Now that we've covered our primary healers, this guide will focus on the DPS/Support hybrid characters. I’d like to start by debunking a popular misconception about “advanced” characters in this game. Those star ratings indicate the learning curve for the character, not necessarily the “skill” needed to play them or how good the character can be. Fighting game players know this all too well. Ryu and Ken are considered fairly simple characters in most Street Fighter games while the likes of an Akuma typically is “more advanced.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean playing one makes you “more skilled” or you need to leave those characters to better players.

Unless you’re a godlike Ana player, in which case you might be an alien or a robot, and you can friend me on Battle.net.

Zenyatta

Not satisfied with having to play either a DPS or a healer? Then Zenyatta might be for you. I liken Zeny to a hybrid command unit in strategy games: he does a little bit of everything, excels at nothing, and also needs to be escorted at all times. Zen players are Overwatch’s kings of multitasking. Learning how to deal with the sheer amount of moment to moment tasks needed to play him effectively is the biggest hurdle you’ll need to overcome.

The first thing to understand about Zen is while he’s a DPS/Support hybrid, his stronger half is his DPS. Never pick him as your team’s primary healer, as that 30 health per second just isn’t enough. There are two major advantages of Harmony Orb over other healing options: it can be used as a “set it and forget it” ability, and it can be used to heal your flankers. You’ll need to stay in that character’s line of sight for it to remain active keep in mind, as both Harmony and Discord Orb are removed if you lose line of sight for three seconds (though they remain active during those three seconds). At the start of a fight, consider Harmony Orb as a tool to give one of your DPS teammates or your diving Winston/D.VA an advantage. Only bother moving it to other targets if they’re in more serious danger such as being focus fired upon or if the primary healer can’t get to them at the moment.

Despite the recent nerf, Discord Orb remains one of the game’s most powerful abilities. If you want to play Zen at higher levels, you have to pick up the game sense and command skill to identify key targets on the opposing team and call out to your teammates who to fire on. If you have a good Zeny teammate willing to call out their orbs, pay attention and try to prioritize those targets. Discord Orb has numerous uses. It’s good for bullying opposing flankers. It is devastating against Pharah players. It carves significant chunks out of the giant health pools of opposing tanks. Proper Discord Orb placement is your top priority at all times.

What targets should you prioritize? To borrow a football analogy, take what the other team gives you. All things being equal, you’d love to prioritize the other team’s Supports, but if they’re not in a vulnerable state, it’s not of much help. If your teammates can follow up on it, then by all means. More often, the priority needs to be any flankers or divers: Winston, Genji, Reaper, Tracer, D.VA, and I’ll include Pharah here as well. Not only are these characters immediate threats, but they like to operate beyond the protection of their teammates. Take the opportunity while they’re vulnerable to eliminate them or force them to retreat. Next, Roadhog is always a priority target as he’s such an imposing threat that you need to get rid of him in a hurry, and your Discord Orb will make that 600 health a much more reasonable amount to plow through. After that, it grows murkier. If your flankers are attacking someone, put it there. If someone is lit, put it on them to help finish them off. The more you play, the more you’ll come to understand just how many uses Discord Orb has.

Zen’s Destruction Orbs take some getting used to. It’s a projectile attack with a pretty fast travel time and a sometimes deceptively small hitbox. For this reason, Zenyatta excels at melting tanks, but struggles against nimbler opponents such as Genji and Tracer. That doesn’t mean you can’t win these fights, but better Tracers and Genjis aren’t going to move in predictable patterns and will likely win one-on-ones. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to lead targets, so try to keep fights in straight lines as much as you can. Your alt-fire charge attack should be saved for peek battles only, as any time you’re charging it up, you won’t be able to change the placement of your Orbs.

