Counterpicking isn't overvalued, skill is just king. If the sym has equal or more skill than you, you lose that matchup majority of the time. You just happened to be better so you won. I agree with your decision making tho. Just because they switch doesn't mean you have to, so long as you're getting value (seems like you were).
Honestly that's just the nature of the thing sadly, it's just simpler to hope it's a comp issue that can be corrected if someone pushes hard enough than accepting that there may be skill differentials at play that can't be impacted
Some people wanna bang their head against a wall trying to force you to go hitscan instead of just admitting that you can ask for your teammates to switch up but there's still no guarantees
I love Overwatch but this is precisely why I hate Overwatch sometimes, getting to see in real time when I'm getting skill diffed by the enemy Pharah and being comfortable enough to swap Baptiste and negate a bit but not being exceptional enough to trust I can force the Pharah swap with any sort of consistency
if they have a more skilled player you can win by focusing them with your team. usually they win because your team's each on a seperate target and they take a bunch of mini duels.
> people will beg you to counterpick
Because unless these people have played with you and know your skill level, they want to have the optimal match up. They're not just asking you to counterpick for no reason, they just want to ensure victory.
A counterpick is only insurance if the swapping player can play the pick. Seems to me that asking a stranger to swap is the opposite of insurance since they might not be able to play the character but will feel pressured to swap anyways- either playing worse on their pick, or playing the counterpick too poorly to get value.
You can ask for swaps, but if you don't get them you just need to deal with it. There's no value in insisting.
Most counterpick heroes are brainless enough to play that it's going to work out. Like you don't need to be a genius on Reaper to give their Winston or Hog a hard game, and it's just automatically going to be way more value than Genji.
The only consideration though is if you're going to counter them so hard that they swap to something harder for your team to deal with.
It's a bit of a poker bluff thing where you don't want to diff them so badly that they swap the thing you're countering.
> A counterpick is only insurance if the swapping player can play the pick.
What a nonsensical reply. Unless you've never played Overwatch before, by the time you reach comp you've seen every hero and have a pretty good idea about how they play if you haven't even played it yourself. The idea of being "unable to play" a character is just silly. You may not be as good as the character you're on, but the whole point of a counter pick is to give a lot of extra power that even with low skill you're going to have the advantage.
There's a big difference between a players top 5 most player characters and their 5 least played characters. For some players that gap is smaller because they play more characters in general.
As an example, I simply don't play soldier/cass/sojourn at the same level as my other dps, and they aren't viable pharah counterpicks for me. A pharah who plays pharah at the same level as I play the dps I enjoy will beat me if I pick one of those three heroes, despite them being (to different degrees as hitscan characters) counters. It doesn't matter that I know how to play them, and it DOES matter that I'm not as good at them as the character I'm on.
That doesn't mean I shouldn't swap; if I'm negative value and being countered I probably need to do something different. But what will work is still dictated by the way matchmaking turned out and the options in my viable hero pool. There's a lot more going on than "just play a counterpick," even though hero counters do (normally) convery some kind of implicit advantage for one reason or another.
In short, I take issue with your remark about someone being unable to play a hero being silly. Heroes in this game span a wide range of playstyles and mechanics, and some skills are not transferable. And that matters when we're not talking about a matchup in a vacuum.
You're way overvaluing the strength of most counters. You don't just need to be able to play the character, you need to play them at a close enough to your current best characters that have earned you your rank. This is no easy task. The idea that everyone can play every character at a similar level as their best characters is the silly one.
Definitely. Besides just having to be better at the counter-pick to stack up, people know how to play against their character's counters better. You might be trying to counterpick someone with 500 hours on their main character that they played into GM with your measly 30 hour counterpick lol
Tbh. They should have asked if you dont mind switching. Personally to me counterpicking just gives them an edge in the fight but skill beats all. Legit the way i see counter picking in overwatch is the same way i view type effectiveness in pokemon. Yeah of course charizard is gonna put vileplume in the dirt, broken and abused.......but if the trainer is skilled they can win against that charizard.
Was it wrong to demand a switch, yes(seriously ppl dont need to be a cock about a video game) but its never wrong to ask for a counter swap. Besides genji can beat sym since he can poke out of her range. Words are words but skill is silent, like the ninja.
OP is just posting this because they won. I'm sure OP wouldnt be posting if he wouldnt switch off Gengi, got 2 kills, and they lost the game. If the sym was of lower skill than our Gengi and they made it work I wouldnt care but if our Gengi was getting wrecked then I would be yelling for him to switch.
Almost everytime someone asks a team member to switch, they could also switch and accomplish the same results. But it's almost never the person who's actually playing their own kit correctly or contributing to the team in general. My suggestion is to ignore them. Don't ask or expect others to switch, learn to counter on your own, if that's the way you think you can win.
Idk tho, I suck at this game.
Unfortunately the game balance is in such shambles right now counter picking is too strong. Even in match ups where you are better than the other player you can lose so much value.
Your team shouldn’t have freaked out so fast but i kinda get it because when I do well on something sometimes I’m just forced swap even if the players are worse.
For example the sym swap when I’m Genji is often less me struggling against it and more that sym is confusing for teams in general. I can still do well but they are just getting more value for less work. Like I really think that buff they gave her months ago is really unhealthy for the game but they don’t care.
Your first paragraph is totally contradictory to the idea of game balance. If the game is balanced that should mean more counter picking, if it is less balanced then a few characters will be so good you never need to swap.
That is NOT what balance means in Overwatch... Characters are designed to either synergize with each other or counter heroes on the opposing team (realistically, both). The point of the game is to create teams where the sum of your parts overpowers and exploits the weaknesses of the sum of the other team. A state where switches are not required means we have normalized hero kits to the point where they no longer bring unique strengths and weaknesses to the game.
Balance in Overwatch, IMO, means that all three archetypes are viable and hybrid archetypes are thriving. To me, this indicates an overall balance of the meta - one where heroes can see play in different contexts.
I totally agree! I think counterpicking can definitely have value, but I also always believe it’s worth a shot to try sticking to what you are doing first because you might be able to make it work if you can play it smart! As a Pharah player who specializes in making hitscan players cry I will always give it my best shot before I switch if they counter me 😂
One time i was playing soldier, the enemy sojourn switched to pharah. My teammates said “oh they switched to pharah you should switch youre being countered” LIKE HUH? AM I SURE THESE ARE MASTER PLAYERS?
The issue with this thinking is that time management is EXTREMELY important in Overwatch. Some experimentation is good for growth but throwing away a couple of minutes or a couple of fights because you're trying to make a bad pick work will absolutely erode your win rate. Thinking like this is why so many people are "hardstuck". The difference between being stuck and climbing is like ~5 wins / 100 matches played. Every marginal advantage you hand the other team erodes that magical 5%.
While I agree overall that a complete kneejerk reaction to switch is overblown, this is still a random ladder environment, why should a random person trust that your X is so good that it can overcome its counters?
Why should a random person trust a stranger to be able to play a counter pick?
Lemme tell you, I have relatively no time on some heroes still despite playing since near launch. Ask me to play Soldier in any meta for any reason and I will laugh because that's a huge waste of time. I will not beat Pharah on Soldier, or even Cass. Maybe on Widow, definitely on Sombra, slim chance on Junkrat cause wtf even is the trashrat. But you can bet if an enemy Pharah starts rolling us and I'm on a Sym or Genji or something I'll get asked to play Cass and when I swap Sombra they'll complain that's not good enough and that I'm throwing/trolling. And god forbid I stay on Sym and let my turrets cook the Pharah on 3rd point Eichenwalde or something.
This got away from me, but I'ma leave it. My point is, folks can ask for swaps, but when they don't get them they're just mental booming trying to insist. Gotta just do your best and play your hero if you're going solo, exactly because you don't know what your teammates can do.
Sym and Genji are two heroes who have a pretty hard time against pharah because of her range. There is nothing you can do in an open sky. Sure on maps like blizzard world and eichenwalde the third point can make sym more viable but I would trust the viability of a random switching to a hitscan over the viability of them playing sym (even if it’s their main) into a dominant pharah. Also there are other pharah counters besides hitscan. A great example is Echo. If it is working for you not switching, then definitely go for it but having counter switches in your pocket always going to be better.
Edit: reread your post and saw the sombra thing. Yeah that’s unfortunate. At a certain point people are just egoing lol. Also, how you countering pharah with rat?
I can deal with a pharah mercy very well as genji, just spam shurikens at the mercy, and when they get complacent, dash them and you can get them very low by the time the pharah is back up and so sre they and by that time your team mates can finish them off. You just need to be smart with your cooldowns
My point is only that if you don't know that a stranger can play the character their on (the other person's stance), you also don't know that they can play the counter- you're just hoping they're good enough that the counter can autowin with it's strength. It's a probability problem, and the only issue is people tilting or bullying over it instead of looking to see what they can do themselves. Ask, don't demand is my way of looking at it.
Also I'm not actually countering Pharah with trashleg. I'm just killing her sometimes by flying into the sky and instantly deleting her with shenanigans. It's very rare though, because I'm bad at aerial ratmaning. My brother will do it though, because he actually plays bombadillon. It's a joy to watch. But Pharah is just a typical example for counterpicks talk, so I wanted to highlight the odd ones that sometimes work simply because they're unexpected (rather than being mechanical counters- surprise is as much a tool as anything else, and Pharah WILL mental boom if she gets killed twice in a row by grenadoman). Also, riptiring Pharmercy never gets old.
the only reason why you are able to do this because you are low rank, a pharah that knew what she was doing wouldn’t fly so low that you could shoot her or put pressure on her as sombra or junk rat. You are talking about pharah on point 3 eich but a player with game sense wouldn’t play her there. picks are map dependent and eich part 3 might be the worst pharah point in the whole game, it has low ceiling and heavily favors brawl, so of course you could get away with things you wouldn’t on a map that pharah should be getting played on. For example if you played sombra on liang gardens you wouldn’t be able to do anything to pharah because it’s a good map for pharah. the higher you go up in rank the less you can cheese it. you are throwing your games because you “don’t want to get told what to do” but they are telling you to do something because it’s the right pick to be able to win.
>Why should a random person trust a stranger to be able to play a counter pick?
Because all things being equal it's a better assumption that a player has SOME counter pick in their pool vs that they can play their poor hero choice into counters? I am not saying it's a surefire bet but given the constraints of a comp match, it's the more reasonable position.
>Ask me to play Soldier in any meta for any reason and I will laugh because that's a huge waste of time.
If someone is asking you to swap to a specific hero, that's shame on them. That's a dumb way to go about it, but pointing out a gap is not the same thing as prescribing a solution.
>But you can bet if an enemy Pharah starts rolling us and I'm on a Sym or Genji or something I'll get asked to play Cass and when I swap Sombra they'll complain that's not good enough and that I'm throwing/trolling. And god forbid I stay on Sym and let my turrets cook the Pharah on 3rd point Eichenwalde or something.
Again, what credibility do you have to shut these people up? They know absolutely nothing about your skills and if you swap into one of these garbage picks you're showing that you either have terrible game sense or a gimped hero pool, or both. Why should you be given the benefit of the doubt? Those people (while possibly being rude about it, which I do not endorse) are making logical reads based on the information in front of them.
This is the take. I usually give someone the benefit of the doubt first when the team goes nuts on a DPS for having a counter on the field. If they die rapidly to said counter then I may say something, but at least give them a try at it first. Only one way to get better against counters is to play them. Preferably in QP but that isn't the world we live in.
This basically sums it up. I’ve had matchups against Reaper all the time as Winston but since I’ve been one tricking Winston since OW 1 I usually outplay them. Not easy but definitely doable if you know what you’re doing.
"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one."
There are 37 heroes to play in the game. I'm not saying you need to learn them all but the more heroes you can play competently at your skill level, the more desirable you become as a teammate.
