Playing OW Classic really makes me realize how far the game has come, and every 2016 Hero besides Genji and Tracer just aren't as good to play.

So I sometimes chill in Open Queue, enjoying farming ULTs with Moira and seeing my numbers surging (Kinda feel satisfied).

Now, I wonder if I want to push to GM / Champion, what shall I learn more in terms of comps and strats?

I've heard some people saying that Top lobbies are mostly 4 Tank 1 Supports, I wonder if that is correct.

I am currently Master 4 in Role Queue Support, I hope I can get some valuable answer from fellow GM above Open Queue Pals!

Like I get it.. It's a team game and all, and you'll have more fun playing with friends, but this and previous season I feel like competitive integrity has gone to shit due to this as a Solo Q player.

I have a few alt accounts, and the experience has been the same? It's relatively very common to match against a 4 stack or a trio, and it's even more noticeable when they aren't just queuing for the sake of queuing together, but they actually know how to comm and synergize.

Normally matchmaker in such situations is supposed to give you Solo Q teammates with higher MMR to balance out the natural disadvantage you're about to face, or match you with another trio of similar skill, but that does not seem to be the case here consistently.

Ik this has been posted a thousand times but I seriously hate her. Im not even mad im just tired of it. This game would be ten times better without her in it. She literally breaks all the rules of this game. One shot abilities are ok when they are very difficult to pull off or have some big windup or warning. Widow can just do it so consistently and easily. No other character forces you to play the game as different as widow. In a game where you have to peek at some point to achieve anything your risking being instantly killed. In a game where managing cooldowns properly and knowing when to push and when to pull is the key to success widow doesnt even let you use a cooldown before your dead.

I dont dislike any other character more than her. Sombras annoying but shes fine even before the removal of permanent stealth. Atleast you and your teammates can actually react and use some cooldowns or whatever before she can kill you. Hogs annoying but hes big and loud and you can play around his hook. Widow is just so unfun to vs its insane. I dont even know how they could fix her. I think its a fundamentally flawed design. Before anyone says skill issue blah blah im gm support and masters on the other two. High ranks is where shes a problem anyway.

Not only the nostalgia, the game mode feels so good due to the absence of post-launch power creep characters.

Tagging enemies actually feels important because enemies will either be killed or zoned away in order to be healed. Now losing a chunk of HP doesn't feel matter when a team has heal creep characters (e.g Ana, Baptiste) and also sustain creep characters (e.g. Orisa, Baptiste) that can make themselves harder to be killed.

CC is also much fewer which means more accessible gameplay as you mainly need to worry about Hook, Flashbang and Freeze, meanwhile these three characters can be easily avoided compared to CC abomination characters like Doomfist & Wrecking Ball.

Many OG characters feel like situational picks, meanwhile post-launch characters are mostly solid or better picks due to their bloated kits. Such as:

• Sojourn = better Soldier:76

• Ashe = better Cassidy / Soldier:76

• Echo = better Pharah / sky Genji

• Sigma = One man army because he has almost everything

• Baptiste = Support Soldier:76 with triple health bar + vertical mobility

• Ana outputs high HPS healing that work in all ranges, meanwhile Lucio & Mercy must play close to the team for consistent healing; Zenyatta heal range is wide but poor HPS.

I love Ana but she also has to go as she is the birth of power creep. A character who literally counters the entire Support cast (including Ana herself) until Kiriko came in (which is OW2 launch).

Ana also made the Tanks hard to kill (thus we got Triple Tank meta in OW1 Season 3). Despite Ana counters Hog, she also somewhat enables Hog (Boosted heal + Vape = Hog goes back to full HP; Nano + Whole Hog = Deadly combo)

i was expecting to get one shotted by a widow body but instead i got one shotted by my own tranq god it felt so bad

goated gamemode tho

I've got my own where Ive tried to keep his animations about the same, improved his worst matchups, weakend his best matchups, and possibly improve his fantasy of being a gun berserker. I was interested to see what others had imagined. Any thoughts?

Wondering if that’s available. Would be a lot of fun

Does it still hold up, in some ways, now that it is being relived again in 2024? Or was it only so good in an era where everyone did not figure out the game, yet? Do the rose-colored glasses deceive all of us?

Are there some aspects to certain heroes, in the past, which you wish were kept, up to this current iteration of the game? Or, were there fundamental flaws to some designs which needed to be rooted out, whether it be the character teetering between being extremely overpowered and unplayable, based on the current kit, or just being exteremly underpowered no matter what changes were made?

Are some things best left in the past (cough scatter arrow cough cough), or would you like to see prior iterations of heroes tweaked in different ways, in the modern game environment?

