We are living in a Hanzo driven, wombo-combo Overwatch Meta

Lately, most team fights in Overwatch go something like this:

Reinhardt, Brigitte and Zarya charging into the fray looking for a Graviton Bomb into a Mercy boosted Dragonstrike combo. The combo's power is best negated by Zenyatta's Transcendence (or at least dampened by Brigitte's Rally or Moira's Coalescence),  so if the other team is without a defensive Ultimate, it's lights out.

This clip of xQc's stream perfectly captures the reality of Overwatches current most dominant strategy:


Brigitte, Zarya, Reinhardt, and Hanzo are near instant-picks in most competitive Overwatch games, with Zenyatta, Mercy,  and sometimes Moira being close behind them. Moira has a unique strength of being able to escape Graviton Bomb with Fade, but Zenyatta can achieve a similar outcome with Transcendence.

Widowmaker, although no help during the massive Graviton Bomb based team fights is another popular pick due to her all-powerful pick-off potential against support heroes. With Hanzo being the top DPS, a skilled Widowmaker player who excels in winning the snipe 1v1 against Hanzo can bring a lot of value to their team, slowing down his ult charge or at least pressuring him from spraying arrows for free damage.


Still good, mainly not worth it.


Genji is still a top-tier hero, but his strength has been diminished greatly. The Dive strategies that were so popular months ago are seldom seen, with Genji, Winston and Tracer facing serious opposition in the form of Brigitte. A perfectly executed dive is still powerful,  but Brigitte's multiple CC options and defensive capabilities have, like Blizzard intended, made life harder for highly mobile heroes.

▲ No one misses Scatter Arrow since the new Hanzo started dominating the meta


The reworked Hanzo's strength is obvious. His buffs allow for faster ultimate charge and more consistent damage. This has created a real need for Reinhardt Shields soaking up stray arrows and well-timed Earthshatters to set up friendly Dragonstrikes. In turn,  Zarya's off-tanking niche is now in high demand, as she has multiple melee or support targets to keep help shield and offensively peel for.

You'd think Reaper or Mei would find a role against all of these tanks, but Junkrat still brings all the AoE damage a team would ever want at a much safer range with a more powerful Ultimate. As a result, these heroes stay at the bottom of the relevance list alongside the usual suspects: Symetra, Torbjörn and Bastion.

Currently, the Overwatch League matches do not reflect this meta as they are still being played on patch 1.22. In this patch, Hanzo has not received his rework and the domino effect of hero priority shifts have not yet been seen.

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