OverwatchOverwatch Doomfist Guide and Overview

The leader of Talon and the main villain of Overwatch is also the main villain of every backline. Doomfist is one of the best disruptors and harassers in the entire game. Equipped with multiple movement abilities, Doomfist is hard to lock down and can jump on you at a moment's notice.

His knockback and AoE damage make it hard to advance on him, but his mobility allows him to easily approach you. Oftentimes, the only way players can shut down a skilled Doomfist player is by running multiple direct counters and heroes with lots of crowd control.

He’s not the best at contesting the objective or frontlining choke points, but his ability to assassinate the enemy's backline more than makes up for those weaknesses. 

TLDR

Play As

• Use your superior mobility to quickly get in and get out. Doomfist should constantly disrupt the enemy and get in the way of their attacks.
• Always save one ability (Punch, Slam, or Block) to survive or disengage from your dive. Dumping all three into a team with full health just results in Doomfist feeding. 
• Track enemy stuns like Sleep Dart, and either Slam Cancel Power Block to dodge or don’t Block unless you’ve already seen the stun used.

Play Against

• While he’s blocking or charging Rocket Punch, stun him. He’s sitting still, and cancelling his Power Block is the best method for eliminating Doomfist.
• Dodge his engage attack. Keep track of Doomfist and watch for when he’s coming in with Seismic Slam or Rocket Punch. If you dodge his initial attack, he misses out on overhealth and will have to reset.
• To counter Doomfist, play heroes with stuns or high mobility heroes who can evade him. If you can’t run away or stun him, Doomfist will harass you all game.

Strengths

Hyper-mobile

Doomfist has frequent mobility tools that he can use for both horizontal and vertical movement. Nowhere is safe from Doomfist. He can rapidly traverse the map, bypass the enemy frontline, or retreat to safety.

Crowd Control

Rocket Punch is on a short 4-second cooldown and can be instantly refreshed by Power Block. Doomfist has more frequent knockback than any other hero. He’s great at controlling space by repeatedly displacing the enemy.

Disruption

Even when Doomfist doesn’t get the kill, his presence is extremely disruptive. When he’s diving a hero or group of enemies, they have to use their cooldowns to counterattack. He takes up a lot of attention, and during that distracted time, the rest of his team has greater opportunities to make big plays of their own.

Weaknesses

Vulnerable to stuns

Power Block has damage reduction, but Doom has no way of actually blocking stuns. During his channelled abilities, he’s barely moving and is an easy target. Since his best moves are movement-based, landing a stun on Doomfist shuts him down hard.

Melee hero

The main limiting factor of Doomfist's kit is that he is primarily a melee hero. Hand Cannon gives him a bit of range and poke, but it’s more of a supplemental ability to increase the lethality of Rocket Punch and Seismic Slam. Doomfist has to get in super close, and that exposes him to a lot of danger.

High skill ceiling

Doomfist is one of those heroes that only shines in the hands of a committed one-trick. If you are just casually playing Doomfist and he’s not your main, be prepared to have a lot of rough games. He has a multitude of hero-specific tech, and players need to have high game sense to read and track enemy resources.

Primary Fire: Hand Cannon

Tips for Hand Cannon

• Range
• • Hand Cannon’s effective range is about 10 meters. Farther than that, the pellets are too spread out and the damage falloff begins to kick in as well.
• Poke and prefire
• • Hand Cannon can be used to get in a bit of poke damage before committing to a dive engagement.
  • Always fire off one or two Hand Cannon before Rocket Punching or Seismic Slamming to chip down the enemy's health and deal more overall damage.
• Auto-reloads
• • Keep an eye on your ammo because your primary fire auto-reloads anytime you aren’t firing it.
  • There is a brief cooldown after using Hand Cannon before it begins reloading, so if you need more ammo, don’t fire any shots.