Any suggestions on getting out of Gold ranking? I put so much work into mastering Moira but I fear that my teams are a hit or miss…

I’m not saying Widow isn’t oppressive or unfun, but she is one of like three DOS remaining that have any agency in this current game. It’s very easy to tell when a Widow is carrying because you will die. In contrast, people don’t complain about how broken tanks are because it’s less obvious when a tank is carrying, or even just outplaying the enemy tank.

When your tank is dominating, it’s less clear as the kills your tank gets makes up only a fraction of their value. Really, a dominant tank commands space and makes it incredibly easy for the rest of their team to just plays the game with a massively diminished risk of being out of position and getting punished for it. So when a tank is dominating, people will falsely believe that it’s really them that is carrying because they have more opportunities to kill, to survive, or to play aggressively in general.

The issue is that tanks are overpowered and determine every single game. I have anecdotally had people agree with me on the various OW subs, I have experienced a 10+ game win streak in ranked where I lucked out by having the better tank, and playing the Classic mode proves beyond a doubt how cosmetic every other role is.

Widowmaker is an issue, but it’s much easier to notice than with tanks, who are an even bigger issue with the health of this game and yet there are hardly as many complaints. They also buffed tanks for the sake of queue times and yet you have to wait upwards of 5 mins in QP to get a game, unless you queue tank and get a game instantly. The game right now is in an abysmal state, and i think the covert nature of how tanks influence the game allows it to go under the radar.

I really want to have fun in this game, but it’s impossible when you are just cosmetic and get zero value compared to a tank, and the developers just keep buffing them. Doomfist is MUCH stronger than the time they had to nerf him after a week because he was dominant, and yet he isn’t even the meta tank…

Everything is from Spilo's Q&A with Aaron Keller and Alec Dawson. Sections and points within them are ordered from most to least interesting.

6v6 future

• They're not open to removing 5v5 right now 2:21:40.
• Depending on popularity and retention, future could be 2:22:09:
  1. Another queue, with a ranked version. This is if the test is really popular.
  2. A limited time event that returns often like Classic.
  3. A limited time event that returns rarely, like April Fools, possibly once a year, if the test is not that popular.
  4. Nothing if it's very unpopular, but they don't expect this.
• Worried about player fragmentation, might remove some other queues if 6v6 returns as a permanent queue. Alec Dawson uses Open Queue as an example queue that could be cut, but Aaron Keller says it's the 3rd most popular mode and that they're not talking about that right now 2:23:57.
• Success gradient is dependent on popularity, retention, and whether players return for the test. They'll look at what roles play the test and what it does to queue times of both 6v6 and the standard gamemodes. Worst case scenario is too many tanks prefer 6v6 and have long queues in it, while queue times for other roles in standard gamemodes gets much worse. Best case scenario is the right amount of tanks so that 5v5 queue times aren't too affected and queue times are good in 6v6 1:58:32.
• Team feedback on Min 1 Max 3 mixed, possible if it fails they revert the test to 2-2-2 1:38:22.
• Long queue times not unacceptable if people want to play 6v6 more anyway and are willing to wait 2:09:20.
• 2-2-2 6v6 test rescheduled to be near beginning of Season 14, before Min 1 Max 3 test 1:37:32.
• Worried about hero divergence. What if a rework is needed in one mode but not the other? 2:03:10
• Committed to faster balancing, using double shield as an example 2:11:50.
• Season 14 tests will be for a total of 6 weeks 1:39:30.
• Technical performance data is very important 2:01:20.
• 2-2-2 is the test the team is most excited for 2:33:04.
• Can make changes to increase a role's popularity as they did for Support in Overwatch 2, no silver bullet 2:10:30.
• Aaron likes the passion and how strongly people prefer 5v5 or 6v6 2:40:38.
• Downside of 2-2-2 6v6 first is they were hoping having Min 1 Max 3 first would help initial 2-2-2 6v6 balance 1:40:48.

2-2-2 6v6 balance examples

• Tanks keep ult charge reduction passive, but health passive, crit reduction passive, and knockback reduction passive removed. Tanks will have less uptime 1:42:20.
• DPS passive stays 1:43:09.
• Self-heal passive goes from 5 to 7 seconds, 2.5 to 3.5 seconds for supports 1:43:20.
• No discussion of Season 9 changes.
• Anything that stays in the playspace for long durations will have duration nerfed, such as Mauga Cage and Lifeweaver Tree 1:45:36.
• Roadhog rework reverted, alt fire returns, no Pig Pen which is more clutter 1:45:00.
• Winston keeps alt fire, they removed it but Aaron Keller wanted it back 1:44:35.
• Reinhardt loses one firestrike, charge has less steering and increased cooldown but can still be cancelled 1:46:16.
• Ramattra shield cooldown increased by a few seconds, typical of tank cooldown increases 1:42:55.
• Zarya has separate bubble cooldowns again 1:46:12.
• Kiriko and Lifeweaver healing increased because they were struggling 1:52:38.
• Ana cooldown reductions, full sleep potency against tanks 1:43:50.
• Zenyatta Discord orb is stronger and cooldown on a target removed 1:43:42.
• Mei freeze not returning, they don't want more hard CC 1:45:50.

