OverwatchOverwatch Venture Guide and Overview

An archaeologist by trade, Sloan Cameron brings their excavation tools to the battlefield!  Known in game as Venture, their kit features a hybrid of melee and poke abilities. Smart Excavator can be used for close range poke damage and is strong when holding tight choke points. Meanwhile, Burrow and Drill Dash are best utilized as close range flank tools.

Venture has to take a lot of high risks throughout a match, but when successful they are extremely disruptive to the enemy team's game plan. While their primary fire is technically a ranged ability, Venture will always want to try to keep their engagements within their melee range.

TLDR

Play As

• Use Burrow and Drill Dash to close into melee range, since Venture excels at close-quarters flanks and burst combos rather than long-range poke.
• Manage your temporary shields from Explosive Resolve by spacing out ability usage so you stay long enough to disengage.
• Tectonic Shock is best used against heroes without vertical mobility as they struggle to escape the large ground pulses.

Play Against

• Venture can still be damaged after activating Burrow until their entire body is fully submerged. Don't let them get away!
• Make a mental note if you don't see Venture on your screen. They are likely setting up a flank attack, so be ready to counter.
• When they miss abilities, or you see them use Drill Dash and Burrow, that's your signal to hard-focus them at their most vulnerable.

Strengths

Deep flanks

The shields generated by Explorer’s Resolve make Venture tanky enough to sustain focused damage on their own. Depending on the situation, Burrow and Drill Dash are interchangeable as engage/disengage abilities. Venture can use these abilities to position themselves behind the enemy backline. Once their cooldowns are back up, they can then go for an assassination. After flanking the enemy back line, Venture can escape over walls with Drill Dash or use Burrow’s invincibility to get out safely.

Burst damage

Primary fire, Burrow, and Tectonic Shock all provide great burst damage to players. Burst damage is even more important to OW2 heroes since the Armor rework in season 10. Moreover, many of Venture's abilities are cancellable into one another, enabling them to deal even faster and larger bursts of damage. (See combos under Tips and Tricks)

Disruption

Unlike many other heroes, Venture doesn’t have to get eliminations to be valuable for their team. When the enemy back line gets booped vertically by a Burrowed-Drill Dash, they have to keep an eye on Venture for an additional 4 seconds before they emerge. The time, focus and abilities dedicated to stopping Venture’s assassination is already extremely valuable. The crowd control from both Drill Dash can also disrupt enemy movement abilities and save Venture’s team from elimination.

Weaknesses

Only useful at extremely close range

Venture’s primary fire is a slow moving projectile that can be difficult to direct impact at its max range of 16m. Their other three abilities have to be near melee range to deal damage at all. When against an enemy comp with lots of poke damage, Venture struggles to get in close enough to do damage and isn’t adding any value to their team until they do so.

Easily countered

Although Venture can be a very good flank hero, they are also easily and heavily countered. Burrow’s long cast animation doesn’t grant invulnerability until completely submerged. CC abilities like Sleep Dart and Magnetic Grenade basically make Burrow unusable as an escape ability.

All or nothing

Because Venture’s best damaging abilities are also their escape abilities, Venture often has to go in and use every resource to secure an elimination, leaving them completely vulnerable to a counterattack. Venture caught without either Burrow or Drill Dash is a sitting duck and has no counter play if focused by the enemy team.

“One-shot” Combos

(All assume direct impact with Primary Fire.)

Primary Fire → Melee → Drill
Fastest burst of damage. Deals a near-instantaneous 195 damage.
One-shots 175 HP heroes (i.e., Widowmaker, Tracer).

Primary Fire → Drill → Primary Fire → Melee
Most reliable combo.
Eliminates all non-Tank heroes except Bastion.

Burrow (max damage) → Primary Fire → Primary Fire (Drill Dash to escape)
Works against 250 HP and below heroes.

Smart Excavator

• Take advantage of its AoE damage to farm ultimate against grouped enemies.
• Taking a slight off-angle allows Venture to stay with their team while also keeping themselves in range for Primary Fire.
• Decent spam ability when holding a choke point.

Drill Dash

• Equally good for movement and damage.
• When flanking, Drill Dash should typically be saved to ensure a safe escape.

Burrow

• Never use Burrow near an enemy with a strong CC ability (e.g., Sleep Dart, Flashbang) unless you are certain it is on cooldown.
• Whenever possible, begin engagements with Burrow.
• Position between multiple enemies to maximize AoE damage output.
• Drill Dashing immediately after fully submerging will fully refill the cooldown upon emergence if the entire 4 seconds of Burrow are used.
• Venture can still be damaged after activating Burrow until their entire body is fully submerged, which makes it unreliable as a quick escape tool compared to Moira’s Fade or Reaper’s Wraith Form.

