I think this is something important that should be preached more to low ELO players a lot more, choosing which players on the enemy team you should look to kill first, provided you don’t put yourself in imminent danger. So I think it goes without saying while choosing a target to elim next, your first priority should always be surviving.
With that out of the way, I feel like a lot of players at the low ranks suffer from just deciding to try and kill somebody because they’re the first player to enter their LOS or they think the key to winning team fights is eliminating the tank first. There are so many times I see players dumping their damage plus resources into somebody that has a yellow beam of light behind them for example. I think people get caught up in stats and sometimes play a style where they have a lot of uptime doing stuff, but don’t realize most of their work is being mitigated in one way or another due to an enemy team member going largely unnoticed and being the reason the rest of their team is tanking hundreds of damage.
There’s also the issue of certain heroes (mainly DPS characters) not getting into the middle of team fights but still affecting them in large ways, namely getting picks. These players seem to get ignored for a myriad of reasons ranging from lack of confidence to tunnel vision on someone else, but when they face a team that never bothers to deal with them, it’s usually GGs.
I wanted to open this discussion which I don’t feel like has been had much since OW2 launch and bounce ideas with the community to help everyone improve and make better decisions that lead to better play.
Generally speaking, let’s say I’m playing Winston. For the most part, this is who I would look to make a mistake in order to dive on them first in an ideal setting (note that every game is different, this is just what I generally look to capitalize on)
Mercy. I single her out because of Res. Some people will probably laugh at that, but imo it makes no sense getting an elim that comes back a few seconds later. It feels like the later the Res comes in the respawn the more back breaking it is too. I definitely rate this ability as an ultimate. It allows for enemy tanks to overextend and put pressure on the enemy team then being given their full HP pool after your team maybe loses someone or uses something like Baps lamp, maybe even an ult. They really swing the momentum of team fights very heavily in a balanced match. Not to mention she can damage boost people, which can make certain heroes even deadlier and of course heal people, which brings me to my next two.
Split between the rest of support and high skilled DPS players, especially on certain heroes.
I was leaning towards the rest of the supports taking this slot cleanly but I have to much respect for what I’ve seen a good soujourn or widow do just for two examples. Going back to one reason to kill mercy first, a dead support hero cannot heal his team, making them easy to kill or in some cases actually killable. You want to maximize the value of your DPS as much as you can point blank period. Should you shoot at turrets? Most times, yes. Should you just at shields and Zarya bubbles? More often than not yes. Should you shoot at somebody that doesn’t have to move much to have their teammate erase the damage and get back to where they just were? I don’t think you ever should except in an attempt to force a C9. Do yourself and your team the favor on working on getting support heroes eliminated or at worst neutralize their ability to heal.
Some might argue I may be putting too much value on players that are great at putting pressure on your team, but I’ve just been in one too many games where the enemy team is just steamrolling us, they have someone just playing out of their mind, we make an adjustment to shut him down and the rest of the match is an easy W. The reason I put these players up there with players who keep people alive is even if the player is just feasting on one guy who may not be playing with the best positioning, them constantly being eliminated is limiting the resources at your team’s disposal. A widow can be owning a sym for example and now your team will have limited if any access to her teleporter, which could be very useful on the fly or it could even be that your team planned on using it and now they have to execute a new strat. Another example can be if your team has a Cassidy and hanzo and the enemy has a pharah. Cass might work her in the beginning, but if the enemy also has a tracer or reaper that focuses on him and shuts him down, that pharah is going to have open skies unless you have another hitscan hero in tank or support, who will not be as effective as Cass. Sometimes the winning condition is as simple as neutralize player X and make him play respawn simulator. The rest of his team will join in.
3. Players making huge mistakes.
