A Comprehensive History of Overwatch Part 17: SNOATs

Part 17: GOATs’ continued dominance and the rise of SNOATs

Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

This series is going to start moving pretty quickly. That’s because it is currently in one of those periods where the meta just doesn’t change for a while. To say that GOATs was the gold standard would be a huge understatement. The meta currently consisted of two teams smashing together as GOATs squadrons, with variations in the build coming from what main tank and what support team was being used. Zarya, D.Va, Brigitte, and Lucio were on virtually every team. There was some variation, sure, but it was hard to see the difference between all of the comps without a trained eye. Players and viewers were getting restless.

These days any variation was welcome. Which is probably why SNOATs became a pretty big deal.

Mei Has Entered the Game

Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

Mei had always kinda been in the back of people’s minds when crafting compositions. Her walling off and zoning tactics were pretty useful against pretty much every team comp, and wall gimmicks that allowed teams to traverse gaps that they weren’t really supposed to. Mei gimmicks had existed since the beginning of the game, but her being meta was rare. Her zoning qualities were rarely in super high demand, and she could become dead weight against compositions that had any sort of verticality.

Mei’s zoning qualities were now in high demand. GOATs, specifically Reinhardt variants of the composition, was a composition that relied on everyone being close to each other. Mei’s playstyle was perfectly suited to shut GOATs down.

Therefore, SNOATs was born. Ditch D.Va in favor of Mei and let it rip. This composition did very well against the standard GOATs composition, and it had merit versus the more mobile dive GOATs as well. Even the most divey of GOATs comps still had somewhat immobile characters such as Brigitte and Zarya. Mei could chop these compositions in half, greatly impacting their ability to actually stick together as a group.

This composition…existed in the sphere for a time, but players still weren’t satisfied with what was happening. It was still GOATs, just with some variation. That would change in time, however.

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