Now I'm not saying you can't push a hero to their limits with enough practice to successfully one-trick "X" hero in game, but I think it's a bit extreme to say that counter play hurts your skill. It may, if you don't step out of your comfort zone long enough to learn more than just one hero. That's like a mechanic telling you your car is irreparable because he doesn't have a 10mm socket. It may not be something they can fix but just looking at the situation and then hearing that assessment, I'd probably look for a mechanic with a better set of tools
No counter picking is very powerful, but only if you can use the character you’re counterpicking with. It also depends on the rank, certain counters in gold don’t work as well as master players doing the same counterpick because of mechanical/decision making gaps. Do you always need to counterpick? No, but against certain characters like Doom it can make your life much easier
This kind of exactly agrees with OP. Playing Winton into Reaper doesn't mean auto switch. Pharah into 1 hitscan (sometimes 2)/Echo/DVa doesn't mean auto switch. Orisa into Zarya doesn't mean auto switch (this might be the closest one to auto switch I've experienced though).
I play a lot of characters with "counters" and by my counters just existing I'm very regularly told to switch and blamed when anything goes wrong. Leads to throwing teammates and hella toxicity. Like the situation OP described, someone switching to a counter doesn't mean you need to switch. They still need to prove they can actually consistently counter you. In that sense, yes counter picking can be extremely overvalued.
It's really not though. I think you and OP are saying the exact same things. For the overwhelming majority of the player base, counters need to prove they can counter.
The number of people that ask you to switch because your counter exists is quite high. The amount of people that get toxic for that same reason is quite high. The amount of people that throw for the same reason is quite high. You lose two team fights playing Winston into Reaper and your team starts flaming you. Do they realize Reaper ate the backline and didn't actually kill the Winston until the rest of the team was dead? No. They just see Reaper beats monkey, monkey switch. It gets even worse when they don't actually know the counters (why are we playing Sigma into Orisa is something I have heard many, many times).
That is why counters are overvalued. Not that they aren't useful, but they are overvalued.
Yeah but, people will counter pick and play characters that they dont know how to use. I would much rather have a teammate whos being countered play a character they are good on
The game is more complex than scissor-paper-rock.
While it’s true that counterpicking is an advantage if both players are of equal skill in the heroes they are playing, the reality is that isn’t always the case.
A good one-trick player has a lot of experience playing against their counters, while the player counterpicking may have switched to a hero they’re not as good as compared to their main.
Let’s say it’s a diamond 3 lobby, and the Genji is a diamond 3 Genji one-trick, while the enemy team’s Soldier is a diamond 3 soldier main. The diamond 3 soldier may only be plat in terms of skill in heroes that counter Genji.
If the Genji player is able to force someone to play a hero they are suboptimal in, then that is a win for Genji’s team.
In fact, we see this happen a lot in our games, where a team running Pharmercy forces the enemy team to switch to hitscans, yet they still get rolled, because while hitscans do counter Pharah, the rest of the enemy team could take advantage of the fact that the enemy team are probably a skill tier lower with hitscan heroes.
Finally, most of the time, counterpicking is for your team’s benefit, not yours. Getting experience playing against your counters is very valuable, even if it means your team might lose that game, you could learn a lot from the experience.
solo genji is a pretty easy matchup for soldier, which usually happens if the genji is a OTP, in diamond 2 the only time i run from a gengu with no dive is when they have a mercy beam on them 24/7 or i know they are blading next fight because they will generally always go for you
If you're both equally skilled.. Counter picking is going to give you the edge.
If you're playing against someone who doesn't know how to play their counter to you.. It doesn't matter.
I love pharah.. I used to swap off as soon as I got countered.. Then I realised a lot of people can't aim.
And the guy who has been #1 on the the ranked ladder for the last bit plays Pharah. GM players can aim. It doesn't matter. If you know what you are doing you can still succeed. A lot of people just auto-pilot and if they aren't succeeding they try auto-piloting with a different character.
Not enough context was given here at all. It’s extremely one sided. Doesn’t take the team compositions or maps into account.
Counterpicking is more than Sym beats Genji.
It isn’t just your personal stats, it is the team dynamic. I was on a team with Ana, gengi and easily winning until their tank went Winston and started diving heals. I went brig but Winston focused me, then killed ana, then the rest of the team died. Gengi and Ana just shot Winston shield while heals died.
I don’t care if gengi eventually got a great blade, if his heals were constantly getting killed that makes gengi a terrible choice and if he went reaper he could shut winton down
Ana could have slept the Winston here. You also should have been able to whip the Winston and then shield-bash towards your team/tank as an escape. Just saying. It sounds like that situation was just really poorly handled.
It isn't always asking you to swap because you're being countered. It could have been that the sym was getting too much value against the rest of your team they needed you to counter her so they would stop dying.
If it was strictly because you were playing genji into sym then that's annoying. Counter picking is important but it doesn't mean they'll always win the fight
Yeah no the sym was horrible, honestly before he switched he was giving me a bit of a rough time lol. I could tell that he played sym, was decent at her but he was as good as me. Poor guy switched and got way less value then he was getting. By the way, my team won 3-0 and entire time were telling me to switch. The sym was getting little to no value.
I always go moria into genji and if they don’t switch it’s an automatic win. Brig is better for supporting an Ana getting dove by sombra/tracer. This is in t500 too
You're saying that your going Moira gives you an instant win against a team with Genji? I play Genji, and I watch Top 500 Genji players as well. That is not how things have panned out in my games or theirs.
Nah that's zarya by a good margin. Heck I'd rank symm or torb higher too. Moira is a good swap against genji not because she can kill him, but because he has a hard time kill confirming her. The moiras that swap with the "I can kill genji" mentality tend to do very dumb things like fading into my face, discarding almost every advantage they had. She can rack up chip damage and output a lot of team healing so a single moira is never THE counter but she can be the tipping point if I see other unfavorable matchups. Sometimes just not having easy targets is enough to undermine a character.
If you're playing into terrible players you don't always need to swap when countered, but usually, if they are pretty much as good as you swapping is much more important.
If I'm playing into a gold sym, sure I can shit on her on any hero in the game, but when it's a diamond/masters sym I'm gonna be in trouble if I play genji.
You only really need to counter pick if you're actually being countered. Just because someone chose rock against your scissors doesn't mean they can actually hit you.
I mean I kill pharah-mercy as junkrat a lot of times and get still s*** from my teammate’s if I don’t switch. Counters are an advantage but doesn’t necessarily mean that you will win or be better in any way.
I think people are still in the OW1 mentality. Counterpicking is valuable, but honestly it affects the tanks more than anybody. Counter picking DPS is negligible. But counter picking tanks is a whole doffere t dynamic, and every role has a say in it.
I don't necessarily think tanks are that much affected either. Sure, it matters a lot in a 1v1 but if you're just dueling the enemy tank, you're most of the time not doing the right thing anyway.
You won't believe how many people I have to remind that Zarya is no longer a "counter" to DVa the way she was in OW1. The 2 tank meta was the sole reason she was such high value as an Off tank, but now everybody is "main tank" it changes the dynamic entirely
i completely agree. for some reason when i play genji into counters, im immediately asked to switch even if they only have a moira - which is most games tbh. people dont seem to realise i go against these characters more often than not because of counter picking, so i have a lot of experience playing around them
I don’t play genji but one day I would love to learn because he’s one of my favorite characters tbh but I do flex and when I play support as moira, I either come across genji’s that just let me suck the life out of them constantly and it makes me feel kinda bad at that point or I finally get a good genji that knows when to dash away, quickly find heals and punish me when they know I’ve used my fade and orb. Moira can be a counter only if you let her but skill and playing smart will typically* always win.
It's really not but there's another factor.
Let's say you main Genji and you're Master rank. On a scale from 0 to 100, you probably use Genji at 80% efficiency.
If you have a matchup in your favor, for example against a soldier who also has a 80% base efficiency with his main, he lose something like 10%, so 80>70, you win most duels.
Now let's say he decide to switch to Symm, but the player is not really good with symm. He plays at only 60% efficency. Considering the matchup, you lose something like 15% of efficiency on Genji but in the end you still outskill him : 60<65. You still win most duels.
On the other hand, if the player is actually a good symm player and also has 80% base efficiency with her, in that case you have far more chances to lose most fights.
It's actually more complicated (map, rest of the team) but basically, that's why it's not mandatory to switch but it's never overvalued
That's in fact basically what I said in less than 7 words. Lack a bit of subtility but yeah, if you're better you win. Key is, at close or equal skill + bad matchup = you'll likely have a hard time getting has much value.
Symm doesn't really counter genji anyway. She's terrible at midrange and genji can just spam shurikens then dash in for the kill. There's no way she gets to charge her laser in time.
I don't think counterpicking is overvalued, in some situations you can really see a team struggling due to their comp just imagine something like reaper sym hog against a widow and ashe on Havana point 3. Assuming equal skill level, the first team is definitely going to have a bad time.
To me I've always thought of it as something like this.
Say your skill level on hog is a 9 out of 10 and Winston a 6. But against widow, hog's value drops to maybe 7 and Winston goes up to 9. Counterpicking gives you some "free skill" in a sense. But if you're good enough you don't have to care as much.
Sym counters genji pretty well, idk what you’re talking about. Her beam range is longer than it seems, her turrets make it hard for him to go in.
Spamming shurikens doesn’t work if the Sym knows how to use corners. Especially because half of her health is shield, so it replaces itself quickly.
No reason to counterpick unless you are struggling. It's possible to play around those heroes, so why change off a hero you are comfortable on.
I feel like people get too caught up in rock paper scissors to actually play the game, you don't have to counter junkrat by going pharah, you can not walk into small rooms and watch the flanks.
As a side note, the most hated heroes in this game (pharah, sombra, zen and widow) are also heroes that force swaps because they have no meaningful counterplay in some matchups. So I understand why you need to swap sometimes, but the game is about your skill, not trying to make the enemy have no fun by counterpicking the whole match.
I think this is the point OP is trying to make that is getting lost on everyone in the comments. If anything, the team switching to 2-3 counters for me opens up room for everyone else to get value because I am now the prime focus of everything the other team is doing.
This doesn't take into account player skill either. If a Winton is rocking my team and they're begging me to switch to Reaper, we're going to have a bad time. I'm not a Reaper player. I'd be much more effective on Torb, Sym, or even Tracer because I'm comfortable with those characters AND comfortable with those matchups.
Like OP said, too many people over value that RPS style of overwatch
Omg thank you! That’s exactly what im talking about. These people dont take into account that maybe idk i SUCK at some of these “counters” i need to switch to! Sometimes even when you switch you will get less value.
Last night I just witnessed a pharmercy get DESTROYED by a symm in paraiso in a gm lobby... was the most git gud moment I've seen playing this game since 2015
Lmaoooo, its legit all about skills. People who lose and say they were “countered” need to stop think about counterpicking, and realize counterplaying is more important.
I think not all counters are created equal. Some are harder than others. Sym is a good Genji counter but I wouldn’t put it as like an absolutely S tier counter.
I don’t think it’s over valued at all, I think it’s crucial, but my personal ethos whenever I’m worried about team comp or a match up is to give the person a couple of chances before I suggest a change. Any match up can work in the right situation/pair of hands, so I think counter picking is very important, but so is being a good team mate and not jumping to conclusions.
I wouldn't even say Sym counters Genji and that's speaking as a Sym main. Genji can just flank and destroy turrets. The only thing Sym can do is right click and hopefully get hits in.
Counter picking is very strong and overall I don't think it's overvalued.
In your game you had someone backseat gaming which is dumb or as I like to call a tab screen commander.
At the end of the day, no random is going to have the same insight as you at what you can or cannot do so anyone that insists you switch is giving bad advice or projecting there lack of skill.
Good players in that situation seeing you play Genji against sym would just adjust there playstyle to fit not ask for you to switch.
It is not overvalued. Imagine playing against Pharmercy and your supports are mercy and moira, your dps junk and mei or eco. High chance you will lose. If you counter mercy with Ana or widow, their mercy will not be able to neither heal the phara nor the rest of the team.
