SWAP: a Guide to Overwatch 2 Counters

I made a video not too long ago discussing the problem of counter swapping in OverWatch 2 and how a lot of the balance issues are too heavily swayed in front of cheese characters that just like to entirely counter swap the tank the DPS the support and make your life entirely miserable why is this such a big problem I discussed a lot of that in the video and I also discussed the merits of when counter swapping may or may not be a little bit overrated but today I want to answer the question of when should you actually swap when is it a good time to actually swap off the character and when is at a time that you just need to learn how to adjust your play style or learn how to play versus the match up a little bit better and today I want to introduce you to the rule of 3.5 so the rule of 3.5 is as follows if you're playing into a hard counter that's two points if you're playing on a bad map for your character that's 1.5 points and if you're playing into a soft counter that's only one point and any time that you find yourself adding up those results and you end up with 3.5 or more you should consider swapping now obviously there's a lot of context that matters of this obviously it depends on your mentality depends on your knowledge of the map or the matchup if you're inexperience cons considered getting good obviously but I think it depends a lot on the situation it depends on your Synergy with your team as well although this is overrated and very hard to read I do think that that is something that if you're able to feel like you have a good grasp of whether I work well with this character or I don't work well with this character that's something that you should be taking into account although in my experience people's ability to read Synergy with their teammates pix is usually vastly vastly overrated so just keep that in mind and I guess finally it also depends on the status of your ultimate we'll go over the hard and soft counters but before we do that I want to talk talk about the map choices here so I actually have just have a quick quick play game a replay code that I pulled up earlier and you could probably guess if I ask you the question uh is this a good Widowmaker map short Sidelines not a lot of space not a lot of long angles the answer is no if Then I then flip the script and I move to like let's say a map like circuit Royale and I ask you is this a good Lucio match if we're playing spam do I really want to play Lucio in a wide open map like this uh and the answer is probably going to be no as well so I understand that reading the map map can be a very difficult very tricky thing to do if you don't quite have the experience so if you're not quite sure then the answer is probably it's okay to play the character if the character feels terrible to play because the sight lines are too long or the sight lines are too narrow then the answer is probably not a great map for that character and that gets the 1.5 result if you have any questions about what are good or bad maps you can feel free to let me know in the comments now finally let's talk about hard and soft counters what classifies as a hard counter and what classifies as a soft counter I classify a hard counter in this video as something that demands a major play style adjustment totally adjust how you approach the match entirely and you're honestly operating at a disadvantage with the character that you're picking you can play it you can find success with it you can win the game easily with it but one hard counter will make your life kind of miserable soft counters however are just simple play style adjustments not anything super major but definitely demands a little bit of a play style adjustment some minor adjustments specifically in how you position and how you play obviously everything that's in this list is subject to change uh it's also very subjective obviously I have experien as a coach for a long time but I'm very open to the fact that I could have made many mistakes in this list so please let me know in the comments if you think I missed any particular matchups obviously this CH list is assuming that both players are equally skilled some of the matchups in this are really skill-based even the soft counters where it could really go either way depending on how good the person is but assuming that both players are equally skilled the hard counter is more often than not going to be very difficult for the person being countered more than likely the person being soft countered is going to have a slight advantage in that matchup um basically I want also wanted to aim for around the mid-rank experience the gold plat Diamond level obviously Hanzo versus torb is more of a hard counter for the torn he struggles to play versus Hanzo but if you're playing in bronze the torn isn't exactly getting hard counted by Hanzo pck so just something to keep in mind finally and this should be the last point before we actually get started understanding getting value and the feeling of getting value and understanding that those are different things is really really important for example Reinhardt versus Arisa I have Arisa is classified as a soft counter into r re heart even though it feels like a hard counter because it's actually very easy to get consistent good value from the Arisa she bleeds damage she gets her cool down Force quite easily and she doesn't consistently kill you if you play your cards right and so while it might feel really bad for the Reinhardt and not a lot of fun uh you do get a lot of value it just doesn't always feel like you do so that kind of follows into the direct versus indirect value and there's a couple there's actually many more examples of that in this video uh so let's take a look here so really really important disclaimer one more I promise I'm editing this video and I realized I need to put something out here there's a couple characters like Zar and Ash even torban for example that have like a ton of soft counters and I realize it's very easy to get to that 3.5 rule on situations when you actually shouldn't swap for example if I'm playing Zar on leang tower control center really small map and they're on like Hanzo ash oh no two soft counters I need to swap well no not really because that map is freaking good for you it's it's not very good for those characters so I think what you need to consider when you're considering whether character is a soft counter or not is whether the character is playing on a good map for example if I'm playing Hanzo ver on junkertown yeah that's going to be hard to play Zar into that for 100% it's gonna be hard to reach him it's goingon to be hard to touch him same thing goes for Widowmaker and so on but if I'm playing zarya on a good map I almost feel like there needs to be a calculation that you need to include where you actually subtract counters so where they don't actually count as counters or actually you get plus one to where you actually are able to play more into your counters because the map is favorable for you so I'm going to leave that up to you guys to use your discretion but again don't just use the calculation if you are also playing in a map that is good for you or bad for your counters if I'm playing Ash on junker toown and they go ball Tracer yeah it might be hard but if I'm on like first point or third point it's also pretty hard for the ball Tracer to consistently get to me if I'm positioned well or at least it's harder so it's not as hard of a counter as it would be in other circumstances so again use your discretion um I think anything that's formulaic do this to swap or know when to