We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.
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At the end of a round of your fave shooter, you are blessed with a wall of stats to pore through and analyze. If you’re a Very Serious Player, maybe you bought a Very Serious Mouse to improve your “accuracy percentage.” But what if one of those popular statistics—bragged about and trained for—were “bullets landed.” This would be very silly. A stat like that would suggest your goal is to recklessly fire as many bullets as you can to maximize the opportunities for one to smack into somebody … What a coincidence, then, that Pharah has this stat, as well as splash-damaging rockets, and—like everyone else—infinite ammo.
Leading your targets and very nearly one-shotting Tracer is satisfying, but in no way do you need to be a tactical pro to excel with Pharah. It does not matter if you’re a newbie, drunk, sleep-deprived, or playing with your feet, you too can land some rad Pharah kills if you just follow these steps:
- Jump up high enough to make their whole team look like ants
- Fire rockets into places where people are (approx.)
- Repeat until your Ultimate is charged
- Repeat with (borderline broken) Ultimate
Overwatch levels have a bunch of verticality built right into them, and Pharah is the only character who continually scrapes the top of the level, and who slides off roofs that are suspiciously much more slippery than they look. In fact, while she’s busy dropping rockets on dejected Reapers and D.Vas, only one other hero can get nearly as high: Pharah’s sweet wonderful girlfriend Mercy.
When Mercy’s watching out for you, you really can one-shot Tracer, or survive against those dangerous heroes who shoot normal straight bullets, which in Overwatch is, like, one guy. With the power of love and rockets and not a care in the world for aim, Pharah—with Mercy’s help—really just ruins a team like they’re so many grumpy dwarves or earth-bound gorillas.
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Offensive Heroes
Genji – Genji is with you
McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter
Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens
Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good
Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not
Defensive Heroes
Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world
Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves
Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat
Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge
Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn
Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me
Tank Heroes
D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch
Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land
Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness
Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge
Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch
Support Heroes
Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want
Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio
Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch
Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra
Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out