Why is there such a difference between Rein and Winston?

General Discussion
1

I get everyone is constantly comparing Rein and orisa. Personally I think if they just made fortify available more and solid, she’d be able to create enough space without barrier that they’d be basically equal. It’s just a question of how long Devs can hold out being stubborn now that they’ve committed to being “aggressive”.

The thing I don’t really see anyone talking about is Winston… anyone that has played since release -knows- that Winston was originally a main tank, just dive instead of death ball. People actually argue about this now.

Some small differences between them that I think add up to a significant power discrepancy:

Their best complement is Zarya. The peel they have is great, but Zarya will nearly always be better off with rein because:

The weapons:
Winston is weak to armor, and Rein is burst damage. Rein also has minor knockback, so he’s literally creating space as he’s in because you don’t want to lose control, even if it’s minor, so you’re going to get out of his range.

Their tanki-ness:
Reinhardt not only has the best barrier in the game, and a better weapon than Winston, but he has 200 armor and 300 health. And he also has knockback resistance. Winston on the other hand, has only 100 armor and 400 health, while having a weapon weak to armor… why?

Engagement:
Rein either can engage with a charge that is a 1HKO, or he can slowly advance with his amazing shield and knockback resistance.
Winston has to engage with his leap and risk getting airborne damage with a worse weapon and likeliness of sustaining airborne damage which is why coordinating with a Zarya is so necessary and is actually -hard- to do, whereas a Zarya is just gonna watch a rein and get effortless charge even when not in voice chat. He has no knockback resistance, and might be able to create minor space + block some healing if he dives backline, but with that small period of time you’re without leap you’re highly vulnerable, which makes it better to be super sneaky with positioning to get into place but risk your team having a few seconds of a 5v6 teamfight until you can get in.

Ultimates:

Rein has one of the best ults in the game, can combo with half the roster. Winston is really just clutch in OT when you wanna push people off payload, or when you wanna disrupt backline to interrupt healing while team pushes frontline, doesn’t combo with anyone.

Idk. Winston feels way weaker than rein. And I know skill matters but pickrate and winrate in higher tiers says a lot as well as just how the kits look on paper as well as how they feel in game.

2 Likes
2

The ability to choose your position in a fight has value, which inevitably comes in trade for something else. Winston and Reinhardt contribute to different game plans, where Winston wants the fight moving quickly from place to place, and Reinhardt just wants the teams to walk up and squish their faces together until one wins.

Reinhardt is incapable of jumping to higher ground or bypassing the enemy front line, so he compensates with a bigger barrier and a bit more damage to give him advantages in a face-to-face team fight, since that’s the only kind of fight he’s good at.

2 Likes
3

Yeah but the entirety of the kit in comparison to Reinhardt seems… not equal.

Rein also has a 31% pickrate and 54% winrate, while Winston has 6% and 52%… so not sure that the mobility is worth everything else his kit is lacking

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4

Winston has 8m range, while Rein has 5m. That 3m difference allows Winston to easier dance around the barrier. Sure Rein’s damage is burst and good against armor. But he can’t swing while using barrier.

Let’s imagine a case where Winston and Rein swap their primary fire and barrier mechanism. The new Winston jump pack to their backline and land for a perfect 50 dmg. Two swings for 150 dmg to kill a backline (takes 2 seconds). Including the airborne time, the opponent has around 3 seconds for opponent to react and kill a defenseless tank. Would you take that trade? Not to mention if the land was not perfect, you need to chase them around, giving them more time to kill. I don’t think 100 more armor would help here. You can’t pick each kit from the heroes and compare them in isolation. You need to compare them as a system.

BTW, Winston’s primary fire being weak against armor is not that big of a problem because he is not meant to focus on enemies with armor. That’s why Brig is so good against Winston. Winston sometimes feels weak because he has many hard counters (Brig, Hog, Mei, Sombra) and soft counters (Reaper, McCree), while Rein is not countered by anything when paired with Zarya.

Winston’s ultimate is usually weaker than Rein, but if you play both of them correctly, Winston should charge faster, which balance them out. Winston’s ult could be way more useful in certain situations than Rein’s (stall, isolate half of their team, disruption, knock to pit, etc), because 1) it lasts way longer; 2) you get value from it without needing support from the team, while Rein needs the whole team to cleanup a good shatter.

5

The difference here is that Reinhardt is a frontline fighter, while Winston is a backline fighter. Their kits are tuned to their own respective roles.

Reinhardt is tankier, slower, and more powerful, because he’s going toe-to-toe with the enemy tank, while also taking incoming fire from the enemy’s midline fighters. He needs to dish out his damage in large bursts to minimize his shield’s downtime.

Winston is fast, but weak. A guerilla gorilla, if you will :slight_smile: Yes, his weapon is so-so, but it’s not meant to be used in a direct engagement with an enemy tank. It’s used to harass the enemy’s backline, and force squishies to direct their attention towards you, and away from their team. Yes, his ultimate has low damage, but you don’t pop it to secure kills. You pop it to throw the enemy team into chaos, opening up an opportunity for your team to go in and take advantage of the disorganization.

If the two of them are compared in a vacuum, yes, Winston can seem objectively weaker than Reinhardt. But we should always contextualize a hero’s kit with their playstyle, and both of their kits complement their playstyle very well.

6

Well Winston is a gorilla and Reinhardt is human duh

1 Like
7

Winston and Reinhardt are not very comparable at all because they do not have similar traits.

