OverwatchOverwatch Mauga Guide and Overview

Always down for a good time and looking to create chaos, Mauga is a walking turret who slams into enemies and mows them down with his double chainguns. If you want to laugh in the face of danger while face tanking every enemy attack, Mauga is the Tank for you. Between the overhealth generated by his Berserker passive and Cardiac Overdrive, Mauga simply outputs more damage than the enemy can survive, while healing faster than the enemy can kill him. 

He’s the ultimate Tank dueler and will win a 1v1 against every other Tank. If another Tank player doesn’t understand how to counter him, then a Mauga mirror is their only hope of survival. Even against small and mobile targets, players with good aim make full use of switching between Gunny and Cha-cha. Mauga wants to stay right up on the enemy Tank where he can stand firm and hold down both triggers. While he can’t chase enemies onto high ground, Overrun allows him to dominate the flat game.

TLDR

Play As

• Focus the enemy Tank. Double chainguns are the perfect Tank-busting weapon. Try to keep the enemy Tank close and run after them if they try to get away.
• Don’t always use Overrun to hard engage; go for knockdowns instead. Mix it up by cancelling mid-run to stay with your team and bait out the enemy's cooldowns.
• Cage Fight prevents all movement abilities, so focus on trapping high mobility heroes.

Play Against

• Save your damage mitigation or mobility abilities to prevent him from damaging you during Cardiac Overdrive.
• Mauga can’t be stopped during Overrun. Position out of his charge range, or prepare to dodge him.
• When he has Cage Fight ready, either play spread so you don’t get caught, or get everyone inside so you and your team can help each other survive the ult.

Strengths

Tank Buster

No Tank wants to duel Mauga. The best Mauga Tank counters are those who can mitigate his damage during Cardiac Overdrive. No Tank can outdamage or out-sustain him on their own. When the enemy Tank is carrying, Mauga can shut them all down.

Self-sustain

Berserker passive constantly grants overhealth from critical hits and burning targets. Cardiac Overdrive’s life steal and damage reduction make you nearly unkillable for 3 seconds. Although he takes a lot of damage, Mauga has strong self-agency in managing his health pool.

CC immunity

Overrun is the only Tank ability that makes you completely unstoppable and even unable to be Hacked. You can time Overrun to counter enemy stuns and interrupt some movement abilities.

Weaknesses

Relies on dealing damage to survive

Because Mauga's healing is based on damage dealt and being able to ignite enemies, abilities that mitigate damage or grant invulnerability counter him. Against teams with barriers or fast and small heroes, Mauga deals less damage overall, which translates into less survivability.

No vertical mobility

Overrun can be used for decent horizontal mobility, but Mauga can’t deal with enemies on high ground. He can shoot them, but is then limited to single chaingun use because of the massive bullet spread using double.

Easy to avoid

Mauga's movement is very linear. Overrun's path can only be altered to a small degree, but when he’s firing both chainguns, he moves incredibly slowly. These make him easy to avoid, which is especially problematic given that his best ability has a short 3-second duration.

Primary Fire: Incendiary Chaingun

Tips for Incendiary Chaingun

• Poke
• • Whenever your target is more than about 10 meters from you, or is very small, you’ll want to begin by shooting them with Gunny until you ignite them. 
• Anti-flier
• • Even though the damage falloff gets pretty bad when the flier is far away, your high rate of fire and accuracy make you good at dealing with fliers.
  • Once you ignite them, they have to retreat to cover because the threat of dying becomes too high.

Secondary Fire: Volatile Chaingun

Tips for Volatile Chaingun

• Auto-crit
• • The point of firing Cha-cha is to auto-crit ignited enemies. It’s free double damage and healing.
  • Switch back to Gunny once the ignition duration ends.
• Team burning effects
• • Volatile Chaingun works with allied burning effects such as Ashe's Dynamite or Torbjörn's Molten Core.