swap here is going to be inherently difficult so you're definitely going to have to use your discretion when it comes to this let me know if you have any questions okay so starting in no particular order we're just going to start with the tanks here and we're going to be starting with wrecking ball so no particular hard counters I know that might surprise some people but I think wrecking ball has ways of counter playing pretty much every single crowd control ability in the game I find brigita's whip shot shield bash and rally to be extremely difficult whip shot specifically is something that requires a lot of counterplay hack as well is more of a soft counter as well especially with how long it lasts it doesn't last as long as it used to be OverWatch One Summer was definitely a hard counter not so much in OverWatch 2 there's also ways of actually chasing down and killing the somra now Bastion is more of a soft counter in terms of if he saves your turret form for your engage he can't quite punish you as hard as he can at Winston because in Tech Theory you can get away and mines can kind of ruin a bastion's day however it's so easy to just chunk a huge portion of balls HP upon engaging that's really tough to deal with sleep Dart and aade um specifically sleep Dart are definitely skill plays that you can outplay but they are tricky to outplay and I so that's I think that's always going to be something that's worth factoring in you can kill on it and you can also kill Zenyatta but again it's one of those counterplay situations where if you mess up versus hisata Discord and damage will ruin your day and with the 225 hp he's actually a little bit harder to kill now I will say the Discord Changers have definitely favored this matchup for the wrecking ball because wilding out is a little bit harder to kill he can't just Spam Discord on you indiscriminately it does be put on cool down May is an interesting one where May is I would not classify a hard counter because you can't really freeze you but the slow really can kill your momentum and it's not exactly something that you can ever kill so that's definitely annoying um I think you could argue that may would fall more into the annoying category maybe not exactly a soft counter but we threw in here Cassidy decent damage fan the hammer um and then obviously hinder is a big big deal for Wrecking Ball just being pulled out of your ball form is a huge huge deal and then obviously being slowed is really really tough and he does a pretty good amount of damage to you even when you're in ball form and Road Hog obvious example Road Hog does a lot of damage versus you um he has shotgun does a lot of damage the slow is difficult I think obviously there's a lot of ways to avoid roadhog but it does make it difficult when he does hit those abilities on you so we'll move on to the next character so doomfist doomfist is another one similar to Wrecking Ball where a lot of the characters with Mobility are countered by crowd control but as long as those characters Mobility have skill expression there's ways of avoiding and counter playing that CR control so similar to Wrecking Ball there's a lot of things that we can check off the boxs here um obviously sleep Dart is one of them that we're worried about hinder is one of them that we're worried about Discord hack uh and even things like bergita but all these characters are characters that you can outplay and you can kill if they make a mistake brri casses in and Anna are all very squishy characters that are very killable by doomfist especially when you have empowered punch but if you make a mistake they will kill you which is why I classify them as soft counters uh now there's a couple other characters that fall into that category as well I mean obviously Road Hog and CC as well it's not a big surprise there but you're noticing a few characters that don't exactly fit the list here and these are what I would call as play style counters not exactly crowd control counters in other words an echo is not something that can really you can really touch at all and she can definitely hurt you um she doesn't crowd control you she doesn't on-shot you but she can't really do a lot to an echo and that makes her what what I would describe as a soft counter and the same thing also applies to far same thing also applies to tracer and to an extent the same thing also applies to KIRO where they can all do pretty decent damage to you but they're really hard for you to consistently kill and even Force good coold Downs out now you can chase down the KIRO and force TP and sometimes for suzu um but she can poke you out very consistently and she can also quite consistently avoid you and these are all characters that you can't really consistently touch but they can all pretty consistently smoke you up just a little bit so keep that in mind div is somewhere in between where she can peel off your engages but kind of like the others she does a really really good amount of damage onto you as well so that's something to keep in mind let's move on to the next character so D.A is one of those characters where I actually find that the counters are few and far between there's a lot of ways that she can out brawl some of the dive tanks there's a lot of ways that she can out dive some of the brawl tanks she can generally avoid a lot of her worst matchups however the reason she's not always meta is because she's not always Peak she's not always the best character for the best pick at the best time but overall she's a pretty diverse character so at least you got going for that um now I will say that obviously zarya May Regita are going to be tricky characters to play into um zarya is what people would classify as a hard counter for diva in low ranks but in mid- ranks once you start to utilize your mobility and avoid the tank trade and look to avoid the zarya by going around her taking different off angles um then you're going to start having fewer problems into zarya thank you um May is another one of those where she could be very difficult to deal with because her freeze slow is a big big deal for Diva and the DPS is obviously pretty oppressive as well but again it's kind of similar to zarya where if you don't have to worry as much about me by avoid her then she's a lot less of an issue the one example that may has over zarya though is that she has a little bit more Mobility with how she can reposition with wall but overall not a huge deal you can also eat her ultimate and you can also eat zarya's ultimate too brigita is actually a tricky one something that took a little bit of time for us to come up with because Bita does a really good job at denying your dive value and does so consistently uh she can consistently whip shot and sprocker Inspire off of you she can deny your Dives and really one armor pack alone is often enough to shut down a diva diving and killing somebody just from the 25 burst HP so it's not one of those match ups that you feel like I can't play the video game like you versus zarya um but she does a great job of denying your value so even though it feels like hey Brig doesn't feel too bad to play into you might not even realize how much of the value that she's denying on you so I think it's definitely a tough match up especially against a good Brig so Jun Queen is an interesting one I think one of the things I noticed with tanks is that characters without damage mitigation struggle with CC characters without Mobility struggled versus Range and characters that don't really have good Shields don't have good Mobility struggle with both and I think junker Queen even though she does have her speed she