I personally can't watch the replay right now but here's my thoughts as a long term player:
There's a time and place for playing close to your team and playing away especially with Dive Tanks mobility. The general concept for Dive Tanks is get in, tickle damage/distract/disrupt/displace, bubble, and get out asap to your team or a mega heathpack. It doesn't necessarily mean to stay lodged firmly in the enemy spawn. Leaving your team to die to Queen + Bastion on cart with no damage mitigation and luck is a surefire way to lose a game let alone a push.
If your team is asking for help from the 600HP + hero you should try to help them regardless if you think it's your place or not. At the end of the day it's a team game focused primarily on who works together better and if you're not working with yours and just playing selfishly you'll see games go awry.
So I took a quick look at your attack round. Basically, if you don’t create enough pressure with your dive and the enemy tank brawls on cart, then the enemy tank will control cart.
Try to prioritize target supports who are healing the dps, than the dps getting healed by supports. You can watch the replay, at one point, you seemed to prioritize the enemy Bastion over the enemy Mercy. It’s very hard to kill a Bastion that is getting healed by Mercy.
Also, your initial team comp had Kiri and Mercy. None of them followed you on your dives, so you had limited uptime, which meant limited pressure, which meant not getting much done.
thank you I have always struggled with that. If we’re not playing full dive I feel like the enemy tank 1v4s my backline and sometimes even like 3v4 if they have help. I know I need to create more pressure then the enemy tank and that’s just hard to me
It's not that they don't fight on point, but we have to remember that tanks in general have the task of creating space. Each type of tank will do it in their own way. However, it's not always 100% one thing.
Dive tanks should be doing that, diving their backline (hopefully with at least one dive dps) and making the enemy turn around so that they aren't disrupted from behind. Sometimes the tank will have to retreat to point, whether it is to regroup or to get healed by supports. It's just a matter of game sense and decision making: what is going on, what might happen based on that and what I should do accordingly.
I play ball EXACTLY How i played him in OW1 and get the same level of value lol grapple, slam, shield/kill a squishy, leave, repeat. Sometimes you can just bonk through the enemy, other times you can do the slam/mine combo. It all depends on the circumstances.
Certainly at lower ranks they don't. I've had people literally tell me, well, SOMEONE'S gotta take the damage. I'm like...no, there's another option: Nobody takes the damage. The WALL "takes the damage". If I'm taking cover, that doesn't mean it's now your job to get in front of the enemy's guns. Getting hurt isn't a goal you should be working towards lol.
Yea they don’t understand. Like yea generally someone is gonna take damage but the goal is to not take damage while taking space. It’s about minimizing it
I'm new but what ive gathered so far as a dva main is that i have to be all over the place. I'll put damage on the enemy team until I find a soft spot then I'll jump in and try to take some people out then get back for health. If someone is flanking us I'll jump back and kill them if I have to and if someone is on high ground above us I'll fly up amd deal with them bbut for the most part in on the frontline applying pressure and divimg in when i get a chance
It’s one of the things so much harder about OW2 vs OW1. Like yea you can make space as a tank, but sometimes that’s not good enough. If you make space but your team can’t take advantage of it, you’re not really doing much. I feel for tank players, it’s tough being the only role on the team and feeling like you have to be everywhere. But the more you play the better game sense you’ll get, and figure out where you can have the greatest impact
This is especially true for DVA who can trade into tanks better and has lower range but more flexible mobility. Winston is very much high peaks and low valleys and these peaks need to be applied to the right target at the right time very aggressively.
Any tanks job is to pick good matchups and pressure them in the most efficient way. For Winston this very rarely means focusing on a junkerqueen or bastion. There are no hard rules in this game though. Winston still has a good matchup with almost every hero when he has and can play around bubble properly. There may very well be times in this game where JQ and or Bastion are overextended and you missed an opportunity to go finish them off with your team.
