The Ultimate Overwatch Beginner's Guide

These heroes are primarily there to do as much damage as possible with an attempt to consistently get picks on the other team. These guys should be your frontliners.

Defense
These heroes are there to hold down the fort. They attempt to slow down the enemies, and build up strength in your defenses.

Tank
These heroes are there to be your sponge for damage, taking up as much of it as possible for the front liners to do as much as damage as they can.

Support
These heroes are there to heal and shield the team.

Game modes

There are 4 different types of game modes in Overwatch, I'm going to list them below with a brief description of each one.

Assault
In a basic description, assault game mode consists of a team having 2 objective points to capture. They have 5 minutes to capture the first point, if you succeed at capturing the first objective, you get an extra 5 minutes added to your limit to capture the second point. If you fail at capturing the first point, the enemy team only needs to get the first "tick" on the objective.

Control
On a control point map, a team needs to take control of objectives in a best of three series. Once a team has been on the point long enough, their progress meter increases. When it's full, it's considered their point.

Escort
Also known as payload maps, a team must escort the payload from one end of the map, to the other within a certain time limit. It's up to the opposing team to stop the enemy from reaching the end by continously making the team reset; knocking them off the payload.

Hybrid
These maps are considered a mixup between Assault and Escort game modes. The attacking team must claim a control point, then escort the payload across the map.

Hero overview

Below I will explain each Overwatch hero, along with their group role, and a brief description/difficulty level it is to play them.

Offense heroes

Doomfist
Difficulty level: Medium Doomfist is an agile attacker, his primary weapon, Hand Cannon, acts as a short range shotgun. Doomfist fires quickly, and a few accurate shots can quickly kill an enemy.

Genji
Difficulty level: Hard
Genji is a very mobile hero. He uses his sword to assassinate his victims. He can also climb up walls, and double jump. He is a very hard hero to get the concept of, because his moves and abilities are hard to maneuver effectively. I would not recommend playing him as a beginner.

McCree
Difficulty level: Medium
McCree is your south western gunslinger, he packs a revolver and a stun grenade for up close combat situations.

Pharah
Difficulty level: Easy
Pharah uses a jetpack to do air missle damage from the sky using her rocket launcher. She is definitely one of the easier characters to play, and fun as well.

Reaper
Difficulty level: Medium
Reaper is a character who can float and teleport in most situations. He is a great flanking character, who should be utilized when the enemy tanks are an issue. He possesses 2 shotguns on his hip for close quartered combat.

Soldier: 76
Difficulty level: Easy
Soldier 76 is probably one of the most easiest characters to play and understand, and he has quite a lot of similarities to other FPS games. He has a run feature, and a machine gun which makes him mobile and accurate.

Tracer
Difficulty level: Medium
Tracer is a flanking character. She has rapid teleportation powers, as well as a recall ability that can be used to pull herself out of the line of fire and regenerate all her health.

Defense heroes

Bastion
Difficulty level: Easy
Bastion is a walking turret, that can setup his turret any place and at any time. His turret actually does massive amounts of damage, and can be extremely useful if utilized correctly.

Junkrat
Difficulty level: Easy
Junkrat is one of the easiest characters in the game, and is also very effective. He has grenades that he spams out of his grenade launcher, as well as detonation mines.

Hanzo
Difficulty level: Hard
Hanzo is a very difficult player to utilize correctly starting off as a beginner. He is considered a sniper, and uses his bow and arrow to get kills.

Mei
Difficulty level: Easy
Mei is a character who can slow down enemies and use defensive walls to block off enemies from a certain location for a certain amount of time.

Torbjorn
Difficulty level: Hard
Torbjorn is a harder character to use effectively. He uses a placed turret that auto fires onto the battlefield. His turret can be destroyed very quickly, thus making him a harder character to utilize.

Widowmaker
Difficulty level: Medium
Widowmaker is another sniper character. I'm marking her as a medium level difficult, simply for the fact that if you get enough practice with her, and against the right comp, you can easily be effective with her.

Tank heroes

D.Va
Difficulty level: Easy
D.Va is a very mobile tank, she has rockets propelled into her suit and can easily be effective on the front line. She is a very flexible tank.

Orisa
Difficulty level: Easy/Medium
Orisa can be easy, but yet somewhat difficult to use effectively. She is a shield tank, that places shields on certain points and chokeholds to keep the enemies from running directly in.

Reinhart
Difficulty level: Easy/Medium
Reinhart is another shield tank, who is very similar to Orisa, except he can be used for more frontline damage. He has a shield, and a hammer that does massive amounts of damage upon striking an enemy.

Roadhog
Difficulty level: Easy
Roadhog is a self healing tank, who moves slowly but has a very powerful hook that he can pull enemies close with.

Winston
Difficulty level: Hard
Winston is one of the harder tanks to get used to, he has a barrier that can be used to protect his teammates, but a majority of his damage is done up close.

Zarya
Difficulty level: Medium
Zarya has the least HP of all the tanks, but she has a barrier that she can use on herself and another teammate for full protection; which is very effective in team pushes.

Support heroes

Ana
Difficulty level: Medium
Ana uses her sniper rifle to heal her teammates as well as inflict damage to the enemies. She also has a very effective sleep dart, which can incapacitate an enemy for a few seconds.

Lucio
Difficulty level: Medium
Lucio is the most mobile of all the support heroes, he can zip around the map, run along walls, and keep up with his entire team. He can heal and boost his team, but is played much different than a typical healer.

Mercy
Difficulty level: Easy
Mercy is one of the easiest, and most simplestic support heroes in the game. She is mainly used to heal, and resurrect dead teammates. She can also damage boost a teammate.

Moira
Difficulty level: Medium
Moira is a healer and a damage dealer. She has orbs of damage that she can throw in a certain direction towards the enemy which would weaken them, as well as a orb of healing that can heal her teammates. Her special escape move is also very effective in staying alive.

Symmetra
Difficulty level: Easy
Symmetra is all about slowing down your enemies pushes. She is not the most damage outputting character, but she can be very effective in slowly maintaining a capture point. She also has a very useful teleportation device that can be used to teleport out of spawn back to the battlefield without running back.

Zenyatta
Difficulty level: Medium
Zenyatta has an orb that he can use to either use as an Orb of Harmony to progressively heal teammates, or an Orb of Discord used to make an opponent more vulnerable. He is also a decent damage outputting character.