The best Hero pairings for Overwatch Competitive Season 3!

Season 3 is live now on Overwatch, and you & your team are going to need to bring your A game to the table. Read on to find out the best hero pairings that can give your team the advantage you need!

The best Hero pairings for Overwatch Competitive Season 3!
Overwatch is a hugely team-based game. Good team composition is essential, but what is even more important is creating a composition that works well not only as a full whole, but between individual teammates. Powerful pairings can make or break a game, spelling either complete success or total failure. In this guide, we'll show you some of the best pairings you can use in Overwatch to destroy the opposition and gain those all important ranks.

McCree & Reinhardt

McCree and Reinhardt are powerful heroes in of themselves. McCree offers precise and extremely effective DPS, with the ability to stop annoying flankers like Tracer, Sombra etc in their tracks with his Flashbang ability. Reinhardt is the spearhead of the team, shielding his allies with a huge blue shield.

With Reinhardt enabling the team to put out damage without receiving it, and McCree providing some of the best damage in the game, this pairing is little more than common sense. McCree can put out huge amounts of damage from the safety of Reinhardt's shield, he can stop the annoying flankers that will try to dash behind Reinhardt, and he can shut down one of Reinhardt's main counters, Pharah.

Their ultimate abilities combine well also. Reinhardt's Earth Shatter throws your enemies to the ground, and a simple Deadeye from McCree at the right time can annihilate the opposing force.

Reaper is a force to be reckoned with, but Ana makes him even more effective

Ana & Reaper

Ana and Reaper are terrifying heroes in their own right. Reaper puts out insane damage, able to hit up to 260 damage up close in a single shot, and Ana can not only deny you healing AND put you to sleep, but she can unleash one of the most devastating ultimate abilities in the game, Nano Boost.

With a recent nerf, Ana's Nano Boost had the speed boost element removed. Previously the ultimate would increase the speed, health, and damage of whoever it was put on, making Reinhardt a great choice for it. Now that the speed element has been removed, it is better to put it on characters who can keep up with the majority of the roster, as opposed to a slow tank who would be left floundering under a hail of fire.

Reaper is the perfect recipient for this. His already ridiculous damage is bolstered greatly with Nano Boost, and his own ultimate ability, Death Blossom, can easily wipe out a team even without Nano Boost. When Ana gives this insane buff to Reaper when he uses his own ultimate ability, the terrifying spectacle of an uber-powerful spinning grim reaper will have the whole enemy team pushing up daisies. So effective is this strategy that it has even garnered its own name from fans, The Beyblade.

Soldier 76 & Mercy

Boy oh boy is this an effective pairing. Mercy is already a great character, being able to dish out effective single-target healing or a powerful damage buff to teammates. With Soldier 76's recent buff, he does even more damage than before, allowing him to melt through lower health characters, and even give some of the toughest tanks in the game severe medical troubles.

Damage-boosted Soldier 76 is nothing to mess with. He will destroy almost anyone in his line of sight, and combining his Tactical Visor ultimate with Mercy's 30% damage boost will spell the end for anybody not behind cover. The best part about this pairing is the sheer sustainability. Not only can Soldier 76 repel almost any threat, he can drop a Biotic Field to heal Mercy if she becomes injured. Furthermore, if members of your team happen to fall, Mercy can fly in to resurrect your dead teammates to full health, ready to inflict even more punishment on whatever poor fool on the enemy team is still in your way. Truly a great pairing.

Widowmaker and Tracer might be enemies in the lore, but they make a great pairing in-game

Widowmaker & tracer

This is a pairing that makes for an extremely interesting mix. Widowmaker is great at holding the backlines down and subjecting enemies to focused sniper fire, but unless you're landing headshots consistently, she often will put players down to very low health, but not quite dead. This is especially the issue with high HP heroes like Zarya, Roadhog etc, where she would require two fully-charged headshots to kill them. This is where Tracer comes in.

Tracer isgreat at harrassment. Perhaps not the best at securing solo kills, but she can shake up an enemy team by jumping into their backline and keeping people busy. With this strategy, Widowmaker can take shots at the enemy team and, if there is someone she doesn't happen to kill, the Tracer nearby can dive in, confirm the kill, and then escape. This means that Widowmaker can serve her purpose by driving the enemy team back with consistent sniper fire, and anybody that manages to survive one of her bullets can be picked off by the Tracer.

