Overwatch Hero Tier List and Meta Report: C U @ LAN

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Opening Thoughts

What’s up guys and gals, CaptainPlanet here to present the Overwatch Hero Tier List and Meta Report: C U @ LAN. This weekend was momentous in the history of Overwatch – marking the game’s largest LAN to date and the end of EnVyUs’ insane 57 win streak at the hands of Rogue, the eventual champions. While the Tournament Meta continued to stagnate, there was still plenty of interesting strategies and Hero usage featured in the grueling two-day tournament, so this week’s report will focus more on some of the higher level strategies on display at the LAN. Before we take a dive into the deep end, let’s get this week’s tiers out of the way.

As always, Raw Data for this and subsequent charts can be found HERE . The data is presented as separate sheets for each Map, for better and more detailed tracking. A Summary Sheet can also be found HERE but its much less pretty. REMINDER: This Data was collected from the Battle for the Atlantic LAN Finals, where 1 hero Limit, and Stopwatch Format was used for Payload Maps

THE TIERS

S Tier (>=95% Usage Rate*): Lucio, Zenyatta

A Tier (>80% Usage Rate): ¿Quién es ‘Sombra’?

B Tier (>50% Usage Rate): Zarya, Winston, Reaper, McCree, Reinhardt

C Tier (>20% Usage Rate): Tracer, Genji

D Tier (>5% Usage Rate): Sombra está aquí

F+ Tier (<5 % Usage Rate with exceptions): Roadhog, D.Va, Junkrat, Mei, Ana, Hanzo

F- Tier (<5% Usage Rate): Symmetra, Widowmaker, Soldier 76, Bastion, Pharah, Torbjorn, Mercy

*What is Usage Rate? For every match, I record the time spent on each hero and divide it by that match’s total time duration. Each of these Data points (a number from 0-1) are then summed across all sides of all matches, then divided by the total number of sides and converted to a percentage to produce a hero’s overall Usage Rate.

The Tier Ranges I’ve chosen** reflect different states of “Balance” in the Meta. This week, the Meta that is being analyzed is the Meta of 1 hero Limit, and Stopwatch Scoring for successful attacks on Payload Maps.

S Tier “The Overpowered heroes”

Lucio and Zenyatta are awesome, nothing to see here. Just kidding…there was actually a bit to be said about the “Dive Meta Duo” of healers in the wake of the Battle for the Atlantic. In previous reports, I made a point to highlight Speed Boost and Discord Orb as the strongest elements of Lucio and Zenyatta’s kits, but it was their ultimates that ultimately (hah) defined much of the strategies in this weekend’s tournament. Many, many times, a Lucio Sound Barrier would give a Genji the survivability he needed to wipe a team, or a Zenyatta Transcendence would completely nullify a Graviton Surge combo. Entire strategies revolved around the two “Defensive” ultimates and while Discord Orb and Speed Boost are present in more scenarios, it would be unwise to sleep on these Heroes’ other abilities.

A Tier “The Core heroes”

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B Tier “The Favorites”

The B Tier represents the all-stars of the Battle for the Atlantic. These Heroes made up the core of most, if not all of the “standard” team compositions, with little variation from map to map. Zarya stands out as the strongest non-Zenyatta/Lucio Hero falling just short of reaching the A Tier this week. Her bubble shield was a key cooldown used throughout the tournament – saving teammates in clutch moments, or simply buffing a diving Reaper or Winston to ensure a pick.

C Tier “The Balanced heroes”

Tracer and Genji are this week’s only C tier heroes, failing to reach the B tier for a couple of reasons. Due to ESL’s strange map pool system not as many King of the Hill maps were played – so not as many Tracers were played (although, she did nearly reach the 50% usage breakpoint). Genji failed to reach the B Tier and above because he’s an offensive specialist – few teams opted to use Genji on King of the Hill or on defense, unless they had a Genji player whose skill was too valuable to waste (see: Tviq and Kyb).