General game future

• Quicker, good updates are healthy. Not variety for variety's sake but some players appreciate the variety. It's taken time to lose old habits, design was very defense-oriented, wanted attackers to have to use teamwork to crack the nut, Paris and Eichenwalde were intentionally designed like this. They now like people being able to move, escape, make plays, don't want teams just stall out in areas. Too many symmetrical gamemodes at this point, but less stalling. Playmaking and carry potential a huge deal to a lot of players, Overwatch has some of the lowest carry potential of competitive shooters, maybe of competitive PvP games, but this philosophy shift helped 2:12:47.
• Want more strategy, more layers of decisionmaking, whether it be prematch or in match. Also searching for something permanent for more casual players, Junkenstein's Lab was in this direction 2:34:50.
• New heroes maps and modes isn't enough, Overwatch should change more fundamentally 2:39:28.
• Vision for core Overwatch is a serious competitive game, but they want more of a beginning-middle-end story for a match with things to look forward to 2:36:28.
• Will continue to test but rounding corner, want to implement lessons from them more. Open Queue Quick Play is 3rd most popular mode, 7% to 10% of player hours per day. There could be better versions of Open Queue, they want feedback 2:29:10.
• They have other format ideas that are less "crazy" or maybe closer to something they've done previously, but are looking at the reception to Season 14 tests 1:40:35.

6v6 versus 5v5

• Support was almost as unpopular as tank at the start of Overwatch 2, but quickly rose in popularity over the first two seasons 1:53:48.
• Support is more engaging in Overwatch 2 than Overwatch 1. Aaron thinks parts of the tank experience are better in 6v6, but that it doesn't necessarily mean it's better for other roles 1:54:30.
• There's less space for DPS role, but you can coordinate with your offtank. You don't get to flank as freely, but you can duel tanks 1:55:57.
• In 5v5 it felt like there was more space to breath. In 6v6 tanks still have freedom of movement but other roles have a lot less 1:56:34.

Min 1, Max 3

• DPS is most popular role, and they recognize that the best compositions will usually only have one, tension between how players want to play and what's optimal, this mode is probably not the right answer 2:05:39.
• Attempt to find a hybrid for fast queues with some structure that solves problems from Open Queue, 6v6 2:04:39.
• 3-1-2 is pretty popular, but 2-1-3 can be quite good too, double sniper maybe on certain maps 2:05:12.

Kingmaker

• If they ever implemented anything like Kingmaker, bonuses would be more individualized 2:27:30.
• Sole Tank gets a speed boost and CC reduction 2:26:57.
• Sole DPS gets a health bonus and cooldown reduction 2:27:04.
• Sole Support gets a health bonus, heal more, and cooldown reduction 2:27:08.
• Hero swapping is clunky 2:27:50.

Classic event

• This event is just the launch meta, no changes during it besides hero limits 1:35:55.
• Repeats will depend on reception, but would visit different metas 1:34:56.

Currently looking few competitive metas and looking at Overbuff pick rates Orisa still seems to be meta. She is averaging a 4.1 percent pickrate second only to Reinhardt. I was shocked when I was the previous patch notes and asked if she really needed to be nerfed this hard. Despite my initial thoughts it’s kinda clear she’s clearly still viable and infact meta in certain pro play comps. With the changes to supports in the current patch it is clear we will see a different backline meta. A potential Ana/Kiri double flex seems good or Ana/Juno seems good right off reading the patch notes. I’m not sure how this might stir up the tank meta but there is a good chance it might.

Why I think Orisa needs a rework ? Simply because her game play loop out of all tanks currently is the most boring in many sense. She falls under the simply bully enemy tank category of value. Her abilities have very little skill expression, exception to Javelin being a skill shot (even so being one of the largest projectiles in the game with firestrike). Gold is just a I don’t die button making her practically just a wall that takes no CC. But other than all of this my biggest problem remains the fact changing her numbers is clearly not doing much for the state of the hero. Even before the big nerfs in the previous patch she was atrocious in terms of winrate in lower ranks. She is currently maintains the second lowest winrate in Gold (average overwatch player rank) and she is yet meta in pro play and top 500 ?

Lastly I don’t think she’s a very enjoyable character to play as, against or to even watch. In the 5 v 5 game design she clearly is “im losing the tank battle” button. But I think her play base deserve something better as well. How would you rework her without suggesting “6 v 6 is the answer” to every problem. What do you think can be fixed to fit her in the current 5 v 5 format? Or do we just delete horse all together?

