Learning to counterpick

[Arkpit 101]

So, I've reached a point where I'm trying to let go of my favorite heroes in favor of playing the game as people tells me it should be played.
By swapping heroes according to situation.

Now I'm a silver scrub so I'm not any good and neither is anyone else down there so it makes compositions a rough thing to talk about since most will be "locked in" on that favorite hero. So with that being known, is there a good way to learn what is good against who in what composition or will this be endless grinding hours to find out yourself? ^^

I'm also struggling to know what the composition should be for pushing through hole maps. Like the Japanese garden thing where it's 1 gate in and it's always packed with shields and torb+bastion. My team tends to stay passive and be poked to death while I try to keep a shield up but not sure how to progress.

[Valks 2,373]

On 2/19/2018 at 3:53 PM, Arkpit said:

Now I'm a silver scrub so I'm not any good and neither is anyone else down there so it makes compositions a rough thing to talk about since most will be "locked in" on that favorite hero. So with that being known, is there a good way to learn what is good against who in what composition or will this be endless grinding hours to find out yourself? ^^

While there are definitely some good picks, the whole counter/synergy system starts to fall apart at lower ranks because of how different your skill with each other can be. While Genji might be great against Widow, you may be useless at playing him, while there might be a solid Winston elsewhere on your team.

The most "simple" counters that don't rely on any level of massive skill:

• McCree > Pharah, flankers
• Reaper > Tanks (not Zarya)
• Soldier > Pharah, any hero with barriers
• Sombra > D.Va
• Bastion > Tanks
• Junkrat > Flankers
• Torb > Flankers
• Widowmaker > Pharah
• D.Va > Projectile heroes
• Winston > Flankers
• Zarya > Tanks, Flankers

It's not a perfect list, there are way more things that can be added to it, but it's a decent start to work with.

On 2/19/2018 at 3:53 PM, Arkpit said:

I'm also struggling to know what the composition should be for pushing through hole maps. Like the Japanese garden thing where it's 1 gate in and it's always packed with shields and torb+bastion. My team tends to stay passive and be poked to death while I try to keep a shield up but not sure how to progress.

As you said, this is mainly an issue on choke maps like Hanamura, Eichenwalde, etc. - the most critical point of this is not your composition, but how you play. You can have the best dive comp ever, but if you don't push and play the poke game, you'll eventually lose. For these maps, you can go one of two ways. Take a main tank like Reinhardt, push behind his barrier as a team and move towards an easy to hold spot with sustained DPS, such as Soldier or McCree (for Hanamura, it's the building on either side which leads to high ground - for Eichenwalde, it's the stairs on the right). If you want to go for a more aggressive strat, you take tanks like D.Va and Winston, jumping straight onto their back line, accompanied by DPS like Genji, Tracer and so. You'll build your supports to support the characters you have, with heroes like Ana working well to keep dive-heroes alive and Zenyatta to put discord on targets. In the first setup, heroes like Lucio, Mercy and Moira all work very well.