Navigating the uncharted waters of Overwatch’s ranked play can be a challenging venture at any rank. Amidst throwers, smurf accounts and generally toxic players, it can be hard to know what will best help the team to actually win a match. All of these challenges arise no matter what tier a player finds themselves in, especially when solo-queueing.
To help navigate the difficult decision of which hero to play at each rank, The Game Haus has come up with the best pick a player can make at each competitive rank. Using examples from the OW community, when possible, these picks should give players at these ranks a better chance to climb and help their team get the win.
Bronze: Torbjorn/Symmetra
Each of these heroes has one thing in common: auto-locking turrets. Having turrets that can effectively do damage for you is key at Bronze rank. The enemy team may not have the wherewithal to target the pesky turrets. Not only this, but Bronze-level players often struggle with aiming. Having turrets to help dish out damage for free will definitely help in that regard and should help to win some games. Each of these is in the top three for the highest win percentage in ranked games for the past month.
Silver: Moira
Moira is a hero that can do a little bit of everything for a team if used properly. The biggest mistake made playing Moira is using the damage (purple) Biotic Orb over the healing (gold). The healing orb is arguably Moira’s most powerful ability and can completely save a team in Silver.
Along with that, her Biotic Grasp is an excellent attack that can finish off targets who are unable to hit the shots needed to finish off a Moira, who could Fade away when her health bar drops low. This kit makes Moira a great choice in a rank where healers will rarely get picked and teams will still struggle to communicate and play more meta compositions. Moira has a 48.74% win rate in Silver, 7th overall.
Gold: Reaper
Although the video is a bit dated (May 2018), Jayne of the Dallas Fuel offers some coaching on Platinum rank Reaper players that is very applicable to Gold as well.
In Gold, players will start to notice that their team leans more towards the occasional meta lineup, playing heroes like Reaper and Mei, especially getting closer to 2500 SR. However, in doing so, teams often fail to peel for their backlines and protect those bold enough to play support characters.
This opens the door for Reaper to either flank and pick off healers or garner quick ultimate charge from shooting at tanks. With his ability to self-heal while shooting his Hellfire Shotguns, Reaper often doesn’t require great healing of his own to completely dismantle an enemy team in Gold. Reaper has a 50.00% win rate in Gold, 11th overall.
Platinum: Brigitte
Platinum is when team positions (sometimes) start to matter and picking a powerful dual-threat character like Brigitte can make all the difference. Brig offers players the ability to begin canceling enemy ultimates and enabling their own team’s ultimates if they are communicating. This big-play ability, paired with her steady flow of healing and damage, make her a great healer on a team and will allow a single player to make a huge impact, even with her recent changes.
[Related: The Brigitte Of It All: An explanation of Brigitte’s new adjustments and the implications]
Platinum still has it’s fair share of irregular matches but playing Brigitte can often make them a little bit more bearable. Brigitte has a 54.95% win rate in Platinum matches, 4th overall.
Diamond: Orisa
Entering Diamond, players will begin to notice meta compositions becoming more frequent and more powerful. In the current meta, bunker compositions are especially powerful. Orisa is a character that is the centerpiece of any good bunker and can make or break it depending on her shield placement. Good bunkers typically only happen on defense, although a more mobile bunker can be equally as effective on offense, especially with the recent move to 2-2-2.
Twitch Partner and popular OW personality SleepingBear has recently shown the power of Orisa, taking a new account to GM with the hero:
So I wanted to get a fresh new account to GM from unranked with Orisa only (ignore the less than a minute -_-) and I am genuinely surprised at myself for doing it in short time. Thought it would take longer pic.twitter.com/VZ7YJ2SwCQ
— SleepingBear (@SleepingBear_1) April 22, 2019
Having an Orisa that can properly rotate and communicate with their team is extremely effective at this rank and can prove deadly if properly utilized. Orisa has a 56.71% win rate in Diamond, the highest in that rank.
Master: Mei
Master is one of the more odd tiers in OW competitive. Here, players can expect anything from OWL-level smurf accounts to players that have just worked their way up from Diamond. But, at the end of the day, this is still a rank where bunker reigns supreme. One way to stop bunker? A big wall of ice.
A good Mei can wall off enemy bunkers and allow their team to rotate to a safer place to reapproach the fight with positional advantage. Not only this, but Mei has entered into the 2-2-2 meta in full force. Paired with a Roadhog and Orisa, Mei can be devastating with or without great communication. Overall, playing with a Mei much easier than storing up for a Nano-Blade combo with EMP, which requires a lot of patience and communication from the offense.
Mei has a 54.08% win rate in Master, 6th overall.
Grand Master/Top 500: Ana
Players in Grand Master hardly need this guide, so this will be brief. Ana gets this slot because she has one of the best kits in the game and, specifically, has a kit that can be best used by high-skill players. Her win-percentage is in the middle of the pack at 53.47% but her usage is among the highest at the current tier. This is for the reasons outlined above.
Ana also fits well within the current meta. Her ability to mesh with Mei/Reaper/Roadhog/Orisa is top-notch and her grenades can shift the tide of several fights if used properly. Overall, if players find themselves at this rank they likely do not need a guide, however, Ana remains a solid pick nonetheless.
Closing Notes
Overall, this guide isn’t simply about which heroes are winning most in the past month but about which ones will start to win most next month. The characters outlined all have proven potential to win at their given rank and should help players advance.
If readers take nothing else away from this article, always remember to communicate and have fun playing. If that becomes a thing of the past, the wins may come fewer and farther between.
[Stats about win rates all provided from Overbuff.com based on win rates at each rank from 07/19/19-08/19/19.]
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