Blizzard has decided to give Overwatch a complete overhaul and along with the first season 2026, they will also bring 5 new heroes directly into the game. One of them was already playable beforehand and, according to MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus, creates really strong compositions.
Completely out of nowhere, Blizzard announced massive changes for Overwatch that will reshape the game in 2026. The kickoff is today, February 10, at 8:00 PM German time.
Overwatch 2 is called Overwatch again, roles are being revised, there are balance adjustments, and the highlight: five new heroes are dropping on the same day as the season begins. Not in the middle of the year, but immediately.
One of these heroes is Anran, a new attacker who fights with fire and was playable a week before the season release. I have been actively playing with my (somewhat) fixed group for years, albeit with breaks.
But with Anran, we discovered a team composition that crushes everything we have known so far. If you are looking for a combination to smash all the teams of new heroes tonight: try our “Pitbull Comp.”
“Like two wild pit bulls that I unleash”
Why Pitbull? Because our tank player referred to my co-DPS and me just like that: “As if I were unleashing two pit bulls and sending them into the enemies.” The composition is quite simple:
- Zarya as tank
- Anran and Vendetta as DPS
Practically, it works like this: Anran and Vendetta jump straight into the enemy team, ideally into the healers, and clean up from the back while being protected by Zarya’s shields. At the same time, Zarya charges her weapon, and the enemies are crushed between two fronts. At its core, the team comp is a dive strategy, but without using the whole team, just the DPS (and healers, but more on that later). Of course, it still requires a bit of practice.
The comp works so well with these three heroes because Anran and Vendetta not only deal a lot of damage but also have strong defensive abilities – stronger than most flankers.
Vendetta naturally has a lot of armor and can block damage with her sword. Anran can pull herself out of the fight for a moment, becoming invisible and invulnerable while igniting enemies. And with the right perk, she can even heal herself.
Keep in mind, Vendetta will probably get a small nerf. The comp should still work.
Build the characters for survival, not damage – that’s important!
Here is also the point that I often observe in opponents and that many get wrong. Yes, Anran and Vendetta are DPS heroes and it sounds reasonable to take perks that allow them to deal even more damage.
However, the two women already deal enough damage. More damage would be total overkill, you cannot kill enemies beyond their death – and a wisdom from WoW is already: a dead DPS does no damage.
Accordingly, you should ensure that you also survive alone while your remaining team deals with possible enemy stragglers or gets distracted:
Vendetta
- Small bonus: Devouring Blow, so that the overhead hit heals you – important: practice hitting with the blade! Otherwise, Vendetta herself is already useless.
- Big bonus: Swift Vengeance; people often overlook this, it seems. But the 150 bonus hit points give you a health bar of almost 500 hit points, including 125 armor, when at full HP. That’s as much as tanks have.
Anran
- Small bonus: Heat Shield, so that you can stay in the enemy team after the ultimate.
- Big bonus: Hunger Flame, with which you can heal yourself.
Zarya
- Small bonus: irrelevant, but I recommend Energy Converter.
- Big bonus: Scout, to buff your DPS even further.
The right healers make the comp even stronger
Basically, it does not really matter which healers you have. Only Lúcio and Baptiste, especially in this constellation, do not work. My tips are:
- Zenyatta, who increases damage on individual targets with his Orb of Discord and can heal at range, especially with the perk Dual Harmony (perfect for this comp).
- Ana, whose Nanoboost can regularly cause quadruple or quintuple eliminations, especially on Vendetta.
- Kiriko for the same reason, where Ana and Kiriko both work as a reaction to the opponents (through anti-heal or Kiriko’s ability to remove it).
- Lifeweaver, because he can save his DPS if they happen to get in too much trouble.
- Brigitte and Moira, because they can keep the remaining team alive and protect themselves while the DPS wreak havoc on the enemies.
In any case, it’s important that the remaining trio alongside Anran and Vendetta has to cope with potentially fighting at a disadvantage and at times has to defend themselves because their damage dealers are standing elsewhere. Even with sacrifices, we were usually successful.
At lower ranks, the practice and understanding of how Vendetta and Anran work may be lacking. At higher ranks, you may encounter counters that you need to watch out for. And there comes another with the season.
Mizuki could become the biggest problem so far
The team comp around Zarya, Vendetta, and Anran does not really have any “hard counters” that we could identify so far. However, the biggest difficulties we had were against:
- Lúcio, who could keep the two DPS away from himself while healing his team at the same time.
- Sombra, who often forced us to turn back.
- Mei, who interrupted our team’s support with her wall.
- Widowmaker, because we had no protection against snipers, and she forced us to focus on her.
- General dive tanks that could tear apart our team if we weren’t quick enough.
Among the five new heroes is also Mizuki, a new support who is specifically designed as a counter against flankers. He can bind enemies to the ground while remaining highly mobile to escape his hunters.
How strong Mizuki will be against our “Pitbull Comp” will be seen from tonight. The season is scheduled to go live at 8 PM, but given the massive influx of players in recent days, it is quite possible that the servers will collapse under the load.
