Zen can be such a ridiculous carry, way more than Ana at < master. The issue with him, and same with Ana, is that most people who play them don't prioritize healing. I play with so many Zens who I will stay in front of spamming "I need healing" as an 80 HP McCree, then ask them in voice chat, then die never getting an orb. They're 100% focused on dealing damage.

You can stay behind your team, call out focus targets, and quickly heal up semi weak players... it's amazing.

My play with zen is to hang back and generate picks with the discord orb and be constantly healing my teammates. Then when a genji/reaper gets behind the lines I freak out and push into my people.

Problem with zen is that good tracers and genjis completely shut you down. Otherwise he's amazing

Tracer is pretty close to 50/50 as Zen. Discord + headshot + kick = dead tracer. Winston is the real issue and he's pretty bad in solo queue until high SR IMO.

Only a one week turnaround between the next season, which is nice.

What're the season dates?

Zen beats Winston 1 on 1 unless he uses the bubble.

My problem with Zen is that you're often the only healer, and people seem to think his orb means they heal immediately. So often someone is next to me spamming "I need healing", but I have to heal the guy on the front line who is at the same low health, even if he's being dumb about it.

Most Zens I play with in low diamond are focusing 100% on damage. A good Zen who actually heals and calls out discord targets is so rare.

Ends Nov 24 starts up Dec 1


Also is anyone GM on 2p2?

Right so he loses... I'm not even sure that's really true, pretty sure Winston could take 25% headshots and still win. Granted most Winston's you run into in low levels are terrible and waste their bubble but under no circumstances in Zen good against Winston with intelligent play.

I'm 20-7-2 this week on Zen this week on Zen and I've regretted every time I swapped off of him including solo healing.

As someone who has played 50 hours of healer this season (Zen / Ana), climbing from 1650 to 3k, your damage output on healer is really important in solo queue in my experience. When I switched my focus from mostly healing to only healing high priority + damage I started winning way more.

If you analyze top of the ladder support mains #s and play style all of them have really high damage output. My healing #s are basically the same as top of the ladder but 30-50% lower damage. I don't believe healers are supposed to be too focused on people who are safe but damaged if there's a fight going on, generally your first priority is someone in the thick of the fight whether it's spamming your heals or damage / CC. If you look at pro scrims, their Lucio's are majority of the time in speed stances vs. heal stance.

I also see a lot of people ask for heals when they are not in a location that could be accessed safely or quickly. That's not to say if you're a 60 hp McCree standing in an accessible area you shouldn't get healed pretty quick but you should also make liberal use of your ping heal button as a standard.

Now that said, there's a lot of people out there doing a really terrible job at healing but remember it's the same on the other side too.

I didn't say Zen was GOOD against Winston, simply that he is favoured 1 on 1 unless Winston has his bubble. It's so easy to hit Winston headshots, but he can't abuse your hitbox because he has no headshots to return with.

I mean it's really just situational awareness. I agree that your damage output is hugely important, but it's mainly just being aware that you are a healer first and foremost. You're almost always going to do more damage in the long run as a team with teammates that are alive.

That being said, one of my biggest pet peeves in this game is all the DPS heroes who have no ability to keep themselves alive. If you're playing tracer, you need to be able to use health packs and movement/recall to keep your own self up. So many fights get lost when they come in as a group and pick both your DPSers who have no awareness. Usually, it's not the healers fault if you get immediately destroyed as pharah/genji.

I just see so many Ana/Zen players get super tunnel vision on doing damage or healing just their friend.

It's difficult to do everything... part of getting better at the game is having it slow down, and be more aware of everything happening around you.

My favorite part of being zen is when you have an aware mcree or other dps pop out of a balcony to get into los for a quick heal and then going right back to it.

i like zens that stay on the point with 4 other teammates while i, as tracer, am disrupting the other team. then once i'm low and i've blinked/recalled and still low in health the zen throws an orb on me cuz he's bored and realizes there's no one else to heal.

FYP

Had a real rager of a teammate last night on an El Dorado defense. Wow some people have some screws loose.

lol Overwatch League.

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/heroes/sombra/

i predict sombra will be less useful below 3000 skill rating and less effective than reaper and tracer in most matchups, but she will be overpowered at 4k+ skill ratings when groupfights and ult chains are mandatory.

Pretty sure Sombra is very OP in her current form, 6s cool down on invis / speed + teleport... She'll be basically unkillable even after using mobility to hard engage. Drop off on SMG is 35m (same as Soldier), similar damage with a wider spread with a 60 round(!) clip, she is a great tank shredder. We don't know the #s yet on the damage.

Almost certain to get nerfed as soon as this becomes obvious and then you're probably right on her place in the meta Clayton. I'm expecting mobility cooldown nerfs.

Pretty big day besides Sombra too:
-Quick play getting 1 hero limit and a new "no limits" format
-Arcade 1v1 and 3v3 modes releasing next week
-Brawl will be lots of brawl types at the same time
-New KOTH map coming in early 2017
-Esports league with all the infrastructure (and no relegation)

I honestly think the esports league is pretty revolutionary, it's setup to be very big with the structure of having one team per city with guaranteed spots. Rev share between the teams and Blizzard will have them aligned. Pretty exciting if you're an esports / competitive fan although we'll have to watch if Blizzard manages it well and can integrate the existing scene and esports best practices into this.

I can play Overwatch now.

After years of cheap laptops and barely being able to run games on minimum settings, I'm now using a 4GHz i7 system with a GTX 1080 and a 34 inch monitor.

https://www.twitch.tv/annemunition sombra gameplay

sombra has some more ridic features including

- hack medpacks so other team cant use the packs and your team's packs refreshes 4x faster

- can see villains thru walls if their health is below 50%

- while "hacking" a player if they have ult it shows above their head

her primary is actually really good, reminds me of soldier. that prob needs to get nerfed. if theyre gonna keep all her stuff her primary should be widowmaker-smg-strength.

havent heard the details on this overwatch league but im wondering what established teams get to do, feels like they wouldn't play ball if they were forced/pidgeonholed into certain cities.

i think the cities idea is dumb, esports just isnt there yet and player transfers happen way too rapidly for a fanbase to get attached. but im a cynicaldouche.

So are the 1v1 maps the same as 6v6?

I think I've lost like 14 of 16 games, and feel like I'm playing fine. In pretty much every one of those games I've been teamed with one or two friends, and the random 3-4 players refuse to coordinate or make competent team comps.

What's the point? There's absolutely no hope to win in those games. Frustrating as hell.

I mean it could be variance, a 55% winrate will have some of those size downswings, a 50% winrate could be even bigger / more common. Also, you can lose a lot of you maps / situations you are not as good at more during a bad run (payload vs. KOTH are not linear winrates in my experience). It's not been uncommon in my experience to have a 90% loss rate in certain situations until you figure it out. Also, if you've changed you hero choices / role choices that can have a huge impact. I typically start the same thing every time in the same situation.

Playing with friends is very different than solo too (solo is much easier unless your friends are serious about winning). My solo winrate is generally 60-65% but I'm lucky to get 50% with even my solid friends, each person you add makes a pretty big difference too if there's any weak links you'll go below 50% (also people get placed above their true SR generally so someone close to placements can tank your winrate together too). I also have a duo partner where we've been sitting at 70%+ for a while but we run specific plays on each map and have good synergy about what to do / swap, etc..

I don't think bad comps are a valid excuse, I won with a last minute pick Symm on defense (we had no tank, 1 healer until 2nd point) who then also played attack Symm at 2900. In those games you have to play / switch to carry picks + style and take responsibility for murdering a lot of people (or defense keeping lots of your team alive). I win a lot of games with solo heal, 1 tank, 4 DPS, it matters to winrate but not that much. Whether I played well and got in position to have a big impact is much more important.

The one key I've found to winning is that you have to pick the right strategy that your group can personally execute, depends on the meta of that specific rank but always have a plan to break the common stuff. If you see a lot spam comps attacking into a choke like Eichen, you need to run Dva to block it or flank Pharah. Lower level teams for example be aware of when / where snowballs happen and aggressively blow your ult to avoid it happening. When they surprise Bastion just break comp and grab Dva. Can't break the 2cp point B? You grab the Reaper. Don't trust your flankers to find the TP, consider grabbing Tracer after first fight.

The game is really complicated and dynamic, at low diamond I still have people complaining about 3 supports when someone runs a Symmetra. It's pretty ignorant but if they are at your rank then they must have some great aim / positioning to make up for that lack of knowledge so you play around it.

For <3k SR solo queue I think you should be able to play these heroes at a reasonable level for maximum winrate:
-Zen (best solo carry)
-Dva (for spam / spread comps)
-Reaper (tank busting if your DPS are bad, clearing 2cp when your DPS are bad)
-Dva, Reaper, Tracer, Soldier, Mei (desperation times, extremely important)
-McCree (for really good Pharah's or Tracers, pretty big investment though not worth it if you can't perform consistently)
-Ana (best solo heal generally, also very high impact on defense as the most survivable support which is important on a couple KOTH maps, same as McCree though you gotta play it really well for it to be worth)

Rein can be insane in duos+, occasionally useful solo (but not something I'd main). My 70% winrate duo we run 100% of games with Rein. If you're duo'ing you have a lot more flexibility beyond the picks I listed because you can use coordination.