has a little bit of poke she does have a really hard time versus some characters I think May is obviously one where a May wall even if there isn't a lot of followup can cost you a lot of HP she can poke you down she can freeze you easily with blizzard and it's hard for you to consistently kill her with ice block I think KIRO is one of those characters that can avoid you entirely and then obviously ruin your entire ultimate with suzu which sucks uh Anna is one of those characters where really both of her abilities are a problem for you even if you can kill her she can do a lot a threat to you and unlike some of the dive King so you don't have as much ways of outplaying her abilities far uh and we're going to talk about a couple of the characters far Widow Ash Hanzo to an extent as well and even Zenyatta are all characters that if they position really really well they can almost completely outrange you to where you can't really interact with them at all and they all have ways of putting out a world of hurt on you and unlike some of the dive characters you can't really close the distance as consistently with them more of a map specific thing but on good maps for widows and Hanzo and zenyas Queen is a ridiculously hard character to play into those and then on the brawl side of things Lucio can deny a lot of your engages with Boop Reaper a character that's not as scared of you up front more of a skill match up but he can ruin your day and then I think in terms of bwl Tanks I think Reinhardt and zarya just generally do a more consistent job of burning you down a high charge zarya a Reinhardt that's managing his HP well and that has shatter by the way can really really really mess up a junker Queen junker Queen is one of those fun characters but can deal uh can struggle with dealing with some ofer counters Arisa now Arisa is an interesting one where her character is not super hard to play so she finds ways to get value even into or at least feels like she's getting value but she actually has a lot of counters a lot of things that she struggles into similar to junker Queen a lot of the more range characters like the Widow the Hanzo the the ash the far she can't really touch those characters um and she doesn't while she does have the javelin spin it's like an even worse version of shout for junker Queen so she has no real way of consistently closing the distance on DPS or squishies uh there's another thing as as well like where we talk about consistent brawl matchup where generally the sigma and zarya are going to do a much much better job of brawling with it the zarya in particular orisa can close the distance on Sigma if she plays it really really smart and she could do pretty well on the 1V one up close but zarya beats you at mid-range zarya B2 at long range and zarya B2 in close range if she's managing her bubbles properly um and because you don't have Mobility it's really hard for you to get around the Zar which is why I find Zar to be probably arisa's hardest matchup Zenyatta falls into the spam category but Discord also is a big big big problem because Discord can actually kill it's like one of the only things that can actually kill you through fortify so keep that one in mind as well and finally KIRO she can suu your ultimate and she just completely avoids you like the rest of the DPS it's not really a character that you can ever close a distance on and KIRO does a surprising amount of damage hitting head shots in you you're actually extremely easy to head shot so um KIRO can either avoid you when she wants to she can ruin your ultimate when she wants to or she can just shoot you in the head when she wants to and it's really actually hard to close the distance and secure kills with her ratra is an interesting one uh his shield is in such a long cool down that he has the typical struggles versus Range spam characters like Anna and Zenyatta and I guess you could also argue that Hanzo can be a bit of an issue but one thing that ratra does have is he does have the Nemesis form so if you don't burst him down quickly he does have that speed boost in the Nemesis form which allows him to deal with some spam characters easily um even things like Widowmaker are not as bad to deal with because of his omnic form range it's something that you can poke out a little bit but I do struggle versus the Discord I do struggle versus the Sleep Dart and N for obvious reasons being forced to block quickly because you've been discorded or spammed or nated is almost not just a death sentence but it means that you're not going to be able to get value out of your Nemesis form which is a big deal moving on Down the Line we're going to talk about some of the other characters that he can't really range obviously soj is a big one so's the difference between soj and the other spam characters is that you can't really close the distance on her because she'll just slide away same thing kind of applies to both the forign Ekko where they can put a lot of pressure on you and you can't really do anything to them Tracer just nuisance you can't do anything versus her she can do stuff to you life of can deny a lot of value again not a character that you can consistently reach and he can pull a lot of your threats away same thing with Mercy anything that's damage boosted as Mercy on an off angle can be a really really difficult to deal with it's not Mercy herself it's what she enables that's difficult and Bastion is an interesting one I actually think we got to see a little bit of Bastion in the OverWatch League Grand finals meta and people were trying to play ratra into Bastion uh I think Boston tried it once and it just it doesn't work because you pull out um and you start to push and the second the Bas goes tur form you immediately have to block and that's not a very good favorable cool down cycle for ratra he takes way too much damage unlike Sigma even unlike Reinhardt he can't do fire strikes he can't pin he doesn't do the damage with a punches fast enough it doesn't do enough DPS to actually threaten the basion the basion just sits there pops turret form and and the ratra generally dies so I think bastion's actually pretty difficult match up for ratra he want to Reinhardt here similar examples as before it's what he can't touch specifically the far I think Ekko can fall into this list as well but generally it would say an echo with a mercy pocket you don't always see Echo with a mercy pocket so it's not as bad for Reinhardt but yeah far is definitely something that you just can't touch same thing goes with KIRO and to an extent same thing I think also goes with lifeo with a character that not only can you not consistently touch but can also ruin a lot of your plays pedal is a huge thing to deal with him it means you can't get to him uh and then life grip means that you really can't solo shatter anybody which is a large one of the reasons why you're going to be using your shatter is just a solo shatter in terms of Brawl characters Bastion is a total nuisance to deal with not a hard counter it's not as bad as running like a Winston um but it's really really difficult to deal with you almost need to save shatter for him you almost need to save charge for him um and then obviously things like Road Hog and Arisa while they're not total hard counters they're very difficult to play with on the front line uh the slow is difficult Road Hog's damage is difficult hhog is difficult javelin javelin spin fortify all these things do a good job of making Reinhardt kind of miserable the only thing that Reinhardt has over them is the ability to pin away and use his Mobility but and some maps that can