D Tier “The Meta Dependent heroes”

💀 oo,hitvp,rTLbVXShogb

F+ Tier “The Used in Super Specific Scenarios heroes”

The F+ Tier Heroes were low on usage, but high in niche effectiveness. Roadhog fulfilled a similar place as Hanzo – both were used in a couple map openings to try to get a quick pick before either team had time to build ultimate charge. Junkrat was occasionally used to create room on offense, but was heavily used on the rarely-played Temple of Anubis to deny routes of attack. In a similar vein, Mei was MVP of Hanamura first-point defense, as her Ice Wall can deny the entire ground floor entryway for extended periods of time. I included Ana in this section as well for a particular play that Rogue performed after full-holding Cloud9 on Dorado defense. Knowing all they had to do was move the payload a short distance, UnKoe swapped to Ana and quickly built his Nano Boost. 30 seconds later, a Nano-Boosted Reinforce blasted through the choke and bee-lined for Surefour, taking out the McCree player and drawing all of Cloud9’s attention. Reinforce died shortly after smashing Surefour, but aKm and TviQ were then able to capitalize on the space created by the Reinhardt player to wipe Cloud9 in the courtyard – all thanks to a quickly-charged Ana ultimate.

F- Tier “The not used for any reason heroes”

It was a sad tournament for Defense heroes and out-of-Meta heroes. Symmetra was the only Hero out of this cohort who saw serious, successful usage – the rest were either panic or frustration picks, or not picked at all.

** I do not chose the placement of heroes in a Tier, only the Range which defines the Tier. By determining Usage Rate directly from hero Time Played in Tournament Matches, my data is Objectively determined, and not subjective at all.

For a more interactive chart (also less messy looking):

Check here!

CU @ LAN

The Battle for the Atlantic showcased the world’s best Overwatch players, creating memorable highlights of huge Genji plays, McCree Deadeyes, and butt-clenching Graviton Surges. Overwatch is and has always been a team-first game, and this concept was on full display from group stages to the finals. Individual players may end up getting picks or plays of the game, but more often than not it’s with the support of their teammates to put them in a position to succeed. In all team-based esports, the squad who manages their game economy often has the advantage – but what economy exists in Overwatch?

This was a question I (and judging from the game cast, most of the non-pro community) had never really explored, until I watched Flame’s analysis of the tournament matches after the fact. In Overwatch, players and teams trade in an economy of “Ultimate Charge”, and the teams that generate advantages in ultimates and cash in those advantages to advance their goals were the ones who succeeded. We, the casual community, need to become a better-informed audience when it comes to the basic concepts of professional-level play – if only to better enjoy the plays we see on stream. Thanks to Flame – who I’ll lean on heavily for the subsequent analysis – I will structure some of these basic strategic choices in a beginner-friendly, text-based way. If you’d rather watch Flame’s videos (which I highly recommend), you can check out the series here

Ultimate Advantage

Ultimate advantage seems self-explanatory at first glance. Team A has four ultimates available – team B has two ultimates available: Team A should have the advantage. However, like most things in Overwatch context is extremely important. Ultimate advantage only matters in how the ultimates are “spent”. A single Transcendence can nullify three offensive ultimates, creating a 1 for 3 ultimate disadvantage to the offensive team. This also bleeds over to combining ultimates. Combining two ultimates often results in more kills than two separate uses of single ultimates (think Zarya + Genji comboed), but using all of your team’s ultimates to secure a single wipe quickly hits diminishing returns in effectiveness. Once again, it’s all about the context in which these ultimates are “spent”. Using two ultimates to secure a checkpoint on a payload map has more overall impact than spending two ultimates when the payload is unable to move, but using five ultimates to take a final point faster than your opponent will always win out.

Differences in ultimate advantage can sometimes result in teams making decisions that seem counterintuitive, like in this clip:

Immediately following Cloud9’s cap of the first point of Dorado, Rogue leaves the high ground and attacks them at the checkpoint, ultimately getting wiped easily. From the perspective of ultimate advantage, however, they came out on top. How could this be? Rogue began this engagement behind on ultimate advantage– they had just lost the first point in the prior fight, meaning that they had reasonable certainty that Cloud 9 had at least a couple fully-charged ultimates. Despite this, all of Rogue except for aKm dropped from the high ground and fought on the payload, backed up by an aKm High Noon. By sitting on top of the cart, Rogue forced Cloud9 to kill them to keep the payload moving, ultimately leading to Grego using his Sound Barrier and DeBett using his Earthshatter to secure the final kills. Already, we can see that by spending just half of an ultimate (aKm ultimately canceled his High Noon) and by using good positioning, Rogue flipped the ultimate advantage in their favor.

