Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
Teams were jumping on the GOATs bandwagon left and right as everyone realized that this composition was the real deal. It matched up incredibly well against pretty much every other conceivable composition and was relatively easy to play and understand. This composition was the meta, for better or for worse.
Naturally, teams wanted to experiment in order to make the composition function even better. One of the first innovations that appeared was the use of Zenyatta over Moira. Moira supplied these compositions with a lot of healing, but the damage output relied heavily on Zarya. This caused issues at times because it left the compositions lacking in overall damage output if Zarya was taken out early.
Zenyatta wasn’t a perfect fix to this issue, but the extra damage output he supplied definitely came in handy. Some players initially thought that the lack of healing wouldn’t be worth it, but this turned out to be untrue. Ana GOATs also popped up towards the beginning. The idea behind Ana GOATs was that the extra healing combined with Nanoboost would give an advantage. Ana GOATs saw decent play for a little while, but eventually died out.
Zen GOATs stuck around. Teams eventually began to realize that Discord Orb in GOATs dittos was really good. Zarya was quickly being identified as the best hero on GOATs. Her status as one of the main damage dealers was important of course, but the extra shields and the healing really helped out the backline. A Discord Orb could bait out a personal barrier or just straight up make her easier to take down. GOATs tends to fall apart without a Zarya to anchor the composition.
Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
GOATs was a very fast-paced composition, but it wasn’t especially vertical. It didn’t generally have to be thanks to all the anti-dive measures it generally packed in, but this could prove detrimental on certain very vertical points, where high damaging bunker compositions could sometimes win out. Dive GOATs aimed to solve this issue. The composition was visually virtually identical, with only Winston replacing Reinhardt.
The presence of Winston completely changed the way the composition was played. Suddenly, the dive tanks of Winston and D.Va would go to work on disrupting, with Zarya providing support. Meanwhile, the healers were still down below, doing their thing. This composition worked wonders as well, further cementing the composition’s place at the top of the metagame.
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