I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
Monkey not to sound like a jerk but you don't seem very familiar with many of the core game mechanics of Overwatch. You're really over-estimating your knowledge of how the game works. If you want to climb in rank I'd honestly recommend doing a lot less lecturing and a lot more listening, there's lots of good resources out there by high level players who can explain how to get better at the game even if you don't have good aim.
Eh, I've been playing since launch, and it's basically the same as TF2 which I've been playing since its beta, so I know the mechanics just fine. We haven't even discussed that, because what's to discuss? It's a teams-only class-based shooter. I know what that is.
I've been playing since Overwatch beta and played TF2 since beta as well, and I completely and fundamentally disagree with your understanding of its mechanics. At this stage maybe I'm not good enough to understand your level of the game yet, who knows, but I'm a very confident Support main, and I know we see a ton of shit in a given match that frontliners simply don't.
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
You're speaking of situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
You would call this a conversation about mechanics? I think of mechanics being more about payload modes and if you can switch teams and how the auto scramble works and the "rules" of the game. How you win and lose. How Q points are earned. That's mechanics.
This has been more of a discussion about tactics. And that doesn't really carry over as much from TF2 days, due to the small teams in OW and that everyone can 'uber'.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
0
VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
I think your main issue here is you're not considering a few factors. One is spawn advantage. The other is that the payload moves backwards when not having an attacker on it. The other is the huge advantage defensive teams get when they hold at chokes as opposed to right up front.
If your def team holds at the choke (or first corner on payload maps) they gain the ability to have good positioning. Until the attackers break their defense they own that ground. And on payload maps it works out even better, your team can not be touching the payload, but as the attackers push it into your alley of death they're actually delivering it into ground you own. Get them to back off, reset your positioning, and they're forced to try and break the defense in order to even get near the payload.
These are all really important parts of the game. Teams that don't do this don't win if they're against a team that does focus on positioning as a team to make it harder for your opponent to even get a chance to hit you.
That's a huge part of overwatch, a team that owns an area going up against a team that tries to break that hold. Objective time, in the long game, doesn't actually matter all that much in most higher rank matches. Fighting on the objective, as an defender, is for when you know you actually have a chance to take it back. If you can kill them without touching the objective then they gain nothing.
And when you're attacking fighting on the objective is again for when you have a chance to take it or when it's overtime. Otherwise you're encouraging your team to desperately waste ults in an effort to change the momentum of the fight. Good defense is around the point or at the chokes until the attackers actually gain real ground. Because the further they push the payload the closer your spawn is to it. If you take it back past the half way point it's increasingly difficult for them to break your defense which will be set up closer to their spawn.
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
OOO! OOO! That's another thing I've become curious about: how strong is mobility simple from the standpoint of accelerating your downtime between respawning and rejoining the fight? I know it's big, but is it so big that, say, heroes that lack such mobility should be balanced to be strictly stonger than heroes that don't? I dunno, but it's interesting.
As a counterpoint to how OW does it, Paladins has a mechanic where every single hero gets a steed when they respawn so they can return to the fight as quickly as any other hero, mobility be damned. It's a clever mechanic IMO.
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
In hind sight, perhaps I should have chucked the ult and ran back to, say, across the street into or behind those other buildings. I might have been able to survive long enough for some of the people who hadn't just died on the point to return.
But I'm not sitting on an ult. That's something I almost never do. If I see more than 3 people and I have my ult up, I'm using it, if for no other reason than to start charging a new one. Sitting on ults is an expensive choice. It is basically saying the utility of attempting a combo outweighs the utility of partially or even completely charging a new ult during the time you are sitting on it. And sometimes it is worth it! A good ult combo can turn a fight around. But it is not without a heavy cost.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
You're talking about situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
Kinda depends on the particular map and team comps, but fully resetting as fast as you can is almost always the correct answer. If you have spawn advantage then guaranteeing another 6-man push as quickly as possible will win you the objective, as long as you don't trickle. If they have spawn advantage then you're more likely to just get overwhelmed and delay your next push, just giving that much more time for the enemy team to re-entrench. The risk is usually not worth the reward.
If you have a big mobility advantage and high ground, then you might have an argument for staying and poking for ult charge, but you should still do so very defensively.
EDIT: fully resetting also gives you the advantage of the enemy team having to figure out what your angle of approach for your next attack is. If you see a couple of enemies already clustered up on the right flank waiting for the rest of their team, it's pretty obvious where their next push is, and you have time to reposition for it.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
+1
VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
No. Absolutely not. There are some exceptions at some maps but you are absolutely better off waiting where the enemy cannot get a free pick.
If you wait near the front line, the enemy's flankers are going to be nearby and they will pick you off in the time it takes for your team to get back, precisely because they know you're alone. Now if you're fairly confident you can fight them off then by all means do what you gotta do, but "giving up ground" is NOT a big deal in Overwatch at all.
Re: your point about territory -
You have a cast of 25 in this game. Lost territory in one area is gained territory in another, and not all territory is created equal. It's precisely why people stand on top of the petrol station in Route 66 and behind the choke in Hanamura. Not because of "space" but because of "best space for my purpose". Defenders benefit hugely from high ground and long sight-lines because they know the Attackers HAVE to come to the objective to win, but with so many possible approaches, standing too far forward means putting your healers in more danger from more approaches, as well as giving Attackers more ways to get around you.
Route 66 and Hollywood are similar - Defenders stand BEHIND the multiple paths that Attackers can take to get there so that they can respond accordingly. Too far forward and you've split the party, allowing free picks OR for the enemy to sneak past you, get on the high ground BEHIND you, and murder the shit out of you.
I get the sense that you want this game to be more like TF2 and play it that way, rather than playing the game it IS. I dunno... it just feels that way.
You would call this a conversation about mechanics? I think of mechanics being more about payload modes and if you can switch teams and how the auto scramble works and the "rules" of the game. How you win and lose. How Q points are earned. That's mechanics.
This has been more of a discussion about tactics. And that doesn't really carry over as much from TF2 days, due to the small teams in OW and that everyone can 'uber'.
Disagree. The way the maps are designed, the way the objectives work, the way attack/defense functions, and the way matches are won in competitive are all related to the game's design mechanics. That is largely what I've been referencing in the majority of my posts, as well as the one you're replying to. But pedantics aside, my point re your understanding of this game still stands.
