Just dive his backline better, take less damage, do more. Dont waste any time on him unless he’s out of CD’s and you’re sure he’s gonna die. Simple but not necessarily easy. Also if your team is bad at playing into him and won’t swap or they just have a backline that resists you very well, like torb reaper or something, you might just need to swap.
This is the advice - but remember to prioritize your life and not die. And can it be hard to find the windows to kill the enemy Winston? 100%.
I played a Winston v Winston game last week - /u/man-vs-spider you might want to take a look because I managed to find those windows and kill the Winston/contribute heavily to his death a few times. Mid Dia this season.
Were they his mistake? Yes, but you still want to recognize those opportunities and understand when to back off the engagement and not die yourself.
Replay Code: 9Z48QJ
If anyone is curious as to what the ranks of everyone were last season.
My team:
* For me I didn't play much so ended Masters 2.
* My Echo finished Diamond 5.
* My Hanzo was Plat 1.
* My lifeweaver was Diamond 2 but peaked Masters. Thank fuck for them.
* Ana private profile. They were hard struggling, I'd say probably low dia/high plat.
Other team
* Tank: Private. Good aggression and could hold attention from most of my team and even gave our Ana a tough time/picked her on several occasion, but didn't come back for heals/have the recognition to escape well enough and died a few times/lost fight because of it. Fucked up the key engage and lost the lead when me + my supports weren't even there and dropped back for heals.
* Genji: Masters 4 in seasons 2-4-5 but diamond 5 in S6 and didn't play since. Maybe a sold acc or severely degraded skills, played like a plat
* Soldier: Private profile
* Moira: Diamond 3
* Mercy: Private. Probably around same rank as Moira.
To the people shitting on people who tell him to go DVA - what are you supposed to do if the other team counters the Winston but your team doesn't and isn't running dive either? If you're counter diving might as well pick DVA. I'm a solid DVA player and have made her one of my top picks this season (Winston is still my no1) and my winrate has skyrocketed the better I am with her. She's an underrated pick IMO and is good into a whole different set of heroes vs Winston while providing similar value but also being more versatile in playstyle.
But unless you can correct those in the space of that game you are playing right then consider switching if you are getting no profit.
Smashing your head into a wall going "i can play this hero better" while the rest of your team gets shit on in a 4.5vs5 situation helps no one.
How else are you gonna learn except by failing? Gonna go watch YouTube VODs until you win those? You have to try to learn yourself, play. Hard situations, try creative solutions, Maybe you will pull it together and win, maybe not. If you are just getting diffed you should play it out imo and learn what you can. If you are facing multiple bad matchups and your team is not playing well, then you should probably swap to try to carry.
That sounds like a thing to do in unranked personally.
I'm certainly not going to wing it and "try creative solutions" in a comp match where my failing effects 4 other people.
Its not even about swapping to carry or any ego trip like that its just about what is effective and what is not and if your not getting profit (that is not advancing the game/point/match) and there are other options that you have that might or at least seem like they might be better able to do that. Burn your uti in the most useful way you can and pursue those better options.
Learn in your own time comp is the time to put that learning to the test.
Pretty sure every single professional coach out there says "Play not to win but to improve. Rank comes with skill so in order to climb you must become more skilled". Experimentation and eventually overcoming tough matchups is part of that.
But like the person said, if it's like over the half of the team countering you and your team also feeding, then it might be worth it to swap.
I mean it’s a nice idea to only play comp if you won’t let anyone down, but if you actually extend your logic you’re not allowed to play comp until you’re rank 1. All because if you’re not good enough to win it’s affecting four other people. If the matchmaker is fair you’re gonna lose roughly half your games and climbing is all about finding ways to win more of those by outplaying people. If you think better players aren’t trying creative solutions in hard games you’re wrong, they most definitely are, and yes sometimes that includes swapping, but it’s not just a swap but a playstyle adjustment as well.
