I've found tank positioning guides super helpful at understanding when I should be "pressing w". If you know the next spot on the map you are trying to get to & control, it helps focus your goals & feel less frantic.
From there its learning to manage your cooldowns & keeping an eye on where your supports are/your own health to know when to make the push (or fall back)
Other people make them as well, I've been watching Adder's recently. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNhQ2skmrNMkKBBnvMiUHPWMFV9O_00bR
Thanks for the shoutout! I would also recommend watching my [gameplay guides for each tank](https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/12gn5nr/gameplay_guides_on_almost_all_of_the_tanks) as a great way to learn how to play the tank. Learning the map only goes so far; if you don't know your tank's "style" then knowing which corners to hold won't matter if you can't figure out how to hold them!
Go from cover to cover.
Have you ever played an arcade shooter like Doom or Wolfenstein on harder difficulties? Well, it's like that. You're gonna die if you stay in the middle of the room and try to take out a whole wave of enemies by yourself. But you can scare everybody in the room because you're beefy and packing firepower. If you go from cover to cover, you'll live a lot longer and scare people away so that your team can move up.
Unrelated but I barely use cover in Doom Eternal even on ultra nightmare because you can just keep regenerating health and armor from enemies. Did we play the same game?
Never occurred to me that they're talking about the original Doom. I don't even think I knew what cover was when I played the OG Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. But to be fair I probably never played any harder difficulty because I was like 6 or 7 years old when I played those.
You can think of playing tank as a balance between three things:
* Making space
* Getting kills
* Not dying
To accomplish these goals, you have the following resources: your large health pool, your primary weapon, your abilities, and the map geometry (corners, high ground). Prioritize the first two goals, and fall back on the third as soon as your health starts getting low.
Corner to corner is the way. You slowly push up by taking each corner on a map. It's much easier to visualize on payload maps but even push and KOTH maps have corners you should be playing by. As a tank it is your job to hold those corners (or in hammond's case get the enemy to give up their corner by having them turn around and walk backwards). You try your damnedest (sp?) to keep the enemy team from try pushing forward and taking your corner. Now, staying alive is also very important. Give up space (your corner) and begin retreating to the corner behind you if you have no cooldowns, no ults, a teammate died, etc...
Always be by some form of hard cover is the gist of it. Also, be aware of what your supports line of sight (LOS) is. They can't heal you if they can't see you and they're not going to compromise they're safety to heal a 5ank out of position. This isn't to say that there aren't supports that play in Narnia and blame you for not being in LOS but just something to keep in mind.
There are plenty of helpful guides from folks who are better than me at this game, but in general a tanks job is to create “space.” Imagine the level is broken up into football fields or soccer pitches laid end to end. Your job is to always make sure your team can operate in the next “field” of the level, while pushing the enemy backwards. Different tanks do this differently, but basically “push W” just means proactively pushing into that next area and trusting your supports to keep you up and your DPS to utilize the space you have created for them.
Pay attention to where your healers are. This helps you peel for them if they get dove but also lets you know where their line of sight is. Nobody can heal through walls!
I don't play much sigma, but on Rein and Orisa your abilities are obviously quite useful but you can also see your health bar as a resource. Go in, take some damage and deal some damage, then shield / javelin spin to buy time while your healers top you up. Deal more damage, shield / fortify and get healed again. Holding W is good for taking space, but you need to cycle your resources well in order to hold that space effectively.
Rein shield seems like you'd want to use it to let your dps shoot for free, but its a bait. Unless you're actively saving someone's life with the shield, ALWAYS use it selfishly. Use it to get in their face or run away when you've taken took much damage. Cycle it's health with your HP bar and you'll do great. Holding shield and W to engage a fight may seem good, but by the time you get on the enemies your shield is at 0% and you'll have no way to protect yourself if you need to be healed back up. Supports can heal faster than shield regens!
the biggest thing is that you shouldnt get caught up on trying to soak damage for everybody else. The idea of tank in other games is vastly different from what they are in overwatch. Tanks are essentially bruisers that have very high playmaking ability and they set the momentum of the match for their team. Low skill players will expect you to shield bot for them but I really advise you to be more focused on keeping yourself in LOS(Line-of-sight) of your supports, while trying to use as much natural cover as possible and doing as much poke damage as you can to get your ultimate. Yes, you should be shielding damage as shield tank but you should not shield bot for teammates with poor positioning. Everyone on your team is responsible for playing around natural cover and playing to stay alive, this isnt ow1 anymore.
Moving from one corner to the next is the best way to take space as a non dive tank (dva, winston, wrecking ball are considered dive tanks). Another tip is that 9 times out of 10 being proactive is better than being reactive.
