The average player often struggle to understand the potential value from non-deadly abilities, including those using them. Shields, Speed Boost, Teleporters etc. are constantly misused.
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>why is it hard to use natural cover?
me looking at the natural cover at
- junkertown A near the end,
- rialto A open area past the choke
- rialto B bridge area
- paris B point
- eichenwalde point B non-high ground bridge
- havana A and C
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See this is why I think converting tanks to brawler tanks would be impossible without heavy map reworks. Quite literally killing zones in maps that would make it impossible to push.
The longer you run around in the open the higher chance of getting nailed by something lethal.
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This is such a cop out.
It’s 2020 and FPS have been popular for like 35 years. If you haven’t grasped the concept of “Hey, if I stand behind this ledge some of the bullets fired at me might hit that instead of me!” then I don’t know what to tell you.
You shouldn’t need a tutorial telling you to reload behind cover, or that OW isn’t a movie and you can’t walk down the middle of an empty street taking on 6 enemies.
Basic tip: If you take cover when low, as opposed to face tanking your death, you might buy a couple seconds for your supports to see you and heal you up. Your death is only “inevitable” if you yolo yourself at the enemy.
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I’m honestly baffled by the answers in this thread
either way, people is just dumb, they want to win without actually playing the game, they think that face to face duels is the way to go so they don’t even mind their positioning
I honestly can’t believe someone said that Mercy can’t use cover effectively because she needs to heal LOL, Mercy, the character with a tether that breaks only after a full second of not being near your target or having no direct line of sight of them, these forums man, seriously
it seriously is, oh don’t mind the benefit of NOT DYING you know? geez xD
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Well technically Mercy can’t tether to a target a certain distance (15m?) away FROM cover so I gave them that in my example. 
Let me explain something to you. If the map and game isn’t designed with natural cover mind it lowers the effectiveness of using natural cover. If most maps are wide open spaces with little room to move up through choke without a shield then what do you expect people to do?
People are not saying they won’t use natural cover, obviously it’s mostly not available on too many maps. You guys act like OW is COD with cover sprinkled everywhere and every character has a sprint and slide mechanic to use it and if you take damage you can heal over time and peak.
Maybe pay attention to the game your playing instead of pretending its something it isn’t.
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The game forces you into open spaces and chokes with minimal cover such that, if the enemy team has any barrier at all, it’s a laughable task to even try to push in on that. You want us to use natural cover? How about pushing the team to actually implement some meaningful cover and good map design for it first
And in any case, as much as people like to gripe about how boring it is to shoot barriers, it’s even more boring to sit behind a corner doing nothing or just peeking until you get an opening to push. As much as this saying has become a meme, this isn’t CS:GO, and it shouldn’t be pushed to play like it.
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You quite clearly don’t play support if you think Ana/brig/moira/bap/zen are perfectly ‘okay without shields’.
Lets use Illios Well as an example.
ANA:
Ana is playing left side where the mini med-kit is. Theres an Ashe across the point lobbing dynamites at her, and she’s trying to stay out of Ashe’s LOS. Suddenly her Hog who pushed up is critical and she needs to peek around the lighthouse corner to heal him. But she can’t due to Ashe. So she tries to go through the lighthouse instead. But surprise!!! The enemy Hog or tracer are right there. So the poor Ana takes dmg and has to back off. Tracer chases, so she uses nade to repel her and heal herself… and now she has to decide whether to risk running across Ashes LOS to get the mini healthpack, or duel the Tracer despite only being half-HP.
Inevitably, she dies.
Either to Ashe or the Tracer or Hog. Meanwhile your Hammond is getting shield-bashed and knocked back on the enemy backline, and your Hog is asleep on the flank. During your death you see the enemy Ana all cozy behind her Orisa + shield. Shes getting anti-nades every chance she can and is dealing dmg… Due to the shield, she’s got less healing to do and more protection. The whole team does. So the whole team can play more aggressively.
Tanks get cards that say 30k dmg blocked. Thats 30k dmg that your Supports dont need to heal. 30k dmg that doesn’t hit your teammates.
Zen can lob an Orb on someone but he has to maintain LOS with them or the orb disappears. Same with discord. And his whole value comes from dealing dmg to build ult but if he can’t peek the corner due to the enemy widow waiting for him to, then what is he supposed to do?
Brig gets dumpstered by spread out (hog/ball flank comps) since her value is AOE close quarters healing. She also needs to be close to proc inspire.
Bap needs to maintain LOS of his team to heal and deal dmg, or else he’s losing value.
Moira is a close range healer and orb doesn’t last long with the way it bounces on most maps.
