Overwatch quickly became a worldwide sensation upon its release. Blizzard's game surpassed over 30 million players across all platforms in just over a year, and this is for good reason. Overwatch is an incredibly fun, and incredibly competitive game that's easy to pick up, and hard to master. The game has spawned tons of content from videos, eSports tournaments, memes, and more. Overwatch currently boasts 25 heroes to play as and is constantly adding more, with Doomfist being the latest inclusion to the roster. Overwatch relies heavily on teamw♔ork and team com🦂position that can make or break the match.
Overwatch has the benefit of constant support from Blizzard and as such, patches are made consistently and nerfs and buffs to characters happen all the time. Major changes and new heroes are put into a "Public Test Region" (PTR) to ensure it isn't completely game breaking. The developers of Overwatch care deeply for the game, as do the voice actors and everyone else involved with it. The core of Overwatch lies in the playable heroes in the games. While Blizzard does a relatively good job keeping the game balanced, it can't always stay that way. Sometimes a patch comes out that completely throws that out of proportion and heroes can become overpowered. Other times, nerfs will go live that completely ruins a character's viability. We've gathered 7 characters that are awful, be it not strong enough or too exploitable. To compliment that, we've also added 8 characterᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚs to the list that are completely overpowered and alm𝕴ost always a good pick.
15 💖 Overpowered: Soldier 76
Solider 76 is meant as a kind of an introduction to the game. He functions like a more traditional first person shooter character, with an automatic assault rife, a self-healing ability, and a sprint. Solider 76 has some of the best damage outputs and can fight at a range unlike other high "DPS🐟" characters. His ultimate ability takes away the need to aim and lasts a good while, all while💟 increasing his reload speed. Mixed with a nano-boost from Ana it makes for one of the deadliest combinations in the game. Soldier 76 comes with good survivability with his heal station, mobility with his sprint, and good damage output with his weapon, which also includes a high damaging rocket that's great for finishing off enemies.
14 🗹 Awful: Bastion
Bastion is by far the most exploitable character in the entire game. In recon mode, Bastion can walk around freely and carries a weak gun that he can use to attack. His alternate fire allows him to heal himself and can move as he does so. Bastion's other ability is entering into what's called turret mode. There, Bastion plants himself in place and becomes immobile, the trade off being that he's given one of if not the highest damage output in the game. While this sounds great in theory, Bastion is incredibly exploitable. A good majority of the characters in the game can counter Bastion and once he's taken down, it becomes much easier for the enemy to push forward. He's also not even that fun to play; sitting around waiting for enemies to come in su🌳ch a high-octane game is a tragedy.
13 ⭕ Overpowered: Lucio
Lucio, since day one, has always been the must-pick character in a team composition. He is the only support healer that can heal in an area rather than one at a time without the use of abilities. His speed boost can make teammates harder to hit and get away from battles when they're very wounded quickly. It also allows him to quickly bring back dead teammates from spawn. His ultimate provides 500 points of shield health, which is great for co🌳untering ultimates coming from the other team. He can push enemies with his alternate fire, both to get them away from his team or sometimes to knock them off a ledge for an easy kill. He can continue healing while firing his weapon as well, so he can compliment the damage output all while keeping his team's health up.
12 Awful: Torbjörn ✨
Torbjörn has the unfortunate pleasure of being one of the characters with the most cons. He carries a scrap gun with a slow fire rate, but high damage output. The primary fire shoots one shot, while the alternate fire is a shotgun-like burst. Torbjörn has another weapon, a hammer. While it does slight melee ꧋damage, its primary use is to upgrade Torbjörn's turret, one of his abilities. He can also drop armor packs for himself and his team. Torbjörn's shortcomings come from simply not being able to contribute much. His turret can very easily be destroyed by many different heroes, and his slow fire rate on his weapons make him hard to be useful in a fight. His gameplay is boring and he's not up to par with the other characters to warrant picking.
