A good Overwatch team composition requires balance, offence and defence, light and shadow, yin and yang. Or you can just smother your problems by throwing a bunch of meat at them.
That’s what Chinese Overwatch team Miracle Team 1 decided to do against FTD Club in an Overwatch Premier Series match, and it worked shockingly well. They pushed to the first point on King’s Row using a composition made up of Reinhardt, Zarya, Winston, Roadhog, D.Va — all tanks — and just one support in Lucio.
By most accounts, it’s not an advisable tactic. You lose out on the mobility and versatility more varied comps give you, and you’ve got a bunch of HP-heavy characters who are massive targets, meaning the other team can charge their ults more easily than normal.
And yet:
It worked remarkably well. FTD could never have seen the meat tidal wave coming since it’s a strat that, to my knowledge, nobody’s ever used at this level of play. When it crashed against the shores of their defence, it was already too late to switch to a composition more prepared to counter it.
Moreover, MT1 deployed their brigade of implausibly large humans (and an implausibly small human in an implausibly large robot, as well as a normal-sized ape) in an uncharacteristically sneaky fashion, tip-toeing through King’s Row’s hotel instead of pushing straight up the middle to the first point. As Dot Esports observes, FTD had no choice but to move out of position to avoid getting steamrolled.
It didn’t end there, either. MT1 kept the strategy going and managed to pull off a huge play involving yet another tank, Orisa. She yanked the other team’s Reinhardt, giant shield and all, into an awkward spot, clearing the way for MT1’s Reinhardt to deploy a huge “earthshatter” ult and knock down two members of FTD. His teammates mopped them up shortly after.
Not long after, MT1 switched to using just four tanks, but their strategy remained similar. FTD had no answer for it as MT1 pushed to the final point and ended the match 3-0. Welcome, friends, to the Meat Wall Meta.
Comments
6 responses to “Pro Overwatch Players Use Wall Of Tanks To Overwhelm Enemy Team”
No idea why they went Lucio as their healer. He can’t solo heal one tank let alone 5!
Probably to make up for their lack of mobility. Otherwise they might’ve got stuck in the choke and got minced before they even got to the point.
Yeah, that speed boost on tanks would have helped put the defense off guard.
Also with all the shields the tanks have (except Roadhog’s massive self healing, which made him the perfect pick to hang back and ‘flank’ from the other side of the first cap), plus the payload healing, Lucio’s lower rate of healing is kinda mitigated.
But he can heal all 5 at once which is especially good if they don’t know who to focus, a large part of it was for that initial speed boost so they could hit the first point unmolested and as a surprise though.
One of the tanks switched off to Ana for the push to second iirc, then a third dropped to Mcree for the final push so the game ended with three tanks.
Lucio just doesn’t put out enough healing to be able to keep one tank fully healed as quickly as the tank needs it, let alone 5.
He heals 16.25 HPS, if as they hope all 5 tanks are getting chip damage he’s healing 81.25 health every second compared to Mercy’s 60 HPS.
During the 3 seconds of Amp it Up he has the potential to heal over 700 health.
You’re really underestimating his healing ability, sure he’s useless if a tank is being focused… But not even Mercy will help much if an entire team is focusing one target.
Admittedly the strategy relied on quick surprise, it doesn’t have a lot of sustain and would be vulnerable to spike damage if the other team could counter pick quickly enough but after that first fight they altered their composition.