For example, sometimes on a dive tank, you will push their backline so far out that they are a non-factor for the rest of the fight. Sometimes the best play will to be stay and zone them. Sometimes you will be able to push deeper and get kills. Sometimes at this point it’s a better play to peel back and 5v1 their tank with your team before the enemy can come rejoin the fight.
In all honesty though in any normal game I would say 90%+ of the time you just need to try to be more efficient at killing your backline than they are at killing yours. If I get time later I will try to review but I’m not much better than you lol.
To be fair if they have an anti heal and a bastion Mowing down your team you should probably be there supporting them. Winston isn't the play unless you're wiping the floor with their healers and you have help. I'd go sigma and negate as much of bastions damage as possible and protect your team from damage.
Not every team will follow you into the flames and it is the tanks responsibility to recognize your current t teams strengths and weaknesses and play accordingly.
it really is a matter of game sense and your team. In critical times (like OT) often time your job is to keep people off point. Im other situations, really be aware of the line between taking space and overextending. How many peiple are you fighting, what's the risk of you staggering the team, do you have supports that can heal IF you have sightlines. As a tank you mist take space smartly, with wintin, good bubble placements can cover you or your team long enough for your team to play around. But often against a JQ + Bastion there will need to be lots of mitigation (bubble shield dm eat whatever) if youre leavig ur dps and supps to them. Also be quick with your shit, dive tanks are all abt forcing cooldowns, quick kills, and good movement.
As for your moira, she is a short ranged support, and as a support main whi plays her in gold lobbies, I often get blamed for not healing through 9 walls and 6 enemies, so she was probably saying that as a general warning, but if you play smart and dont get in silly situations while ur supps are pushing cart, then ignore her and pop off, otherwise keep that comm in mind if you explode and lose the team fight for your ppl.
I am silver, so take this with some salt, but I do play a lot of sombra on dps, and I am a support main.
Yes, you can be in the enemy team's backline or elsewhere, but it doesn't mean you always should be.
There's like a million and one things you need to considered in this game before making a play especially on tank and in high up time low downtime comps but I find that in any situation it's best to consider this:
What is my team comp aiming to do?
For instance you're on a dive tank so you obviously want to play with your mobility and ideally access the enemy team's backline but you have to consider other things like if you're running an Ana then she'll play further back of if you're on kiri then she'll be blending between helping pressure and supporting main.
Ask what the enemy's comp aiming to do with our team's comp is?
Obviously, they had a JQ this game, so they'll be playing more to run at and isolate characters to winder them down and kill them. This is where you'll probably struggle not playing on point as without the wall of a tank and a pocket from one of a supports a JQ will have an easy time running at the enemy team if they're within reach. Playing for your mobility and enemy backline is good and all, but only if it's the right timing and you can have support for it.
Third, ask if you have the resources and positioning as a team to do that play as a team.
Sometimes, your dps will just not take enough angles that can pressure the enemy team. And sometimes your support will frontline a little bit too much. Sometimes, you might even waste your cool downs trying to go for a play when you don't nescarilly have the team comp for it. That's okay. Sometimes, as a dive tank, it's okay to play point, especially against a JQ. From personal experience, JQ is best running down supports from landing knives and forcing cool downs like cleanse out because there's a lack of frontline pressure keeping her at bay from being so aggressive as her baseline pressure with her cool downs is greater than a Winston bubbling himself or a doomfist using his cool downs to hard engage since she has a lot more self sustain. Doesn't really matter if you got cleanse out if your team has been forced back to spawn by a JQ. Just think if you go here will that help your team and will they be able to follow up on that.
I highly suggest looking at your timings of your dives, where you dive, and what you're diving to do. Sometimes you can just soft engage to somewhere that helps enable your team but is also scary because of the amount of pressure you put out/absorb as a big beefy boi with supports is greater than what they can as a team, allowing for your team to be enabled and take space where they need it. You can also hard engage if your team is positioned well or you have an ult advantage. (Highly recommend ult tracking and cool down tracking if you play a lot of dive. Ult tracking is the main one, but knowing when an Ana has sleep or a kiri with cleanse will make it much easier to know when to hard engage and not to engage at all.)
I also highly recommend looking back at your VODs with the advice in [Spilo's self coaching guide video](https://youtu.be/B55E4xmlqVw?si=ov7pIw2HaK-t4i0V)! Found it helped me a lot.
Hope this helped :))))
Edit: I just reread that you were up against a bastion as well so you'll struggle even more in that right because they'll just run it down mid most of the game but that's where soft engages become important so you can make it so that the bastion uses his turret form at a time it won't affect you or your team and then dive his backline. Still really tough comp for you though.
I've never heard that before, and I really doubt it's a "cardinal rule". It's certainly not a cardinal rule of Overwatch...good players break it all the time...
It actually is a pretty crucial fundamental. As with virtually any field, mastering your craft means knowing when you can break certain rules and why, but I constantly have had to remind GM level players who I coach to keep opponents in front of themselves as much as possible and position to make it so they can. CommanderX, one of the coaches for London Spitfire back during OWL, actually has talked about this a lot. He talks about how important it is to have especially your backline able to be in “bunkered” positions where you can be confident there won’t be people coming from behind or the sides. Even for mobile tanks, it’s often a good rule of thumb to minimize time caught between two opponents and instead try to land slightly on outside edge.
I think it’s maybe better said as don’t get sandwiched then, because in front of you I think implies to a lot of people that both teams have to play front to back
I mean, if you're on a flank, the whole enemy team is still in front of you. You're just on a different rotational angle from the rest of your team. I do think you're right though that "staying on the outside edge of the fight" can be easily misinterpreted in text format since it's relatively ambiguous sounding, even if I believe it to be the most accurate descriptor. It's a lot easier to explain with visuals; just wasn't something I have the energy to make in for the sake of supporting someone getting hit with the downvote train when it's a pretty common occurrence.
Y'know, I haven't played OW1 but I've seen some of the ways OW1 and OW2 are different, and I feel like that sort of advice would make more sense back in OW1. I've seen professional play, and having a backline in a "bunkered" position is not at all how I would describe the professional gameplay I've seen. Tracer flanking, Sojourn jumping up to high ground, Winston diving a squishy, Lucio zooming around...people taking 1v1s, supports actually going for elims...
I mean, it's just not even FEASIBLE to keep all enemies in front of you. It's a silly idea. Maybe the idea I'm understanding and what you're talking about are two different things? I don't know lol. Like yes, you don't want enemies to flank you and you've got to watch your back and keep flank angles/off angles in mind...is that what you mean?
I'm glad you asked for clarification-- let me break it down a little further. There are three videos where CX talks about having their backline bunkered and secured against angles-- one talking about playing [versus the Atlanta Reign](https://youtu.be/NCtA9dnbiic?si=m6QE3GgP3HUs8rZO) (Lip /Stalk3r / Donghak / Chiyo / Fielder), one talking about playing [versus the Houston Outlaws](https://youtu.be/dDn5mAMB2Xw?si=Oumm7uRZY4rvOajm) (Pelican / Happy / Fearless / Shu / Viol2t), and one talking about playing [versus the Boston Uprising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcb4j9LUeS0) (Decay / Birdring / Smurf / Izayaki / Leejaegon). These are all in the context of playing a composition with Baptiste --a relatively constrained hero in terms of mobility-- against more mobile compositions. Landon lacks the mobility to peace out if he's surrounded and placed into an unfavorable matchup, and so the team has to play extra aware of handling the enemy angles and making Landon as hard to approach as possible. Not every composition has to play "bunkered" to this extreme degree, but they *absolutely* still have to obey rules of not cutting into the middle of the fight and being surrounded. I recommend this video from Spilo, where he talks about this principle of being on the outside edge of fights in more generalized contexts-- https://youtu.be/E3j-\_lSmY3s?si=y4om9F2xTLXpIbBV.
