OverwatchOverwatch D.Va Guide and Overview

She’s a retired pro gamer and has been a staple of pro Overwatch play. D.Va is the mech flying Tank who specializes in constantly moving around the fight to find the strongest position. Going against a skilled D.Va player feels like she’s everywhere at once, and there is nowhere you can go that she isn’t going to show up and stop you.

She can’t Tank in the traditional sense. If you try to stand firm and lock down choke points with her, you’ll soon have her mech destroyed. In many Tank matchups, her goal is to avoid the enemy Tank entirely and leave them walking around with nothing to do.

Matchup and map knowledge are particularly important for D.Va players as Matrix can completely take enemy abilities out of the game, but only if she’s positioning properly. Always be on the lookout for which of your teammates needs help, and abuse the short cooldowns of Boosters and Matrix to help them become playmakers.

TLDR

Play As

• Be reactive. Use D.Vas mobility to respond to where and who the enemy team is attacking.
• Peel and enable. Defense Matrix should be used to keep your backline alive and to protect your DPS during their attack.
• Protect yourself first. Don’t forget you need to keep yourself alive and in mech if you want to be useful to your team. 

Play Against

• Create crossfire. Attacking D.Va from multiple directions stops her from Matrixing all your team's damage.
• Stay together. Focus on keeping each other alive and forcing her to retreat. Every time she leaves close range, her value goes way down.
• D.Va has no protection against beam and melee attacks. If you’re struggling, consider swapping to counter.

Strengths

Low cooldown mobility

Boosters have the lowest cooldown of any movement ability in OW. On top of that, they allow her to fly in any direction. D.Va can quickly engage and then disengage, fly to defend her team, or fly to help her team secure an elim.

Defense Matrix

Defense Matrix, being resource-based and not health points, means she can absorb infinite damage during its duration. She’s also the only Tank who can completely absorb ultimates like Graviton Surge and Blizzard. The power and versatility of Defense Matrix make D.Va the best team enabler among tanks.

Burst damage

Up close, she has great burst damage when firing her shotguns and Micro Missiles together. When your team can’t seem to stop the enemy Supports, D.Va can go in as the backline assassin and kill one before the rest of the enemy has time to react.

Weaknesses

Terrible ranged damage

Anytime D.Va isn’t right in the face of the enemy, her damage can pretty much be entirely ignored. The slow travel speed of Micro Missiles also causes them to be an unreliable source of ranged damage.

Directional damage mitigation

While some Tanks can block damage from multiple directions or large areas in front of them, D.Va’s Defense Matrix is a cone-shaped straight in front of her. If you aren’t precise with Defense Matrix's aiming, you’ll waste the resource and not even absorb the damage you intended to. This also makes her struggle in the open because of crossfire.

Zoning Ult

In the lowest ranks, you may be able to get away with launching D.Va bomb into the sky and getting random team wipes. Once you begin to climb, however, you’ll quickly find that players are good at hiding from Self-Destruct as it flies through the air.

The best use at higher ranks is often as a zoning tool. Only being able to force the enemies to walk away for a few seconds is much less impactful than stunning the entire team with Earthshatter or Grav.

Primary Fire: Fusion Cannons

Tips for Fusion Cannons

• Use the closest cover
• • Due to the limited range, you want to always look to position as close to the enemy as possible. 
  • Move from corner to corner and try to hold the cover closest to the enemy. The farther you can safely push up, the more opportunities you’ll have to find a good dive target.
• Infinite ammo
• • The wide bullet spread and infinite ammo of your primary fire end up being good for constant small instances of damage. 
  • D.Va is the best at chasing after a Translocator Sombra because your shotguns will reveal Sombra invisible location. 
  • Additionally, every bit of damage restarts the self-heal passive. Take advantage of this when enemies are low and don’t have a Support able to heal them.

Secondary Fire: Defense Matrix

Tips for Defense Matrix

• Learn matchups
• • Depending on the enemy team’s hero selections, your Defense Matrix focus will change. If they have a Moira, you should be eating every Biotic Orb. If a Junkrat, Defense Matrix his Concussive Grenades, Reinhardt's Fire Strike, Zarya's Graviton Surge, Ana's nade, and the list goes on.
  • All high-value abilities that can be absorbed by DM should be the primary target for you.
• Peel
• • Booster and Defense Matrix are the best combo abilities for peeling among all the Tanks. When you see Roadhog hook a teammate, Boosters and Defense Matrix the follow-up damage so they can survive, for example. 
• Enable
• • Is your DPS going for a high-risk, high-reward play? Apply Defense Matrix to them to significantly reduce risk and increase their chances of success. 
  • Coordinate with your DPS and protect them during their Ult use. Pharah's Barrage, Cassidy's Deadeye, and Reaper's Death Blossom are good examples of ults that greatly benefit from Defense Matrix protection.

[Shift]: Boosters

Tips for Boosters

• Be decisive
• • D.Va can’t afford to be passive or stand around trying to decide what to do. Her short range means she can’t stand in main and poke, and the short duration of DM prevents her from being a shield bot.
• Dive and engage
• • If you’re going to use Boosters to hard engage, be sure to have plenty of Matrix so you can survive the counterattack. 
  • Always try to engage on the perimeter of fights, and never in the centre. You’ll have an easier time isolating enemies while also taking less damage.
• Disengage 
• • If you go in or are pushed up on the objective, and suddenly the entire enemy team is looking at you, Booster away to safety. In about three seconds, you’ll be healed up and ready to Booster back up to try again.

