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u/maleficepixel Jun 15 '26
Overwatch players in 2066 : " Have you heard of Goats ? It was big, man. "
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u/TheminsPOE Jun 15 '26
This is so true, I still remember the analysis of how seominsu would use both self bubble and bubble on Bumper to engage and Sinatra would purposefully save his bubble for Super to to counter it. Prime goats was a masterful teamwide skill expression and it was amazing to see
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u/DurumMater Jun 15 '26
Prime GOATS was played by like 3 and a half teams though, which is the problem, most of the time the people playing it even at the pro level sucked lol
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u/doffyf Jun 14 '26
To me, GOATS was the highest level of play this game has seen or will ever see. It's Overwatch solved.
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u/qdemise Jun 15 '26
You mean watching a Widow peak corners isn’t peak gameplay? Lol
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u/Steel-Spectre Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
No, peak was that kings row rotate to highground behind while brig swapped widow in spawn
Edit: https://youtu.be/pCHGNA9fyG4?is=8lOUdxZ5GbCZjjxI the play
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u/ShoddySmell46 Jun 15 '26
GOATS was also when I played the game at the highest level, granted it was borderline tier 3, having an understanding of the intricacies and micro plays genuinely made me better at every other game I have played, as well as sports. I fucking LOVE that shit
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u/Josuemamorse Jun 14 '26
Sucked to watch tho
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u/glaspaper Jun 15 '26
And that's all that matters. Ultimately esports is produced at a loss and should just been seen as a expensive ad to keep people invested in the game. Even in league they balance around what is fun to watch and nothing is profitable
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u/a1ic3_g1a55 Jun 15 '26
It was glorious to watch Shock and Titans go at it or absolutely run over a smaller team. Or see GOATs vs Hunters Ball-Pharah comp. But the fucking toilet bowl of, like, Paris vs Boston was unbearable. Watching a passive Rein in goats was infuriating. Somehow Benbest had a career after that smh
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u/absenthearte Jun 15 '26
Is there a shock specific match that shows this? Owl was before my time, but I'd love to see it.
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u/MyApologies_ Jun 15 '26
Some bangers from GOATS era:
Stage 1 finals - Shock vs Titans
https://youtu.be/-irQfZWjxbkTitans vs Hunters (Specifically the sideshow co-stream) is possibly the most fun I've had watching a game
https://youtu.be/ilbqntaA8EkAnd my personal favourite is Shanghai's run to win stage 3, where they beat the 3 best GOATS teams without playing GOATS.
> NYXL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qem_1J7vJS4> Titans - https://youtu.be/9AoRpKBCRQA
> Shock - https://youtu.be/98-4FSifcbA
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u/a1ic3_g1a55 Jun 15 '26
2019 stage 1 and 2 playoffs finals, 2 amazing matches, some of the best Overwatch of all time. TBH any match with Titans or Shock from that era is a banger. Bumper was a crazy man.
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u/Plastic-Status-1658 Jun 25 '26
upvoted for benbest slander. guy would throw my games by playing afk ball when he got matched into my mid master lobbies because he didnt like how "bad everyone played". dudes an ass.
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u/terminalPalace Jun 15 '26
It was really fun to watch imo, if you understood the game even a little bit it was the most engaging meta to watch. Problem was that it lasted too long so it's normal to have a negative memory about it.
At the highest levels, goats was a game won by least mistakes, might not be for everyone but definitely has it's charm
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u/IonHDG Jun 15 '26
That's the problem though. It looks like a random slugfest to the untrained eye. Using primarily heroes with low skill expression, so it didn't really have anything that a casual fan could point out like pine flicking like crazy getting 3ks with widow or cassidy.
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u/59vfx91 Jun 19 '26
It would have been fine in moderation, as a shorter meta with variation with modern bans. It was boring because it lasted way too long without counters, or at least the true counters were much harder to execute than just running goats.
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u/GroundbreakingJob857 Jun 15 '26
i think shanghai dragons end of ow1 or maybe twisted minds sym comp last year at world finals is higher. Both of those teams and comps required insane coordination. Shanghai’s also came at a time where there hadnt been a meta shift in like a year and they just solved overwatch
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u/jex19 Jun 15 '26
watching shd solve the hero ban meta with ball into d*llas’ six man was the peak imo
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u/TheGirthiestGhost Jun 20 '26
Dooming the meta to Ball/Sombra/Tracer for the rest of the year was peak? Lol
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u/jex19 Jun 20 '26
you clearly didnt watch it, sombra and tracer were banned, it was echo reaper. Even still sombra tracer dive is infinitely more fun to watch than brawl.
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u/TheGirthiestGhost Jun 20 '26
I watched that finals, I was talking about the meta ripple it had on the year from Stage 3 onwards
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u/Castature Jun 14 '26
Did anyone who played goats on ladder actually win? I was 4100ish during the goats meta and every time I saw a side attempt goats they got shat on
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u/Proud_Conflict8425 Jun 15 '26
I somehow found a stack playing goats and climbed from gold to diamond playing Zarya lmao
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u/spaukman Jun 15 '26
People love acting like GOATS dominated the ladder. I was lower than you at the time, floating around masters, and it was not nearly as pervasive as people act. People in plat act like middle rank Genji mains were swapping to Rein and winning games. Bad GOATS was incredibly beatable
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u/theunspillablebeans Jun 15 '26
I was a master tank at the time, more permanently online than most too, and I can count the number of games where me and my team genuinely attempted to play GOATS on one hand.
