While playing Mercy, I tend to always keep everyone healed as much as possible, and try to never let anyone die. This is mainly due to habits I have developed from playing healers in other games where dying is bad. However, Mercy's ultimate can revive them within 10 seconds, so when should I let them die (i.e. stop healing them so I can revive them) in order to most effectively use my ultimate?
Overwatch – How to Decide When to Let Teammates Die
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Related Solutions
If you go into the options menu, you'll see the option to toggle teammate health. Note that Zarya also has this option as well; the exact instructions that follow are the same except to pick Zarya from the All Heroes dropdown menu.
As of an older update Blizzard made it able to enable this option across all heroes.
You'll need to go to:
- Options menu from the main menu
- Controls on the top bar of the Options menu
- Select Soldier 76 from the All Heroes dropdown menu
The option is labelled "Allied Health Bars". Toggle On to show.
The game currently has two snipers and they work differently.
Widowmaker
Widowmaker has a grappling hook that she can use to pull herself up to ledges and rooftops. You should use this to position yourself somewhere where it's hard to see you.
Her alt-fire will use her zoom scope. When zoomed in, a power meter appears on your screen. When the power meter is full (takes about 2 seconds), headshots will do 300 damage and body shots will do 150 damage.
Keep in mind that a few characters have a different head position:
- D.va's head is...
- Mech: The entire cockpit she sits in.
- Girl: Her head
- Bastion's head is...
- Recon configuration: His head
- Sentry configuration: The glowing spot on the back of the turret near the top.
- Tank configuration: The glowing spot on the back of the tank near the top. (This used to be at the top of the tank, but I'm pretty sure that changed during beta.)
Bear in mind that death replays as well as your sniper rifle's tracers (the red lines that show where you were shooting) give away your position, so you periodically need to move.
Don't forget to set your venom mine down somewhere. It's best use is as an early warning that an enemy is nearby as it shows on your screen when it's triggered.
Your ultimate should most likely be used shortly after you get it as it shows all enemy positions to your team.
Hanzo
Unlike Widowmaker, Hanzo doesn't have a zoom scope. As such, you tend to do better when you're closer to an enemy. Constant movement between shots helps quite a bit.
Remember that you can climb walls and use this to your advantage.
Hanzo's arrow do more damage if you charge the bow for a second before letting go of the attack button.
You should use your Sonic Arrow whenever it's ready to help show your allies where enemy players are. Keep in mind that, unlike Widowmaker Ult, it only shows enemies near the arrow.
On Defense, consider shooting it at one of the enemy doors during setup time so that you can see what heroes the other team has.
Your Scatter Arrow is a mixed bag. It's most powerful when shot in a small room as the shots ricochet off walls. However, you can still do a lot of damage with it by shooting the floor directly in front of an enemy.
Your ultimate is incredibly powerful as it sends the twin dragons/wolves in a direct line in front of you and travels a good distance, but bear in mind that it won't hit anyone within about 5 meters of you.
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Best Answer
You should never let your teammates intentionally die just so you can use your ult revive. There's no point of doing this at all, and can only ever put your team further behind. However, if your team is about to be wiped out (say, by a junkrat ult), then you should usually get the heck out of dodge, then shift back in and rez everyone, rather than going down with the ship. In fact ditching teammates which are about to die is a good idea even if you don't have a rez. If it's just you and a Tracer guarding the point, and then 3 offensive heroes come in, then you're better of leaving the tracer to fend for herself and group up with the rest of your team.
So, when should you use your rez then? Well, that's simple! When it matters! Yes, not much of an answer but the idea is that there's no simple answer like "when you'll rez 3+ people". Sure, rezzing 3 people is normally going to be a good idea, but if you just wiped out the entire enemy team, most of the dead allies respawn timer is almost up, and you spawn is right next to the point then you're really just wasting that ult, because by the time the enemy team returns your teammates would have been back even if you didn't use your ult.
So, here's a few questions I'll normally ask myself when I have my Mercy Ult up, and folks are dead:
Which player(s) are dead, and what hero are they playing? If it's that Reinhart whose shield was keeping us alive then I'll happily use my rez to just bring him back, but if it's Symmetra, and her teleporter is already up, then I'd rather save it for when someone else dies.
How many players are dead? If you're going to rez 3 people then unless the entire enemy team is dead you should almost always use that rez.
How well is combat going? If the current battle is going really well for us, and we're going to wipe out the enemy team without me using my rez then I'll usually just save it, since chances are the team will be back before the enemy can pose a threat again anyways.
If I rez, are they likely to just die right away? If it's just you and a Tracer, and three enemies, then using that Ult is just extending the respawn timer on that Tracer. Your better off just letting her respawn naturally and get away from battle.
Does it look like more folks are going to die before the currently dead folks respawn? If there are two dead people, and I see that Junkrat is going to die before I can get to them and heal them then I'll wait a couple seconds so I can get that Junkrat in my ult too.
Are we in overtime? If we're in overtime then I set the bar a bit lower for when I'll use my rez, since it's better to use it and hope it makes a difference, then to keep saving it, only for the match to end with a loss.
How close are to capping the point, or did we just cap it? In either of these cases my bar for using my rez is lower, primarily because if we've got nearly a full team after capping the point then there's a good chance we'll be able to rush to the next point and and get it up to at least the first tick before the enemy team can regroup.
So this is a bit longer than I planned, and there's definitely the more I could list, but the letting your team die just to use your rez is a waste (but don't needlessly go down with the ship by healing a doomed ally), and learning the right time to use your rez comes with experience.