I need to add a main tank to my roster of heroes I can play, but I keep dying immediately upon landing. I could really use some tips on how to play him.
always try to single people out. Never try to fight the team. “Shield Dance” while fighting. (Move from in and out of your bubble against the person/people you’re fighting to take less damage)
Winston is pretty easy but not brain dead. You’re a big target. If you have your jump and you have around 100hp then try to get out and get back to your team.
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for one thing if you jump when you land the momentum sends you farther forward, melee before you land for a animation cancel, other than that it’s pretty much all positioning.
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counter dive is a thing.
try to engage without using leap so you have leap as a escape.
sometimes you just need to go balls deep though
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Winston is mainly about choosing your engagements correctly, good communication, and knowing tactics like bubble dancing (moving in and out of your shield) and punching when about to land for more burst damage.
There is a lot of timing involved in playing Winston, you need to find the right opportunities to separate a member of the enemy team off (preferably a support) and then go from there. You shouldn’t be diving in alone though, so you should communicate with your team when and who you are diving on so the other tank and dps can follow suit.
“Winston requires no skill lol just play him” - Genji main
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also your leap cooldown is more important than you think, specifically when engaging a genji, simply having the cooldown will stop the genji using his dash as the first person to use there movement ability loses control of the engagement.
if you leap first genji can dash your backline knowing you cant touch him for a few seconds.
if he dashes in and you have leap you can collapse on him and he cant escape.
its a mind game.
When attacking a hero with high mobility, like Genji, walk up to them so when they use their mobility, you can use your Super Jump.
You must first acquire a taste for peanut butter.
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Just hold left click.
Not a Winston main, but one tip is to know when to drop your bubble while still in the air. Sometimes if you wait to land before bubbling you’re already dead.
Also, some comps you run Winston into you just can’t dive straight into the enemy team realistically.
I don’t main the monkey, but here’s some things I’ve picked up from playing him
The main thing to know is to know who your target is. You have an auto aim electric beam. Supports and squishes are easy targets. You might not kill them, but that’s ok. Your goal is too harass them and force them to retreat or die. But the number one rule. DO.NOT.TARGET.TANKS. You have low damage. By the time they’re half health, you could’ve killed two supports, made a sandwich, and switch to a tank buster(may be over exaggerating it but you get the picture. Don’t target tanks).
Leap pack is Winston’s only form of mobility. Use it to either engage or escape.
Your sheild can mean the difference between life and death. Use this to cover you and sheild dance. You can also contain certain things in it(for example, and d.va bomb will only hurt the inside if you get it in, and you can block lucios helaing and ult through the Barrier).
Primal rage is a weird ult. The best use I’ve found is stalling or pushing an objective. Your jump is on a two second cooldown, so you can use it in spawn and get back in the fight during a clutch overtime. But don’t use it for the goal of killing anyone unless they’re in a cornerstone or near a ledge. It does petty low damage.
Don’t often jump into groups, if anything you should be stacking damage with a DPS or a fellow tank due to his Tesla Cannon being only 60dps. If you’re gonna use the jump for attack you need to go for squishies like supports, landing right on them causes damage too
Your shield is good for projectiles due to being a bubble but won’t hold for long, sometimes it’s better to use it just to cut off large bursts of damage (like a Barrage or a Self-Destruct), protect someone on the edge of dying or to prep another hero to cast an attack that takes a while to be cast
NEVER ENGAGE AGAINST: Reaper, Tracer, Doomfist, Bastion, Torb, Mei, they will rip you apart
AIM FOR: Zenyatta, Mercy, Hanzo, Widowmaker, Lucio, Brigitte (at a distance, if she starts comboing you need to get out fast), D.Va, Genji and Soldier: 76 (if he puts his biotic field down consider your options)
Do Not Feed Symmetra, you can kill her turrets swiftly but she’ll get so much damage charge out of you. Similar can be said with Torb’s turret, sometimes you can get it but often a Molten Core will be forced and you’ll be dead
Don’t Underestimate panic senses, you know how many times I’ve seen a Genji try in vain to deflect your electricity? It happens, Tesla cannon can also go through shields so a Reinhardt who’s more focused on keeping their shield up will be standing their in vain
Know your range: That can be said for all heroes, Winston’s range is 8m so he has to be quite close, this can help when engaging with CCs though, Brigitte’s shield bash is 6m, McCree’s is 5, if you can avoid those CCs then you can deal with them much easier.
