Some of the most common community mistakes, and how you can fix them.
Having played Overwatch for an unhealthy number of hours, we’ve noticed a few common bad habits which many players aren’t necessarily aware of. While they’re all small issues – and we’ve certainly got our own areas of improvement to deal with – they can have a surprisingly strong impact on your chances of winning or not.
We’ve highlighted those that we feel are most common across the community, with an explanation of why each one is bad and how they can be rectified. By making these little changes, it’s amazing how much your play can improve.
Not contesting the point in overtime
- If you can make it to the point in time, it’s always worth trying to get there. There’s absolutely nothing right about the defeatist attitude: “We would’ve lost anyway.”
- You never know what might happen if you manage to keep that timer ticking over just a fraction longer. It’s surprising how an enemy team can crumble if they’re put under a little more pressure to finish you off in an attempt to finally capture the point.
- Imagine holding the point just long enough so that your friendly Winston could leap back onto the objective and unleash his Primal Rage. His enormous health boost and ability to knock back opponents could buy so much time, your entire team could contest and wrest control back from the enemy.
Trickling in and dying when you need to group up
- Say you’re being picked off trying to capture the objective, and all you need to do is simply group up and push together. Don’t go off without your team and get eliminated, as it’s the most detrimental thing you can do. It means that your allies are at a continuous player disadvantage if they want to get stuck into the fight and have to waste time waiting for you to respawn.
- If it’s happening, call for everyone to sit in the spawn room and completely reset your push. Don’t be tempted to chase off after a member of the enemy team by yourself – it’s not worth it.
Wasting your Ultimate if your team isn’t there
- Your Ultimate is a precious ability and – more often than not – it requires a team to fully take advantage of its power.
- Imagine you’re Reinhardt, sitting on the objective by yourself. All of your team have recently been eliminated and the enemy team are clustered together in a tantalising formation, perfectly aligned for a huge Earth Shatter. Realistically though, you aren’t going to eliminate six of them in one game-changing moment. It’s better to be patient and save it for the next push when your team are there to back you up.
Get on the mic and call things out
- We encourage everyone to get in the team chat even if you’re not fond of talking to strangers over the internet. You don’t have to hold a conversation, just call things out.
- Let people know where enemies are positioned, or who just used their Ultimates as it’s all valuable information. You might not get a verbal response, but it’s almost guaranteed that everyone is listening and secretly very thankful.
- Above all, it promotes teamwork and increases your chances of winning by getting everyone on the same page.
Don’t use all of your Ultimate abilities at once
- This continues the theme of “Ultimates are sacred.” If you spew them all at once, you’ll wipe the entire enemy team out, but give them the Ultimate advantage for the next fight.
- Make sure you hold onto your Ultimate for a second when you see your allies drop theirs into the fight. Always ask yourself: “Will it be overkill if I use my Ultimate here?”
- Saving a couple of Ultimates per fight enables your team to build up a nice cycle of cooldowns, where it’s almost like having round the clock usage. If everyone coordinates, you can almost cycle them in such a way that you always have one as an extra advantage in a brawl.
- It also means a more disciplined enemy team won’t be able to brute force a victory with their Ultimates if you and your team just wasted them all in one go.
