Any basic tips for Rein?

General Discussion
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To keep it simple: I want to play rein better so that I can confidently shield, so some basic tips would be nice. Thanks :slight_smile:

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  • Short charges - only charge enemies that are nearby. Don’t over extend.

  • Try not to let your shield break.

  • Hop to cover when your shield is breaking - this helps if you are not in VC. Repeating this makes it obvious to your team that your shield is breaking. (optimally use call outs in VC, “Shield weak, recharging”)

  • Use cover, and look for your next cover along your route. You’ll need this to keep your shield charged.

  • Call out your Firestrikes - don’t let your team get wrecked when you drop your shield - try to let them know.

  • Use your firestrike as much as possible without jeopardizing your team.

  • Use your health - don’t be afraid to get in there and swing your hammer when not using your shield.

  • Shatter goes down geometry, but not UP geometry. This means shatter off the cart, or from steps and it will travel down.

If you want a much longer read, there is a great Rein post on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/6sz7gb/assorted_rein_tips/

Edit: While it has been a few seasons, I used to main Rein way back when he had 2k shields.

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  • Use Charge for mobility, UNLESS you can guarantee a kill. Or got cornered, at least you would take someone with you XD

  • Use Shatter carefully. You are exposed during and after the casting animation. Also people have much better reaction times than they were in the past.

  • Always jump after Charging, it would send you a bit further.

  • When your shield is at the 500 HP mark, tell your team to take cover and drop it. It is much better to let the shield regenerate than letting it break and THEN wait for it to regen.

  • Oh yeah, you know this guy?
    Leeroy Jenkins HD 1080p - YouTube
    Yeah, DON’T BE HIM.

2 Likes
4

Here’s something no one has said: Don’t stand in choke like a mindless zombie. Hold your shield up and PUSH

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PRESS W and make callouts and you’ll get into masters.
Pro tip: telling the people you’re supposed to be working alongside that they’re bad doesn’t make them want to carry you.

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Map and team composition matters greatly.

Reinhardt cannot swing and shield at the same time. If you have a genji, widowmaker, mercy, ana, and hammond on your team Reinhardt is not really shielding anyone and getting damage output behind him. He’s pretty ignorable in several instances as people might just go shoot the hammond, genji trying to flank as reinhardt can be too slow or gets pressured by a single character like Mei.

Playing Reinhardt into Gibraltar can work, but only if the enemy team is really running a ground based team your value is minimal.

Generally, rein works well with a brawly team and low inherent mobility like brig, lucio, bap, moira, zarya, reaper, mei, mccree, etc. If your team is running this you might double up on that running reinhardt. Likewise, he cannot do well on super wide open maps against widely mobile or long range teams.

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.you read that wrong

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I had a > but forum formatting is awful

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and tanks can easily carry. They’re the most important role and since role lock they’re 100% the most important role. Without tanks your defense or attack is dead.

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Yeah that was my whole point. Tanks carry the f outta games

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When you are charging from spawn room back to fight, holding W, jumping and holding down your shield button right before the charge ends until right after your charge ends will give you an extra bit of distance boost, may be useful for closing distance.

Eichenwalde Defender room A is one good way to use it.

1 Like
13

Caveat before I begin. There are exceptions to EVERY rule.

Basic positioning - Rein thrives at chokes and corners for 3 main reasons.

1 - You want cover to do a decent amount of the job of protection. If the cover is doing roughly half of the job of protection, your smartly managed barrier can do the other half. A Rein that can at any time easily side step behind cover is a much more effective Rein than one that can’t.

2 - Rein does NOT like being flanked by a certain subset of the DPS roster. Playing chokes and corners limits his exposure to these threats by a LOT.

3 - The hammer loves enemies that have to come around a corner or through a choke, it is comparably bad or even useless in open areas.

Don’t ride the cart between teamfights. Someone else can do that while you lead your team to move up or back to the next strategically viable choke / corner.

Barrier management
It’s a resource that needs to be carefully managed. If your barrier ever drops to zero you should consider that a failure on your part. A very newbie Rein playstyle is to hold the barrier up and try to block ALL incoming damage until the barrier breaks. A smart Rein thinks about what kinds of damage are incoming and is always thinking about what the most dangerous things are out there that the barrier could protect his team from.

The least important damage to block is spam damage that your team can easily dodge or outheal. Remember that healing builds Ult charge for your team, so it’s perfectly fine and even beneficial to let a certain amount of damage leak through.

The most important damage to block is burst damage that your team cannot easily dodge or outheal (example Widow headshots), dangerous cooldown abilities (example Sleepdart, Flashbang), and of course, Ults.

Charge Tips
Charge is Reinhardt’s best friend when used right and his worst enemy when used badly. The #1 thing to get in your head as an aspiring Reinhardt main is that Charge is a positioning tool not a damage tool. Never charge to a position you don’t want to be in. Once you have that FIRMLY in mind, you CAN start to get creative with this (really) wonderful ability. It has got a lot of great uses, but my recommendation to a Rein just starting out is to just really cement that #1 rule into your head before you start trying to get fancy with it.

Firestrike on cooldown if possible
Use it as much as you safely can. You want as much Earthshatter as you can get in a round, and Firestrike is your primary Ult charge tool.