I get the sense that you want this game to be more like TF2 and play it that way, rather than playing the game it IS. I dunno... it just feels that way.
It is true that there has been a repeating pattern since the game came out of my assuming that some strategy or tactical manuever is going to dominate people because it worked well in TF2 but due to the tiny team sizes or some other basic mechanical difference the conventional wisdom turns out not to be so wise.
For example, I started overwatch just playing lots of Torb because I was a Engie main in TF2. But come to find out, Torb is not Engie. Torb is Torb. It took me a long time to give up on the idea of a nest and just play him the way he is built.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
spawn advantage
Can someone give me a definition?
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
You know, I'm always complaining people don't properly prioritize the high ground, but I wasn't really taking that into account in my thinking about tank positioning during group ups. I was basically thinking of territory in a purely linear sense; either you gain ground forward or you fall back. That actually wildly complicates things.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
In hind sight, perhaps I should have chucked the ult and ran back to, say, across the street into or behind those other buildings. I might have been able to survive long enough for some of the people who hadn't just died on the point to return.
But I'm not sitting on an ult. That's something I almost never do. If I see more than 3 people and I have my ult up, I'm using it, if for no other reason than to start charging a new one. Sitting on ults is an expensive choice. It is basically saying the utility of attempting a combo outweighs the utility of partially or even completely charging a new ult during the time you are sitting on it. And sometimes it is worth it! A good ult combo can turn a fight around. But it is not without a heavy cost.
Some ults are expendable: Tracer's, Sombra's, McCree's, Hanzo's, etc. They charge quickly and can be charged quickly with little risk to the person charging it.
Some ults are not: Zarya's, Mei's, Reinhardt's, etc. These charge more slowly and can only be used willy-nilly if you can reliably have an ult ready to negate every enemy push.
I actually agree that sitting on an ult is not ideal, but there are LOTS of factors that make this a good or bad choice. Ult economy is a HUGE part of this game that does not exist in TF2, and when you think about what you're giving up, it's actually a HUGE potential swing that's worth hanging on to.
Mei's in particular. It doesn't do a lot of damage on its own but it has a HUGE zoning effect AND disables anyone caught in it. It forces people to pop cooldowns to escape it and you might force the enemy Lucio or Zenyatta to use their ults in defense of it, even if your team doesn't follow-up with any kills.
The actual golden rule of Overwatch is not to use any ultimate without either securing a number of kills that are worth it OR trading it for a number of enemy ults. Blizzard is the difference between a win or a wipe. Don't use it alone because it's actually worthless alone unless the enemy spends an ult or two in response to it. So if you really hate hanging onto it, consider using it to bait out enemy ults. But otherwise, use it to set up team wipes cuz those are AWESOME. Still, if you don't think setting up a combo is worth it, then at LEAST consider ways to make its use worth the reduction in your team's ult economy.
Basically: if you don't want to sit on an ult, that's up to you, but it is a poor "golden rule" to follow in almost all aspects of this game.
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited July 2017
I'm going to be honest... I have no clue exactly how Q points are earned. I know that you earn them the same ways as Fire points. I know that damage, self heals, blocking, and just being alive all contribute. But you seem to suggest that which hero you are also can affect the rate you earn Q, other than in the obvious way in that some heroes do more or less damage than others.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Blizzard is the agonizing anticipation felt as you are gripped by the icy winds of the underworld while the gradual spectre of death floats up to caress her icy tendrils upon your consciousness.
The time it takes for a player to reach the objective or "in play" area of the map. So not just respawn timer, but the time it takes to walk back. Usually early points have short walks for attackers and longer walks for defenders, while later points have longer walks for attackers and shorter walks for defenders.
So for instance if you attack the first point of a 2cp map, your whole team dies, but you take 3 defenders with you, it's a win for you. Your team should be able to respawn and get back to the point before the defenders can do the same, because you have a shorter trip. So basically that means trading kills is good for the offense.
On the second point of 2cp that dynamic is reversed, the attackers have a long walk and the defenders have a very short walk. Trading kills doesn't really help the attackers anymore, because the defense will be back long before attackers will get back. This is why on the 2nd point of 2CP you're usually only playing for like 1 or 2 ticks of capture at a time, because you'd have to win the first fight very cleanly to stand up to the enemy respawn.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm going to be honest... I have no clue exactly how Q points are earned. I know that you earn them the same ways as Fire points. I know that damage, self heals, blocking, and just being alive all contribute. But you seem to suggest that which hero you are also can affect the rate you earn Q, other than in the obvious way in that some heroes do more or less damage than others.
There is a passive charge, other than that it's damage and healing, no blocking. Each ult charges at a different rate.
Important to note, health packs don't charge ult unless they are hacked by Sombra, then they count as her healing you.
On all maps EXCEPT KotH maps, the Attacking and Defensive spawns are at different distances to the objective. On early points, the Attackers are usually closer to the point than Defenders, while on final points, it's the opposite.
And on Payload maps, the distance to the spawn will change as the Payload progresses. Ergo, on Hollywood, if you're almost capping the first Payload point, that means the Payload is much closer to the Defender's spawn than the Attacker's spawn.
Because of this differing distance, deaths on either team will come with different opportunity costs. On Hanamura B, for example, a death on the Defending team isn't as huge an advantage as a death on the Attacking team. It takes less time for the Defender to reach and contest the objective than the Attacker.
And certain heroes (Genji, Tracer, Sombra, Winston, etc) will also close these distances more quickly than others. So if I'm an Attacker on Hanamura B and we kill the enemy Genji first, we may not necessarily push in unless we score a second kill straight away, because not only is that Genji going to respawn right behind the point, he's also going to get there much faster than most other heroes can.
How far away the objective is from spawn (as well as the mobility of anyone returning from spawn) has a HUGE impact on how the game is played at that given moment. Mercy will get back faster than Zenyatta, for instance, so killing a Zenyatta is going to buy you more time than killing a Mercy, but a Mercy might be the more important kill because of her Res, so what do? etc etc etc
(FTR, asking this question does clearly demonstrate a lack of familiarity with this game's mechanics.)
I'm going to be honest... I have no clue exactly how Q points are earned. I know that you earn them the same ways as Fire points. I know that damage, self heals, blocking, and just being alive all contribute. But you seem to suggest that which hero you are also can affect the rate you earn Q, other than in the obvious way in that some heroes do more or less damage than others.
