[Top 10] Best Overwatch Heroes For Beginners That Are Powerful

best Overwatch heroes, Overwatch beginner heroes, best heroes for beginners

Updated:

16 Sep 2022

What Overwatch Heroes Are Best For Beginners?

Picking up Overwatch is a daunting task. With 32 heroes on the roster, it’s difficult to find which hero will suit your personal strengths as a gamer. However, this guide will show you the best heroes to start off with as a beginner.

10: Mercy

Mercy, donning her valkyrie suit, flies to an injured civilian buried in rubble

Mercy is a support hero who has the ability to fly to her teammates using her valkyrie suit. A pacifist and Swiss field medic, Mercy is a perfect first choice for someone looking to play support.

Her kit is versatile and allows you to experiment with different playstyles. She can regenerate, fly, and fall slowly. While in the air, you can use her passive ability called “angelic descent” to slow the fall. Although this may not seem like a huge deal, you can use the sudden speed change to trick enemies, and also look around the map to spot weak points in the opposing side’s defense or offense.

Mercy has a caduceus staff and a blaster. The staff heals at 55 HPS (healing per second), and it has a damage boost feature you can use on any of your teammates. The blaster has 20 rounds of ammo and does 20 damage per shot. It automatically reloads if you switch to your staff for 1.4 seconds.

Her most powerful ability isn’t her ultimate; it’s her resurrect. It has a 30 second cooldown, but it can bring an ally back to life with full health. When used wisely, it can turn the tide of the battle. For example, if you resurrect (nicknamed “res/rez” by Overwatch players) a teammate with their ultimate, that will greatly aid your team.

Valkyrie is her ultimate, and it allows her to fly freely and chain heal/damage boost her allies. Her flight speed is increased, and so is the fire rate on her blaster. This ultimate is useful when you’re in a team fight and need to heal or damage boost multiple targets at once.

Mercy is perfect for beginners since she has a straightforward role. She’s very difficult to master, especially as you go higher up in skill rating, but at a beginner level, she’s one of the best supports you can play to become accustomed to how the game works.

What Makes Mercy Great

Versatile kit that allows her to protect herself
High healing capabilities
Her ultimate, Valkyrie, gives her the high ground in team fights
Her damage boost is amazing when paired with other ults (i.e. Soldier 76’s tactical visor)

See Mercy in action:

Top 500 Mercy gameplay

9: Orisa

Orisa giving the camera a wave. Be sure to wave back!

Orisa is a robotic tank that specializes in laying down suppressive fire. Her weapon, fusion driver, does 11 damage per shot at a fire rate of 12 rounds per second. Although it takes nearly 3 seconds to reload, her weapon forces enemies to find cover.

Her next ability is called “halt!”, a surge of gravity that forces any nearby enemies to get sucked toward the energy. Enemies caught in it are briefly slowed, giving you and your teammates a chance to fire at them.

Next is fortify, which grants Orisa a 40% damage reduction for 4 seconds. If your shield runs out, and it’s still on cooldown, use fortify to block the incoming damage. As for her barriers, she can put one down at a time. They block 600 damage each and have a 10 second cooldown. An interesting detail to her barriers is that they can be deployed while she’s reloading her fusion driver.

Lastly, her ultimate is called “supercharger”. Orisa places a device that damage boosts all allies in its line of sight (LOS). It lasts for 15 seconds and boosts damage by 50%. However, it can be destroyed as it only has 200 health, so be sure to protect it.

The best strategy is to place a supercharger after, or before, your Mercy uses her Valkyrie (if you have a Mercy). Since Mercy’s damage boost doesn’t stack, you should plan the damage boosts accordingly. For example, you place your supercharger, and as soon as it runs out or gets destroyed, your Mercy uses her ult and damage boosts the entire team so you can keep up the momentum of your attack.

What Makes Orisa Great

Her shields may not block much, but the cooldown is quick
Her primary fire suppresses enemies and forces them to reposition
When paired with other high-damage heroes (i.e., Bastion), Orisa’s ultimate shreds enemies
It’s easy to use her kit
Her abilities teach beginner players good positioning and teamwork

See Orisa in action:

Gameplay of amazing Orisa players

8: Soldier 76

Soldier 76 stares down his targets with his tactical visor glowing red

Soldier 76 is a trained soldier who is the equivalent of a walking arsenal. He has an automatic assault rifle, rockets, and his own healing field. His rifle does 6-20 damage per shot at a fire rate of 9 rounds per second. The rifle has a range of 30 to 50 meters, making him a perfect counter for flying heroes like Pharah and Echo.

His helix rockets do 120 damage on a direct hit, a 40-80 splash hit, and if he comes too close to the rockets, he inflicts 20-40 damage on himself. When used in combination with his assault rifle’s regular fire, he can kill low-health heroes in seconds.

Although he has a lot of offensive power, he also has a biotic field that heals him and anyone in the field at 35 HPS, and a sprint that increases his speed for as long as he’s using the ability (adds a 50% bonus to his speed).

His ultimate is a tactical visor that’s like an aimbot, except this one won’t get you banned. It locks onto targets and fires at them. The ability lasts 6 seconds, and it doesn’t require you to aim to use it. The best way to use this ultimate is to get on high ground and benefit from Mercy or Orisa's damage boost.

Soldier is a high-damage hero that counters other hitscan heroes (like Cassidy, Ashe, and other Soldier players) along with flying heroes. He’s great for beginners who want to learn more about good positioning and working with teammates to create the best results. Soldier is strong on his own, but if you work with your other DPS, supports, and tanks, you can make him overpowered.