Playing Winston in Overwatch isn’t as straightforward as you may think, but this guide offers tips to help you learn the hero. While Winston is a tank, he’s far more aggressive than most other tanks and should be played by someone who wants to tank in an offensive fashion. You won’t be standing back putting up shields while your team takes down the enemies. Instead, you’ll be running ahead of your team and making your enemies run in fear.
Tesla Cannon
Aim isn’t really a concern when it comes to Winston’s primary attack. The Tesla Cannon fires off an arc of electricity that hits any enemies relatively close to where you’re aiming. If multiple enemies are grouped in close proximity, the attack will hit all of them so long as you place the electricity close by. To top it off, the beam will even cut through some shields and barriers, making it easy for an aggressive Winston player to blast through the opposing team’s defenses.
Barrier Projector
There are plenty of times during a game of Overwatch in which you need to lock down an objective. Winston’s Barrier Projector is the first tool to help your team accomplish this goal. It creates a bubble around Winston that helps protect your team from incoming attacks, but allows your teammates to attack freely from within. It can take quite a beating before it breaks, which makes it perfect for securing objectives when you need to make that final push.
Jump Pack
Winston’s Jump Pack gives him a mobility option that most tanks don’t have. He can blast forward into the opposing team’s back line and take out any heroes with lower health. It inflicts minor damage to any enemy heroes who happen to be under Winston when he lands, but more importantly, it works well in conjunction with Winston’s other abilities.
Once you land from a Jump Pack maneuver, pop your Barrier Projector and go to town with your Tesla Cannon. If you pop your Barrier Projector, other heroes on your team with high mobility can follow you in and quickly clear out enemies in the immediate area from behind the safety of your shield. You can also use Jump Pack to get out of sticky situations when you need a quick escape to avoid death.
Primal Rage
Primal Rage is Winston’s ultimate ability and it can be monstrous in the right hands. First off, as soon as you activate this ultimate ability, Winston jumps to full health. If you’re about to die and your Barrier Projector is still on cooldown, activate your ultimate to keep Winston in the fight with full health. It also shortens the cooldown of Jump Pack, which increases Winston’s mobility even more and lets him really go to down on any enemies that may attempt to escape your wrath.
You lose the Tesla Cannon while Primal Rage is active, but this attack is replaced by Winston’s bare hands. While you won’t have the range of the Tesla Cannon, Winston’s fists inflict considerable damage and the reduced cooldown of Jump Pack gives him the mobility necessary to make the shorter attack range work for him. These attacks also have considerable knockback, which makes this a great tool for clearing an enemy team out of an objective point.
Winston isn’t your traditional tank, but he does the job. In the right hands he can be very difficult to kill and works very well at initiating a team fight or clearing out an objective point. Don’t be afraid to jump into a fight as Winston, just try to have some support to follow you in and provide some much needed back up.
