I’ve been told that shooting at tanks is bot behavior and that it generally leads to nothing, yet shooting at Supports is generally a death sentence too if you’re not playing the meta DPS. So that only leaves the enemy DPS which, depending on which hero they are playing, can lead to an instant death.
For the longest time, the priority was to kill the Supports or tank bust the Tank. Neither of those are options exist anymore, so there’s no real way to cripple the enemy team. All you can really do is choose a target and pray that one of your teammates assists you in killing them (or play very specific meta heroes/have 100% accuracy and one tap everyone with Widow).
So I’m genuinely curious what I am expected to do by my team.
Side note for context: I have the most experience on Reaper, but I am capable of playing every hero sufficiently enough to be considered good with them. If the best solution is just to play meta heroes and not the ones I actually enjoy, I’d rather just not play OW anymore.
It depends on the hero, your comp, and their comp.
As Ashe, Echo, and Soj I generally try to go for aggressive angles where I can focus the enemy supports. If I can’t, I generally focus the DPS before taking those angles.
If I don’t have space to work with(more of an issue on Ashe and Soj), I tend to play off the tank and play aggressively targeting the DPS and Support when the opportunity arises.
Although, sometimes the tank is just really easy to punish and I can just outright kill them. If that happens we just auto win.
I feel it depends upon the situation. I especially pay attention to where their team is positioned/ours as well. I play Reaper mainly as well, and what I feel is mainly important is just to have constant threat and pressure. Start of the fight, I’ll be with my tank and apply ample pressure to their tank, which in turn, their supports have to react by forcing their cooldowns. Pressure allows the team to have opportunities for openings in the opposing team’s weakness.
Off angles, forcing their tank/DPS to look away from the main fight give off value and openings for the team as well.
In such openings, I try to keep tract of cooldowns usages and see who’s out of position with their location and health management. If I see someone’s in a weaker position like those, that’s when I tend to focus them down and go for a pick, whether they be a tank/DPS/support. Like I said, seeing their cooldowns usages help out a lot what you can get away with.
I usually play those three when I can’t be bothered to try-hard on my reliable picks and usually don’t tend to run into any issues unless the enemy team focuses me with 2 or more people (typically double hitscan/hanzo).
I can outsnipe one person, but I can’t handle two at the same time. Tends to be the same on every other character I play that’s not in my main hero pool (which is currently filled with heroes at the bottom of the “meta tier list.”)
Hanzo: Supports/Whoever is in your face
Widow: Supports/Whoever flanks you
Sombra: Supports/Isolated DPS
Ashe: Supports/DPS
Reaper: Tanks/Flank Supports
Mei: Tanks/Isolate from team
All depends on who you are playing, I play these so this is what I’ll say.
You see, the issue with this is that I already utilize these strats, but the rely heavily on my team following up on it. If no one follows up on it, we lose, I de-rank and so on into an endless cycle (since the lower you go, the less team-oriented the game becomes).
I can only see this cycle leading to a plateau or further de-ranking with no room to actually improve my own gameplay (other than miraculously gaining god-like aim).
I feel like it’s just GG if I get flanked on Widow when I’m by myself unless I hit an extremely lucky flick to the head. That and 9 times out of 10, I’ll be instantly focused just for peeking out by 2 enemies minimum.
As for Reaper, I don’t think it’s possible to climb with him unless you’re already at the top or if you utilize the “decoy” playstyle where you just pretend to be a threat with constant uptime.
The rest of those heroes, I can definitely see being useful target prioritization to utilize in the future though.
Depends on the dps you play. All the dps have different target priority
Flankers tend to go for the stationary heroes of snipers and supports that have little to no movement abilities
Brawlers tend to go for the tank and the frontline
etc
Take into consideration the efficiency of the heroes kits and try to think what hero would be the easiest for me to kill on this hero, what heros kit do i counter with mine, etc
Some games it just feels like you’re playing much faster and more aggressively than your team. In situations like that where you’re hoping a teammate will back you up, it may be better for you to be the backup for a teammate.
Just had a game where I was flanking as a DPS too far ahead of my team’s engagements. We did much better after I decided to back up my Winston instead of going for plays myself and hoping the team would push when I made a move.
Unfortunately I’m afraid that’s Reaper’s weakness-- He’s very team dependent on his team following up the pressure and openings. You can flank and go for risky solo kills for plays, but yeah… We know how it goes for Reaper going for solo flanks against supports/DPS. Having direct value is pretty hard for Reaper as he’s pretty counterable and doesn’t have instant breakpoints of instant kill spam damage (UNLESS he’s RIGHT up in their face, which more often than not, he’ll have the entire team’s attention)
On a side rant, that’s pretty much what I despise of Sojourn. She spams damage then gets an instant breakpoint headshot damage of 195 from long range. Easier value for her in a team fight than Reaper who has to get in close.