Gunny and Cha-Cha (Firing simultaneously)

Tips for Gunny and Cha-Cha

• Only for close range
• • Firing both chainguns simultaneously massively increases bullet spread. Therefore, use both only when your target is very close.
  • The damage is doubled, and you can keep the target permanently ignited if they can’t shield or cleanse.
• Tank Buster
• • Gunny and Cha-Cha make Mauga the Tank buster he is. Tanks' large bodies and high HP make them the perfect target. If the enemy Tank lets you stay close to them and endlessly shoot, that’s all you have to do to win.
• Walk speed
• • Mauga moves painfully slow while firing both chainguns. Enemies can shield, dance, or rotate around cover to avoid you. Whenever this occurs, you’ll need to switch back and forth between single and double chainguns to stay in range.

[SHIFT]: Overrun

Tips for Overrun

• Knockdown
• • Scoring a knockdown is the best use of Overrun because the knockdown damage and time often convert into a quick elimination.
• Unstoppable
• • Since Mauga can’t be CC’d or Hacked during Overrun, you can purposely use it to counter enemy CC. 
  • He can be stunned during the brief startup animation, so you’ll need to predict the timing of enemy ability usage in some cases.
• Cancel and Circle runs
• • You shouldn’t commit to slamming into the enemy with every Overrun use. You’ll just be feeding and tilting your teammates.
  • Instead, contest space with the threat and pressure of Overrun without committing to the slam.
  • Either cancel the run or keep running and circle back into your own team.
• Bait out enemy cooldowns
• • Overrun is a very short 5-second cooldown. Almost every other ability has a longer cooldown, so if the enemy reacts to Overrun with their cooldown in an attempt to counter, you can punish them with your next Overrun. 

[E]: Cardiac Overdrive

Tips for Cardiac Overdrive

• Manage Armor
• • Ideally, you want to use Cardiac Overdrive when you still have armor health to maximize damage reduction. 
  • Additionally, when Cardiac Overdrive ends, if you don’t have armor left, you’ll need to disengage and get healing. 
• Wait out Tank Damage mitigation
• • A short 3-second duration and a long 12-second cooldown make Cardiac Overdrive easy to waste. 
  • Track whether the enemy Tank has damage mitigation available, like a full health Reinhardt shield, or D.Va Defense Matrix. They can easily absorb all the damage you output during Cardiac, thus stopping you from gaining any lifesteal. 
• Ally healing
• • Although Cardiac Overdrive no longer grants ally damage mitigation, it still grants them lifesteal.
  • When nearby allies are low on health and fighting an enemy, you can often save them with Cardiac Overdrive.

(Passive): Berserker

Tips for Berserker

• Keep the fire burning
• • Mauga deals more damage and heals himself faster against burning enemies, so you should always ignite people with primary fire before using secondary fire.
  • At close range, firing both guns together is always best.
  • Incendiary Chaingun can naturally headshot enemies. You don’t actually need to wait for someone to be on fire to benefit from Berserker.

Ultimate: Cage Fight

Tips for Cage Fight

• Isolate enemies
• • The best use of Cage Fight is to isolate one or two enemies inside your giant barrier. They’ll be cut off from their allies, and the rest of your team can safely focus on eliminating the caged foes.
• Trap high mobility enemies
• • Deal with those pesky heroes constantly outrunning you by locking them in the cage. An enemy like Doomfist can’t even use Rocket Punch or Seismic Slam while in Cage Fight. 
• Cage Fight Counters
• • Keep track of what enemy heroes have counter abilities like LifeweaverLife Grip. Wait until you’ve seen these abilities recently used before activating your ult.
  • When the enemy counters Cage Fight with an ultimate like Transcendence, it's better to cancel the ability and Overrun away.
• Numbers game
• • Even when using Cage Fight, you should still ensure your team has a numbers advantage. Trapping 5 members of the enemy team backfires if it's just yourself and one other ally still in the fight.

Minor Perks

Kinetic Bandolier

• Niche
• • In most scenarios where you’ve run out of ammo, you’ll also have used Cardiac Overdrive and won’t have enough health to charge straight into the enemy to keep attacking.
  • Plus, in these cases, you also won’t be running the full distance and therefore won’t get the max 150 ammo reloaded.
• Less downtime
• • Mauga's reload animation is much longer than most, so cutting down reload time is beneficial. 
  • Useful into poke and dive comps where you spend more time poking, then suddenly need to rush in.

