Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch League pro picks show you’re playing all the wrong heroes in ranked

This might shake things up on the competitive ladder.

The professional Overwatch scene has historically been a trend-setting vehicle for casual players to discover powerful team compositions, and with the opening of the Overwatch League’s spring stage qualifiers that began on April 27, pros have seemingly done it again.

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But this time, instead of coming up with something especially off-the-wall, OWL teams showed the world that what Overwatch 2 competitive games have been missing is some good old fashioned dive compositions.

Winston is among the least-selected tank heroes in Overwatch 2 competitive play over the past three months, according to Overbuff, and Sombra is similarly underrepresented on the ladder. However, in the Overwatch League, both characters had some of the highest usage rates this past weekend, according to stats tweeted out by OW2 content creator Samito.

https://twitter.com/SamitoFPS/status/1653760308350005255/photo/1

With a dive meta being the main course of the weekend, Winston was used 54.23 percent of the time. Meanwhile, DPS players used Tracer and Sombra 33.96 percent and 23.5 percent of the time, respectively. They were the most-used DPS heroes, and to make matters even divier, Genji was the fourth-most repped DPS hero of the weekend getting a 6.08 percent usage rate.

Winston was by far the most-used hero on the roster, and while Sigma came in second at 14.78 percent, another popular dive tank, D.Va, was the third most-used tank coming in at 9.46 percent.

Related: Super-teams and high ping: 3 lessons learned from the Overwatch League Pro-Am

Ana might not necessarily be considered a “dive” support hero, but as one of the most versatile main healers on the roster, she was utilized more than any other support. Meanwhile, Brigitte, with her freshly reworked ultimate ability, was the second most-selected support hero in large part because she is an anti-dive support hero that can help protect a powerful support like Ana.

Many of these usage rates (particularly for DPS and tank heroes) are vastly different from casual play on the competitive ladder, where the top DPS heroes have strong damage from mid-range or further. Overbuff lists Cassidy, Soldier: 76, and Hanzo as the three most-picked DPS heroes in competitive over the past three months. Tracer is somewhere in the middle of the roster in terms of competitive usage, and Sombra is second to last.

Tank play in comp is dominated by the likes of Reinhardt, Orisa, Sigma, and Ramattra. Even among dive tanks, heroes like D.Va, Wrecking Ball, and Doomfist get played more than Winston, and they also have higher win rates as well.

A dive comp might not be the easiest to coordinate with random people you find in a match, but based on what the pros are showing us, it’s certainly among the most optimal ways to dominate some games.


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Author
Max Miceli
Senior Staff Writer. Max graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a journalism and political science degree in 2015. He previously worked for The Esports Observer covering the streaming industry before joining Dot where he now helps with Overwatch 2 coverage.