Blocking does NOT contribute to Q points.
Different heroes charge their ults at different base rates, usually as a balancing aspect given that some ults are straight up more bonkers than others. That is separate to how much damage or healing YOU do while playing that hero.
The time it takes for a player to reach the objective or "in play" area of the map. So not just respawn timer, but the time it takes to walk back. Usually early points have short walks for attackers and longer walks for defenders, while later points have longer walks for attackers and shorter walks for defenders.
So for instance if you attack the first point of a 2cp map, your whole team dies, but you take 3 defenders with you, it's a win for you. Your team should be able to respawn and get back to the point before the defenders can do the same, because you have a shorter trip. So basically that means trading kills is good for the offense.
On the second point of 2cp that dynamic is reversed, the attackers have a long walk and the defenders have a very short walk. Trading kills doesn't really help the attackers, because the defense will be back long before attackers will get back. This is why on the 2nd point of 2CP you're usually only playing for like 1 or 2 ticks of capture at a time, because you'd have to win the first fight very cleanly to stand up to the enemy respawn.
That's a fascinating way to think about it. I mean I knew all this stuff already but I'd never thought of it in terms of kill swaps. It means a generic kill's value diminishes as you progress further into the map.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
You're speaking of situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
Depends on the point. If the Attackers spawn closer to the objective than the Defenders, then Defenders should hold on the point until you have your tanks back, then return to the choke. Attackers in this scenario should retreat back to their spawn or at least out of danger until their full 6 returns.
If the Defenders spawn closer than the Attackers, then really Defenders should be always resetting to advantageous positions (usually high ground or behind known approaches/chokes), while Attackers will want to back out and reset for another full push.
Whenever you die it takes roughly 10 seconds for you to respawn. If you can get to the objective (or fight) before someone on the other team who spawns at the same time you do, you have spawn advantage. This is because your team can either regroup or get back to the fight quicker than the other team, potentially giving you the edge you need to win fights. On Payload maps who has spawn advantage actually shifts the closer the payload gets to the next checkpoint. At first the attackers have a huge spawn advantage, but closer to the end of each checkpoint the defending team gains the advantage. On 2CP maps the first point gives the attackers an advantage, where the second point the advantage is given to the defenders.
If you currently have spawn advantage it's actually not the worst thing in the world to get back into the fight and ignore regrouping, as long as you're not going into a 1v6 or 2v5 or something. But if you don't have the spawn advantage then those picks you might make by poking or by basically suiciding the point won't help your team. Those picks will be back in the fight before you will be.
No I don't.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
OOO! OOO! That's another thing I've become curious about: how strong is mobility simple from the standpoint of accelerating your downtime between respawning and rejoining the fight? I know it's big, but is it so big that, say, heroes that lack such mobility should be balanced to be strictly stonger than heroes that don't? I dunno, but it's interesting.
As a counterpoint to how OW does it, Paladins has a mechanic where every single hero gets a steed when they respawn so they can return to the fight as quickly as any other hero, mobility be damned. It's a clever mechanic IMO.
That sort of mobility is strong, but not game-breakingly. I find it only ever matters when you're stalling out an objective as a Defender on point B, or in the final moments of a KotH map.
Consider that high-mobility characters also tend to be vulnerable to dying, usually with low HP.
(FTR, asking this question does clearly demonstrate a lack of familiarity with this game's mechanics.)
No, only terminology. I mean, earlier in this very thread I had to ask for a definition of "dive" because up to that point I thought it had to do with griefing but it's really just an aggressive flanking comp.
I don't talk much about overwatch so I don't know the terms folks use for concepts, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of those concepts.
This has all been very high level tactics. I mean, cool is learning stuff here too. This isn't basic stuff. You might not realize that because you play at a higher level, but in QP even knowing where the tanks are at and which heroes can do what is asking a lot.
So to calm this all down... we need place names very badly. I only get on voice chat in comp, but when I'm there I need to be in voice chat so I can announce and hear about enemy incursions. But I cannot tell you how often I'm saying things like "They're up on that balcony thing" or "They're coming through... that room with the health pack". It took the TF2 community years to develop names for all the important parts of all the maps, so it's not surprising.
My friend and I are starting to form a vocabulary but I worry it diverges from the main community and when we're in comp voice chat nobody will know wtf we are even talking about.
(its too damn late)
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
edited July 2017
I usually go with directions in relation to the objective or descriptions of the zone
So on Route 66, right at the start, if we are Defending we have top right tunnel, bottom right tunnel, main (aka Payload path), far left (near edge of the map), in gas station (or big health pack), on top of gas station, right side behind sign, high ground behind (or bridge, leading onto top of gas station).
Attacking the same area means most of the directions are reversed and in relation to the Payload's position. So high left, bottom left, main, far right, right in gas station, right above gas station, etc.
Some folks go with clock directions and high/low/below.
I don't know how I can express how much I disagree with you. The objective... is the objective. Its why you have a team. It's why you queued. You win by pushing it / defending it. If you aren't going to fight on the point, where are you going to fight?
I just wanted to come back to this. If not on the point, then around the point. For a concrete example, take Numbani's first point, when the attackers are trying to get the capture point to start the payload. The capture point sits in a low-lying region surrounded on all four sides by various high ground. High ground has a well-documented advantage over low ground thanks to the high ground itself providing a measure of cover, and furthermore, standing on the point causes the attackers to be clustered while the defenders are spread out while still having the same amount of firepower afforded to each. That is to say, the defenders all fire into the same general area, while the attackers either split their offense in multiple directions, or concentrate on one side while exposing themselves to the opposite side.
Low, central ground is a weak position, and most control points in Overwatch are placed on low, central ground.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
The objective is not always the most advantageous position is the main point here. For example, on Hollywood stage 2, you can defend the payload about halfway down the street but there is high ground all along that side and a huge flank route that comes around right to your butt. If you back up to the T-junction at the front of the saloon, you have vision of the main route and both flanks as well as the high ground. Mobile characters can get on top of the jail as well. It's a better spot to defend from than earlier on the road.
