What platform are you playing on, cwar?

Also, maybe I'm misreading your post, but do you not think Symmetra is a generally minusEV play? I wouldn't want two supports and a Symmetra on my team.

PC / US.

My Symmetra comments were more about composition not being a major factor in winning (relative to other factors you can control). She's the highest winrate hero so probably not very -EV on average until around masters. The biggest problem when you have her on your team is people don't like running 3 supports so it's hard to coordinate, Symmetra players tend to be non-communicative and you'll often end up solo healer which is sub-optimal for carrying cause you often can't / shouldn't play Zen.

The thing you have to realize is that plat and below is that the majority of DPS picks are dead spots. I think Reaper, Junk Rat and Mei are the only +EV heroes in offense / defense trees at that level. Furthermore, there's some picks you should be way more concerned about seeing like:
-Widow (especially defensive Widow)
-Mercy (especially KOTH Mercy)
-Defensive Bastion
-Winston
-Ana
-Tracer
-McCree
-Soldier

Having a Mercy on your team is probably the most -EV comp occurrence that's also very common. Tilting over Symmetra is just a bit irrational (although it's still a good idea to ask them to swap for the reasons I mentioned).

Almost any pick is far a guaranteed loss because both sides have multiple dead spots every game. I'd be far more concerned about reactive compositions after you know what they are doing and managing your teams trickling as best you can. Really it doesn't matter either because it happens on both sides (less frequently on yours), and even if you get put in a -EV situation if you can make it say a 40% winrate vs. a 25% winrate you'll climb fast.

i'm a tracer/sym main, i guess avoid playing with me

why is mercy -EV? havent played in a while

he's talking about pubs... and yeah mercy on koth is really bad on koth in a pub. other modes, i'm fine with because they probably suck at any other role if they lock in mercy.

Mercy is probably the worst hero in the game right now honestly. Bad in pubs, bad in 6s. Bad in pros. She's so bad they don't even put in her in Pharah comps any more.

Pubs it's especially bad because your Mercy won't hide for res (or will hide with a beam showing her location) and your team has a high probability of dying over a long period of time / stragglers / spread. Without a solid res she's really bad kit strength wise.

All the other healers are really strong too which makes it even more drastic.

Good mercys can be game deciding in "hold point A-or-lose" situations. At 3k SR i dont run into many of these good mercys but they do exist and they are tough to deal with (because you never see them until they are raising people).

In general i prefer lucio/zen/ana though too

What chars is currently OP? And which are under powered?

Nothing is actually OP at the moment for pubs. Ana + Reaper ults are being combo'd a lot for the pro games and while it's going to be tuned down it's not so strong that it's being done 100% of games.

This is the current winrate list:
http://masteroverwatch.com/heroes/pc/global/mode/ranked

Stuff that's really strong for comp'ing:
-Rein (duo)
-Lucio (duo)
-Zen (solo)
-Zarya (everything but defending)

If you got really good at it Ana + Reaper I've heard can get you an 80% winrate.

UP for pubs assuming you play it well (ie Widow has a terrible winrate but a proficient Widow is actually quite useful):
-Mercy (the worst)
-Torb
-Soldier
-Pharah (but less so and only at SR where people have good aim)

Ya I mean I went from 3.3k->3k in like 15 games, which is just super tilting. I agree that solo queue is a lot easier, and I think I'm gonna get a second account to just play with my friends on, because honestly, they are bad.

Symmetra is a super viable hero on first point defense. She pairs really well with an Ana or Mercy (I don't think mercy is as bad as you do). I play her pretty frequently. The comp thing though is kinda valid. For example, we played a game on Dorado the other day as a 3 man queue, and got paired with another 3 man queue against a 6 queue (this happens pretty often). The 3 randoms on our team picked hanzo, widow, and roadhog, and didn't join team chat. That's just a loss. If I play Zarya (my best hero), and try to give the hanzo someone to combo with, then we don't have a Rein, which imo is super vital on payload. Sure, we could play Ana/Lucio/Rein, and our comp wouldn't necessarily be awful... but those 3 picks by our teammates are just so hard as even a start.

I hope the next season does a better job separating ranks out a bit, and potentially adding a solo queue season rating as well. There are way too many people in diamond with 6 hours in the current season, and no ability to understand basic coordination. I can only ask people so many times to stop running in ahead of respawns and dying. If you have a team that just refuses to stop trickling in, you lose.

Meh.