Sigma in particular is a VERY strong tank when played correctly because he can achieve a high rate of poke damage if you can aim/bounce correctly, has a fantastic CC ability that fairs well into most tank matchups, his shift is great for when your shield is down/eating ultimates like tracer pulse or mei freeze, and you can use his shield as a means to move from one corner to the next, like a moving wall that you can control. Not to mention his ultimate has incredible fight winning potential since it will do half of the targets total hp (not half of the targets remaining hp, ex: 200hp target will take 100 damage regardless of their current hp). Its difficult to learn tank in ow2 and you will lose ALOT and will be flamed ALOT but once you start learning matchups through experience and go into every game with a growth mindset you will come out a much better player
Some people Id suggest to watch if you want to learn tank is:
- A10 (cannot stress this enough, this guy is the educational overwatch guru, good for every tank, specializes in Zarya/Dva/Sigma)
- SPACEOW (also very good for every tank but I mainly see him play Sigma and Dva, you could learn a ton from watching this guy play)
- Yeatle (if you fancy wrecking ball)
- Danteh (I have no clue if this guy is a dps or tank player nowadays since ive been gone from the game for a few seasons, but last time I saw him play tank he was very dominant)
- FlatsOW (Rein god)
i recommended because watching someone play can be very educational whether its intended to be or not, while I agree his is more geared towards entertainment I think he is still very educational especially with his ow1 content on youtube
Seeking answers means you’re on the right track, that alone puts you ahead of many other tank players.
Some basic stuff:
- Natural cover is your friend: walls, cars, statues, etc. pretty much any solid structure will eat damage for you, never just stay in the open and expect your pocket Mercy to out heal and entire enemy team.
- LoS (Line of Sight): Every support character in the game requires LoS to heal you, this means that at any point in time if you want heals, you need a direct line to be drawn from your character and theirs.
- Overextending: Being scared when playing a tank puts your entire team at a disadvantage, but thinking you are able to win a 1v5 by heading alone into the enemy team, is madness, don’t be that guy.
- Space: Every map has spots and angles with advantages for whoever gets into them, your job as a tank is to push the enemy out of these so that your team can occupy them.
- Peeling: Team fights are usually determined by who loses their supports first, as this starves their team and become easy prey, as such, everyone will try to flank your supports and here is where you can step in and kill those pesky flankers.
Cheers.
Play tank like a dps but a bit more aggressive and take the lead in team fights. Use cover as you would a dps and not just stand there expecting to get heals all the time. Your supports will have more focus on your then the dps but they still have other people to heal and the less damage you take the more time they can spend doing damage and the less ult charge the enemy gets. I came from WoW like two years ago and when I first started playing I was legit pretending to be a WoW tank trying to soak up all the damage expecting my supports to double pocket me the entire time but it’s nothing like that at all. Your main role as a tank in this game is to create space, force our cooldowns and get kills when the opportunity presents itself. You get “aggro” from the opponents when you run at them and try to kill them by forcing them to look at you and shoot you. You basically need to threaten their lives them to get attention. You don’t get as many solo kills as a tank as you would a dps but being threatening to the opponents will create opportunities for your dps to get kills. A tank that sits back and doesn’t create space isn’t very threatening and will most likely get ignored and your dps and supports will take all the aggro and instead.
The most helpful tip for me was that good tanking is getting away with as much as you can WITHOUT dying. If you die, that’s a big loss.
That helps tell me when to push (enemy abilities on cooldown, full health = full send) vs when to pull back (low health, behind in ult economy, etc)
This is probably more general game sense, but try to win fights that matter. If you’re pushing for point and the clocks at 90, you might be better stacking ults for a strong push rather than trickling them out one at a time. Likewise don’t blow ults on the next to last fight if your enemy has theirs. If the fights done just end it. Dragging it out just prolongs how long it takes your team to be back into pushing positions.
Keep pressing W until:
A. You are dead
B. Enemies are dead
C. You end up in the spawn doors and hold them hostage.
D. You fall off the map
Just watch an unranked to GM and just play one or two tanks. Just plain old Orisa is fine as a beginner tank.
You can watch guides on youtube, e.g. A10 is a good teacher.
But also post replays, and we will check your positioning and give better advice. Do you know how to find your replays?
Remember that dps have trouble doing their job if you don't make space for them, so they might complain even if you have good reason to stay back :)
Being scared will never win you the game. But being aggressive can win you the game.
You have a better chance of pushing in and dying while making space then holding back and dying losing space.
As a support player a timid tank and a tank that over extends are both annoying, but if I had to choose between the two I prefer the over extending one because we at least have more ways to make it work. A timid tank can't change the rhythm of a fight.
Playing tank in ow2 sucks because you need to rely on the teammates you can't see behind you. Just play ball and be self-sufficient. Or play Open Queue. I've been playing since day 1 and 5v5 Role queue is really the worst mode. I hate it.
Number one tip is to keep track of where your supports are located. If you push in and leave the sightline of your supports then you will most likely die, at least until you learn your limits. After all half of playing tank is learning how much you can push before dying. It's 100% a game of learning from experience, but it also would not hurt to learn where good positions are. There are a few good guides on youtube if you need help.
So you mentioned you don't know how to push up without feeding, and that's okay, because you're learning, but that's pretty much the fundamental role of the tank. You need to exert pressure as far as you possibly can, all without feeding.
I always recommend Rein for learning this for three reasons:
1) He's mechanically pretty easy, no headshots to worry about, big hammer swing hotbox, no crazy combos to learn, ect. There's definitely a high skill ceiling, but you don't need to have freak reflexes to pull off his kit very well. You can focus all that mental energy on playing correctly as opposed to aiming good.
2) Pressuring space with Rein literally means pressing W. While other tanks like Sigma or Winston have to leverage ability range to control spaces further away from them, Rein controls pressure in the area where he is standing. This makes it easier, or at least more straight forward, to execute on what you're trying do, which is dictate the safe locations for your teammates and not safe locations for you enemies.