Secondary Fire: Rocket Punch

Tips for Rocket Punch

• Engage with Punch
• • The short cooldown and refresh on Empowered Rocket Punch make Rocket Punch better for engaging than Seismic Slam when you don’t need Seismic Slam's verticality.
  • Hitting a stun on your first attack also makes your follow-up easier.
• Wall slams
• • You should always be trying to line up the enemies with walls or structures behind them. You can strafe or Seismic Slam into position, then Rocket Punch into a wall. 
• Hold onto empowered
• • When you have Empowered Rocket Punch, cancel with primary fire or by using another ability if you don’t have a good target. It’s important not to waste Empowered Rocket Punch.

[SHIFT]: Seismic Slam

Tips for Seismic Slam

• Get into position
• • Slam is great for jumping over walls or the enemy team to get into position for a Rocket Punch.
  • Just make sure you end up behind cover or somewhere the enemy team can’t kill you if you use both in abilities in a row like this.
• Get out
• • Seismic Slam's fast speed and capability for vertical, diagonal and horizontal movement make it really good for getting out of dangerous positions.
  • After Punching or Blocking, you’ll often need to Slam away so you can stay alive then hard engage after the enemies' resources are low.
• Slam cancel
• • Activating Block or Rocket Punch before during your Seismic Slam will cancel the ability but keep the momentum. Seismic Slam vertically, then cancel and Doomfist will go flying into the air.

[E]: Power Block

Tips for Power Block

• How to increase Empowered rates
• • Wait until the enemy is already attacking. Don’t preemptively Power Block, hoping the enemy will start attacking you.
  • Block slow travel speed projectiles like Fire Strike and Pharah's Rocket Launcher. You have enough time to block these types of projectiles after seeing they’ve been fired at you.
  • Create pressure. If you’re being a huge threat to the enemy team, they’ll be focus firing at you which results in more damage to Block.
• Bait stuns
• • Cancel with Seismic Slam when you know the enemy is going to try and stun you.
  • Example: Ana's Sleep Dart cooldown is twice as long as Power Block and Seismic Slam. Therefore, you can use Block, Slam to the side before Sleep hits you, then have both abilities back before Ana has another Sleep Dart.
• Tank high damage ults
• • Staying alive is actually the main use of Power Block. If you don’t have your movement to dodge, use Block to tank high burst damage attacks like Pulse Bomb.

(Passive): The Best Defense…

Tips for The Best Defense...

• Overhealth
• • Doomfist can generate up to 200 overhealth. This is easiest with Meteor Strike because it generates more shields per enemy hit.
  • Generating temporary shields is the key to Doomfist's survival. Carefully aim your abilities to ensure you are constantly gaining the overhealth. If you don’t, you’ll need to disengage much sooner.
• Decay
• • Overhealth doesn’t decay until after 3 seconds, and the decay is slow.
  • Don’t rush just because you have overhealth. You still have time to carefully plan out your attack path and target.
• Only generated when dealing ability damage
• • Overhealth doesn’t generate from ability use, but only ability damage.
  • Example: Rocket Punch being collision canceled by another knockdown ability (Charge, Bash, Punch, B.O.B.) generates no overhealth. 

Ultimate: Meteor Strike

Tips for Meteor Strike

• Refresh cooldowns and health
• • Unless there is a tight group of low HP enemies, it's always better to hold off on activating the Strike until your health and cooldowns have recovered.
• Read movement
• • Wait and watch your target to see how they are moving. They know you are in ult and will try to dodge. Predict which direction they are moving and select that location.
• Get ready to dodge
• • Against enemies with projectile stuns, they often try to hit Doomfist as soon as he lands. In these matchups consider Slamming away as soon as you land.
• Zoom in vs zoom out
• • When zoomed in, Doomfist stays on his current ground level or drops to the lowest available ground.
  • When zoomed out, Doomfist will instead move onto the highest targeted floor.