I mean I have played every hero in comp this season, in a non troll manner. Bastion, Widow, Torb, etc... can all be legitimately useful heroes in certain settings. I think picking torb on say Hollywood overtime defense when the attacking team has 1 minute can be super useful. He's an amazing DPSer on his own, and his turrets can really stuff that push against relatively uncoordinated teams. Bastion can be great say on the last point of hollywood on attack to just post up on the trickling defenders (as a surprise). Soldier can definitely be a better choice than McCree when you are getting constantly focused. Cant' do damage as a dead hero.

The issue is most people don't switch during a given half. I don't play DPS quite as often because those are usually the first two heroes picked, and I don't really care that much. When I do get a game on DPS, it's not uncommon that I end up playing 5 or 6 different heroes over the course of 1 map. People are obsessed with not throwing away any ult charge, which is just dumb.

For example, someone picks Mei on defense on kings row (super fine). The attacking team takes the first point as Widow/Rein/Roadhog/Pharah/Ana/Zen. The other DPS is a junkrat. The Mei in this example needs to switch. She's hard countered in terms of usefulneses by the widow/pharah. Both she and the Junkrat just keep doing what they're doing saying "I got golds and am stomping" Drives me nuts. That round is almost a guaranteed loss.

Every hero is viable at a non pro level... just some have much more limited comps/situations they're viable against. People don't realize this, and thus bastion has a 43% winrate.

Yikes, been a while since I played >.<

Yeah I agree, I tried to list heroes that are very niche. I don't have an issue with someone playing a niche hero well / appropriately on my team. I think in pubs though a lot of those niche situations become more niche because there's something more important (like a stalling Dva / Reaper pick in your last point Hollywood defense example).

They've said that basically people got placed too high this season and it will be fixed next season so that was a real issue.

I think one thing to be aware of though is that someone might be an idiot about switching but it means they probably have above mechanics / positioning if they are in your game. You'll see trickling / peeking issues commonly even in masters.

The game is pretty complicated though, your KR example I have a different opinion on how you would need to handle that situation and it's far from a guaranteed loss. Depending on who was doing well on their team you'd be wanting Junkrat to switch to either a counter Widow or McCree and keep your Mei because she has good ult charge targets and blizzard is OP on KR (especially streets phase) and even more against 4/6 of the enemy comp with no mobility. If JR doesn't switch I'd probably still not switch if I was close to an ult (which assuming you win a fight could end up in not switching for a long time).

Now assuming the Widow was oppressive, maybe you'd want to insta switch to Widow but what if you can't play Widow proficiently? McCree isn't going to help much. Now either we're trying to organize a role swap mid game, 3 tank a Winston (can be rough if your healers aren't in comms too), or maybe take a chance on your blizzard. I think it's really debatable what's best there. This exact situation came up in a Envyus vs. Lunatic Hai (2nd best team in the world) pro game sans Widow and the Koreans didn't switch out anything after point A and then tried to have their non-McCree DPS run it so they could keep their Mei. They lost to the Pharah who notably won a 1v1 with the McCree, bad situations happen to everyone.

edit: They don't even have a Lucio to get out of the blizzard, that's gotta be a good chance.

I need people to play with on Xbox. I can't play alone anymore. Its too frustrating. Send me a friend request "peezy II" . The "II" are capital i's

Over the last couple weeks the only thing I've found oppressive in comp is a stall combo of mei/dva/reaper/lucio/soldier/rein. Even a good duo of mei and dva alone can be a huge issue but if everyone is committed to stalling it's nearly impossible to win on some of those point Bs.

Usually it only comes out at the very end but to be honest if you just rolled with this comp the entire payload round with the intention of stalling I think you win almost always (assuming you did decently on offense). I still have a hard time getting my team to switch at the end though.

On switching heros, I've had a big problem lately getting dps to change to something that can deal with pharah (who can be a huge problem on console if she's good).

Had a genji and a tracer who refused to switch yesterday because they "had gold and silver everything" meanwhile the tanks and healers could barely move and we're getting obliterated by pharamercy the entire game.

I wish my teams were more willing to do the stalling comp described above. Makes a lot of sense.

As for DPS refusing to switch, it's definitely annoying. Not quite as annoying as the Junkrat who insists he's contributing and shouldn't switch b/c he's gold in damage, but annoying enough.

On an unrelated note, after taking a few weeks off I've been able to mostly claw out of a huge downswing where I had some really bad negative variance characterized by teammate disconnects + horrible comps. I've been able to do it in solo comp. by playing mostly Zarya w/ some Reinhardt, DVa and Zenyatta. I had been playing a lot of Lucio and losing before, and I think the problem was that my teammates were uncoordinated and spread all around minimizing the good I could do, and there were also opportunity costs since I'm a solid, high damage-dealing tank who's also capable of mad Zarya bubble support. Maybe I've just been lucky, but maybe once in my last dozen games have I encountered a squad that refused to go any heals, at Eichenwalde on Defense, and I just went ahead and switched to Zenyatta that time and we won. The higher my SR gets, the more reasonable solo teammates seem to be.