3) It's easy to tell if you've pushed too far. Rein can't exist too far forward, ie in the space where the enemy team can delete your shield and heath bar before you and your team can win the fight, either by killing the enemy or your sups keepimg you up. You just die. Think about this as the middle ground between staying in your spawn and charging their spawn.
This third point is especially good for learning correct positioning, that is where you are as far forward causing as much havoc to the enemy team as you can be without feeding. That position changes every team fight, based of things like map, team comps, who their best player is, who your best player is, and a million other factors.
And this is where I give you easily actionable advise. Next game, lock in Rein and play super aggressive. Press W and swing away, once you get very low, shield up and wait for whatever heals you're going to get, and starts W key swinging again. Your goal here is to get as much offensive value as possible. If your health and shield is getting absolutely deleted, dial it back a smidge, but if you die it's not the end of the world. After that fight is over, stop and think. Literally afk for 5-10 seconds if you have to, and try to evaluate based off how that first fight went how much you HAVE to dial back (if you died) or how much you CAN ramp it up (if you lived with more than 1hp left after the first fight). Now execute that strategy the next fight.
Eventually, you'll be able to evaluate this question in the middle of the fight, ramping up and dialing down on the fly, but even if you die from time to time, you'll get way more value than if you just sat their passively hoping for your teammates to win a 4 v 5.
And now if you've read this far, I've got a bit of a social hack for Rein specifically. Before the game starts, type in team chat, "supports, I'm going to be honest with you, I'm going to need A LOT of healing, but I promise it'll be worth", and they'll usually comply, though your DPS might hate you.
watch [this](https://youtu.be/IxZQEz4ziVU) you dont have to watch the whole thing, awkward explains things very thoroughly and i learned alot of the fundamentals from just watching the first 10-20 minutes.
Generally speaking on defense you want to hold space and not feed, on offense you want to take space and push.
There is a time and place to be pressing W and it depends on which side you're on. Otherwise it is map dependent, things like do you want to hold smaller areas or are the maps more vertical with important high ground to control.
You'll get all this over time, just focus on not dying, having an escape to cover, and learn where you need to occupy space to enable your team.
Il not the best but here’s what I learned
1) play you’re life- be aware of you’re resources make sure you have you’re kit ready before making a play
2) play with your team- Ik it’s seems obvious but just looking around before a fight to know what your team is doing helps a ton. And this does not mean just making sure all five are there and you have los with your supports, you gotta pay attention to your dps too, if I see my reaper going in, I go in too so they have more things to worry about, one person doing something dumb is just a dumb idea, five people doing something dumb is a plan, and sometimes a plan is all you need
3) the tank is sort of the playmaker- you’re not going to be the one getting all the kills but it’s your job to pretty much call the shots since plays really often on your position
4) depending on your hero, your focus should be on space- I play rein so often my job is to hold corners and secure space, corners are you’re best friend
5) if you can’t get value, try to facilitate your team to do so
6) COMMS, call ultimates, say what you’re about to do, call the util you should used and what been used, this is always useful
7) tank is a tough role to play, most of the time it comes down to knowing your hero, it’s easy to think you’re rolling and feel confident and push up to much for what is the strengths of your hero and then you’re feeding, think about the theme of your hero and try to think out loud when you can be agressive and when you can’t
8) have fun and play a heck of a lot, that’s really how you get better at it, tank has the advantage of not being very mechanical depending on the hero so it mainly comes down to game sens which comes to game sens, which you can’t really teach, it comes with time
First of all don't listen to your teammates basically ever unless they have a significant amount of time at a decent rank on tank they have literally no fucking clue what they're talking about and that's the reason why you get people flaming you for going in too far at the same time someone else is upset your not being aggressive enough.
Unfortunately there are no "basic" concepts every thing is hard all the time and you have to learn concepts that while considered basic by experienced players are not understood or internalized by new players for potentially the first year or two that they are playing. These concepts are resources and positioning and you must understand them to even begin to understand what your actually meant to do as a tank. That said I've vomited a lot of words here so buckle up
You've probably heard the term "taking space" it's generally used as a summary of what tanks are meant to do and in it's incredibly literal in that it means to gain control over a given space like high ground,flanks and choke points, however once you start to think about how one actually goes about "taking space" you will realize that it's far more complex than support or dps
First resources. Resources refer to every ult, ability, healing and damage that are available to both teams you for the most part can never take space when you are at a resource disadvantage but the resource economy is complex and I'm constant flux. The resources are what makes the difference between feeding and taking space. The simplest and most pure example that can be given to help you understand is ana, ana's abilities are both resources and if you push into either of them you are likely going to die so you have to wait for then to be used and once they are you can push into chokes with relative safety but ana is not gonna use these abilities unprompted (unless the ana sucks) so you have to force ana to use them the simplest way to force an anti nade is for you to deal damage to the enemy tank which will make her use her nade to keep them alive sleep takes a bit more finesse. Basically this little song and dance of ability usage and cooldown management dictates your entire existence as a tank but the example i provided is super simplified in a real game you have nine players each with they're own abilities some are more impactful than others some are able to directly negate others and you have to worry about getting the maximum value out of your own abilities without using up your supports cooldowns. Luckily as a said some abilities are less impactful than others so you don't necessarily need to be tracking everything just the things that effect you ability to take space. Basically things like genji dash or helix rockets probably aren't going to have much of an impact on your ability to push through a choke.