Clobber

• Can cancel into Clobber out of Primary Fire.
• Can cancel at any point during the drilling animation into Drill Dash or Burrow.
• The full 70 damage goes through barriers such as Reinhardt’s Barrier Field.

Ultimate: Tectonic Shock

• 75 HP of shield health lasts for the entire duration of the ultimate plus 3 seconds before decay begins, giving Venture an effective 325 HP while ulting.
• Can be repeatedly healed by Supports.

Minor Perks

Deep Burrow

• Good for flanks and increasing overall mobility.

Excavation Exhilaration

• You dump all your cooldowns to get in and weaken enemies, pop ult, and quickly get them all back. 
• The best part is you can burrow into Ult and then escape.

Major Perks

Smart Extender

• Though brief, it’s nice to have an option for better ranged damage.

Covered in Dirt

• Best for general flank and close-range combat playstyle that Venture primarily sticks to. Makes them more tanky during fights.

Best Maps

Ilios Well

• Ilios Well provides Venture with plenty of walls and high ground to safely escape to. While Venture does terrible in the open area around the Well, both sides of the map are great for setting up flank routes. Both sides of the point also have walls Venture can jump over with either Burrow or Drill Dash.

Oasis City Center

• The objective point on City Center has natural cover for Venture to circumnavigate even if both of their abilities are on cooldown. Additionally, the side routes all have health packs and safe areas to engage from or escape to.

Hollywood

• Venture has to create flank routes to be effective on Hollywood and adapt to where the enemy team is positioned. On this map, the backlines often set up well behind their front line. The space offers the perfect opportunity for Venture to embark on its own solo mission to disrupt or eliminate the separated enemy blackline.

Worst Maps

Havana

• Havana tends to be one of the worst maps for all close range heroes. Not only are the map areas incredibly wide and open, but most areas also lack usable cover for Venture.

Junker Town

• Poke positions and high ground are incredibly strong on Junker Town. Venture struggles to stage and find pathing to ever reach their optimal attack range.

New Queen Street

• The initial robot starting area on New Queen Street is doable for Venture, since they can use the high-ground tunnel and the mega health pack room. The final points on either side of the map are just way too open for Venture. They become dependent upon their team's resources to stay alive and be effective.

Venture works best in Brawl Comps that can utilize their close range damage.

Ideal team comp built around Venture:

Mauga, Venture, Cassidy, Kiriko, Lifeweaver

Individual synergies with other heroes

Mauga

• The synergy between Mauga and Venture revolves entirely around Cardiac Overdrive usage. Pairing Cardiac Overdrive’s damage reduction and life steal with the Venture’s shield hp generation makes for a deadly combo. Venture becomes virtually unkillable for the 5 seconds they are buffed by Mauga. Furthermore, Mauga can coordinate Overrun and slam with Venture’s engages and Cage Fight leaves caught enemies nowhere to run from Tectonic Shock.

Sombra

• Sombra is the easiest hero to follow Venture’s flanks with and Hack can prevent enemies from using CC on Venture. The amount of resources it takes from a team just to survive a Sombra/Venture dive also gives the rest of your team a huge window of opportunity to go aggressive.

Lifeweaver

• Venture can struggle to both confirm an elim and still have the resources to safely escape. Life Grip allows Venture to dump all of their cooldowns into the enemy and be pulled to safety. This combo can be extremely difficult for enemy teams to stop and can typically be cycled every other time Venture engages.

Unfortunately for Venture, they are actually one of the easiest heroes in OW2 to counter. The long cast time of Burrow gives time for teams to focus fire to death before the invulnerability kicks in. Simply choosing one of the counter picks below is typically enough to shut down Ventures. In general, pinging the Venture when they begin their engagement will prevent many deaths. Always try to track where the Venture player approaches from and learn their escape patterns so you can follow up and eliminate them before regrouping with your team.

Specific Hero Counters

Doomfist

• Doomfist’s mobility outclasses Venture’s and allows him to hunt Venture down where they would normally be safe. Rocket Punch cancels Burrow and guarantees death. The multiple burst damage abilities of Venture also gives easy charge to Doomfist for his Empowered Punch.

Cassidy

• Magnetic Grenade. Even if you have horrible aim with Cassidy, all you need to do is stick them with a Magnetic Grenade and your team can easily follow up with enough damage to elim her.

Ana

• Similar to Magnetic Grenade, Sleep Dart hard counters Venture’s game plan and abilities. The brief moment of slow movement and vulnerability during the startup frames of Burrow is the easiest opportunity for Ana land a sleep.