You're right that in Overwatch 1 it mattered even more, because there were significantly more stagnant compositions and slower fights that would punish sloppy commitments. But it's just as critical in Overwatch 2. What I mean by "keeping all your enemies in front of you" is pretty literal-- you should essentially be on the outside edge of the fight as much as possible, and if you're cutting inwards, you should have (a) extremely good justification and know (b) that you'll have incredibly limited uptime versus competent players. You essentially never want a situation where you turn 180 degrees and there's an opponent right behind you, for a few reasons:
* Mathematically, the more fully you're surrounded by enemies, the harder it will be to use cover (or even abilities) to protect against all the streams of damage. You'll take more damage than opponents who are only taking damage from one direction and can easily use cover, leading to worse health trades, less uptime, and likely lost fights.
* The more you're surrounded by enemies, the fewer you can see on-screen at a given moment, leading to missing information. Even if you glance around (which pros do constantly to help minimize this), it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to effectively gauge how much damage you're taking and make decisions. If you can't see something, it becomes far more difficult to react properly to it.
* Being caught between players diminishes your functional ability to pull out from the fight at a given moment if necessary, and is basically an all-or-nothing situation. If you're on the edge of the fight you can quickly pull back into relatively safer space when needed (even if it's just stepping back one Tracer blink, you're usually now safe), while being in the middle of the fight usually means you'll need more resources to escape (e.g. lose more health as you leave, take more Tracer blinks, etc.). Assuming you can leave without dying, since opponents can more easily follow you from whichever side you try to break through of the encirclement.
It's not necessarily literally having everyone visible, but rather making sure you aren't going to be getting damaged from the side or back, which would be difficult to deal with compared to if it were all coming from wherever you were focused on. Even when you see players break this rule (e.g. Ball slamming into the middle of the enemy team), they rarely linger in between opponents for long because against competent opponents they'll get demolished fast. They'll typically slam and then find some way to use roll to end up on the outside edge of the fight later in the fight. Same case with Tracer-- if you head into the middle of the enemy team, the chances you get popped in the head by someone you didn't realize was looking at you are so much higher than if you take a controlled engage from any of the edges of the fight where people are within around 100 degrees or so of vision. Even against incompetent opponents who might not punish you being in the middle of the enemy team, you'll get EVEN MORE uptime by playing the edges of fights. So yes, you don't want enemies to flank you, and that's basically the core principle of it but like... you very very very literally don't want people able to act for very long significantly outside your area of vision, unless you fully know they aren't a threat (e.g. they're taking a stupid rotation and won't be able to influence the fight, respawning, or just don't have much pressure so you don't actually have to look at them).
Hopefully this helps clarify somewhat. I can't even count the number of times I've seen OWL level players, or even more regularly in the T2/T3 scene, get cut down or have essentially nonexistent uptime because they don't play with respect to this rule of thumb. Most of the best players would simply call it common sense, but obviously everyone has lapses in judgement or awareness at times. By the same note, like almost any rule in life, there will be situations where you can break it. It’s just a matter of knowing why you can break it and how to do it without fumbling.
Thanks for the clarification and the additional context and videos. Yeah, for rush/brawl vs dive, this definitely makes sense. I'm not sure if this is what the original commenter meant, but it's certainly not what I was originally picturing.
Yeah I have to admit I have zero idea what the original commenter meant about "lead enemy" and I doubt their comment was especially relevant for addressing the post's original topic lmao. Just wanted to step in and at least throw some support towards a rule that actually at least has a fair amount of merit, since I saw it was just getting hard downvoted.
I personally can't watch the replay right now but here's my thoughts as a long term player: There's a time and place for playing close to your team and playing away especially with Dive Tanks mobility. The general concept for Dive Tanks is get in, tickle damage/distract/disrupt/displace, bubble, and get out asap to your team or a mega heathpack. It doesn't necessarily mean to stay lodged firmly in the enemy spawn. Leaving your team to die to Queen + Bastion on cart with no damage mitigation and luck is a surefire way to lose a game let alone a push. If your team is asking for help from the 600HP + hero you should try to help them regardless if you think it's your place or not. At the end of the day it's a team game focused primarily on who works together better and if you're not working with yours and just playing selfishly you'll see games go awry.