be actually kind of difficult to do that's why I classify them as soft counters not hard but they're still annoy Road Hog now Road Hog is an interesting one so the rework that really didn't change much anything at all he struggles with the same stuff that he did in the previous iterations on is a hard counter sleep D and nade are still very very difficult to deal with Now The Vape change did help with that a little bit so that you don't have to worry about oh no my vape's going to get canceled you'll have it almost immediately afterwards but he still struggles immensely with this character um he's just a big fat guy very easy to shoot very easy to sleep very easy to nade and Anna will remain a hard counter to Road Hog Zenyatta I would say is a Discord uh something that's very very easy to land on a road hog very easy to hit shots on a road hog and a lot of times the way he's positioning if he's positioning smartly is just outside of your range um so it makes it difficult for you to consistently range him d.va does a good job melting you d.va can also Matrix your shots uh so there's not a lot whole lot of new information there Hanzo and sojen kind of fall into the same category where again like Zenyatta a lot of range pressure in you and again not targets that you consistently kill um now the reason that you don't see Ash on here although we considered it is because I think Ro hog does a pretty good job of consistently burning Bob um so that's something that we definitely took into account there's some of the old matchups that definitely factor into here but Ash does fairly well with Road Hog as well the only problem though is that Ash ends up having to use a lot of ammo on road hog which can be kind of expensive midf fight but Hanzo and soen don't care so just builds a rail Hanzo just builds ult instantly uh and forces your resources and again characters that play usually a little bit outside of your effective range Sigma and orisa are kind of in similar categories where they do a really good job spamming you like the other characters but not really being characters that you can consistently kill Javelin Sigma Shield Sigma Rock Sigma shift flux Javelin even even orisa's ultimate can be difficult to deal with as a road hog um and they generally just do a good job of marking now there are ways of outplaying these tanks um you can definitely outplay them but it is a little bit tricky so Sigma is an interesting one he's actually very popular in the meta right now because a lot of the more popular quote unquote counters to him aren't as strong a lot of characters like I would even say Tracer could arguably fit in here as well but a lot of characters like KIRO like Sombra like Ekko and to an extent I guess Trac you're could few throw in here as well can just avoid him and go around him that's sigma's biggest weakness anything that's within reach within spam he does a pretty good job of beating raw hard brawl comps Ryan may he can struggle a little bit into but he does okay into those as well um I would say that's why we have ratra and Ryan in here in terms of like smashing heads into each sh each other the ratra and Ryan are going to do slightly better um but then he's also vulnerable to characters that go around him um so Sombra kuo Eko characters that he can't really poke out characters he can't really control is definitely a bit of a problem with seg those characters aren't very strong right now but if they do come back in the MAA do expect Sigman to fall out a little bit so Winston's obviously a tough one Winston's been one of those High skill characters that struggles with a lot of counters I think we talk about again about Winston counters it's not just about what can poke him out at range it's also characters that even if he closes the distance on just beat him in the face I think bastion's a really difficult one uh because he can consistently save his CHT form for when you engage completely melts your bubble completely melts your HP um and not even something that you can consistently kill and even when you Primal Rage his Primal uh is something that's you're easily able to melt uh and then even just from staging like winson's uh is okay at out ranging Bashan kind of sort of but basan can consistently use his weapon and poke out your HP even when not in his turret form so there's just nothing good about Bastion that feels I just feels terrible all the time and D.A is definitely an interesting one d.va can consistently do a lot of damage to you up close and d.va can consistently Mark you so unlike Bastion diva is very mobile and no matter what way that you try to avoid her she can set up and deny that engaged entirely so D.A is one of those counters where it's not just that she's difficult to deal with but she can also deny your counterplay which is trying to avoid her she it's really hard to avoid a D.A in terms of soft counters characters that can consistently poke out Winston while also being difficult to uh to dive Eko uh Zenyatta I think torbjorn Cassidy are all characters that can poke you out at range and then also be very difficult to actually kill I think zenat definitely falls into that category with Discord can melt Primal but also with the 225 hp and the kick he can be a difficult character to kill even when you do land directly on him brigita obviously denies your staging with whip shot uh Junger Queen could be something that if you acally mess up with her she can kill you with her knife she's able to pull you back out and then obviously obliterates you Point Blank Range you're thinking about why are you at Point Blank Range and a junker Queen well the difference is that with other tanks that if you mess up and get Point Blank Range on you can get out juner Queen if she plays her cards right she can actually deny your getting out um Road Hog is just ridiculous obviously again a tank that you're not really going to be spending a lot of time diving anyway because you don't really dive tanks but Road Hog's hook can really displace you in those short to medium ranges even when you're trying to avoid him and then hhog totally obliterates you um and then I think even moving on to something like Reaper um obviously Reaper is pretty easy to avoid uh but it is something that does deny certain spaces from how you engage uh I think Reaper is probably the easiest of these counters actually to play around especially in medium to high ranks but it is a character that is difficult and it can be character that can mess up you mess you up if you mess up let's put that way we'll talk about zarya so zarya is an interesting one actually find that she has a lot of counters things that can out brawl her things that can avoid her things that can out spam her um her bubbles do give her some viability but I actually think Zar is one of those characters that's pretty bad if the meta isn't good for her if she's not feeling particularly strong I do think life fever is a pretty tough counter to deal with his ability to Pedal your grab his ability to LIF grip your grab his ability to heal up the targets that you're shooting is pretty consistently oppressive um just completely shutting Dr grab down consistently and not being a squishy that you can consistently kill because he plays too far away puts him ENT to at least a hard counter for me um yeah definitely a hard counter for me and in terms of soft counter characters that can out brawl aari with some support I think definitely Bastion Reinhardt can all ruin AAR I think mayw can be tough to deal with ratra I think does a better job on the brawl as well U but I think even harder than that are dive characters that