Minor Perks

One-Two

• Quick Punch
• • Doomfist starts to auto reload while charging Rocket Punch, so One-Two makes the biggest difference on primary fire uses when not full charging Rocket Punch.
  • Dump all Hand Cannon ammo into the enemy, quick Rocket Punch into a wall, finish them off with the refreshed primary fire, Slam away.
• Great with Rocket Punch
• • Because you don’t have to spend time charging Empowered Rocket Punch, One-Two gives you rapid burst damage potential.

Survival of the Fittest

• A bit weaker overall than One-Two
• Doomfist gets plenty of elims
• • Because he has AoE abilities, and your team follows up on your engages, most kills by your team will have some damage assist from Doomfist and count as an elim for the extra overhealth.
• Not good if your team is getting rolled
• • On the occasion you need more solo play-making potential, One-Two would be better to take.
  • When your team isn’t getting a lot of elims, you won’t get much benefit from choosing Survival of the Fittest

Major Perks

Seismic Empowerment

• Nearly useless
• • Honestly, don’t select Seismic Empowerment unless it gets a major buff in the future.
  • You’ll almost never hit three people with one Seismic Slam, so you won’t be getting many more Empowered Rocket Punch.
• Slightly less terrible in 6v6
• • If the enemy is reminiscing and running some modern version of GOATs, then it might be worth taking this Perk.

Power Matrix

• Best Major Perk
• Creates new counterplay
• • Previously, we stated Doomfist is particularly weak against stuns. Power Matrix gives him counterplay against stuns. As long as he times correctly, Power Matrix absorbs and negates all projectiles.
• Shares Defensive Matrix counters
• • Unfortunately, Doomfist is not totally invulnerable during Power Block. Abilities like Roadhog Hook, Doomfist Rocket Punch, and Sigma's Accretion still counter Power Matrix.

Doomfist and his incredible mobility are best utilized on maps where teams tend to play spread out. The only thing he requires is natural cover to rotate around. Doomfist typically takes space in chunks so long sight lines and wide open areas are difficult for him. Tight areas with lots of walls and structures give him more opportunities for wall slams off Rocket Punch which greatly raises his overall impact. Additionally, his knockback is quite far so maps with nearby ledges give him the chance for environmental kills.

Best maps

• Lijiang Tower
• Dorado
• Oasis

Worst Maps

• Havana
• Midtown
• Rialto

Ideal team comps built around Doomfist take advantage of his explosive playstyle. Doomfist's gameplay loop constantly shifts between engaging and disengaging. Heroes with similar styles or who have high value burst abilities are the best pairings.

Essentially, every Doomfist comp utilizes a dive playstyle that anchors on his attacks. Thanks to his block and bonus health, Doomfist is rather self sufficient so he doesn't demand a lot of healing resources which opens up more flexibility for Support pairings.

Individual synergies with other heroes

Zarya (if Tank, then extra DPS or support)

• Zarya and Doomfist compliment each other's kits really well in 6v6 formats. Doomfist's aggressive dives become more lethal and consistent when protected by Projected Barrier. If the enemy can't CC Doomfist when he's punching in because of the bubble, he's very difficult to shut down. Their ults are also a great combo since egrav hold the enemy in place for Doomfist to slam on.
• They play split up, where Zarya holds down the front line and Doomfist harasses the backline.

Genji

• The only thing Genji and Doomfist need to cart games is a bit of coordination. As long as they can time their attacks and target the same enemy, they can quickly earn their team the numbers advantage. Alternatively, one can follow the other after the enemy team uses their defensive resources to survive the first attack.

Ana

• Ana's ranged healing and damage can assist Doomfist in his deep dives. Whenever she lands an anti, Doomfist should be able to secure the kill unless the enemy uses an invincibility or cleanse.
• Doomfist is also a great nano target and can get multiple kills during the boost. Lastly, anytime Ana sleeps someone and Doomfist has ult, that's a guaranteed kill.

Coming Soon!