10 Hours In Paradise - A Overwatch Beginners Guide

I was going through some old stuff on my laptop over the weekend and I came across this Overwatch guide I wrote for the OverPWN forum last October. It's a guide of my first 10 hours with Overwatch.

Anyway, most of the points are still relevant, so I thought I would share it. Enjoy - bushie83

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences of my first 10 hours with Overwatch. I am in no way claiming to be an Overwatch expert, far from it, I am only level 23 so haven't even played Competitive. However, that said, I thought some of my experiences may help improve your game.

It's also worth noting that I've read and watched a lot of guides, which I recommend you do.

So below, in no particular order, are my beginner tips for Overwatch

Heroes:
Make sure you spend  time with all the heroes. You may not have a good game with one hero, but persevere - that hero may just become your favourite. I couldn't get on with Torbjorn at first but I forced myself to play him, and now he's one on my "go to" defence heroes, if needed.

Playing all heroes also gives you flexibility if selecting your preferred hero means creating an unbalanced team. You're more than likely not going to master every hero (although I am sure there are some of you out there that have), however by testing all heroes, you will find the ones that suits your playing style. Maybe try and master one hero from each class? That's what I tried to do.

Practice makes perfect..........well better in the case of Overwatch:
There is a reason Blizzard put a training mode in the game. Use it!

You could argue that playing  quick mode is practicing. I found, at first, because the game is so fast, I tended to panic when under attack. By entering the training mode and practicing using the heros abilities and trying to come up with new combos, it helped me stay calm when under attack, and it ultimately helped my game.

There are a load of hero guides on the internet. I would recommend reading/ watching some before playing a new hero.

Do your job:
There are 4 main roles/ classes in Overwatch - offence, defence, tank and support. Make sure you know and play your role. I've seen Windowmakers (the out-and-out sniper of Overwatch) on the front line of an attack. Needless to say, she died pretty quickly.

The roles are not rigid, that's what makes Overwatch so good. An example of this is some offencive heroes i.e. Soldier 76 and McCree are very good in some defensive situations, depending on what tactics your team are playing.

Again, I would recommend doing some research on the heroes, and read/ watch some hero guides.

Know your surroundings:
Get to know all of the maps. By knowing the maps, you will know where to set up some good defences, or know the best places to retreat to if your being chased down by a hero.
You can spend time exploring the maps in skirmish mode.

Also, get to know where all the health locations are - you are going to need them. In fact...........

Heal, heal and heal:
Other than some support heroes, your health will not regenerate over time, like some FPS games. So make sure you are always healing, especially if you do not have a healer in your team, for what ever reason.

I found I good tactic is to know all the health locations, and stay close to them!

Overtime:
You're defending the point, it starts to count down, 97%, 98%, 99%....... OVERTIME!

Be aware of overtime. Don't be complacent at 99%, stay calm and continue with the plan. So many times I've seen people get excited at 99% thinking the point is won, rush into the enemy and die! I've even been involved in a game were the whole of my team rushed into the enemy at 99% and all died - we ended up losing the point.

Keep calm, and defend the point as planned.

Play as a team:
Within a couple of games, I soon realised that Overwatch is a team game. I "came" from Destiny were you mainly play solo (yes, I know you play as teams for Raids, but generally, you play Destiny solo). Overwatch is not Destiny! If you go running into a game, over extend, you will die! Go into a game as a team, even if you are not in communication with your team mates, go into the battle as a team. If you die, respawn and see all of your team mates have died, don't just run back into the battle. You will die. Wait for your team mates to respawn, and go in together.

Obviously there are some heroes you can play "solo". Maybe your playing Tracer or Reaper and want to flank the enemy, you could argue that you are soloing! Yes, you are going into the battle on your own, but it's still important to start the attack or defence as a team. So before you flank, wait for the rest of your team to start.

Don't SOLO!

Hopefully you have found this guide to be of some help. As I have mentioned, I am in no way a expert at Overwatch, but if you've taken one thing from this guide, I would be happy. Likewise, you may be an experienced Overwatch player and don't agree with something I have written, please let me know, I am still learning and the whole point of OVA:done is to become a better Overwatch player.