Finally, there’s Transcendence: the probably best Ultimate ability in the game right now. Also known as the “press Q to cockblock Genji” ability, Zen becomes invincible for 6 seconds and provides 300 healing per second to any teammates nearby. Please make note of this, as too many players are under the belief it makes teammates invincible. It does not protect against the following: Rip Tire, Self-Destruct, some Nano-Boosted attacks, Pulse Bomb, Whole Hog (mostly if pinned against a wall), High Noon, direct hits from Bastion in tank mode, and even Bastion’s basic primary fire. Ana’s grenade also nullifies your ability to heal teammates as well. Keep all of this in mind, as finding value in Transcendence often decides matches. Keep it in reserve for countering abilities like Dragon Blade or when your team gets caught in a Graviton Surge. Personally, I look at what the other team has for its comp and pick one character who I tell my team “I’m going to try to counter x.” If you have a Lucio as a teammate, it’s best to work out with him in advance who is using their Ult for what and in what order.

Despite being able to deal more damage, Zen is the most vulnerable of four healers to opposing flankers. His hitbox is annoyingly wide, he has no movement abilities to help escape, and his only option to stop a diver on top of him is basically to kill it despite being intentionally designed not to win those matchups. You have to really put thought into where you position him. You need to be in the center of the backline group most of the time. If you’re too far back or not protected by a Rein shield, you can be easily dived, sniped, or hooked before anyone can assist you. Think of it like positioning a ship at the center of a formation. You want to be in a spot where you can overlook the entire field of play, pound away at the other team from afar, but still be safely where your teammates can guard you.

You’ll need to make use of all these individual elements of Zen to get full value out of him. He’s not a good pick if you just want to do a bit more damage while playing a healer. Rather, he’s a good off-healer because he can heal while providing DPS. If you’re a DPS main (insert meme here) and want to pick up a Support, Zen is perhaps the best choice for you.

Ana

So you tried Zen and decided, “This is too easy. Give me something where I need to multi-task as much, but I also have to aim to heal.” In the interest of full disclosure, I can explain how to play Ana a lot better than I can actually play her. Less than one percent of the player base can actually play her effectively, so don’t feel you need to learn her if she’s beyond your capabilities. If any Ana players want to chime in and take me to task for any of this, I won’t take offense. There’s a very good reason she’s considered the most difficult character in Overwatch to play. That said, you don’t have to fear learning Ana if you’re serious about it. Well, so long as you’re on PC. It’s mor

The biggest misconception with Ana is that you want to play her as an off-healer similar to the way you play Zen. In reality, she’s a hybrid Support heavier on the healing side than the DPS side. Her healing output is actually as high if not higher than Mercy. The best advice I ever received on where to start with learning her is to just get used to pocketing teammates similar to how you’d play Mercy. Despite being a sniper, Ana possesses no means to quickly move about, so she needs to be positioned in your backline with the tanks as opposed to trying to find sniping perches. Well, since you have to stick by your tanks anyway and it doesn’t take much aim to consistently hit them, start by pocketing your tanks.

So here’s the thing about viewing Ana as a “sniper:” the only difference between scope and hip-fired darts is the scoped ones are hitscan and the hip-fired ones are projectiles. They do the exact same damage, and Ana can’t hit headshots, so there’s no real benefit a lot of the time to trying to scope during fights. Even though her hip-fired darts are projectiles, they have a pretty fast travel time and thus don’t require leading at short to medium ranges. Halo players familiar with the DMR should probably have a good grasp as to how the rifle works as a hip-fire weapon. Rather, Ana is more of a utilitarian sniper. She can give your team a lot of what Hanzo or Widowmaker provides, except she does so while also serving as a support as opposed to a dedicated DPS. But for most firefights, you’re going to have to get used to firing from the hip. The sniping aspect is actually more important in a way when you have to make sure you hit a teammate in dire need of healing and can't afford to miss.

There’s quite a bit to understand about how Biotic Grenade functions. On you or your teammates, it heals 100 HP and boosts all other sources of healing by 100% for five seconds. On enemies, it causes 60 damage and blocks healing for five seconds. There’s also a catch with it: it’s Ana’s only means of healing herself. So as a bit of advice to you and your teammates, the other Support player should try to keep Ana healed so she can dedicate her grenade to better uses. When you need to heal yourself, try to at least splash any nearby teammates with it as well.

Biotic Grenade is one of the game’s best and most versatile abilities in the right hands. Cutting off the ability for a lit target to heal for five seconds just about guarantees their death. A well placed grenade can even neutralize Zenyatta’s Ultimate. On the flipside, doubling the healing a frontline teammate can receive for five seconds makes them extremely difficult to kill when backed by Supports. Spend time practicing how to aim the grenade at distance. You can have impactful games as Ana and never land a Sleep Dart, but proper use of her grenade can swing matches as much as Ultimates can.

