Overwatch

Hero Guides

The three main play styles — Brawl, Dive, and Poke — are generally in a rock-paper-scissors fight with one-another.

Goal: to stick together, move in fast, and get on top of the enemy team

Prioritized abilities:

Effective range: close

Things to avoid:

Long-range heroes. The team’s goal is to stick together and get on top of enemies, so only close/medium-range heroes will be effective here.
Heroes who want to run alone, for example Sombra, who regularly needs to leave to disengage.
Single-target healers. It’s more difficult to heal the correct target in the chaos of a brawl.

Good Brawl picks:

Situational picks:

Winston. Jump only to disengage, not to engage. Play like a Reinhardt. Use your shield to survive longer.
Symmetra. Teleporters can get your team around difficult terrain fast.

Goal: to be able to quickly jump on vulnerable enemies

Prioritized abilities:

High mobility (jumps, teleports, etc)
Abilities to keep from dying (Kiriko’s Suzu, Moira’s Fade, Tracer’s Recall)
Vertical movement (Hanzo’s, Genji’s or Kiriko’s wall climb, Winston’s jump pack)

Effective range: variable

Things to avoid:

Heroes that can’t engage and disengage, or doing your job at range. If you can’t get in and out without dying, or you can’t do your job at range, then avoid that hero.
Dive is not played as ”Brawl, but everyone jumps in”.

Good Dive picks:

Situational picks:

Brigitte. If your composition is running Ana, stick with the Ana to protect her.
Lucio, if running Kiriko.
Mercy, if running Ashe, Echo, or Pharah.

Goal: deal damage from range, force the enemy team into bad positions, get picks, and take space

Prioritized abilities:

Effective range: long

Things to avoid:

Close-range heroes. They will have nothing to do for most of the fight.
Support heroes whose main benefit is multi-target healing. You will rarely group up enough for this to be efficient.

Good Poke picks:

Situational picks: