Despite what you may have heard, Overwatch is far from a casual game. It’s accessible—at least, it’s much more accessible than Team Fortress 2—and it’s one of those games that’s “easy to play, difficult to master.”
The game is much more balanced than Valve’s classic team-based shooter and you’ll always know what you’re going up against whenever you face one of the heroes. As the game lacks any “sidegrade” weapons or alternative builds, you’ll never be taken by surprise.
Some classes are, of course, easier to play than others. It even says so in the game’s 3-star difficulty rating. It isn’t the best indicator of what you should be playing if you’re absolutely new to the game, however.
With that in mind, we’ve put together this list of the best heroes you should pick as a beginner.
You’ll still need to learn the maps and how each hero complements other heroes, but we’ll leave the more advanced strategies for another time.
Soldier: 76
This old man’s the easiest hero to get into. If you’ve played any recent FPS—be it Call of Duty or Wolfenstein—then you’ll be right at home with Soldier: 76. Armed with a Pulse Rifle for medium-range engagements, you’ll want to keep your enemies at a distance. The hero also has a set of rockets he can use to take down weak enemies, and he can drop a healing beacon down to heal himself and his teammates.
Mercy
A classic support hero, Mercy plays almost identically to TF2’s Medic. She can heal her allies or boost their damage dealing capabilities. As Mercy, you’ll always want to follow a tank around to make sure that your team can push forward. She can also fly directly to a targeted ally if they’re in a hard-to-reach spot or if they’re charging way ahead of her. Her Resurrect ultimate allows her to turn bad situations around by raising the corpses of all her nearby allies.
Roadhog
This big guy has a repeating automatic shotgun/slug thrower that allows him to dispense tons of damage at close to medium range, and he can also use his Chain Hook to pull enemies toward him before finishing them off with a blast to the face or a melee attack—kind of like Scorpion.
He has tons of health and he can even heal himself by sipping a drink from whatever he keeps in his tumbler for a quick health recharge.
Reinhardt
Designed as a tank, Reinhardt doesn’t have much in the way of ranged attacks and is best suited as a melee character who leads the charge and keeps his allies safe from harm with his portable energy shield. He wields a huge sledgehammer to smash anyone who gets in his way and a charge move that’ll kill most targets in a single hit by ramming them into a wall.
Bastion
Arguably the cheapest hero in the game, Bastion is a robot that can transform itself into a stationary turret, dealing massive amounts of damage with its minigun. It also has the ability to heal itself, and it can turn into a small tank for its ultimate that can kill anyone in a single blast of its cannon.
If and when Bastion gets the Play of the Game, that means everyone on the opposing team just wasn’t playing well.