Your Ult is not made for damage, Primal Rage is better suited for disposition, breaking an enemy formation or people contesting points and environment kills
As much as Winston has a decent health pool, he’s still a huge target, Winston players should often play to harass rather than hold, if you’re in a situation where you need to buy time though use your jump, and your ult (ult restores all your health and gets an extra jump).
For team comps, Winston is not the best solo tank unless you have 3 dps, but he is good for Control Maps, lots of close range in that
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I’m gonna do the best that I can but don’t expect anything amazing.
Holding space (or whatever your jump is binded to) when you dive makes you bounce after your dive is finished. This really only works when it’s done more horizontally. This is a good trick to get back to the fight faster. You can also place your shield down when you land and the jump will bring you to the edge of your shield, which is useful when you need to play around your shield.
Shielding tips: a few of my personal shielding tips are bubbling dva bombs, bubbling large chokes (winstons not the best main tank for a choke but the bubble can sometimes win the choke), bubbling in a fight with a dps (this is a smart strategy to survive against high damage, example is soldier. Place your bubble down then do the opposite of what the enemy does, so if they’re inside, you go outside). Bubbling an ulting mccree or soldier, bubbling supports if they’re being attacked, bubbling in a team fight and bubbling a torb turret.
When you land on an enemy, make sure to melee before you land on them. This is gonna make you get some extra burst damage in there. Melee and primary fire will do the same dps as just using primary fire, use melee and primary fire to chip away at armour faster. Melee if an enemy is low on health.
Primal rage is probably one of the most difficult ults to use in the game so you’ve really got to find your style for it. The most common styles I see it used for are stalling a point, getting your health back during a team fight and knocking your enemies off the map/point. Your melee can be animation cancelled by using primal rage immediately after, you won’t see the animation but you will receive the hitmarker. This is a very hard trick to pull off but you can combo your dive, melee and primal rage together to burst down 100 damage in a second but it is very hard to do. Not even the pro winstons can do it on a consistent level. The combo goes dive>melee>land>primal rage>primal punch.
Things to avoid:
• bastion, literally swap off winston if there’s a bastion. There’s a low chance you’re going to be effective with a bastion there.
• enemies being healed, your dps isn’t high enough to reliably kill a pocketed hero. If they’re low on health you might be able to kill them but most of the time they’ll kill you first. This goes for almost all healing, lucio’s non-amped healing is really the only one that this doesn’t apply to. That being said winstons dps is 60 while lucio’s hps is about 16 or something like that so it’s still a big hit to his damage.
Tanks, they have too much health for you to attack them, if you’re going to attack one, make sure your team is there to help you.
Enemies to focus:
Healers, this one is pretty obvious, killing them is your job.
Baby dva, free ult charge, gimme.
Snipers, also your job to be focusing.
Low health people, winston is a low health destroyer. Anyone under 100 hp and without a mobility ability is almost always a garunteed kill.
IMPORTANT: winston is not a dps, he is not a kill hungry machine. I can’t explain to you when you should be diving in and when you should be retreating from the fight, you will learn that when you play him. Pick your targets wisely, jumping on an alone junkrat is not going to be the smartest idea whereas jumping on a widow and hanzo together will most likely result with 2 kills for you.
Winston performs at his best with teamwork so try to stay close with other high mobility heroes like genji and dva, keep track of your healers because keeping them alive when they get attacked is a game winner. If you want to focus on your winston play alone, I’d recommend FFA but it’s not easy due to briggite and mccree stuns.
Make sure to watch some winston guides by t500 winstons such as “when to punch as winston” by xqc and “one tip for every hero as winston” by karq. Start watching some t500 winston streams such as fissure, gamsu, mano and miro. Also look at some peel and dive guides.
Ps. I’m sorry if there is spelling mistakes in here, it’s currently 1am and I’m on my phone so I don’t have a big keyboard. I’m also sorry if you can’t really understand what I’m trying to tell you, I’m not very good at explain things.
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Use melee against armored targets while simultaneously holding your right trigger.
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This is all good advice.
The biggest tip I would say is to avoid dropping your bubble the moment you land. Wait until people actually start focusing you/damaging you before you drop it. It will prevent you from wasting it in situations where it is not needed and also give you an extra second of survivability, which is a huge deal on Winston.
Another tip is to save your jump cooldown at times, and engage from crafty ways by dropping on enemies from above, or from behind. Then you can deal your damage and your jump will be off cooldown for when you need it, so you can get out.
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