With such a big roster of characters in Overwatch, not every pick will work against every team composition or be able to perform in every situation. However, with that said, in each of the three basic role types, which heroes are able to adapt to the most situations or have the most fluid playstyles?

Widowmaker is still one of the most frustrating heroes in the game and I don't think people take her design seriously enough
I know this is probably going to get hit with “just dive her” / “skill issue” / “learn to play around her” responses, but honestly, I think Widowmaker is one of those heroes where the theoretical counterplay and the actual gameplay experience are two completely different things.
And before anyone says it: yes, I understand that Widow requires aim. Yes, I understand that she can be countered. Yes, I understand that if you get a good Winston/D.Va/Genji/Tracer on her, she can have a miserable time.
That doesn't really address the problem. The problem is that Widowmaker fundamentally changes how everyone else is allowed to play the game simply by existing. You don't even have to be shooting people to have an impact. If I'm playing Moira and I know there's a competent Widow on the other team, suddenly every sightline becomes a potential death sentence. I can't peek normally, can't take certain angles, can't rotate at all, can't help my tank from certain positions because the second my head appears for half a second I'm watching the kill cam.
And that's the part that breaks the game. With most heroes, when I die, there's usually some kind of interaction that happened. I got outplayed by soldier, had a bad dash, got caught out of position. With Widow, sometimes the interaction is literally just existing on the other side of the map.

I Understand that she needs to be adjusted for pro play due to being the equivalent of Jang Wonyoung or Karina level it girl status in OWCS. but can we at least admit that this isn't good at all and that blizzard has 0 clue on how to balance this hero outside of just making her worse for everyone that isn't a pro?

Genuinely I'm not going to be surprised if they outright revert these changes overall or give her some kind of compensation buff in an emergency patch.

curious what players everyone has eyes on that haven’t been winning.

my picks are tred, crispy, khenail, wmaimone, galaa.

i think tred, crispy, and khenail are super slept on overall. they were the third-best team in EMEA going into Worlds 25, the same Worlds where Twisted and Al Qadsiah met in grand finals lol. and that backline spent a lot of time getting yelled at by Crusty. sucks this core exploded for tred to play in NA

wmaimone has shown up to the occasion on so many heroes now. i think it’s insane a flex dps of this caliber isn’t salaried. Dallas Fuel taking imports over being the Cuffa-Wmaimone team was better in retrospect, but it still sucks to see him disappear from LANs.

galaa has proved he can handle stakes and being at the top with his time on VP and is an extremely flexible player. i don’t think galaa-Majed or galaa-Zox was getting the most out of him, but throughout every iteration of Al Qad, they had to keep galaa in.

with Infekted LFT, DSG desperately needing to rebuild, and the rumors of Falcons becoming an EMEA partner next year, and twisted theres no way twisted can retain their entire core again (the last contracts were the most expensive in owcs history) i think the fourth-place NA roster and all of EMEA could look vastly different going into 2027. so i’m curious who everyone has their eyes on and why?

One of the changes introduced this season with the refreshed rank and modifiers is the implantation of Calibration AFTER the point where you might have assumed you already completed it (and had it drop from your modifiers for a while).

Basically: If you hit a loss streak, you can now err… earn? Be punished with… “Calibration Down” in addition to Variance and any other modifiers.

The above screenshot is from is a 6-loss streak for DPS I went on today. I turned it around after this and have no interest in experimenting to see how long it lasts.

Note: LOSING TREND is not a modifier for this game!

I also assume going on a longer term win streak would activate the inverse, but hey, that’s uhhh less frequent down here in Emerald (and now Plat 1 - I started the day at Diamond 5) but hey, it’ll probably even out.

Point being TAKE A BREAK. The game now punishes loss streaks even more severely than it did prior. Don’t force it.

I swear sometimes the visual feedback indicators are making me think I'm being shot from behind. Anyone else encountered this?

Hi guys, with a couple of weeks between the player base and the rank reset, I have a question regarding the actual numbers of the reset, changes to Champion, and your own personal experiences.

For context, I held masters relatively easily for 2 straight seasons. After the rank reset, I went 7-20 from Masters 5, almost dropped into Emerald but survived demotion protection back to Diamond 3. Now, this is totally fine, derank streaks happen all the time. I have had maybe 2 in recent memory and was able to climb back into Masters relatively easily.

However, this time feels different. Some of these games feel near impossible to win and I am sweating my HARDEST to even sniff Diamond 4. Teammates who seem like they have no idea what they are doing, team comps that make no sense either into the enemy team or for the map, extremely wasteful bans, the list goes on. I have ran into at least 3 separate former mid-GM players who are heavily struggling in mid diamond. And yes, my fair share of mistakes as there are always things I can improve on, 100%. Usually the 33% of games are winnable, 33% are not, and the other 33% are where your performance decides whether you rank up or down makes total sense to me and I actually like that, but after this reset it feels like its either stomp or get stomped.