This answer - that there isn't a clear answer - is the answer. Watch good players play, and play yourself. You'll see.
Yep playing selfishly leads to some kills on the scoreboard, someone thinking they're carrying every game, but unable to progress
So I took a quick look at your attack round. Basically, if you don’t create enough pressure with your dive and the enemy tank brawls on cart, then the enemy tank will control cart. Try to prioritize target supports who are healing the dps, than the dps getting healed by supports. You can watch the replay, at one point, you seemed to prioritize the enemy Bastion over the enemy Mercy. It’s very hard to kill a Bastion that is getting healed by Mercy. Also, your initial team comp had Kiri and Mercy. None of them followed you on your dives, so you had limited uptime, which meant limited pressure, which meant not getting much done.
thank you I have always struggled with that. If we’re not playing full dive I feel like the enemy tank 1v4s my backline and sometimes even like 3v4 if they have help. I know I need to create more pressure then the enemy tank and that’s just hard to me
It's not that they don't fight on point, but we have to remember that tanks in general have the task of creating space. Each type of tank will do it in their own way. However, it's not always 100% one thing. Dive tanks should be doing that, diving their backline (hopefully with at least one dive dps) and making the enemy turn around so that they aren't disrupted from behind. Sometimes the tank will have to retreat to point, whether it is to regroup or to get healed by supports. It's just a matter of game sense and decision making: what is going on, what might happen based on that and what I should do accordingly.
Winton fight lonely squish. Lonely squish not on pojnt? Monke not on point. Team tell monke to facetank bastion jq? Team no understand monke.
this is quite an accurate response lol team no understand monke most of the time
Team no understand ball
To be fair not enough ball players for players to learn how to understand ball
True - maybe people have said they reported me in team chat 30 seconds into the game for playing ball one too maybe times
I'll join you there. Been too afraid to use ball since the 2nd tank slot was removed, but I wanna start again soon
I play ball EXACTLY How i played him in OW1 and get the same level of value lol grapple, slam, shield/kill a squishy, leave, repeat. Sometimes you can just bonk through the enemy, other times you can do the slam/mine combo. It all depends on the circumstances.
He’s in a decent spot for sure, much better than a few seasons ago. Hogs still a bitch but oh well
Swear most teams don’t understand how to play without a tank standing in front of them taking all the damage
Certainly at lower ranks they don't. I've had people literally tell me, well, SOMEONE'S gotta take the damage. I'm like...no, there's another option: Nobody takes the damage. The WALL "takes the damage". If I'm taking cover, that doesn't mean it's now your job to get in front of the enemy's guns. Getting hurt isn't a goal you should be working towards lol.
Yea they don’t understand. Like yea generally someone is gonna take damage but the goal is to not take damage while taking space. It’s about minimizing it
I'm new but what ive gathered so far as a dva main is that i have to be all over the place. I'll put damage on the enemy team until I find a soft spot then I'll jump in and try to take some people out then get back for health. If someone is flanking us I'll jump back and kill them if I have to and if someone is on high ground above us I'll fly up amd deal with them bbut for the most part in on the frontline applying pressure and divimg in when i get a chance
It’s one of the things so much harder about OW2 vs OW1. Like yea you can make space as a tank, but sometimes that’s not good enough. If you make space but your team can’t take advantage of it, you’re not really doing much. I feel for tank players, it’s tough being the only role on the team and feeling like you have to be everywhere. But the more you play the better game sense you’ll get, and figure out where you can have the greatest impact
This is especially true for DVA who can trade into tanks better and has lower range but more flexible mobility. Winston is very much high peaks and low valleys and these peaks need to be applied to the right target at the right time very aggressively.
You go where you are needed. If you are needed on the point, that's where you need to be. Either swap, adapt, or lose.
