Overwatch 2 Tier List Rankings – The Best Heroes

In this tier list, we’ve got you covered with the best heroes in Overwatch 2.

We’ve updated our tier list for Mid Season 12 and its latest balance changes.

Let’s dive in!

If you play other shooters be sure to also check out our Apex Legend Tier List or Marvel Rivals tier list.

Here are our rankings for the best heroes in Overwatch 2:

For a visual reference of our Overwatch 2 tier list, check out our infographic below:

Note that the heroes are organized by difficulty for new players/beginners who haven’t tried them yet.

Orange represents a high/hard skill floor, Blue represents an average skill floor, and Green represents a low/easy skill floor.

Overwatch 2 Tier List Commentary

As always with our tier lists, we want to highlight that we believe that the player always matters more than the character you play as.

If you have an off-meta main that is working for you, by all means, no need to switch! Keep rocking it.

This list is more to understand if one of your characters is favorable in the current meta, or to help players that have run into a plataeu.

Quick Notes

Mid Season 11 Notes

Universal Changes:

• Armor flat damage reduction decreased from 10 to 7 per impact.
  • (reduction has previously changed from 5, to 10, now to 7)
• Tank Role Passive:
  • Knockback resistance reduced from 40% to 25%.
    • (Was briefly 50% a few seasons back)
  • Ultimate generation reduction remains at 40%.
• Damage Role Passive
  • Remains only half as effective against Tank heroes
    • 10% healing reduction applied on Tanks
    • 20% debuff applied to Supports and DPS

The brand new, “Mobility Hero,” category has been added to OW2. The devs state that with the introduction of Juno and more mobility abilities taking over, they want to bring some balance trade offs by reducing their health pools. A number of DPS and Support heroes have had their 250hp reduced to 225hp. The exact criteria for being considered in this “Mobility” category has not been disclosed, but some have questioned how the decision was made to include Hanzo in the 225hp “Mobility Hero,” class, but exclude the hypermobile Genji who remains as a standard 250hp hero.

After being completely over-tuned for the last few months, Tanks are receiving slight role nerfs, and D.Va who has been decidedly the best tank in in the first half of season 12, getting a health redistribution. Every other change this season to Tanks are actually buffs to bring the weaker Tanks closer in power to the meta Tanks.
The buffs and nerfs in the Mid-season 12 update are rather conservative compared to recent seasons. Other than Hanzo’s rework which gives him back one-shot on critical hits, all other changes only have minor impact.

As predicted, the addition of Juno and her speed ability have shifted OW2 into a mobility meta.  Let’s take a closer look at who the strongest heroes in each role are this season and what makes them so dominant.

Fundamental Differences from Overwatch 1

Since you’re here, there’s a good chance that you already know the core differences between Overwatch and Overwatch 2.

If not, know that there are some kit adjustments across the hero cast. Be sure to know what has changed for your hero pool before diving into ranked.

The other major change to know is that now, there are five players instead of six (sorry to all you sixth men and women out there). This means that there are now one tanks instead of two.

Although it depends on the comp and the map, in general, this means that there is a noticeable decrease in the amount of crowd control and shields in the game.

There will be less instances of just defaulting to deathball teamfights and more instances of skirmishes and duels that happen.

How tiers work

In S-tier, you’ll find the best heroes in Overwatch 2 which will be very present in almost all maps and comp combinations.

A-tier heroes are still great choices but tend to be present for fewer maps than S-tier characters in pro play. However, in some situations, A-tier characters might shine more than S-tier characters.

In B-tier, we’re continuing the trend of heroes that have lower overall presence and are even more specialized. Some heroes here are just worse versions or downgrades of heroes in a similar niche above them (such as Ashe usually being the better choice over Cassidy).

Lastly, we have the Situational batch of heroes in the C-tier section. These heroes are rarely seen in comparison to their peers and are usually pulled out for specific halves or holds on a very small pool of maps. If you’re having success with them, by all means, keeping playing them.