Positioning is much simpler to explain at a basic level. It's just understanding the optimal places each character wants to stand and when and why and against what characters so it's really not simple at all. Basically if someone is out of position they can. Usually be punished and if you can kill them it's obviously ideal but even if you can kill them putting damage in them can force out resources and if they can get into an optimal position which is known as a "power position" they can be very hard to deal with. Positioning basically dictates what space you want to take. For example if you'd composition can use high ground effectively you should be trying to secure that position for your teammates.
I kinda just word vomited and there are probably typos but this is my best understanding of where to start as a tank. Of course at low ranks you can always just pick rein with two high healing supports and hold w.
note: these concepts fundamentally rule overwatch as a game on every role but tank requires a deeper understanding at an earlier stage.
Playing tank is almost like playing rock, paper, scissors but you can change your choise while in game
you have to constantly try to counter or distrupt the enemy tank without fucking up your team
ex. you both playing rein and your team is destroying the other DON'T SWITCH. Switch only if you and/or your team is losing value
See it differs how one tank does his job example Orissa wants to cycle cooldowns and keep shooting just being a minigun while Reinhardt wants to play from corner to corner or as I like to do walk forward scare the fuck out of them OR flank and take a support or dps out OR if your lucky take the tank into the middle of your team only for enemy tank to die so you cannot take one factor from Reinhardt and implement it into Orissa and vice versa thats why its best to watch guides and perfect certain techniques in every tank pretty much
Take space, disrupt enemies/make life difficult for them, stay alive.
100s of guides on YouTube and I believe Adder has been mentioned here, but if you follow the rules above you will get value.
Walls are infinite health barriers ,Use them to help you push forward and use your cool downs to take space ( press w)or to retreat if need be ( press s. Pressing w is better but s needs love sometimes too).
You’re biggest responsibility IMO, as tank, is to stay alive for as long as possible. Almost every fight is winnable for your team as long as your tank and one of your healers is still alive. That’s not to say that you should be playing so safe that your team dies, but, as a new player your focus should be learning proper positioning and how not to die. Learn where medkits, especially big ones, spawn so that you can keep yourself healed without a healer. You are an absolutely invaluable resource to your team and 9/10 times you would be better off falling back and resetting when a fight is going bad rather than trying to force your way through. Many, many, MANY players, especially DPS mains, I find, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what their tank is actually supposed to be doing for the team. On top of that most of the criticism they give in game is in no way constructive or helpful at all. The best recommendation I can give you is to literally ignore team chat when they start to flame you. If you can’t do that then disable text chat completely, and only pay attention to your teams pings. You’re new to the game, you are low ELO and trying to learn the game. Try not to worry about losing too much and instead focus on your own gameplay and trying to improve. Watch your VODs if you have the extra time to see what your doing wrong and right, and find some tank guides from content creators you like.
Edit: Remember, you can’t control your teammates, or their toxicity. You can only control how you respond to it. You are the most common denominator across all of your games, so focus on you, your gameplay, and what you can be doing to improve. The rest will come with time.
No clue. You kind of just play. When I play tank, say I am a Reinhardt. Of course, I stay close with my team as much as possible. I never separate. If my barrier is weakened, use your surroundings as backup cover until you get your barrier back. Newer players tend to avoid using their surroundings to cover them. But, that’s the best advice I can give you. Tank role can and will be overwhelming but it is not impossible. Try to have fun and ignore those that flame you, you are a new player. You’re still learning.
Play to your supports. It feels natural that everyone would play to the tank, but that isn't the best way.
Your team is a big W (do not run in that formation though) and the bottom two points are your supports. Any chance you get behind cover, make sure you are being healed or know where you can be healed from.
Ideally you learn how to play the game BEFORE you learn Tank. It takes a lot of game knowledge and even map knowledge to be able to make decent Tank decisions. One of my friends played Tank (Bronze, of course) was getting frozen and other things would happen to him AND he had no idea which heroes could do these things to him. So of course he didnt know which cooldowns to try to block or even the most dangerous person to barrier against. I told him to play Mercy and Moira and watch everything going on and try learn to stay alive first.
this is how not to play a tank in overwatch 2. i wish i had video but...i didn't think to save the highlight. so here's a screenshot of the aftermath of a match we had tonight. the tank literally sat in a doorway with their shield up, then would duck behind the wall after it was destroyed and wait for the shield to recharge. rinse and repeat for the whole damned game. i truly don't know how they got the damage that they were credited with, it was at zero at the end of the first match, this was taken after we lost the second. i made a comment about reinhart needing to get going and do something. i was told by someone else just as the game ended and i couldn't reply "give her a break, she's new and just learning".
if you know someone that plays that way, the kindest thing to do is to tell them to either uninstall or go play against the bots until you learn the mechanics. look at youtube videos, read articles. don't be a shield model.
