Season 6 of Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 launched Season 6 on Thursday, August 10, 2023. Blizzard released a ton of new content, including maps, a game mode, and a new hero. Spoiler alert, the new hero is super OP and will likely be nerfed in the coming months.
Lifeweaver did receive some buffs since his Season 4 release, but he still isn’t a viable pick in most situations. Illari, the Season 6 entrant, on the other hand, outputs an enormous amount of damage and has incredible stopping power. She’s only available in quick play at the time of this writing, so I won’t include her in these rankings.
You can read about the full changes for Season 6 in the Blizzard forums. For anyone looking to improve their rank in Season 6, use the heroes below!
Best DPS in Season 6 of Overwatch 2
We’ll start off with everyone’s favorite role, DPS. These heroes are great for putting out sustained damage and confirming kills in your match.
Echo
Her consistent pressure can be applied from range, but where Echo shines is up close and personal. By combining her burst tactical with primary fire and a laser, she can quickly eliminate most non-tank heroes in the game.
Echo has great mobility and doesn’t require a Mercy pocket to be effective. She also has an incredible ult which was recently buffed – cost was reduced by 25%, with a slight nerf to ultimate generation while Duplicate is active – that effectively gives her a bonus life. Make sure to Duplicate an enemy from a semi-safe location to ensure you don’t return to Echo form immediately.
Lastly, she works well against Tracer, who continues to wreak havoc on enemy backlines. Wait for Tracer to Recall, hit her with a few sticky bombs, and the opposing Tracer will be back in the spawn room.
Tracer
Even though she’s known for being difficult to play, she can add so much value just by bothering the enemy supports. Tracer is a character who draws significant attention away from the enemy team and can waste opponents’ cooldowns just by blinking around the map.
Speaking of maps, Tracers must have some of the highest map knowledge on their team. You must understand where each health pack is and how best to maneuver around enemy threats.
She’s most lethal at close range, and you’ll want to ensure you always have “1.5 blinks” available when engaging. This means you have one blink in the tank, and a second one is about to come online within a couple of seconds. With this strategy, you can often get out of the trickiest situations unscathed.
Best Tanks in Season 6 of Overwatch 2
It’s weird because Tanks are really just bigger DPS heroes who make and take space for their team. Their kit empowers them to mitigate enemy damage and have high survivability.
D. Va
For whatever reason, Blizzard buffed D. Va even though she was already pretty strong in Season 5. In Season 6, her Boosters cooldown was reduced from 4 to 3.5 seconds. Additionally, she is now immune for 0.4 seconds while ejecting her mech. The overall impact is more mobility uptime and higher survivability.
D. Va is one of the core pillars of a dive comp. She engages quickly, takes out an enemy with missiles, and disengages for support from her team. The Defense Matrix can negate several enemy cooldowns and ults when timed correctly.
To round out her kit, her Self-Destruct ultimate is a fantastic way to clear out choke points and objectives. At high levels of play, the ult is used as a 2nd life, enabling ultra-aggressive plays from this top-tier tank. She’s a well-rounded tank who can carry a team when mastered.
Junker Queen
This tank is unique in her style of play because she operates most like a DPS-Support combo.
Junker Queen has a shotgun and Knife pull similar to Roadhog’s shotgun-hook kit, but what makes her unique is her ability to Wound enemies. This game mechanic slowly drains enemies’ health while refilling Queen’s own health pool. It means she needs to use her abilities to regularly wound as many players as possible to stay in the fight.
Good Junker Queen players will apply Wound early, confirm kills with her Scattergun and Carnage, then use Commanding Shout to clean up the remaining enemies. She’s susceptible to a quick death without any cooldowns or applied Wounds, so make sure to play near cover.
The Rampage ultimate is essentially an Ana nade landed on the enemy team if they are lined up. In most cases, you should land this ult on two key targets and prioritize removing them from the fight.
Best Supports in Season 4 of Overwatch 2
Supports are complex, often misclassified as “healers”, and might be the most complex in terms of decision-making. In this role, your job is to maximize pressure on the enemy team. This means various things in different scenarios, including healing, doing damage, applying status buffs or nerfs, and sometimes even creating space!
Ana
While Ana saw a slight nerf to her Biotic Rifle, now doing 70 instead of 75 damage or healing per shot, she is still one of the most versatile supports in the game. Additionally, she pairs well with Illari and the other top support on this Season 6 list.
Anas need to be looking to do damage to maximize their value to the team. Even hitting one shot on an enemy squishy can force them to play more cautiously in the fight. If your team doesn’t need health, dish out the damage!
Biotic Nade is one of the most powerful tactical abilities in the game. Again look to use these offensively to quickly shift the balance of the fight in your favor. Like sleep dart, you want to be attacking with her abilities unless the opposing team has flankers or a dive comp. In the latter scenario, save your cooldowns to protect yourself.
Nano is a lifesaving ultimate and pairs great with several heroes. Try to use this on the friendly who is applying the most pressure to the enemy team or who is at the highest risk of dying.
Kiriko
In Season 6, Blizzard changed the Protection Suzu. The knockback effect is removed, initial healing is reduced from 50 to 40, and the ability now heals an additional 30 when cleansing a negative effect. It’s an interesting change that is balanced out by an increase in Kunai damage from 40 to 45. Keep in mind that the critical damage multiplier was also reduced from 3.0 down to 2.5 for the Kunais.
Overall, Kiriko remains a lethal force with a ridiculous kit of abilities. She can still teleport, buff her team, heal at range, and save enemies from impending doom.
She’s a high-skill-ceiling hero who rewards aggressive play and tactical decision-making. I imagine she may be swapped out on certain maps for Illari once she becomes available in ranked play.
Overwatch 2 Season 6 Meta
As always, the name of the game is variety. Some heroes lose value on certain maps and others are hard countered by select enemy picks. Make sure you stay flexible in your playable characters, work on your comms, and adapt to your surroundings.
Here’s a recap of the strongest heroes to climb the ranked ladder in Overwatch 2 Season 6:
- DPS – Echo + Tracer
- Tank – D. Va + Junkerqueen
- Support – Ana + Kiriko
Here are a few strong comps to try out, with a mix of these top picks and some other powerful heroes for Season 6:
- D. Va | Tracer | Sombra | Kiriko | Ana
- Ramattra | Hanzo | Widowmaker | Brig | Ana
- D. Va| Genji | Tracer | Z | Ana
- Reinhardt | Ashe | Cassidy | Zen | Ana
- Junker Queen | Hanzo | Echo | Kiriko | Mercy
Who are your top picks for Season 6 of Overwatch 2? Join the conversation in the comments section, below!
