Overwatch is always getting new updates sometimes even in the middle of tournaments so it is super important for teams to figure out how those changes affect the meta as fast as possible. In this article i will talk about how i think about the meta and what can the best ways to figure it out.

New Patch, Now What?

When new patch hits some teams panic a bit and start changing everything take out the heroes they perceive that were nerfed and start playing with the heroes that got buffs or new heroes sometimes without even thinking what the changes really mean, and if you have both teams in a scrim doing that it’s even worse, while both teams trying new stuff is fine for players to get a feel for the changes, the amount of useful information you get from those scrims in terms of hero composition is minimal.

In terms of scrims the best way to test new strategies is to play them against what was already good before the patch, the new meta must be able to beat the old meta or it really isn’t a new meta, sometimes people forget that. One thing you always need to keep in mind is…

It’s still Overwatch.

Yes heroes changed, yes there can be a new map but you are still playing Overwatch. What do i mean by this? No matter what changes you are playing the same game, so the knowledge you got from previous metas and your understanding of the game is still valuable when a new patch hits, and not only that Blizzard keeps the same design trying to keep the game balanced and so that there can be some sort counter play. For me everything in Overwatch is balanced around Mobility, Health, Damage, Range (Also Utility like stuns and shields but i’ll leave this out for simplicity.)

Let’s look at some heroes.

Tracer got high mobility and damage but low health and range. McCree got high damage long range but low health and mobility. Winston got high mobility and health but low damage and range. Roadhog got high damage and health but low mobility and range. So you start seeing a pattern for every advantage a hero got there must be a downside if you want a hero with high damage and high mobility then it will have low health, some heroes blur the lines more than others but all heroes that will come will also follow this or they will be broken.

You can also imply counters based of these, a long range high damage hero will counter a low range low mobility hero, a high mobility high health hero will counter a low mobility low hp hero and so on. So…

How does this apply to the meta?

To apply this to discovering the meta we need to get all these factors together into a team strategy/composition. For that we don’t even need to look at specific heroes (for now).

Let’s keep it basic and pick one of the factors for our strategy, for example Mobility and pick heroes based on that. Picking heroes based on mobility will mean they will more than likely have either low health high damage, high health low damage and more than likely they will also be close range. What do we end up with? Yes, it would be a full dive composition.

If we go to the other extreme with low mobility you will end up with a composition that needs high survivability, heroes with high health and shields and we end up with a full tank composition.

In theory, not looking at map advantages, a close range high survivability composition would beat a low range lower survivability composition. So a full tank would beat a full dive if this ended here full tank would be the meta.

What kind of heroes beat a close range, low mobility composition with high health? Long range high damage heroes. Pair them with mobile heroes that the tanks can’t reach and you’ve got the counter. But wouldn’t this be countered by a full dive? Exactly we’ve got a rock, paper, scissors balance.

Overwatch — Rock Paper Scissors

These obviously aren’t the only hero compositions you can play and you can hybridize them to make them less counterable.

And that’s what teams do specially on first point defenses. On defense you don’t want to play with a composition that is easily countered so you end up with a composition that isn’t really a counter to anything but also can’t get countered easily. In terms of the last meta we would end up with a composition that contains heroes that can deal with tanks and that can deal with dive for example the Orisa Junkrat Widowmaker Brigitte compositions (widowmaker also makes sure enemy doesn’t play Pharah).

Now you could ask.

If it’s rock, paper, scissors how do we end in a meta where everyone just plays dives or just play tanks?

That’s kinda the secret of figuring out the meta, those happen when there is a change or composition that breaks the cycle. Sometimes that answer can be in those hybrid compositions where you kinda try cover the weakness but usually it comes down to the those three rock paper scissors archetypes i wrote above.

But there are times the patches break the cycle and its important to identify it, imagine they do a change that makes a dive composition less effective versus a long range high damage composition or a change that makes tank comps able to deal with long range high damage composition. Changes like that where it makes one of the archetypes be less effective will make another be the meta for example if tank comps aren’t effective then full dive will be the meta. Maps can also contribute to breaking the cycle.

Map influence.

Different maps favor different archetypes, a long and open map would favor long range and/or high mobility heroes, a map with lot of high ground will favor heroes that can abuse it, a short closed map will favor short range and/or tanky heroes. So in some maps even if you have a tank heavy meta you will still see dive compositions played in them, a good example would be second point Dorado(like many other second points) that for me no matter what happens will always favor more dive style compositions. So some heroes will be more effective in some maps or zones of the maps and that influences the meta.

Hero Choice their Influence and how to Adapt.

Now we start getting into the more specific part and this is where the Patch Notes start getting more into play. I will use examples for the patch before Hammond since it’s the one i’m more familiar with but it can inform and help future choices.

I’ll put here what it wrote to my team almost at the start of the Brigitte meta like a week after patch so not everything might have come true but might be interesting.

