Jonathan Almaguer
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16 Min read Welcome to our Overwatch 2 Tier List that covers the best heroes for each role in the current meta. This list will always be updated with the live meta and is currently based on the Aug 7th mid-season 17 Hotfix Balance Update.
Below the rankings, you’ll also find the best build for each hero and a brief description of the thought process behind the build and what makes it strong.
One of the biggest factors influencing a hero’s viability in Stadium is how effectively their powers and items scale up as the match progresses. Also, consider the small size of maps and tight spaces to fight around the objective. Heroes well-suited for brawl and rush comps are excelling in the early meta.
Additionally, being locked into your hero for the entire match also means that if a hero has a hard counter in Stadium, they are forced to play into the struggle of playing around their counters. The theory in Stadium is that you can counterbuild, rather than counter swap, but this has varying levels of success based on specific matchups.
With the addition of Sigma, Junkrat, and Zenyatta, we now have 21 heroes available, but which ones truly shine under the stadium lights?
Let’s break down which heroes have been seeing the most success with the help of their strong and versatile builds to give you the competitive edge.
Check out our Best Heroes in Season 16 of Overwatch 2 Tier List!
| Tier | Overwatch 2 Stadium Tier List |
|---|---|
| S |
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| A |
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| B |
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| C |
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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.
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!
This list is more to understand if one of your characters is favourable in the current meta.
In S-tier, you’ll find the best heroes in Overwatch 2, which will be very present in almost all maps and team comp combinations.
A-tier heroes are still great choices but tend to be present on 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 being the better hitscan choice over Soldier: 76).
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 map areas or by character specialists. If you’re having success with them, by all means, keep playing them.
| Tier | Overwatch 2 Tank Tier List |
|---|---|
| S | Zarya, Sigma |
| A | Reinhardt, Junker Queen |
| B | Orisa |
| C | D.Va |
Still one of the most versatile Tanks in Stadium right now, Zarya’s best builds depend on the enemy team’s composition and Power selections. Her go-to builds look for a damage boosting and high charge so she can melt through the enemies. Faced up against her only soft counter, Reinhardt, she can go for mobility and range to play keep away with him. After a few nerfs to her, and overall better matchups for Rein, Zarya has dropped below Rein for the first time since the launch of Stadium.
Sigma’s base kit makes him the perfect Tank for Stadium. He has great poke damage, survivability, his ult damage naturally scales up with Stadium health pools, and he has the CC and burst damage needed for securing elims. The best builds boost his self-sustain and Hypershperes. The hotfix balance patch buffed both his shield HP and Accretion builds which means he has more counter build options depending on the matchup.
| Tier | Overwatch 2 Support Tier List |
|---|---|
| S | Cassidy |
| A | Freja, Soldier: 76 |
| B | Mei, Ashe, Genji |
| C | Reaper, Junkrat |
The gunslinger stands out as hands down the best DPS in Stadium, especially after Soldier: 76 nerfs. He scales up better than any other hero to the point where he can literally one-shot enemy DPS and Supports when pairing a high weapon power build with a Mercy pocket.
With ults coming online less frequently than in standard game modes, avoid the trap of boosting up his ability power for High Noon and go for max weapon power and attack speed. He’s one of the few heroes who can get more out of Vandanium Injection than from using his ult.
Freja dropped into Stadium way overturned, and quickly got a heavy deduction in cash earnings. Now, they have nerfed her Bola Shot build to reduce player frustration with CC and constant Freja ults. Her new best builds beef up her Take Aim explosive bolts and keep her in as a dominant Stadium pick.
| Tier | Overwatch 2 Support Tier List |
|---|---|
| S | Kiriko, Juno |
| A | Mercy, Moira |
| B | Lucio, Zenyatta |
| C | Ana |
If you’re looking for the balance of offensive and defensive capabilities in a Support, Kiriko is who you’ll want to play. Two Protection Suzu’s is a must, but after that, she has multiple viable builds. Depending on what her team needs, or what best counters the enemy team, Kiri can focus her build around healing, aggression, or self-sustain. She’s also an easy counter against ults like Rampage and Blizzard. Just be sure to not use Clone Conjuration against Junker Queen’s because they activate Commanding Shout Refreses and Wounds on your clones.
