Fellow Crusaders!
I have joined you ranks though I’m afraid I’m just a mere recruit unsure of what his duty is other than to protect others from oncoming fire!
Apprise the duties of a Crusader upon me so that I may one day be as strong and sturdy as you have become!
A sheild is strongest when weilded with the purpose to protect; not harm.
Hello Keinhardt, it is nice that you have decided to take up the shield.
I cannot say that i am an expert on Reinhardt play and that shows in my SR (based off Season 11, i am Silver/Bronze). You can easily check my stats off sites like Overbuff.
I think that for Reinhardt, he serves 2 main purpose:
For the first, it is fairly obvious, shield up; move forward with the group to claim the objective / advance the payload past choke points.
By having your shield up constantly, it allows for your team mates to get behind you and safely take out the Red Team. The shield would almost always be the focal point of the red team and it should never be broken i.e. if you are reaching about 300-400 hp on your shield, you need to allow it to recharge.
Move behind cover and wait for 2 (?) seconds and it would start to recharge. It does not always have to be back up to full strength. You have to judge based on the situation, how much Shield HP is required to adequately suit the situation at hand. In Competitive mode, you should be soaking up over 19,000 damage.
There are times whereby you would have to body block and take hits for your team mate in order to advance the objective. So that means that you probably would have to die. A lot. If that does not sit well with you, then an off tank (D.Va, Hammond, Zarya) may be more suitable for you.
Creating Space is the more ambiguous of the two. I think that the more expert Reinhardt mains would have a different interpretation than mine. My interpretation is that main Tanks, in general, especially mobile ones like Reinhardt, Road Hog need to get into the thick of battle offensively, taking hits (dying) and be the focus of the Red Team. In other words, take aggro (MMORPG-style) and while the Red Team is focused on you, your Damage Dealers can take them out . Meanwhile, you need to stay alive for as long as possible and dish out as much damage as possible. As a Reinhardt player, this would mean that you would have to toggle between your Shield, your Hammer Swings, Your Fire Strike and time your Charges. Essentially, this can be bad because you would be feeding the Red Team’s Ultimate Charges but if your Damage Dealers are doing their jobs, Red Team should die faster than having their Ult charge up. If your healer is doing his/her job, you should not have to die. In Competitive Mode, good Reinhardts should be dying about 6-8 times a game, average over 20 kills a game and have a Kill:Death ratio of about 2.5.
There is a Reinhardt guide from the old forums here:
Some Reinhardt Threads from this forum:
I hope that all these information and my sharing helps.
All i can say is, knowing the theory is one thing and executing it is another.
If i might just add, in my very humble opinion, to play Reinhardt right, one should have or at least adopt the mentality of a true Tank main and because this post is already way too long, you can check out my post here to see what i mean.
Reinhardt may appear to be easy to play and i do not disagree, he is an “easy” character to pick up because his abilities are all very straightforward. However, there is a lot of depth in his gameplay and imho, if you want to watch some videos of great Reinhardt play, Fragi and Fissure from the OWL are great for reference, especially since Fragi is a great offensive Reinhardt and Fissure is more defensive but arguably the better overall Reinhardt player.
Once again, i apologise for this extremely long post.
For Honour, and Glory!
This a very good Q&A on Reinhardt play pertaining to my points about Advancing and Creating Space.
Hope it helps.
Test your limits.
Best advice i can give you
Fight for honor my fellow Reinhardts!
Sometimes shielding someone isnt enough to protect them
Never be afraid of dropping the hammer to save a comrade!
Also bow now now now HAMMER TIME!