The best counters for every Overwatch 2 support hero

Taking out a team's supports is essential to winning.

Mercy Overwatch art
Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch 2‘s supports have similar duties to those in other hero-based games. Support characters fulfill roles other than absorbing damage or dishing it back out. Most frequently, they’re healers, restoring other heroes’ health or granting shields to protect them. These flexible heroes can also deal out some serious damage, provide utility to their teammates, or debuff their enemies.

Overwatch 2 is continuing to expand the franchise’s roster of support heroes with fun new additions like Kiriko, whose incredibly high headshot multiplier allows her to dish out serious damage. As the development team at Blizzard Entertainment continues to release new heroes, we’ll keep this list updated to make sure you stay one step ahead of the enemy team.

Here are the best counters for each Overwatch 2 support hero.

Best counters to every hero in Overwatch 2

Ana

Screengrab via Blizzard Entertainment

Ana is technically a sniper, like Widowmaker and Ashe, but she’s more of a healing sniper than a damage-dealing sniper. Aside from her strong Nano Boost ultimate, her biggest power is her Sleep Dart, which can put enemies to sleep until they take additional damage. It’s a unique stun that can help take out large, high-profile targets like tanks and certain damage dealers, and it’s one of the only non-tank crowd control abilities that was left intact after the move to Overwatch 2‘s five-vs-five format.

Sleep Dart isn’t effective against every hero, though. Characters who are small, fast, and hard to hit with precision shots can outmaneuver it; think characters like Genji, Doomfist, Tracer, and Lucio. It’s also hard—though not impossible—to hit Pharah and Echo with a dart while they’re in the air. Ana is generally a difficult character to play; she has very little self-heal and can only heal allies if she lands her shots on them. Her low mobility makes her an easy target for enemies, too.

Baptiste

Overwatch hero Baptiste preparing for battle.
Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Baptiste is a powerful frontline healer. His Immortality Field can readily keep his team alive, especially if a shield tank is guarding it, and his Amplification Matrix makes it easier for a defending team to put out some damage while they hold a payload or control point.

At the same time, he suffers from some of the same problems as Ana. His primary fire is difficult to control, meaning that low to mid-skill players may not do a lot of damage as Baptiste. He also has very little self-heal. Only his Regenerative Burst ability heals him alongside his allies. His alternate-fire heal doesn’t heal him. Highly mobile heroes like Tracer, Genji, Hanzo, Lucio, Echo, and Pharah can get around his Amplification Matrix to attack from another side and Sombra can hack his Immortality Field, rendering it useless.

Brigitte

Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Brigitte is half support, half tank. She has more health than the average support character and can defend herself with her small shield, which looks like a mini version of Reinhardt’s. She’s also the premiere anti-dive character thanks to the knockback from her Shield Bash and Whip Shot abilities. Genji and Tracer players should take note that Brigitte was literally designed as an anti-flank and anti-dive hero.

Thanks to her half-tank status, Brigitte is a little slower and chunkier than the average support hero. She can’t stun flying targets like Pharah and Echo. Characters have to come fairly close to her for her stun to work, meaning that anyone who can stay at long range has more of an advantage. Strong, distanced burst fire is a good way to take her out.

Kiriko

Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Kiriko is a support who exemplifies utility over raw healing output. Like Ana, her primary fire rewards careful shots, and she has a high degree of mobility that can help her quickly get to allies in need. She’s more of a team player than a solo hero: she’s at her best when she can use Swift Step to reach teammates and Protection Suzu and Kitsune Rush to cleanse and buff them. While her Kunai headshot multiplier is massive, she can’t reach her true potential alone.

While she has the mobility to keep up with fast DPS heroes like Tracer and Genji, the precision nature of her Kunai makes it difficult to hit them, particularly if you’re aiming for a headshot. Very mobile damage heroes can run circles around her without worrying about getting hit. She’s also weak to crowd control; she can run away from dangerous heroes with Swift Step, but there’s a brief period before the ability goes off where she can be hit and interrupted by attacks. Hitting her with a stun from Roadhog, Ana, or Sigma can prevent her from getting away and make her easier to defeat.

Lúcio

Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Lúcio is fast, small, mobile, and incredibly fun to play. His passive makes it easy to glide along walls and surfaces, enabling him to skate into the enemy team and knock people back with Soundwave, also known as the “boop.” He specializes in strong sustained healing and has the potential for some play of the game-worthy environmental kills.

Unsurprisingly, he’s got a lot of weaknesses to go with his strengths. Because he’s extremely fast and hard to hit, Soldier: 76 and Cassidy’s hitscan weapons will have an easier time finding their marks. Weapons that auto-lock, like Symmetra’s beam, Moira’s grasp, Winston’s electricity, and Torbjorn’s turret, are also helpful. Stuns from tanks can halt his movement, preventing him from getting away, and Sombra can turn off his healing entirely with her Hack.

Mercy

Screengrab via Blizzard Entertainment

Mercy is the premiere easy-to-play, high-output healer. The beam from her staff locks on and makes it easy to deliver constant healing, even for beginner players. Though she’s targeted more consistently in upper tiers of play, she maintains her usefulness even there thanks to the sheer amount of healing she does and her useful jump-glide movement pattern.

Mercy does have a gun, but it takes time to swap to and it doesn’t do much damage. Almost everyone can out-damage her, but if you’ve gotten her into a fight situation, you’ve likely already lost because Mercy is better suited to make a quick exit by flying to a teammate than standing and fighting. Soldier: 76, Cassidy, Ashe, and Widowmaker can hit her easily with their hitscan weapons while she’s gliding slowly through the air. Dive heroes can pursue her, resulting in kills for characters like Genji, Tracer, Winston, and Symmetra.

Moira

Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Moira is a versatile and frequently troublesome character to play against. The reach of her Biotic Grasp primary fire is extremely long to compensate for the fact that Moira can’t heal herself and others unless she attacks enemies. The beam auto-locks and deals sustained damage, which can spell death for the opposing team when paired with her bouncing Biotic Orb.

Thanks to her status as a sustained damage dealer, burst fire that can out-damage Biotic Grasp can defeat her faster than she can defeat others. Characters like Junkrat, Pharah, and Ana are great for this. (Beware: She can also get a good handle on Junkrat if she’s fairly close to him thanks to his slow rate of fire.) Stuns stop her ultimate, so Ana and tanks with crowd control have the upper hand when she activates it. Extremely long-range heroes like Widowmaker and Ashe can also avoid Biotic Grasp altogether while still dealing damage.

Zenyatta

Zenyatta Spartan Kick
Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Zenyatta is a tough character to play, but underneath his difficult exterior is a hero that rewards good aim and careful positioning. Though he only does a small amount of healing compared to other supports, his Orb of Discord enables him to prioritize targets for the rest of the team and assist in taking out high-profile enemies. His primary fire also does a significant amount of damage, particularly if you land a headshot.

All this power comes in a slow-moving package. Zenyatta has no movement abilities, making him extremely vulnerable to precision headshots from heroes like Widowmaker, Ashe, Cassidy, and Hanzo. His rate of fire is also slow, meaning that AoE burst fire is capable of knocking him out before he can ever hit his shots. Zenyatta players should fear Junkrat and Pharah. High-mobility heroes like Genji, Echo, and Doomfist can also simply chase him out of the backline.

Author

Emily Morrow
Emily is a staff writer covering Apex Legends, Overwatch, Pokemon, and general gaming for Dot Esports. Her other bylines include Digital Trends, Screen Rant, and GameSpew. She also works as a narrative designer in games. Get in touch with her on Twitter @thepokeflute.

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