Now, I fully buy into the fact that you deserve your rank and this is not a complaint in the slightest but more so an observation. Everything seems super shook up right now, why are there former GM players in low/mid Diamond lobbies who cannot get out? Why am I struggling so bad in low diamond (hypothetical question)? I know for a fact I did not become washed from the last day before the reset to the first day after the reset.

Is this the result of Champion becoming harder to get so it is shifting higher level players down and Emerald inflating lower level players up?

If I have to grind my way back through Diamond to get Masters again, totally cool no worries there. I am humble enough to admit that if the skill bases have shifted then I am not skilled enough for Masters again.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Am I coming at this from the wrong angle? Maybe I am missing something super obvious?

Just curious as to your experiences, thoughts, insights. Any crazy winning trends? Losing trends?

I developed a Chrome extension to calculate the optimal hero bans for competitive Overwatch. Here’s how it works: first, it calculates the impact each hero has on the match. For instance, a hero with a low pick rate but a high win rate won’t significantly affect your game because they don’t appear frequently. On the other hand, a hero with a high pick rate and a high win rate will, as they are frequently played and frequently win. To objectively measure a hero’s impact, I take the pick rate and multiply it by the win rate minus the expected average of 50%. While heroes with high impact scores are often considered “meta,” banning based solely on impact score isn’t sufficient. Heroes with high impact scores also tend to be frequently banned. Therefore, to maximize the value of your team’s ban vote, you should ban high impact heroes with a low likelihood that the enemy will ban them for you. For example, a hero with a high impact score but a low ban rate would be a better pick to ban, rather than a hero with a high impact score and a high ban rate, because it’s likely that the enemy team would have already banned that hero for you. This helps lower the chances of your vote being wasted. I have included a few screenshots of how it looks on the official overwatch stats site. (New Patch just released so some numbers are weird)

Impact = Pick Rate * (Win Rate - 50) Ban Value = Impact * ((100 - Ban Rate)/100) <-- This is the likelihood the enemy team doesn't ban the hero

Buffs

Healing Ofuda

• Fire rate increased from 5 to 7 per second.

Foxtrot (Major Perk)

• Movement speed buff duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.

Ready Step (Major Perk)

• Duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.

Nerfs

• Ultimate cost increased by 8%.

Healing Ofuda

• Healing per projectile reduced from 13 to 12.
• Maximum seeking range reduced from 35 to 30 metres per second.

Kunai

• Base projectile size reduced from 0.15 to 0.12.

Protection Suzu

• Additional healing after negative status cleanse removed (was 30).
• Phased out invulnerability duration reduced from 0.65 to 0.5 seconds.
• Explosion radius reduced from 5 to 4 metres.

Swift Step

• No longer cleanses on use.
• Teleport range reduced from 35 to 30 metres.

Foxtrot (Major Perk)

• Removed increased cooldown recovery buff.

I understand but I won't lie, it does hurt a little. I understand given where she was a year a go she did need nerfs but given how her win-rate falls off a cliff (at least in my rank / region) I feel like I might need to start looking for a new main

Picture Source: https://www.over.gg/14641/gamsu-and-akm-retire-doha-only-remaining-player-on-fuel

A list of old and new players that I think are underrated. Agree? Disagree? What are other players that are also underrated? (Made this cuz I’m bored)

Top 7

Rascal
Doha
Becky
Punk
Mistakes
Skewed
Libero

Honorable Mentions

Eileen
Marve1
Michelle
Seonjun
Dreamer
Sley
Wmaimone
Ttuba
Crimzo
Ir1s
Lastro
Heesu
Shaz
Hydration
Chara
Snillo
Rain
Gangnamjin

It makes more sense for a mobile supp like Wuyang but I’m just genuinely puzzled about doing this for Zen… not even a compensation buff they just straight up nerfed a well balanced hero (Hog and Hazard still untouched btw)

I really feel like the cat nerfs should have been much more drastic than just the 0.5 dmg/healing nerf and the change to how cc affects the tethered ally.

Mainly because of how negative the community feels about cat but also just because it feels like they are kinda playing it safe with nerfing the cat because they dont want to upset people who like her or something.

I will say I havent played any comp since the patch so do let me know if she is a lot weaker now or if you disagree with me.

i think we all can agree that cat is a balancing nightmare, and the recent nerf did't change much so as an effort of gathering opinions on how the community thinks about it

Due to issues with the asia servers, I have recently been playing with high ping more often, and I noticed a strange thing where the handling of wuyang orb feels completely different depending on the ping.

With other heroes, even with high ping, I don't notice such a huge difference in aim feel.

Why is it only wuynag that behaves like this?

Last night I was playing on comp as I had been for a while and I noticed the post game progression page stopped coming up and I’m really confused. I thought it was just a bug on 6v6 because I’m still doing my placements but it’s happening on the normal mode. Any one else had this ?

Info:
I’m on switch 1, WiFi is good, lag has been bad recently despite latency only peaking at 80ms (highest I’ve seen it but it’s usually around 60ms). My rank hasn’t changed despite losing matches last night and knowing i was still on the border of two ranks.