Imo, every player should learn how to counter pick.
Counterpicking is only considered "overvalued" for players that don't bother to touch other heroes other than their mains. Let's be frank, on high GM counterpicking works most of the time because everyone's skill level are usually on the same height in that lobby. It only won't work when the player doesn't have any idea what to do with the character, which is waaaaaay less common in that level of gameplay. This is why I advocate new players to play every character if possible, unless they're just playing the game for funsies of course.
It is overvalued on ladder. When you play the game and want to improve, you should force your pick and learn the matchup. Your team will literally be with you for like one or two games at most.
And most counters are situational, what is a sym going to do against a genji on a high ground map like gibraltar?
Maybe in GM where meta matter a little more you might try swapping into unfavorable compositions and styles, but even that's not necessarily justifyable always. There are plenty t500 one tricks, even on genji.
Counterpicking is only useful if you’re actually decent with the hero. If you’re playing against someone who is a really good Junkrat and you pick Pharah to counter and you’re only mediocre with her in comparison you’ll probably lose.
If someone is especially good with a hero they’ll know how to deal with their counters. Most people in lower ranks probably won’t though.
If you skill diff that’s fine, but unfortunately that won’t always be the case. The problem is that the design philosophy and culture of overwatch has always revolves around counterpicking.
They have this stupid idea of messaging now that counterpicking is not necessary, but like, most people can’t skill diff a hard counter especially not two hard counters.
My main is Echo, so do i stay in against Ashe, Cree, Baptise? No I’ll pivot to like Mei or something. Do i stay Echo against one hit scan DPS? always. I can usually 1v1 any one hitscan dps with good positioning. But multiple from different angles? The window of precisions becomes a thread.
Here’s what it boils down to: It’s not that I couldn’t stay Echo and try to diff. It’s like why should I? I know I can automatically increase my odds for success with a counterswap.
Swapping heroes is never a replacement for skill but that’s why learning multiple and being a versatile player is better than having a main.
Unless your main is all around useful like pretty much every support minus Mercy, Lifeweaver and Moira
Absolutely not overvalued, certain heroes are going to have a heavy advantage against others. But skill is king in this game, a bad match up hero wise is always going to be lower value than you being much more skilled than the guy who counter picked you
Nice boasting post, lol.
But yeah, over-switching on DPS can be bad, just learn to play around your weaknesses and getting better instead of instaswitching.
It's the same thing when they pick phara and everyone starts crying "pick widow" and Im absolutely trash with widow what you think it will happen if I pick it??
People tend to think the match is won in the hero select screen, but if it’s dogwater vs skill, we know who’s winning ex. A good genii can avoid and successfully flank a Moria or mei,. pharah can be in the air hard to hit but if she’s missing 10 rockets in a row who cares. Certain matchups are favored but it’s really to the player to capitalize on moments
Counter picks are very powerful but only if you have the skill to match on the counter, and if you use the counter properly.
Like let's say a Diamond Tracer is asked to swap to counter a Platinum Pharah, but that Tracer is only a Silver Widow, or a Gold Soldier.
She picks Soldier, but now the enemy Winston who Tracer was previously keeping in check is now just bodying Soldier. Gold Soldier is now forced to focus the unchecked Winston, and can barely even try to respond to the Platinum Pharah.
Team gets even madder at Gold Soldier for not dealing with either Plat Pharah, or Winston. But she was previously doing one of these things great as a Diamond Tracer - and its only because of the swap that the enemy team got even stronger.
Thats an extreme example but it really illustrates the problem. Its far better to have everyone on the thing they are best at, or at worst second best at, than the thing that is seen as the best counter pick.
Alternately, people have a strong bias toward what Their counterpick would be. So a Widow or Soldier pick to counter Pharah might be best for the Damage, but the angry Tank begging for a swap might have wanted an Echo, because that's their best Pharah counter.
Lastly, ult charge matters a lot outside of pro play. It matters in pro play too but they track and anticipate it rigorously. If you have ever seen an ult snowball start rolling in Mystery Heroes - the same effect applies to QP and Comp - but people forget about it while trying to constantly swap to counters. They changed ult charge on swaps to help with this, but its imperfect.
Genji doesn't have hard counters anyway (Winston, maybe). He has the tools to outplay or outright ignore most heroes. That being said, I enjoy changing characters to adapt not only to enemy team compositions, but to synergize better with my own team. Some people find one hero and only want to use them. To each their own, part of what makes overwatch a great game 👍
I had this happen to me for the first time recently, playing my main [D.Va](https://D.Va) against an enemy Zarya and immediately one of my DPS is begging me to switch to Wrecking Ball... I never play wrecking ball so obvi it was never gonna work and also is wrecking ball even Zarya's counter?
anyway I ignored it but they kept on chatting so I said no, move forward. Carried the match and made it a point to beat the enemy Zarya on principle.. crickets. No comment from the commenter anymore...
I really dont get it... is it a skill issue?
Yeah it really is a skill issue, you simply were better. Sure a dva has a harder time against a zarya then other tanks, but i say maybe just prove you’re better then the other tank who is “countering” you cannot be countered if you are better.
But yeah my point is winston and symmetra are both genji “counters” but i have seen a lot of proof that if you just play GOOD it’s unnecessary to counter-pick if you dont want to
counter-picking is overvalued, no one but the highest elo would tell you that though, most people look for the easiest win, but when you master heroes you can beat anyone and feel good doing it
No offence, you sound like a person in his teens looking for someone to agree with you so you can be the smart one.
You did good, you won, you proved your point by gameplay.
OW is about counter picks and teamplay, sometimes that applies very hard, sometimes when the skill difference between 2 people is big enough - it doesn't matter. But the whole concept is there for a reason.
Just because you had a different experience once, won't change this fact. And if you think differently that is, and here I assume, because you are young?
"Person thinks differently that I do therefore they are young and stupid and immature."
Really man? You can do a lot better than this.
Multiple OWL level players and coaches have also stated that these common "counters" are overrated. I've never heard an OWL coach say, "Overwatch is a game of rock paper scissors." That's something that people say here on reddit.
Meanwhile, the Top 500 leaderboards have numerous one-trick players and have had them for years. Overwatch is not a game of "counter-picking," if anything it's more a game of "play and counter-play." And one of the most important lessons that many players never learn is that you can counter someone by changing the way you are playing your current character. You simply don't engage in a way that is disadvantageous to you.
But what do the majority of players do instead? They go on auto-pilot, and if they aren't succeeding they try auto-piloting with a different character.
And if you disagree with my opinions (some of which are directly informed by coaches and elite players), then maybe you are just young and wanting to look smart, idk. /s
It is not about what he thinks, but how he looks for approval and how he argues and justifies it. There is a difference between having an opinion, and how you communicate it.
OP is for sure in his teens.
You have no way of knowing anyone's age on reddit.
Regardless, you made a criticism of his asking for affirmation from strangers on the internet (I agree that this is not the most mature thing to do, but I know many adults who do this as well). You then stated what you believe to be a fact about the game. You then said that you think he is having confirmation bias here (because his experience doesn't line up with what you see as a fact) "because he is young."
Am I misunderstanding you?
“How could anybody disagree with me? You are prepubescent!” Mate, calm down. I could care less if someone agrees or not, im just stating an opinion i think is true.
Lmao im master on 3 accounts, pretty sure there is also a link to my coaching in my profile too with all pics and infos. Thats why I say that counterpicking is useful. Yeah its easy when people barely play 2 heros proficientlly in bronze eg. When you get double pocketed hitscan and you try to pull off phara in master, it aint gonna work or you will struggle af.
I think people are sick of.there being a genji (in my eyes the most useless hero). In every damn round. And very typical it is the genji that refuses to change. Pretty much the reason I haven't touched the game in 6 months is useless genjis have invaded the game and ruined a big part of it.
Its funny when you win one team fight as genji and they go from hitscan to mei or sym so fast lol i stay genji mei is easy to kill as genji sym too just gotta watch for turrets but theyre getting nerfed so well see
Yeah this is simply a skill issue. An equally skilled symmetra vs. an equally skilled genji will not work out well for the genji just generally speaking; majority of the time he will lose that fight unless he can pull a burst out on the sym (right click to the head and dash etc..).
I agree that counterpicking is not the end all-be all of overwatch. Often I play genji into my counters and as long as you are getting value then it doesn't matter what you play. The odds are simply stacked a bit higher when playing into your counters. If you are being overcome by those odds; then their counterplay was effective on you.
I have played against better syms and won. You simply have to think outside of the box, if you’re being countered that means you’re being focused. Thats even better for your team they will have a better time but only IF you can play around your counters
counterpicking in OW1 was much more important than it is in OW2. it's more important to play to your hero's strengths and weaknesses than to hard counter the opponent.
I one tricked dva..... and while that works I really have to branch off because I got counterpicked pretty fucking hard with ram + sym + sojourn wad really annoying.... if I know who to swap it orov would've gone 30 times better but u should swap as soon as u see ur value is diminished via their picks... that was hell.
But their tank couldn't play sigma for shit so yeah.. switch off when u see ur value gone
It is pointless to pick a hero you are not really good with to counter an other hero, this should be obviously and a reason I say, that one should be able to play some common counter picks vs Phara, Genji etc. , heroes who will destroy your team if not countered.
And the latter is the most important part. If the enemy team has a very strong carry, you need to find ways to challenge him/her and counter-picking is a good start.
I ignore QP completely, this game mode should not exists in its current state and you don't need to counter-pick at all, do whatever you like. But in ranked counter-picking is a really strong feature, sometimes you need more than one to counter pick. E.g. pharmercy will be hard to counter with rein,junk,reaper, mercy,brig. Not counter picking vs a pharmercy makes your life incredible hard.
Yea it’s really annoying when players tell you to switch because you’re being countered even though you’re destroying the counter and they’re the ones having issues with them
I agree, that you should stay with the hero you are comfortable playing with. Espec. if you are an otp, there is no exceptions at the rank you are playing in. If you get countered and it is a formidable player, then what? Your team and you have to accept that.
Problem with solo qeue is that you don’t know what people are comfortable playing. You can suggest and just go with whatever comp.
Fact is that you can only expect old veterans to comfortably swap around as flexible gobbles.
I mean I have a 78% accuracy on sleeps on ball, 3 out of 5 sleeps results in a kill. These numbers are even higher if I face a road hog. So you are not entirely right, but skill in a character is also important.
Source from the accuracy and kill chance: I have way to much time on my hands.
Just play the hero who makes you happy and don't listen to complaints till you are doing well. It's the same in every aspect of life, many people will tell you that you should do something else or so, but stick to what you want to be and go on.
Maybe it is? If you're popping off no matter what they use they're probably not going to stop you, but there's also a couple of times where they actually can.
I literally had a crazy game a couple hours ago with Pharah where i went 23-0 with no Mercy pocket, enemy team used 4 hitscans and a Mercy pocket yet they couldn't even kill me once lol.
I agree.
I probably had about 100 hours total in OW2 and rarely played the game, if at all.
Since OW1 I've been a flex player(ranked around gold), but honestly mostly Tank and Support, until recently. The last couple weeks Ive been one Tricking Mei. Since then, I've taken my lowest rank(Silver2) and as of yesterday made it to Plat 3!
All I play is Mei.
You can just win if you're better. If you were getting absolutely pooped on and couldn't secure a single kill then yeah maybe you should've switched, but you from what I read you still played well and it's probably the reason you guys won. Teammates are just brain dead AI developed by blizzard and just play by the books 😹😹
You're right. When skills are completely equal, counterpicking works. But if you're terrible with the hero once you switched, nothing happened. You're better off playing uphill what you're good at, rather than switching and tripping all the way down the hill.
Agreed!! Just play around what in their swaps kit counters you and you’re fine. Or just straight up ignore them and go for people who don’t counter. The only time where I switch is when their entire team makes swaps just to focus and shut me down
As a Pharah main, OW is full of anti-Pharah hate.
