Roles

Each hero fills a different role in Overwatch.

Tank

T

File:Icon-WEEB.png

WEEB

KINDA ANIfME

Orisa

BARRIER DEPLOYED

Reinhardt

HAMMER DOWN

Roadhog

WHOLE HOG

Sigma

SIGGLES

Winston

OOO OOO AA AAA PRIMAL RAGE

Wrecking Ball

ROLL ROLL

Zarya

ASJKBHASHQWJSGDNASJD

Exceptions

While Roadhog lacks a barrier to absorb enemy attacks, his Take a Breather ability reduces incoming damage by 50% while healing back half of his health, allowing him to survive soaking up large amounts of damage. This leaves the d is most effective when used in and around cover, taking limited bursts of damage at a time and relying on her shield to regenerate between exposures. Zarya is a unique tank because of her regenerating hitpoints, which allows her to work effectively by herself as a proxy-positioned (offside) harassment, not requiring constant healing and only needing line of sight to her team to be able to provide barriers when needed.

Damage

Damage Heroes

Bastion

Doomfist

Genji

Hanzo

Junkrat

McCree

Mei

Pharah

Reaper

Soldier: 76

Sombra

Symmetra

Torbjörn

Tracer

Widowmaker

Exceptions

Due to her self-sustain and utility abilities, as well as her relatively low damage output, Mei is often considered a Damage/Tank hybrid, focusing less on damaging incoming enemies and more on guarding choke points. She is effective at contesting an objective, rendering many opponents' ultimate abilities useless and can excel at setting up enemies for easy pickings by her team's damage dealers.

Sombra deals less damage and requires good tracking. She substitutes the burst damage of her fellow Damage heroes in exchange for incapacitating key targets with Hack for her allies to swarm. She's far less self-sufficient than other Damage heroes, relying on team coordination and communication to operate at her strongest. She is often considered a Damage/Support Hybrid.

While Symmetra has the potential to output tremendous amount of damage when fully charged, she is often picked for her utility role instead. Her turrets are effective at slowing down mobile targets and disrupting the enemy team, while her teleporter is useful for providing mobility to traditionally immobile heroes in addition to allowing unorthodox strategies exclusive to her kit. Much like Sombra, she lacks self-sufficiency compared to the other damage heroes and requires a highly coordinated team to reach her highest potential. She is also often considered a Damage/Support hybrid.

History

This role was introduced in the June 5, 2018 Patch by merging the two roles that existed before: Offense and Defense. Doomfist, Genji, McCree, Pharah, Reaper, Soldier: 76, Sombra, and Tracer belonged to the Offense category, while Bastion, Hanzo, Junkrat, Mei, Torbjörn, and Widowmaker belonged to the Defense category. Prior to the release of her second rework, Symmetra was also intended to switch from Support to Defense. Blizzard gave the following explanation of their decision to merge these categories into one: "Since the line between Offense and Defense heroes has become increasingly blurred, we’ve decided to group all those heroes into a single new “Damage” category. We believe that the term more closely matches the role name that is now being used in Overwatch League and across most of the game’s community."

Support

Support heroes empower their allies by healing them, boosting their damage, and providing vital utility. As support, you’re the backbone of your team’s survival.

Ana

Baptiste

Brigitte

Lúcio

Mercy

Moira

Zenyatta

Role Queue

An example of separate SR for each role

Role queue was added on August 13th, 2019, for Competitive Play, and on September 3rd, 2019, for Quick Play. Players first select 1 or more roles before queuing, and once in a game, players can only pick heroes within a single role. Players have separate SR for each of the three roles.

To encourage unpopular roles—usually tank and sometimes support—incentives are added in the form of 1 loot box per day for playing as the role, and 25 credits for each game after. Loot boxes gained this way are normal loot boxes, and contain no seasonal cosmetics.

Although role queue has standardized the game and prevented instances in which teams do not have any tanks or supports, it has drastically increased the time it takes to find a game, especially for the damage role. As a result, the While You Wait featured was introduced on December 10th, 2019, to allow players to use the training room and play specialized game modes while waiting.

Prior to role queue, Blizzard has previously attempted to standardize team compositions by allowing lock role with the Looking for Group feature.