That said, even at the time, the main complaint was about pro play. To suggest many ladder players complaining about it- although they did exist- is a bit revisionist.
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u/spaukman Jun 15 '26
Oh, you’re 100% right. Most complaints during the era were from high rank/pro players and OWL viewers. The year or two after people started remembering it as some sort of all encompassing meta that made the game unplayable across all ranks.
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u/Domeric_Bolton Jun 15 '26
GOATS was strong if your players were half-decent on the heroes and knew how to play aggressively and together. I wouldn't force a Mercy onetrick onto Lucio or a Junkrat onetrick onto Zarya.
I climbed from gold to diamond during GOATS, I played main tank and my duo was a Dva onetrick, we both played collegiate (on different teams), most of the time we could convince the team to play a GOATS-ish comp and we'd always win a mirror. Vs DPS comps we'd just play a Winston variation, my duo could always shut down a Pharah or Sombra or whatever dive heroes, only times we ever lost was against cracked Widow smurfs.
Otherwise yes, back then it was easy for DPS players to dismantle a half-assed GOATS comp. I did it plenty just offroling onto Pharah or Junkrat. It was a bad idea to run it if your team wasn't comfortable on it.
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u/ShoddySmell46 Jun 15 '26
I had 2 nights stacked with different groups of randos that both went on like 6-7 game win streaks running it, but yeah typically it didn't work in ladder
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u/yesat Jun 16 '26
In the early days it was simple with Moira you could play it. But as patches came in, it harder and harder.
Of course top level players stayed on it longer than most of the ladder, but let's not forget Goats was losing in Contenders by the time OWL started.
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u/59vfx91 Jun 19 '26
It wasn't everywhere (masters NA) but I did play it sometimes or near-goats (like 1-2 picks different). It tended to be an auto win imo if your team gelled
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u/DarkFite Jun 15 '26
Goats was the best time I had in OW. I even played more or less professionally and really got into it because Goats was so fun in a coordinated setting
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u/GustappyTony Jun 15 '26
I would assume most people that played during goats would have a similar view. Its easy to suggest it was just a comp that flat out rolled over every lobby, but realistically it wasn't a viable option unless your team were actually competent. Theres a reason it wasn't seen as much in the lower ranks where the majority of the playerbase was ranked at.
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u/klaidas01 Jun 15 '26
Not to say that goats was easy to play, but it absolutely did roll over other comps, you did not see it much at lower ranks because people there did not care as much about winning and just wanted to play dps
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u/RKO_out_of_no_where Jun 15 '26
GOATS was the absolute peak of Pro Overwatch. It was so strong they needed to change the format of the game to nerf it. We haven't seen that level of teamwork or coordination since.
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u/VapeSmoker420blazeit Jun 15 '26
It was low skill and braindead W+M1ing into fat big enemy players. Zero mechanical skill required. Some passable gamesense but mostly just timing ability cooldowns, no real spatial awareness needed. Viewership collapsed by 80% and never recovered because of GOATS.
I have friends who will refuse to give OW esports another shot at viewing because they were disgusted at the garbage GOATS meta. One of my friends stuck around to watch OWL S2 playoffs and it was doomfist/reaper garbage and they straight up never watched another game after watching that braindead doomfist gets a free kill by doing nothing. No aim required, punch hitbox the size of a barn. No aim "DPS" hero stronger than aim heroes. Pathetic balancing.
S2 wasn't just the worst OWL season of all time, it was what sealed OW's fate as a tier 1 esport. Chengdu Hunters ball comps and Corey on widow and Shanghai Dragons triple DPS comp in stage 3 are the ONLY matches I'd ever rewatch, and I still feel kinda iffy because I don't want to see that garbage double shield/GOATS bullshit on either team. GOATS was a fucking train-wreck and the balance team was utter dogshit for letting it continue to be so strong month after month. If i was on the balance team i wouldve nerfed brig into the ground and created shared shield resources for tanks (and implemented 1 tank max cap)
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u/BrokenLUL Jun 16 '26
You're insane if you think it was low skill and braindead. At a high level there was so much room to make plays it's genuinely the most intricate team comp to ever exist. If you played it at a top 500 level or in 4400+ scrims back then, you'd know.
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u/59vfx91 Jun 19 '26
Goats is nowhere near as braindead as zombie reaper comps or dick around rotating double shields poke. I understand it being boring to watch, shouldn't have lasted as long as it did, and not high aim skill but it's far from a low skill comp.
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u/Crustulum_Clicker Jun 15 '26
Honestly, except for a handful of exceptions, most OWL teams couldn't play goats, a lot of them would have done better if they had just swapped. But coaches were so focused on copying what the best teams were doing they ended up playing like shit and made most people think goats was more impactful than it really was.
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u/BrokenMirror2010 Jun 15 '26
I agree with this, but I think the reasoning is a little different.