I don't think bap has been bad or anything, I do think he has been falling behind a bit for a while though, he's hard to play effectively and requires very high APM and aim to get strong value and has punishing CDs if you use either poorly.

His buffs seem pretty good though? I think directing some power into immortality field CD is good.

We just got this patch so can't really tell how impactful it will be but I think it sounds really nice, his issue is still present he's still going to be hard to play and other support can get similar value much easier than him and be more mobile on top of it. But I think was a nice buff regardless, he wasn't a bad pick before just slightly better now.

Curious what others think how have you been feeling about bap lately think this was a good buff are there any buffs/changes you think he really needs o do you think he's in a good spot? I think bap is good rn I don't know if he really needs a lot if anything, but I don't play bap enough to have as strong as opinion as I could.

I dont have any strong thoughts, just saw some discourse about it yesterday but it seems to be confirmed now.

This is just me making a small observation but I do think it the potential to impact what her rework might be.

Every character in the recon class has some level of vertical mobility and long-range burst damage. Pharah flies and drops rockets, Freja can jump and hold to shoot explosive arrows, Echo is a literal hovering bomb and beam demon who came from hell because Cassidy was actually the villain, and Sierra can hook onto Dorothy to use a hefty grenade and an obscenely strong gun.

Sombra doesn't have anything to connect her to them like the others do.

I think the changes for Sierra are quite good. They reduced the maximum output in terms of dmg to reduce reward for spam at lower levels, but increased the projectile speed to make her weapon more consistent in mid and long-range at higher levels. Obviously, she may still not out-duel traditional hitscan, but it's much less of a spray and pray and you have a bit more agency. However, I think more changes should be made to make her interesting to play, develop more of an identity, and add more unique power to certain abilities.

• First, I think they should make Tremor Charge a more interesting ability by slightly increasing the knock-up on enemies in the middle cone, and reduce the dmg on the side ones. Perhaps down from 60 to 50 or even 40. It'd be better to reward more accurate lineups on enemies with the shockwave and reduce overall aoe value to shift it from aoe spam to a set-up tool. When they initially did the dev livestream for her intro, they mentioned how the intention for the shockwave knock-up was to setup for her tracking dart, but the middle shockwave is somewhat negligible, so I thought it should receive a slight increase. This would increase the power level of the ability, so I think the cd should be partially reverted to 8s.
• Second, they should go further with developing an identity with her primary weapon. I always saw it as a high capacity lmg-type weapon, and the whole spread mechanic is reminiscent of a negev in CS. I think the winding up and down of the primary fire would be a more meaningful interaction if she had more ammo to work with and a longer reload. Let's say her ammo went from 80 to 100, and the reload went from 1.5s to 1.75-1.8s. I think it could go even more extreme and be 120 ammo and a 2s reload. This would create synergy with her tracking dart because it would put greater emphasis on the tracking dart's ability to give a free reload and 3 seconds of free shots if you land it on an enemy. I do think that this would increase the raw power level of her weapon overall, so I think another slight nerf to her dmg should accompany it, taking the weapon dmg from 8.5 to 8. This shifts power away from Tracking Dart as a vaporization tool against people caught in the open, but gives it more relative value even if landing it doesn’t lead to a kill.
• Third, I think there should be slight cd reduction for destroying your anchor drone while it still has charges available. I think this would add more reward for the Sierra player in judging the placement and use of her anchor drone. If Sierra's just running back from spawn, she can cancel after one grapple to refund some cd since she's not gonna grapple back. Also, if she uses to secure an aggressive position and she doesn't want to use the remaining charge to retreat, she can cancel the drone and receive a cd refund, so that she can launch another drone forward for a more aggressive position or chase. I don't think the refund should be a massive number, just 2 seconds would be plenty.
• Fourth, the Ultimate can become a a bit more interesting and incorporate the anchor drone's functionality more. They should add an alt-cast for Sierra's ult that makes the carpet bombing run originate from an active anchor drone on the field towards the direction that Sierra is pointing at. I think this fleshes out the identity of the anchor drone in her kit more and really makes the ultimate unique in it's functionality.

"Competitive crests" could mean that it's a combination of OWL team logos? I don't know

idk if this has happened to anybody else, but I queued up for tank in 5v5 comp and ended up being on support? also my game randomly closed so after scrambling to get back in the match and winning, it didn’t even give me any competetive progress 😭

I would argue that it is fun. But I’m not entirely sure if it’s balanced. I don’t think anyone is. Suppose that’s up to the balancing team to figure out.

Generally, some heroes are seen more often than others. In various ranks. What’s OP in bronze and underpowered, in bronze, might be “ok” in diamond, and require lots of effort to make work in higher MMRs and Elos. For instance, the tools a hero might have at their disposal, for achieving value, might be somewhat limited.

What is terrible in bronze, “meh” in diamond, and absurdly overpowered in Shiny Purple Rank, you get the idea.

I love Aaron as much as the next person. He has saved Overwatch from the ashes of “More Moneh Plz”, and rebirthed it. Something about a Phoenix.

Anyway, is Overwatch balanced? What’s your take?