.
Meh..I gave up taking competitive seriously. The fact that if one member is playing comp like they should be playing unranked kills the entire team.