No one is sad that Juno’s OP Pulsar Torpedos build was nerfed. She was arguably the strongest hero in Stadium and needed to be tuned down a bit. She received some major compensation in return and now earns 33% more cash! The changes from mid-May made Juno less oppressive overall, but stronger in the early to mid rounds.
Her Topedoos are still the foundation of Juno’s best builds so stack up the Topedo Powers and AP. Especially with he recent changes to her strafe speed while gliding, you’ll want to avoid any other Booster builds.
Her mobility and speed boost also enable her to stay alive against the increased lethality of the enemies as the rounds progress and the builds get beefed up.
There are countless items and powers to choose from in a game of Stadium, but there are a few selections for each hero that bring the greatest benefit. Some heroes benefit more from weapon power, while others are impacted more by ability power. Should you stack lifesteal, attack speed, or movespeed?
After testing every item, we got you covered with the best build for each hero. Although there are certain matchups where you may want to sub out an item or two (ex: D.Va beam damage reduction item when facing a Zarya), these will most often be the strongest build for your character based on the current meta.
All final builds are based on an average of 10k cash per round. In games where the two teams are matched closely enough to make it to Round 7, this is a conservative and achievable average. For the earlier rounds, simply sub out the Epic items for their Common and Rare counterparts.
D.Va’s best build starts off with her best Power, Meka Punch. The extra damage and potential Boosters reset is immediately strong, while some other Powers take a few rounds to scale up. D.Va’s Stadium gameplay loop is to position on the perimeter of fights, DM to keep her team alive, then hard engage whenever she see’s an enemy at low health. This build maximized primary fire lethality, and the booster melee combo to quickly secure elims.
Junker Queen’s best build centers around Ability Power to boost her axe and Commanding Shout. Starting off with Chop Chop for two Carnage uses significantly increases her survivability in the early rounds by raising her wound uptime and brawling power. As the rounds progress, Commanding Shout becomes your carry ability, so taking the items that boost the effectiveness and frequency of Shout are your priority.
Orisa’s best Stadium build is all about becoming unkillable. Starting off with Hooves of Steel help to keep you alive between Fortify uses in the early rounds. You should also take Vanadium Injection fairly early as the stats boosts are better than using Terra Surge in most scenarios.
If Orisa makes it to Round 7 with this build, all she has to do is oppress the enemy with her damage, overheat to spawn a shield, and keep spamming until the enemy team dies. Building in this manner greatly helps with dueling the other Tanks in Stadium, as they’ll barely be doing any damage to you while you’re blasting them.
Reinhardt’s best build maximizes his burst damage while minimizing how often he needs to be exposed to damage. Players tend to focus Tanks a lot in Stadium, and this can make it difficult for Rein to drop his shield and swing. Therefore, starting with Feeling the Burn and Magma Strike allows Rein to min-max his damage dealt to damage received ratio.
Move speed is also extremely important for Rein, so we’ll be buying the best movement items. Additionally, you’re going to want to Charge in more often than in core mode. However, you’ll need your team’s assistance to survive your Charge dives. Taking Vanguard in the 5th round helps your team to stay aggressive when you Charge, so you don’t end up feeding.
Sigma’s best Stadium build takes advantage of buffs to Accretion to help his team secure easy elims on the stunned targets. With this build, landing a direct hit Accretion will stun, then apply a movement and healing reduction debuff to the target. The recent buffs to his shield health make this build even more effective than ever.
Mass Driver’s projectile speed increase will make it easier to land direct hits on the enemy’s backline, who are the most vulnerable to an instant death. Also, the increased splash damage and uptime of Accretion greatly helps your team because of the frequency of the enemies being rebuffed.