11 ♛ Overpowered: Ana
Ana was the first addition to the game after it was released. She has seen arguably the highest number of changes as she dominated the Overwatch scene. Her gun allows her to heal from a great distance, and she has the highest healing output in the game (aside from ultimates). Her grenade allows teammates to heal quicker and, if used on an enemy, will damage them and prevent them from getting healed. Her sleep dart can prevent charges and make for an easy kill. It can even be used on heroes in the middle of ultimates to cancel them out entirely. Her Nan🥃o Boost allows Ana to power up a character for 8 seconds and increase the target's attack by 50% along with making them take 50% less damage.
10 A🅘wful: ﷽Hanzo
Hanzo is the one of the more mobile snipers i💟n the game, sporting a bow and arrow that when fully charged, can kill most characters in the game with one shot, any hero but tanks. One of 🍸his abilities allows him to shoot an arrow that'll show where enemies are in a vicinity, and the other ability allows him to shoot an arrow that'll split off into multiple ones, which is good for dealing with enemies that are closer to him. However, Hanzo's weakness comes with his class (sniper). The fire rate of his arrows is slow, and if he's jumped on by nearly any character it's almost certain death. He lacks tools to get away from these kinds of fights, and as such is very easily countered.
9 Over♕powered: Reܫaper
When Overwatch first came out, Reaper was the main DPS character to pick.🍸 Carrying around shotguns with devastating damage output at close range he was a must pick for a while. Reaper would die off for a bit, but with the latest buff allowing him to heal with damage dealt along with characters that get in quickly dominating the game Reaper became relevant again, and very powerful. His ultimate deals great damage and can wipe out an entire team on its own. Reaper's Wraith Form allows him to escape from battles easily as it increases his movement speed and prevents him from taking damage. His teleport also allows him to get above the opposing team and jump down on unsuspecting enemies to easily kill them and get away just as easily by quickly going into Wrath Form.
8 Awful: Widowmake🌞r 📖
Widowmaker is the clear sniper character in the game. She's the only character with a real sniper rifle, though with the twist of it having to be charged up fully in order to kill in one shot. One of her abilities is a grappling hook that'll allow her to get onto perches she normally wouldn't be able to get to. Widowmaker's other ability is a mine that'll cause continuous damage to whoever activates it. While Widowmaker certainly has the toolkit to make her one of the best snipers, she still falls flat. Her abilities have incredibly long cooldowns, and her weapon's damage output outside of the scope in incredibly low making it incredibly easy to kill her if you get into her face, something that is quite easy to do in Overwatch.
7 🐈 Overpowered: Zarya
Zayra has perhaps one of the best defensive toolkits in the game. Her gameplay relies on her abilities. One provides shields for an ally, which when it takes damage will 🍷raise her "charge." She also can use the same shield on herself. Zayra's charge will raise when the shields are damaged, and the higher the charge (up to 100) the more damage she'll deal out. When fully charged, Zayra can have the highest damage output in the game. Her ultimate is one of the best in the game: an orb that'll suck in enemies and make them immobile. This can be used to simply shoot at the enemies easily and take them out, or it can combined with many ultimates in the game to ensure an entire enemy team is wiped out.
6 📖 ♍ Awful: Roadhog
Roadhog has one of the more storied histories in Overwatch in terms of buffs and nerfs. He went from being generally unused, to being almost always used and being arguably one of the best in the game, to being unused again. Roadhog's primary gameplay relies on his hook, which'll stun enemies and drag them right in front of him. At one point this was a one-hit combo. However, a nerf lowered his dama༒ge, and that combined with Roadhog's inconsistent damage in the first place can lead to it barely doing half of the hooked enemies' health allowing them to get away easily. Roadhog does have slight survivability with his other ability, which allows him to self-heal; however, doing so in battles makes him immobile (currently) and allows him to be easily attacked and killed during the animation.