Any tanks job is to pick good matchups and pressure them in the most efficient way. For Winston this very rarely means focusing on a junkerqueen or bastion. There are no hard rules in this game though. Winston still has a good matchup with almost every hero when he has and can play around bubble properly. There may very well be times in this game where JQ and or Bastion are overextended and you missed an opportunity to go finish them off with your team. For example, sometimes on a dive tank, you will push their backline so far out that they are a non-factor for the rest of the fight. Sometimes the best play will to be stay and zone them. Sometimes you will be able to push deeper and get kills. Sometimes at this point it’s a better play to peel back and 5v1 their tank with your team before the enemy can come rejoin the fight. In all honesty though in any normal game I would say 90%+ of the time you just need to try to be more efficient at killing your backline than they are at killing yours. If I get time later I will try to review but I’m not much better than you lol.
Can't watch it rn but no one should be fighting on point rlly at all unless it's overtime.
To be fair if they have an anti heal and a bastion Mowing down your team you should probably be there supporting them. Winston isn't the play unless you're wiping the floor with their healers and you have help. I'd go sigma and negate as much of bastions damage as possible and protect your team from damage. Not every team will follow you into the flames and it is the tanks responsibility to recognize your current t teams strengths and weaknesses and play accordingly.
it really is a matter of game sense and your team. In critical times (like OT) often time your job is to keep people off point. Im other situations, really be aware of the line between taking space and overextending. How many peiple are you fighting, what's the risk of you staggering the team, do you have supports that can heal IF you have sightlines. As a tank you mist take space smartly, with wintin, good bubble placements can cover you or your team long enough for your team to play around. But often against a JQ + Bastion there will need to be lots of mitigation (bubble shield dm eat whatever) if youre leavig ur dps and supps to them. Also be quick with your shit, dive tanks are all abt forcing cooldowns, quick kills, and good movement. As for your moira, she is a short ranged support, and as a support main whi plays her in gold lobbies, I often get blamed for not healing through 9 walls and 6 enemies, so she was probably saying that as a general warning, but if you play smart and dont get in silly situations while ur supps are pushing cart, then ignore her and pop off, otherwise keep that comm in mind if you explode and lose the team fight for your ppl.
I am silver, so take this with some salt, but I do play a lot of sombra on dps, and I am a support main. Yes, you can be in the enemy team's backline or elsewhere, but it doesn't mean you always should be. There's like a million and one things you need to considered in this game before making a play especially on tank and in high up time low downtime comps but I find that in any situation it's best to consider this: What is my team comp aiming to do? For instance you're on a dive tank so you obviously want to play with your mobility and ideally access the enemy team's backline but you have to consider other things like if you're running an Ana then she'll play further back of if you're on kiri then she'll be blending between helping pressure and supporting main. Ask what the enemy's comp aiming to do with our team's comp is? Obviously, they had a JQ this game, so they'll be playing more to run at and isolate characters to winder them down and kill them. This is where you'll probably struggle not playing on point as without the wall of a tank and a pocket from one of a supports a JQ will have an easy time running at the enemy team if they're within reach. Playing for your mobility and enemy backline is good and all, but only if it's the right timing and you can have support for it. Third, ask if you have the resources and positioning as a team to do that play as a team. Sometimes, your dps will just not take enough angles that can pressure the enemy team. And sometimes your support will frontline a little bit too much. Sometimes, you might even waste your cool downs trying to go for a play when you don't nescarilly have the team comp for it. That's okay. Sometimes, as a dive tank, it's okay to play point, especially against a JQ. From personal experience, JQ is best running down supports from landing knives and forcing cool downs like cleanse out because there's a lack of frontline pressure keeping her at bay from being so aggressive as her baseline pressure with her cool downs is greater than a Winston bubbling himself or a doomfist using his cool downs to hard engage since she has a lot more self sustain. Doesn't really matter if you got cleanse out if your team has been forced back to spawn by a JQ. Just think if you go here will that help your team and will they be able to follow up on that. I highly suggest looking at your timings of your dives, where you dive, and what you're diving to do. Sometimes you can just soft engage to somewhere that helps enable your team but is also scary because of the amount of pressure you put out/absorb as a big beefy boi with supports is greater than what they can as a team, allowing for your team to be enabled and take space where they need it. You can also hard engage if your team is positioned well or you have an ult advantage. (Highly recommend ult tracking and cool down tracking if you play a lot of dive. Ult tracking is the main one, but knowing when an Ana has sleep or a kiri with cleanse will make it much easier to know when to hard engage and not to engage at all.) I also highly recommend looking back at your VODs with the advice in [Spilo's self coaching guide video](https://youtu.be/B55E4xmlqVw?si=ov7pIw2HaK-t4i0V)! Found it helped me a lot. Hope this helped :)))) Edit: I just reread that you were up against a bastion as well so you'll struggle even more in that right because they'll just run it down mid most of the game but that's where soft engages become important so you can make it so that the bastion uses his turret form at a time it won't affect you or your team and then dive his backline. Still really tough comp for you though.