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
You're speaking of situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
Depends on the point. If the Attackers spawn closer to the objective than the Defenders, then Defenders should hold on the point until you have your tanks back, then return to the choke. Attackers in this scenario should retreat back to their spawn or at least out of danger until their full 6 returns.
If the Defenders spawn closer than the Attackers, then really Defenders should be always resetting to advantageous positions (usually high ground or behind known approaches/chokes), while Attackers will want to back out and reset for another full push.
So in both cases, Defenders should hold something - either strong positions or the point itself - and Attackers should reset in safety? Have I read that right?
I'm a huge fan of grouping. That's my entire point. The tank defines where the group IS / groups ARE. Getting to a tank is the same as grouping up. But you shouldn't cede ground to try to backtrack to the tank. That makes no sense.
It does. Going in 1v6 is a guaranteed loss. Doesn't matter if you stalled the cart for 5 seconds (you'll probably only stall it for 1 or 2). If you grouped up immediately, you could wipe the other team and hold them off of the cart for the whole match.
Now it depends on which class you are and where the enemies are. A Mei's entire purpose is to block the point/cart, and sometimes to act as an offtank when you don't have one. But with good wall placement and use of cart as LOS break, you can stall for almost an entire respawn cycle.
But a squishy is probably not going to want rush a point without a tank unless they have an ult and nowhere else to drop it and no good reason to hold it (because the team is too far away or the comp doesn't have a good combo for their ult). They might even retreat just to find cover.
But IMHO people just retreat way way too much in this game.
Yeah Mei can absolutely stall a point for a long time and that's a huge asset in OT. But you can use those same abilities to survive the team fight. So just wait a second.
I agree that people are often too willing to concede a point but most of the time it's better to be with your entire team.
And just a side point, "grouping up" is not finding a tank. It's moving back to spawn until all 6 of you are together. A squishy and a tank moving in is just a two-man trickle. 2v6 is no better than 1v6.
You are aware that flanking exists?
My dream push is two groups, a rein/orisa, a mercy/ana, and 1-2 dps, going in the weakest link, while a road/zarya/winston/mei, some flankers and/or an offhealer, going some another way, where the flankers pop out and start dropping healers just before the main force drops in and starts laying into their tanks and DPS.
Meanwhile, the enemy team is trying to do the same to you. So you still have to wait for 6 even if you're pushing as two groups, because if you're going in as a single group of 3 without the OTHER 3 pushing at the same time, then the first 3 are going to get eaten alive precisely because the enemy can afford to focus them down.
So yes, a 3-3 setup is a good idea for a push. But they have to be done at roughly the same time, which means waiting for a full 6 before you execute it.
I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
You're speaking of situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
Depends on the point. If the Attackers spawn closer to the objective than the Defenders, then Defenders should hold on the point until you have your tanks back, then return to the choke. Attackers in this scenario should retreat back to their spawn or at least out of danger until their full 6 returns.
If the Defenders spawn closer than the Attackers, then really Defenders should be always resetting to advantageous positions (usually high ground or behind known approaches/chokes), while Attackers will want to back out and reset for another full push.
So in both cases, Defenders should hold something - either strong positions or the point itself - and Attackers should reset in safety? Have I read that right?
To some degree. Defenders also need to be on the lookout for attackers not resetting in safety. If the defending team knows there's a chance attackers have a staggered spawn going (like if their DPS and healers went down first and then their tank(s)) then a tank and the dps should move slightly past the choke in order to bate the returning DPS into engaging (this works great if you have long range healers that stay back as well as a high mobility tank). Punish the out of position DPS, hopefully staggering the attackers further, and then if you see the attackers starting to approach as a group, move back behind the choke, taking up any high ground you can.
I think I just had the best moment of playing Overwatch ever. Numbani. We full stopped them on defense. On attack I switched to Winston. Rest was Diva, Genji, Mercy, Lucio, and I think a Pharah. We decide to go top left. Find a Reinhart, Diva, and Sym turrets defending the door. I call to pull out, and we do! Go straight to the long left flank and I dive a Zen on the point, who dies, then Reinhart drops onto the point, we focus him down, then Diva drops onto the point, we focus her down, and bam, won on the first push.
Communication and coordination really are the most important thing.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I got midly upset when someone in comp suggested (in an admittedly polite manner) that I had bad situational awareness because I guess he felt like I wasted my Mei ult.
I had dropped it directly on the cart.
So come to find out, essentially everyone else on the team was either dead or running back. At some point in the moment when I swung around to flank and when I returned, which might have been 3 seconds, the entire push had evaporated. It turned out to be a solo ult.
My mistake was probably asking "Where is everyone" in team chat. He might have assumed I meant "I can't find the carets in the GUI" but it's more like "Why did our push evaporate?".
I mean, even if I'd known that the team was dead, I probably wouldn't have done much differently except maybe explicitly try to get a solo ult kill on a healer or someone. It probably would have gone just as badly. I'm not exactly sure what he expected of me. That push was dead before I even got there. That cannot possibly be my fault.
The questions here for me are:
1) were you attacking or defending?
2) how far was the payload from the end of the map?
3) how much time was left?
The thing is, you can see allied dead bodies in your UI, as well as the blue chevrons. If you can't see any of them near where the cart is, then it's a pretty clear indicator that there's no one there to back up your ult. Mei's ult is fantastic, but it's best used when you have teammates up who can finish off the people you've frozen.
If numbers aren't in your favour, running up to the objective at all is furthering the problem: you're perpetuating a numbers disadvantage by your team. Unless you KNOW you can survive long enough for your teammates to join you, I wouldn't have even bothered contesting it unless a) we were defending, b) it was literally right on top of the final capture point, and c) it was Overtime.
Mei is a great staller but she can only do so much. In the dying moments in a defense round when the enemy is all over the cart and it's nearing the final capture, then yeah, you're gonna have to dive in no matter what, and you'll probably win the round by dropping Blizzard to zone the objective. But if you're attacking, have plenty of time left, or it's not the final cap point, the better tactic is to wait for your team to form up and attack as 6.
As it is, you could've died and left your team staggered in numbers AND down one of the strongest ults in point defense. If you didn't die, that's awesome, except yeah the ult economy is now a bit out of whack because your ult is a huge potential swing and, depending on the stage of the game, a solo ult may not have been worth it.