Pyromaniac

• Adds a small burst of instant overhealth whenever you ignite an enemy. Good for survivability, and best when having to play more passively.

Major Perks

Firewalker

• Best Major Perk
• • Ignited enemies take 15 damage per second, and can immediately be auto-crit by Cha-Cha. Since Mauga is unstoppable during Overrun, he can easily ignite multiple enemies with each use.
• Burst damage
• • Slam onto an enemy, and they're instantly ignited. If you center slam their head, you’ll even get healing from the slam's critical hit. Plus, you’ll be dealing damage faster because you don’t have to spend time igniting them with primary fire before getting in the auto-crits.

Combat Fuel

• Don’t need the extra Overhealth
• • Mauga heals himself and reduces so much damage that you won’t even notice 100 extra Overhealth during Overdrive.
  • Plus, you need to land 50 critical hits in between each use? Realistically, you’ll probably be averaging 50-60 overhealth with each Cardiac use.
• Soft counter to anti-healing and damage mitigation
• • Where Combat Fuel can be useful is in matchups with anti-heal like Ana nade, or Tanks who can mitigate your entire Cardiac duration. The extra overhealth could theoretically keep you alive.
  • Still recommend always selecting Firewalker.

The best maps for Mauga have small but open objective areas. If the objective is broken up by too much natural cover, it's easy for the enemy to rotate around him since he moves so slowly while firing both chainguns. Other Tanks can’t go toe-to-toe with Mauga, so he excels on objectives that pull teams into close-range fights. The maps Mauga struggles most on are those with lots of high ground, where dive comps are dominant. He has no vertical mobility, so Overrun gets little to no value against enemies who can run away to high ground he can’t reach. The same can be said of maps with huge open areas where the enemy can keep their distance from Mauga.

Best Maps

• Samoa
• Suravasa
• Rialto

Worst Maps

• Dorado
• Watchpoint: Gibraltar
• Junkertown

Team comps built around Mauga can support his all-out aggressive plays. Mauga gets hard-focused by the enemy. Outside of a few seconds of Cardiac Overdrive's damage reduction, he has no protection from damage. Due to this, Mauga requires a lot of team resources to be allocated to him, so he works best with heroes who are self-sufficient. Allies also need to be able to quickly react to Mauga's Overrun since he sometimes uses it to bait, and sometimes goes deep for a hard engage. Lastly, the best teammates position themselves somewhat close to Cardiac Overdrive, within the 10m range.

Example of a team comp built around Mauga:

• Tank: Mauga, Zarya (for 6v6)
• DPS: Ashe, Reaper
• Supports: Kiriko, Ana

Individual synergies with other heroes

Ashe

• Although Mauga doesn’t have a shield for Ashe to hide behind, his presence demands the full attention of the enemy team, which creates an opening for Ashe to snipe and throw Dynamite. The burning of Dynamite also triggers Volatile Chaingun’s auto-crits. This combo is especially good against squishies because the massive burst damage of Dynamite, combined with critical hits from Mauga, is very difficult for an enemy to survive. Hitting enemy Supports with Dynamite forces out healing cooldowns and takes away sustain from their Tank.

Reaper

• Mauga spends a lot of time dueling the enemy Tank in battles that are largely determined by sustain. Because he is a slow and huge bullet sponge, but he also deals high damage, fights are determined by which Tank receives more healing. Reaper's flank playstyle is great for harassing or assassinating the enemy’s Supports, which greatly helps Mauga win the Tank duel. Additionally, when Reaper is frontlining with Mauga, the extra lifesteal of Cardiac Overdrivemakes them an unkillable wall of damage for 3 whole seconds.

Kiriko

• The easiest way to kill Mauga is to apply an anti-heal debuff to him with an ability like Biotic Grenade or Rampage. Mauga primarily relies on lifesteal to survive, so if he gets hit with an anti-heal, he dies unless he can use Overrun to escape quickly. Protection Suzu is the best ability to cleanse Mauga of anti-heal effects and simultaneously grant him a burst of healing. On top of the cleanse, Mauga in Kitsune Rush just deletes enemies. Kiriko also deals decent damage to benefit from the Cardiac Overdrive, unlike Lifeweaving, who is the only other Support with a cleanse.

Coming Soon!