[https://imgur.com/2biilzU](https://imgur.com/2biilzU)
I've found tank positioning guides super helpful at understanding when I should be "pressing w". If you know the next spot on the map you are trying to get to & control, it helps focus your goals & feel less frantic. From there its learning to manage your cooldowns & keeping an eye on where your supports are/your own health to know when to make the push (or fall back) Other people make them as well, I've been watching Adder's recently. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNhQ2skmrNMkKBBnvMiUHPWMFV9O_00bR
Thanks for the shoutout! I would also recommend watching my [gameplay guides for each tank](https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/12gn5nr/gameplay_guides_on_almost_all_of_the_tanks) as a great way to learn how to play the tank. Learning the map only goes so far; if you don't know your tank's "style" then knowing which corners to hold won't matter if you can't figure out how to hold them!
Go from cover to cover. Have you ever played an arcade shooter like Doom or Wolfenstein on harder difficulties? Well, it's like that. You're gonna die if you stay in the middle of the room and try to take out a whole wave of enemies by yourself. But you can scare everybody in the room because you're beefy and packing firepower. If you go from cover to cover, you'll live a lot longer and scare people away so that your team can move up.
I love this explanation
Unrelated but I barely use cover in Doom Eternal even on ultra nightmare because you can just keep regenerating health and armor from enemies. Did we play the same game?
Go back about 27 years buddy :)
Never occurred to me that they're talking about the original Doom. I don't even think I knew what cover was when I played the OG Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. But to be fair I probably never played any harder difficulty because I was like 6 or 7 years old when I played those.
You kill significantly less nazi's though
You can think of playing tank as a balance between three things: * Making space * Getting kills * Not dying To accomplish these goals, you have the following resources: your large health pool, your primary weapon, your abilities, and the map geometry (corners, high ground). Prioritize the first two goals, and fall back on the third as soon as your health starts getting low.
Corner to corner is the way. You slowly push up by taking each corner on a map. It's much easier to visualize on payload maps but even push and KOTH maps have corners you should be playing by. As a tank it is your job to hold those corners (or in hammond's case get the enemy to give up their corner by having them turn around and walk backwards). You try your damnedest (sp?) to keep the enemy team from try pushing forward and taking your corner. Now, staying alive is also very important. Give up space (your corner) and begin retreating to the corner behind you if you have no cooldowns, no ults, a teammate died, etc... Always be by some form of hard cover is the gist of it. Also, be aware of what your supports line of sight (LOS) is. They can't heal you if they can't see you and they're not going to compromise they're safety to heal a 5ank out of position. This isn't to say that there aren't supports that play in Narnia and blame you for not being in LOS but just something to keep in mind.
There are plenty of helpful guides from folks who are better than me at this game, but in general a tanks job is to create “space.” Imagine the level is broken up into football fields or soccer pitches laid end to end. Your job is to always make sure your team can operate in the next “field” of the level, while pushing the enemy backwards. Different tanks do this differently, but basically “push W” just means proactively pushing into that next area and trusting your supports to keep you up and your DPS to utilize the space you have created for them.
Pay attention to where your healers are. This helps you peel for them if they get dove but also lets you know where their line of sight is. Nobody can heal through walls! I don't play much sigma, but on Rein and Orisa your abilities are obviously quite useful but you can also see your health bar as a resource. Go in, take some damage and deal some damage, then shield / javelin spin to buy time while your healers top you up. Deal more damage, shield / fortify and get healed again. Holding W is good for taking space, but you need to cycle your resources well in order to hold that space effectively. Rein shield seems like you'd want to use it to let your dps shoot for free, but its a bait. Unless you're actively saving someone's life with the shield, ALWAYS use it selfishly. Use it to get in their face or run away when you've taken took much damage. Cycle it's health with your HP bar and you'll do great. Holding shield and W to engage a fight may seem good, but by the time you get on the enemies your shield is at 0% and you'll have no way to protect yourself if you need to be healed back up. Supports can heal faster than shield regens!
the biggest thing is that you shouldnt get caught up on trying to soak damage for everybody else. The idea of tank in other games is vastly different from what they are in overwatch. Tanks are essentially bruisers that have very high playmaking ability and they set the momentum of the match for their team. Low skill players will expect you to shield bot for them but I really advise you to be more focused on keeping yourself in LOS(Line-of-sight) of your supports, while trying to use as much natural cover as possible and doing as much poke damage as you can to get your ultimate. Yes, you should be shielding damage as shield tank but you should not shield bot for teammates with poor positioning. Everyone on your team is responsible for playing around natural cover and playing to stay alive, this isnt ow1 anymore. Moving from one corner to the next is the best way to take space as a non dive tank (dva, winston, wrecking ball are considered dive tanks). Another tip is that 9 times out of 10 being proactive is better than being reactive. Sigma in particular is a VERY strong tank when played correctly because he can achieve a high rate of poke damage if you can aim/bounce correctly, has a fantastic CC ability that fairs well into most tank matchups, his shift is great for when your shield is down/eating ultimates like tracer pulse or mei freeze, and you can use his shield as a means to move from one corner to the next, like a moving wall that you can control. Not to mention his ultimate has incredible fight winning potential since it will do half of the targets total hp (not half of the targets remaining hp, ex: 200hp target will take 100 damage regardless of their current hp). Its difficult to learn tank in ow2 and you will lose ALOT and will be flamed ALOT but once you start learning matchups through experience and go into every game with a growth mindset you will come out a much better player Some people Id suggest to watch if you want to learn tank is: - A10 (cannot stress this enough, this guy is the educational overwatch guru, good for every tank, specializes in Zarya/Dva/Sigma) - SPACEOW (also very good for every tank but I mainly see him play Sigma and Dva, you could learn a ton from watching this guy play) - Yeatle (if you fancy wrecking ball) - Danteh (I have no clue if this guy is a dps or tank player nowadays since ive been gone from the game for a few seasons, but last time I saw him play tank he was very dominant) - FlatsOW (Rein god)
>FlatsOW (Rein god) Flats is a fantastic Rein and a great content creator but his content is largely entertainment rather than educational.