Zarya’s best build keeps her at high charge and dealing high damage. There is so much spam damage in Stadium, and large bubbles with increased duration make it easy to maintain high charge. Stacking some lifesteal on in the later rounds is to make sure you are not getting burst down in betweeen bubble uses.
Start off fights slow while you get your energy up, then start walking over the enemy. Once you get increased beam range, really focus on walking past the Tank and melting their backline.
Powers
Ashe’s best build burns up the competition. We’re going all in on Coach Gun and Dynamite. Even at longer ranges, any Coach Gun pellets that hit will ignite the enemy, so don’t fall into the trap of trying to become a brawling Ashe. Still play back, and use Coach to knock back approaching enemies.
You’ll also be benefiting from applying constant healing reduction and lifesteal once you get enough cash for these Epic Items. Although we are putting any resources into weapon damage, Infrared Lenses increases all damage to burning foes and Mark of the Kitsune applies Ability Power to Viper shots following ability usage, so Ashe maintains lethal sniper burst damage.
Cassidy’s best build heavily invests in primary fire damage to make every shot a lethal threat. You’ll use his Powers to increase his survivability through Combat Roll, while filling every item slot with Weapon Power. Stacking Full House on top of Deadman Walking is great for further increasing burst damage throughout a round.
If you find yourself struggling to land critical hits in the first two rounds, or the whole enemy team is high mobility and flying around, swap out Bullseye Power for Sunrise.
Freja’s best build focuses on Take Aim explosive bolts now that her Bola Shot Ability Power build has been nerfed. This Take Aim build fits best into the current meta because she can quickly spam explosive bolts and dashes to be equally evasive and lethal.
Utilizing these Powers and Items allows Freja to be a Tank shredder, or quickly take out the enemy backline. She’ll have superior burst damage and force the enemy team to play more passively because of the threat of getting stuck with a Take Aim bolt.
Genji’s best build turns him into a backline assassin. Given that Supports are so prominent in Stadium, building to empower Genji with the capability to quickly eliminate a single target brings the highest value.
By Round 3, you’ll have at least one Epic melee item and the melee Power, Hidden Blade. The primary focus becomes Shuriken to chip down the target’s health, dash through them, and get the kill with right-click melee combo. Get out, and repeat.
Junkrat’s best Stadium build gives him massive burst damage that enables him to be a Tank buster or delete DPS and Supports. Every Item and Power invests in increasing the lethality of his primary fire.
You’ll need to be landing consistent direct hits, but the increased projectile speed from Zip Grease makes this a lot easier. His high damage allows him to excel at bursting down Tanks, and they are also the easiest to direct hit, so most of the time they’ll be your primary target.
Build Code: MXKAB
The single Tank in Stadium makes or breaks a team. Mei’s best build ensures the enemy Tank breaks. By immediately investing into her Ice Wall, you’ll have more opportunities to isolate the enemy Tank, and each Wall will be more effective.
As the rounds progress, we’ll begin building into her survivability because incoming damage will be ramping up and she’ll often be in brawl range of the enemy Tank.
The best build for Reaper is a shotgun build that provides him with high amounts of self-sustain while also making him extremely lethal. Building in this manner enables Reaper to win 1v1s against enemy DPS and Supports. He’ll also have the damage and lifesteal to be a Tank buster when needed.
By round 3, you should be hard engaging by walking or TP’ing in, attacking, then using Wraith Form to dodge enemy cooldowns and reload, then get the kill and reset your cooldowns so you can escape with Wraith.
Soldier: 76’s best build makes full use of his Helix-Visor combos. By building into both Ability and Weapon Power, Soldier has both burst and constant damage. The main idea behind stacking Helix and Pulse Rifle is landing a direct hit with a Helix, then finish the target off with Super Visor.
In the 7th round, the added sustain of Hunker Down’s Biotic Field enables Soldier to stay aggressive even in the face of the enemy’s high round 7 damage. Against comps with multiple fliers, the easiest strategy is to take Peripheral Pulse in round 3 and only build into Weapon Power and Speed.
