Overwatch Winston How to Engage Guide

by javierhzo

So, one of the biggest differences of playing monkey, vs orisa or Rein is that you want to skip the poking stage and go straight from the posture to the engage.

What does this means? They have the shield advantage so your team is more likely to lose the fight if it becomes a shield shooting war, that’s why monkey synergies are heroes who usually want to ignore shields (tracer, genji, zen, mercy, etc)

Quick tips:

• EVERY ENGAGE SHOULD BE TO A SQUISHY HERO, DON’T DIVE THE TANKS unless they are low hp, hacked, purple or you are playing goats
• ALWAYS melee just before landing with your jump pack
• Melee tanks or brigg armored allies bc melee burns armor faster than the tickle gun and maximizes your dps

The Ways To Engage:

• The jump pack engage: this is a high risk engage, it works better if the DVA comes with you with matrix so you can hold your shield a little longer, the goal is NOT to do an elimination, is to soak up damage for your DPS so they can get the kill, your job is to be as annoying as you can for 5 sg, until you get your jump back and can return to safety, you should be on a 6-3sg cooldown on your shield by the time your healers top you off, use this time to scout your next dive and position yourself appropriately
• The drop or tickle engage: instead of wasting your jump pack cooldown you hold a high ground location or a flank route with your jump pack online or just 1-2sg away, so you drop on or reach the enemy dive target and you damage them and bubble dance until you are threatened and you jump out to safety, this is the “safe” engage, the best way to do this, is if you can hold a high ground where you can still reach people with the Tesla Canon
• The carry engage: this is the most aggressive engage (without the ult) and is perfect if the target is out of position and you won’t be in any threat after you KILLED(yes, this is how you kill as monkey) your target, so the point is to get to your target much like the drop engage(with your abilities off cooldown) but after the target uses his movement abilities you jump melee them, heroes like Zen will just try to run away from you, forcing you out of your bubble, after they get out of range of your tickle gun, if your bubble is still alive or you have some cover, reload and do a short jump, melee, on them and it should be an easy kill (to short jump, look down in a 20-30° angle and hold S before jumping) the 75hp damage burst is more than enough to finish the kill before a Zen can melt you out of your bubble
• The brain dead engage(ult) : you engage on your target using one of this ways and over commit for the kill, if you are in danger use your ult and try to isolate yourself with one target, otherwise you are just going to feed 1000hp worth off ult charge
• The counter dive: according to the enemy team comp you sometimes will need to dive the diving team on your healers use the bubble in top of your team and try to focus the dps heroes instead of the tanks, do not waste your time chasing them down, just force a disengage.
• The boop engage: this is more a tip than a way to engage, but don’t be afraid to ult at full hp if you are sure you can get 1 or 2 environmental kills

How to Approach Different Comps as Winston

here are some quick tips:

• This one was in the last one but ill repeat it: if you are in a 1v1 SPECIALLY VS ARMORED TARGETS always include some melees in, this burns armor faster and maximizes your dps by preventing reloads.
• Primal rage give Winston a speed boost (I think is 40%) it can mess up your jumps by over jumping your target.
• if you get to push a enemy to a wall while primal rage, spam the jump pack for extra damage.
• use your attack AFTER you landed on top of people on Primal rage, since you can boop them away before landing and miss the jump dmg

Ill post here some of the most commons comps I’ve found in Low to medium SR (1500-2500) and how to approach them:

Death ball = Rein + Zarya

Dive / disrupt = winston/Hammond + Zarya/ Dva

Goats (yall know whats that)

Bunker = Orisa+Hog/Dva

Unless they have Goats or dive/Disrupt you should be focusing on the healers and some DPS heroes, If they have goats, play high ground safely and farm primal, if they have dive/ disrupt, your attention need to be split between diving and peeling (Counter Dive)

So now we are going to focus on the healer comp and how to approach them.

