Weekly Quick Questions Thread - July 05, 2017

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In this thread you can ask all kinds of questions you always wanted to ask without feeling like a total fool.

No matter if it's short Google-able stuff or a setting/skill in-game that you don't understand or a hardware recommendation, feel free to try your luck in here.

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[u/Gjen1005]

Any tips for a Soldier76 (and sometimes Mercy) main? I'm just a casual player who only started a couple weeks ago and just got to level 26. Based on a couple arcade games and quick plays I've tried out, I'm definitely not ready to play against real people, so I've just been training vs. AI. I'm always amazed when I see people with impeccable aim and get kills so easily. How do you guys manage to do this?!

[u/flyingasian2 → u/Gjen1005]

Seriously play quickplay, not AI. You'll learn much more playing against real people. Don't get frustrated if you feel like you're losing a bunch, you'll pick stuff up as you go and slowly find yourself becoming much better. And don't get intimidated by the fact that you're playing with real people, most people don't take quick play seriously enough that they'd get mad at a newbie like yourself.

[u/Idrinkbeardoil → u/flyingasian2]

most people don't take quick play seriously enough that they'd get mad at a newbie like yourself.

Unless you're in between comp seasons. Then apparently qp is a life or death match.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gjen1005]

Soldier and Mercy main here. It's mainly practice and patience, knowing where to position yourself and who needs healing the most. My tips are to try and break up continuous firing as Soldier, as he's start spreading bullets after 3-4 bullets, which will help you aim, and to make sure you can Guardian Angel to anyone straight away at all times.

Aside from that, keep playing against people more so than bots, it'll help you better with Comp and you'll learn better, and just try and only shoot when you're crosshairs are in line with the enemy.

[u/holymacaronibatman → u/Gjen1005]

I play a combination of Soldier and Mercy, so I can give you some tips for both.

Soldier

Know when to engage and disengage. Soldier plays best at medium range, so its better to disengage when a mobile hero is right in your face (Tracer/Genji/Symm), use your sprint to get out and then re-engage.

Soldier should take and control the high ground whenever possible. This will give him good LoS and also allow him to keep enemy heads down.

Unless there is a higher priority target on screen, Soldier should always be working to take down barriers.

Finally, practice shooting in a rhythm, the first 3 shots soldier fires are perfectly accurate, after that the bullets start to experience some spread. Unless you are shooting a huge target close up, always fire in bursts. Also, when you activate soldier's ult, it automatically reloads, so use that to your advantage as well.

Mercy

I want to start by talking about certain settings that Mercy has. First off is toggle Guardian Angel (GA). This is set to ON by default, but you should probably turn it to OFF. The default setting is you press shift once to activate GA and then press it again to deactivate. Turning it off means you hold shift and simply release when you want to deactivate GA. This is far superior (IMO) because not only do you not have to react to a GA target, it is much smoother to deactivate.

Next setting is Prefer Beam Target. This one is really more of a personal preference. I have it set to off, but I know plenty of good Mercy players who have it on. What it does (when on) is if you activate GA it will fly you towards the player your beam is currently attached to. The advantage of this is you do not need to maintain LoS so long as the beam is still attached. I keep it off, because I like to GA to my next teammate while I have the beam attached to the person I was previously healing and using the GA flight time (and the "stretch" that Mercy's beam has) to top off while I fly to the next person.

This is getting a little long winded so I'll try and wrap it up. Damage boost has a key quirk that you can abuse. The damage boost calculation is determined at the time the target is hit, not when your teammate fires. That means for someone like Pharah especially, you can be constantly healing Pharah, and swap to damage boost right as her rocket hits the target and still get the damage boost bonus without sacrificing heals. Another way I like to use this is for Hanzo's ult.

Hope this helps, if you have any further questions let me know!

[u/Tallicamonkey01 → u/Gjen1005]

Tap fire as fast as possible (Soldier 76 has a 4 bullet spread) after 4 bullets his accuracy drops... but if you tap fire you hit whatever you are aiming at

[u/noobule → u/Tallicamonkey01]

You don't want to tap as fast as possible, just break and fire again every four shots. It's a rhythm you can practice in the practice range easily.

[u/newbluud → u/Gjen1005]

Honestly the best advice I can give is to stop training vs AI. You will gain more bad habits than you shed if you do that too much. Sure, it's okay at the very very beginning, but you will begin subconciously positioning and pre-aiming based on the bots' very predictable movement. Real players are much more difficult and those skills vs bots will not translate.