Not sure what to do.
T578C6
Tryna find Niccolo since you seemed to get along with him and liked his VOD.
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ah, we meet again. hi friend. 
because you’re identifying echo as an issue, i’m going to vod review your play and then look at some of the stuff with the echo as i go along, and focus on your hero interaction with her too.
- dorado first point is a unique point to defend from. it offers high ground and low ground. and there’s a bunch of different ways you can position yourself and your team. rein probably will try to hold shield on high ground as there isn’t much he can do from that position and while bap should do more of the tank healing, the rein being away from the d.va (poor positioning on them btw) hurts that. so you want to keep an eye on d.va. sym as well.
*note right away. yes your d.va is in an awful position. but make sure you have orbs on targets. whether it is harmony/discord, make sure you have your orbs on somebody, and try to maintain that at all times. - as zen, you don’t have that much utility to deal with the echo; bap and ana are probably the best for that. you have an easy hitbox and echo can easily handle that (if she can aim a bit). discord is a useful tool and that’ll be what you have to use. with no mercy pocket, your soldier and bap should be able to burn through her. keyword is should. d.va should be able to do things too.
- so far you are doing a nice job keeping echo honest. keeping her discorded, and her not having that reliable of healing does a lot of good things (writing this at 1:31)
- on your first death, you died due to your positioning. in proximity to your team, it would have been a bit aggressive. playing on stairs is fine, but when they have dive tanks and echo, it’s more useful on you to play on stairs, maybe better on the edge of the staircase in “market” (thats what i will call the area after that choke where the cart goes under) i understand you may have been trying to help soldier, but you can help him just as much at a distance. LOS for orbs, and you shoot at a safer position and whittle down the shield and winston if he doesn’t disengage.
- your trans usage was a little forced in seemed like. it keeps your rein up and that part is nice but you aren’t really able to get value out of it from that. does it help that your team can potentially hold closer? yes. but your team was three down i believe right before you popped it. two or three down.
- side note: i think it would have been okay to ask the dva to swap to sigma or hog. it allows you to play slower, gives you more room to operate, and hopefully it doesn’t leave your team down a player for a fight. they are getting caught out so easily.
- 3:40 shows the danger of playing zen into that comp. winston solo’d you. it also is him catching you out of position. positioning on zenyatta is extremely important because 1) zen has no movement abilities and 2) zen lacks the utility to bail himself out unless the player is a mechanical god of a duelist. it’d be helpful just to rotate near the point b checkpoint, taking the back left exit from bank.
- good awareness to take out the d.va
*i’m surprised the winston was able to take out four players there so easily. i think with tire coming in an winston diving, seeing immor a little late kinda costed you another life. but your team also did not turn on winston when he dived in. that is a team awareness issue right there, not one that’s necessarily just you. object permanence is a thing in overwatch too. - when the round closes as it did here, sometimes it’s not as helpful to wait as it is to try and touch and contest cart. with you being close to trans, i think it would’ve been helpful to rotate towards point to make an attempt to touch.
- seconds round, you will want to keep your orb on tracer and ana. keep your eye on your ana because she won’t have much to help herself against enemies if she is dove. she is also the primary source of heals on your team.
- i could tell your second trans was a bit forced too, to make sure you don’t die. because your team just capped the first point it’s okay to die considering you respawn literally right there. it would have saved that fight after where the enemy rein gets nanoed.
- the rein is pushing you out at 9:51, and your escape route gets you killed. instead, you should go out of the window, and drag rein into your team so they can close in on him and punish him as a unit.
- i like the bap switch because it allows you to be a bit more impactful with your ult and gives you more utility. you are free to do more dps (while also healing!!!) as you have an ana and your team will sustain better. ana/bap is normally a great sustain comp but it feeds ults to the enemy team. keep this in mind. it’s more on your duty to heal the tanks then. ana should have an easier time hitting the dps with scoped shots than you will with a projectile.
- your shift usage at 10:54 didn’t do much of anything. you could’ve just kept shooting your soldier to heal him and have the same effect. little tip i will give: if i’m using my burst it’s not bad to take some damage, because it gives you ult charge for healing yourself. you need to use the ability smart, as it is on a 12-13s cooldown. it’s not really worth to just use it on a single target when it is an AoE ability.
- i don’t know if you are aware, but a patch or two ago, bap’s secondary healing changed. if you directly hit your teammate it heals 70, and if it’s in its little area where it can hit them, it hits for 50. keep this in mind when you are healing up teammates.
- for rip-tire, don’t always pop immor right away. it can be waited out and secure a kill. anticipate when it might be coming. if you can see it, try to immor around then, so you can get the kill on the tire. and still survive.
this next section i will be making general, not far in-depth comments about the echo, watching from her perspective to see what the biggest issue was.
- your soldier wasn’t doing much against her at all in first round. that’s not on you. they should know to challenge the echo as a hitscan.
- d.va can contest her in the air as well but she hasn’t been doing anything about it. because she isn’t getting contested by your team (and other than discord, there isn’t much you can really do as zen), she is playing with her food
- the only time echo really got focused out is when she was getting ulted. it’s pretty ridiculous on your end and i can see where for you it can be frustrating.
- echo died a grand total of… 1 time. if that doesn’t illustrate how poor of a job your team did to limit the echo, i don’t what does.
i’m never going to place blame solely on you. i think that you played alright within the context of you situation. echo didn’t do much to you as zenyatta, but the rest of the team was outmatched. your dps did not do a very good job against her. sometimes all it needs is one person to watch her. even if its not to kill her. just zone her out.
now, i’ve seen your zen and a little of your bap. idk what else you play. but on an individual level, here’s what you can do with each hero against echo. note that this is on an individual level and my advice to deal with her may not be the most effective in a team context.
- ana: scare her off by sniping her. if she tries to dive in and get close kills with beam, sleep her. nade can be used defensively against the burst of her kit, and when she dives in. echo’s beam does 200 hps when her target is under half hp, and 50 when above. let’s say you are at 80 and she starts to beam you. if you use nade,congratulations! you just bought yourself some time alive.
bap: hit your directs on your teammates. bap and ana are the best supports to deal with her. heal up a lot of her burst damage. - brig: hit whip shots and shield off sticky bombs. whip shot is a crowd control and will knock her away. it is a great peel ability. when bombs get stuck to your shield, draw your shield back (so let go of rmb) and back up, and you might just be out of range for her bombs to damage you. (that last tip might fall null)
- lucio: probably the worst hero to duel the echo with. use your movement to avoid her and limit her value onto you as a target. support your team and if they aren’t paying much attention to her, try to win the fight on the ground against the other members of the team.
mercy: be careful of her, mercy is not really that hard to hit during rez (as much as forumers like complaining about it) so a very immoble mercy can die easily to echo. believe it or not it taks brains to play mercy a bit hahaha. also, keep an eye on where her stickies hit. mercy normally stays with the dps (as she should.) if you have a hitscan, try to damage boost them and scare echo away. the goal isn’t always to kill her but to limit her and get her low enough. - moira: also more of a ground-oriented hero for the main fight. you probably can reach her with your primary grasp if she dives in. and that little tickle damage can actually help you especially if she gets low.
- zen: discord orb. enough said there. if she is close on you you can try to duel her but it’s not the most promising matchup on your end.
i hope that this was at least somewhat helpful to you 
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thanks bud.
thank you so much! i read the whole thing again!
i did have voice comms going in this game, and a lot of it was essentially wallhacking for my teammates and letting players know what I could see (also where they were in relation to other teammates, like when Soldier76 was on high ground on 2nd point and we had time to reposition (or at least be aware we had one DPS on flank))
I think I kept mentioning the Echo whenever I saw it, and iirc one of my tanks tried to deal with her. Since I know she has considerable presence on their team, so i tried to stay hidden and keep the discords on them while giving the team info (for instance being above us, left, right, or moving to flank for an upcoming fight).
Good notes on watching ult charge. And also to not force the trance.
Getting better at reading ults too, was able to call a few of them.
Good notes on recognizing the healing effect as ult feed for other team (this was a footnote in the back of my mind, generally written off as an unavoidable truth for any heals) (iow, 1000 hp damaged and healed for another 1000 hp is 2000 hp ult charge for the enemy team - i am aware 
)
Will keep that in mind more for future games, though it’s mostly unavoidable. Will also try to pair healing synergies with barriers. An idea would be to stay Zen/Lucio/Brig if our team has somewhat strong damage nullification (Barriers/Absorb) to help mitigate the heal feed. Hard to balance knowing when to keep your team up and when to let them die, hahahh…
Double efforts on keeping Ana and Tracer alive (squishies). Gotcha.
=== General footnotes for the first part ===
Yeah, I mentioned it a few times in comms. I’ll personally retrain myself on hitting targets with Zen in aim trainer. It’s about all I can do to step up in that regard.
That much I definitely felt.
Sometimes I end up babysitting a bit in my games. Usually if I see what’s lacking on my team, I’ll try to think of which support will best fill the gap.
My Zen pick is based on trust that for the most part I can rely on them to know how to not die, for instance knowing how to take cover when a lot of damage is incoming, otherwise I’ll pick someone that covers areas the team needs most.
I’ll try to read those queues as well and anticipate how/where my teammates will move, and pre-adjust accordingly. Additionally I can volley a right click before the move just in case any of them decide to push in on my team’s brief retreat.
Usually if something can mitigate damage (praying for natural cover, but shields are better than nothing) then the healing works moderately well alongside cooldown regenerations. Discord on the right target (plus callout) usually makes sure at least one opponent can’t push however they will.
Typically this results in about 4-5 seconds of retreating to recover, before I feel the team might try to push back (if necessary).
I think one thing I’ll do is take huge swaths of space in anticipation that at least one opponent will dive or flank, or move into a location where diving/flanking is not ideal for them.
But this is me just playing mental chess with ideal strategies. Trying to wrap my head around good positioning for the better. Usually I’m pretty good at it, but I admit that day I wasn’t feeling so great about my positioning.
Anyways, thanks so much for the feedback!!! It’s always a pleasure to read your writings! 
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