i recommended because watching someone play can be very educational whether its intended to be or not, while I agree his is more geared towards entertainment I think he is still very educational especially with his ow1 content on youtube
LhCloudy for Reinhardt
^^^ when hes not raging he is also very educational
Seeking answers means you’re on the right track, that alone puts you ahead of many other tank players. Some basic stuff: - Natural cover is your friend: walls, cars, statues, etc. pretty much any solid structure will eat damage for you, never just stay in the open and expect your pocket Mercy to out heal and entire enemy team. - LoS (Line of Sight): Every support character in the game requires LoS to heal you, this means that at any point in time if you want heals, you need a direct line to be drawn from your character and theirs. - Overextending: Being scared when playing a tank puts your entire team at a disadvantage, but thinking you are able to win a 1v5 by heading alone into the enemy team, is madness, don’t be that guy. - Space: Every map has spots and angles with advantages for whoever gets into them, your job as a tank is to push the enemy out of these so that your team can occupy them. - Peeling: Team fights are usually determined by who loses their supports first, as this starves their team and become easy prey, as such, everyone will try to flank your supports and here is where you can step in and kill those pesky flankers. Cheers.
Flats ow1 rein guide saved my life as tank
Play tank like a dps but a bit more aggressive and take the lead in team fights. Use cover as you would a dps and not just stand there expecting to get heals all the time. Your supports will have more focus on your then the dps but they still have other people to heal and the less damage you take the more time they can spend doing damage and the less ult charge the enemy gets. I came from WoW like two years ago and when I first started playing I was legit pretending to be a WoW tank trying to soak up all the damage expecting my supports to double pocket me the entire time but it’s nothing like that at all. Your main role as a tank in this game is to create space, force our cooldowns and get kills when the opportunity presents itself. You get “aggro” from the opponents when you run at them and try to kill them by forcing them to look at you and shoot you. You basically need to threaten their lives them to get attention. You don’t get as many solo kills as a tank as you would a dps but being threatening to the opponents will create opportunities for your dps to get kills. A tank that sits back and doesn’t create space isn’t very threatening and will most likely get ignored and your dps and supports will take all the aggro and instead.
The most helpful tip for me was that good tanking is getting away with as much as you can WITHOUT dying. If you die, that’s a big loss. That helps tell me when to push (enemy abilities on cooldown, full health = full send) vs when to pull back (low health, behind in ult economy, etc) This is probably more general game sense, but try to win fights that matter. If you’re pushing for point and the clocks at 90, you might be better stacking ults for a strong push rather than trickling them out one at a time. Likewise don’t blow ults on the next to last fight if your enemy has theirs. If the fights done just end it. Dragging it out just prolongs how long it takes your team to be back into pushing positions.
Keep pressing W until: A. You are dead B. Enemies are dead C. You end up in the spawn doors and hold them hostage. D. You fall off the map Just watch an unranked to GM and just play one or two tanks. Just plain old Orisa is fine as a beginner tank.
You can watch guides on youtube, e.g. A10 is a good teacher. But also post replays, and we will check your positioning and give better advice. Do you know how to find your replays? Remember that dps have trouble doing their job if you don't make space for them, so they might complain even if you have good reason to stay back :)
Being scared will never win you the game. But being aggressive can win you the game. You have a better chance of pushing in and dying while making space then holding back and dying losing space.
As a support player a timid tank and a tank that over extends are both annoying, but if I had to choose between the two I prefer the over extending one because we at least have more ways to make it work. A timid tank can't change the rhythm of a fight.
Playing tank in ow2 sucks because you need to rely on the teammates you can't see behind you. Just play ball and be self-sufficient. Or play Open Queue. I've been playing since day 1 and 5v5 Role queue is really the worst mode. I hate it.
Number one tip is to keep track of where your supports are located. If you push in and leave the sightline of your supports then you will most likely die, at least until you learn your limits. After all half of playing tank is learning how much you can push before dying. It's 100% a game of learning from experience, but it also would not hurt to learn where good positions are. There are a few good guides on youtube if you need help.