[E]: Micro Missiles

Tips for Micro Missiles

• Don’t poke with Missiles
• • It’s easy to fall into the trap of standing far away and using missiles to shoot at an enemy barrier. This is a huge waste of Missiles and gives the enemy a window to move up, knowing you can’t burst them down.
• Best burst damage
• • Booster, wait until you are close, then Micro Missiles, and shotguns, to burst an enemy to death. Extremely effective against enemies on off angles and flanks. 
  • Against aerial enemies like Pharah, Mercy, and Echo, be sure to wait out their primary movement ability, then Booster to chase after so they can’t escape.
• Matrix and Missile
• • Protecting yourself and attacking simultaneously comes in handy when you need to shut down enemy DPS. Getting right on the enemy with Matrix cuts off all projectile damage and projectile healing. Plus, your Micro Missiles are damaging them. If even a single ally coordinates and attacks with you, the enemy should die.

Ultimate: Self-Destruct

Tips for Self-Destruct

• Booster Bomb
• • 99% of the time, you’ll want to send your exploding mech forward and not just eject in place. 
  • However much Boosters' resource is left, is how far the mech will fly.
  • A good rule of thumb is to use 50% of Boosters before Ulting to ensure the mech falls back down before exploding. That way, you don’t overshoot the enemy team by accident. 
• Second life
• • Sometimes the use of Self-Destruct is for the quick re-mech. If you’re getting demeched with Ult available, don’t hesitate to use your Ult.

[Q]: Call Mech

Tips for Call Mech

• Be safe
• • The most important consideration of when and where to remech is whether you are likely to survive. Get behind cover before calling down mech.
  • Also, remember Call Mech gets cancelled by hack, knockback, and stuns. Be aware of the positioning of enemies with these abilities.
• Oneshots 250 HP heroes if extremely close.
• • Generally not worth it, but for memes and niche scenarios, it comes in clutch. 

Passive: Eject

Eject out of your mech when it’s destroyed.

Tips for Eject!

• If the fight is already lost, be sure to die quickly and not stagger. The worst thing you can do in pilot form is make your respawned team wait for your late respawn.

Primary Fire: Light Gun

Tips for Light Gun

• Get away from the enemy when you are pilot D.Va and target the easiest to hit enemy to get Call Mech quickly.
• Don’t give up; her tiny body makes it difficult for enemies to hit you. Sometimes you can win a 1v1 and get mech back.

Minor Perks

Bunny Power

• Safer Minor Perk
• • The extra health makes it way easier to survive long enough to remech. Enemies look to instantly kill pilot D.Va when she ejects from her mech. Bunny Power helps her to tank those attacks.

Extended Boosters

• Good for diving
• • When diving the enemy backline, you can Boosters through their Tank and any other enemies in the path to proc Extended Boosters.
  • Chasing a Mercy, for example, is much easier when you have more flight time.
• Numbers
• • Each boop deals 25 damage.
  • Base Boosters have a 2-second duration. Hitting two enemies extends the duration by 50%.

Major Perks

Shield System

• Increased self-sustain
• • Shield health moves to the front of D.Va’s health pool and is damaged first.
  • Matrix converting damage absorbed to recover lost shield health increases your survivability mid-fight.

Precision Fusion

• Best when you want to focus on offensive power and kill potential.
• Save for finishing blows instead of using it at the start of attacks.

The most distinct advantage D.Va has over the rest of the Tanks is her ability to fly for 2 seconds, every 3 and a half seconds. She gets the most value from maps with extensive high-ground areas. Her damage is only effective at very short ranges, so maps with flat and open areas are bad for her. However, that doesn’t mean she wants to sit and brawl on the objective. Capture and Control points that are cramped don’t give her enough room to move around, and she’ll likely lose the face-to-face Tank battle.

Best Maps

• Watchpoint: Gibraltar
• Paraíso
• Numbani

Worst Maps

• Ilios
• Nepal
• New Junk City

The team comps that can best utilize D.Va’s mobility and damage mitigation strengths are dive and poke comps. D.Va excels at enabling her allies by repositioning quickly and often. For her to deal meaningful damage, she needs to be point-blank right in the enemy's face. Because of this, D.Va is often ran with dive heroes who suddenly collapse on a single target. 

As a defender and enabler, D.Va allows her ranged and hitscan allies to take aggressive positions while she protects them with her presence and Matrix. 

Against poke comps, she is equally effective since DM is resource-based and can absorb infinite damage. Add on her ability to control high ground, and the poke comp with D.Va is always at an advantage.

Example of a team comp built around D.Va:

• • Tank: D.Va, Reinhardt
  • DPS: Ashe, Reaper
  • Supports: Zenyatta, Ana

Individual synergies with other heroes

Reinhardt (6v6)

• When paired with Reinhardt, D.Va covers all of his weaknesses. She can deal with enemies on high ground and DM him when he drops his shield to swing. They can even dive together whenever Rein can pin past the enemy Tanks.
• Both are also excellent protectors for their ranged teammates who can stand behind their shield and Matrix while laying down suppressive fire.

Reaper

• Reaper helps to take attention away from D.Va whenever he's on the flank. Her Boosters also allow D.Va to quickly dive anyone Reaper is surprise attacking. The easiest time to kill Reaper is while he's stuck spinning in Death Blossom. Defense Matrix covering Blossom is shockingly lethal and hard to stop.

Zenyatta

• The team with this glass-cannon Support always has the upper hand on offense. Well, as long as Zenyatta is alive, D.Va can peel for Zenyatta whenever he's getting focused and help him stay in the fight. His long-range damage and Orb of Discord are also the best Support tools to help D.Va secure elims on the enemy backline.

Coming Soon!