you completely avoid your value for example it might be something that you can peel off a Winston or peel off a Sombra but a recking ball is hard to peel off because he comes in and comes out so fast that you can use one bubble now he rolls away and he comes right back again immediately afterwards so a dive character like that and honestly KIRO as well can be really really really difficult again a character that just totally avoids your impact totally avoids um and and just goes around you entirely and if it use a bubble on a ball engage or KIRO engage it can feel pretty bad because again they could just immediately come right back in again and then even worse than that are the characters that you can't even touch characters that are spamer ass um Ash Hanzo uh eii Widowmaker and Echo really all the flyers I think far actually belongs in this category as well I'm not sure why I forgot her but far belongs in this category as well any character that you can't touch just feels absolutely terrible uh and that's that's the big thing with Zar it's like she's not the best Brawl character but she's also not really good at spamming either so anything that completely outs spams her sojourn uh damage boosted Mercy whatever um can feel pretty pretty bad to play so I actually think Winston falls into the dive category as well where although his engages are not quite as unpredictable as a ball for example the ability to completely avoid you and then not shoot your bubbles to feed you charge when you do peel off the bubbles get actually pretty bad uh so I think that's one of the things that makes Winston difficult to deal with I wouldn't say it's a hard counter by any means but it can be difficult to play with so Ash is an interesting one I think that she struggles versus some of the dive characters doomfist KIRO traser Sombra Genji wrecking ball all can do a pretty good job of disrupting her and Diving her and consistently killing her or at least threatening the kill I think Winston can be a little bit trickier Winston can definitely kill her as well but coach gun can kind of ruin his day and it's also easier to poke Alo Winson in staging than it is some of these other characters uh I think coach's a little bit worse versus these other characters D.A can dive you too D.A can also deny your M uh your your shots she can deny your dynamite and she can do all of these things while also not really risking her life I think diva in some situations may even be a hard counter so read into that as you will I think the interesting thing about Ash as well is that she tends to struggle versus very very heavy spam characters like Hanzo sigmas widows um she's a good spam character but she can lose to Hanzo very easily in a 1 V one she's a good sniper but she can lose to Widow very easily in a 1 V one so more of a map situational thing and I think Sigma does a really good job of shutting her value down as well Cassie is an interesting one I I think the the fallof change really hurt him a lot so where he's not allowed to get a lot of damage done Sigma Diva do a great job shutting down his value sojan is better range character than he is uh sojan with rail can be terrifying to deal with Hanzo Widow Ash all consistently outrange you um and they're not the characters that you can consistently threaten uh I think it's pretty straightforward with Cassidy characters that are out able to out spam him generally beat him in the match up Eko is an interesting one a hybrid between a flyer and a Spam character she can definitely get spotted out and ruined by a Sombra a serjan with rail can really really ruin an Ekko as well and actually Cassy does quite well versus Ekko because as opposed to far off Ekko tends to play a little bit closer which is exactly in a Cassie's effective range and that 225 hp plus that inade can definitely ruin your life Ash can poke you out pretty easily I think maybe not as consistently as Cy but consistently enough and can also threaten kills a lot faster D.A can eat stickies D.A can Matrix your shot D.A can threaten you and actually elari falls into that cast category where she can actually pretty consistently ruin your day by shooting you but she's also almost impossible to kill at the same time so I think ilari is one of the best Echo counters in the game Genji is a funny one so Genji you guys might have a lot of issues with TBS might have issues with the symmetras but there's ways of counter playing all of those almost consistently they're very annoying but they're not exactly counters now there's a few exceptions to that rule on this list I think Moira catalogs as a soft counter because it's one of those matchups that really doesn't fa the Genji almost ever so your best bet is just to avoid her and just deny her value and only take the engagement when you see an opportunity to she's not something that's going to consistently deny your value entirely but she's going to make your life kind of annoying and she's also a support character that's just something that you can't consistently kill so you prefer them to be on a support character that you'd prefer to be able to kill uh and I think that that's something that can be very difficult to play around far not a character that you can touch same thing kind of goes with Ekko two characters that can shoot you but you can't really shoot them and then while zarya again we talk about the tank Line This usually you should be avoiding the tank line is Genji but as opposed to some of the other tanks that you can occasionally Farm occasionally put some pressure on Zara is never really a Target that you can consistently farm and she can also deny your engages by bubbling off backline so not a hard counter by any means but definitely can be pretty annoying to play around to Genji is surprisingly not hard counterable but there are a lot of things and we had a list of what was annoying for Genji the list was a mile long so you might find yourself being annoyed a lot if not consistently hard countered a lot Hanzo not the strongest DPS but just certainly one of the hardest to hard counter far no hit scan could be very difficult to deal with and he's very squishy so he's very easy to dive I think Genji's has the advantage in the 1 V one which is lower appropriate and then obviously the two tanks that shut down his spam but he's a relatively flexible DPS at least in terms of the hard counter soft counter value junkrat obvious limitations of junkrat very limited range very limited uh Mobility which means that characters like far obviously difficult to deal with but the same thing also applies to any of the spam characters as such as these and I actually think Baptista fairly well versus him doesn't get to close enough to die and lamp can be one of really the most consistent rip Tire counter in the game uh because it lasts long enough for you to be able to break it it's not a consistent immediate invulnerability like a a sound barrier or suzu morality field lasts long enough to be consistent counter to junkrat as well as his ability to just freaking shoot the rip Tire um Diva Sigma can eat the spam pretty easily and spam you out consistently uh it's characters that you actually have to respect their ability to actually kill you and not just deny your value so yeah May is an interesting one actually feel her relatively Dynamic uh some of you guys might be struggling versus a lot of the matchups but if you learn how to adjust your play style around the mid- ranks she starts to shine she's not always the best pick but there's a lot of things that you could do with her character you could take angles take flanks take 1 V ones she can deny any tank value so there's a lot of match ups that she feels maybe not the best in but she feels good enough in far is a character that she has a hard time consistently shooting and shutting down value on and then the same thing also applies to KIRO with the added bonus that K can also shut down your ultimate which really really sucks far is one of the most consistently countered heroes in the game but she's also interesting in the fact that sometimes she counters her counters let me explain you look at a character like Widowmaker you look at a character like Soldier you look at a character like Cy and you get the idea here all these hit scan characters in theory counter far but they're also sometimes the easiest kills if far can close the distance or even better get on top of those characters so if you're playing on a bad MAP as far it's going to be almost impossible for you to play on hit scan if you're playing on a good map with far it's going to be almost impossible for the hit scan to play around you so I am going to be putting hit scan into this category here but keep in mind that this is a two-way street it can these can also be your easiest kills as well Cassy is generally far as best counter on shorter range sideline Maps Ash is great on mid-range soj is great when she has rail solders great when there's a lot of flanks available because you can be very hard to consistently track Widowmaker is obviously phenomenal in the more longrange sideline Maps Som is actually pretty interesting because she can kill you if you get caught without a pocket she can also sometimes kill your mercy but more of than not she can actually kill the person that you're leaving behind you see if far has a mercy pocket there's a DPS in the support that is not getting healing so characters like wrecking ball Tracer and somra do a really good job killing the isolated DPS and killing support even if they don't directly kill you ekko's kind of somewhere in between she's the non she's the far counter that's not exactly a far counter um the only thing that prevents Ekko from being a hard counter is the fact that she doesn't quite have the consistent verticality to consistently chase you and she could be kind of caught out in the open looking for you so an echo with a mercy definitely a hard counter Echo without a mercy not so much but she does pretty pretty good versus you in the 1 V one now you guys probably can notice why uh batist obviously hit scan support does fairly well although he is killable D.A does pretty good at denying far value because Matrix does a lot and far can also die to Diva if she doesn't have a pocket and the last one is the hard count here which is the elari so elari has the best of both worlds she has the capability of shooting out of the sky she doesn't have to scope her range is pretty decent and she also has self as well the ability to consistently rotate so uh this has maybe changed a little bit since the projectile size nerve but ilari is a huge huge huge deal when it comes to dealing with Farah and it's one of the big reasons when aimed relatively well and positioned relatively well that far is not as popular in mid and high ranks soin very dynamic character a lot of Mobility a lot of range really only deals uh poorly with characters that completely outrange her and she actually does fairly well in these matchups when she has real so these are why these are not hard counters you can you can absolutely out snipe a Widowmaker when you have rail but you have to respect her when you don't same thing goes with Hanzo Soldier is one of the characters that has a little bit of Dynamics um which gives him some flexibility but it doesn't mean that he struggles versus characters like Hanzo that do better up close when he has storm arrow and does better at far when he doesn't so Hanzo is just going to beat you up close going to beat you far away if he has those CDs Ash is going to outrange you consistently but you can beat her if you outflank her um same thing is going to go with sojourn and Widowmaker although soj with rail can be really difficult to deal with if he doesn't have ra do pretty well versus sir and Widowmaker is something that you can get up and close to and win but if you can't get up close to a Widowmaker can be very hard to find Value versus now the other opposite extrem are the characters that are better flankers than you tracers sombras and balls characters that if you do try to take a lot of flanks and you get caught by one of these characters they can quite easily kill you so again there's ways of counter playing soldier you can play more sniper oriented more flanker oriented depending on the enemy composition but these characters are going to make your lives difficult Sombra uh Sombra actually is pretty dynamic in OverWatch 2o the most recent rework there's not a lot of characters that can make her life difficult Tracer KIRO are hard to win they can shut down a lot of your ultimate value they can also kill you rather quickly and they can even spy check you pull you out of stealth definitely that's the case with D.A definitely uh difficult to kill uh consistent targets when D.A is around she's very good at spy checking you the only reason I would put D.A not in hard counter is that she is a tank that you can actually Farm on the front line so that's something that you can absolutely do manual hacks do a really good job on D.A if she doesn't cancel them so that's something that you can counterplay but D.A is pretty difficult to play into nonetheless I think the only hard counter for Som is torbjorn he's very hard to consistently kill with overload his turd is absolutely obnoxious um and he really outranges you in medium short long there's just no range that you can do better versus him now he's a very easy kill if he doesn't have overload or his turret is mispositioned so keep that one in mind so's again one of those more dynamic characters where she has decent range she has the mobility of her turret which opens up some options I think that she struggles versus the characters that fly over her or really truly are inaccessible far is one of those characters that she really can never reach Hanzo is a character that she can reach but who can cons quickly and consistently one-hot her up and close I think the ability that the fact that Hanzo doesn't have to scope in and still has storm Arrow can make that one1 feel very scary for uh for for symmetra and then there's characters that can virus her and ruin her day such as Sombra um obviously that's more of a skill match up you can win the 1 V one as as symmetra but the fact that EMP also shuts down your ultimate really I think puts us in the soft counter category Doom visit wrecking ball can consistently find you and kill you um they could chase you down very quickly with teleporter so teleporter does a good job at denying Winston value but doesn't do as good of a job of denying doomfist and Wrecking Ball value not to mention they can Boop you and knock you out of your teleporter so you can't actually teleport back to safety so these are good characters versus symmetra Tor now this one's funny because Tor is uh one of the the the characters that people all pull always pull out to counter other characters but he is very easy to counter now you're probably wondering well then how is this character even played if he's so easy to counter the problem is and this should be a little bit of a commentary in OverWatch to balance is that easy characters have a lot of counters but because they're easy it's often harder for the counter to get value than it is for the torbjorn in other words if I'm