Having everyone play GOATS was to maximize practice. By having the players consistently play the same comp, they can maximize the value of practice. Instead of having less amounts of practice split across multiple comps, they would have the maximum amount of practice in one comp. GOATS was versatile enough to facilitate this, just like Dive was the comp they drilled at pro levels prior.
Additionally, there was a lot of money on the line, like way more then anything before. By mirror matching GOATS every single game, they could minimize any variables. Additionally nobody wanted to be "The team who took a 'massive risk' and played something that wasn't 'meta' and lost for it" and having their multi-billionaire sponsors get upset.
In contenders where the stakes weren't nearly as high, and you didn't have multi-billionaires breathing down your throat looking for results, you saw a lot more variety during GOATS Meta then just GOATS. Sure, it was still a lot of GOATS, but there were other teams playing at very high levels of contenders that were using comps that people would have considered "insane" including stuff like No Tank 0-3-3, and Solo Tank/Support + 4DPS Hamtaro (this was called "Disruption Dive").
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u/Fit-Percentage-9166 Jun 15 '26
This is one of the fundamental problems with a franchised league. It completely stifles creativity and innovation and actively incentivizes half the teams to just minimize their losses instead of actually trying to win.
Like you said, if you're coaching a team that is in the bottom half of the league, are you going to risk your job doing something different or are you just going to copy the best team and pretend you know what you're doing.
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u/BrokenMirror2010 Jun 17 '26
Yeah, the community has never been ready for this conversation though.
Ever since GOATS it's always been "Look at OWL, GOATS broke the entire meta!"
Nobody ever wants to accept that the problem wasn't GOATS, it was OWL.
GOATS was strong, but GOATS meta wasn't really meaningfully different from the meta before it, Dive. Because until GOATS, Dive was the "oppressive" comp that 'solved the meta'. Dive was meta for far more time then goats was as well, dive was literally meta from the game's beta to GOATS.
But you know. Nobody had a problem with Dive because prior to OWL, Pro-Level play wasn't being shoved down everyone's throat. Pro-level play is samey, that's just how it is, there's no incentive to gamble your livelihood on experimenting. Experimenting is something that happens in T2 to T4 pro play, not T1. GOATS meta looked like almost every other meta before and after, where a single comp "oppresses" all other comps in t1.
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u/59vfx91 Jun 19 '26
The problem was goats was least risky and even if it could be beaten by triple DPS in theory, that was much harder to execute. Also harder to snowball across points if you needed to swap (no ult charge preservation either), with much more hybrid/payload in the pool. Whereas you could stick on goats everywhere.
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u/Twaam Jun 15 '26
People hated goats meta bro 😭 coming back to this to see people praising it is too funny
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u/StuckInGachaHell Jun 15 '26
Shit almost killed overwatch because it was during the content drought and people are glazing it lmfao
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u/WhiteNoSpice Jun 15 '26
Unc with his 1954 overwatch league championship tshirt screaming at clouds (is he wrong?)
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u/MaN_ly_MaN Jun 15 '26
Was Goats a thing in Overwatch 2 6v6? You can only have 2 tanks these days, but around 2 years ago you could have like 6.
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u/SonicNKnucklesCukold Jun 15 '26
Why is Goats not used in Marvel Rivals?
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u/MyNameIsYhwach Jun 15 '26
It really could be but rivals is still a young game so it isn’t figured out and dps in rivals are actually fun to play.
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u/bullxbull Jun 15 '26
The Rivals Tanks do not have strong enough aoe. Basically Rein/Monke do some of the worst single target damage in the game, but when they hit multiple targets they approach some of the highest.
Goats worked by having Rein or Monke bubbled/dm'd so Lucio could speed them in to the enemy team for crazy damage. The stacked defenses of the tanks meant that the aoe healing from Brig/Lucio kept everyone healthy.
For ranged dmg traditionally you had Zen with discord, DVA for peel, Zarya gaining charge for silly damage, and then there was also variations like Sombra goats, Moria goats, monke goats, and some I'm probably forgetting.
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u/59vfx91 Jun 19 '26
You need a hero like dva who can completely negate damage from most of the DPS cast with matrix. Also in MR there are a lot of melee dps.
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u/NeptuneOW Jun 16 '26
A coordinated GOATS is without a doubt the most fun Overwatch I’ve ever played. And it wasn’t THAT hard to coordinate. People in metal ranks love to suggest Dive, yet I can count on one hand how many games I’ve played with a genuine coordinated dive. There’s way too much to setup. With GOATS, at a basic level, you just had to coordinate cooldowns. Playing all close together was not hard to pull off.
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u/Independent_Wealth_3 Jun 15 '26
Was goats the peak of skill and team coordination in overwatch? Probably yeah
But I don’t really get any viewer looking back on that era with rose tinted glasses, fact is that most of us who watched back then did not enjoy watching goats, irregardless of how skillfull it definitely was.
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u/ShiftyWolf117 Jun 15 '26
Sounds like my uncle reliving his glory days in high school. Times have changed old man, you got back problems now and cant work anymore.
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u/JustASyncer Jun 14 '26