If we compare strict percentages, the gap is even more apparent:

Cloud9 spent two whole ultimates and only gained 16% ultimate charge as a team compared to Rogue’s 96% team gain. Reinforce never even thought about using his fully charged Earthshatter either, preserving it for the next fight. What did Cloud9 ultimately gain out of this exchange? While removing annoying Rogue players from the payload to enable its movement was objectively a good thing, Rogue knew that they could reach the second archway and contest the payload from above in the time it took Cloud9 to push the payload that far. Ultimately, Cloud9 traded one offensive and one defensive ultimate for half of a McCree ultimate, a meaningless stretch of payload path, and 80% worth of ultimate disadvantage.

The Dive Meta

Ultimate Economy

The above scenario is a perfect example of the Dive Meta. “Diving” is not limited to attacks: defenses will attempt to take advantage of particular map areas to make a kamikaze attack that results in a net-positive in ultimate advantage. The “Dive” Meta has arisen not just due to the impact of Lucio Speed Boost and Zenyatta’s 50% Discord Orb, but in response to the strength of their defensive ultimates. While Rogue demonstrated a unique way to gain an advantage in ultimate economy on Dorado, the most common way to turn the tide is to pop a Transcendence and nullify multiple stacked offensive ultimates. Transcendence often results in 2 for 1, and even 3 for 1 trades of entire ultimates and is a pretty obvious game-changer.

What does this have to do with the Dive Meta? The existence of Transcendence – and Sound Barrier to a lesser extent – has forced teams to go all-in to either kill the Zenyatta or force him to pop Transcendence in an non-ideal scenario. As soon as you get that crucial Zenyatta pick, your team is free to spend their ultimates as they please, no amount of individual talent (usually) can deal with a Zarya + Genji combo without it.

Creating Space

Strategies that have evolved in the Dive Meta can be analysed without the lens of ultimate economy as well. Time and time again, Reinforce could be seen charging into the fray as Reinhardt or Winston with a Zarya bubble – only to die shortly thereafter. Hell, even with an Ana Nano Boost, he only manages to secure one kill before dying:

The key concept here is space. The space that Reinforce creates with these plays is both real and abstract: a Nano Boosted Reinhardt or a Zarya-shielded Winston running at you forces your team to move back, but it also occupy significant attention in the minds of the opposing players. It’s hard to ignore the giant, red, hammer-swinging German of doom so while Cloud9 is occupied stunning and otherwise focusing down Reinforce, aKm and TviQ have the freedom to move around and frag uncontested. In this case, Winz ends up with most of the killing blows – most likely due to the Zarya bubble he drops on Reinforce (see the frame below) instantly charging him to full energy.

Sidenote – can we get some better quality Twitch VODs? Jesus christ

I love it when a plan comes together

Sometimes, the stars align in Overwatch. With their backs to the wall, tournament on the line, Rogue defeated EnVyUs in a single play on the final round of Lijiang Tower – ending EnVy’s 57 win streak. While the play received an appropriate amount of hype from the live casters, the millisecond timing of events that had to occur in an exact order to set up Winz’s tournament-defining Graviton Surge is beyond belief. Flame does an amazing job breaking it down, but I will give you my own play-by-play as well:

Starting points:

EnVyUs has the point, ticking up at 57%. Winz has 91% ultimate charge on Graviton Surge Internethulk has Winston Ultimate TviQ has Tracer Sticky Bomb ready. KnoxXX has 84% on Sound Barrier Taimou has just pressed Q on Reaper, Death-Blossoming Rogue just outside their side of the chokepoint on Night Market.

The Play

Taimou bey-blades towards Rogue, losing his Zarya shield in the process. He secures a kill on aKm, drops Winz to 100 health, but gets killed by UnKoe’s Zenyatta.

Winz begins to take additional damage, dropping down to 5 health then heals to 7, but reaches 100% on Graviton Surge. During this time, KnoxXx also reaches 100% on Sound Barrier

Internethulk uses his Winston ultimate and Winz’s personal bubble comes off cooldown. Winz uses the personal bubble, but not before Internethulk swipes at him. Winz does not die, however, as he received a clutch Sound Barrier from KnoxXx in the split second before Internethulk whacks him.

Winz, not expecting to still be alive, lands next to four EnVyUs players after getting knocked back by Internethulk. He promptly drops Graviton Surge and dies shortly thereafter.