playing torbor into to say uh let's say Cassidy right the Cassidy in theory has the advantage the Cassidy has the advantage have a much fatter hit box he could can do more consistent damage than me I'm relying on my overload to kill him um as a torn but I can also just pray and close my eyes and hold on the button and maybe maybe I'll get value right or maybe I just avoid him and shoot the enemy tank and place my turret in a really difficult spot so I think toron has a lot of counters but because he's relatively easy to play his ways of getting value uh if your if your counter Parts don't play well so Hanzo not a character that you can really du can bust your turret down can bust you same thing with that go same thing with Zenyatta same thing with far it's really going to be a lot of the spamer characters are characters that could bust you and bust your turret down you have one of the biggest hit boxes in the game um there's really not a whole lot in here that can't break your turret consistently and bust you down um I don't really think there's a lot of unique Specialties here some tanks that can shut down your value nemesis form can do a great job use me omn form of breaking your turret and then breaking you um same thing goes with Arisa Diva Can Matrix your ultimate and then also kill you um even the new micro missiles change makes it a little bit easier to break turret may can very very easily kill you with icicles um KIRO can very very easily kill you and kill your turret so a lot of these characters are just very good at breaking turret consistently and then winning the 1 V one in medium ranges up close torb's a little bit more scary but yeah Tracer I think is one of the high skill characters in the games so there's a lot of things that are going to feel like hard counters that aren't but maybe hard counters in lower ranks so we'll go down that list um we're going to talk about EDR who has the ability to pylon who has the ability to two shot you body shot as of 2023 uh and so that's a huge huge huge deal uh obviously something in lower ranks that may not be as prevalent but definitely in higher ranks and in even medium ranks ilar does a really good job of dealing with Tracer value you essentially have to go in use your full clip and then recall to get pylon and then you still don't have an advantage in the the One V one because she can two tap you just with a body shot um KERO can very easily kill Tracer deny her value get away same thing with Baptist very easy to put pressure on a tracer regenerative burst lamper really good versus him turret makes tracer's life miserable and you can almost one shot head shot her uh whip shot Inspire bash all these things make tracer's life Miser there's a lot of characters that can peel off a tracer even if they can't consistently kill her for to Lucio a little bit of Chip damage on a tracer is really really annoying there's a lot of value that could be had not through necessarily killing the Tracer over and over again Diva Brig Lucio can't consistently do that even the bass Bap can't consistently kill Tracer but they do just enough chip damage or just enough peel value to really deny the value and the fact that Tracer is harder to play makes it even worse so Widowmaker so Widowmaker I think is a character that's very easy to counter with Sombra and Wrecking Ball characters that can easily quickly stage on her and kill her very quickly um but map dependent right map dependent and these characters do have counter plays ways of playing around them uh and then if we go down the list there's a couple of characters that can do similar things but can't do it quite as consistent ently for example KIRO Tracer Doom F and Winston all can head shot or dive Widowmaker but don't have the quite same level of uh sustain and flanking uh as the Sombra on wrecking ball so they're not quite as consistently at doing it and then Hanzo is kind of a weird one where Hanzo is not exactly it's I would definitely not call him a hard counter it's more of a skill match up depends on the map depends on the situation but let's put it this way whenever they pick Hanzo you're definitely paying attention to that as Widowmaker finally we'll finish with some support So Anna starts with Diva I think the Sleep Dart and N being able to beat eaten can be really really tricky can Matrix a lot of your damage Matrix a lot of your healing and can in theory also dive you and kill you so that can be pretty rough I think Anna also struggles with Som and Tracer all these are characters that you can definitely kill they are definitely characters that have the advantage over you uh they have more ways of dealing with your CDs than some of the other dive characters um and they also can kill you if you make the mistake so an equally skilled Tracer versus an equally skilled Anna Tracer is going to win that 1 V one most of the time and the same thing goes with Sombra as well as the fact that if they start to lose the 1V one these guys also have the capability of disengaging and re-engaging when they have the advantage Baptista is a tricky one I actually think Baptista is really really hard to counter he's not always the best pick which is why that he's not the most powerful character in the history of the Universe um but he's hard to counter pick I think doomfist can do a pretty good job versus him because you can consistently punch him out of his CDs consistently re-engage disengage um and because there's no CC from Baptist uh and even the ultimate can be difficult to outplay sometimes I think Doom is a pretty good match up versus Baptist I think wrecking ball does pretty good job versus Baptist as well um so keep that one in mind too so I'm not sure why it's all the way over here that's a mistake on my end um but Brig Brig does uh has a hard time versus spam characters that she can't reach or reliably 1 V one obviously far Echo characters that you can't really reach I think Ash as well character that you can't really reach now Widowmaker I guess could fall into this category but it's easier to avoid Widowmaker spam whereas Ash can be a little bit more aggressive Bob Dynamite can definitely make Brigg's uh life really really difficult I think Hanzo could maybe fall into that category too but not quite as much but those characters just just out brawl her Ryan uh junkrat Bastion Ram you characters you don't really want to get close to um and so the shield Maiden character generally wants to beat on the the week um and if there's a character like a Ryan Ram or a Bastion or even a junkrat you often have to be really really careful uh when where you're getting your value elari is hard to counter elar is a situational counter where she can definitely be something that a Widowmaker um can definitely make you think twice about peing a sight line um but it's not something that is hard counter you can kill a Widowmaker if the the stars align Diva can deny a lot of your value denies your ultimate and can spam you out or or can dive you rather um I think Sigma as well can can deny your ultimate but most importantly can also just Spam you out Shield off your value uh and then really wrecking ball is a character that can now easy pretty easily break your pylon and dive you over and over again and even if he can't consistently kill you uh you just don't do any significant damage to him because you don't have any CC you don't have any burst damage so it's actually really quite hard uh to consistently kill Wrecking Ball asari and it's pretty easy for him to consistently harass and deny your value here we go no counters not always the best pick but I don't think there are many