Okay so,

I used to play Overwatch. I slowly stopped, and eventually completely quit a month or so after the release of the new game. I’ve played it once or twice since then, but only for a couple matches before once again abandoning it.

Now, I have changed my views since I played since I’m older now and yada yada, I don’t really approve of smurfing and I don’t want to use my alternate account (which I will call “account one”) that I actually kept my SR up on when I played OW1 comp. Account one has like 700hrs on it, and I used it as my main for awhile because I wanted to detach from my old main (account two) due to embarrassing amounts of hours and being “self conscious” about my hours on certain characters when I wasn’t good at said characters. So I ditched that old account two for account one.

Account one had ranks I was semi-proud of. Now, my account two, was originally my main. Has.. more hours than I can remember, I know it’s over 1300, I have used anytime I play Overwatch now. I used it before I quit Overwatch, but by that time, I gave up on competitive. I threw matches with two friends of mine (this was years ago so don’t come at me), and lowered all of my roles’ ranks to bronze. But the thing is, I’m not actually bronze.

So account two had extremely low MMR and extremely poor SR. Even on the role I was best at. But I’ve been wanting to come back to Overwatch, and maybe even come back to the competitive scene. But the problem is, I don’t want to ditch account two anymore. And I don’t want to play on account one.

I heard rumors I think, that around Overwatch 2’s release that people’s slates were effectively wiped clean. I’m wondering, if I played competitive placement matches, after over a year of not playing competitive, would my old bronze ranking still haunt me? Would I still be placed low regardless of how I played?

I know this is a long read but thanks for reading!

By god I am so sick of this hero. 1.0 widow with current bullet sizes (we are on increased bullets right?) is horrible to play against, who wouldve thunk it.

I’m an audiophile by heart and to my ears, overwatch has some really lovely gameplay sounds. Excluding voice lines, what sounds do you enjoy? Weapon sounds, reloads etc. Personally, I really like Ana’s gun when it hits and Queen’s jagged blade - tika-tika-tika-tika.

I've onetricked my way to Masters 2 as the reaper guy but now i'm beginning to struggle against very good sniper comps. By the time i've closed the distance to get a pick the snipers have already killed off a lot of my team. I utilize cover to cover shadow step but finding value against these compositions is getting pretty difficult.

Yes I do swap when it isn't working so don't think i'm throwing games, I just really enjoy the challenge of making more niche heroes work in situations they normally don't and it usually works out very well. High elo console has a lot of pocketed Ashe/Widow and I sometimes struggle to find value here. Any tips?

Welcome to the weekly /r/CompetitiveOverwatch Short Questions Megathread!

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Overwatch’s balance is tilted heavily in favor of tanks and supports, making them feel drastically overtuned compared to DPS heroes. With tanks dishing out massive damage while being incredibly hard to kill, and supports able to sustain themselves while still putting out DPS-level damage, it’s time for a major change.

A flat 50% damage reduction across all tanks and supports would bring them down to a level that respects their roles without overshadowing DPS heroes. Tanks are supposed to create space and absorb damage, not act as secondary DPS. Supports, meanwhile, should focus on healing and supporting, not dishing out damage that rivals dedicated damage-dealers.

This kind of adjustment would give DPS heroes a fair chance to do what they’re meant to: take down opponents. It would put tanks and supports on an even playing field, keeping fights skill-based and rewarding proper team coordination instead of allowing tanks and supports to steamroll with both high damage and sustain. Let's bring back role balance and make Overwatch fairer for everyone!

Jeff Kaplan’s philosophy for Overwatch wasn’t just about balancing numbers; it was about creating a game where skill, timing, and awareness mattered most. He believed in balancing heroes in a way that encouraged skillful play, rewarding players who put time and effort into mastering their heroes. His approach was careful and incremental, making small, intentional changes instead of massive overhauls. This mindset kept heroes balanced without making them comically broken or drastically overtuned.

Kaplan was also not afraid to make necessary nerfs, especially to heroes who could dominate without requiring much precision. Heroes like Genji and Moira, who can sometimes feel unhealthy for the game with their high-impact abilities and ease of use, would have likely seen Kaplan’s balanced, skill-focused approach. Under his philosophy, heroes that offer low-risk, high-reward playstyles would be adjusted to provide more skill-based counterplay, so they’d still be viable but not frustratingly oppressive.

It’s clear that Kaplan’s vision was about keeping Overwatch both challenging and fair. He listened to the community and made adjustments that preserved each hero’s unique identity while ensuring they required skill to truly shine. This kind of game philosophy is what Overwatch could benefit from today. Would anyone else like to see a return to Kaplan's style of balance?"