Ana’s best build increases her self-agency through Sleep Dart, sustain, and burst damage so that she can survive against meta heroes on the enemy team. In round two, you should take Tranquilizer immediately if you can afford it; otherwise, go for all Weapon Power and Speed, then sell them next round.
By Round 3, you should be able to survive against any flanker and secure the kill yourself. It’s almost impossible to miss the giant Sleep Dart, then the Bonus damage of Letha Dose combined with your follow-up shots is generally enough to eliminate most DPS and Supports in the mid-rounds.
In the late rounds, the enemy’s builds make it very dangerous for Ana to ADS, so we’ll build into increasing her unscoped effectiveness.
They just can’t nerf it enough. Juno’s best build remains a Topredo build. All Powers increase the uptime and effectiveness of Puslar Torpedoes, and every item invests into Ability Power.
Not only will you be firing off Torpedoes nonstop, but you’ll also be building ult faster. The high Ability Power buffs Orbital Ray as well, so that will help keep your ult inline with the increasing damage and healing of the later rounds.
Kiriko’s best build takes advantage of the short timers in Stadium by giving her team the advantage in ult economy. She’ll be able to quickly build Kitsune Rush, which should be enough to win the first ult fight. The buffs of Kitsune and Suzu also help the rest of her team to catch up and maintain the ult advantage. Since there are so few fights, it is very difficult for the enemy team to catch up.
Against Junker Queen specifically, we recommend taking Two-zu as your first power, then Cleansing Charge instead of Clone Conjuration. This is because JQ can easily trigger Commanding Shout resets on your clones, and she’ll be unkillable.
Lucio’s best build goes all-in on Ability Power. Although his primary fire won’t scale up in the later rounds, Sound Wave will be incredibly powerful, and his healing/speed auras will carry your games. Once you have Mark of the Kitsune and Reverb, however, you’re damage will be very high due to the frequency of Ability bonus damage.
Start with Crowd Pleaser to help you farm cash early on from the extra healing. In the early rounds, you can play more aggressively or go for assassinations, but in the later rounds, you’ll find significantly more value from positioning with your team.
For the late game, Lucio should be building ult quickly and always have Sound Barrier to counter the enemies’ fight-winning ultimates. The combination of Power and item buffs also makes the healing of Amp it Up high enough to survive most enemy attacks.
Mercy’s best Stadium Build heavily invests in her healing staff and Resurrection. Remember that Ability Power essentially does nothing for Mercy, so only ever buy Weapon Power and Attack Speed.
Threads of Fate is her most important Power, so select it first and get used to the timing of switching targets. Even if you are trying to pocket one ally, you should still switch back and forth in order to keep two allies chained at all times.
Mercy needs to utilize movement and self-healing to stay alive. If she’s the first to die, her team will certainly lose the fight, but if she’s alive, she can always rez the fallen ally. This build increases her rez consistency without sacrificing her healing and damage boost value when she doesn’t have rez or Valk available.
Moira’s best build has orbs flying everywhere. Most Stadium heroes have difficulty dealing with or escaping from Moira’s orbs, so she can find a lot of value with each use. Primarily, you’ll be focused on orb usage for both healing and damage, but the Powers in rounds 5 and 7 ramp up the effectiveness of her primary and secondary fire really well.
When facing a D.Va, this orb build is still really good when playing as a flanker. If you find the D.Va is really good at DM’ing your orbs, you can move Cross-Orball to be the final Power and move the other two up.
Zen’s best Stadium build centers around his secondary fire. Using this build enables you to maximize your individual damage output while also minimizing your exposure to enemy attacks. Your primary objective will be playing near corners and cover, maintaining near 100% Discord and Harmony Orb uptime, and spamming damage and finishing off critical health enemies.
Using this secondary fire build, Zen’s gameloop is to apply Discord, charge a full volley, then use jump and hover over walls or around a corner to fire the volley.
Want to dominate the meta for other games? Check out all our other Mobalytics tier lists.
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