Flyers Team Comp Guide

Heroes with the ability to fly in Overwatch have a unique advantage over most of the roster. Compared to flyers, the majority of heroes have limited vertical mobility, and many struggle to interact with targets in the air.

Taking to the skies can be a powerful win condition and be extremely frustrating for the enemy to play against. At the same time, flying can be a double-edged sword as several heroes are specifically equipped to contest airspace and can quickly shut down careless flyers.

In this guide, we’ll cover all flyer heroes across each role, how to maximize their value through positioning and cooldown management, and the most effective strategies for countering flyers on the enemy team.

How To Play as a Flyer

• Reposition Constantly
• • Use your flight to take off-angles and high ground that grounded heroes cannot reach.
• Be sneaky
• • Position yourself away from your teammates (above or off to the side). Force enemies to split their attention.
• Balance offense and defense
• • Don't exhaust all your movement and defensive abilities at once unless you are guaranteed a kill. Always ensure you have at least one burst mobility tool available and an escape route.

How To Counter Flyers

• Prioritize Long-Range Hitscans
• • Consider swapping to heroes that can contest aerial enemies. D.Va, Ashe, and Illari, are all fully capable of going toe-to-toe with enemy fliers.
• Look up and around
• • Always be ready to quickly contest the flyer whenever they peek out to attack. The sooner you get some damage on them, the quicker they'll have to retreat.
• Enable and protect your allies
• • When your hero can't directly attack the fliers, either protect your teammates who can, or go attack whoever on the enemy team is enabling their flyers.

Flying Heroes

Tanks

D.Va is the only flying Tank in Overwatch at the moment. She is equally effective as a flyer herself and as a counter to enemy flyers. The greatest strength she possesses is Boosters being on such a short cooldown and giving her full flight control. She uses this frequent and versatile mobility to constantly move around the fight and do everything from Diving, to peeling, frontlining, and objective stalling.

DPS

While a few other DPS heroes like Anran have some aerial movement, Echo and Pharah stand out as the true flyers in this role.

Overall, they position and play quite differently. Echo's silent gliding allows her to be the sneakiest flanker in the entire game. On the other hand, Pharah jets are very loud, making it difficult to set up a surprise attack.

What they do share is the ability to use vertical cover, attack from above, spam sight lines, and quickly dash through the air for burst combos and evasive maneuvers.

Try out Echo if you enjoy a more hybrid playstyle, and go wtih Pharah if you want a more pure flyer experience.

Supports

In the Support role, we find the only hero in Overwatch with the ability to fly indefinitely. Jetpack Cat has by far the best mobility of any hero in any role as Frenetic Flight gives her fast aerial movement and its fuel refills quickly as well.

When one of the flying DPS heroes is on the team, no one is better at enabling them than Mercy. While she has decent flight capability on her own with Guardian Angel, superjump crouch cancels, and Angelic Descent, she really shines when she can fly towards an ally in the air. Flying DPS can also be difficult for other Supports to heal and aid, and there is a reason Pharmercy has been a coined Overwatch term for years.

Not quite on the same level as the previous two, but Juno deserves a shoutout as well. With her double jump, hover and Glide Boost, she spends a lot of time in the air; just not quite as high as the others. Her kit doesn't synergize nearly as well with other flying heroes, but on her own she still benefits from most of the advantages covered for the other flying heroes.

Example of a Flyer Team

• Tank: D.Va
• DPS: Pharah, Sombra
• Support: Mercy, Jetpack Cat

For this example team, we're throwing in Sombra as the one non-flyer. Realistically, it would be extremely difficult for your team to perform well by running all flyers and trying to play the entire game in the air. Throwing in a self-sufficient flanker like Sombra, Tracer, or Genji creates a more well-balanced team.

Their flanking capabilites will be valuable for taking pressure off the flyers by harrasing the enemies hitscan heroes who are trying to aim up at the skies.

A team like this plays similarly to Dive comps, in that they play spread out, focus on using mobility to outplay the enemy team, and go for aggressive, decisive plays.

The Flyers Checklist

Before even engaging with the enemy, there are a few questions you should always ask yourself.

• Where is the vertical cover I can fly around?
• Who on the enemy team is my greatest threat?
• • How can I neutral their threat?
• Is there any way I can set up and attack from where my target enemy won't see me?
• Where on the map can I use off angles, flank routes or high ground to my advantage?
• Where is the majortiy of the team fight likely to take place?
• Should I stick with my team, or am I able to survive on my own?
• • How can my teammates and I split up to attack from unexpected angles?
• Where is each member of the enemy team?
• • Can anyone help defend my target?
• Where is my escape route if I need to suddenly retreat?

Going over these questions will help you to be intentional with your setup and gain an advantage against the enemy before the fight even starts.

During the team fight, here are a few more questions you can keep in mind to help yourself increase your success:

• What cooldowns and ultimates are available?
• • How can I play around these resources?
• Are there any burst damage threats like a Widowmaker headshot?
• Where is the enemy team's focus? How can I attack from an angle they aren't looking (vertical or horizontal).
• Do I need to save my movement abilities as an escape tool, or can I survive if I use them offensively?

The focus of these questions is understanding the enemy team's threat and win conditions. Figuring out the answer to these types of questions enables you to create strategies that counter what this specific enemy team is trying to do.

