Hero Mastery: Understanding Reaper

You are Reaper, and you just got your ult. You feel your adrenaline pumping, your eyes darting across the map, the enemy tracer is occupied, Reinhardt is blocking your team, and the enemy Ana has proven that she can’t land a sleep dart to save the life of her firstborn. You teleport up to a higher point, leaving your team to defend the point on their own momentarily, and you laugh to yourself, the enemy team has no idea what’s coming. You wait for the enemy Mei to walk past the point at which you’re standing and then you drop down. You mash your ultimate button with all of the drama and energy of Yu-Gi-Oh drawing a card, or Goku turning Super Saiyan.

“Die, die, die!”

You say it with him as Reaper becomes a Beyblade of whirling destruction and ruined KDA’s. Except no one’s KDA gets ruined. Mei becomes a block of ice, Zenyatta ults and you immediately get filled with bullet, arrows and whatever the hell it is Zarya shoots at you. You explode and seriously consider leaving the game. How did your team accomplish NOTHING with your sacrifice? How did it not work? Your PoTG hopes just went out the window and you got nothing for it. Your team loses the ensuing five-on-six and you’re tilting off the face of the planet, your only saving grace being that your teammates are too unobservant to realize what the turning point was that allowed them to push onto the point.

So where were the mistakes made? It stemmed from not understanding the basic rules of the game. The characters in Overwatch are balanced to have meaningful weaknesses and Reaper has his own. Short range and relatively few defensive abilities (Spectre Form is a lackluster one at best) are Reaper’s. The best way to counter these weaknesses is to be with a team, being the follow up makes the burden on the Reaper far less painful. It’s important to not believe that you must make your own plays by yourself. Let your engage…Well, engage.

An equally important idea is to remember to look for minor flanks and, if you’re confident in your abilities, to counter a flanker. If you haven’t got your ultimate, then looking for a setup for it isn’t necessary. Try to find the enemy Genji or Tracer, I promise they’ll be looking to get behind your team. Make them regret it. You’re strong in close quarters, and other flankers tend to be close range combatants, and even if you don’t kill them, leaving a stalemate will deny them the ability to take down your team. However, if you do manage to take them out, it becomes a 5v6 and that’s something to look forward to. If no one is trying to flank your team, then chances are you can find one of your own, kill the enemy Mercy in the confusion, buckshotting her from behind before making your exit, again, your team is up a person.

Flanking is everything here.

The most important part of the character is to realize that your job isn’t really to wipe the enemy team on your own. You want to look for the opportunity to create a player advantage for your team in the safest way possible for you. Aim to kill one, and leave to begin with. Then move on to realizing opportunities for multikills. If you can get a multikill you’ve done your job and then some. You want to use your mobility to pick off and assassinate people who are out of position, so that your team can use their abilities to take over the fight.

What do you think? Let me know if this helped you, or if you just think I suck in the comments below or @TirasCarr on twitter!