Welcome, my name is Librarian Husky. Positioning is a very popular topic among Overwatch players. It’s reached a point now where a lot will claim it’s the main issue holding players back from ranking up. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.

The Importance of Positioning in Overwatch

But what I do know is that the word “positioning” is very vague, and without any further explanation to back it up, the word is completely meaningless. So, I’m here to explain what having good positioning really means and why it’s become such a popular topic among Overwatch players.

Understanding Good Positioning

The first thing to understand is that asking what good positioning is is the wrong question to ask.

Understanding Positioning in Video Games

If you’re really trying to learn, what you should ask is the opposite. It’s better to define what bad positioning is, and once you’ve answered that thoroughly enough, all you’ll be left with is the answer to what good positioning is. I say to use this approach mostly because I find it to be a very lazy answer to just say “play high ground” and leave it at that. I believe that response is a result of asking the former question.

Exploring Bad Positioning in Gaming

There has to be a reason behind why using high ground is the conclusion that’s most commonly drawn when talking about positioning, and knowing that reason will lead you to having a better understanding rather than using high ground simply because someone told you to.

So now, I’d like to go into detail about what is considered bad positioning, and we’ll make a list out of it. The list will contain things you want to generally avoid, but keep in mind there are times where it simply can’t be avoided.

Understanding Bad Positioning in Gaming

Not every point we make on this list can be used in combination to create some kind of perfect positioning checklist. They are only things you’ll want to consider while you’re playing.

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The Most Obvious Form of Bad Positioning

To start the bad positioning list, the most obvious form of bad positioning is anywhere that has an extremely high likelihood of getting you killed. Places like the enemy spawn, the center of a fight, or sitting on an objective. Your chances of dying are significantly higher if you’re in one of these spots. But you can already see the problem here, right?

Roles in a Competitive Match

There has to be someone at the center of a fight, and someone has to play the objective, or you’d have no chance of winning. That’s why I say there’s no perfect position. Generally, a tank is at the center of a fight, but when it comes to being on an objective, that can be anyone’s responsibility. It’s more situational.

Varying Responsibilities

So now we’ve already gotten into a predicament here where the points on our list will apply differently in different situations and for different roles. Even within those roles, different heroes will want to position in different ways.

The Importance of Positioning in the DPS Role

The DPS role being the most diverse when it comes to positioning. There are heroes within the DPS role that you want to play safer on than with other DPS. For example, if we compare Widowmaker to Reaper, one has to be close to gain any value, and the other is more valuable at a distance, which is another point on our list. Bad position is somewhere where you get very little value. In some cases, this means being too far away from a fight, and in other cases, this means being too close.

Optimizing DPS Performance

The key to excelling in the DPS role lies in understanding the nuances of positioning. Different heroes require distinct approaches; some excel at close range, while others thrive from a distance. Bad position can significantly impact your impact on the game, whether it’s being too far or too close to the action. Mastering the art of positioning is crucial for maximizing your effectiveness as a DPS player.

Safety Levels Across Different Roles

So, to simplify things, I’m going to divide each role into the level of safety you’ll generally want to have. Looking at the three roles, the one you want to play the safest on is support, followed by DPS, and then tank. How this relates to the list we’re creating is that supports will want to avoid more of the things we list in comparison to tanks, and DPS are somewhere in the middle, but vary depending on what hero you’re playing. Some DPS lean more towards tank-like positioning, while others lean more towards support-like positioning.

Maximizing Value and Positioning

Continuing the list, if we’re trying to maximize value while avoiding the first point on the list, what we’re left with is still an overall bad position because the value I described earlier didn’t account for our opponents. If both teams are avoiding the points we’ve made on this list so far, what we’ll be left with is something close to everyone standing out in the open shooting each other at different distances based on where they think they’ll get the most value.

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Gameplay Positioning in Lower Ranks

Funnily enough, this is exactly what happens at lower ranks. Both teams will stand in the middle of a street shooting each other back and forth until someone dies, soaking up loads of damage in the process, and then usually blaming a support for not healing enough when they do inevitably die.

Importance of Positioning

To summarize this issue into a point that we can add to our list, a bad position is also anywhere where you can easily take damage. Basically, we’re taking any position where you’re more likely to die a step further. This is where the safety levels between roles really begin to differentiate. You have to reach a balance between a great position for dealing damage and a safe position for receiving damage.

The Importance of Balancing Damage in Different Roles

And that balance is vastly different between roles. In a perfect world, no one would want to receive damage at all, but that’s just unrealistic. You have to take some hits if you want to get anywhere.

Prioritizing Safety Levels Across Roles

Going by our levels of safety, we can try to get an understanding of just how much we want to prioritize avoiding damage. Supports will want to stay away from receiving damage way more than a tank would because supports can still get value without dealing damage, thanks to their ability to heal their team. I say this, but this does not mean don’t do damage at all.

Understanding Healing and Damage Management in Support Role

In fact, learning to weave in damage during your healing downtime is one of the keys to climbing on support. Based on our levels of safety, tanks will generally be in the riskier positions among the players on your team. Positions where you can both deal and receive tons of damage. Thanks to their higher health pools, they can survive longer in risky situations. For DPS, their risk roughly correlates with their HP pools as well.

