Julia’s Overwatch Not-Developer Update: FAQ Edition!

Let’s talk video games. Specifically, let’s talk about the extremely popular game Overwatch. This awesome game produced by Blizzard Studios is available on three platforms currently: PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Unlike many modern games, Overwatch is new and refreshing. You play as one of the characters currently on the roster, (it’s futile to list exactly how many heroes are on the current roster. Blizzard adds a new character every few months.) and you shoot the enemy. That is, admittedly, a bland and uninteresting description… until you get more details.

You are placed in a team of six, including yourself. In the current meta, (meta is a strategy, action, or method used by a player to get an advantage over the opposing players,) you have two healers, two tanks and two DPS (damage per second) heroes. You play one of four game-modes: assault, control, escort or hybrid. There are other game modes, but these four game-modes are the focal point of competitive play. Your objective differs from each game-mode, but generally, your goal is to win against the other team and secure the victory.

Quick play is fun if you’re looking for a fun game to pass the time with. Once you reach level 25, you are eligible to play ten competitive games to be ranked. This is where the fun begins. There are currently eight ranks: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, grandmaster and top 500. I play on XBOX One servers and I am currently very high diamond, low masters. I haven’t been playing as much this season so my rank has decayed. (Decaying is something that happens in high rank: I haven’t played my five games for the week, so I am losing rank. It’s to boot people with multiple accounts off of leaderboards and also stop players from achieving a high rank and never playing again to maintain the rank.)

I am a tank main. The current tank roster consists of two shield tanks and four off tanks. The shield tanks are Orisa and Reinhardt. The off tanks are D.Va, Roadhog, Winston, and Zarya. Specifically I main Zarya and D.Va. They are high-damage and take a significant amount of map-awareness and skill. D. Va has a total of three abilities. She can free-fire without worrying about reloading from her mecha. She also has mini-missiles which get fired from her mech. Her ultimate ability is self-destructing her mech and launching it in the air to drop in front of the enemy. This ability is very hard to master and takes expert positioning. Her second ultimate ability is very powerful. Once D.Va’s mech has been destroyed either by self-destructing or taking too much damage, she will jump out of it. She has a pistol to defend herself with that doesn’t do as much damage. By shooting the enemy and hitting their hitboxes, you can successfully get back in your mech.

If you think all this information is a lot, it’s just scratching the surface of Overwatch’s potential. Look out for the next column to come along for the next JONDU column series.