In that situation, it was close to the first cart point on hollywood attack, I'd had been on the point fighting with the team. I believe most were there, at the very least our dva and a healer. I spun around inside the bar building so I could get behind the cart and start freezing healers, but by the time I got there, in the matter of only a few seconds, the rest of the team disappeared. I say (and this was my mistake) "Where is everyone?", drop my ult and hope for the best. It worked for a few minutes but I'd already blown my CD's so I was mostly just trying to sew confusion before I died. But I was dead when the team died, I just didn't know it yet.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
In hind sight, perhaps I should have chucked the ult and ran back to, say, across the street into or behind those other buildings. I might have been able to survive long enough for some of the people who hadn't just died on the point to return.
But I'm not sitting on an ult. That's something I almost never do. If I see more than 3 people and I have my ult up, I'm using it, if for no other reason than to start charging a new one. Sitting on ults is an expensive choice. It is basically saying the utility of attempting a combo outweighs the utility of partially or even completely charging a new ult during the time you are sitting on it. And sometimes it is worth it! A good ult combo can turn a fight around. But it is not without a heavy cost.
Some ults are expendable: Tracer's, Sombra's, McCree's, Hanzo's, etc. They charge quickly and can be charged quickly with little risk to the person charging it.
Some ults are not: Zarya's, Mei's, Reinhardt's, etc. These charge more slowly and can only be used willy-nilly if you can reliably have an ult ready to negate every enemy push.
I actually agree that sitting on an ult is not ideal, but there are LOTS of factors that make this a good or bad choice. Ult economy is a HUGE part of this game that does not exist in TF2, and when you think about what you're giving up, it's actually a HUGE potential swing that's worth hanging on to.
Mei's in particular. It doesn't do a lot of damage on its own but it has a HUGE zoning effect AND disables anyone caught in it. It forces people to pop cooldowns to escape it and you might force the enemy Lucio or Zenyatta to use their ults in defense of it, even if your team doesn't follow-up with any kills.
The actual golden rule of Overwatch is not to use any ultimate without either securing a number of kills that are worth it OR trading it for a number of enemy ults. Blizzard is the difference between a win or a wipe. Don't use it alone because it's actually worthless alone unless the enemy spends an ult or two in response to it. So if you really hate hanging onto it, consider using it to bait out enemy ults. But otherwise, use it to set up team wipes cuz those are AWESOME. Still, if you don't think setting up a combo is worth it, then at LEAST consider ways to make its use worth the reduction in your team's ult economy.
Basically: if you don't want to sit on an ult, that's up to you, but it is a poor "golden rule" to follow in almost all aspects of this game.
This is a great post, but in fairness, all of your posts about mechanics have been spot on. Basically, I want to agree, but also super agree (in an old forum where I hung out over a decade ago, we gave people LIME for truth; you get lime).
@Monkey Ball: Viv is right here. You probably wasted your ult because you didn't pay attention the situation. You should not have chucked the ult AT ALL. If your team had all melted so easily, then you should have run away (if you could get away) or just died immediately. You needed to regroup with your team ASAP and let them know the next push had Blizzard up. Then you could initiate the next fight with Blizzard, likely resulting in an immediately won team fight and the checkpoint.
Put it this way: you chose to use Blizzard into a lost team fight and died without getting the checkpoint. If you had chucked the Blizzard and run, you would be down an ult and alive without getting the checkpoint. If you had died and respawned without using ult, the enemy team would be slightly higher on ult charge than in option 2, but you would have ult ready, be with your team, and have an outstanding chance of getting the next checkpoint.
The third scenario is clearly the best one. Using an ult to no advantage is strictly WORSE than holding it for the right moment, particularly on attack where a few won team fights are all you need. That doesn't mean the moment needs to be perfect (there are desperation scenarios to consider) but wasting ults is an almost certain way to lose through attrition, especially when considering slow-charging, high impact ults like Blizzard and Graviton.
This doesn't mean you're a bad player or worthless or anything. It just means there are aspects of the game you need to improve. Exactly like everyone else! I've learned a great deal from listening to the players on the forum because they give great advice and are generally better than I am. No shame in doing the same.
For call-outs, use directions (left/right/behind) relative to your team facing the objective, and verticality (above/below). Don't bother describing the exact structure that the player is on top of or whatever, voice chat efficiency is critical. All you're trying to do is get your team to turn in the right direction so they aren't caught off guard by a flanker.
For call-outs, use directions (left/right/behind) relative to your team facing the objective, and verticality (above/below). Don't bother describing the exact structure that the player is on top of or whatever, voice chat efficiency is critical. All you're trying to do is get your team to turn in the right direction so they aren't caught off guard by a flanker.
Every building is a "house" and every platform is a "bridge". At least when I'm talking frantically over voice coms.
For call-outs, use directions (left/right/behind) relative to your team facing the objective, and verticality (above/below). Don't bother describing the exact structure that the player is on top of or whatever, voice chat efficiency is critical. All you're trying to do is get your team to turn in the right direction so they aren't caught off guard by a flanker.
Pretty much: the axis of the team's advance is always forward, and all directions are with reference to the main group. Unless you're speaking to a particular person.
When people say call-outs are hard and subjective I think they overcomplicate things in their head. There's not much you can't describe with "top/ground/bottom" "left/right/forward/behind" and some short description if needed. So for example, "Reaper top left doorway, above the payload".
The third scenario is clearly the best one. Using an ult to no advantage is strictly WORSE than holding it for the right moment, particularly on attack where a few won team fights are all you need. That doesn't mean the moment needs to be perfect (there are desperation scenarios to consider) but wasting ults is an almost certain way to lose through attrition, especially when considering slow-charging, high impact ults like Blizzard and Graviton.
This doesn't mean you're a bad player or worthless or anything. It just means there are aspects of the game you need to improve. Exactly like everyone else! I've learned a great deal from listening to the players on the forum because they give great advice and are generally better than I am. No shame in doing the same.
I am willing to concede the idea that I have in a way overcorrected for defects I've seen in others in QP and low level comp. As far as ult economics (I like that term!), once I learned the checkmarks in the tab UI are folks ready to ult (that must have been six months in) I came to realize how often people were just sitting on a single ult for large portions of a match, waiting for that perfect combo. I also noticed when enemy team players had very frequent ults, where I ask "How in the hell does he have an ult again already?". I came to the conclusion that "sitting on an ult" was just people not aware of the fact that they are potential wasting additional ults. That they were just not aware of that tradeoff.
