Winston is unplayable in mid tier

Competitive Discussion
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I made a post about this earlier and people said he’s op in top 500. Mid ranks the problem.

TLDR:
You get out of Winston what you put into Winston

Out of 7 games 1-6 tonight (i have a LOT of time playing him over the years. im plat playing in low gold)

0 Mercy’s damage boosted my jumps, valked in

0 kiriko’s tp/suzu jumps

0 moiras faded in with jumps

0 zens discorded dive targets

0 anas nano’d me in or anti’d jumps

1 team played dive and had competent weaver/zen

I was 100% most countered player. Widow is a close 2nd for who gets counterpicked faster

HOW TO FIX:

He needs to be more self reliant. I can’t be bothered teaching all of theses things every game^^ ppl in comp can’t handle the concept that someone their rank knows something they don’t

He likely just needs more health, but i would prefer shorter cooldowns because he has so much downtime waiting or sitting getting healed it makes you pull so much aggro you need the healer to basically catch you mid air leaping out because the bubble rarely lasts long enough before getting destroyed and his hitbox is massive. His half bar plus bubble doesn’t tank long enough to buy slow teams any meaningful time at this rank. I can see why he’s op where everyone’s hyper fast and accurate but nah we don’t live that life here in gold plat. Also, remember you’re, ALWAYS countered and prioritized because you’re an easy target. Any noob can kill a winston. I can play orisa all day or sig all day and get countered once or twice but winston is 4x counter after the first fight. Thats just how we are, we see monkey we go reaper.

I think yellow armour could be replaced by blue regen like zarya, so he doesn’t take all the healers time. Ball at least gets to roll to packs, monkey cant even get to most packs without dying.

getting deleted in primal is fun, maybe make primal shorter but full immune or more dmg resist instead of a larger health bar. Teams can too reliably hard focus him mid ult. To the point where he really needs to leave half way through his ult to be safe and ends up getting nothing done other than feeding his healer ult charge… 99% of healers don’t check who needs ult charge more. them or their partner, and the one with ult ends of doing all the healing for no gain while the other one’s sitting at 80% too slow to get the gains.

This stuff is all so obvious but none of it gets done and no one talks about it. There’s so much old dusty stigma around asking for winston buffs it’s insane. He’s bad, he’s always been bad, you only ever win uncountered or with very strong heals. He’s the genji of tanks, but worse because there’s a lot more expected out of the team.

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I think Ball is just a better pick atm. I only use Winston if they are running like sym + sombra or something where I can actually get decent value from his E. It also depends on the map and what/how your team is playing but I’d rather go Ball like 90% of the time.

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No tank is a bad pick at any tier. They’re all extremely powerful heroes in their own right, and 100% viable at all tiers.

4 Likes
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i hope this was sarcasm because if it wasn’t, you forgot all about Hog

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Hog is the best tank in the game

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It’s because in OW2, there’s no more second tank to take the bulk of the damage or act as a distraction. Now you take ALL the damage as a tank and get all the attention from the enemies. Not to mention they still haven’t gotten rid of many of the anti-tank/tank busting abilities/heroes in the game. So if you’re on winston trying to dive the enemies, unless your DPS helps you with the dive, you’re gonna have a bad time.

There’s less coordination in lower ranks, which means it’s less likely that your teammates are going to help you with the dive. That’s why it’s much harder to make heroes like doomfist work in lower ranks. Wrecking ball is probably the only tank that still works quite well even in lower ranks as a dive tank, thanks to his insane survivability.

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I guarantee you, as a diamond i will absolutely destroy if im put in a gold lobby on winston.
Even if im getting hardcountered im still getting value.
Winston is all about diving the right target at the right moment with the propper jump and shield placement. Even against a reaper i still get my value in diamond.
I still do really well on winston in diamond.

Its all about timings on winston.
You shouldnt jump in and immediatly use your bubble for example except for if they have cc like sleepdart.
Bubble dance correctly and you still get value.
Bubble dance on the edges not in the “middle/front”

I dont know if you ever watched it, but watch ‘Yeatle’ unranked to gm on winston.
Its useful because he will show you how to soft dive for example and when to hard engage.

Imo winston does not need any buffs or changes, the only thing winston needs is the same thing for every other tank. Less tank busters who make it unenjoyable to play tank. Its unenjoyable but not impossible.
You can always start on ball wait for the sombra swap and get 2 fights for free on winston because they wont swap off sombra because emp is too good.

Fyi, im not getting damage boosted on jumps or getting anti nades thrown at them etc. I do most of the dives solo. Yes sometimes i get healed throughout my dive but thats because im in los.
Most of the time im splitting people of from healing, even if its for a second.

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I’m plat tank… I main Winston for tank… in theory you need none of this… you dive in to get 1 pick safely and leave. This turns a team fight to a 4v5. Then you jump back to your supports since hardly anyone can keep up with Winston’s movement or health packs and repeat. Your dps will also need healing so your supports don’t have the time and defence or health to dive the enemy every time you do.