TviQ, apparently having watched this all unfold, tosses his Sticky Bomb into the mass of players – securing the team wipe, the point cap, and the victory for Rogue

The split-second timing, the luck, the outcome – this is what Overwatch is all about. Had any of these events happened differently, had Taimou gotten one more shot off, had KnoxXx’s Sound Barrier hit a second later, had Internethulk whacked Winz in a different direction Rogue would be going home, and we’d potentially have a still-undefeated EnVyUs on our hands (although Reunited would have given them an excellent challenge). Instead, we got one of most mind-blowing plays and epic storylines in this still young game.

Offense / Defense Payload Win Shares

Data “As Is”

For the most part, all Hero’s win shares and loss shares mirrored their overall usage due to the stagnation of the Meta. Lucio and Zenyatta had near 100% usage on both offensive and defensive losses, Zarya led the tanks on offense while Reinhardy led the tanks on defense, and the DPS had relatively even usage on successful attacks while McCree led them on defenses.

Offense vs. Defense

While most of the DPS (the ones that were used, anyway) fell within ~10% of each other on offense, there was much more variation on defense. McCree was used in 95% of defensive wins while only in 56% of offensive wins, and Reaper had a split of 66% defense win shares and 35% offensive win shares. Reinhardt had similar outcome – 56.55% success on offense vs 82% on defense – and perhaps contributed to McCree’s numbers by providing a safe barrier for cover. Zarya offense vs. defense win shares were the opposite of Reinhardt’s – and her meteoric rise as the premier tank of the Dive Meta is to blame.

Offense vs. Offense – Defense vs. Defense

Not too many Heroes stood out for their offense / defense win share differentials because of the homogenization of lineups in the current meta, but as always there were some areas of interest. Reaper had the largest differential: on offense it appears that the more time that teams devoted to Reaper, the less likely they were to succeed – a differential of 27%. Genji and Zarya on the other hand, were used 14% and 13% more often in offensive wins than losses, perhaps due to the dominance of Rogue and Reunited’s Genji players, TviQ and Kyb respectively. These two teams reached the finals and used Genji in many more situations than the rest of the teams competing due to the strength of their Genji players.

On defense, McCree was the only Hero who had a noticeable advantage – a 10% usage bias towards defensive wins vs. losses. D.Va and Tracer had the same numbers in the opposite direction, which makes a bit of sense. Teams bringing out the Tracer and D.Va picks are doing so to try to stop a faster stopwatch time, so their desperation indicates they’re more likely to lose.

Final recommendations:

Not much to say, other than Zarya is a must-have on offense and to curb back the Reaper usage on offense as well.

Let’s talk swaps

Swaps “To”

In what’s quickly becoming a boring trend, Tracer lead the swaps “to” board in the Battle for the Atlantic. Her 85 total swaps was an enormous amount – to put this in perspective there were only ~64 payload maps played total. Since King of the Hill’s lineups often included no swaps at all, Tracer’s high swap rate indicates a shift in how pros have begun to approach payload and 2cp maps. Each point was seen as a potential battleground, and more teams are swapping to Tracer to add a few seconds to the overall payload time at mid-map points, not just the final point. Winston, D.Va, Reaper, and Genji make up the next “tier” of “swapped to” Heroes, all of which due to specializing in certain map types.

Swaps “From”

Reaper led the swaps “from” once again for his use in specific map areas. Most teams will swap to a Reaper mid-map but will swap off him as a change of pace if they feel like their strategy is not working, or if their strategy works so well that they move past the area of the map that favors him. The same goes for Zarya and McCree, teams will often open with both of these Heroes but then swap to a Genji, Tracer, Reaper, Winston, or D.Va depending on the map situation.

Final thoughts and shoutouts

Huge thanks to Flame this week for doing great deep dives on the Battle for the Atlantic matches, I learned a ton from his videos and hope to see more of them. If you want more Flame-y goodness, you can check out his YouTube Channel or Twitch Channel. Also big shoutouts to all the teams who competed in the Battle for the Atlantic, as well as all of the support staff and talent who made it an excellent tournament. From what I’ve heard, it was a great event for players and viewers alike – and while no production is perfect all parties have learned a lot from the experience.

Until next time,

CaptainPlanet