Maybe they are aware. Maybe I'm the one underweighting ult combos.
Grouping vs Territory is something I'm going to need to mull over for a while. Last night's conversation left me with a lot to consider.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
It depends on the ult and the situation. You don't want to blow Zen or Lucio's ults just for the hell of it. You want them for when your team is taking or about to take a bunch of damage. With Pharah, her ult is often a death sentence, so you'll generally want to wait for the right opportunity (whether that's a combo or just a couple squishies grouped together). Those times when your Mercy hasn't used rez in awhile could very well be that they aren't being backed up by the rest of the team, so they're getting picked off at the beginning of every fight. Stuff like that.
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I agree. It just you should wait near the front line, not at spawn, so as not to lose ground needlessly.
I've been playing since Overwatch beta and played TF2 since beta as well, and I completely and fundamentally disagree with your understanding of its mechanics. At this stage maybe I'm not good enough to understand your level of the game yet, who knows, but I'm a very confident Support main, and I know we see a ton of shit in a given match that frontliners simply don't.
You're speaking of situations I've become curious about lately, but I don't know enough about OW to make any solid conclusions yet. So I guess I'm asking the floor.
When an Attack team has broken through a choke but lost the ensuing teamfight, what's the correct move for the survivors? Do you fully reset and push the choke again? Do you try to skirmish around past the choke so that your respawns don't have to fight their way back through a reset choke defence? I don't know.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
This has been more of a discussion about tactics. And that doesn't really carry over as much from TF2 days, due to the small teams in OW and that everyone can 'uber'.
Okay see, in Diamond Competitive, this shit wouldn't fly, cuz you staggered your team's attack big time. It wasn't even that you asked "where is everyone" that was the mistake; it's that you assumed the game state wouldn't change between your decision to do something and then executing the decision you've made. Ultimates are valuable in this game and I'm a huge proponent of ult economy in general, and as such I'm generally wary of anyone just chucking an ult without knowing precisely what your allies are going to be able to do to maximize its effect.
Because it wasn't the end of the game, it probably wasn't Overtime, and you were on Attack, so the enemy is beholden to what your team decides to do (not the other way around as is the case on Defense). This meant that you probably had enough time (30s is all you need on the clock) to regroup and make another push. Since it was so close to the cap point, you could've held your ult, backed off, waited for the team, then pushed through the enemy with Blizzard to support it and probably wiped them, and that wipe would've given you the cap.
Consider also that they have spawn advantage at that point, so even if you took one of them down with you when you decided to use Blizzard, that dead enemy would've been back in the action before you are, especially since Mei doesn't have the mobility to accelerate her approach.
If your def team holds at the choke (or first corner on payload maps) they gain the ability to have good positioning. Until the attackers break their defense they own that ground. And on payload maps it works out even better, your team can not be touching the payload, but as the attackers push it into your alley of death they're actually delivering it into ground you own. Get them to back off, reset your positioning, and they're forced to try and break the defense in order to even get near the payload.
These are all really important parts of the game. Teams that don't do this don't win if they're against a team that does focus on positioning as a team to make it harder for your opponent to even get a chance to hit you.
That's a huge part of overwatch, a team that owns an area going up against a team that tries to break that hold. Objective time, in the long game, doesn't actually matter all that much in most higher rank matches. Fighting on the objective, as an defender, is for when you know you actually have a chance to take it back. If you can kill them without touching the objective then they gain nothing.
And when you're attacking fighting on the objective is again for when you have a chance to take it or when it's overtime. Otherwise you're encouraging your team to desperately waste ults in an effort to change the momentum of the fight. Good defense is around the point or at the chokes until the attackers actually gain real ground. Because the further they push the payload the closer your spawn is to it. If you take it back past the half way point it's increasingly difficult for them to break your defense which will be set up closer to their spawn.
OOO! OOO! That's another thing I've become curious about: how strong is mobility simple from the standpoint of accelerating your downtime between respawning and rejoining the fight? I know it's big, but is it so big that, say, heroes that lack such mobility should be balanced to be strictly stonger than heroes that don't? I dunno, but it's interesting.
As a counterpoint to how OW does it, Paladins has a mechanic where every single hero gets a steed when they respawn so they can return to the fight as quickly as any other hero, mobility be damned. It's a clever mechanic IMO.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
In hind sight, perhaps I should have chucked the ult and ran back to, say, across the street into or behind those other buildings. I might have been able to survive long enough for some of the people who hadn't just died on the point to return.
But I'm not sitting on an ult. That's something I almost never do. If I see more than 3 people and I have my ult up, I'm using it, if for no other reason than to start charging a new one. Sitting on ults is an expensive choice. It is basically saying the utility of attempting a combo outweighs the utility of partially or even completely charging a new ult during the time you are sitting on it. And sometimes it is worth it! A good ult combo can turn a fight around. But it is not without a heavy cost.
Kinda depends on the particular map and team comps, but fully resetting as fast as you can is almost always the correct answer. If you have spawn advantage then guaranteeing another 6-man push as quickly as possible will win you the objective, as long as you don't trickle. If they have spawn advantage then you're more likely to just get overwhelmed and delay your next push, just giving that much more time for the enemy team to re-entrench. The risk is usually not worth the reward.
If you have a big mobility advantage and high ground, then you might have an argument for staying and poking for ult charge, but you should still do so very defensively.
EDIT: fully resetting also gives you the advantage of the enemy team having to figure out what your angle of approach for your next attack is. If you see a couple of enemies already clustered up on the right flank waiting for the rest of their team, it's pretty obvious where their next push is, and you have time to reposition for it.
No. Absolutely not. There are some exceptions at some maps but you are absolutely better off waiting where the enemy cannot get a free pick.
If you wait near the front line, the enemy's flankers are going to be nearby and they will pick you off in the time it takes for your team to get back, precisely because they know you're alone. Now if you're fairly confident you can fight them off then by all means do what you gotta do, but "giving up ground" is NOT a big deal in Overwatch at all.