You traditionally run Winston into open maps and maps with awkward terrain. Lijang Tower Gardens or Oasis City Center. Reinhardt does better on maps with many corners, little high ground, and short sight lines between corners and terrain. Lijang Tower Control Center or Oasis University is Reinhardt map. Gibraltar is the go to Winston map and King’s Row is the go to Reinhardt map.

They fill different needs.

8

Rein has:
Almost 3x more barrier.
More damage.
Better abilities.
Probably the top tank ult.

Winston has:
The ability to keel over and die the second Reaper enters the game.
…?

2 Likes
9

More than barrier the key difference between rein and winston is close range damage, now reaper counters both, but he will have to think thrice before pushing a rein close as he has tools to decimate him, what does winston have run away.

Winstons dmg numbers are anicient. He is a chicken hero like genji who has to dive into no mobility supports like ana or zen, but even ana will bravely walk into his bubble and try to nade or sleep him cause he cant kill her easily with his 60 dps.

A hero that had potential to be king kong plays like a buck buck buckaa chicken.

The issue is not rein the issue is winston has been bad long before rein meta.

One of the key characteristics of tanks is high dmg in close range like, dva sigma rein hog ball winston plain lacks that orissa used to have fortify to make up for slow dps but she doesnt have that now which is why she is also weak.

A tank should be able to control the space around him.

10

If you’re engaging using your leap without a Dva with dm ready or something like that, you’re playing Winston wrong. I’m down for playing Reinhardt in dive though :smiley:

11

For Rein. For Winston it’s D.Va.

12

Rein/Zarya is an easy comp to understand and to execute in a ladder environment where teamwork is kind of lacking. Dive is much harder. It really comes down to that.

13

Winston does not seem that far removed in ability from DVA/Roadhog/Zarya/Orisa/WB.

Rein outclasses all of them in nearly any map. Zarya is versatile enough to be ran with any of them that are competent except maybe dva who is starting to feed even more than roadhog in some scenarios/team comps, but rein is kind of too far removed from the rest of them.

I think Orisa/Winston need minor buffs, or rein needs a minor nerf.

14

Dva can decimate at close range and survive as well as get out.That said she is probably close to winston than others you listed.

Roadhog is a bad tank due to lack of synergy but no one can walk into his space and kill him not even reaper. Its a death sentence for any squishy to push into road hog.

Zarya she both enables other tanks as well as a powerhouse byherself.

Orissa is in a weak state if they buff fortify she will be back to being good,

WB is winston dva 10x he can damage cc distract and get out and has ton of survivability in terms of mobility CC and shields.

Winston is just in need of buffs. winston will be bad even if you make rein trash tier like orissa, cause winston is weak.

15

I always seem to do well with Winston, his ability to throw chaos into the middle of an enemy team is great if you have a team that can take advantage of it.

1 Like
16

Because of their playstyles. Feel free to look up high tier gameplay and if you look at the hero’s primary role in a teamfight and their positioning, you’ll quickly see why Rein and Orisa are comparable while Rein and Winston are not

17

keep in mind that a winston comp is countered more easily then a reinhardt comp.

one dps just needs to pick reaper and suddenly winston needs to really watch out were he wants to engage.

18

Fact is Winston is the worst tank for win rate and Rein is the best. They need to buff Winsont so his winrate gets somewhere close to Rein.

19

Rein likes to play corners.

Winston likes to play high ground.

Rein gets more value when the enemy has less map cover.

Winston gets more value when the enemy has more map cover.

Beam heroes love to play with Rein, and against Rein.

Beam heroes hate playing with Winston, and against Winston.

20

Winston is stronger than Rein on high-ground maps.

TBH, they both have different ways of getting value.

The issue is, at low tiers, not many understand how exactly you get value out of Winston.
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Here’s an easy way to visualize how:

Let’s assume your team has Rein & Zarya on Anubis attack.

And your team & enemy is at a stand-off on the left choke near mega.

Your team can’t push in. The choke is too small. And enemy formation too tight.

It doesn’t matter if Zarya is fully charged.

A decent enemy will hold that choke.
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Now let’s say you got Winston off-tank instead of Zarya.

If Winston jumps straight to point, the enemy faces a sudden dilemma:

Either hold the choke & lose the point…

Or collapse to point & lose the choke…

No matter what they do, they lose something:

● if enemy collapses to point, your team enters the choke for free
● if enemy stays at choke, Winston caps the objective
● if enemy tries to deal with Winston & also hold choke, they have to split

Meaning, they wont be as strong up front.

Meanwhile, Winston can easily bubble, then jump to right, high-ground mega, heal, then drop down to harass the 2 contestors on point.

● if those contestors are healers:

GG.

Winston distracts them. Enemy front has no sustain & crumbles.

● if those contestors are DPS:

GG.

Enemy front is outnumbered & outgunned.

Winston can keep dropping to point, bubble, harass, jump back to high-ground, get mega, drop back to point, kill, then jump back up etc…

…until entire enemy is overwhelmed by pressure up front & pressure behind.

(at no point is Winston in danger, jump escape is always available)

All this space taken despite swapping huge firepower in Zarya for weak firepower in Winston.

Because with Zarya, the stand-off remains until one team breaks.

But Winston’s mobility allows the taking of space without waiting for one side to break.

Winston forces the issue without waiting to see who has the better deathball.

Forcing the enemy to look behind, means less eyes on your frontline.

When that happens: your DPS is being pressured less & can exert more pressure on distracted enemies.

Just 1 big jump to the point relieves pressure at the choke & allows your frontline to move forward.

When played like this, Winston can feel superior to Rein.

But really, both have maps where they shine.