Role of Tanks in Managing Risk

In fact, learning to weave in damage during your healing downtime is one of the keys to climbing on support. Based on our levels of safety, tanks will generally be in the riskier positions among the players on your team. Positions where you can both deal and receive tons of damage. Thanks to their higher health pools, they can survive longer in risky situations. For DPS, their risk roughly correlates with their HP pools as well.

Support Role Strategy

But there are exceptions, like Tracer, for example.

Supports having the capability of healing up the extra level of damage risk that both tanks and DPS have is another reason why it’s important to play safer on supports than the other two roles. Once one support dies, it can snowball very quickly into the entire team dying.

Positioning for Success

Now that we know being in a position where we can easily take damage is awful, where we end up now is trying to find a position of value where we can deal an acceptable amount of damage while also avoiding an acceptable amount of damage. Meaning, the conclusion this has led us to is that we need to find cover in a spot to avoid taking damage where we can also deal good damage. In the case of our list, a bad position is anywhere without readily available cover. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing a hero that specializes in close quarters or not.

The Importance of Natural Cover in Survival

Staying near natural cover is always helpful. There’s not a more reliable tool for survival than a wall that doesn’t move and can’t be penetrated by bullets or other types of projectiles.

Advantages of High Ground Positioning

This is the point where we can start to understand why high ground is almost always the default answer given for good positioning. It naturally helps you avoid damage from close-quarters heroes, access cover from longer-range heroes that are below you, and gives you a good vantage point for dealing lots of damage. If you’re playing against heroes that can’t easily contest you on the high ground, it’s a great overall position. But it would be a mistake to add not using high ground to our list.

The Importance of Positioning in Gaming

We want high ground to be an option for cover rather than something to be prioritized. And I’ll get into why.

Consider Your Opponents’ Abilities

The problems now become more specific. What happens if you’re using high ground against a team full of snipers or heroes that can easily reach high ground like Winston? If all you’ve ever heard about positioning is to use high ground, you’re going to end up constantly dying, leaving you also with extremely low value. What we’ll add to our list instead of not using high ground is not considering what your opponents are capable of.

Understanding Bad Positioning in Competitive Play

Putting it in a different way, a bad position is a position where we didn’t consider our enemy’s strengths. If they’re playing a team composition that can’t reach high ground or snipe you easily, then high ground is great. But if your opponents deem you as a problem, I can promise you that once you reach a certain point in your climb, your opponents will switch comps just to take care of you.

Awareness and Adaptation

I guess you could say, as you get better, your opponents’ awareness also gets better. As your opponents become more aware of where you’re positioned, we’ll now run into our next bad positioning issue. Say you get collapsed on by your opponents, what do you do if you haven’t thought about that yet?

Importance of Having an Escape Plan

It’s your next problem. Not having an escape plan while the cover you’re using may not move, your opponents definitely will. Being in a spot where you can reposition to safety easily is very important. As you climb, people will punish you heavily if they know you can’t get away. Always try to have an out, no matter where you’re positioned.

Strategic Repositioning for Safety

It’s crucial to anticipate the need to relocate swiftly for safety during combat. Lack of an escape route leaves you vulnerable to enemy advances. Effective positioning allows for quick retreats when under fire, preventing adversaries from taking advantage of your immobility. Always plan ahead for a safe exit strategy.

Strategies for Effective Gameplay

This can mean anything from being able to reach a health pack before dying, to repositioning to make sure you’re in your support’s line of sight for healing, or at the very least, regrouping with your team for help. Which will be the last point on our list. Not playing within reach of healing resources or your team.

Importance of Healing Resources

Although passive healing exists, it’s still a lot faster to get healed by something or someone else. You don’t always have to be near a healing resource, but at least keep healing in the back of your mind while you play. Because taking damage is inevitable, and staying healthy is important to survival.

The Importance of Positioning in Overwatch

It’s easier to provide value if you have enough health not to be one-shot by everything.

Perfect Positioning and Unpredictability

As I said at the beginning, not every one of these points can be followed all at once to create some form of perfect positioning. Even in a spot that might be considered a great position, you’ll end up dying every now and then because there’s a layer of unpredictability that comes from your opponents. The unavoidable risk is part of the game. But as you play and make more positioning mistakes, you’ll learn more on your own than from any guide video you may watch.

The Relationship Between Skill and Positioning

As for why positioning has become such a popular topic among Overwatch players, good positioning can make up for lower skill, and high skill can make up for poor positioning. Basically, the better you are at the game skill-wise, the more you can get away with doing something dumb.

Challenges of Transitioning Skills to Overwatch

So there are players with high skill at the game but low knowledge. And since they may be used to being higher ranks in other games through pure skill, it baffles them when their skill doesn’t carry them as well in Overwatch.

Understanding Gameplay Dynamics

Most shooters either have shorter respawn times than Overwatch or no respawns at all, with Overwatch being somewhere in the middle. The ones that are used to the shorter respawns might not value staying alive as much or might not understand the importance of playing with their team. The ones that are used to no respawns might not be used to all the healing that is present in Overwatch, making them play riskier than they should to try and secure an elim. So positioning is a common problem among players that were good at another game but couldn’t replicate that same level of success in Overwatch.

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