fun's about to start!

For much of little Rems' life, I could not play games where you had to aim. I struggled through Mass Effect my first time but persisted for the story that I already knew was good. I was aware of Overwatch being released from the grapevine, and figured it wasn't for me. First person too? Forget it. Online multiplayer? No. Just, no. (My FFXIV /playtime is laughing at me.) But my friends were having fun and the characters were bright and colourful and there were so many women – women not in their teens or early twenties but their thirties and older, such a rarity, successful and celebrated, and I wanted to know them for myself…

So maybe, I should give it a shot.

I first tried Overwatch in October 2016 during a free weekend around Sombra's launch – and it didn't stick. Walking into an FPS blind with no prior exposure is uh, an experience. I had not a clue what I was doing. There was so much visual input. I have some vague recollection of running around Numbani invisible but was I doing anything of note? Was I, doing damage, getting elims? Not in the slightest. I played a few games and I didn't think I would ever return.

Famous last words.

My life changed forever at the end of 2016. I quite literally woke up one day and my body had simply given up – the vertigo and the dizziness were without end, the cognitive fog had me in a vice, I would walk a few metres and feel like I was about to collapse. My concentration went. I could barely look after myself: you think for a while, I'll get better, in time. Then you have to start living with the reality that you won't. I slowly had to start giving a lot of things up. I couldn't work. I didn't think I would be able to write anymore from how much it hurt.

There are some things you can't push through. My chronic illness, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.), is one of those things. Sleep doesn't help. You push and your baseline lowers. It's an endless cycle of adapting. M.E. very slowly, year by year, takes – I've gone from moderate through moderate-severe now severe and sometimes I am terrified of what is perhaps inevitable. I was scared in 2017, too. When you stop being able to do anything, including leaving the house or spending time with loved ones and friends, you get very isolated. Some of my friends were still playing Overwatch. And I thought to myself, maybe I should give it another try.

I wanted something I could do. Perhaps this is "the grind" mentality, but I understood it to be something without a distinctive end, completely unlike the games I usually chose; it could be played consistently and that over time I could improve at. What Overwatch became was something I could play every day for a couple of hours and enjoy. Some of my mental health does kind of hinge on that. Overwatch is of great comfort to me – it's been by my side for over seven years and got me through a lot of tough times. It's done what I gave it to do, and so much more.

I also met my duo not long after I started playing. Seven years on, we are still playing together and she's one of my best friends. Claire – I love you very much. Thank you for playing this goofy little game with me for so long. ❤

I'll be watching over you

I dove back into Overwatch for real around the time of Mercy's rework in September 2017. I don't remember if I touched Mercy before this – I have no recollection of ever using mass rez so likely not – but there was something I noticed whilst playing her. I was still very fresh faced in the genre, to be clear. I still didn't really know what I was doing – I'd get lost from being in first person, unable to judge distances; sometimes I still do. But Mercy is fundamentally very simple for a beginner to play. Obviously there's tech to learn, positioning, game awareness, yada yada, but as my priority was to attach a beam to another player and heal them without doing damage myself, I could observe what everyone else was doing.

This was a game changing moment for me. I wasn't stellar at Mercy for a very long time – we don't talk about how long it took me to start using blue beam – but it's like playing a minigame inside the game itself. Your goal is, survive. And heal your team whilst zipping about all over the place and slingshotting past your target, round corners, using buildings and rooftops to keep yourself hidden and to slowly slide down— but it's mostly just survive. You are not here to do damage: your goal is to ensure others reach their potential. Personally Mercy's skill ceiling is defined by the player's game sense. Do you know how to prioritise? Do you know what you should always boost – such as Sigma's lift at the start of his ult, or Moira's ult (underrated) – regardless of anything else going on? Do you know everyone's abilities and cooldowns and can you follow the flow of a fight well enough to determine when enemy players have their ultimates, and be responsive enough to act? Are you watching for flankers or are you static and immobile? That sort of thing.

I'm not saying I'm the best Mercy the world has ever seen, but I know what I'm doing. Mostly. She has my highest playtime, and though I don't tether myself to her as I used to, she will probably always be my best hero.

Becoming a flex player

I will always in my heart be a support player. It's what I naturally gravitate towards – solo tanking is hard and DPS can be demanding and difficult and is in some ways the least impactful role, ironically enough. You can fumble through with a DPS that isn't pulling their weight but if your tank or supports aren't… it's tough. But when I started branching out beyond Mercy gameplay, the heroes I picked were Mei, and D.Va.

Mei has a lot of self-sustain, and if you get overwhelmed, even emotionally, you can always hop into your ice block and be impervious to all damage. I miss the days where I could freeze people regularly: there's something about chain freezing a Roadhog to send a message, y'know? D.Va is famously versatile and a lot of Mercy mains end up on the D.Va train at some point because again, she is arguably the easiest tank to pick up and play: you go here, you shoot, you block damage. Plus she's pink and cute and bunny rabbit themed but has equally experienced the horrors.