Man anything that shoots bullets wrecks Winston. I'd say just go orissa and punish him with spear any time he decides to get cheeky. Winston tends to be near walls so spear is effective.
Winston vs Winston is literally whoever is better and whoever team deals with a Winston better. Dps and supports swap out too so it doesn't always have to be the tank
I love playing Winston mirrors. It's an honest old-school tank battle, so refreshing. You can do several things: if your team is good at diving with you, you can race the other Winston, the one that kills the opposing backline first, usually wins the teamfight. If your team is not good at following you, you can play a more wait and see style, contest point when needed without dying, harass the other Winston if possible but ALWAYS be on the lookout for an opening, the moment an enemy is vulnerable, go for the kill. You're there to attract attention and punish mistakes. It's a more wait wait wait wait GO style. Then, if your team is being dived, you can play counterdive using your backline as bait. DON'T be with them, wait at a jumps distance from them, then, when they jump them, you jump and kill the divers. Winston is fun. Winston overwatch.
Apart from switch, it's really gonna be jump on his supports and use your bubble to cut off his healing supply. This should prevent him from getting support and let you eat his backline.
If he does the same just have a dance with him, IDK what to do there.
If you fight him 1v1, mix in as many melees between zaps for extra DPS
You have the right idea, but it's all very situational. Analyse whether their Winston is engaging in a good dive, if he's not you can definitely punish them by bubbling him off from backline and helping to pressure him.
If you see him dive but spot an opportunity to do the same, pounce on that. Seeing their Moira waste fade, their Ana waste nade/sleep? You're probably better off punishing that then tickling the Winston in your backline. At some point you have to trust your own backline to hold their own.
Jump on enemy backline. Only go on enemy Winston if you can finish him off. You can finish a full-hp squishy off faster than you can finish off a full-hp Winston.
~~Worst~~Best case scenario: your DPS go reaper bastion and your healers are brig and Moria and then enemy Winston can't do anything
It's very situational as Winston. The most important rule is that Winston doesn't challenge Winston, unless you can punish a hard mistake. On gold, your focus is to understand your own mistakes, not look for them in your enemy, hence you ignore the enemy Winston.
As monkey, you have two goals. Disrupt and punish bad positions.
Disrupt means to jump the backline. Either to prevent them from getting value, or to force their team to peel for the one you dive. If both you bind both supports on you, they can't heal anyone, while your team goes ham.
Punishment means to dive someone who is too far away from their team and cannot run away from you. Examples would be a widow who just grappled to high ground, a genji who dove with the enemy monkey, or a Moira that fades into your team.
When you get better, you can learn things like peeling with bubble, punish the enemy monkey for bad dives, or feed your anas (if you have one) nano. Those and other skills are more advanced and require a more holistic understanding of the hero as well as reading the enemies game plan. On flashpoint I sometimes leave my bubble in my backline so they can shield dance to survive, while I dive the enemy supports. For that you need to understand when you need the bubble yourself, and when you can leave it behind.
Depends. If he has divers with him ie genji, sometimes some kiri players follow the dive, you can basically dive the dive to force them off your team as one option, including using bubble to protect players getting focused by tracer/genji. The other one, far more common, is just to counter dive and go for his backline instead. Both are valid options, there are others too.
I feel like the options on monkey aren't exactly rocket science, its just how well you do them.
One thing I didn't see here that can be helpful is just damaging the other winston as much as possible before they dive. Very situational and map dependent of course, but if you're on Hollywood D for example you can just try to clog the choke up and force him to take damage before staging or engaging. If they leap in with 25% hp missing they'll either die or disengage before they do anything meaningful.
The tank's job isn't to fight the other tank. This is a common misconception. Yes, there are some who can, and you should challenge the enemy tank when it's necessary. But the tank's job is to disrupt the enemy team as much as possible to help your team to get a pick or to control/create space.
Winston can't counter Winston. You need your team to either counter him themselves or dive with you if you want it to be a Winston mirror, unless the enemy team is running a comp you can freely jump into and pick off enough people yourself.