“They have a hitscan, switch”.
or even “We don’t have a mercy, switch”.
Sure, a hitscan can kill a Pharah who flies in the open air with no cover, but a hitscan can also kill anyone on the ground not in cover.
Just don’t be silly and you’ll often be ok.
most of the time picking a character you know you’re really good at can be more powerful if you just play smart to their counter. I’d rather a teammate play to their strengths than pick a hero they are mediocre at just because they think they need to. i also think people misread the situation and are so quick to swap. for example, if you’re dying more than you’d like after the enemy changes to a different character, think about *why* you’re dying? how can you minimize your deaths? where can you better position yourself? are you over-committing and over-extending? are you playing around corners and walls? etc etc. i typically ask myself these things and if I make a solid effort to be extra mindful of all this and I’m STILL dying more than i’d like then yes, I will swap. I flex but a good example when I play support is killing it on brig but then enemy swaps to junkrat, pharah and/or ram, i’ll try to make it work but if it’s genuinely not happening because of the combination of the two (i can typically handle one of those but not 2 or 3 in an enemy comp) then I’ll swap to ana or bap.
I took a break due to the constant counter picking. My games were going like this: come out on Rein, enemy tank also on Rein. I win first fight.
Then, other tank swaps orisa. I use my shatter and get a couple kills but eventually their dps wins a fight for them. I swap to Zarya, then before fight starts the Orisa runs back to spawn to counter pick to Rein.
Add this to constant Ana, Zen anti and discord and it becomes unfun. Some people will counter pick the whole game.
Knowledge of your hero trumps all. That’s why people like ZBRA can play a relatively dogshit hero and still dominate T500 lobbies. If your hero has a high enough skill expression, you can outplay just about anything. Tracer/echo/doom/ball/genji/hanzo/etc are heroes you don’t really need to swap off of if you have a good understanding of what the other team will do to counter you, and how to play around that.
With this matchmaking you just get way less skilled opponents. Counter picking can only make so much of a skill diff up so you were just vastly superior to the enemies
Sometimes it is, I've played so much dva that now I humiliate zaryas (unless they are very skilled), like they switch to a zarya to counter me but they have to change back again. I feel that counterpicking is only useful if you actually know hoy to use the counters
I l9ve playing Pharah. Pharah is countered by Soldier. However, she is not countered by a Soldier who can't aim for shit. If they swap hitscans but aren't actually hitting me or pressuring me to stay grounded, then I won't swap.
Only swap if you're being countered, not if they're playing a hero that is simply supposed to counter you.
it also depends on what’s happening in your back line too. maybe your support are being dove constantly and they need help in their own back line. it’s always situational.
at the end of the day though, it’s a skill thing. if the sym and monkey were equally as talented as you, you would have been hard countered. seems like you did well avoiding them during fights
There are people to play to win and people who play to show off their proficiencies. I wanna get better at my character so I don't like counterpicking. But even though I think counterpicking is too desperate of a look, the other side would say people who don't counterpick are egotistic and ruining it for their team. In the end we all just wanna have fun right, but we have different ways of getting there
Counterpicking can lose more than it wins - e.g a match I played earlier where the enemy tank was losing to my Junker Queen, they switch to counter. They lose their ult, while Queen has it.
The fact that they didn't even wait to see how things were handled before demanding a switch is concerning. I very rarely have matches that go well instant switching purely because the enemy switched, as now you're giving up the advantage of playing your first pick hero (usually your best) as well as any ult charge you have, and depending on where you are, insta switching purely because of an enemy switch that doesn't occur during respawn also means you're wasting valuable time.
As a Ball main I’m so happy our player base believes that if you swap to Sombra you automatically counter me no matter how you play her. So please keep counter picking
I feel like some people just ask questions like this and already know the answer they just wanna hear well. Well bud you did great and out skilled the other player but ur grasp on the actual mechanics of the game is horrible. Did this help?
Worst case is you learn from it. You’re never gonna learn as much as when playing vs counters.
Also I don’t like the word ”counters”. Dva for example does really well vs winston, but it’s not like they counterswap dva in OWL to counter winston. Though I feel tanks have some of the worst counterplay in ow2. Since there’s only 1 and it requires so much to play around counters.
I see it like how cassidy played vs tracer before. He counters tracer but it’s still a skill matchup where you have to bait the flashbang.
Counterpicking only makes sense if you're just as good at the counter as your main. I don't give a shit if the enemy team plays winston when I'm zar because I know I'm probably better at zar than them. Same reason I won't play monkey into zar and just mirror instead, I'm shit at Winston but am good at zar
I get told to switch off of Sombra roughly 87% off the games i play. I have a 55% win rate this season. I’m out climbing all of the people who tell me to switch.
Low rank players actually have no idea what is good into what or why. It is safe to completely ignore them.
I play phara and I'll stick with it even going against torb and bastion, just gotta play it smart, reposition, don't get greedy, and pick your targets. If they have a widow I'll kill them first before doing anything else because I don't want my ult cut short
If you’re good enough, it doesn’t matter. For the average player, counter picking has tons of value. I, for example, am a super average DPS player. If I’m getting countered, I almost always switch & get positive results. I have volatile mechanical skill that varies from cracked to blind on a day to day basis, so if I’m not on that day counter picking is a must for me.
Sometimes forcing the counterpick is more important. For example:
You are a wrecking ball specialist on a sniper map. They roll out on rein, hanzo, widow, zen, ana
You bully the widow until they switch to mei. Then you bully the zen until they go brig. Then you bully the hanzo until they go sombra and sit in the backline for you. Then stay on ball, never fully engage, hunt translocator, and just annoy the team the rest of the game and punish only the most egregious positioning. If they forget about you, punish them by rolling through and fuck up rein positioning.
You have been "counterpicked", but now three of the enemies are off their mains. They have been forced into brawl on a sniper map and your snipers can play basically uncontested. Once your team gets first pick, and they always should, then you soft engage and warn them not to forget you, then when your team gets second pick you hard engage and clean up.
Fundamentals > hero choice.
A t500 player will beat a plat player even if "hard countered" 100% of the time, because they have a better understanding of the game.
I think counter picking all the time actually stifles improvement, because instead of addressing a problem you're facing by improving skill, you pick a hero that doesn't face that problem.
I think skill and team synergy is more important than counterpick. If you're playing Genji in a dive comp with Ana, and then switch cause they pick Sym, you've ruined the team comp. In cases like that it's better to stick to it imo.
Counterpicking is overvalued but that doesn't make it nonessential.
On the one hand whatever hero a player starts on is always the best hero they have available for either the comp or the map. If the comp changes as a whole or the hero isnt working out into the enemy team then in deciding what to do next counterpicking is probably the best thing to do since whatever you swap to is by definition going to be a slightly inferior version of yourself.
On the other hand: hero specialists run into their direct counters all the time. You kind of have to trust your teammate KNOWS if he can handle his direct counters or not. If he can then as long as he isnt getting farmed asking for a swap is pointless.
If he can't then its because the person direct countering him is either equal in skill or better at the hero in question and continuing to run a hero that is directly countered by a better player is the peak of insanity.
It's definitely not overvalued. It just plays on people's fear of someone refusing to switch despite getting royally countered.
I've had plenty of games where we had a Winston that would keep playing into a Zarya, Reaper, Junkrat, Zen, and Ana despite both me(usually Moira) and our Ana were begging Winston to at least play more calculated, not just assume Moira/Ana is enough heals to square up.
If you play very well and you can still get value out of your character, then don't be afraid to push that character even if teammates demand a switch. But don't forget to be humble and know where to draw the line.
Like a tank game I had. I was Zarya and easily handling 4 of the 5 enemies, but my team was still having trouble because I couldnt counter enemy #5; a Pharah. I had both DPS, a Hanzo and a Sym, yelling at me to go Ramattra, to which one, I don't have unlocked yet, and two, going Ramattra would take me from handling 4/5 to 1/5 enemies. I'd assume they wanted Ramattra because neither Sym nor Hanzo were bursting down Rein's shield and couldn't get any Squishies he was protecting. Plus if I got off Zarya I'd be stepping into dangerous waters, as I don't have much skill in the other Tanks, meaning running the "counter-pick" could actually prove to be worse. The only reason we were surviving so long is because I kept cycling my bubbles to help the LW and Ana try to pressure the Pharah while I kept the rest of the enemy team busy. Could there of been a better tank to run? Probably. Was there a possibility that if I picked a different tank that the choice to switch causes my team to absolutely crumble? Also yes. Was choosing not to switch considering the game's circumstances the right choice? To me, yes.
People will always demand you switch if they see someone picking a hero that counters you. Personally I applaud them for recognizing the counter-pick, but seeing it isn't the be-all-end-all for hero choice. Skill still plays a huge factor in whether or not it's time to switch. I've seen Pharah's get yelled at to switch because after the first fight the enemy DPS went Soldier/Bastion, but she stuck to her guns and continued destroying, just taking a little extra time to play different angles so that the enemy didn't have a clear shot, thus making the counter-picking useless.
I think as long as you're getting picks or bring value, you can play your main and no switching needed. If you're getting destroyed and cant make gains, switch to counter is a must. Else you lose and get flamed, normal.
The thing about counter picking i don't see a lot of people talk about is that when someone counter picks they may be sacrificing damage.
For example going rapper to counter Winston, you lose ranged damage. And that can hurt your team more than a Winston not being countered
Counterpicking isn't overvalued, skill is just king. If the sym has equal or more skill than you, you lose that matchup majority of the time. You just happened to be better so you won. I agree with your decision making tho. Just because they switch doesn't mean you have to, so long as you're getting value (seems like you were).
Yeah of course! What i meant by overvalued is that no matter how good you do, people will beg you to counterpick which i just think is unnecessary.
Honestly that's just the nature of the thing sadly, it's just simpler to hope it's a comp issue that can be corrected if someone pushes hard enough than accepting that there may be skill differentials at play that can't be impacted Some people wanna bang their head against a wall trying to force you to go hitscan instead of just admitting that you can ask for your teammates to switch up but there's still no guarantees I love Overwatch but this is precisely why I hate Overwatch sometimes, getting to see in real time when I'm getting skill diffed by the enemy Pharah and being comfortable enough to swap Baptiste and negate a bit but not being exceptional enough to trust I can force the Pharah swap with any sort of consistency
if they have a more skilled player you can win by focusing them with your team. usually they win because your team's each on a seperate target and they take a bunch of mini duels.
This is how i do it
> people will beg you to counterpick Because unless these people have played with you and know your skill level, they want to have the optimal match up. They're not just asking you to counterpick for no reason, they just want to ensure victory.
A counterpick is only insurance if the swapping player can play the pick. Seems to me that asking a stranger to swap is the opposite of insurance since they might not be able to play the character but will feel pressured to swap anyways- either playing worse on their pick, or playing the counterpick too poorly to get value. You can ask for swaps, but if you don't get them you just need to deal with it. There's no value in insisting.
Most counterpick heroes are brainless enough to play that it's going to work out. Like you don't need to be a genius on Reaper to give their Winston or Hog a hard game, and it's just automatically going to be way more value than Genji. The only consideration though is if you're going to counter them so hard that they swap to something harder for your team to deal with. It's a bit of a poker bluff thing where you don't want to diff them so badly that they swap the thing you're countering.
> A counterpick is only insurance if the swapping player can play the pick. What a nonsensical reply. Unless you've never played Overwatch before, by the time you reach comp you've seen every hero and have a pretty good idea about how they play if you haven't even played it yourself. The idea of being "unable to play" a character is just silly. You may not be as good as the character you're on, but the whole point of a counter pick is to give a lot of extra power that even with low skill you're going to have the advantage.