How to adapt: See two snipers? Go Dive. See Dive? Go Brigitte. See Brigitte? go 2–2–2 with two long range high damage DPS. Don’t see Widowmaker? Can go Pharah. See Pharah? Go Widowmaker. See Pharah/Junk+Snipers? Go double Sniper. See 3–3? Pray to God. Kappa (2–2–2 should work just gotta play around high-ground and distance can go Pharah Hanzo/Widowmaker or even Orisa Junk Brigitte comp with one DPS or maybe counter with three DPS). This way of adapting is kinda why we starting to see more teams starting a defense with Orisa Brigitte Junk Widowmaker (for example mercy zen brigitte orisa widowmaker or with Brigitte instead of the zen and then one more tank stuff like that), instead of starting double sniper. Widow stops Pharah and snipers, Brigitte makes diving harder, so other team can’t just swap to full dive like they will if you defending with double sniper no Brigitte.

So you can see how each hero can influence the compositions and sometimes one hero can influence a whole meta like Brigitte did, in my opinion without Brigitte you would be able to just keep diving in all maps. So now we’ve another new patch and a new hero what can change? We go back New Patch, now What?

New Meta, The Future.

I haven’t been watching scrims in this patch so I've limited information but i’ll make the exercise and think what the meta can look like the future.

So to figure out the future meta you first start with the past you look at previous meta and also what came before for example before Brigitte it was a pretty dominant dive meta, if something happened to Brigitte it would probably mean dive would be dominant again, nothing really huge happened to Brigitte so let’s just look how the last meta was and what is new and what it can change.

New Hero, Hammond (I’m not calling him wrecking ball sorry Blizzard), let’s use what I’ve said before, Hammond is a hero with high health/survivability and high mobility so this kind of Hero fits into rush or dive comps and he got a ability that gives him more shield depending on the number of enemies nearby so it could make him better vs tanks. His weakness i would say is stuns/hacks and he is a tank that can make space for the team but doesn’t really protect team like an off-tank like Zarya or D.Va. Based on this i would probably see him in some kind of super aggressive dive comps,maybe even in the main tank role vs tanks can also see him in a third tank role(can you imagine a winston d.va hammond dive? lol).

Other changes: some long range hit-scan heroes got a little more damage at long range. Sombra became broken good, Ana ultimate improved, little nerfs to Brigitte, Hanzo and Widowmaker, Lucio buffed, Mercy nerfed, little buff to Moira.

So we will see way more Ana, Lucio and Sombra. This plus Hammond means high mobility comps got better, this doesn’t just mean dive, put a Lucio Ana with a full tank comp rushing and as long as there are no high-ground or you can somehow clear it, it will still be effective.

What i think this patch hurts the most is the long range dps options, and it hurts them in two ways, yes there is a new dive hero and people will be rushing with Lucio more but the new Sombra is the killing blow in my opinion. The new Sombra in my view can completely destroy compositions that play with a far away back-line, Sombra with infinite time stealth can setup in enemy back-line get perfect scouting and if a sniper or zen is alone in the back it’s a one clip death. Teams will need to learn how to deal with her.

So remember the rock, paper scissors? If the long range dps become less effective then we could have a break in the cycle if for example the Tank comps have a way to implement Sombra in their strategy they will be in a good place to beat the double high damage dps compositions (they even could do it before, it required a lot of coordination from the dps team). So what will the meta be?

My Prediction that can be totally wrong.

With Hammond coming in, with Sombra being a threat to back-lines, with Lucio and Ana coming in more, if we see less Zenyatta we will see Genji way more, my prediction is that Rush comps will be more effective. Rush comps can either be Full Tank rush comps, get a Lucio and just Rush the other team with your ball of death, or Full Dive comps(with Hammond involved). With teams being able to close the distance this effectively i really think the meta will be about these rush comps than ever before. The dive favorable maps/zones are normally the ones that change less and we will still probably see Winston D.va Widowmaker Genji/Tracer(even Sombra) or full dive don’t really see any reason for them to change much. Will see how right or wrong i am in the next World Cup and Contenders Finals games in the upcoming weeks.

Conclusion.

The most important thing to understand about the meta isn’t just about one or two hero compositions that you copy because they are “meta”, it’s all about understanding all the interactions between the heroes and also between the compositions and also about something i didn’t talk much here that is your players and your team what is the style that benefits the hero pool of your players all of that comes into play. That’s why we can see different metas developing in each region, we’ve the meme EU only plays tanks NA just dives and stuff like that while there isn’t much truth about it, the regions sure have different styles, if you have a region just playing full dive all maps you could probably be pretty successful going in there with a full tank, the meta on that region would be dive comps because meta is kinda what all teams end up “agreeing” is the composition that gives them more chances to win, that doesn’t mean you can’t go and beat them with other composition specially if they never really practice against it.

So my suggestion is learn the hero and composition interactions, the strong and weak points, look at the players you have, look what other teams are doing and make your own “meta”, only thing you’ve to make sure is that you have a plan that can beat what the other teams are playing against, and then practice it a lot in scrims and refine it.