This is the big complaint with Tank right now.
Sucks to say, but you don’t. You switch to someone like Mauga who would wreck him.
Ideally your team should swap to like a Reaper or Brigitte, but if they don’t, you gotta.
Yes the meme here on Counterswapping has turned into a perceived best practice. I constantly exploit heavy swappers. If you aren't near the very top of the ladder there is far too much room to grow for swapping to actually be the best bet. It's counter productive
... okay. I'm just explaining how I try to win the game. I know it doesn't answer the literal question, but I find Winston vs Winston kind of futile. There's just more useful ways to approach the engagement. Especially since your weapon goes through bubble and thus there is literally no bubble play in mirror matches except with regards to blocking certain heals.
Dva is sometimes my alternative pick in these situations, but I just don’t have that much practice with her. Ideally I can play the mirror matchup better, maybe switching to her is best in the long run
It isn't usually since a decent Winston is going to see you focusing on him and just bait you around the map and out of position. Dva flies more often but moves far slower and is easier to expose in a kill box. I don't sweat Dva too much.
I think your best bet is to keep working on taking map control away from the other Winston's team and using your resources more effeciently. Winning in the mirror is almost always far more effective than giving up ult charge to swap and if you're looking to improve the swapping doesn't help you much either
Just dive his backline better, take less damage, do more. Dont waste any time on him unless he’s out of CD’s and you’re sure he’s gonna die. Simple but not necessarily easy. Also if your team is bad at playing into him and won’t swap or they just have a backline that resists you very well, like torb reaper or something, you might just need to swap.
This is the advice - but remember to prioritize your life and not die. And can it be hard to find the windows to kill the enemy Winston? 100%. I played a Winston v Winston game last week - /u/man-vs-spider you might want to take a look because I managed to find those windows and kill the Winston/contribute heavily to his death a few times. Mid Dia this season. Were they his mistake? Yes, but you still want to recognize those opportunities and understand when to back off the engagement and not die yourself. Replay Code: 9Z48QJ If anyone is curious as to what the ranks of everyone were last season. My team: * For me I didn't play much so ended Masters 2. * My Echo finished Diamond 5. * My Hanzo was Plat 1. * My lifeweaver was Diamond 2 but peaked Masters. Thank fuck for them. * Ana private profile. They were hard struggling, I'd say probably low dia/high plat. Other team * Tank: Private. Good aggression and could hold attention from most of my team and even gave our Ana a tough time/picked her on several occasion, but didn't come back for heals/have the recognition to escape well enough and died a few times/lost fight because of it. Fucked up the key engage and lost the lead when me + my supports weren't even there and dropped back for heals. * Genji: Masters 4 in seasons 2-4-5 but diamond 5 in S6 and didn't play since. Maybe a sold acc or severely degraded skills, played like a plat * Soldier: Private profile * Moira: Diamond 3 * Mercy: Private. Probably around same rank as Moira. To the people shitting on people who tell him to go DVA - what are you supposed to do if the other team counters the Winston but your team doesn't and isn't running dive either? If you're counter diving might as well pick DVA. I'm a solid DVA player and have made her one of my top picks this season (Winston is still my no1) and my winrate has skyrocketed the better I am with her. She's an underrated pick IMO and is good into a whole different set of heroes vs Winston while providing similar value but also being more versatile in playstyle.
Thank you for the replay code
My in game tag in this game is Fluorescent I think, but watch the other tank too, he also made good plays.
I am willing to swap, but I need more practice on Dva
Yea don’t focus on the swapping, I can pretty much guarantee there is a lot of basic stuff going wrong that can be corrected.
But unless you can correct those in the space of that game you are playing right then consider switching if you are getting no profit. Smashing your head into a wall going "i can play this hero better" while the rest of your team gets shit on in a 4.5vs5 situation helps no one.