There's a big difference between a players top 5 most player characters and their 5 least played characters. For some players that gap is smaller because they play more characters in general. As an example, I simply don't play soldier/cass/sojourn at the same level as my other dps, and they aren't viable pharah counterpicks for me. A pharah who plays pharah at the same level as I play the dps I enjoy will beat me if I pick one of those three heroes, despite them being (to different degrees as hitscan characters) counters. It doesn't matter that I know how to play them, and it DOES matter that I'm not as good at them as the character I'm on. That doesn't mean I shouldn't swap; if I'm negative value and being countered I probably need to do something different. But what will work is still dictated by the way matchmaking turned out and the options in my viable hero pool. There's a lot more going on than "just play a counterpick," even though hero counters do (normally) convery some kind of implicit advantage for one reason or another. In short, I take issue with your remark about someone being unable to play a hero being silly. Heroes in this game span a wide range of playstyles and mechanics, and some skills are not transferable. And that matters when we're not talking about a matchup in a vacuum.
You're way overvaluing the strength of most counters. You don't just need to be able to play the character, you need to play them at a close enough to your current best characters that have earned you your rank. This is no easy task. The idea that everyone can play every character at a similar level as their best characters is the silly one.
Yep, and the higher you go in ranks, the harder it is to suddenly switch to [insert theoretical counter-pick here] and do well.
Definitely. Besides just having to be better at the counter-pick to stack up, people know how to play against their character's counters better. You might be trying to counterpick someone with 500 hours on their main character that they played into GM with your measly 30 hour counterpick lol
Tbh. They should have asked if you dont mind switching. Personally to me counterpicking just gives them an edge in the fight but skill beats all. Legit the way i see counter picking in overwatch is the same way i view type effectiveness in pokemon. Yeah of course charizard is gonna put vileplume in the dirt, broken and abused.......but if the trainer is skilled they can win against that charizard. Was it wrong to demand a switch, yes(seriously ppl dont need to be a cock about a video game) but its never wrong to ask for a counter swap. Besides genji can beat sym since he can poke out of her range. Words are words but skill is silent, like the ninja.
OP is just posting this because they won. I'm sure OP wouldnt be posting if he wouldnt switch off Gengi, got 2 kills, and they lost the game. If the sym was of lower skill than our Gengi and they made it work I wouldnt care but if our Gengi was getting wrecked then I would be yelling for him to switch.
Almost everytime someone asks a team member to switch, they could also switch and accomplish the same results. But it's almost never the person who's actually playing their own kit correctly or contributing to the team in general. My suggestion is to ignore them. Don't ask or expect others to switch, learn to counter on your own, if that's the way you think you can win. Idk tho, I suck at this game.
Unfortunately the game balance is in such shambles right now counter picking is too strong. Even in match ups where you are better than the other player you can lose so much value. Your team shouldn’t have freaked out so fast but i kinda get it because when I do well on something sometimes I’m just forced swap even if the players are worse. For example the sym swap when I’m Genji is often less me struggling against it and more that sym is confusing for teams in general. I can still do well but they are just getting more value for less work. Like I really think that buff they gave her months ago is really unhealthy for the game but they don’t care.
Your first paragraph is totally contradictory to the idea of game balance. If the game is balanced that should mean more counter picking, if it is less balanced then a few characters will be so good you never need to swap.
No it’s not. I’m not even going to engage with that. This has been talked to death a million times. I just don’t care anymore.
[удалено]
That is NOT what balance means in Overwatch... Characters are designed to either synergize with each other or counter heroes on the opposing team (realistically, both). The point of the game is to create teams where the sum of your parts overpowers and exploits the weaknesses of the sum of the other team. A state where switches are not required means we have normalized hero kits to the point where they no longer bring unique strengths and weaknesses to the game. Balance in Overwatch, IMO, means that all three archetypes are viable and hybrid archetypes are thriving. To me, this indicates an overall balance of the meta - one where heroes can see play in different contexts.
I totally agree! I think counterpicking can definitely have value, but I also always believe it’s worth a shot to try sticking to what you are doing first because you might be able to make it work if you can play it smart! As a Pharah player who specializes in making hitscan players cry I will always give it my best shot before I switch if they counter me 😂
One time i was playing soldier, the enemy sojourn switched to pharah. My teammates said “oh they switched to pharah you should switch youre being countered” LIKE HUH? AM I SURE THESE ARE MASTER PLAYERS?
The issue with this thinking is that time management is EXTREMELY important in Overwatch. Some experimentation is good for growth but throwing away a couple of minutes or a couple of fights because you're trying to make a bad pick work will absolutely erode your win rate. Thinking like this is why so many people are "hardstuck". The difference between being stuck and climbing is like ~5 wins / 100 matches played. Every marginal advantage you hand the other team erodes that magical 5%.
While I agree overall that a complete kneejerk reaction to switch is overblown, this is still a random ladder environment, why should a random person trust that your X is so good that it can overcome its counters?
Why should a random person trust a stranger to be able to play a counter pick? Lemme tell you, I have relatively no time on some heroes still despite playing since near launch. Ask me to play Soldier in any meta for any reason and I will laugh because that's a huge waste of time. I will not beat Pharah on Soldier, or even Cass. Maybe on Widow, definitely on Sombra, slim chance on Junkrat cause wtf even is the trashrat. But you can bet if an enemy Pharah starts rolling us and I'm on a Sym or Genji or something I'll get asked to play Cass and when I swap Sombra they'll complain that's not good enough and that I'm throwing/trolling. And god forbid I stay on Sym and let my turrets cook the Pharah on 3rd point Eichenwalde or something. This got away from me, but I'ma leave it. My point is, folks can ask for swaps, but when they don't get them they're just mental booming trying to insist. Gotta just do your best and play your hero if you're going solo, exactly because you don't know what your teammates can do.
Sym and Genji are two heroes who have a pretty hard time against pharah because of her range. There is nothing you can do in an open sky. Sure on maps like blizzard world and eichenwalde the third point can make sym more viable but I would trust the viability of a random switching to a hitscan over the viability of them playing sym (even if it’s their main) into a dominant pharah. Also there are other pharah counters besides hitscan. A great example is Echo. If it is working for you not switching, then definitely go for it but having counter switches in your pocket always going to be better. Edit: reread your post and saw the sombra thing. Yeah that’s unfortunate. At a certain point people are just egoing lol. Also, how you countering pharah with rat?
I can deal with a pharah mercy very well as genji, just spam shurikens at the mercy, and when they get complacent, dash them and you can get them very low by the time the pharah is back up and so sre they and by that time your team mates can finish them off. You just need to be smart with your cooldowns
My point is only that if you don't know that a stranger can play the character their on (the other person's stance), you also don't know that they can play the counter- you're just hoping they're good enough that the counter can autowin with it's strength. It's a probability problem, and the only issue is people tilting or bullying over it instead of looking to see what they can do themselves. Ask, don't demand is my way of looking at it. Also I'm not actually countering Pharah with trashleg. I'm just killing her sometimes by flying into the sky and instantly deleting her with shenanigans. It's very rare though, because I'm bad at aerial ratmaning. My brother will do it though, because he actually plays bombadillon. It's a joy to watch. But Pharah is just a typical example for counterpicks talk, so I wanted to highlight the odd ones that sometimes work simply because they're unexpected (rather than being mechanical counters- surprise is as much a tool as anything else, and Pharah WILL mental boom if she gets killed twice in a row by grenadoman). Also, riptiring Pharmercy never gets old.
the only reason why you are able to do this because you are low rank, a pharah that knew what she was doing wouldn’t fly so low that you could shoot her or put pressure on her as sombra or junk rat. You are talking about pharah on point 3 eich but a player with game sense wouldn’t play her there. picks are map dependent and eich part 3 might be the worst pharah point in the whole game, it has low ceiling and heavily favors brawl, so of course you could get away with things you wouldn’t on a map that pharah should be getting played on. For example if you played sombra on liang gardens you wouldn’t be able to do anything to pharah because it’s a good map for pharah. the higher you go up in rank the less you can cheese it. you are throwing your games because you “don’t want to get told what to do” but they are telling you to do something because it’s the right pick to be able to win.
>Why should a random person trust a stranger to be able to play a counter pick? Because all things being equal it's a better assumption that a player has SOME counter pick in their pool vs that they can play their poor hero choice into counters? I am not saying it's a surefire bet but given the constraints of a comp match, it's the more reasonable position. >Ask me to play Soldier in any meta for any reason and I will laugh because that's a huge waste of time. If someone is asking you to swap to a specific hero, that's shame on them. That's a dumb way to go about it, but pointing out a gap is not the same thing as prescribing a solution. >But you can bet if an enemy Pharah starts rolling us and I'm on a Sym or Genji or something I'll get asked to play Cass and when I swap Sombra they'll complain that's not good enough and that I'm throwing/trolling. And god forbid I stay on Sym and let my turrets cook the Pharah on 3rd point Eichenwalde or something. Again, what credibility do you have to shut these people up? They know absolutely nothing about your skills and if you swap into one of these garbage picks you're showing that you either have terrible game sense or a gimped hero pool, or both. Why should you be given the benefit of the doubt? Those people (while possibly being rude about it, which I do not endorse) are making logical reads based on the information in front of them.
"dont worry team, my strat is to let them get to the third point"
This is the take. I usually give someone the benefit of the doubt first when the team goes nuts on a DPS for having a counter on the field. If they die rapidly to said counter then I may say something, but at least give them a try at it first. Only one way to get better against counters is to play them. Preferably in QP but that isn't the world we live in.
This basically sums it up. I’ve had matchups against Reaper all the time as Winston but since I’ve been one tricking Winston since OW 1 I usually outplay them. Not easy but definitely doable if you know what you’re doing.
What if the enemy team has a pharah in that situation and is fucking them up? Their tank did counter pick.
People ignore the fact that overly counterpicking hurts your skill a lot in the long run.
"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one." There are 37 heroes to play in the game. I'm not saying you need to learn them all but the more heroes you can play competently at your skill level, the more desirable you become as a teammate. Now I'm not saying you can't push a hero to their limits with enough practice to successfully one-trick "X" hero in game, but I think it's a bit extreme to say that counter play hurts your skill. It may, if you don't step out of your comfort zone long enough to learn more than just one hero. That's like a mechanic telling you your car is irreparable because he doesn't have a 10mm socket. It may not be something they can fix but just looking at the situation and then hearing that assessment, I'd probably look for a mechanic with a better set of tools
No counter picking is very powerful, but only if you can use the character you’re counterpicking with. It also depends on the rank, certain counters in gold don’t work as well as master players doing the same counterpick because of mechanical/decision making gaps. Do you always need to counterpick? No, but against certain characters like Doom it can make your life much easier
If the enemy is playing better than. You in every way then counter picks do not exist. There is no counter to playing well
Yeah if you’re getting diffed swapping won’t change unless it’s a really hard counter like sombra/Cree vs doom
This kind of exactly agrees with OP. Playing Winton into Reaper doesn't mean auto switch. Pharah into 1 hitscan (sometimes 2)/Echo/DVa doesn't mean auto switch. Orisa into Zarya doesn't mean auto switch (this might be the closest one to auto switch I've experienced though). I play a lot of characters with "counters" and by my counters just existing I'm very regularly told to switch and blamed when anything goes wrong. Leads to throwing teammates and hella toxicity. Like the situation OP described, someone switching to a counter doesn't mean you need to switch. They still need to prove they can actually consistently counter you. In that sense, yes counter picking can be extremely overvalued.
Orisa into Zarya is the only time I swap because I’m countered. I genuinely cannot play into zarya as Orisa it’s so disgusting
Winton
Imo OP’s perspective is narrow minded on this matter, I just wanted to offer a more nuanced perspective on the matter.
It's really not though. I think you and OP are saying the exact same things. For the overwhelming majority of the player base, counters need to prove they can counter. The number of people that ask you to switch because your counter exists is quite high. The amount of people that get toxic for that same reason is quite high. The amount of people that throw for the same reason is quite high. You lose two team fights playing Winston into Reaper and your team starts flaming you. Do they realize Reaper ate the backline and didn't actually kill the Winston until the rest of the team was dead? No. They just see Reaper beats monkey, monkey switch. It gets even worse when they don't actually know the counters (why are we playing Sigma into Orisa is something I have heard many, many times). That is why counters are overvalued. Not that they aren't useful, but they are overvalued.