Speaking of her Sleep Dart, it’s fairly self-explanatory how it functions, so I’m going to skip right to how to best make use of it. Stop me if you’ve seen this before: you just put the Ulting Roadhog to sleep when your teammates keep shooting him, negating that game-saving play you just made. It is vital to yell out “so and so is asleep” or “sleeping so and so” to warn your teammates to stop firing at something. Your teammates aren’t always trying to sabotage you: it’s just really counter-intuitive to have this one ability for which you need to stop firing. Sleep Dart’s best use is for shutting down Ultimates. Even most players with bad aim should be able to consistently hit large targets like Roadhog and Winston or stationary targets like Pharah or McCree using their Ults. This effectively can save your Lucio or Zenyatta from having to pop their more valuable Ultimates. When not being used as an Ult counter, think of ways you can swing matches by effectively removing a key player for a few valuable seconds. One popular example: if the other team’s Reinhardt keeps throwing out his Firestrikes at random, put him to sleep the second he drops his shield. One last note (thanks to @mikelemmer for this suggestion); the Sleep Dart has a small startup animation (about half a second) when you activate it, so practice adjusting your aim to compensate for this.

Ana’s Ultimate is one of the most potentially devastating in the game with the right team coordination. It boosts the target’s damage by 50%, reduces damage by 50%, increases speed by 30%, and lasts for eight seconds. It gets better. That teammate you just boosted continues to build Ult, so if they can pull off two or three rapid kills, then it chains into another Ult! It has a fairly low cost (even though a change on the PTR will be increasing its cost to the same as Mercy’s), meaning you’ll have it available in the majority of team fights. This is a bit more of an advanced topic, but attacking teams often like to do “trash pushes” where they try to bait out the other team’s Ults while saving their own for the following run. Nano-Boost might be the best Ult in the game for purpose given its rapid charge time and difficulty to counter without the use of Ultimates.

The best targets to boost either have their Ultimate ready or have large ammo clips so they’re not wasting time reloading. Reinhardt is always the best choice when you can’t combo off of another Ult, though the likes of D.VA and even Mei work well. Good choices when in combination with other Ults include Roadhog, Genji, Reaper, and Soldier 76. Two quick notes: warn your teammates before you’re about to boost them, and be very careful when aiming your boost. Also, teammates, please don’t walk in front of your Ana when she’s trying to Ult. Granted the expression on the Mercy player’s face when they find they’ve suddenly been Nano-Boosted is priceless…

As you can tell, there is a lot that goes into Ana. Don’t feel you have to learn how to play her to “complete” your Support knowledge. I think she’s an amazingly versatile character that is particularly potent when on Attack or Escort, but only if you can actually get value out of her. But it’s going to take a lot of practice if you’re more serious about using her in competitive play.

Great write up yet again, thanks. Ana is not a hero I'm bothered about playing but Zen on the other hand, Zen is my bread and butter support pick. I fundamentally like the way he plays, throwing orbs out all over the place, 5 different things to think about at any one time. It's those times when you're gold for both eliminations and damage you have to stop and ask yourself what everybody else was doing lol. But yeah, a good Genji, tracer or Reaper will ruin your day if you hang back too much, especially if the 76 or McCree on your team doesn't like looking anywhere other than forward.

Wait, you need to be in line of sight for the orbs to work? What the fuck?

Nice work as always!

I've been playing some Ana as of late, poorly mind you, and she definitely does have a high skill ceiling. I think one key, like you mentioned, is hip firing can be much more effective at close ranges, especially when you are pocketing team-mates. It's especially true because iirc, there is less of a delay between shots when hip firing versus scoped firing.

I think the increase to the radius of her biotic grenade is going to be absurd and probably more than make up for the Ult charge nerf. I'm excited to mess around with that!

@frodobaggins: Thanks! Yeah, the whole Zeny vs. Genji/Tracer/etc. kung fu that goes on is actually a pretty interesting topic in and of itself. That's especially true against Genji. It's especially annoying if you've done your job and you've orbed Genji, maybe scored a hit or two, made him use his deflect so he has to come in with abilities on cooldown (btw this is a good way to get yourself killed playing Genji beyond a certain level of play) and your teammates a) still won't bother to shoot him despite knowing exactly where he's going to be in a second and b) your Zarya won't shield you/your Lucio won't give you speed boost/etc. But anyway, he's probably my most played character at this point just because, like you alluded to, you can impact a match in multiple ways. I can cover for a DPS not doing their job as Zen, but not so much when I'm playing Mercy or Lucio.

@frostyryan: No, you just need to be line of sight or they are returned to you after three seconds. So you can still put it on say a Genji jumping over the gate on Hanamura A, but it only buys them a few seconds of healing.

I'll edit that portion to clarify that.

@slax: Thanks!

Yeah, that change to her grenade is huge. Honestly, I think this is only going to make her better for the majority of players. The Zen player in me really worries about how much better it's going to make her at nullifying my Ult. Meanwhile, if you think of how fast Mercy's Ult charges, it's still plenty fast enough. I think that portion of the change is pretty much focussed on countering the triple Support/triple Tank Meta.

@cav829: Oh absolutely. It charged far too quickly and you were able to get that ult off more than once a fight. It was dominate in some lower level games I've been a part of as if your team is coordinated they can continue to push you with that ult constantly going off.

I like this way of nerfing a character by buffing another. I think that it's weird when the only counter to someones ult is that identical character on the other team using that same ult (which I think Lucio is the best example of, although there are ways to play around it). Though, I think that Zen may need a slight buff after this patch, but I like the idea that there is a way to counter his ult that still takes skill, but would really turn a team fight. I think Zen's healing could use a slight buff to counter this inherent nerf to him, but I suppose we'll see.

I've been practicing a lot with Ana over the past month or so, and learning to use her Biotic Grenade and Sleep Dart effectively were key to that. One thing I would mention about the Sleep Dart is while it has an obscenely fast projectile speed, there's a noticeable delay between hitting the button and it actually firing you have to account for. I would recommend lots of practice to get an innate feel for how long it takes to fire; once you have that nailed down, you can start pulling off crazy shit like sleeping Tracer and Genji. (I actually caused a Genji to ragequit the other day because I instinctively slept him right when he ulted.) As for the biotic grenade, I often save it for healing particularly jumpy allies it's hard to aim at.

I do wish they would change Ana so her shots weren't absorbed by allies with full health, though.

@slax: Completely agreed on the changes. I think Blizzard is getting a much better handle on tweaking the game with these past two set of changes. I wouldn't go so far to say Zeny needs much tweaking though. We'll see. He's still one of the most popular picks in the Meta right now since he's so versatile. I think him and Zarya are the two characters that most work in any mode and any comp right now.

@mikelemmer:That's some great advice on the Sleep Darts! I'm not sure what the full animation time is before she actually fires, but it feels like about .3 to .5 seconds or so. I actually put up the below video yesterday just because it was kind of hilarious, but it should help demonstrate your point. Granted, in the below example that Tracer just made a beeline for me, so it was a lot easier a correction to make than some of those shots you're referencing.

One thing I also might mention: I use a Razer Deathadder and have remapped a lot of shift and E commands to the side buttons. That helps a ton on characters like Ana and also Zeny where I can switch orb sup without moving off WASD as much.

Yeah, it's really annoying how her shots are blocked by teammates. It's especially annoying if you're all grouped up behind a Rein shield and you can't find a good angle to fire through your teammates. That goes hand in hand with the "I hit Q just as the Mercy/Lucio/Zenyatta walked right in front of me" issue.

@cav829: You are probably right about Zen. It seems like he has been suffering multiple nerfs in a row now, but I guess he deserves it after the buff party he received a few months ago.

I love chatting heroes with you, thanks for indulging me!

@cav829 These guides are awesome! Especially for me for I love playing support because I suck at killing enemies so I try best to keep teammates alive. But I have bad habit to play only Lucio, which is great character, but I feel like I am missing whole other game only because I play just one character. I have tried Symmetra couple times, so I am waiting your guide to controlling her right way.