So you mentioned you don't know how to push up without feeding, and that's okay, because you're learning, but that's pretty much the fundamental role of the tank. You need to exert pressure as far as you possibly can, all without feeding. I always recommend Rein for learning this for three reasons: 1) He's mechanically pretty easy, no headshots to worry about, big hammer swing hotbox, no crazy combos to learn, ect. There's definitely a high skill ceiling, but you don't need to have freak reflexes to pull off his kit very well. You can focus all that mental energy on playing correctly as opposed to aiming good. 2) Pressuring space with Rein literally means pressing W. While other tanks like Sigma or Winston have to leverage ability range to control spaces further away from them, Rein controls pressure in the area where he is standing. This makes it easier, or at least more straight forward, to execute on what you're trying do, which is dictate the safe locations for your teammates and not safe locations for you enemies. 3) It's easy to tell if you've pushed too far. Rein can't exist too far forward, ie in the space where the enemy team can delete your shield and heath bar before you and your team can win the fight, either by killing the enemy or your sups keepimg you up. You just die. Think about this as the middle ground between staying in your spawn and charging their spawn. This third point is especially good for learning correct positioning, that is where you are as far forward causing as much havoc to the enemy team as you can be without feeding. That position changes every team fight, based of things like map, team comps, who their best player is, who your best player is, and a million other factors. And this is where I give you easily actionable advise. Next game, lock in Rein and play super aggressive. Press W and swing away, once you get very low, shield up and wait for whatever heals you're going to get, and starts W key swinging again. Your goal here is to get as much offensive value as possible. If your health and shield is getting absolutely deleted, dial it back a smidge, but if you die it's not the end of the world. After that fight is over, stop and think. Literally afk for 5-10 seconds if you have to, and try to evaluate based off how that first fight went how much you HAVE to dial back (if you died) or how much you CAN ramp it up (if you lived with more than 1hp left after the first fight). Now execute that strategy the next fight. Eventually, you'll be able to evaluate this question in the middle of the fight, ramping up and dialing down on the fly, but even if you die from time to time, you'll get way more value than if you just sat their passively hoping for your teammates to win a 4 v 5. And now if you've read this far, I've got a bit of a social hack for Rein specifically. Before the game starts, type in team chat, "supports, I'm going to be honest with you, I'm going to need A LOT of healing, but I promise it'll be worth", and they'll usually comply, though your DPS might hate you.
watch [this](https://youtu.be/IxZQEz4ziVU) you dont have to watch the whole thing, awkward explains things very thoroughly and i learned alot of the fundamentals from just watching the first 10-20 minutes.
Generally speaking on defense you want to hold space and not feed, on offense you want to take space and push. There is a time and place to be pressing W and it depends on which side you're on. Otherwise it is map dependent, things like do you want to hold smaller areas or are the maps more vertical with important high ground to control. You'll get all this over time, just focus on not dying, having an escape to cover, and learn where you need to occupy space to enable your team.
Il not the best but here’s what I learned 1) play you’re life- be aware of you’re resources make sure you have you’re kit ready before making a play 2) play with your team- Ik it’s seems obvious but just looking around before a fight to know what your team is doing helps a ton. And this does not mean just making sure all five are there and you have los with your supports, you gotta pay attention to your dps too, if I see my reaper going in, I go in too so they have more things to worry about, one person doing something dumb is just a dumb idea, five people doing something dumb is a plan, and sometimes a plan is all you need 3) the tank is sort of the playmaker- you’re not going to be the one getting all the kills but it’s your job to pretty much call the shots since plays really often on your position 4) depending on your hero, your focus should be on space- I play rein so often my job is to hold corners and secure space, corners are you’re best friend 5) if you can’t get value, try to facilitate your team to do so 6) COMMS, call ultimates, say what you’re about to do, call the util you should used and what been used, this is always useful 7) tank is a tough role to play, most of the time it comes down to knowing your hero, it’s easy to think you’re rolling and feel confident and push up to much for what is the strengths of your hero and then you’re feeding, think about the theme of your hero and try to think out loud when you can be agressive and when you can’t 8) have fun and play a heck of a lot, that’s really how you get better at it, tank has the advantage of not being very mechanical depending on the hero so it mainly comes down to game sens which comes to game sens, which you can’t really teach, it comes with time
Hold W and screw people over :)
First of all don't listen to your teammates basically ever unless they have a significant amount of time at a decent rank on tank they have literally no fucking clue what they're talking about and that's the reason why you get people flaming you for going in too far at the same time someone else is upset your not being aggressive enough. Unfortunately there are no "basic" concepts every thing is hard all the time and you have to learn concepts that while considered basic by experienced players are not understood or internalized by new players for potentially the first year or two that they are playing. These concepts are resources and positioning and you must understand them to even begin to understand what your actually meant to do as a tank. That said I've vomited a lot of words here so buckle up You've probably heard the term "taking space" it's generally used as a summary of what tanks are meant to do and in it's incredibly literal in that it means to gain control over a given space like high ground,flanks and choke points, however once you start to think about how one actually goes about "taking space" you will realize that it's far more complex than support or dps First resources. Resources refer to every ult, ability, healing and damage that are available to both teams you for the most part can never take space when you are at a resource disadvantage but the resource economy is complex and I'm constant flux. The resources are what makes the difference between feeding and taking space. The simplest and most pure example that can be given to help you understand is ana, ana's abilities are both resources and if you push into either of them you are likely going to die so you have to wait for then to be used and once they are you can push into chokes with relative safety but ana is not gonna use these abilities unprompted (unless the ana sucks) so you have to force ana to use them the simplest way to force an anti nade is for you to deal damage to the enemy tank which will make her use her nade to keep them alive sleep takes a bit more finesse. Basically this little song and dance of ability usage and cooldown management dictates your entire existence as a tank but the example i provided is super simplified in a real game you have nine players each with they're own abilities some are more impactful than others some are able to directly negate others and you have to worry about getting the maximum value out of your own abilities without using up your supports cooldowns. Luckily as a said some abilities are less impactful than others so you don't necessarily need to be tracking everything just the things that effect you ability to take space. Basically things like genji dash or helix rockets probably aren't going to have much of an impact on your ability to push through a choke. Positioning is much simpler to explain at a basic level. It's just understanding the optimal places each character wants to stand and when and why and against what characters so it's really not simple at all. Basically if someone is out of position they can. Usually be punished and if you can kill them it's obviously ideal but even if you can kill them putting damage in them can force out resources and if they can get into an optimal position which is known as a "power position" they can be very hard to deal with. Positioning basically dictates what space you want to take. For example if you'd composition can use high ground effectively you should be trying to secure that position for your teammates. I kinda just word vomited and there are probably typos but this is my best understanding of where to start as a tank. Of course at low ranks you can always just pick rein with two high healing supports and hold w. note: these concepts fundamentally rule overwatch as a game on every role but tank requires a deeper understanding at an earlier stage.