It also really does make a huge difference communicating with even just one person. I had team chat accidentally turned off before and just assumed no one ever talked. Since I started communicating I think I've gone ~12-3 in solo matches, obv a small sample but it's made the difference between winning and losing at least once and likely more matches. I can't stand playing with ragers, but fortunately for every rager there's been 5 dudes who have been laid-back and fun to play with.

On this, while obviously it would be ideal if Genji and Tracer changed to deal with the Pharah, they don't have to. If both tanks and healers are being properly shut down there's not much good reason for them to stay on tanks and healers while the Pharah is dominating - they may as well all change and focus the Pharah until she switches off. Especially if it's a Pharah Mercy combo, you're gonna want more than a single McRee or Soldier to counter it hard enough that it switches away. One can probably manage if you have a Zen with good discords, tho.

Yeah I generally agree but in this particular example we could barely move. Our dps was basically only killing their second healer and second dps and they were certainly doing a good job on that front but that was not the priority.

I was playing zen and kept discord on her the entire time but still nobody could reliably shoot her (including me) to keep pace with the mercy healing.

I think in these spots I should just switch to soldier or something and deal with it myself I don't know.

It may be good to discord Mercy so that she has to hide more often

Soldier ult does well, as does a good Mccree ( probably not on console ).
Winston also does well if he plays with the team and when pharah jumps he follows.

I generally have no problems handling a good Pharah / Mercy as a solo Ana, no fall off damage is clutch. Zen + Ana is a 2 shot. Poke at the Mercy first as she has no self sustain and then the Pharah will have to play careful and not float above your squishies. If Pharah focuses her rockets at you, use cover and wait, you've won because you're offering your team a 5v4. Same idea as peaking a Bastion.

If they are the main problem you honestly don't want some random McCree dealing with it, do it yourself IMO.

95% of the time the Pharah isn't good enough to actually worry about killing directly, you can mitigate with angles / barriers / matrix. When they over commit I win most duels against 1v1 Pharah even as Zen as long as you have room to maneuver it's incredibly easy to dodge rockets.

Yeah it doesn't happen too often but on console a good pharah is an enormous problem

I absolutely need to get better at non reaper dps. Currently I'm a pretty strong reaper but if there's a pharah or something I suck too much at soldier and mcree to be helpful and obviously getting someone else to double switch with me is never easy.

I also suck at Reinhardt and Zarya but luckily the two people I play with the most (catfan and Larry) main those two so I'm not stuck tankless very often.

Yea pharah is really good on console and some maps (Nepal, Ilios) if I can play dps I will use her every time.

I think Symmetra is only the "highest winrate" because most (reasonable) people switch off Symmetra for the second point. So Symmetra gets credit for the wins (when you hold first point) but not the losses (when you get steamrolled first point and switch off Symmetra quickly).

What's wrong with Zarya on defense? Zarya is a top tier pick for second tank in every situation except maybe a few of the maps with super long sight lines like Gibraltar or Eichenwalde. Able to support team with barriers, top tier ult, and does really well against all the other tanks too (can shield people who get hooked by Hog, her beam goes through DVa's defense matrix, can barrier the person who Winston jumps on, and can farm ult really well off the big hitboxes of Hog, DVa, and Winston).

Also while I think Lucio is a really good pick for all situations, I just feel like you can't carry a game with him at all. The difference between an average Lucio and a good Lucio is not that much and he relies on the rest of the team actually performing and following up on his speed boost. Besides speed boosting through chokes his main role is literally to just exist and not die which is super boring to play as well.

Personally I think making Lucio a support was a design mistake. He has all this cool wall riding movement that is not really that useful because he mostly just sits on the back line. They should make him a DPS, keep the speed boost and take away the heals. And instead of providing shields, his ult should boost attack power or attack speed or something (makes way more sense when a DJ "drops the beat" that his allies would start going HAM).

I'm at 3150 SR (PC) but haven't been playing much lately since the trolls are out in full force with the season ending soon. Also feels like there are a ton of one trick ponies at this SR and if they don't get their preferred hero they will throw the game. Played last night for the first time in a while and one person instalocked McCree, and there were two other people on the team who ONLY played McCree and they picked some troll characters after waiting like 30 seconds. Our troll comp winds up getting rolled at the first checkpoint by a team that had an attack Symmetra, prompting our solo healer to switch to Torb.

Hopefully the season reset will improve this trolling situation.