Lucio needs to be close to people to heal, so he (like brig) can get trashed on by double off tank comps unless he focuses on speed boost + dps’ing OR its a koth map where everyone is playing close anyway.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about because Mercy is a great support to play when you have wacky teamcomps and no shields. Her range is 15m and she can break LOS for 2 seconds before her beam breaks so she can dance/strafe at corners and be safe. She also has fast mobility to quickly reposition and juke long range attacks. And she has rez to save a teammate who got picked due to no shield.
Anyway I’m down for getting rid of shields… but only if they rework 80% of the chokepoints on these maps and increase healing lmao
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Natural cover is all well and good… but you win the game by getting on the point, and the point doesn’t usually have natural cover.
I mean it isn’t exactly rocket science that if teams a) have to leave cover and b) will get instantly deleted once they leave cover, they’re going to start to rely on shields to be able to safely leave cover. If Blizzard wants to make teams less dependent on shields, they have to dial back T2K, but they don’t want to do that because they’re jealous of CS:GO.
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Most heroes in this game don’t have the kit for natural cover. You need to be able to peak and poke for that, which usually means hitscan. Natural cover is tailored for more typical FPS games.
Immortal cart: Am I a joke to you?
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because a cart is definitely going to cover you from a sniper on high ground looking down on you… or a pharah/echo flying above…or that the enemy tanks or any other enemy threats aren’t going to threaten you away from the payload… not to mention shatters being allowed to go over/under payloads totally didn’t happen /s
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Ah yes, I am on Numbani attack A. My tanks are Hog Ball or Dva Zarya or some combination of those heroes. I have no cover to get to the point whatsoever. Maybe my Dva/Ball engages some high ground, great, unless the whole team goes dive I cant do anything but try and get to point in front of the enemy team. Say we actually get in point. Now what? Dva/Ball is going to get bursted down from behind the shielded enemy team, our Hog or Zarya might get a hook off or bubble to save the other tank, great. But then what, the team has no protection whatsoever and is trying to engage a team that is just sitting behind their shields and spamming. You could flank sure, but by the time you possibly get a pick or two flanking, your frontline and healers are demolished by their superior frontline and possible flankers. This is all coming from a tank main. A shoddy frontline is the worst thing a team can have, a crappy dps can be dealt with by making their job as easy as possible by giving them tons of space and heals, a lousy healer can also be dealt with by allowing plenty of peel and playing safely while maintaining comms, but a lousy tankline cannot be remedied.
I’ll explain what I mean since you all don’t seem to get it. You can still use natural cover to push forward. I was on Junker town today and my team had a hog and zarya. So no barrier. The healers were Mercy and Lucio. So very little healing too. So I decide. Ok that means I need someone with self sustain who likes to work on his own. So I pick Reaper.
Before the game starts the enemy Widow brags about being top 500 on his main account. The match starts and he instantly pops 3 of our guys one after another. So I made it my mission from that point to focus all my attention on him. I used natural cover; dodging from one building to another. In order to get as close to him without him seeing me and without using my abilities so I had an escape plan if I needed one. Then just to test his aim I teleported up beside him. I was expecting a true top 500 widow to pop my head as soon as I appeared but he missed, a lot, and I took him out. From that point on I decided he was definitely not a top 500 widow and kept sneaking up and taking him out the whole match leading to us winning even though they had the far better comp.
I couldn’t have done that if I was dumb and just stood out in the open the whole time. He would have just kept popping me and my team’s heads. But because I used natural cover and kept taking him out they were free to do their jobs without fear of the widow constantly taking them out.
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It’s not so much failure to acknowledge the importance of natural cover. Any person who played other FPS games knows how valuable natural cover is.
It’s the tremendous advantage shields offer. Having cover that is transparent, protects you completely, can be placed anywhere and any time, can be moved, and allows you to shoot through it while blocking the enemy projectiles is too much of an advantage to not run it.
Your team is at a severe disadvantage if you are not running a shield while the enemy is.
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Because natural cover is missing in places, where it’s needed. Like control points, which usually are rather large square without any objects to hide behind.
So, why bother to use something, that isn’t in places you need it to be?
Bingo.
It would not be hard if everyone in the game is playing like that. The main problem comes when the enemy is defending (more cover naturally, they can wait for you to go in) AND also they have natural cover AND shields.
You will need A LOT of firepower to bypass those shields AND also stay alive. Not to mention that you overlap body block with LOS for your DPS, so literally only flankers would be viable.
Have you tried aiming to anything that is behind shields+natural cover+camping/defending when you have a roadhog and a dva moving around your LOS and blocking it? . Its not easy, and its not a matter of skill rank. Its basically counter productive.
Because most people need the big blue rectangle to not die instantly. Either that or the moderately sized flying rectangle or the big blue rounded trapezium that pops up on the screen before breaking after 1.2 seconds.