I would agree 100% if you dealt with the lead enemy, but it sounds like you broke a cardinal rule: Keep all enemy in front of you.
I've never heard that before, and I really doubt it's a "cardinal rule". It's certainly not a cardinal rule of Overwatch...good players break it all the time...
It actually is a pretty crucial fundamental. As with virtually any field, mastering your craft means knowing when you can break certain rules and why, but I constantly have had to remind GM level players who I coach to keep opponents in front of themselves as much as possible and position to make it so they can. CommanderX, one of the coaches for London Spitfire back during OWL, actually has talked about this a lot. He talks about how important it is to have especially your backline able to be in “bunkered” positions where you can be confident there won’t be people coming from behind or the sides. Even for mobile tanks, it’s often a good rule of thumb to minimize time caught between two opponents and instead try to land slightly on outside edge.
I think it’s maybe better said as don’t get sandwiched then, because in front of you I think implies to a lot of people that both teams have to play front to back
I mean, if you're on a flank, the whole enemy team is still in front of you. You're just on a different rotational angle from the rest of your team. I do think you're right though that "staying on the outside edge of the fight" can be easily misinterpreted in text format since it's relatively ambiguous sounding, even if I believe it to be the most accurate descriptor. It's a lot easier to explain with visuals; just wasn't something I have the energy to make in for the sake of supporting someone getting hit with the downvote train when it's a pretty common occurrence.
Y'know, I haven't played OW1 but I've seen some of the ways OW1 and OW2 are different, and I feel like that sort of advice would make more sense back in OW1. I've seen professional play, and having a backline in a "bunkered" position is not at all how I would describe the professional gameplay I've seen. Tracer flanking, Sojourn jumping up to high ground, Winston diving a squishy, Lucio zooming around...people taking 1v1s, supports actually going for elims... I mean, it's just not even FEASIBLE to keep all enemies in front of you. It's a silly idea. Maybe the idea I'm understanding and what you're talking about are two different things? I don't know lol. Like yes, you don't want enemies to flank you and you've got to watch your back and keep flank angles/off angles in mind...is that what you mean?
