Overwatch Character Guide: Pharah Symmetra Mei

Yesterday evening (December 1st, at the time of writing this) was the night of the annual Game Awards show, a lavish live-streamed spectacle where the best and brightest of the video games industry gathered in Los Angeles - in order to receive awards voted on by industry peers and journalists, celebrating the year in gaming. It was a good night for big-name hits like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End , the reboot of DOOM and Blizzard's mega-selling team shooter **Overwatch ** , as well as respected independent titles like That Dragon Cancer - and it was a chance for those in attendance to show off all-new trailers for upcoming tit

Overwatch's single most iconic character is also one of the toughest to master, as Tracer's time-bending skillset is quite unlike anything we've seen in a first-person shooter. Armed with two automatic energy pistols, she has the ability to completely empty a clip in around a second, with her reload time taking roughly the same amount of time. For this reason, accuracy is key, as her roster-low health count of 150 makes her squishy to the point where any moment spent not shooting has the potential to cause an untimely death. Luckily for those who choose Tracer, her abilities focus on a combination of speed, confusion and evasion to make her one of the most frustrating characters for newcomers to go against.

Symmetra's first ability, her Sentry Turrets, allow her to place up to six turrets around the map. Once an enemy steps within range, these turrets will fire a continuous beam of medium-damage energy until that foe either dies or steps out of range. While these turrets are exceptionally easy for enemies to kill, they can be hidden in creative locations and grouped together to maximize effectiveness. Her second ability, Photon Shield, allows her to grant extra hitpoints to teammates within range. While shields will not heal those who are critically injured, equipping an entire team with them before a big push can certainly give you an edge. Finally, her ultimate, Teleporter, is one of the biggest game-changing abilities in all of Overwatch. By placing the Teleporter somewhere on the map, a second portal is opened up at the spawn point, allowing teammates to bypass that potentially long journey back to the objective. Not only can this assist your team in reaching an capture point quicker, but it makes escorting a payload a relative breeze considering it's possible to always have one person moving it forward.

Pharah's first core ability, known as Jump Jet, allows her to rapidly boost into the air. Aside from the fact that this is an awesome tactic for maneuvering around the map, it also presents Pharah players with a huge advantage, as most players are concentrated on ground-level encounters. Needless to say, any rockets that come from above will generally take the other team by surprise, so use this to your advantage. Her second ability, Concussive Blast, doesn't do a great deal of damage, but it has the ability to push enemies a significant distance. If you're looking to annoy the hell out of opposing snipers (or anyone during the second round of Capture on Nepal), try using this to push them off of the map. Finally, her ultimate, Barrage, causes her to remain stagnant while she unleashes an insane amount of rockets in the direction of her reticle. This is best utilized in combination with Jump Jet, but you should be aware that you're going to be a relatively easy target for those behind you, so try to plan accordingly.

Imagine my surprise when I was looking through the cast of characters and stumbled upon Symmetra, a support character who has the ability to bend and reshape light into mechanical constructs. While there are a growing number of characters of Indian descent in video games ( The Order: 1886 and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate feature a few), it’s very rare that they are featured as playable characters. I immediately took her for a spin, and after I decided to check out the complete roster of playable characters.
This focus on overall team success is part of the game’s DNA, and it shows both in-game and when you’re not actively in a match. There are plenty of leaderboards and statistics to let you know how you fare with each character, and the ability to try out each character in a ‘tutorial map’ is a very useful feature. In-game, there are plenty of ways to communicate with teammates. Aside from traditional methods like voice or type chat, pre-determined messages can be accessed on the fly, from simple greetings to more informational chatter.

If you're looking to dig your teeth into a hero with an exceptionally high variance between high and low-level play, then look no farther than Mei. If you were to take a poll of everyone's favorite and https://www.overwatchtactics.com/ least favorite characters, assuming that you're speaking to players who have sampled each of them, then it's likely you'll find equal amounts of Mei-haters and Mei-lovers. Her main weapon, the Endothermic Blaster, has two distinct firing modes that can take out even the strongest enemies when used in combination. By clicking the left-mouse button (or pulling the right trigger), she can continuously fire a stream of frost, which will both do damage to enemies and eventually freeze them in their tracks. Its secondary firing mode charges up a massive icicle, which does an insane amount of damage upon contact. Needless to say, the Endothermic Blaster has the potential to be ruthless against long-range foes while also making it relatively easy to deal with faster characters like Tracer and Genji.