Create Crossfire

One of the most impactful elements you can create to help you and your team deal meaningful damage is crossfire. A player can only look straight ahead, and most abilities only function in a single direction.

For example, if you are playing against a team with D.Va as the Tank, her Defense Matrix is a powerful defensive tool for shutting down your Poke team's ranged damage. However, she can only aim it in one direction, so if you and your team are attacking from multiple angles simultaneously, she is forced to choose which damage to let in, and which damage to absorb.

• Example: You are playing Jetpack Cat, and your ally Echo is playing around high ground on the main route. If you stand with her and attack, any enemy looking to attack her will also be easily able to swap to attack you. Instead, if you position off to the side, or above or below the Echo, you'll still be able to assist her with healing and by attacking her same target, but the enemy will be forced to choose between focusing on just one of you at a time.

Reposition Constantly

The whole point of having the ability to fly is being able to take positions and move in ways other heroes cannot. If you just fly low to the ground and stick to the main choke points, you are giving up all your value, and would be better off playing a hero designed for grounded combat.

Never stay in the same spot for long enough for the enemy to adapt and prepare a counterattack. Get a few shots in, apply pressure, then move to a new spot and use a different structure for cover. Doing this makes it difficult for the enemy to land hits on you and also makes them more vulnerable to your damage since it is a challenge to predict where you will attack from.

Resource Management

Resource management plays a major role both surviving and winning your games. Cooldowns should be used deliberately, with players ensuring they have a plan or ability to escape alive when the attack goes all-in to try and eliminate you.

If you are playing Pharah for example, you have a ton of movement tools:

• Jet Dash
• Jump Jet
• Hover Jets
• Concussive Blast jumps
• Rocket Launcher jumps

As a rule of thumb, you never want to use all in such a rapid succession that it leaves you with no burst mobility available. The only exception is when you are trying to chase down a low HP enemy or boost in for a surprise attack. However, even in these scenarios, you need to carefully plan what you will do if the attack is not successful.

Similarly, tracking what resources your target and their allies have is crucial to surviving and securing eliminations as a flyer. If the enemy is playing Bastion and you didn't just see them use Configuration: Assault, do not fly high in the air or go out into an open space because he will transform and delete you.

Contest The Airspace

Countering flyers doesn't always mean eliminating them every time you see them. Dealing any damage forces them to retreat to cover, and makes them hesitant to re-engage from the same angle. If you keep chipping away at their health, you will either make their Supports use up healing resources on them (leaving other enemies more vulnerable) or cause them to waste a lot of time doing nothing while they reposition behind cover, look for healthpacks or wait for passive health regen.

Flyer Counterpicks

The first step in contesting the airspace and countering flyers is playing a hero who can actually interact and attack the flyer. You're going to have a really difficult time trying to land Fire Strikes as Reinhardt if you are playing against an Echo and Jetpack Cat.

Best Heroes to Counter Flyers

Tanks

D.Va is by far the best Tank for dealing with flyers. Not only can she fly up and burst down her target with Micro Missiles, but Defense Matrix is also very good for absorbing flyer projectile spam.

For grounded Tanks, Mauga can contest flyers pretty well by shooting one chaingun at a time. Incendiary Chaingun is especially good as the damage over time further delays self-healing passives from kicking in, and is good for converting damage to eliminations with your team.

DPS

The main counterpick choices would be any of the hitscan heroes in each role. Those with better range are the ideal choices. Since flyers will generally play from longer ranges, a histcan like Cassidy will deal far less damage then one like Ashe because of falloff damage.

Since there are so many choices in the DPS roster, here's a list of the best:

• Ashe, Bastion, Emre, Soldier: 76, and Widowmaker.

These are not the only heroes with the capability to shutdown fliers, but generally they can do it the most consitently.

If the map favors more close to medium range engagements, thenCassidy is also a great choice. Another example is Sombra being a decent counter if you can sneak up and initiate with Hack to prevent the flyer from boosting away.

When you want to fly yourself and also counter the enemy fliers, Echo becomes the best choice. She tends to have more consitent air-to-air damage and can use her Sticky Bombs > Focusing Beam combo to burst kill her target.

Supports

Gentle reminder that Supports are exactly that, heroes who provide support to their teams. They are not heal-bots, so don't think that you need to rely on your allies to take down flyers when you are on the Support role.

Ana, Baptiste, Illari, Jetpack Cat, and Zenyatta all can output significant damage against flyers. They each do this a bit differently, but they all can be the reason an enemy flyer is prevented from making plays and eventually swaps off out of frustration.

Enable Your Team

When you are playing a hero who can't directly contest the enemy flyers, you should focus on enabling your teammates who can.

If you are playing Reinhardt, you can use Barrier Field to protect your hitscan allies and enable them to attack aggressively without the threat of death.

Reaper can attack the flyer's allies to pull team resources away from the flyer and give his other teammates the upper hand in their fight against the flyer.

If your Ashe is constantly being harassed by a flanker and can't find an opening to fight the flyer, you can use Brigitte or Lúcio to fight the pesky flanker.

Mercy is another good example since she doesn't go for the attack herself, but uses her damage boost and healing to give whoever is focusing the flyer a huge advantage against them.