OverwatchOverwatch Hazard Guide and Overview

Enhanced by body augmentations, Hazard leaps around the enemy team, trapping them with his dangerous Jagged Wall. The deployable wall is large enough to block most doorways and can be used to cut off entrances and escape paths that the enemy is trying to use. Equally effective is when he uses the wall defensively as a barrier to protect himself during an engagement.

As a Tank, he’s rather versatile and doesn’t quite fit into any of the traditional Tank categories. His shotgun, wall, and block make him decent as a frontline brawler, while Leap and Vault give him dive capabilities as well. Hazard is a great Tank to pick up when you want the ability to quickly switch between defensive and aggressive playstyles through a match.

TLDR

Play As

• Use Jagged Wall to cut off the enemy LoS. You can protect yourself from damage or separate enemies from their allies.
• Always be moving and repositioning. Vault has no cooldown and Violent Leap's cooldown is short. Hazard does best on the move and should never sit in one place.
• Spike Guard early to maintain armor and gain information on enemy positions. Dive, then Guard again to finish off targets, and survive long enough to Leap away.

Play Against

• Every time you see Hazard use Spike Guard, use your crowd control abilities on him.
• Plan how you will survive his dive. You can use escape abilities, damage mitigation, stuns, or position near an ally who can assist you.
• Counterswap when necessary. Examples: Ana can sleep and anti him; Echo can avoid him, then burst combo him to death after he blocks; Roadhog can interrupt his dives with Hook.

Strengths

Multiple mobility tools

Hazard can climb walls and ledges, Leap, and bunny hop. He can even Vault on Jagged Wall when needed. When positioning and managing his cooldowns properly, there should never be a time when you have no mobility options.

Deployable wall

As the only Tank and only hero other than Mei with a deployable wall, Hazard can execute plays that no other Tank can. Wall is equally good for blocking doorways, used as a barrier, isolating enemies, cutting off enemy escape routes, and for a bit of damage.

High uptime

With multiple strong abilities and a short cooldown cycle, Hazard never has to sit around waiting for his resources to refresh before he can engage. Compared to many other Tanks with a main long cooldown ability that their entire game plan is centered around, Hazard spends far more time in the heat of battle.

Weaknesses

Has to get in close

Slash and Bonespur are only effective at very close range. Depending on the map and enemy team comp, Hazard may waste a lot of time trying to approach the enemy while getting poked down.

Short mobility distance

While he’s not a true dive Tank in the traditional sense, his playstyle is very similar. His movement range, however, is quite limited compared to the other dive Tanks. Hazard struggles to chase down enemies with mobility and escape tools of their own.

Weak to crowd control

Without a barrier and only one use of Jagged Wall, Hazard is particularly susceptible to CC. If the enemy has heroes with stuns and displacement abilities, expect to be targeted every time you use Spike Guard. The slow, predictable movement makes Hazard an easy target.

Primary Fire: Bonespur

Tips for Bonespur

• Poke during approach
• • Don’t just wait around for the perfect moment. As soon as you see the enemy, you can start applying some poke pressure. 
  • Against barrier Tanks, the distance doesn’t matter too much and you’re decent at chipping away at their barrier health. 
• Play corners
• • Your ranged damage is worse than almost every other hero. So you don’t want to get into a full-on ranged fight. Peek corners while shooting to minimize how much damage you’re taking.
• Reload before fully engaging
• • Bonespur is your primary form of damage so if you’ve been poking, make sure you reload before Leaping into the enemy team.
  • Spike Guard automatically reloads, so no need to manually reload if you’re about to block anyway. 