Mei was the hero I used to really understand the game though. I could hardly be an inactive participant forever. A lot of this came from just experience and practice – and it was GOATS meta (3 tanks, 3 supports) in Overwatch League that really taught me the fundamentals of ult tracking and fight flow. This is a controversial take, but I miss GOATS. It's fun. The classic experience I most want is not Moth Meta for Mercy's rework where you have a bazillion rez's at your disposal which it should be as that's when I started playing, but it is GOATS. I wish to swing my mace and be an unstoppable force. Is this so much to ask. Launch Brigitte was very busted but I got very good at her.

These days I play a bit of everything. Of course I do have my mains; I still largely play support. But it's important that even if you don't excel or mesh with a particular hero that you understand their playstyle so you know how to play with them. It's a team-based game after all. Knowing how and when to counter and to adapt your own play to find success are skills that come with time and make every match a little bit different; something that worked against one composition may not for another, or their players are more active in dealing with the threat you provide and so it fails. Such is the way of playing against other humans. It's challenging, but not impossible.

I dabble with the new heroes added too! It's still exhilarating when you start playing a freshly launched hero and something about them just clicks. I felt this way about Junker Queen when she was added – she was made for me as a Brigitte player – and I really bonded with Lifeweaver. Like Mercy, he requires a lot of understanding of how the game is played, perhaps more, because he is given so much responsibility that usually sits squarely on a tank's shoulders by being able to displace his teammates as he pleases. A very good Lifeweaver can win games, and a poor one can easily lose them. But he has a nice rhythm to him and I enjoy him… as one of the very few male heroes I will actually regularly play.

(I even got a gold weapon for him: he broke the streak of women only. What a guy.)

The last hero I had this experience happen with was Juno. Juno might be my favourite hero to play they've added in a very long time, and part of why I can actively succeed with her are all those long hours of figuring out how to aim on Ashe.

Statistics

I don't play competitive regularly anymore – there was a time I was high Diamond in open queue playing Mercy – although I have taken advantage of the recent Drive events to receive those shiny points that'll get me the last few golden guns for heroes I let slip. I have a lot; in order of acquisition, my golden weapons were for Mercy, Symmetra, Mei, D.Va, Moira, Brigitte, Sombra, Zarya, Ashe, Junker Queen, Lifeweaver, Juno, and Echo, with the next planned for Winston. Theoretically I have enough for Winston right now, but I want to see how much I like playing Freja when she's added in a couple months first.

I have sunk a lot of hours into this game over the years. Here, I'll show them to you:

That's also not all of them either, just the top ten. My range is hundreds of hours on Mercy to less than an hour on some of the newer heroes plus Doomfist – I have a lot of respect for Doomfist's that can pull off his tech, I simply do not have the capability myself, beyond about fifteen seconds on Echo when there's nothing else I'd prefer to duplicate every now and again.

Ashe used to be much lower. In fact, when I started working on Deadlock Rebel, she was at about 175 hours. I then inserted a temporary image whilst writing this page of 200 hours. As you can see: she is not that anymore. I have full confidence that one day she will surpass Brigitte, decidedly helped by the over forty hours I've amassed on Juno since she came out… Ashe does have my highest hero progression though, because I simply had to have "Outlaw" as my title.

And since I can't find anywhere else to put it: my favourite map is King's Row and my favourite map type is either hybrid or escort. I'm a payload type of person.

Forever in my heart

Even before she became my favourite, Ashe was tied for my most joyous reveal (the other was Brigitte. I am easily moved by 'person picks up a weapon to shield and defend those that they love'). Ashe was so damn cool, and she was voiced by one of my favourite voice actresses – she had to be the new hero, and she was!

I usually wouldn't include a page like this on a character specific tribute but playing the game is part and parcel of the Ashe experience and I don't play her in every match that I join. Ashe was the hero I've most actively had to improve on. At first, I was pretty bad: there was a reason I didn't really play hitscans that rely on raw aim. As I've said before, this was just not something I was good at. Ashe is all about hitting your shots and angling your dynamite; some days it just doesn't happen. I had to learn from the ground up how to play Ashe on a controller, and after many years, recently managed to scrape my win rate with her up to 50% from the 43% where I started, a very appreciated sign of marked progress.

But it's because I liked her and her potential so much as a character that made me want to learn to play her in the first place. My favourite heroes in the lore align with the ones that I play. This makes sense; if I like them I want to spend time with them. In Ashe's case, she's in there. I have to see her and hear her say her words, at least once a day. The only notable exception to this rule is Widowmaker. I can't play her at all. I have tried, and my methods for playing Ashe just simply do not apply. Regardless, Amélie Lacroix still has my heart.

I love so many of these characters dearly. They've got so much potential. This universe has successfully held my interest for nearly eight years, and that makes a very strong bond. The rest of the genre never captivated like Overwatch did, and nor do I really have the time to dedicate to another game with no clear end in mind; that honour sits with Final Fantasy XIV. Still, it's the heroes of Overwatch that keep me coming back: there's someone for everyone. I was right, by the way. I do so love the women – I haven't mentioned them all, but you get the idea. I like to imagine my favourites in situations and write fic about them experiencing the growth a PVP game will never be able to give them, and to explore their relationships, be it friendly or romantic. I still hold out a little hope for PVE or the lore significantly moving forward again, but I'm happy to keep doing it myself.

Overwatch is still a comfort. I was here at the end of Overwatch 1's service, and I will likely still be here until the very last.

So, to answer your opening question, Winston…

I'm with you.

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