Re: your point about territory -
You have a cast of 25 in this game. Lost territory in one area is gained territory in another, and not all territory is created equal. It's precisely why people stand on top of the petrol station in Route 66 and behind the choke in Hanamura. Not because of "space" but because of "best space for my purpose". Defenders benefit hugely from high ground and long sight-lines because they know the Attackers HAVE to come to the objective to win, but with so many possible approaches, standing too far forward means putting your healers in more danger from more approaches, as well as giving Attackers more ways to get around you.
Route 66 and Hollywood are similar - Defenders stand BEHIND the multiple paths that Attackers can take to get there so that they can respond accordingly. Too far forward and you've split the party, allowing free picks OR for the enemy to sneak past you, get on the high ground BEHIND you, and murder the shit out of you.
I get the sense that you want this game to be more like TF2 and play it that way, rather than playing the game it IS. I dunno... it just feels that way.
Disagree. The way the maps are designed, the way the objectives work, the way attack/defense functions, and the way matches are won in competitive are all related to the game's design mechanics. That is largely what I've been referencing in the majority of my posts, as well as the one you're replying to. But pedantics aside, my point re your understanding of this game still stands.
It is true that there has been a repeating pattern since the game came out of my assuming that some strategy or tactical manuever is going to dominate people because it worked well in TF2 but due to the tiny team sizes or some other basic mechanical difference the conventional wisdom turns out not to be so wise.
For example, I started overwatch just playing lots of Torb because I was a Engie main in TF2. But come to find out, Torb is not Engie. Torb is Torb. It took me a long time to give up on the idea of a nest and just play him the way he is built.
Can someone give me a definition?
Some ults are expendable: Tracer's, Sombra's, McCree's, Hanzo's, etc. They charge quickly and can be charged quickly with little risk to the person charging it.
Some ults are not: Zarya's, Mei's, Reinhardt's, etc. These charge more slowly and can only be used willy-nilly if you can reliably have an ult ready to negate every enemy push.
I actually agree that sitting on an ult is not ideal, but there are LOTS of factors that make this a good or bad choice. Ult economy is a HUGE part of this game that does not exist in TF2, and when you think about what you're giving up, it's actually a HUGE potential swing that's worth hanging on to.
Mei's in particular. It doesn't do a lot of damage on its own but it has a HUGE zoning effect AND disables anyone caught in it. It forces people to pop cooldowns to escape it and you might force the enemy Lucio or Zenyatta to use their ults in defense of it, even if your team doesn't follow-up with any kills.
The actual golden rule of Overwatch is not to use any ultimate without either securing a number of kills that are worth it OR trading it for a number of enemy ults. Blizzard is the difference between a win or a wipe. Don't use it alone because it's actually worthless alone unless the enemy spends an ult or two in response to it. So if you really hate hanging onto it, consider using it to bait out enemy ults. But otherwise, use it to set up team wipes cuz those are AWESOME. Still, if you don't think setting up a combo is worth it, then at LEAST consider ways to make its use worth the reduction in your team's ult economy.
Basically: if you don't want to sit on an ult, that's up to you, but it is a poor "golden rule" to follow in almost all aspects of this game.
The time it takes for a player to reach the objective or "in play" area of the map. So not just respawn timer, but the time it takes to walk back. Usually early points have short walks for attackers and longer walks for defenders, while later points have longer walks for attackers and shorter walks for defenders.
So for instance if you attack the first point of a 2cp map, your whole team dies, but you take 3 defenders with you, it's a win for you. Your team should be able to respawn and get back to the point before the defenders can do the same, because you have a shorter trip. So basically that means trading kills is good for the offense.
On the second point of 2cp that dynamic is reversed, the attackers have a long walk and the defenders have a very short walk. Trading kills doesn't really help the attackers anymore, because the defense will be back long before attackers will get back. This is why on the 2nd point of 2CP you're usually only playing for like 1 or 2 ticks of capture at a time, because you'd have to win the first fight very cleanly to stand up to the enemy respawn.
There is a passive charge, other than that it's damage and healing, no blocking. Each ult charges at a different rate.
Important to note, health packs don't charge ult unless they are hacked by Sombra, then they count as her healing you.
On all maps EXCEPT KotH maps, the Attacking and Defensive spawns are at different distances to the objective. On early points, the Attackers are usually closer to the point than Defenders, while on final points, it's the opposite.
And on Payload maps, the distance to the spawn will change as the Payload progresses. Ergo, on Hollywood, if you're almost capping the first Payload point, that means the Payload is much closer to the Defender's spawn than the Attacker's spawn.
Because of this differing distance, deaths on either team will come with different opportunity costs. On Hanamura B, for example, a death on the Defending team isn't as huge an advantage as a death on the Attacking team. It takes less time for the Defender to reach and contest the objective than the Attacker.
And certain heroes (Genji, Tracer, Sombra, Winston, etc) will also close these distances more quickly than others. So if I'm an Attacker on Hanamura B and we kill the enemy Genji first, we may not necessarily push in unless we score a second kill straight away, because not only is that Genji going to respawn right behind the point, he's also going to get there much faster than most other heroes can.
How far away the objective is from spawn (as well as the mobility of anyone returning from spawn) has a HUGE impact on how the game is played at that given moment. Mercy will get back faster than Zenyatta, for instance, so killing a Zenyatta is going to buy you more time than killing a Mercy, but a Mercy might be the more important kill because of her Res, so what do? etc etc etc
(FTR, asking this question does clearly demonstrate a lack of familiarity with this game's mechanics.)
Blocking does NOT contribute to Q points.
Different heroes charge their ults at different base rates, usually as a balancing aspect given that some ults are straight up more bonkers than others. That is separate to how much damage or healing YOU do while playing that hero.
That's a fascinating way to think about it. I mean I knew all this stuff already but I'd never thought of it in terms of kill swaps. It means a generic kill's value diminishes as you progress further into the map.
Depends on the point. If the Attackers spawn closer to the objective than the Defenders, then Defenders should hold on the point until you have your tanks back, then return to the choke. Attackers in this scenario should retreat back to their spawn or at least out of danger until their full 6 returns.
If the Defenders spawn closer than the Attackers, then really Defenders should be always resetting to advantageous positions (usually high ground or behind known approaches/chokes), while Attackers will want to back out and reset for another full push.
