Breaking Down the Icepick Composition

ICEPICK: Origins

There is some small variance in this composition, but the strongest variant includes Orisa, Roadhog, Hanzo, Mei, Baptiste and Zen. The origin of this comp is split from two different metas. The tank line paired with a Mei comes from the infamous Clockwork Vendetta who rolled contenders with these three heroes in combination with Ana, Zenyatta and a Torb. Before this however, there was the composition that was run in essentially all playoffs in Overwatch League last year which included the two snipers, Hanzo and Widowmaker along with the front line of Orisa, Roadhog and D.Va, along with a solo mercy as the only support.

With the release of 2/2/2 lock these two have fused in essence to become “Icepick”. Whilst this composition  actually isn’t as strong on the control game type it excells on maps that used to benfit double sniper as this comp holds an insane amount of pressure, zone control and burst.

ICEPICK: Strengths

The strengths in this composition come from their ability to burst people down with powerful combos and ultimates. Overwatch’s history has rarely seen a composition with this much burst. Baptiste’s amplification matrix is incredibly powerful in the mirror match. Coupling with the discord orb Zenyatta can throw out at will to delete a hooked target. The Halt Dragon combo is as also fairly okay however Baptiste’s immortality field does nullifty it. The video below demonstrates what happens when the dragon-halt combo is executed without a baptiste on the enemy team and how strong it is, this is one reason that Bapt is included in this comp.

London Spitfire’s 4-man Dragonstrike combo | Tactics

What makes this composition overpowered is the pick potential Orisa’s standard pull above an enemy shield to Even without introducing the burst potential of Zenyatta, Hanzo and Baptiste, the clockwork three (Orisa, Roadhog and Mei) provide consistent potential to isolate and zone targets. Mei’s Ice Wall can be used defensively to block an enemy halt which is used in cycle with Orisa’s fortify to deny an enemy bunker the chance to create a pick. The reason this composition may substitute the Roadhog for a D.Va  is due to how it can quickly snowball with tempo, which being halt-hooked would disrupt. Weirdly chosing the more defensive option can help with being aggressive as you deny damage or enemy pulls whilst keeping up a consistent high damage output, if the fight goes out long enough blizzard can be used to secure it.

Due to how strong this composition operates when it has positional advantage, teams will often try and push an advantage as much as possible when the fights are won, or try their best not to lose as fast as possible once in that position. That’s where the defensive cooldowns of Matrix, Ice block and Immortality field can really shine.

ICEPICK: Weakness

The two main weakness’s of this composition comes from the lack of sustain with Bapt, Zen as your support line whilst also losing on control to NuGoats. Point stacking has become a legitmate tactic and this composition does not execel at sustaining like a mei reaper comp does or the tradtional 3-3 did. You would have thought in theory a well executed dive with an emp can beat the composition however duo the imortality field it can deny alot of the intial bust a dive puts out to secure a kill, simply put dive needs an opening pick on the squishiest target to operate and Bapt Drone denies that.

the second counter to this composition is poke bunker with mcree and hanzo that shield break and pressure the tanks so they can’t set up plays for their dps without using natural cover where its impossible to be shot from.

In future we will see NuGoats being run on control whilst Icepick will be deployed on escort and some areas of 2cp or payload points of hybrid.

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