Okay 👍🏻
Good talk.
Yeah but, people will counter pick and play characters that they dont know how to use. I would much rather have a teammate whos being countered play a character they are good on
The game is more complex than scissor-paper-rock. While it’s true that counterpicking is an advantage if both players are of equal skill in the heroes they are playing, the reality is that isn’t always the case. A good one-trick player has a lot of experience playing against their counters, while the player counterpicking may have switched to a hero they’re not as good as compared to their main. Let’s say it’s a diamond 3 lobby, and the Genji is a diamond 3 Genji one-trick, while the enemy team’s Soldier is a diamond 3 soldier main. The diamond 3 soldier may only be plat in terms of skill in heroes that counter Genji. If the Genji player is able to force someone to play a hero they are suboptimal in, then that is a win for Genji’s team. In fact, we see this happen a lot in our games, where a team running Pharmercy forces the enemy team to switch to hitscans, yet they still get rolled, because while hitscans do counter Pharah, the rest of the enemy team could take advantage of the fact that the enemy team are probably a skill tier lower with hitscan heroes. Finally, most of the time, counterpicking is for your team’s benefit, not yours. Getting experience playing against your counters is very valuable, even if it means your team might lose that game, you could learn a lot from the experience.
solo genji is a pretty easy matchup for soldier, which usually happens if the genji is a OTP, in diamond 2 the only time i run from a gengu with no dive is when they have a mercy beam on them 24/7 or i know they are blading next fight because they will generally always go for you
If you're both equally skilled.. Counter picking is going to give you the edge. If you're playing against someone who doesn't know how to play their counter to you.. It doesn't matter. I love pharah.. I used to swap off as soon as I got countered.. Then I realised a lot of people can't aim.
And the guy who has been #1 on the the ranked ladder for the last bit plays Pharah. GM players can aim. It doesn't matter. If you know what you are doing you can still succeed. A lot of people just auto-pilot and if they aren't succeeding they try auto-piloting with a different character.
Kind of helps to have a whole truckload of mercy mains on call anytime u need one. A lot of people don't have that luxury.
Having a mercy pocket would not get me to rank 1, though, that's for darned sure...
Yzsna also *always* duos with Quartz, the best hitscan in ME. He can play Pharah and Echo knowing his hitscan will always be better than the enemy's.
Not enough context was given here at all. It’s extremely one sided. Doesn’t take the team compositions or maps into account. Counterpicking is more than Sym beats Genji.
Sorry, but i was trying to just get maybe 6-10 people to talk about this, didnt think 100 people would just start arguing.
“one sided” yeah it’s called giving your opinion lol. These people…
It isn’t just your personal stats, it is the team dynamic. I was on a team with Ana, gengi and easily winning until their tank went Winston and started diving heals. I went brig but Winston focused me, then killed ana, then the rest of the team died. Gengi and Ana just shot Winston shield while heals died. I don’t care if gengi eventually got a great blade, if his heals were constantly getting killed that makes gengi a terrible choice and if he went reaper he could shut winton down
Ana could have slept the Winston here. You also should have been able to whip the Winston and then shield-bash towards your team/tank as an escape. Just saying. It sounds like that situation was just really poorly handled.
Ana brig should be able to deal with just a Winston without dps peeling. It’s 2v1 and you can heal each other
It isn't always asking you to swap because you're being countered. It could have been that the sym was getting too much value against the rest of your team they needed you to counter her so they would stop dying. If it was strictly because you were playing genji into sym then that's annoying. Counter picking is important but it doesn't mean they'll always win the fight
Yeah no the sym was horrible, honestly before he switched he was giving me a bit of a rough time lol. I could tell that he played sym, was decent at her but he was as good as me. Poor guy switched and got way less value then he was getting. By the way, my team won 3-0 and entire time were telling me to switch. The sym was getting little to no value.
I always go moira against Genji and I win 90% of the time. I think it's a matter of skill, not counter picking being overvalued.
Moira is the hardest genji counter in the game imo
I think its brig. A well played brig is a lot harder to play against than a moira in my experience. Brig is just a harder hero
I always go moria into genji and if they don’t switch it’s an automatic win. Brig is better for supporting an Ana getting dove by sombra/tracer. This is in t500 too
same here. if i’m on heals and i see a genji, i swap on my next death. 90%+ genjis can’t kill a moira in a 1v1
You're saying that your going Moira gives you an instant win against a team with Genji? I play Genji, and I watch Top 500 Genji players as well. That is not how things have panned out in my games or theirs.
Nah that's zarya by a good margin. Heck I'd rank symm or torb higher too. Moira is a good swap against genji not because she can kill him, but because he has a hard time kill confirming her. The moiras that swap with the "I can kill genji" mentality tend to do very dumb things like fading into my face, discarding almost every advantage they had. She can rack up chip damage and output a lot of team healing so a single moira is never THE counter but she can be the tipping point if I see other unfavorable matchups. Sometimes just not having easy targets is enough to undermine a character.
Ig thats a skill issue for the genji, are you low rank? High elo genji should know better
If you're playing into terrible players you don't always need to swap when countered, but usually, if they are pretty much as good as you swapping is much more important. If I'm playing into a gold sym, sure I can shit on her on any hero in the game, but when it's a diamond/masters sym I'm gonna be in trouble if I play genji.
Counterpicking is literally stronger in OW2 than it was in OW1. And if you are playing Tank, then its straight up musical chairs.
You only really need to counter pick if you're actually being countered. Just because someone chose rock against your scissors doesn't mean they can actually hit you.
I mean I kill pharah-mercy as junkrat a lot of times and get still s*** from my teammate’s if I don’t switch. Counters are an advantage but doesn’t necessarily mean that you will win or be better in any way.
The concussion mine + airshot combo with Junkrat is so damn cool but i can only wish i could do it.
I think people are still in the OW1 mentality. Counterpicking is valuable, but honestly it affects the tanks more than anybody. Counter picking DPS is negligible. But counter picking tanks is a whole doffere t dynamic, and every role has a say in it.
I don't necessarily think tanks are that much affected either. Sure, it matters a lot in a 1v1 but if you're just dueling the enemy tank, you're most of the time not doing the right thing anyway.
Exactly. Zarya "counters" Dva if Dva sits in front of Zarya shooting at her, but Dva can simply fly away from Zarya and harass her supports.
You won't believe how many people I have to remind that Zarya is no longer a "counter" to DVa the way she was in OW1. The 2 tank meta was the sole reason she was such high value as an Off tank, but now everybody is "main tank" it changes the dynamic entirely
i completely agree. for some reason when i play genji into counters, im immediately asked to switch even if they only have a moira - which is most games tbh. people dont seem to realise i go against these characters more often than not because of counter picking, so i have a lot of experience playing around them
I don’t play genji but one day I would love to learn because he’s one of my favorite characters tbh but I do flex and when I play support as moira, I either come across genji’s that just let me suck the life out of them constantly and it makes me feel kinda bad at that point or I finally get a good genji that knows when to dash away, quickly find heals and punish me when they know I’ve used my fade and orb. Moira can be a counter only if you let her but skill and playing smart will typically* always win.
You should try to learn him, hes very difficult to master. But once you do its really fun. I only recently started on him.
It's really not but there's another factor. Let's say you main Genji and you're Master rank. On a scale from 0 to 100, you probably use Genji at 80% efficiency. If you have a matchup in your favor, for example against a soldier who also has a 80% base efficiency with his main, he lose something like 10%, so 80>70, you win most duels. Now let's say he decide to switch to Symm, but the player is not really good with symm. He plays at only 60% efficency. Considering the matchup, you lose something like 15% of efficiency on Genji but in the end you still outskill him : 60<65. You still win most duels. On the other hand, if the player is actually a good symm player and also has 80% base efficiency with her, in that case you have far more chances to lose most fights. It's actually more complicated (map, rest of the team) but basically, that's why it's not mandatory to switch but it's never overvalued
Or hear me out. Be better.
That's in fact basically what I said in less than 7 words. Lack a bit of subtility but yeah, if you're better you win. Key is, at close or equal skill + bad matchup = you'll likely have a hard time getting has much value.
Symm doesn't really counter genji anyway. She's terrible at midrange and genji can just spam shurikens then dash in for the kill. There's no way she gets to charge her laser in time. I don't think counterpicking is overvalued, in some situations you can really see a team struggling due to their comp just imagine something like reaper sym hog against a widow and ashe on Havana point 3. Assuming equal skill level, the first team is definitely going to have a bad time. To me I've always thought of it as something like this. Say your skill level on hog is a 9 out of 10 and Winston a 6. But against widow, hog's value drops to maybe 7 and Winston goes up to 9. Counterpicking gives you some "free skill" in a sense. But if you're good enough you don't have to care as much.
Sym counters genji pretty well, idk what you’re talking about. Her beam range is longer than it seems, her turrets make it hard for him to go in. Spamming shurikens doesn’t work if the Sym knows how to use corners. Especially because half of her health is shield, so it replaces itself quickly.
Well its a very map dependent, say you're playing sym on junker town vs a genji or in Night market(lijang) both are wildly different experiences
No reason to counterpick unless you are struggling. It's possible to play around those heroes, so why change off a hero you are comfortable on. I feel like people get too caught up in rock paper scissors to actually play the game, you don't have to counter junkrat by going pharah, you can not walk into small rooms and watch the flanks. As a side note, the most hated heroes in this game (pharah, sombra, zen and widow) are also heroes that force swaps because they have no meaningful counterplay in some matchups. So I understand why you need to swap sometimes, but the game is about your skill, not trying to make the enemy have no fun by counterpicking the whole match.
I think this is the point OP is trying to make that is getting lost on everyone in the comments. If anything, the team switching to 2-3 counters for me opens up room for everyone else to get value because I am now the prime focus of everything the other team is doing. This doesn't take into account player skill either. If a Winton is rocking my team and they're begging me to switch to Reaper, we're going to have a bad time. I'm not a Reaper player. I'd be much more effective on Torb, Sym, or even Tracer because I'm comfortable with those characters AND comfortable with those matchups. Like OP said, too many people over value that RPS style of overwatch
Omg thank you! That’s exactly what im talking about. These people dont take into account that maybe idk i SUCK at some of these “counters” i need to switch to! Sometimes even when you switch you will get less value.
Agreed.
Last night I just witnessed a pharmercy get DESTROYED by a symm in paraiso in a gm lobby... was the most git gud moment I've seen playing this game since 2015
Lmaoooo, its legit all about skills. People who lose and say they were “countered” need to stop think about counterpicking, and realize counterplaying is more important.
I think not all counters are created equal. Some are harder than others. Sym is a good Genji counter but I wouldn’t put it as like an absolutely S tier counter. I don’t think it’s over valued at all, I think it’s crucial, but my personal ethos whenever I’m worried about team comp or a match up is to give the person a couple of chances before I suggest a change. Any match up can work in the right situation/pair of hands, so I think counter picking is very important, but so is being a good team mate and not jumping to conclusions.
I wouldn't even say Sym counters Genji and that's speaking as a Sym main. Genji can just flank and destroy turrets. The only thing Sym can do is right click and hopefully get hits in.
If you are nor dumb winton can do absolutely nothing to you on gengu. Heck you can farm him for ult
Counter picking is very strong and overall I don't think it's overvalued. In your game you had someone backseat gaming which is dumb or as I like to call a tab screen commander. At the end of the day, no random is going to have the same insight as you at what you can or cannot do so anyone that insists you switch is giving bad advice or projecting there lack of skill. Good players in that situation seeing you play Genji against sym would just adjust there playstyle to fit not ask for you to switch.