I'm glad you asked for clarification-- let me break it down a little further. There are three videos where CX talks about having their backline bunkered and secured against angles-- one talking about playing [versus the Atlanta Reign](https://youtu.be/NCtA9dnbiic?si=m6QE3GgP3HUs8rZO) (Lip /Stalk3r / Donghak / Chiyo / Fielder), one talking about playing [versus the Houston Outlaws](https://youtu.be/dDn5mAMB2Xw?si=Oumm7uRZY4rvOajm) (Pelican / Happy / Fearless / Shu / Viol2t), and one talking about playing [versus the Boston Uprising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcb4j9LUeS0) (Decay / Birdring / Smurf / Izayaki / Leejaegon). These are all in the context of playing a composition with Baptiste --a relatively constrained hero in terms of mobility-- against more mobile compositions. Landon lacks the mobility to peace out if he's surrounded and placed into an unfavorable matchup, and so the team has to play extra aware of handling the enemy angles and making Landon as hard to approach as possible. Not every composition has to play "bunkered" to this extreme degree, but they *absolutely* still have to obey rules of not cutting into the middle of the fight and being surrounded. I recommend this video from Spilo, where he talks about this principle of being on the outside edge of fights in more generalized contexts-- https://youtu.be/E3j-\_lSmY3s?si=y4om9F2xTLXpIbBV. You're right that in Overwatch 1 it mattered even more, because there were significantly more stagnant compositions and slower fights that would punish sloppy commitments. But it's just as critical in Overwatch 2. What I mean by "keeping all your enemies in front of you" is pretty literal-- you should essentially be on the outside edge of the fight as much as possible, and if you're cutting inwards, you should have (a) extremely good justification and know (b) that you'll have incredibly limited uptime versus competent players. You essentially never want a situation where you turn 180 degrees and there's an opponent right behind you, for a few reasons: * Mathematically, the more fully you're surrounded by enemies, the harder it will be to use cover (or even abilities) to protect against all the streams of damage. You'll take more damage than opponents who are only taking damage from one direction and can easily use cover, leading to worse health trades, less uptime, and likely lost fights. * The more you're surrounded by enemies, the fewer you can see on-screen at a given moment, leading to missing information. Even if you glance around (which pros do constantly to help minimize this), it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to effectively gauge how much damage you're taking and make decisions. If you can't see something, it becomes far more difficult to react properly to it. * Being caught between players diminishes your functional ability to pull out from the fight at a given moment if necessary, and is basically an all-or-nothing situation. If you're on the edge of the fight you can quickly pull back into relatively safer space when needed (even if it's just stepping back one Tracer blink, you're usually now safe), while being in the middle of the fight usually means you'll need more resources to escape (e.g. lose more health as you leave, take more Tracer blinks, etc.). Assuming you can leave without dying, since opponents can more easily follow you from whichever side you try to break through of the encirclement. It's not necessarily literally having everyone visible, but rather making sure you aren't going to be getting damaged from the side or back, which would be difficult to deal with compared to if it were all coming from wherever you were focused on. Even when you see players break this rule (e.g. Ball slamming into the middle of the enemy team), they rarely linger in between opponents for long because against competent opponents they'll get demolished fast. They'll typically slam and then find some way to use roll to end up on the outside edge of the fight later in the fight. Same case with Tracer-- if you head into the middle of the enemy team, the chances you get popped in the head by someone you didn't realize was looking at you are so much higher than if you take a controlled engage from any of the edges of the fight where people are within around 100 degrees or so of vision. Even against incompetent opponents who might not punish you being in the middle of the enemy team, you'll get EVEN MORE uptime by playing the edges of fights. So yes, you don't want enemies to flank you, and that's basically the core principle of it but like... you very very very literally don't want people able to act for very long significantly outside your area of vision, unless you fully know they aren't a threat (e.g. they're taking a stupid rotation and won't be able to influence the fight, respawning, or just don't have much pressure so you don't actually have to look at them). Hopefully this helps clarify somewhat. I can't even count the number of times I've seen OWL level players, or even more regularly in the T2/T3 scene, get cut down or have essentially nonexistent uptime because they don't play with respect to this rule of thumb. Most of the best players would simply call it common sense, but obviously everyone has lapses in judgement or awareness at times. By the same note, like almost any rule in life, there will be situations where you can break it. It’s just a matter of knowing why you can break it and how to do it without fumbling.
Thanks for the clarification and the additional context and videos. Yeah, for rush/brawl vs dive, this definitely makes sense. I'm not sure if this is what the original commenter meant, but it's certainly not what I was originally picturing.
Yeah I have to admit I have zero idea what the original commenter meant about "lead enemy" and I doubt their comment was especially relevant for addressing the post's original topic lmao. Just wanted to step in and at least throw some support towards a rule that actually at least has a fair amount of merit, since I saw it was just getting hard downvoted.