I’ve been practicing Zarya but haven’t found a good reason to draft her over other heroes.
To combo some abilities like graviton surge + planet cracker, or to enable a diver with shields (though she is nowhere as effective at that as pre-rework Tassadar was).
Or if you’re just good at playing her in general. Better to pick someone you’re really good at than a lv3 hero which is “meta” but you have no experience on.
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I like her on Braxxis for a beefy sustain combo. She doesn’t need mana so you can fight endlessly for the beacon. Add a healer that also doesn’t use mana (Auriel/Morales) and you can stay on the beacon/lane forever. Try to keep up the pressure on the enemy team so they will never get a break and eventually go oom.
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In teamfight heavy maps. She lacks macro and waveclear, and her main strenght is giving sustain and burst protection for fights. She is also really really good with hypercarries. Oh, and Garrosh + Zarya combo is insane (the shield mov speed at 4).
Her level 20 that silences people is a game winner if you can get 2+ people in it.
You generally want Zarya in a match with ‘easy’ enemy damage to manipulate (either to take or to avoid). Mages tend to be a good example of that as a lot of their abilities have clear areas they hit, and there are cooldowns before the next ability can hit again; auto attacks are less so as they can usually stop attack, or just change targets, and can deny zarya easy access to energy sources.
However, for the most part, I’d say that zarya can almost always be a good pick, but it’s a matter of how she’s built that defines what she does.
The usual go to I see is grenade build – which I think is a trap build – that leads players to poorly time shields, standing too far back to make use of most of her kit, and end up energy starved and lacking contributions.
So there’s 3 things you can shoot for for picking up Zarya
- Enabling a hero to give them more mobility.
The notable example there is racecar Garrosh as her lvl 4 talent adds a ton of movespeed that can make heroes that specialize in isolating a hero get extra buffs they generally lack in their own kit. Her heroics help compliment the isolation or wombo, so even without energy, she has some utility she can bring, but the hopeful idea is that having an enabled ally makes an easy draw for energy when the enemy team try to stop the zoom zoom boom boom.
- Having an ally to reasonably swap ‘tanking’ at your side.
Biggest issue for a zarya is either mistimed shields (don’t soak any damage) or complete focus (too much damage on one target) so, ideally, she and at least one other hero need to be able to rotate in who is taking the damage while shielded.
If someone is confident on energy control and sources, then they can afford to take her talents that add more damage. If she’s not confident in energy sources, then she should
- Build around resource control
Of what experience I’ve seen with Zarya, her resource-control talents tend to be under picked for how players try to use her. Without energy, she’s not a threat, if she can’t rotate threat in, and out, then she can’t sustain the energy to boost the damage she’d need and keep a cycle of damage mitigation + damage boost going.
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Together We Are Strong for ‘Auriel’ mode where shields on allies are just a means to get energy from them attack (ie, safe poking ala ming chromie, or stuff like protect hammer strats)
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Maximum charge for self-reliance on keeping energy; having a non-shield way of sustaining her energy meter goes a long way to having her be a good pick.
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Feel the heat; more damage, more waveclear, even bumps up some of her energy-starved contributions, but Ideally, if you’re confident in a solid energy source, her boosted AA is where her damage is going to rack up.
Ally utility picks work for select allies that don’t need to her have energy to work, Resource Control picks for when you lack confidence in ally assists (or end up having to ‘solo’ a lane) and anything else once you have more experience feeling out how you control her resource and damage sources.
Semi-healing via shields can be a great tool regardless of ‘when’, so Zarya being a good pick is based on the player, and what talents they pick, rather than not.
If you see her in aram, i’d saw she’s almost always an ‘must have’ as the constant skirmishing means lots of energy control, and more damage mitigation is usually better than not.
In QM, roles can be all over the place, and zarya can seem at her worst if she’s forced to ‘solo’ tank and can’t get anyone in a position to make use of her ally shield.
In draft, she could arguably almost always work, but players need to be experienced figuring out how to juggle her as a solo-lane as she’ll likely slot for a bruiser and be expected to play in that same way rather than being a second support.
Garrosh zarya , diablo zarya, xul zarya, imperius zarya.
What is “macro”? I’ve seen this a few times but felt like now asking what it meant.
Macro is related to waveclear, splitpushing power, double soaking, camps and all that. It usually means do everything on the map except teamfighting.
Zarya does have great siege power though. Because of her trait, shields and auto attack, she can easily take down structures with her team.
A macro play is a play that benefits the game in the long-run.
An example being: Preparing a siege camp to be taken, but waiting until the enemy team will be occupied by the objective to take it.
A micro play is something more like landing a hard combo skill shot to kill an opponent.
She is one of the ultimate enablers. Her shields talent to the nines, she can lean into self reliant damage or supportive builds. But she always flourishes when she’s paving engages.
Against mages and destroying a foes combo.
She’s good in many matchups. Just don’t ask her to solo lane, and be weary of picking her against teams with displacement or shield breakers.
She’s good for combos and waveclear. The best map for her is Braxis Holdout.