Pick 2 to 3 heros that you specialize in. But also know how to play 1 of each role.
Stick to your mains unless something else is needed.
So… Semi-Flex?
or just main your hero and flex when necessary, and don’t only play only one hero, maybe atleast 2, ofc 1 more than the other?
that’s what i’m kinda thinking right now so i’ve been limiting myself this last week to only 2 heroes i really enjoy more than the rest.
I can’t say for sure since it’s been a long time since then (Season 2 I think). My lowest SR ever was 2303 before I started the climb.
I can use one of my recent comp games as an example, I was playing Mei and my team ran Genji, Widowmaker, Hammond, Zarya, and solo heal Ana, and we won vs. the enemy team running full GOATS comp. (It just so happened that the Genji on my team was Necros and he was streaming his 1st game so you can find the match here lul)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/346856667
Team composition is often of limited consequence in solo queue. This is because of the lack of basic coordination in these games. In stacked games, of course it’s of great importance, because you WILL be punished for not running a good team comp.
Let’s say I’m matched against a Pharah player. My team says to me “Mei they have a pharah onetrick you better play hitscan” - They’re missing the point. Yes Pharah has an advantage over Mei on paper, but the game is not won or lost from the hero select screen, it’s down to your exectuion. You can be playing against counterpicks but still win because you outplayed your opponent, that’s the whole idea behind soft counters.
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And so many games are won because it’s so easy to break the other teams moral by just getting a pick. I’d still rather ppl were less sucky to each other though.
that i get, or you simply just do better than their dps, for example running a reaper against pharah seems pretty reckless, but if you can kill the enemy team except pharah much quicker than pharah can kill your team, at that point aren’t you winning?
but i think in the terms of the necessity of tanks and supports.
for example could you have for example a brig as a solo healer and win?
or a roadhog as a solo tank and win?
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Technically yes you can. A general rule of thumb in solo queue games is that any outcome is possible.
Somewhere in between. I’d rather have a one-trick Mercy healing me than a flex player who splits his time evenly, but that one-trick can’t do anything else as soon as two Mercy players get into the same group.
I have about 8 mains, practice with them all, try to be able to offer at least every role, but don’t delude myself into thinking that I can be great with every hero. That seems to me to be the best way to go about it.
really? because people in my current rank “gold” are stressing the fact of having a proper comp which seemed a little silly to me even in that rank 
People do that in bronze. It is all about this emulation culture. People would rather mimic viable strategies than playing with what they have.
Yeah that basically sums up my memories of my gold games back in Season 2. In higher ranks I’d say that rule applies more than in lower ranks, mostly due to people’s mentality towards team comps. People at those ranks are of the belief that games are won or lost in the hero select screen so they basically start inting the game before it’s even started.
hmm… i could probably one-trick my 2 heroes without getting so much flack for it in ranked but i still go in with an open mind in a way, since i want to also build an interesting comp or see what the hubbub is about with teamwork etc and learn the difference between comp and qp
IMO, Hard counters don’t exist in OW.
Yeah, in a blank 1v1 arena you have situations like Pharah against melee heroes like Rein and Brigitte, but in the actual game there is one factor that prevent her from doing that: the point.
If you win the ground fight, and both teams are down to Brigitte vs Pharah, Brigitte can seek cover close to the point, forcing Pharah to get down to be able to land a hit, and that put her into flail range. I think everyone has been in at least one game where Pharah was the last person standing in the match on overtime, and she simply couldn’t land to keep OT alive because Rein want to hammer her legs.
Most people who says a certain hero is being “hard countered” never played a game where actual hard counters exists. Hard counter isn’t just “advantage in matchup”. Hard counter is rock against paper. Is zero chance of victory if the other side isn’t afk.
yeah, that seems like a silly preconceived notion people do have atleast in my rank, allthough all my time in qp says otherwise.
it’s literally teamwork and skills, not picks and counters.
They have existed in the past (take Brigitte vs. Tracer for example), but for the most part I would say they’ve been eliminated from the game.
oooh that’s a juicy tip, i’ll try to remember that muhahaha
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Even Brigitte vs Tracer I wouldn’t consider a hard counter because Tracer can keep her distance and play bait to lure Brigitte’s attention (making the fight 5v5… Symmetra did this kind of thing a lot when she had to guard her ult).
The absolute hardest counter in this game is Bastion vs. Doomfist, and even that I can visualize some counterplays with a team using Doomfist as bait while everyone else focus down Bastion. By the nature of the game being team-based, it means you can cover for your team’s weakness. Like, D.va is on goats exactly to protect goats from their biggest weak point: Ana’s biotic grenade and Pharah/Junkrat spam.
I’m a one trick and even I know the answer is flex
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Whether something is a hard counter or not is pretty subjective to be fair. I can take a matchup I know all too well as an example; Mei vs. Roadhog.
Even vs. an excellent Roadhog player, a Mei who knows what they’re doing will farm the living heck out of that Roadhog, using him as her personal ult battery. This is because Roadhog’s only defence against Mei is his hook, which can easily be anticipated and baited out using Mei’s cryo freeze.
However if the Mei does not know she can do all of this to the Roadhog, then it’s an easy picking for him. He hooks the Mei and can likely pull off a 1 shot ombo before she can cryo.
Hard counters in PvP games are extremely rare. But they appear all the time in PvE and single player games because those games are intended to explore power fantasies, and being OP and invincible is part of that fantasy.
Eg, you are playing Metroid, and you shoot a metroid with ice beam. It will freeze in place and be easy target for you to missile it down. There is nothing that a metroid can to do you that will kill you before you can freeze them, unless you go afk.
That’s what a hard counter do.
If you need to weight actual player skill to determine the outcome, even if it benefits a certain hero above other, by definition it isn’t a hard counter. Your Mei/Hog fight is a great example on this, because Mei takes a long time to kill Hog, but Hog only need to land one good hit to win. And both sides are always worried that one of their teammates will make the fight 2v1.