Secondary Fire: Spike Guard

Tips for Spike Guard

• Keep your armor up
• • Don’t wait until you’re almost dead to start blocking. The best time to block is when you have plenty of armor health and not when you’re about to die. That way, when you start attacking again, you still have the armor to tank damage with.
• Final blows
• • The autofiring damage is excellent for finishing off enemies at critical health. It’s guaranteed to hit, reloads your primary fire, and buys your Supports time to heal you.
• Survive burst damage
• • Spike Guard reduces all direct frontal damage by 65%. As long as you are not right next to it, you can even survive a D.Va Bomb.
  • Always try to Leap away and immediately block when you see incoming burst damage.
• Minimize healing resources used
• • As a non-sheild Tank, it’s still your job to take as little damage as possible. Don’t be a bullet sponge who demands all your team’s healing resources. You’ll get the rest of your team quickly killed if both Supports are constantly having to heal you.
  • Guard refreshes quickly so block often.

[SHIFT]: Violent Leap

Tips for Violent Leap

• Take space in increments
• • Leap doesn’t send you across the map like Winston, Doomfist, D.Va, or Wrecking Ball. So you need to approach in Leap-ranged chunks.
  • Leap to the closest cover, poke, and Guard, then Leap to the next cover that gets you closer to your target until you ultimately end up in dive range.
• Engage then disengage
• • Don’t forget that Violent Leap is also an escape tool. Even though you’ll primarily be using it to attack, it’s great for getting to safety as well.
• Bunnyhop
• • Leap and jump as soon as you land to perform a bunny hop. You’ll keep momentum and jump farther.
  • You can also hold onto Slash until just after bunny hopping to effectively extend its distance.
• Use other abilities during airtime
• • Don’t just float through the air, attack or deploy Jagged Wall. Good for extra damage and combos.
  • Best combo: Violent Leap → Bonespur (primary fire) → Violent Leap slash → Bonespur → Melee

[E]: Jagged Wall

Tips for Jagged Wall

• Turn on “Jagged Wall uses preplacement controls” in hero settings
• • Makes precise placement of wall much easier.
• Cut off LoS
• • The main use of Wall is blocking the enemy’s LoS. You can deploy wall in front of you to block poke damage, or place it between an enemy and their Support to cut off their healing. 
• Protect your flank
• • When you’re diving the enemy backline, the rest of their team will turn around and try to kill you. Put Jagged Wall behind you to protect yourself from the counterattack so that you’re free to focus on your offense.
• Block entrances and escapes
• • Jagged Wall is large enough to block doorways. Great for stalling time when the enemy in trying to contest the objective, or to separate them from each other. 
  • When attacking an enemy trying to get away from you, shoot wall in their way to stop them from escaping.

[SPACE]: Vault

Tips for Vault

• Move
• • As Vault has no cooldown, you should use it and save Violent Leap whenever possible. When staging your dives, use wall climb to set up on high ground or jump over walls to get to your target.
• Evade
• • You can wall climb to make yourself more difficult to hit. Especially against close-range heroes like Reinhardt, wall climbing is great for getting out of Hammer range and dodging Shatter.
• Wall climb reset
• • Using Violent Leap after wall climbing allows Hazard to wall climb again without needing to touch the ground.

Ultimate: Downpour

Tips for Downpour

• Goes through walls
• • No matter how many walls or structures are in the path, Downpour's spikes go right through.
  • Use Spike Guard to 3rd-person peek around corners and see where the enemy is positioned. Then, stick 'em with Downpour. The hidden path is more difficult for them to avoid.
• Blocked by barriers, and projectile-absorbing and destroying abilities
• • Sigma, for example, can negate your ult by deploying his shield above himself or by aiming Kinetic Grasp up. If you want to hit him (or any hero with these types of abilities), you’ll need to wait until they don’t have their cooldowns available. 
  • The same could be said for cleanses and escape abilities, as the long start-up animation, plus the travel time for farther away enemies, gives them plenty of time to dodge.
• Be smart
• • The enemy can still kill you when they're immobilized. They just can’t move around. You can’t just 1v5 wipe them or mindlessly attack. Still use cover and make sure you have your team’s resources to help you.
• Pulls down fliers
• • Downpour has a tall vertical area of effect at 30m high. Unless the enemy is flying super high, you can pull them down with your ult.