Whenever you die it takes roughly 10 seconds for you to respawn. If you can get to the objective (or fight) before someone on the other team who spawns at the same time you do, you have spawn advantage. This is because your team can either regroup or get back to the fight quicker than the other team, potentially giving you the edge you need to win fights. On Payload maps who has spawn advantage actually shifts the closer the payload gets to the next checkpoint. At first the attackers have a huge spawn advantage, but closer to the end of each checkpoint the defending team gains the advantage. On 2CP maps the first point gives the attackers an advantage, where the second point the advantage is given to the defenders.
If you currently have spawn advantage it's actually not the worst thing in the world to get back into the fight and ignore regrouping, as long as you're not going into a 1v6 or 2v5 or something. But if you don't have the spawn advantage then those picks you might make by poking or by basically suiciding the point won't help your team. Those picks will be back in the fight before you will be.
That sort of mobility is strong, but not game-breakingly. I find it only ever matters when you're stalling out an objective as a Defender on point B, or in the final moments of a KotH map.
Consider that high-mobility characters also tend to be vulnerable to dying, usually with low HP.
No, only terminology. I mean, earlier in this very thread I had to ask for a definition of "dive" because up to that point I thought it had to do with griefing but it's really just an aggressive flanking comp.
I don't talk much about overwatch so I don't know the terms folks use for concepts, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of those concepts.
This has all been very high level tactics. I mean, cool is learning stuff here too. This isn't basic stuff. You might not realize that because you play at a higher level, but in QP even knowing where the tanks are at and which heroes can do what is asking a lot.
So to calm this all down... we need place names very badly. I only get on voice chat in comp, but when I'm there I need to be in voice chat so I can announce and hear about enemy incursions. But I cannot tell you how often I'm saying things like "They're up on that balcony thing" or "They're coming through... that room with the health pack". It took the TF2 community years to develop names for all the important parts of all the maps, so it's not surprising.
My friend and I are starting to form a vocabulary but I worry it diverges from the main community and when we're in comp voice chat nobody will know wtf we are even talking about.
(its too damn late)
So on Route 66, right at the start, if we are Defending we have top right tunnel, bottom right tunnel, main (aka Payload path), far left (near edge of the map), in gas station (or big health pack), on top of gas station, right side behind sign, high ground behind (or bridge, leading onto top of gas station).
Attacking the same area means most of the directions are reversed and in relation to the Payload's position. So high left, bottom left, main, far right, right in gas station, right above gas station, etc.
Some folks go with clock directions and high/low/below.
I just wanted to come back to this. If not on the point, then around the point. For a concrete example, take Numbani's first point, when the attackers are trying to get the capture point to start the payload. The capture point sits in a low-lying region surrounded on all four sides by various high ground. High ground has a well-documented advantage over low ground thanks to the high ground itself providing a measure of cover, and furthermore, standing on the point causes the attackers to be clustered while the defenders are spread out while still having the same amount of firepower afforded to each. That is to say, the defenders all fire into the same general area, while the attackers either split their offense in multiple directions, or concentrate on one side while exposing themselves to the opposite side.
Low, central ground is a weak position, and most control points in Overwatch are placed on low, central ground.
So in both cases, Defenders should hold something - either strong positions or the point itself - and Attackers should reset in safety? Have I read that right?
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
To some degree. Defenders also need to be on the lookout for attackers not resetting in safety. If the defending team knows there's a chance attackers have a staggered spawn going (like if their DPS and healers went down first and then their tank(s)) then a tank and the dps should move slightly past the choke in order to bate the returning DPS into engaging (this works great if you have long range healers that stay back as well as a high mobility tank). Punish the out of position DPS, hopefully staggering the attackers further, and then if you see the attackers starting to approach as a group, move back behind the choke, taking up any high ground you can.
Communication and coordination really are the most important thing.
This is a great post, but in fairness, all of your posts about mechanics have been spot on. Basically, I want to agree, but also super agree (in an old forum where I hung out over a decade ago, we gave people LIME for truth; you get lime).
@Monkey Ball: Viv is right here. You probably wasted your ult because you didn't pay attention the situation. You should not have chucked the ult AT ALL. If your team had all melted so easily, then you should have run away (if you could get away) or just died immediately. You needed to regroup with your team ASAP and let them know the next push had Blizzard up. Then you could initiate the next fight with Blizzard, likely resulting in an immediately won team fight and the checkpoint.
Put it this way: you chose to use Blizzard into a lost team fight and died without getting the checkpoint. If you had chucked the Blizzard and run, you would be down an ult and alive without getting the checkpoint. If you had died and respawned without using ult, the enemy team would be slightly higher on ult charge than in option 2, but you would have ult ready, be with your team, and have an outstanding chance of getting the next checkpoint.
The third scenario is clearly the best one. Using an ult to no advantage is strictly WORSE than holding it for the right moment, particularly on attack where a few won team fights are all you need. That doesn't mean the moment needs to be perfect (there are desperation scenarios to consider) but wasting ults is an almost certain way to lose through attrition, especially when considering slow-charging, high impact ults like Blizzard and Graviton.
This doesn't mean you're a bad player or worthless or anything. It just means there are aspects of the game you need to improve. Exactly like everyone else! I've learned a great deal from listening to the players on the forum because they give great advice and are generally better than I am. No shame in doing the same.
Every building is a "house" and every platform is a "bridge". At least when I'm talking frantically over voice coms.
Pretty much: the axis of the team's advance is always forward, and all directions are with reference to the main group. Unless you're speaking to a particular person.
When people say call-outs are hard and subjective I think they overcomplicate things in their head. There's not much you can't describe with "top/ground/bottom" "left/right/forward/behind" and some short description if needed. So for example, "Reaper top left doorway, above the payload".
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I am willing to concede the idea that I have in a way overcorrected for defects I've seen in others in QP and low level comp. As far as ult economics (I like that term!), once I learned the checkmarks in the tab UI are folks ready to ult (that must have been six months in) I came to realize how often people were just sitting on a single ult for large portions of a match, waiting for that perfect combo. I also noticed when enemy team players had very frequent ults, where I ask "How in the hell does he have an ult again already?". I came to the conclusion that "sitting on an ult" was just people not aware of the fact that they are potential wasting additional ults. That they were just not aware of that tradeoff.
Maybe they are aware. Maybe I'm the one underweighting ult combos.
Grouping vs Territory is something I'm going to need to mull over for a while. Last night's conversation left me with a lot to consider.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing