I just got into Overwatch (Xbox One) about a week ago and while I tend to gravitate towards a few specific heroes (Bastion, Reinhardt, Mercy) I wonder if it's better to strictly focus on one or two heroes or learn a bunch of them.

What seems to be best practice? Should I just pick my favorite and become besties or pick a couple to know pretty alright?

I would say learn what every character is capable of and to play atleast one from each role. This means no matter what your team is missing or what objective you're doing you can switch it up. Eventually you'll probably be playing like half the roster.

I would say the best practice is to learn a few of them. Try to get some favorite in each class so you can switch depending of the situation...

Also, try to experiment with different heroes from time to time. They might surprise you...

I think starting with one of each role is crucial, you pretty much sure you always have a good team compisition with that.

People who have mains and refuse to pick anything else are infuriating. Learn to play at least one of each role.

It's important to at least get experience with every single hero, no matter how interested in actually playing them you are.

You'll get a feeling for their match ups, their cool downs, and ability strengths and weaknesses.

If you're going to get into ranked, play all of them so you know what they can do.

Otherwise just play whatever. I don't play ranked.

I only play as Mei. Even if there is already a Mei on the team and we are attacking, I only play as Mei.

Yeah, Overwatch is easy enough to get into that most of the characters you can be able to play for sure. The ones that require a bit more skill (e.g. Widowmaker, Genji) would take some time or if you aren't that great of a shot at FPS's but other than that, knowing how to use everyone even at a basic level is also useful when fighting against them.

For serious play, obviously you need to know what every hero is capable of and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

From their you want to be proficient in 2 of each class. If you're only proficient with 1, for example let's say Lucio, and somebody already picked him, you need to be able to play a good Zen. Just for example.

i suck with most everyone, but it doesnt matter as i can't experiment as i always end up having to play support (i.e. lucio 24/7)

I think all the characters (other than Widowmaker) are pretty fun. I don't play a lot of ranked, so in a usual 6-8 game sitting I usually play about 6-8 different characters. If its going all to hell, ill switch up and pick one of the guys I'm actually decent with to finish the match. In a ranked game, agree with the others, spend a good amount of time with at least one person from each class. One benefit of playing with every character at least a little bit is that you know what they are capable of when you come up against that same character on an opposing team.

I think it's probably best to know at least one character from each class, as to be able to pick up the slack if no one else on the team wants to play support, tank, etc.

As for me, I main Tracer and Pharah, but I'll opt for Lucio and Junkrat when necessary.

I think when first starting out, it's good to get 5-6 matches+ on everybody until you find ones you are comfortable playing. It helps you figure how the characters synchronize together, who counters who, which maps are good with which heroes etc. And from a personal enjoyment standpoint you might also find that a character you thought you couldn't play well, you actually can have fun with given some practice (for me that was McCree). Then once you have basic proficiency with a decent variety of them, then you can specialize a bit. In an ideal situation you'd be proficient with at least 2 heroes from each class so you don't leave you team in a lurch if the team needs a specific role filled.

For me personally i find I can play the Tanks and Supports generally much better than the Offense heroes or Sniper heroes (just not good enough of a shot to be as skilled.) probably due to years playing MOBAs in those roles. But I can fake it on offense if need be.

and if you discover you can't play a certain role (which can definitely happen to anybody, make sure you tell your teammates so you give your team a chance to have better composition.

the problem I've discovered though once you get into competitive is that a whole class of heroes (defense) isn't basically that viable in the current Meta. Which means their counters aren't needed as much either. So in the end now that I'm a 100+ matches in I tend to play the same heroes over and over dependent on maps (e.g. KotH matches always seems to need a Lucio, which while effective is boring to do over and over). OW needs some semi-major balancing to make the whole roster more viable.

Thanks for the input everybody. I see a lot of super useful advice from every direction and that's actually reassuring.

The way I handled it was to pick one character from each class I was going to learn that week.

I then would pick a "main" for a given day. If that character was already taken, I'd swap to another one of the chatacters I'd picked.

Seemed to work pretty well.

There's a lot of good advice here. I definitely like the suggestion of starting by playing 5-6 matches as every character to get a feel for them and to figure out what you like. Depending on your end-goals, I could give a lot of suggestions. Don't worry too much at first about team comp or Meta or what not. You need to walk before you can run, or so to speak.

So first off, I want you to never look at the Blizzard-defined roles. They are awful and lead to popular misconceptions of what character to pick in what situation. I put forward this suggestion to a group I play with as a better way to generally understand what the characters do:

DPS: Soldier 76, Tracer, Pharah, Genji, McCree, Reaper, Roadhog, Hanzo, Widowmaker, Bastion, Junkrat

Tank: Reinhardt, Zarya, D.VA, Winston, Mei

Support: Lucio, Zenyatta, Ana, Mercy

Just don't play these characters: Symmetra, Torbjorn

I am somewhat joking on the last two, but honestly, neither is going to help you get much better at the game and the occasions where you should use either start getting more and more infrequent as you get better at the game. And yes Roadhog players, you are not a tank. You are an off-tank at best and you're Ult Farmer Hog when you actually try to be the primary tank. :)

My suggestion would be once you've gotten your feet a little more wet, settle on filling two roles more than trying to pick eight different characters to learn. Four to six characters is plenty and more than 80% of the player base. Remember that skillsets you pick up in one role do transfer to another. For example, Zenyatta is a DPS/support hybrid. But also the ability to manage his orbs has applications to how you play Zarya.

Finally, some characters are just plain easier to learn than others. For DPS, Soldier 76 and Reaper can be picked up a lot quicker than McCree or Reaper. For tank, don't even try to play Zarya until you've spent twenty hours with the game. Reinhardt, D.VA, and Roadhog (in the off-tank role) are easier to pick up. Winston's skillset is really easy to use, but I feel like that leads to misconceptions on how to play the character and thus players writing him off when they don't get how he works. On support, stick with Mercy and Lucio at first. For the love of all that is holy, just don't even try to play Ana when you're learning the game. Less than 1% of the player base right now knows how to effectively play her.

One final suggestion: ignore the temptation to "main" Junkrat when you find yourself doing well as him early. Just trust me on this one.

Any hero except Mei. As long as you don't play Mei you're cool.

Having a good character for each role is ideal. So as long as you have that then I would say you are fine.

However, having a good assortment of heroes that you can play is what you probably want. Each character has some nuance where some are better on certain maps, some work better depending on your team setup and counter picking. Since overwatch lets you just switch heroes on the fly you should really take advantage of being able to change heroes depending on the situation. It will absolutely win you some games.

If you just want to have fun though, then yeah play whoever you want.

The recent patch fixed a lot of this. Check out the report from last weekend's ELeague play.

Mei's Ultimate went from one of the weaker in the game to top 5 almost overnight. She is now a valid off-tank pick. That's one of the issues with how people don't know how to work her into a team comp: she's an off-tank. She's not DPS. I blame Blizzard's bad labels for that. Hanzo has become somewhat viable as a more consistent DPS in the right hands. Mercy has made a big comeback with her boosted healing, and as a result has also brought Pharah back into play. And the slight nerf to McCree and nerf to Genji has kept them both viable, but has meant some other DPS options are sneaking back in. Of course, we'll need to wait a few weeks to see if it fully shakes out that way.

The Lucio KOTH issue more is this: there are four viable supports and you need 2 against any good team. In KOTH play, it's really difficult to properly position a Mercy so she isn't getting relentlessly divebombed the entire game, and there are fewer spots she can go and hide in to pull off a Huge Rez. Ana's only KOTH value comes from the NiP triple tank/triple support oh my god that Roadhog just mowed down my entire team combo. Thus, the Meta continues to favor the Lucio/Zeny combo there.

So yes, there are still some useless heroes in competitive play, but it went from just under half the cast struggling to five (Widowmaker, Torbjorn, Junkrat, Symmetra, and Bastion). And honestly, below Diamond play Bastion and Junkrat (the issue with Junkrat isn't so much he is terrible as a lot of bad players settle on mindlessly spamming grenades as Junkrat to try to pick up gold medals) still have value on occasion. You'd be surprised: Bastion occasionally pops up in ELeague play. The issue is you have to keep moving him about and you have to know when to switch him out after the other team has adjusted.

Very good to know the fundamentals of each hero, most importantly to know what they're capable of and what their limitations are when playing against them. Also good to be able to fit any role if the need arises, and in this game counter-picks can often times really change the momentum of a match.

Besides that though, there's nothing wrong with preferring one or two heroes over the others. It's just that the circumstance of a match can absolutely outweigh that preference.

I'd suggest finding at least 1 character of each type to get good with before jumping into competitive.

Beyond that enjoy the game!

@cav829: That's definitely a lot better!

Blizz still has got some work to do tho, noticed the bottom tier remains all defense heroes.

I'd say have a couple to focus on. It's a good idea to become proficient with a character, but sometimes somebody may already be filling that role or already be playing that character. It is frustrating when I play a game where two people pick characters like Genji, Hanzo, or McCree, when the last thing your team needed is more than one Hanzo, yet there are still times when you get the feeling that you are in a game with two Hanzo mains, and nobody wants to back down. (I've literally been in games on PC where we had two Torbjorn's, and one guy was a jerk and basically said "I'm Torbjorn, you pick somebody else", only to have nobody backing down and starting the game with two of them.) You want to be at least a little more broad than just trying to main one character.

Maybe find an Assault, Defense, Tank, and Support character you like playing and you should be fine. That way, when your team needs a healer, you can be a healer; when you need an extra tank, you can be a tank, etc.