Earthshatter tips
First off, Earthshatter is fairly predictable and interruptible by a smart enemy team. It won’t take you too long to figure this out. A couple times of losing it to Sleepdart or something like that and you’ll quickly figure out what the danger zones are.

It is NOT a get out of jail free card. Never, I repeat NEVER press that Earthshatter button out of desperation, unless that Shatter is going to stop something VERY BAD (example Reaper Die! Die! Die!) from happening to your team. If your health is low, you’re going to die anyways before it goes off.

Earthshatter is best used when your team is in position to capitalize on it. It’s not a very good solo ult at all.

When your shatter hits a bunch of enemies right in front of you, resist the (natural) urge to immediately Charge as a followup. When you do this, you splash the prone enemy targets around and make them very difficult for your teammates to hit. Best followups for Shatter are some combination of Firestrike and Hammer Swings on the prone targets.

GLHF! I am always excited to see someone taking up the role of Reinhardt in this game. I think he is pound for pound the most… satisfying… hero to play. I think he is fairly easy to pick up on his basics but with a long and steady learning curve toward true mastery. Deceptively simple, let’s say :slight_smile:

And the meaty crunch of him, when you have your Rein turned on to 10 and the enemy is coming at you with 5’s… it’s really exhilarating.

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14

Good tips here some things I would add that are important.

When the other Rein Charges at you, Charge don’t side step. When you side step the healer behind you dies. Try to charge so you 2 will meet closer to your team for obvious reasons.

Your main job is to make space. You do that with your hammer, you hold space with your shield. Don’t be afraid to play aggressive with the hammer, but manage your aggression pick a spot on your health bar, where you need to back off and shield so your healers can heal you. You will find your own magic spot by trial and error.

Snipers and Ranged threats, Hold your shield up call out for the appropriate team mate to make that kill before you think about swinging.

Enemy Ults, McCree, Soldier, Reaper, DVa, Pharah, Hog, Bastion
When these players ULT your shield needs to go up without thinking and then try to face them.

FireStrike Sync, when other Rein fires his, fire yours. Now you have a countdown (your cooldown )to when he will do it again and you can shatter when he drops his shield to firestrike.

Shatter also hits the direction of your crosshair not necessarily the way your model is facing :slight_smile: RMB allows you to look elsewhere.

Watch Zarya bubbles when you have shatter, wait for her bubbles to be on cooldown or you risk her robbing you also.

Oh also don’t be afraid to take short charges against DF in midair this works in catching him.

Oh also McCree and Brigitte if these two are near you don’t shatter, back up, they are waiting for it. Ana can hit you from anywhere you can’t really stop that.

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Depends on your rank. The higher you go, the faster you have to decide. Key is to never doubt yourself (but don’t go for long charge lol). I’ll give you some tips. Might be good might be not so good.

Playing Rein is dependent on your main healer. If they are not keeping you up, you’ll have bad time. Specially right now. So play little bit defensively for 1 minute or so to figure it out. But if opposing rein is aggro, you will have to do same regardless (when he is in range). Otherwise you’ll lose no matter what.

Block burst damage that can kill your support or give significant high ult charge to opponents. Example would be: Ashe’s dynamite (if you drop your shield for .1s even, your shield will take initial damage rather than full duration.), nade, dva miceo missles etc. Don’t block trash damage that won’t kill you.

Swing whenever possible as long as your teammates aren’t low health. Don’t be scared of body blocking damage. Reason is, if you are swining for 1s, your shield isn’t taking damage. Plus your healers can heal you up but they won’t be able to heal your shield.

Always stay near corners. In defense if your shield is low, take cover and don’t go for charge. You blocking 200 damage means your teammates might get time to do more damage or survive.

Firestrike is interesting. Generally I send on in the spawn in each map. I’ll hide until the door is 1s left and throw it. On a good match, will get 27-28% ult charge from it alone. Also, try to get as many people in your firestrike as possible. Rather than throwing it on cooldown, wait for the opponents to line up and then throw. 2 well placed fire strike is way better than 5 random. When you have ult, don’t stop throwing fire strike. Rather do it so that it ends before it reaches opponents or simply misses them into a wall. It helps a lot to not give opponents needless support ults.

As for nano, ask Ana to not nano you before shatter. Because a good rein won’t drop shield as he’ll think you’ll ult.

Always go for this combo in shatter:
Shatter, firestrike, swing once and short charge the biggest hsalthpool target. If timed correctly, you’ll get at least 20% ult immediately. Sometimes it’s 40% if the stun went way and you hit multiple people.

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Yeah, I really want to put a pin on this. Bad Reins come in two flavors, the ones that swing too much and the ones that shield too much. It’s when you find that magic mix that you really start feeling the fun potential of the hero, and that just comes down to experience and practice. Block Block Block Swing Block might be the right answer for one situation, and Swing Swing Swing Block Swing might be the right answer for another.

It’s dumb to say that you need to ‘read the tempo’ of a battle, obviously all heroes benefit from reading the tempo of the battle, but Rein needs to do this most, on a second-to-second basis. He has got a lot on his plate, he needs to balance protection of himself, protection of his team, contributing damage and positioning of his team. Thankfully, the tools he has to do all this complicated stuff are essentially pretty easy to learn and use.

Timing is key to being a Great Reinhardt.

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17

Dont expect your shooters like 76, McCree to stand behind your shield and pop heads. They will always move ahead.
So try to stand in front of everything.