How to fight the Reinhardt [GUIDE]

General Discussion
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Hey everybody! I’ve been hearing alot of you have been having difficulties defeating the Reinhardt, so I put together this little guide on how to beat him, let’s gooo!

INTRODUCTION: WHO IS THE REINHARD?

The Reinhardt is a defensive powerhouse on the battlefield of overwatch, his shield will block almost all your attacks. At long ranges he will throw projectiles, and at close range he will use his devastating hammer!
Because of this, it’s best to keep the fight midrange and wait for openings

PART 1: OPENING UP THE REINHARDT

Remeber what I said about his shield blocking most of your attacks? Well, that’s because you’re not waiting for the right opening! I like to stand at midrange and wait for him to fire a projectile, then he will usually walk up with a hammer swing, and that’s when you hit him with a stagger attack! Which will allow you to do additional damage!

PART 2: OPTIMIZATION

Ok, you’ve staggered the rein, now let’s talk about what to do next, ideally you wanna cancel into another attack for more dps air even an additional stagger! Here are some good burst combos:

flashbang—FTH
sesmic slam—upercut (for the restagger) shot)
concussion blast—rocket (hard to do, must be quick!)

Experiment with other combos and find the ones that suit you!

PART 3: Strategy

Now you know how to fight the Reinhardt, but do you know when? Despite his powerful attacks, Reinhardt is acctualy a lower priority target in the arena! The other smaller enemies can use the openings Rein creates of your gameplay to attack you, so you wanna kill them first. More importantly, there are some enemies that can boost the Reinhardt and even revive him! It is crucial that you dispose of them before challenging the bossman. “Take out all the whitebelts so you and the blackbelt can dance”

CONCLUSION:

Reinhardt is a tough enemy to fight, he’s strong defensive abilities can feel akward to the combat loop of overwatch, but hopefully, this guide will help you deal with him more easily.

Feedback? Hate? Please consider commenting and leaving a review on this guide, farewell gamers!

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ITT: how to counter a Gold Reinhardt.

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Gold is the difficulty level at which most players play on, so I believed it was relevant.

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Yeah I smash gold Rein’s with my plat Roadhog and Sigma, but I just don’t like how one good shatter can mess up a good hold when you outplay the Rein for the most part. Makes you kind of want to pack it in and take the easy route too sometimes. I did a quick read, but shatter avoidance to avoid the wipe is also big. Doom does a pretty nice job displacing would be shatters I think.

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No, he is BEER!!

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He’s a tough character to fight if you play to his strengths. Best thing is to not let him play into his strengths. Any comp, really. Reinhardt really wants you to fight him head on, so don’t. If you’re going for a stun play like flashbang over shield or you’re inting towards him as 6 to burn him down, it’s fine, but if you’re not trying to combo him you really should take angles on him to either force mistakes out of him, or threaten his team.

For example, as a hero who can safely take aggressive angles and flanks like tracer: when your tanks are about to begin fighting their tanks, shooting him from the side often makes him turn and shield you and opens him up for easy exploits like hooks, stuns, sleeps, anti nades, etc. At a certain skill level people stop falling for this and ignore you, but then you just go for the backline instead. Take focus away from red team rein’s supports for long enough and the frontline will usually fall apart, if you’ve timed everything correctly. The most important part about this type of strategy is to keep yourself safe above all else, and minimize how many enemy players you’re actually peeking or engaging. Getting 5 to turn on you in the backline is useless if you die in 2 seconds. You’re not in an owl team, your team isn’t gonna capitalize on that.

As a hero who can’t safely take wide flanks, but can take shallow off-angles that peek past him and into his team like hanzo, mccree, roadhog, sigma, or ashe: while both teams are fighting, take the angle and start shooting past the shield into the backline instead of afk’ing by your reinhardt and spamming shield. Think back on all the games you chalked up to losing because the enemy carry was just a smurf - they probably weren’t spamming shields, they were probably exploiting juicy angles, and people were probably saying “why is nobody contesting them??!!!” Here’s a little secret: If the enemy tanks are rein/zarya, they have almost nothing to contest someone taking aggressive angles.

The best part is, this isn’t a team dependent strategy. It’s all about the angles you decide to take, and what you do with them. It only becomes less effective when you either can’t hit your shots reliably enough, or when your timing or sense of what a good angle to take is just wrong.

Coincidentially this is also a very good strat against bunker style comps as long as they don’t have a competent sigma player.

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As a Rein main I can tell you.

1: Kill the shield
2: Rein dies because 50 less armour cripples his gameplay potential and turns him into a shield bot that’s only good on like maybe 1 map.