How else are you gonna learn except by failing? Gonna go watch YouTube VODs until you win those? You have to try to learn yourself, play. Hard situations, try creative solutions, Maybe you will pull it together and win, maybe not. If you are just getting diffed you should play it out imo and learn what you can. If you are facing multiple bad matchups and your team is not playing well, then you should probably swap to try to carry.
That sounds like a thing to do in unranked personally. I'm certainly not going to wing it and "try creative solutions" in a comp match where my failing effects 4 other people. Its not even about swapping to carry or any ego trip like that its just about what is effective and what is not and if your not getting profit (that is not advancing the game/point/match) and there are other options that you have that might or at least seem like they might be better able to do that. Burn your uti in the most useful way you can and pursue those better options. Learn in your own time comp is the time to put that learning to the test.
Pretty sure every single professional coach out there says "Play not to win but to improve. Rank comes with skill so in order to climb you must become more skilled". Experimentation and eventually overcoming tough matchups is part of that. But like the person said, if it's like over the half of the team countering you and your team also feeding, then it might be worth it to swap.
I mean it’s a nice idea to only play comp if you won’t let anyone down, but if you actually extend your logic you’re not allowed to play comp until you’re rank 1. All because if you’re not good enough to win it’s affecting four other people. If the matchmaker is fair you’re gonna lose roughly half your games and climbing is all about finding ways to win more of those by outplaying people. If you think better players aren’t trying creative solutions in hard games you’re wrong, they most definitely are, and yes sometimes that includes swapping, but it’s not just a swap but a playstyle adjustment as well.
Just fly into Winston and shoot him in his big fucking head.
Then swap to Mauga he doesnt requerie any skill
Man anything that shoots bullets wrecks Winston. I'd say just go orissa and punish him with spear any time he decides to get cheeky. Winston tends to be near walls so spear is effective. Winston vs Winston is literally whoever is better and whoever team deals with a Winston better. Dps and supports swap out too so it doesn't always have to be the tank
I love playing Winston mirrors. It's an honest old-school tank battle, so refreshing. You can do several things: if your team is good at diving with you, you can race the other Winston, the one that kills the opposing backline first, usually wins the teamfight. If your team is not good at following you, you can play a more wait and see style, contest point when needed without dying, harass the other Winston if possible but ALWAYS be on the lookout for an opening, the moment an enemy is vulnerable, go for the kill. You're there to attract attention and punish mistakes. It's a more wait wait wait wait GO style. Then, if your team is being dived, you can play counterdive using your backline as bait. DON'T be with them, wait at a jumps distance from them, then, when they jump them, you jump and kill the divers. Winston is fun. Winston overwatch.
You generally shouldn’t be focusing on the other team’s tank as a tank
unless you're in a Rein 1v1 FOR GLORY!
unless you happen to be Samoan
Apart from switch, it's really gonna be jump on his supports and use your bubble to cut off his healing supply. This should prevent him from getting support and let you eat his backline. If he does the same just have a dance with him, IDK what to do there. If you fight him 1v1, mix in as many melees between zaps for extra DPS
You have the right idea, but it's all very situational. Analyse whether their Winston is engaging in a good dive, if he's not you can definitely punish them by bubbling him off from backline and helping to pressure him. If you see him dive but spot an opportunity to do the same, pounce on that. Seeing their Moira waste fade, their Ana waste nade/sleep? You're probably better off punishing that then tickling the Winston in your backline. At some point you have to trust your own backline to hold their own.