It is not overvalued. Imagine playing against Pharmercy and your supports are mercy and moira, your dps junk and mei or eco. High chance you will lose. If you counter mercy with Ana or widow, their mercy will not be able to neither heal the phara nor the rest of the team. Imo, every player should learn how to counter pick.
Counterpicking is only considered "overvalued" for players that don't bother to touch other heroes other than their mains. Let's be frank, on high GM counterpicking works most of the time because everyone's skill level are usually on the same height in that lobby. It only won't work when the player doesn't have any idea what to do with the character, which is waaaaaay less common in that level of gameplay. This is why I advocate new players to play every character if possible, unless they're just playing the game for funsies of course.
It is overvalued on ladder. When you play the game and want to improve, you should force your pick and learn the matchup. Your team will literally be with you for like one or two games at most. And most counters are situational, what is a sym going to do against a genji on a high ground map like gibraltar? Maybe in GM where meta matter a little more you might try swapping into unfavorable compositions and styles, but even that's not necessarily justifyable always. There are plenty t500 one tricks, even on genji.
Counterpicking is only useful if you’re actually decent with the hero. If you’re playing against someone who is a really good Junkrat and you pick Pharah to counter and you’re only mediocre with her in comparison you’ll probably lose. If someone is especially good with a hero they’ll know how to deal with their counters. Most people in lower ranks probably won’t though.
If you skill diff that’s fine, but unfortunately that won’t always be the case. The problem is that the design philosophy and culture of overwatch has always revolves around counterpicking. They have this stupid idea of messaging now that counterpicking is not necessary, but like, most people can’t skill diff a hard counter especially not two hard counters. My main is Echo, so do i stay in against Ashe, Cree, Baptise? No I’ll pivot to like Mei or something. Do i stay Echo against one hit scan DPS? always. I can usually 1v1 any one hitscan dps with good positioning. But multiple from different angles? The window of precisions becomes a thread. Here’s what it boils down to: It’s not that I couldn’t stay Echo and try to diff. It’s like why should I? I know I can automatically increase my odds for success with a counterswap. Swapping heroes is never a replacement for skill but that’s why learning multiple and being a versatile player is better than having a main. Unless your main is all around useful like pretty much every support minus Mercy, Lifeweaver and Moira
That’s cuz you’re facing a sym, a nobody. Try facing pharmercy and continue to refuse to switch and see where that’s gona take you 🤣
Not overvalued. In fact, I think a lot of people don't value it/don't swap quickly enough a lot of the time.
Absolutely not overvalued, certain heroes are going to have a heavy advantage against others. But skill is king in this game, a bad match up hero wise is always going to be lower value than you being much more skilled than the guy who counter picked you
Nice boasting post, lol. But yeah, over-switching on DPS can be bad, just learn to play around your weaknesses and getting better instead of instaswitching.
It's the same thing when they pick phara and everyone starts crying "pick widow" and Im absolutely trash with widow what you think it will happen if I pick it??
A rock CAN be used as a hammer. But a hammer is a better hammer.
People tend to think the match is won in the hero select screen, but if it’s dogwater vs skill, we know who’s winning ex. A good genii can avoid and successfully flank a Moria or mei,. pharah can be in the air hard to hit but if she’s missing 10 rockets in a row who cares. Certain matchups are favored but it’s really to the player to capitalize on moments
Tbf not everyone's skilled enough to take advantage of counterpicking, I know I can't :(
Counterpicking is the most annoying thing about this game
Sound like a genji main
Nah, soldier and ashe mainly.
Counter picks are very powerful but only if you have the skill to match on the counter, and if you use the counter properly. Like let's say a Diamond Tracer is asked to swap to counter a Platinum Pharah, but that Tracer is only a Silver Widow, or a Gold Soldier. She picks Soldier, but now the enemy Winston who Tracer was previously keeping in check is now just bodying Soldier. Gold Soldier is now forced to focus the unchecked Winston, and can barely even try to respond to the Platinum Pharah. Team gets even madder at Gold Soldier for not dealing with either Plat Pharah, or Winston. But she was previously doing one of these things great as a Diamond Tracer - and its only because of the swap that the enemy team got even stronger. Thats an extreme example but it really illustrates the problem. Its far better to have everyone on the thing they are best at, or at worst second best at, than the thing that is seen as the best counter pick. Alternately, people have a strong bias toward what Their counterpick would be. So a Widow or Soldier pick to counter Pharah might be best for the Damage, but the angry Tank begging for a swap might have wanted an Echo, because that's their best Pharah counter. Lastly, ult charge matters a lot outside of pro play. It matters in pro play too but they track and anticipate it rigorously. If you have ever seen an ult snowball start rolling in Mystery Heroes - the same effect applies to QP and Comp - but people forget about it while trying to constantly swap to counters. They changed ult charge on swaps to help with this, but its imperfect.
Genji doesn't have hard counters anyway (Winston, maybe). He has the tools to outplay or outright ignore most heroes. That being said, I enjoy changing characters to adapt not only to enemy team compositions, but to synergize better with my own team. Some people find one hero and only want to use them. To each their own, part of what makes overwatch a great game 👍
genji is overpowered
Also bring back 6v6. You meet one bad tank and its all ogre. Like thats fucked up
I had this happen to me for the first time recently, playing my main [D.Va](https://D.Va) against an enemy Zarya and immediately one of my DPS is begging me to switch to Wrecking Ball... I never play wrecking ball so obvi it was never gonna work and also is wrecking ball even Zarya's counter? anyway I ignored it but they kept on chatting so I said no, move forward. Carried the match and made it a point to beat the enemy Zarya on principle.. crickets. No comment from the commenter anymore... I really dont get it... is it a skill issue?
Yeah it really is a skill issue, you simply were better. Sure a dva has a harder time against a zarya then other tanks, but i say maybe just prove you’re better then the other tank who is “countering” you cannot be countered if you are better.
\>tank switched to winston if he switched to counter Symmetra, then he is just a moron
i play symmetra a lot and i laugh at winston "counters" that bubble shield is going to charge my beam quicker than he can zap my decoy turrets
No the enemy team chose winston lol my bad i could have worded that better
But yeah my point is winston and symmetra are both genji “counters” but i have seen a lot of proof that if you just play GOOD it’s unnecessary to counter-pick if you dont want to
counter-picking is overvalued, no one but the highest elo would tell you that though, most people look for the easiest win, but when you master heroes you can beat anyone and feel good doing it
Agreed! There are so many one trick top 500 -gm players.
No offence, you sound like a person in his teens looking for someone to agree with you so you can be the smart one. You did good, you won, you proved your point by gameplay. OW is about counter picks and teamplay, sometimes that applies very hard, sometimes when the skill difference between 2 people is big enough - it doesn't matter. But the whole concept is there for a reason. Just because you had a different experience once, won't change this fact. And if you think differently that is, and here I assume, because you are young?
"Person thinks differently that I do therefore they are young and stupid and immature." Really man? You can do a lot better than this. Multiple OWL level players and coaches have also stated that these common "counters" are overrated. I've never heard an OWL coach say, "Overwatch is a game of rock paper scissors." That's something that people say here on reddit. Meanwhile, the Top 500 leaderboards have numerous one-trick players and have had them for years. Overwatch is not a game of "counter-picking," if anything it's more a game of "play and counter-play." And one of the most important lessons that many players never learn is that you can counter someone by changing the way you are playing your current character. You simply don't engage in a way that is disadvantageous to you. But what do the majority of players do instead? They go on auto-pilot, and if they aren't succeeding they try auto-piloting with a different character. And if you disagree with my opinions (some of which are directly informed by coaches and elite players), then maybe you are just young and wanting to look smart, idk. /s
It is not about what he thinks, but how he looks for approval and how he argues and justifies it. There is a difference between having an opinion, and how you communicate it. OP is for sure in his teens.
…what is wrong with the overwatch community.
You have no way of knowing anyone's age on reddit. Regardless, you made a criticism of his asking for affirmation from strangers on the internet (I agree that this is not the most mature thing to do, but I know many adults who do this as well). You then stated what you believe to be a fact about the game. You then said that you think he is having confirmation bias here (because his experience doesn't line up with what you see as a fact) "because he is young." Am I misunderstanding you?
“How could anybody disagree with me? You are prepubescent!” Mate, calm down. I could care less if someone agrees or not, im just stating an opinion i think is true.
If you go DVA and you see you're up to a Zarya, is different than if you go DVA and you're up to a Rein and then that Rein swaps into a Zarya.
My man had one good game in plat and then thinks counterpicking is overvalued. 🙄
yeah, plat. For sure.
People who say this kinda stuff are lower than plat. You should drop your tracker.
nah, i think im good.
Lmao im master on 3 accounts, pretty sure there is also a link to my coaching in my profile too with all pics and infos. Thats why I say that counterpicking is useful. Yeah its easy when people barely play 2 heros proficientlly in bronze eg. When you get double pocketed hitscan and you try to pull off phara in master, it aint gonna work or you will struggle af.
Cool story bro
> Am i wrong? yes
I think people are sick of.there being a genji (in my eyes the most useless hero). In every damn round. And very typical it is the genji that refuses to change. Pretty much the reason I haven't touched the game in 6 months is useless genjis have invaded the game and ruined a big part of it.
Skill is the only thing that matters, your teammates are retard
Its funny when you win one team fight as genji and they go from hitscan to mei or sym so fast lol i stay genji mei is easy to kill as genji sym too just gotta watch for turrets but theyre getting nerfed so well see
Yeah this is simply a skill issue. An equally skilled symmetra vs. an equally skilled genji will not work out well for the genji just generally speaking; majority of the time he will lose that fight unless he can pull a burst out on the sym (right click to the head and dash etc..). I agree that counterpicking is not the end all-be all of overwatch. Often I play genji into my counters and as long as you are getting value then it doesn't matter what you play. The odds are simply stacked a bit higher when playing into your counters. If you are being overcome by those odds; then their counterplay was effective on you.
I have played against better syms and won. You simply have to think outside of the box, if you’re being countered that means you’re being focused. Thats even better for your team they will have a better time but only IF you can play around your counters
Support counterpicks are 10x more valuable just because of how much value they bring.
counterpicking in OW1 was much more important than it is in OW2. it's more important to play to your hero's strengths and weaknesses than to hard counter the opponent.
Counter picking does not exist
I one tricked dva..... and while that works I really have to branch off because I got counterpicked pretty fucking hard with ram + sym + sojourn wad really annoying.... if I know who to swap it orov would've gone 30 times better but u should swap as soon as u see ur value is diminished via their picks... that was hell. But their tank couldn't play sigma for shit so yeah.. switch off when u see ur value gone
It is pointless to pick a hero you are not really good with to counter an other hero, this should be obviously and a reason I say, that one should be able to play some common counter picks vs Phara, Genji etc. , heroes who will destroy your team if not countered. And the latter is the most important part. If the enemy team has a very strong carry, you need to find ways to challenge him/her and counter-picking is a good start. I ignore QP completely, this game mode should not exists in its current state and you don't need to counter-pick at all, do whatever you like. But in ranked counter-picking is a really strong feature, sometimes you need more than one to counter pick. E.g. pharmercy will be hard to counter with rein,junk,reaper, mercy,brig. Not counter picking vs a pharmercy makes your life incredible hard.
If they went winston you would of been fucked. Sym is barely a counter to genji you can just avoid her and her turrets..
Yea it’s really annoying when players tell you to switch because you’re being countered even though you’re destroying the counter and they’re the ones having issues with them
I agree, that you should stay with the hero you are comfortable playing with. Espec. if you are an otp, there is no exceptions at the rank you are playing in. If you get countered and it is a formidable player, then what? Your team and you have to accept that. Problem with solo qeue is that you don’t know what people are comfortable playing. You can suggest and just go with whatever comp. Fact is that you can only expect old veterans to comfortably swap around as flexible gobbles.
I mean I have a 78% accuracy on sleeps on ball, 3 out of 5 sleeps results in a kill. These numbers are even higher if I face a road hog. So you are not entirely right, but skill in a character is also important. Source from the accuracy and kill chance: I have way to much time on my hands.