Ps. Sorry about if sentenced feels a little wrong, not my native language.

Again, great guide. I don't have much to add other than that using Ana's ult to boost Symmetra is a pretty great combo. You know, minus the fact that Symmetra is pretty useless otherwise.

Zenyatta is my Overwatch husbando and nobody elses.

One small thing about Zen you missed. Discord orbs, for the three seconds the target is out of LoS, still has a big debuff icon over where they are for you. A lot of people are not aware of this, and will continue running to their intended destination/flanking route. You can use the icon to tell your teammates where someone is very likely to be.

Otherwise, great write-up!

@noeinj:Thanks!

@almostswedish: Thanks! I almost mentioned that on Symmetra, but that might encourage more people to play Symmetra. I kid. It is oddly effective on her though, yeah.

@adequatelyprepared: Quite true. I find it particularly useful for keeping track of where Tracer is Blinking to. I've gotten pretty decent at fighting off Tracers who don't seem to get Discord Orb lets me track their movements. Actually, after playing Zen for a while I have gotten pretty decent at knowing exactly where she's going to be after each Blink even minus the Orb as the distance is fixed. So maybe as a side note to anyone having trouble keeping track of a Tracer, try playing Zen for a bit.

Boosting a Reaper is probably the most underrated tactic with Ana. If you (with the help of your team) can avoid getting stunned an reaper can easily clear up a whole team even without the use of ulti. As a matter of fact the reaper often times deal more dmg with well aimed shots than with the ulti but this is about Ana i suppose ;)

Reinhardt boost is the obvious choice because its the easy to execute one but a good reaper is priceless. You are to fast to target and you one shot everything which aint a tank. (tanks go down in two shots).

I love getting Ana boost as Roadhog ready to go whole hog.

@rethla: Only problem with Nano-Boosting Reaper without Death Blossom is his small ammo clip. But it can work. Funny thing is Lucio speed-boosted/Zarya shielded Death Blossom accomplishes a similar effect, yet I don't think most people know how to pull off that combo.

@frodobaggins: Most def. Whole Hog even without Ana's Boost has 5000 damage potential over 6 seconds, raising it to 7500 on a target with a 600 health pool, suddenly with 50% extra damage reduction, and now able to move faster than your team can. It's definitely the best Ult combo out of Nano-Boost IMO. It even blows right through defensive Ults like they were nothing.

@cav829: yeh rarely do you ever get good shields from a zarya. They just stand back and shield themself and maybe a healer or something thats not under direct fire. If you tell them to shield you when you dive you just get some shitty comment back.

A well played Zarya is equally rare and equally good, Its probably the best thing you can have on your team.

The small clip aint much of a problem as it is fast to reload, unless their entire team is all standing on the exact same pixel you probably have plenty of traversegaps that covers those reloads naturally. If they all are standing on the same spot they will be dead in 8 shots anyway ;)

@rethla: You should be watching the Overwatch Open. Nano-Boost Reaper is dominating a lot of these games. Consider me a believer in even the non-Ulting Reaper Nano-Boost after watching this.

@dudeglove: Not a problem! I really should do some refreshes on these guides. Not only has the game changed quite a bit since I wrote them, but I've gotten a lot better at characters like Ana along the way.

You definitely illustrate some issues I've found with people understanding how to work with Ana, especially at lower ranks (not trying to be an SR snob here). So I have two accounts now for playing with different sets of friends and have thus played games the past season everywhere from Gold to Diamond. I'm also active on a pickup game discord where you'll get into games with people of all ranks. Especially at Gold level, team members body block you. They duck behind scenery instead of trusting their Ana to heal them up. They spam fire at targets they should know their Ana is probably trying to sleep and wake up targets they know they can't kill. The most annoying mistake is when a team fight is coming up and they know you need to Nano a specific target, but still walk together in a giant mess making it easy to Nano the wrong target.

Another key piece of advice I'd add to your list is to try to keep sleep or Bio Nade up at all times. Once flankers know you've used both abilities, they'll come in hard on you knowing they only have to fear your primary fire. If they have to worry about getting slept or naded, they'll typically play the engagement much more carefully.