Healer Comps:

• Ana/Zen This is a really weak healer comp, they lack mobility and ways to peel for themselves, the Zenyatta is the best dive target here, if you are in a position where you can see him and he has not noticed you, wait for the volley to go off, try to use the jump to finish him off, bc if he has trans he will try to wait until he is low hp, use your bubble to prevent ana heals, If the Ana is going to be your dive target try to not get naded, and put your shield between her and you so you dont get slept or you are dead.
• Baptise/ana v zen: I think they would be the most common healers to pair with Baptise, if he is in high ground he can jump down and if you follow hes just gonna jump back up bc he doesn’t have a cooldown and you do, force him to use the S field to survive you and disengage, you can also dive the ana or zen, and use bubble to prevent the bapts heals
• Mercy + main healer : mercy is annoying but fragile, but she can take some damage to peel for the other healer, so what i like to do is drop engage on the mercy and use the jump to follow up when she retreats to the other healer.
• mercy + zen: dive zen
• Lucio: he is hard to kill and is going to retreat like in a video he saw from eskay or frogger, i think you are better diving some DPS, if he is hacked he can’t do anything so is an easy target, put the bubble in top of him to nullify his aura and ult to his teammates.
• Mercy + Lucio : try to find a dps target to dive, we usually see this combo with a pharmacy and deathball tanks, so just dive the hanzo 1-trick
• Moira + whatever : Moira is really weak to the carry engage, specially if you use your bubble so she cant heal from you, if you see her use fade (or someone calls it out) go for it.
• Brigg: brigg weirdly is a good dive target (weird bc she killed dive), she usually likes to hang out with the tank, thats a big nono, but if you found her isolated, go for it, use your bubble between her and you, if you manage to block the stun+hit+whip combo she is dead, rally its her time to shine, disengage.

Now the dps:

• Ashe: carry engage, without coach gun shes dead, if you find her reloading you should kill her and still be like 300hp, dies to primal easily.
• Bastion: if you are not playing full dive, swap of Winston, if you are, use your bubble to cut down the heals, if they have a mercy, focus her to make her run away so your team can kill the bastion more easily, YOU CANT NOT KILL HIM ALONE WITH PRIMAL.
• Doomfist: counter dive engage, Not your job, but the bubble can mess up his hand cannon combo and safe a teammate, zap him if he is in range and force a retreat, if he is holding a closed room do not try to kill him, rotate and let your team now his position.
• Gengu: counter dive engage, kinda like doomfist, its hard for you to secure a kill on but you should peel since is easier for you to hit him.
• Hanzo: engage him when out of storm arrow or bait it out with a drop engage without droping bubble, as soon as he use it escape, get healed and go in again hard.
• Junkrat: safe engage bc if you mess up he can burn you down, look for traps since its your certain death, Dies easily to primal
• Mccree: drop engage, but your bubble between him and you or use just before landing so you don’t get stunned.
• Mei: you can hard engage on her bc its not immediate threat but you wont kill her, make sure to peel for you frozen teammates, she is a bad pick vs dive, but don’t get frozen on primal,
• Pharah: if you hear out from comms she is low hp or you found her in a closed room she is an easy kill, don’t be afraid to literally jump straight up to secure that kill and melee as soon as you are about to get off range with her, jump on her face and put a bubble while she is ulting so she dies to her own barrage.
• Pharmacy: you can dive the other healer so the mercy has to peel and call your team to shoot down the pharah ASAP
• Reaper: you can drop engage to make him waste wraith, avoid thigh hallways and closed rooms, he is not your job, and primal is just going to feed the Blossom.
• Soldier76: aim your jump behind him so he have to fight you, die or drop in the middle of the point (bc he usually hold high grounds), Biotic field is annoying but you can kill him, primal rage is a huge counter to visor, and if they nano visor you need to soak up that damage, jump engage him use bubble and then primal, he should be an easy kill if you have primal available.
• Sombra: try to zap around hallways and your healers when you are coming back for a dive your dmg area is super big so it works to decloak her, dont get hack with primal, bubble breaks hack.
• Symm: she is weak to monkey and a good dive target, bubble dance, kill the turrets and hard engage if she tp out and you still have bubble, dies easily to primal
• Torb: yell at your team bc they dont break the turret and then do a drop engage on him, remember to melee the armor away.
• Tracer: if you can predict where the recall is going to be try to land there with a melee jump, if she is not in beam range disengage, she is just farming you.
• Widows: Widowmaker likes to drop from high ground and then just grapple back on when they are getting dove from a monkey, think 1 step ahead, you have to engage her with the jump available or have someone to help you secure that kill