Minor Perks

Deep Leap

• Counter high mobility 
• • Hazard can have difficulty keeping up with targets who have lots of mobility, like Juno, Mercy, and Sojourn. The extra Leap distance helps him to close the gap and stay in a more advantageous range for him.
• Faster engages
• • With the increased distance, you won’t have to break up your approach into as many stages since you can dive from farther away.
  • More often, you’ll be able to bypass the enemy frontline and instantly reach the backline with Leap.
• Pairs with Off The Top
• • You can go all in on Leap perks and structure your game plan around Leap and Slash. Just know you’ll be sacrificing Lifesteal and Wall uptime to do so.

Anarchic Zeal

• Self healing
• • A full-duration Spike Guard with Anarchic Zeal will heal you for approximately 50 HP per target.
  • Combined with the damage reduction, this makes Hazard significantly more tanky, and alleviates some healing resource demand on your Supports.
• Run with Reconstitution 
• • When planning to use Anarchic Zeal, you should select Reconstitution as your Minor Perk to capitalize on the Lifesteal.
  • Hazard can trap an enemy in a corner between his body and Jagged Wall while holding Spike Guard.
  • Every couple of seconds, they’ll retrigger Jagged Wall and Reconstitution's energy refill. Enjoy watching them panic as you slowly drain their life.

Major Perks

Reconstitution

• Significantly increased uptime
• • Upon reading the Perk description, you may think it sounds weak. What makes Reconstitution powerful, however, is that Hazard uses the base Spike Guard resource before depleting the overfill. Also, the overfill does not decay, so you can hold onto it as long as needed.
  • Between the instant refill and overfill, you’ll be able to use Spike Guard considerably more often or for longer uses.

Explosive Impalements

• Extra burst damage
• • Very good for securing elims with your team and solo kills. You don't have to do anything special because all Hazard players should already be using the combo listed above of shoot > Leap > Melee. Basically, a free extra 40 damage.

Hazard's mobility is best utilized on maps with lots of walls to climb, and plenty of high ground to move around on. Since he has limited range, his playstyle is hindered on maps with large open areas and maps with long sightlines. He also likes to set up his dive engagements by utilizing corners and structure, so maps with sectioned-off areas give him more opportunities. Another map feature that helps Hazard shine is tight choke points and doorways. On maps where the enemy team funnels through these tight areas, Jagged Wall puts in work and easily carries fights by cutting off the enemy.

Best maps

• Antarctic Peninsula
• Samoa
• Throne of Anubis

Worst Maps

• Havana
• Midtown
• Circuit Royal

Team comps built around Hazard can quickly react to his movement, baits, and hard engages. Because Hazard is constantly repositioning, heroes with limited mobility or range have a hard time playing with him. Also, he doesn’t offer much protection to his team, and doesn’t have the movement range to peel for his backline, so teammates need to have some self-sufficiency. There is some flexibility in hero selection, however, since Hazard isn’t a full-on brawl or dive Tank.

Example of a team comp built around Hazard:

• Tank: Hazard Zarya
• DPS: Freja, Venture
• Supports: Kiriko, Lúcio

Individual synergies with other heroes

Freja

• Freja's dashes and vertical mobility easily allow her to assistHazard when he hard engages. While he’s staging, Freja is also great at applying poke pressure to help create space for his dive. They just need to coordinate ability use timing, because if Hazard traps someone with a Jagged Wall to their back, Freja needs to have dashes available to blast them with Explosive Bolts.

Lucio

• Lucio has the speed and agility to engage alongside Hazard. He also doesn’t struggle to stay alive on his own when Hazard is off on a solo mission, trying to isolate the enemy backline. One thing Hazard can struggle with is disengaging after he’s committed to a fight. Lucio’s speed boost gets Hazard into position faster, and gets him safety more efficiently as well.

Kiriko

• The reality of having no barrier and standing still while blocking is that Hazard is going to get stunned and anti-healed often. Protection Suzu comes in super clutch in these scenarios and can end up being Hazard's only hope of survival. Additionally, Kiriko can go in with Hazard for an aggressive attack, then immediately TP out until the next dive.

Coming Soon!