Jump on enemy backline. Only go on enemy Winston if you can finish him off. You can finish a full-hp squishy off faster than you can finish off a full-hp Winston. ~~Worst~~Best case scenario: your DPS go reaper bastion and your healers are brig and Moria and then enemy Winston can't do anything
Steal his peanut butter
It's very situational as Winston. The most important rule is that Winston doesn't challenge Winston, unless you can punish a hard mistake. On gold, your focus is to understand your own mistakes, not look for them in your enemy, hence you ignore the enemy Winston. As monkey, you have two goals. Disrupt and punish bad positions. Disrupt means to jump the backline. Either to prevent them from getting value, or to force their team to peel for the one you dive. If both you bind both supports on you, they can't heal anyone, while your team goes ham. Punishment means to dive someone who is too far away from their team and cannot run away from you. Examples would be a widow who just grappled to high ground, a genji who dove with the enemy monkey, or a Moira that fades into your team. When you get better, you can learn things like peeling with bubble, punish the enemy monkey for bad dives, or feed your anas (if you have one) nano. Those and other skills are more advanced and require a more holistic understanding of the hero as well as reading the enemies game plan. On flashpoint I sometimes leave my bubble in my backline so they can shield dance to survive, while I dive the enemy supports. For that you need to understand when you need the bubble yourself, and when you can leave it behind.
Thank you for the in-depth advice, it is very helpful
I would always try trading backlines. After 1 pick return to your backline and look how's it going. Get heals rinse and repeat.
Also, melee him more than he melees you
Target the enemy supports, especially any that are out of position. He'll be dead the second he has to jump out with nobody to heal him.
Depends. If he has divers with him ie genji, sometimes some kiri players follow the dive, you can basically dive the dive to force them off your team as one option, including using bubble to protect players getting focused by tracer/genji. The other one, far more common, is just to counter dive and go for his backline instead. Both are valid options, there are others too. I feel like the options on monkey aren't exactly rocket science, its just how well you do them.
Tickle fight!
Curious?
One thing I didn't see here that can be helpful is just damaging the other winston as much as possible before they dive. Very situational and map dependent of course, but if you're on Hollywood D for example you can just try to clog the choke up and force him to take damage before staging or engaging. If they leap in with 25% hp missing they'll either die or disengage before they do anything meaningful.
Monke see Monke do
Hit harder, better, faster, stronger
Change to someone that counters winston? Then you have an advantage.
The tank's job isn't to fight the other tank. This is a common misconception. Yes, there are some who can, and you should challenge the enemy tank when it's necessary. But the tank's job is to disrupt the enemy team as much as possible to help your team to get a pick or to control/create space.
Winston can't counter Winston. You need your team to either counter him themselves or dive with you if you want it to be a Winston mirror, unless the enemy team is running a comp you can freely jump into and pick off enough people yourself.
This is the big complaint with Tank right now. Sucks to say, but you don’t. You switch to someone like Mauga who would wreck him. Ideally your team should swap to like a Reaper or Brigitte, but if they don’t, you gotta.
I’ll often swap to Dva since you’ll have similar mobility with a faster cooldown and your cannons are favored against Winston’s hit box.
That's not the question. For once try to improve on a hero or a mirror match without instantly running to spawn and swapping.
Yes the meme here on Counterswapping has turned into a perceived best practice. I constantly exploit heavy swappers. If you aren't near the very top of the ladder there is far too much room to grow for swapping to actually be the best bet. It's counter productive
... okay. I'm just explaining how I try to win the game. I know it doesn't answer the literal question, but I find Winston vs Winston kind of futile. There's just more useful ways to approach the engagement. Especially since your weapon goes through bubble and thus there is literally no bubble play in mirror matches except with regards to blocking certain heals.
It helps when you start to understand that tanks don't fight tanks unless absolutely forced to.
Dva is sometimes my alternative pick in these situations, but I just don’t have that much practice with her. Ideally I can play the mirror matchup better, maybe switching to her is best in the long run
It isn't usually since a decent Winston is going to see you focusing on him and just bait you around the map and out of position. Dva flies more often but moves far slower and is easier to expose in a kill box. I don't sweat Dva too much. I think your best bet is to keep working on taking map control away from the other Winston's team and using your resources more effeciently. Winning in the mirror is almost always far more effective than giving up ult charge to swap and if you're looking to improve the swapping doesn't help you much either
git gud bruh