characters that feel really truly bad I think initially here I had Diva as being somebody that could eat your healing and eat your damage and far is a character that you can't really interact with but also far implies usually that there's a support in DPS that's isolated which allows a keru to take an angle and harass them almost like a tracer um so I don't find keru to be easy to counter at all life Hoover lifeover very very frustrating character to play into and I'm thankfully character that is also pretty pretty easy to counter far is a character that he can't really do much versus lifegrip is pretty hard uh to use versus a barrage far can kill people so quickly even just from a damage boosted direct rocket it's really hard to react to in time and she can also really harass you and you don't really have the hit scan projectile damage or even the mobility to consistently avoid it pedal is not going to do it um characters that can snipe lifee as well uh and that are difficult to get life grip value as well as Hanzo far Widowmaker excuse me and ash fall into that category where they quick kills um and they can shoot you out quite easily and you don't really have the capability of dealing with them now I will say sometimes life fever can poke these characters out keep in mind that you don't really have any fallof on your thorns and your spread is really tight for the first couple of thorns so sometimes if you play extreme ranges where fall off is a problem you can deal with these characters okay but it's a knee situation Echo Falls in a Farah category where it can be difficult to deal with as a lifeover um but not quite as bad as Farah and elari is a character that can again just poke you out not really character that you can really interact with um life grip can be definitely useful versus her ultimate but that's about the only match up part of that match up that's really consistently favorable to you Lucio Lucio relatively good character but also very very hard to play and something that a lot of people can struggle to play with um he's not as easy to get value out of so that's the biggest problem with Lucio he's actually not all that easy to counter Cass can consistently shoot him hinder really messes him up um even high noon can catch a Lucio that's a little bit mispositioned and then Sombra is pretty good at killing Lucio or at least threatening him obviously EMP doesn't cancel sound barrier anymore it only takes a chunk of the HP down but somra is one of the uh better DPS versus a Lucio character Lucio is one of those characters that's hard to counter um but is something that can be very difficult to get value out of so counters isn't everything in OverWatch Mercy dies very quickly to Sombra uh has more counterplay options versus Divas tracers and wrecking balls but those can all be very very very annoying to deal with nonetheless GA is not consistent at getting away from those characters and they have ways of also preventing your support passive from kicking in um Tom is really the only one that should be consistently immediately killing you um but yeah Moira Moira is an interesting one where actually DPS Moira or the viability of DPS Moira is something that kind of factored into this decision because DPS moer at least at times is definitely a really important play style in certain situations and a lot of these characters do a really good job at denying that value hog is terrifying DPS you don't do anything to him can very quickly consistently kill you um can also even hook your ultimate uh torbjorn it just totally ignores you turret's annoying to deal with you can't break turret can poke you out his overload dominates you even without overload he's quite easy has quite an easy job killing you um Cassidy Hanzo all have a very job have a pretty easy job killing you Hanzo would be slightly different without storm bow but storm Arrow really ruins you um Wrecking Ball totally ignores you and can harass and force your CDs quite easily he can't consistently kill you but he can force your fade and you can never kill him and the same thing goes with Bastion where Bastion basically just struggles you off so anything that you're not a viable threat to but is a viable threat to you uh is a big problem with Moira Zana now I actually had a hard time putting hard counter on Sombra um I think you could probably argue that Sombra is somewhere in between soft and hard counter I just think that you do have to significantly change how you position versus the Sombra and you do have to be on Red Alert so even if you can counterplay the Sombra you obviously can it does make your life difficult and I think that falls into a hard counter category um Tracer as well can do a pretty good job assassinating you all again that 225 hp helps although the Discord Nerf change definitely hurt because if you Discord a tracer too quickly and she ducks behind a corner it puts you at a pretty big disadvantage the One V one because you don't have your wall hacks anymore now some of you might be surprised why far's in here um I think far is okay versus zenyata um just because that he's such a slow character that if you're able to get over him um that he's basically a hit scan speed character but without the consistency of hit scan to threaten you so maybe not exactly a soft counter but I will say zenyata is one of the weaker supports when playing into Pharmacy that about wraps this up uh the key thing here is that while we talked a lot about counters I actually hope that the opposite happens I hope this encourages you to swap less I think that that you can kind of get an idea that there are a lot of soft counters there a lot of hard counters here and there um but that there's a lot of room for counterplay and if you're sticking with a rule of 3.5 you might find yourself to be swapping a little bit less now I will say it's okay to swap when you know that you're just slamming your head into a wall when you're tilted you're frustrated you don't understand the matchup or you feel like there's way too many counters that are ruining the fun um but there's a lot of room of counterplay with all of the soft counters and even with the hard counters as well um obviously the return on investment of swapping maybe a little bit too high uh but I do think in the long run that people that learn how to counterplay are generally better than people that learn how to counter pick especially in ranked um please let me know if I miss any uh was obviously a pretty big undertaking I definitely may have missed some so just I'll heart the comments and the YouTube comments that I think point out good stuff so if you think that oh this was actually a counter that's actually a counter I will give your comments a read and I'll try to Heart them to let you guys know that oh yeah good point keep an eye on that one so if you're watching this video check out the comments you might get a couple of new things that I missed but anyway that's all I got [Music] [Music]

Channel: Spilo

Views: 62,225

Keywords: twitch, blizzard, educational, coach, coaching, spilo, overwatch, ow, competitive, advanced, stream, pro, overwatch 2, guide, ow2, meta, climb, rank, tip, trick, worst, best, grandmaster, positioning, beginner, ow2 guide, ow2 coaching, overwatch tips, overwatch tricks, ow2 tips, overwatch 2 guide, overwatch guide, new, ow2 developers, support balance, blizzard devs, ow2 problems, ow2 devs, react, tank balance, dps balance, rework, update, support, balance, dev, devs, counterpick, tank, 5v5, dps, damage, counter, swap

Id: IG2b52Vofew

Length: 46min 44sec (2804 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023