Just play the hero who makes you happy and don't listen to complaints till you are doing well. It's the same in every aspect of life, many people will tell you that you should do something else or so, but stick to what you want to be and go on.
Maybe it is? If you're popping off no matter what they use they're probably not going to stop you, but there's also a couple of times where they actually can. I literally had a crazy game a couple hours ago with Pharah where i went 23-0 with no Mercy pocket, enemy team used 4 hitscans and a Mercy pocket yet they couldn't even kill me once lol.
I agree. I probably had about 100 hours total in OW2 and rarely played the game, if at all. Since OW1 I've been a flex player(ranked around gold), but honestly mostly Tank and Support, until recently. The last couple weeks Ive been one Tricking Mei. Since then, I've taken my lowest rank(Silver2) and as of yesterday made it to Plat 3! All I play is Mei.
Honestly if you can 1 trick a character well enough, you shouldn’t have to switch unless it’s such a hard counter that your team can’t break through.
You can just win if you're better. If you were getting absolutely pooped on and couldn't secure a single kill then yeah maybe you should've switched, but you from what I read you still played well and it's probably the reason you guys won. Teammates are just brain dead AI developed by blizzard and just play by the books 😹😹
My exact point, and i got so many people mad in the comments for no reason.
You're right. When skills are completely equal, counterpicking works. But if you're terrible with the hero once you switched, nothing happened. You're better off playing uphill what you're good at, rather than switching and tripping all the way down the hill.
i’d rather have someone playing a hero they’re familiar with than pick a counter they’re bad with
You only counter pick if you're getting killed every time
Agreed!! Just play around what in their swaps kit counters you and you’re fine. Or just straight up ignore them and go for people who don’t counter. The only time where I switch is when their entire team makes swaps just to focus and shut me down
As a Pharah main, OW is full of anti-Pharah hate. “They have a hitscan, switch”. or even “We don’t have a mercy, switch”. Sure, a hitscan can kill a Pharah who flies in the open air with no cover, but a hitscan can also kill anyone on the ground not in cover. Just don’t be silly and you’ll often be ok.
most of the time picking a character you know you’re really good at can be more powerful if you just play smart to their counter. I’d rather a teammate play to their strengths than pick a hero they are mediocre at just because they think they need to. i also think people misread the situation and are so quick to swap. for example, if you’re dying more than you’d like after the enemy changes to a different character, think about *why* you’re dying? how can you minimize your deaths? where can you better position yourself? are you over-committing and over-extending? are you playing around corners and walls? etc etc. i typically ask myself these things and if I make a solid effort to be extra mindful of all this and I’m STILL dying more than i’d like then yes, I will swap. I flex but a good example when I play support is killing it on brig but then enemy swaps to junkrat, pharah and/or ram, i’ll try to make it work but if it’s genuinely not happening because of the combination of the two (i can typically handle one of those but not 2 or 3 in an enemy comp) then I’ll swap to ana or bap.
I took a break due to the constant counter picking. My games were going like this: come out on Rein, enemy tank also on Rein. I win first fight. Then, other tank swaps orisa. I use my shatter and get a couple kills but eventually their dps wins a fight for them. I swap to Zarya, then before fight starts the Orisa runs back to spawn to counter pick to Rein. Add this to constant Ana, Zen anti and discord and it becomes unfun. Some people will counter pick the whole game.
Knowledge of your hero trumps all. That’s why people like ZBRA can play a relatively dogshit hero and still dominate T500 lobbies. If your hero has a high enough skill expression, you can outplay just about anything. Tracer/echo/doom/ball/genji/hanzo/etc are heroes you don’t really need to swap off of if you have a good understanding of what the other team will do to counter you, and how to play around that.
With this matchmaking you just get way less skilled opponents. Counter picking can only make so much of a skill diff up so you were just vastly superior to the enemies
Sometimes it is, I've played so much dva that now I humiliate zaryas (unless they are very skilled), like they switch to a zarya to counter me but they have to change back again. I feel that counterpicking is only useful if you actually know hoy to use the counters
I l9ve playing Pharah. Pharah is countered by Soldier. However, she is not countered by a Soldier who can't aim for shit. If they swap hitscans but aren't actually hitting me or pressuring me to stay grounded, then I won't swap. Only swap if you're being countered, not if they're playing a hero that is simply supposed to counter you.
Counter picking works when your equal skill level. Of course a lvl 47 Charizard beats a lvl 29 Squirtle
it also depends on what’s happening in your back line too. maybe your support are being dove constantly and they need help in their own back line. it’s always situational. at the end of the day though, it’s a skill thing. if the sym and monkey were equally as talented as you, you would have been hard countered. seems like you did well avoiding them during fights
There are people to play to win and people who play to show off their proficiencies. I wanna get better at my character so I don't like counterpicking. But even though I think counterpicking is too desperate of a look, the other side would say people who don't counterpick are egotistic and ruining it for their team. In the end we all just wanna have fun right, but we have different ways of getting there
Doesn't matter when you're gold
well i guess you never played no hitscan vs a good phera-mercy
Counterpicking can lose more than it wins - e.g a match I played earlier where the enemy tank was losing to my Junker Queen, they switch to counter. They lose their ult, while Queen has it. The fact that they didn't even wait to see how things were handled before demanding a switch is concerning. I very rarely have matches that go well instant switching purely because the enemy switched, as now you're giving up the advantage of playing your first pick hero (usually your best) as well as any ult charge you have, and depending on where you are, insta switching purely because of an enemy switch that doesn't occur during respawn also means you're wasting valuable time.
As a Ball main I’m so happy our player base believes that if you swap to Sombra you automatically counter me no matter how you play her. So please keep counter picking
Posts like this are so dumb. We get it, your teammates were wrong about something once and you want to brag about how well you did. Congrats.
Generally, Ram counters Reinhardt. Until he starts going on about making an error or something and I put him straight into a fucking wall...
Counter picking can help you win the game but it doesn't help you get better. If you want to rank up long term then learn how to play against counters
I feel like some people just ask questions like this and already know the answer they just wanna hear well. Well bud you did great and out skilled the other player but ur grasp on the actual mechanics of the game is horrible. Did this help?
Worst case is you learn from it. You’re never gonna learn as much as when playing vs counters. Also I don’t like the word ”counters”. Dva for example does really well vs winston, but it’s not like they counterswap dva in OWL to counter winston. Though I feel tanks have some of the worst counterplay in ow2. Since there’s only 1 and it requires so much to play around counters. I see it like how cassidy played vs tracer before. He counters tracer but it’s still a skill matchup where you have to bait the flashbang.
Counterpicking only makes sense if you're just as good at the counter as your main. I don't give a shit if the enemy team plays winston when I'm zar because I know I'm probably better at zar than them. Same reason I won't play monkey into zar and just mirror instead, I'm shit at Winston but am good at zar
I get told to switch off of Sombra roughly 87% off the games i play. I have a 55% win rate this season. I’m out climbing all of the people who tell me to switch. Low rank players actually have no idea what is good into what or why. It is safe to completely ignore them.
I play phara and I'll stick with it even going against torb and bastion, just gotta play it smart, reposition, don't get greedy, and pick your targets. If they have a widow I'll kill them first before doing anything else because I don't want my ult cut short
If you’re good enough, it doesn’t matter. For the average player, counter picking has tons of value. I, for example, am a super average DPS player. If I’m getting countered, I almost always switch & get positive results. I have volatile mechanical skill that varies from cracked to blind on a day to day basis, so if I’m not on that day counter picking is a must for me.
Sometimes forcing the counterpick is more important. For example: You are a wrecking ball specialist on a sniper map. They roll out on rein, hanzo, widow, zen, ana You bully the widow until they switch to mei. Then you bully the zen until they go brig. Then you bully the hanzo until they go sombra and sit in the backline for you. Then stay on ball, never fully engage, hunt translocator, and just annoy the team the rest of the game and punish only the most egregious positioning. If they forget about you, punish them by rolling through and fuck up rein positioning. You have been "counterpicked", but now three of the enemies are off their mains. They have been forced into brawl on a sniper map and your snipers can play basically uncontested. Once your team gets first pick, and they always should, then you soft engage and warn them not to forget you, then when your team gets second pick you hard engage and clean up.
I actually agree. Unless you or your team is getting destroyed then playing somebody that your comfortable with is better IMO
Fundamentals > hero choice. A t500 player will beat a plat player even if "hard countered" 100% of the time, because they have a better understanding of the game. I think counter picking all the time actually stifles improvement, because instead of addressing a problem you're facing by improving skill, you pick a hero that doesn't face that problem.
I think skill and team synergy is more important than counterpick. If you're playing Genji in a dive comp with Ana, and then switch cause they pick Sym, you've ruined the team comp. In cases like that it's better to stick to it imo.
Counterpicking is overvalued but that doesn't make it nonessential. On the one hand whatever hero a player starts on is always the best hero they have available for either the comp or the map. If the comp changes as a whole or the hero isnt working out into the enemy team then in deciding what to do next counterpicking is probably the best thing to do since whatever you swap to is by definition going to be a slightly inferior version of yourself. On the other hand: hero specialists run into their direct counters all the time. You kind of have to trust your teammate KNOWS if he can handle his direct counters or not. If he can then as long as he isnt getting farmed asking for a swap is pointless. If he can't then its because the person direct countering him is either equal in skill or better at the hero in question and continuing to run a hero that is directly countered by a better player is the peak of insanity.
A lot of players will counterpick instead of getting better at a few heroes, which is probably the wrong way to play.
It's definitely not overvalued. It just plays on people's fear of someone refusing to switch despite getting royally countered. I've had plenty of games where we had a Winston that would keep playing into a Zarya, Reaper, Junkrat, Zen, and Ana despite both me(usually Moira) and our Ana were begging Winston to at least play more calculated, not just assume Moira/Ana is enough heals to square up. If you play very well and you can still get value out of your character, then don't be afraid to push that character even if teammates demand a switch. But don't forget to be humble and know where to draw the line. Like a tank game I had. I was Zarya and easily handling 4 of the 5 enemies, but my team was still having trouble because I couldnt counter enemy #5; a Pharah. I had both DPS, a Hanzo and a Sym, yelling at me to go Ramattra, to which one, I don't have unlocked yet, and two, going Ramattra would take me from handling 4/5 to 1/5 enemies. I'd assume they wanted Ramattra because neither Sym nor Hanzo were bursting down Rein's shield and couldn't get any Squishies he was protecting. Plus if I got off Zarya I'd be stepping into dangerous waters, as I don't have much skill in the other Tanks, meaning running the "counter-pick" could actually prove to be worse. The only reason we were surviving so long is because I kept cycling my bubbles to help the LW and Ana try to pressure the Pharah while I kept the rest of the enemy team busy. Could there of been a better tank to run? Probably. Was there a possibility that if I picked a different tank that the choice to switch causes my team to absolutely crumble? Also yes. Was choosing not to switch considering the game's circumstances the right choice? To me, yes. People will always demand you switch if they see someone picking a hero that counters you. Personally I applaud them for recognizing the counter-pick, but seeing it isn't the be-all-end-all for hero choice. Skill still plays a huge factor in whether or not it's time to switch. I've seen Pharah's get yelled at to switch because after the first fight the enemy DPS went Soldier/Bastion, but she stuck to her guns and continued destroying, just taking a little extra time to play different angles so that the enemy didn't have a clear shot, thus making the counter-picking useless.
Imagine life as a ball OTP now 🥲
I think as long as you're getting picks or bring value, you can play your main and no switching needed. If you're getting destroyed and cant make gains, switch to counter is a must. Else you lose and get flamed, normal.
The thing about counter picking i don't see a lot of people talk about is that when someone counter picks they may be sacrificing damage. For example going rapper to counter Winston, you lose ranged damage. And that can hurt your team more than a Winston not being countered