Hey r/OverwatchUniversity

I'm Nicky, I like to teach OW concepts that I've learned during my time of Solo Q..

Today I wanted to show something extremely important.. stages of positioning, specifically how predictable pre/post-fight setups lead into winning mid fights..

Pre-fight This is where most of the advantage actually comes from. The next fight location is usually predictable based on payload position and space. If I set up early on a strong angle, the enemy team has to spend cooldowns, attention, or positioning just to deal with me. They’re trading resources for space before the fight even begins, which creates small statistical advantages going into the engage.

Mid-fight This part is chaos, it’s never clean or scripted. People miss shots, cooldowns overlap, things break down fast. The difference is that good pre-fight positioning makes the chaos easier to play inside of.

Post-fight After fights end, the next setup is usually predictable again. Either you push forward immediately and claim space, or you reset early and prepare the next pre-fight. Hesitating here often just gives the enemy a free neutral fight.

The big shift for me was thinking less about reacting to fights and more about predicting where the fight is about to happen and when I should commit.

https://youtu.be/4WF5cISdOhQ?si=X45XOKWd7SB1SFhZ

Here is the video on the topic, hope you guys get something out of it

I've first played Overwatch in 2018 on PlayStation, switched to PC around the time of Overwatch 2's release. I quit the game for a while but came back recently with the Season 1 patch, as many other people have. I've been enjoying the game a lot again, which is nice. This also gave me a new eagerness to engage with the new content, as well as old content I haven't really taken note of before.

I've always mostly played tank and support, which is still true nowadays. My most played character by far is Wrecking Ball, who I'd say is definitely the character I'm best at comparatively and my win rate across all games with him is 62%. Note that I do not play Competitive, I only play Quick play, Arcade, Custom Games or whatever seems fun at the moment, though I still take each individual game seriously and try not to throw.

Logically the DPS role is one I haven't really practiced that much, only occasionally playing a bit of Cassidy and Junkrat. Though I've always enamored the players that can play the role well, specifically the "Flanker" archetype, since Wrecking Ball is essentially that but as a tank. Though I've always shyed away from it because of the steep learning curve and the toxicity around it, though today I built up the courage to try some quick play games with some different characters.

Boy was that a mistake.

Quite literally the first game I played Anran ever, I was flamed from both my own team and the enemies for being a "wannabe one trick", that I should get off the character, uninstall, you know, the usual stuff, while the game wasn't even over yet. Logically I got extremely downtrodden and started just playing even worse because of it. It was quite literally the most amount of toxicity I've ever witnessed in an Overwatch game and it was all directed at me, all for just playing a character ONCE. And the games after, while not as harsh, were more of the same. Someone in the lobby was always mad telling me to quit, something I was not familiar with when I was playing the other roles.

If I ever want to get to the point where I'm good enough to where I won't be insulted anymore, I'd have to put possibly hundreds of hours into these characters, all while being insulted and belittled from every side.

And... I do not have the strength to do it. I really don't want to touch that class ever again if this will always be the reaction to it. But now at least I understand why so many of the good Genji players I encounter are so absurdly hate filled if that's how they're treated for just making a mistake.

Rant over

Title pretty much, I've found myself trying to learn him and finding a good amount of success, but oftentimes I'll be play him and my team just... Doesn't get it? Like I'll be contesting high ground and take out a widow, only to look down and see my cass walking straight into the enemy team and die.

I've started playing ramattra in a lot of games just so that my team has a big blue polygon to stand behind so that they don't walk forward and keep dying.

If it gives contsxt I peaked diamond 2 on console, and started playing on PC recently and got placed gold 1, working my way up.