This generally happens due to people not being aware that role and functions are 2 different things. As a DPS you are mainly either an Opener or a Finisher, so yeah, you have in order of priority:
Finish off targets, assist call outs from Tank
Burst someone if possible, to peel or help taking Space by destroying barriers
Target squishies
Blast the Tank if he gets too close or challenge your team’s space way too much
As reaper, its pretty much tanks and dps that get close enough to 1-2 shot. You shouldn’t try for supports unless its a lone zen (still risky), Lifeweaver, or a hyper focused ana
The fact you cannot pinpoint who to target means the game has done a good job of saying all roles are possibly valuable to attack, but they all have their tradeoffs.
That is balance.
When possible, removing supports removes infinite sustain meaning you do not need as much damage to go through to get a kill. You do not have to kill supports, but pressuring them when you can to possibly kill them and keep them out of the action or panic and use resources is always good.
Tanks are the easiest role in the entire game to bully, but not when they have support from the team. Which is kind of the point. A supported tanks is incredibly difficult to lock down, but pressuring a tank is still valuable when you can.
DPS are arguably one of the easiest to take out if healing is not involved, but when it is you have to deal with possibly double support pocket. Otherwise, these are the easiest units to kill if caught alone since they have no sustain.
It all comes down to looking at the synergy your team has versus the enemy team and going after the weakest link or playing a part that balances things out. In the end, 1v1s are easy to evaluate, the game gets hard when you factor in 10 people
kill what you can kill
if moira used fade, kill moira
if zarya used bubbles, kill zarya
if zarya used bubble, but bap is close, force him to use CD and depending on how it goes, retreat or kill them
killing is the final part, focus on forcing CD and paying attention when the enemy uses a CD and identify if it is possible to kill after that.
So in short, if you pay attention to the enemy’s CD usage, you will be able to identify who and when you can kill.
Shooting the tank is fine IF there are no other targets or you’re in a position where you can kill the tank. Just be mindful of certain tank abilities like Sigma’s absorb where he benefits the longer you shoot him while he’s using it.
If there are other targets around other than the tank, shoot them, especially if your in a position where you can flank the backline and take out their supports.
Otherwise it’s generally situational. Sometimes putting pressure on the tank will make them collapse, sometimes pressuring the support will let your team kill them easier, if an enemy DPS is destroying your team, you probably want to take them out.
Support will generally be trying to break los while keeping los on their team. But if you can kill a support, you should.
If you do damage to someone and they survive, you’re giving the enemy Supports ult, is something I try to keep in-mind.
It’s on a hero-by-hero basis, sometimes team-by-team, or even mood-by-mood, who INITIATES a fight and who follows-up, but the team needs to figure out how to do damage when it matters, and not just a lot of it.
Same concept, of course, applies to everyone and their important cooldowns and respawn times, Ult economy, etc… I earnestly encourage everyone to just try and play smart and experiment and work with your team to figure out what to bet on and all that good stuff.
If you’ve had some teammates that kinda just yell at you in an unproductive way, I’m sorry about that. I think a great way to get revenge on them, though, is to really dissect what went wrong and learn potential lessons-to-be instead of being ALL self-conscious, or rejecting the whole idea that you could have mis-played either.
Sometimes on DPS, you’re like a badass rogue, but sometimes you gotta be a soldier for someone else who, fair or not, knows better where the ball is gonna be for you to dunk. Sometimes your job is to make stuff happen up-front, sometimes your job is to respond to Pings or Voice comms about someone being low HP because your role is usually the most incentivized to finish off enemies too.
I’m being abstract and wordy here, but genuinely, after you understand what your Hero can do and what you can personally do on your Heroes, it’s important to be a team player, or if not, pop off*!!
*
(and plz not in a dumb 1v5 where you burn your Ult charge, even if your 3/4 kills were cool, cuz we gotta respawn anyway )
For one, don’t play too much reaper. Seriously the hero is meh right now. Play heroes with range and simply dish out damage to anything thats not a tank. If you play flank heroes like tracer genji or sombra, go after snipers or anyone out of position. If you play front lines like reaper, bastion, mei then yeah tanks are the way to go. If you play anything else? Keep your distance and pop shots at anything below 250hp. If the enemy has no hitscans? Go pharah or echo etc. get creative, you can actually play whatever you want but just make sure that hero has range. Reaper is the worst choice for using him majority of your games though.
Shooting tank often is not a bad idea, even with their passive, you still gain faster ult charge, and if the enemy tank is over extending, your whole team should focus on the tank and try to secure the kill.
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