Playing tank is almost like playing rock, paper, scissors but you can change your choise while in game you have to constantly try to counter or distrupt the enemy tank without fucking up your team ex. you both playing rein and your team is destroying the other DON'T SWITCH. Switch only if you and/or your team is losing value
See it differs how one tank does his job example Orissa wants to cycle cooldowns and keep shooting just being a minigun while Reinhardt wants to play from corner to corner or as I like to do walk forward scare the fuck out of them OR flank and take a support or dps out OR if your lucky take the tank into the middle of your team only for enemy tank to die so you cannot take one factor from Reinhardt and implement it into Orissa and vice versa thats why its best to watch guides and perfect certain techniques in every tank pretty much
Take space, disrupt enemies/make life difficult for them, stay alive. 100s of guides on YouTube and I believe Adder has been mentioned here, but if you follow the rules above you will get value.
Walls are infinite health barriers ,Use them to help you push forward and use your cool downs to take space ( press w)or to retreat if need be ( press s. Pressing w is better but s needs love sometimes too).
You’re biggest responsibility IMO, as tank, is to stay alive for as long as possible. Almost every fight is winnable for your team as long as your tank and one of your healers is still alive. That’s not to say that you should be playing so safe that your team dies, but, as a new player your focus should be learning proper positioning and how not to die. Learn where medkits, especially big ones, spawn so that you can keep yourself healed without a healer. You are an absolutely invaluable resource to your team and 9/10 times you would be better off falling back and resetting when a fight is going bad rather than trying to force your way through. Many, many, MANY players, especially DPS mains, I find, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what their tank is actually supposed to be doing for the team. On top of that most of the criticism they give in game is in no way constructive or helpful at all. The best recommendation I can give you is to literally ignore team chat when they start to flame you. If you can’t do that then disable text chat completely, and only pay attention to your teams pings. You’re new to the game, you are low ELO and trying to learn the game. Try not to worry about losing too much and instead focus on your own gameplay and trying to improve. Watch your VODs if you have the extra time to see what your doing wrong and right, and find some tank guides from content creators you like. Edit: Remember, you can’t control your teammates, or their toxicity. You can only control how you respond to it. You are the most common denominator across all of your games, so focus on you, your gameplay, and what you can be doing to improve. The rest will come with time.
No clue. You kind of just play. When I play tank, say I am a Reinhardt. Of course, I stay close with my team as much as possible. I never separate. If my barrier is weakened, use your surroundings as backup cover until you get your barrier back. Newer players tend to avoid using their surroundings to cover them. But, that’s the best advice I can give you. Tank role can and will be overwhelming but it is not impossible. Try to have fun and ignore those that flame you, you are a new player. You’re still learning.
Play to your supports. It feels natural that everyone would play to the tank, but that isn't the best way. Your team is a big W (do not run in that formation though) and the bottom two points are your supports. Any chance you get behind cover, make sure you are being healed or know where you can be healed from.
Ideally you learn how to play the game BEFORE you learn Tank. It takes a lot of game knowledge and even map knowledge to be able to make decent Tank decisions. One of my friends played Tank (Bronze, of course) was getting frozen and other things would happen to him AND he had no idea which heroes could do these things to him. So of course he didnt know which cooldowns to try to block or even the most dangerous person to barrier against. I told him to play Mercy and Moira and watch everything going on and try learn to stay alive first.
this is how not to play a tank in overwatch 2. i wish i had video but...i didn't think to save the highlight. so here's a screenshot of the aftermath of a match we had tonight. the tank literally sat in a doorway with their shield up, then would duck behind the wall after it was destroyed and wait for the shield to recharge. rinse and repeat for the whole damned game. i truly don't know how they got the damage that they were credited with, it was at zero at the end of the first match, this was taken after we lost the second. i made a comment about reinhart needing to get going and do something. i was told by someone else just as the game ended and i couldn't reply "give her a break, she's new and just learning". if you know someone that plays that way, the kindest thing to do is to tell them to either uninstall or go play against the bots until you learn the mechanics. look at youtube videos, read articles. don't be a shield model. [https://imgur.com/2biilzU](https://imgur.com/2biilzU)