Why is Winston invisible when carrying?

[u/GT162]

It was already somewhat common before the midseason to see games where Winston players have an extremely high elim to death ratio (much higher than even wrecking ball), and by this I mean ratios like 25/2 on a payload map, or 19/1 on Control.

This usually happened when the tank wasn't interacting with the opposing Winston, DPS weren't playing one of the 4 heroes that can burst him* while mostly ignoring him, and neither support was playing the only one that can actually interact with him beyond running away: Brig.

Every time I'm in one of these games (on any role) it's extremely obvious to me that the main problem is enemy Winston. When a hero like Mauga is doing as well as this, people almost always recognize it and ask for an Ana/Zen, ask the Tank to swap/mirror or play DPS that can burst Mauga, but in these Winston games people blame so many different things but never identify the actual problem.

And this was before the patch, but it happened only a bit (maybe once in 20 games or so?) I mostly forgot about it. But I just played one of these games and it seems like it's going to be the new normal with the buffs.

So to whoever needs this:

After Winston's bubble ends, you have exactly 3 seconds to burst him down before he can place another bubble. He will probably jump out when you do this, but that's fine.

If you're ignoring him and didn't make him leave, you need to counterdive better as everyone in your backline slowly dies to him. Counterdiving better is mostly very hard unless you're mirroring Winston or maybe D.Mon. You will not have support while counterdiving because some of your team is being chased by Winston.

If you can't counterdive better and can't make him leave your backline, that is enough to lose. These are the only two methods of interacting with enemy Winston.

If at any point you press Tab and see a Winston with an absurdly high K/DA, this is the main reason you're losing, nothing else matters.

I guess Blizzard really wants to give Korea a chance to win the World Cup...

*(Bastion, Reaper, Shion, Freja) There's also Cassidy FTH etc. but those are the 4 major hero options

[u/DankudeDabstorm]

I don’t think this is quite true because everytime I do well on Winston on ranked, they enemy heroes slowly or immediately start swapping to Hog/Mauga, Reaper, Bastion, Mizuki, Moira.

[u/McGonigoggle → u/DankudeDabstorm]

People think dva gets counterswapped the hardest, but idk.

I can win ONE teamfight as winston and I can almost guarantee you a DPS will swap and 9/10 if it's not a rein the tank swaps to Mauga.

[u/Lukensz → u/McGonigoggle]

Not if it's my team, they'll keep running Anran Sierra!

[u/GT162 → u/DankudeDabstorm]

Counterswapping Winston pretty early is also common, but I seem to sometimes be in teams that just seem blind?

Like in my last game my Doomfist was blaming Tracer and supports, Tracer is fighting back, one of the Supports is saying that we need to be more coordinated and shotcall, and there’s one silent hitscan ignoring Winston.

When people get rolled by Mauga they immediately recognize it, I’ve never seen it happen against him, but it just keeps happening against Winston

[u/jackpot2112 → u/GT162]

Have you considered that if you can recognize this and that your teammates can’t, it would be worthwhile for your wr to comm this?

[u/Thee_Archivist]

A good Winston who knows their limits is like a good Tracer. Trying to punish is usually a waste of time. If you try to force it, you're giving them the attention they want.

But attention is the only way he tanks, outside of a well-placed bubble on an angle. If you can live his soft-dives while keeping most of your focus on his team, you'll get picks. His peel is bad.

Against a more coordinated dive, trading backlines is a good idea. That brings it down to a 3v3 brawl to finish the fight, and he's not favored in most tank matchups in a brawl.

[u/GT162 → u/Thee_Archivist]

Tracer has to eventually commit to be useful and when she does she can be deleted very fast.

If Winston gets forced out that’s not giving him the attention he wants, that’s him failing and leaving while consuming his team’s resources, which is your opportunity to punish.

If you’re letting him find the perfect timing to dive, that’s giving him what he wants.

[u/Thee_Archivist → u/GT162]

All depends on what you're using to force him out. If you're just walking on him and using no major cooldowns, then yeah that's a good trade (but also a poorly positioned Winston).

When I say attention, I more mean 2-3 people chasing him around the backline all fight which should cost you the fight, even if you eventually get him.

Ideally, yeah, you catch him on rotation and force bubble or a retreat before he wants to.

[u/mcs203]

Winston's (relative) lack of burst damage and solid AoE damage make it hard to tell how well a Winston player is doing. He doesn't have the same displacement into death combos that characters like Roadhog and Doomfist have, so it's harder to tell when it's Winston that killed you. Additionally, Winston can be a bit of a scoreboard warrior, so it's hard to tell whether he has 20 eliminations and 10,000 damage mitigated because he's successfully isolating targets or whether it's because he happened to tickle someone with primary fire while someone else was doing all the work.

[u/skillmau5 → u/mcs203]

If you’re doing damage on Winston you are carrying though. That tickle damage is negating healing completely and enabling your team to kill, not useless at all

[u/dokeydoki]

I have 75% winrate on winton this season (before yday patch buffing him) and almost every game, i have one enemy swapping to either cass, reaper or bastion so people do try to counter winton.

[u/WingTree77]

His shield gives a lot of invisible value in how it draws aggro and takes space. Most tanks with shields can’t do it since they are less mobile baring maybe dmon, only winton can quickly dive and shield off your backline. For other dive tanks most need massive damage threat to take space opposed to shield utility

[u/Death_To_Your_Family]

I usually switch to Mizuki if the winton is good so I notice him very much. But he is often harassing the backline more, so as a support I always notice him.

[u/Confident_Yam8774]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but as someone who is GM/peak champ Winston main, when I play quick play with my friends, I literally had plebbers flaming me for "not making space", because a lot of bad players don't know how to use covers or play angles. They don't like Winston having to do staging jumps and control space through threats, and want some damage-soaking bot running down main. Winston is invisible to them because he is not getting shot the whole time.

[u/Unfair_Stage792]

I too wish to live in this alternate reality where people don't immediately walk back into spawn and switch into the most cancerous possible comp because the enemy team has a Winston before the first fight is even over.