The Best Damage (DPS) Heroes

Ashe

In Season 12, the DPS roster is struggling. Unfortunately for them, DPS is lagging behind as the weakest role. The current Armor, Tank passive, and DPS passive changes from the previous seasons keep increasing the power of Tanks and Supports, while reducing the impact of DPS heroes.

One hero stands a cut above the rest. Ashe has already been performing really well, and is notably the strongest hitscan DPS. Her high burst damage, long range, Dynamite, defensive coach gun and B.O.B. are all becoming unique strengths that other DPS are having an increasingly harder time contesting.

Against 225 hp heroes, Ashe only needs to land one headshot plus one body shot to secure an ultra fast elimination. Furthermore, B.O.B is effectively a Tank and receives all the Tank role passives making B.O.B. harder to destroy or boop away because of the headshot damage and knockback reductions. The easiest way to shut him down used to be Ana’s Sleep Dart, but now it’s only going to put him down for a measly 3 seconds.

Tracer

After a very brief fall from grace, Tracer returns to her rightful place as a meta pick. The addition of 225hp mobility heroes required the devs to reduce her Pulse Pistol damage by .5 dmg per shot. Given the state of insanely high mobility both offensively and defensively, Tracer simply stands in her own league in terms of being able to escape from, and chase down the enemy mobility abilities. She still deletes heroes like Juno who is picked almost every single game. While her individual strength is slightly lower, what she adds to her team and her ability to follow up on Tank aggression keeps her as a mainstay in the current meta.

The Best Tank Heroes

Winston

With D.Va receiving nerfs in the last 2 patches, Winston finally takes over as the strongest Mobility Tank in the current mobility meta. While Tanks like Winston and D.Va tend to gain increasing value the higher up the ranked ladder one climbs, their current states are allowing them to be dominant at every level of play. The new 225hp mobility heroes are like delicious peanut butter to Winston’s Jump Pack, charged Tesla cannon, melee combos.

The armor changes have been Winston’s best friend. As long as he manages his armor health, Winston no longer gets hard countered by heroes like Reaper, Bastion, and D.Va. The armor just soaks up the damage, while his Tesla Cannon ignores armor. Barrier Projector shuts down much of the enemy team’s countermeasures and is one of, if not the strongest Tank ability at the moment. Even with the 5 dmg per second reduction in the previous hotfix, Winston remains one of the most consistent Tanks this season.

D.Va

D.Va’s 375 armor health gets reduced to 325, and she loses 25 total from her max health pool. The buffs to her Booster impact damage, weapon spread and Micro Missiles damage have not been reverted, and now when facing all the 225hp heroes, D.Va’s damage deletes them. Her mobility allows her to perform well on just about every map and into almost every type of team composition. Even though Zarya, who gives D.Va some trouble recently got buffed, only Zarya’s right clicks have increased damage which doesn’t matter much to D.Va as they are very easy to Defense Matrix.

The Best Support Heroes

New Support Hero: Juno

Upon her official release, Juno received multiple nerfs and reworks from her beta testing. The nerfs were too heavy handed and Juno seemed like a useless hero at first. Since then, she has received multiple buffs and quickly stole the #1 Support spot. Hyper Ring controls the pace of fights and is by far the strongest mobility ability in all of OW2. Most matches are seeing Juno output extremely high levels of damage and healing in addition to the speed utility she provides.
Juno’s only weaknesses are her falloff damage and healing which means she provides very little support at range. Combined with her low hp and weak 1v1 dueling abilities, she often becomes the go to target for the enemy team.

Brigitte

Making up for the defensive weakness of her allies, Brigitte can single handedly shutdown every enemy dive attempt. Every time she spots the enemy D.Va or Winston jumping on her support duo, a simple Whipshot shuts that down quickly. Health packs are super strong for both peel and offensive support for her allies at range. Primarily paired with Juno and Ana, Brig’s job basically becomes to keep them alive and free to focus on maxing their output to the rest of the team. Brigitte Armor and Rally, also has greatly benefited from the universal armor changes, and no bug fix was listed as addressing interactions where armor from Brig is reducing damage at a higher than normal rate.

Want to dominate the meta for other games? Check out all our other Mobalytics tier lists.

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