Ensuring all kills are confirmed means that there is less chance for enemy healers such as Zenyatta, Mercy, and Lucio to build their own ultimate charge by healing injured teammates, and also leaves the enemy team a man down for the coming team fight, forcing them to either engage at a disadvantage, or to regroup and lose valuable time.

Tracer's role can also be filled by the latest addition to the roster, Sombra, especially seeing as she is able to disable enemy abilities, which can also help Widowmaker hit important shots. It is purely down to player preference.

Zarya & Genji

Zarya is a powerhouse of a tank. Able to deploy shields on herself and selected teammates, damage dealt to these shields charges up her weapon, allowing her to do increasingly more damage with every little bit of charge. When enemies are out of range of her Particle Cannon's powerful beam, she can lob a devastating energy grenade to finish them off. Genji is a slippery devil. Being able to double jump, wallclimb, deflect, and dash, he is incredibly hard to keep a track of and thus is a great initiator.

With Genji's ability to initiate a fight by jumping straight into the fray, Zarya can deploy a particle shield onto him to soak up some damage and thus charge her own damage. She can then jump into the fight herself and deploy her own personal particle shield, putting her at a high enough charge to melt through any opposing hero. The beautiful part of the synergy however, comes when both Zarya and Genji have their ultimate abilities ready. Zarya can pull all enemies within a certain area of effect onto a single point using her Graviton Surge ultimate ability, and trap them there for a few seconds. Genji can then use his Dragon Blade ultimate ability, summoning the power of the dragon into his sword, an ability which lasts 6 seconds, deals 120 damage per swing, and can hit all of the enemies within the Surge in a single swing.

Combining these ultimate abilities together will almost always yield great results, often cutting down most, if not all of the enemy team. The best part about this combination is that, if it is not countered by an enemy support ultimate such as Zenyatta's Transcendence, the support and damage heroes will always die first, leaving some mortally wounded tanks to be mopped up by the rest of your team.

D.Va and Mei are both great at stalling objectives and buying time

D.Va & Mei

D.Va & Mei are the defending team's dream, and the attacking team's nightmare. Mei has ridiculously good stall potential, able to put an ice wall between her and the enemy team, encase herself in a block of ice to become invincible briefly and restore her own health, and freeze even the most fearsome of enemies into an icy statue of vulnerability.

D.Va is also a great hero for stalling. Whilst not as proficient as Mei, she can use her Defence Matrix ability to deflect almost all incoming attacks, including fired ultimates such as Zarya's Graviton Surge, Soldier's Tactical Visor and more. She is also able to fly, meaning she can boost herself away from danger, or fly just within the capture area of the objective she is defending to contest the enemy team's capture until backup arrives. Even when her towering mech is killed, she is not dead yet. She then ejects out of the mech and, equipped with a pistol, she can run rings around the enemies due to her fast movement speed. If she gets enough damage down, she can even call another mech.

The ultimate synergy potential with Mei and D.Va is there, but it is unfortunately not too effective. Holding as many ultimates as possible is key for big team fights in Overwatch, and using Mei's Blizzard to freeze all enemies within an area of effect already makes for easy pickings on any frozen enemies. When D.Va throws her ultimate, Self Destruct, into the mix, it uses two ultimates when one could be used, and denies friendly heroes ultimate charge to build their own ultimate abilities.

In the absence of Mei's Blizzard though, D.Va's Self Destruct can force enemies off the point to cover. The explosion of the mech will deal 1000 damage, often killing anyone within the massive blast radius. Both characters are great at zoning enemies out of objectives and stalling a capture whilst waiting for the rest of their team to provide backup.

Mei and D.Va are great for buying time alone, but having them both doing this ensures chaos on the objective as the enemy team will struggle to focus down the Mei, whilst also trying to kill the D.Va harrassing them.

So, we've shown you some of the most important and powerful pairing for Overwatch, and putting these together with the help of a friend or two can ensure you have the upper hand on your enemy. Competitive Season 3 is live now on all platforms, so get out there, kill some noobs, and win some games!

1 Comment

  1. Avatar photo

    Payload! The Payload! Someone help me move this thing!!!

    Reply

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