I wanted to make this thread since people can share some strategies that worked for them to help others out. I’ll provide some of mine to start.
Storm Rising
Thunderstorm
Widow is super effective, along with any long range hero, since they play far away from anybody. So they’re rarely close enough to get shocked by enemies. Additionally, Moira is also really good here, since her mass AoE healing and Biotic Orb is really good at out-healing the damage from the enemies up close. Overall, her healing in general for the story missions are great (in experience). Storm Raging
This one is… difficult. But I think the best strategy I’ve used is the Sym, Orisa, Moira and Widow bunker. Essentially, shack up in a corner (Like the area above the entrance to second point, or the little top areas in the sea fort.), Have the Widow and the Orisa pick off people from a distance (With coordination or else everybody’s gonna get enrage), Moira pokes enemies that get close and spams healing orb and Grasp to mass heal everybody. The big part that ties it all together is the kiting, (Especially with the heavy assault cause they’re cancer to deal with.) using Sym’s TP. When the Heavy Assault gets close, use Sym TP to teleport to a distant area where you can set up another bunker. Then, when the Heavy Assault comes back, you and your team TP back to your original spot and keep alternating. All of your teammates including Widow constantly stay together at ALL times. This team comp is actually pretty fun most of the time. The thing that’s most irregular about I guess would be Widow being with the team pretty much 100% of the time. (You can also swap out Widow for Ashe, but McCree and Hanzo usually don’t go well).
Generally, the Comp forms a bunker in a little corner or small area with Orisa’s shield and the natural environment, Sym puts her TP down and has it connect to another distant bunker location and sets up her turrets inside the bunker to attack the people that get close, while spamming orbs and mowing over people with beams. Moira is poking at enemies to help out a little with damage and gain resource, while using Healing Orb most of the time combined with Heal Spray for mass area healing. Finally, Widow is killing the weaker targets with oneshot, and is busting through enraged targets health too. Also, Assassins aren’t as threating, since your team can surround her and deal a ton of damaged, plus, you don’t have to go through 4 Fall Guys courses just to reach their dying body. As a final warning, Heavy Assaults, Assassins and Snipers are extremely dangerous when enraged, so take caution. Blood Moon Rising
This one is also really difficult, since I haven’t played it too often. Long distance characters can be pretty good, along with explosive area damage characters. Individual character strategies I’ve used are passive healing ones with Ashe and Widow. Use your Venom-Mine/Dynamite on a group of enemies to get some passive healing for a couple seconds. Ashe gets more then Widow, since Dynamite does more damage, but still, it’s a useful tactic to use. Also, I’ve seen Soldier the support played often. Mei works when used correctly, too.
Retribution
Close Quarters
Brig is perfect here for obvious reasons. Hog and D.VA are also good, since D.VA can do work at close range, and Hog’s hook forces enemies close to him, so they can be damaged. Additionally, Moira can work well, too. Since I don’t think she needs to deal damage for the self-heal and getting resources. Surgical Strike
TBH I don’t really have one. Your aim determines how well you do in this. Widow, Ashe and Cree are pretty good in my experience. Bap and Mercy work as Supports to use, too. Don’t have much experience with this, though. Sympathy Gains -AUGH this one is difficult. Mainly because coordination is practically a must or nothings going to die. Widow is amazing in this mode, since her one-shot flat ignores the healing on the little guys. She can also apply a huge burst on Enforcers, and Take out Snipers real quick. Most other characters can work as long as you all focus on the same target. I don’t recommend characters with Area Damage as their specialty. Characters like Pharah, Junkrat and the like can hit multiple enemies and end up healing everything. Additionally, Ana is like… S Tier. Her Anti Nade is SOOOO Valuable in this mode, since it can make a group of enemies vulnerable to a full on assault. The Ana just has to play safe, since Nade is her only source of healing unless you got a Soldier or another Support.
Uprising
Bulletproof Barriers
Sombra is S Tier, here; since her hack disables enforcers barriers, and EMP destroys all barriers it hits (The challenge does only say bulletproof…). She’s also good at helping taking out the Detonators since hack and EMP can delay them. Also, Sym can just build free Beam Charge and get Ammo back, so a good Sym can have Level 3 beam most of the time and reduce the amount she needs to reload. Molten Cores
This one generally isn’t too difficult. Just play Mid-Long range heroes and keep your distance. Bunker comps often work well. For example, Symmetra, Torbjorn, Orisa, Mercy/Moira works, since you can line the area/payload with Turrets, TP to safety, and get a shield with Orisa. You can also trade out Symmetra and Torbjorn for Ashe and Widow. Although I would prob keep Torb since his ult is amazing for this mode. This one IMO along with maybe Thunderstorm are the easiest challenges missions. Glass Cannon (The Hardest Mode in my opinion) This one is REAL hard. I don’t really have a proper strategy for it. I think running Off-Tanks in place of DPS is your best bet. For Supports, I’m not too sure, but Mercy has worked in the past for me. I think Sigma also one-shots enemies with Flux now with the 50% increased damage but I might be wrong. I don’t think shields are affected and stay at normal HP, so I’d assume shields are EXTREMELY useful for keeping yourself out of harms way, since even small amounts of damage are extremely punishing.
Feel free to share any strats the have worked for you! I hope the ones I’ve shared help out! Good luck! Have fun!
~Gundham the dirty Widow main
Keep in mind that Echo can duplicate teammates in Retribution and Storm Rising. If you have an Echo/d.VA comp you can eat a ton of damage from heavy assault units and then throw your duplicated meka away for free self destruct damage and area clearing. 2stronk.
Moira’s ult and orbs pierce barriers in the unbreakable barrier Uprising, so you can just kind of focus on the other trash while Moira builds ult and then roasts everything for free. Rein’s hammer ignores shields too, but it’s a little difficult to get in there at the final gauntlet so Orisa or Sigma make better choices for tanks.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Ana is S tier in Sympathy Gains. Anti is way 2stronk in a mode where enemies clump up and can heal each other otherwise. You’ll probably want some high burst damage heroes or heroes that can reposition enemies away from the group so they don’t keep getting healed.
After doing these missions multiple times there are so many different strategies to use. I will say your choice on Symmetra or Widowmaker is kind of eh to me. Symmetra can’t headshot on anything. Turrets go down really fast. Teleporter is really not necessary. Her biggest use to me is shield. Widowmaker’s damage output is pretty pathetic and she can’t deal with heavies or assassins well. Which is annoying.
Rein is good on every uprising mission.
Orisa is pretty much always useful in every mission type.
Roadhog is generally a top tier pick for talon enemies. Hog’s damage output into heavies is dumb and his CC for assassins/snipers are useful and he tanks enforcers for free ult charge.
Sigma is situationally useful. He just lives. That’s about it. But his damage output is horrendous since he has a low rate of fire and can’t headshot.
Baptiste is pretty much useful on every mission type.
Mercy is alright, but she doesn’t offer much than just raw healing.
Ana is pretty much uninteresting. No headshot damage. Only useful for bionade on healing challenge.
Moira is okay. Just has issues on prolonged engagements due to healing resource issue. No real benefit than healing. Minor perk on bombs in uprising.
Zenyatta is pretty good. Discord very handy for taking out nearly any threat many times faster. Makes a good extra unit after say healing/tank/dps are taken.
Junkrat, Doomfist, Pharah, Symmetra, Widowmaker, are sort of meh for challenges.
Reaper/Hanzo/S76/Tracer/Bastion only offer raw damage and not much else.
Genji/McCree are useful for talon enemies due to stun and simply ranged damage and can headshot.
Echo’s value depends purely upon what you run. Having 2 hogs running around in talon is amazing.
Sombra is really only useful in uprising and even then she’s completely outshone by torbjorn. Molten Core simply makes him too good on top of turret and overload. Damage is too high that sombra’s hack is not even really needed.
Shield is really good for cheesing Heavy Assault, since it has enough health to tank it’s damage. You can just keep switching sides over and over until the shield disappears or it dies.
For storm raging:
I also saw Zarya as a really good pick, you can simply gain energy by standing nearby the enemy and of course safe teammates.
For close quater:
Brig and Rein have an amazing synergy here.
While Rein simply keeps his shield up, Brig can damage they enemy without taking damage, which of course also triggers inspire-healing. Stun and Rein charge are also good tools to keep the heavy assaults in check.
For class cannon:
In think Torb is one of the most important picks. You got a “fifth” teammate with the turrent and its hp isn’t halfed.
Molten Core takes care of many enemies really fast, since they are kinda stationary/don’t move much/move in a predictable pattern.
I also feel like Bap is never a bad choice, for obvious reasons, not the ideal pick for all missions though.
PS: The Mercy player should just crouch behind the telephone box during the challenging four minute standoff. You might take some stray bullets here and there, but otherwise you won’t be targeted and you can access your whole team easily if they stay on the payload.
I also got one general tip for Storm Rising.
After the payload reached it’s destination.
Don’t stay inside the last point you’ll get surrounded to easily even with highround.
Position with your team outside the last point, further back, where the other small building is. The enemy will have to come at you where you have enough space to kill them and to react.
Sympathy gains: If you do not want to coordinate on voice, just bring a zenyatta and agree “shoot the discord”. You are now all in sync, easy peasy.
And for the heavy units in retribution/storm rising: Roadhogs ult will kill them if you use it on their red tanks on the back. Always bring him when facing those guys.
Number 1 best tactic: hope you get competent teammates, as annoying as it sounds. Even with good hero picks and good tactics, if one or two of your team are stupid or drop the ball near the end, chances are you’re still going to lose. Yesterday I had a really good run in Storm Raging with Orisa, Bastion, Ana and Soldier. 0 deaths until the last battle… and then we died because or Soldier refused to group up and died a bazillion times to the 4 snipers that spawned. When the heavies came it was over.
And Torb, just plop his turret down somewhere far away, it has ridicuolous range anyway. His gun also don’t have fall off and since enemies are rather stationary he can do quite some damage from far away himself.
I actually found it was one of the easiest together with molten cores. But I kinda forgot how I did it since I only did it last year, and first try even.
Honestly, I hate this one and it just doesn’t work well in Overwatch. Due to the spammy nature of most weapons, the oversized hitboxes and unforgiving amount of healing, this mode feels more random than anything. Simply one wayward bullet can mess up things already. Still need to beat that mode.
Also, Junkrat is a weird one for this mode. On one hand his basic attacks are bad because of the aoe damage, but on the other hand his ult is very good to clear out groups of enemies since it one-shots most of them. His mines can also be used to knock enforcers in the water.
I found that Reinhardt works really well, as his shield still has 560 hp IIRC, but you really need the others to have some range and go full ham on the bastions in the last section so they die quick. I also agree that Mercy is quite good, I’m also wondering about Lucio since the lower hp means that his passive healing is propertionally stronger, but I haven’t seen him used yet.
Remember, read the challenge’s description, I walked into sympathy gains and didn’t coordinate at all
All my fault and we probably would’ve lost, except I was playing Echo and kept duplicating our McCree and just ult spamming
Sorry to that group
She really can work in a lot of situations. The only ones I wouldn’t recommend are Bullet Proof Barriers and DEFINITELY NOT Close Quarters. Glass Canon to an extent since the HP nerf as well, although it’s probably possible.
-AUGH this one is difficult. Mainly because coordination is practically a must or nothings going to die. Widow is amazing in this mode, since her one-shot flat ignores the healing on the little guys. She can also apply a huge burst on Enforcers, and Take out Snipers real quick. Most other characters can work as long as you all focus on the same target. I don’t recommend characters with Area Damage as their specialty. Characters like Pharah, Junkrat and the like can hit multiple enemies and end up healing everything. Additionally, Ana is like… S Tier. Her Anti Nade is SOOOO Valuable in this mode, since it can make a group of enemies vulnerable to a full on assault. The Ana just has to play safe, since Nade is her only source of healing unless you got a Soldier or another Support.
This one is REAL hard. I don’t really have a proper strategy for it. I think running Off-Tanks in place of DPS is your best bet. For Supports, I’m not too sure, but Mercy has worked in the past for me. I think Sigma also one-shots enemies with Flux now with the 50% increased damage but I might be wrong. I don’t think shields are affected and stay at normal HP, so I’d assume shields are EXTREMELY useful for keeping yourself out of harms way, since even small amounts of damage are extremely punishing.
