A character from Overwatch 2 is currently better than all others. This leads to the best players in the world only playing this one heroine.
Overwatch 2 has now been released for just over 2 weeks, and slowly but surely it has become clear which heroes are currently particularly strong. This is especially reinforced by the fact that Torbjörn and Bastion are currently banned in the ranked mode and thus fall out as counters.
At least for tank players, this has ensured that one tank lady now outshines all others and has become the most popular hero among professionals: Zarya dominates the battlefield.
Where do the data come from? The reddit user “TheForrestFire” looked at the data of the top 30 players in each role on the NA servers and discovered quite remarkable things:
In 83% of cases, Zarya is the most played tank character among professionals. In even 100% of cases, Zarya is among the “Top 3” most played tank heroes of the professionals.
This naturally puts all other tanks in a pretty bad light.
Also prominently represented is D.Va – the mech pilot makes it into the top 3 of the most played tanks with 70% (that is, 21 of the top 30).
Why is Zarya so strong? This is mainly due to her rework. In the first Overwatch, Zarya had different cooldowns to protect herself or an ally with a barrier. In Overwatch 2, she has 2 charges that she can distribute freely. So, she can either protect herself twice or a teammate double – or share it, as she did back then.
This makes Zarya much more flexible and allows her to protect the team and herself in the best way suitable.
At the same time, this also ensures that Zarya constantly has a high energy level, which allows her weapon to deal significantly more damage.
At full energy, Zarya can mow through enemies and can deal a whopping 850 damage with a single magazine load within 5 seconds, if all ammunition hits.
Another advantage is that with Zarya you don’t have to try for headshots, as her energy weapon deals the same damage everywhere on the body. It is sufficient to simply aim for the much bulkier torso.
All of this leads to Zarya currently not only being a solid tank but also taking on the role of a DPS and a support character who improves with absorbed damage.
After all: Blizzard is aware of the problem with Zarya and seems to recognize that she currently outperforms any other tank hopelessly. Therefore, there will likely be nerfs for Zarya in the coming week to bring her down to the level of the other tanks.
Do you also like playing Zarya? Or do you not particularly like her playstyle as a tank?
