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If the enemy team picks up multiple Torbjörns, specially while defending a map, I find it extremely difficult to capture even the first point, because each turret is defending another, and hidden behind walls where a sniper can't hit them without being attacked from another.

And it can be even harder if one of them picks Symmetra and puts more turrets and a teleporter, or a Reinhardt shields one of the main turrets, that protect the others (for instance, top right of the capture point in Volskaya).

What are the best group compositions and strategies to counter this?

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  • I lost once against people playing this strategy. We ended up with multiple Pharas, it didn't work quite well. When Torbs started to get their ultis, it was seriously devastating. Didn't test much of Reinhardt though, sadly. Looks like currently this strategy is very viable on certain maps.
    – Predelnik
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:18
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    @Predelnik I've never been able to get Pharah to work against a Torbjorn turret. She works best in the air, but a Torbjorn turret is like a tiny tanky Soldier 76 with an aimbot.
    – DaaaahWhoosh
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 15:08
  • @DaaaahWhoosh She works fine with distant open turrets, plus also may eliminate some turret defenders in the process. Turrets in small buildings is kinda another story though.
    – Predelnik
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 15:11

8 Answers 8

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A Reinhardt or more than one, with good long range damage dealers such as Widowmaker, Zenyatta, Soldier: 76, or Pharah. The hard part is getting everyone to hide behind Reinhardt's shield, but once everyone's in place, the turrets deal very low DPS and will be easy to take out.

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    None of the damage dealers would stand a chance if the Tjorborns have even a remote idea what they should be doing - placing their turrets on well hidden spots around the chokepoint. By the time Reinhardt pushes it, his shield will be down and everyone will be a shooting gallery.
    – Иво Недев
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:04
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    Say Hanamura's objective A. You push, your shield is up, everything's good, BUT there's a turret (or two) on either side of the gate, which one do you protect against. And while you or your team is taking down turrets the Tjornborns themselves can do quite nice damage with left click from a range.
    – Иво Недев
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:06
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    upvoted because we've done this and it works very well. Take your Reinhardt, get some good long range DPS behind him, and then turn a corner and wreck everything you can. We mopped up a full team of torbjorns in record time.
    – GarrettJ
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 15:03
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    @ratchetfreak Not at all, Winston's shield is on a long cooldown, is stationary, and has much less health than Reinhardt's.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 16:10
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    @Dragonrage While it definitely "can help" it's nowhere near as effective as Reinhardt's. If Torbjorn himself is right clicking the shield from that close, it'll go down very quickly. Not to mention, it's only a temporary solution to one turret.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 17:04
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From my own experience, a Reinhardt or two is almost completely necessary. I would recommend throwing a Zenyatta in as well; despite being squishy, his orb of discorb is a huge help against Torbjorn, especially when he's pulled his Molten Core. The key to pushing past a Torbjorn defense is to kill him, that way, he cannot rebuild his turrets. A damage debuff is the key to quickly eliminating them.

As other answers have stated, snipers and the like (Pharah, Soldier: 76, etc) can all assist, and the absorb/reflect of D.VA and Genji is invaluable, but the debuff gained from Zenyatta's orb can make things all the more easy.

EDIT: I've often found that as soon as a wall of Torbs'n'Turrets is broken, the point is usually yours. The turrets are only truly dangerous as long as Torbjorn is still around. If you kill all the Torbs, they aren't likely to be able to setup a new defense on that point.

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  • That would be true against one or two turrets. But when there's five or six, things get a lot messier, because even 2 reinharts can't cover all sources of damage, being unable to protect teammates, and reinhart himself can't destroy the turrets (his only ranged option deals 100 damage - which is healed in 2 hammer strikes by the torb).
    – fcm
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:17
  • True, you would likely need to be in voice communication with the Reinhardts to effectively shield against whatever turrets there are. Again, a turret is only really effective as long as Torbjorn is there to heal it, molten core it, or replace it. If Torb is dead, he can't replace his turret.
    – nightsurfer
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:20
  • +1 for edit, once you break the initial wall of torbjorns it's smooth sailing
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 19:39
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As several have said already, Genji, Pharah, Soldier 76, Zenyatta, and Reinhardt are all good picks against a team that has one or more Torbjörns. However you should also look at D.Va, Winston, Hanzo, Widowmaker, Junkrat, Tracer, Zarya, McCree, and Mei. All of these can help destroy turrets in the following ways.

  • Genji can deflect turret damage back at the turrets to kill them.
  • Pharah has long range damage with her rockets that do splash damage, so she can hurt the Torbjörn who is repairing the turret at the same time as damaging the turret. She can also knock the Torbjörn away from his turret with her E ability, and if someone is distracting the turrets, her ultimate can quickly clear out turret nests.
  • Soldier 76 has good dps that is quite accurate at mid range, and a full clip or two into helix rockets will generally kill a turret.
  • Zenyatta while being a support, does a lot of damage with his primary and alternate fire. If he is shielded, he can not only heal people who get low, but charge his alternate fire to help burst turrets down. He can also use transcendence to keep his team alive while pushing in to clear turrets.
  • Reinhardt is pretty essential for killing turrets. While they may chip his shield down fairly quickly, he can provide protection for multiple members of his team who can all provide damage to destroy the turret.
  • D.Va can use her mech to absorb a lot of damage from turrets, as well as completely negating a turrets damage if she uses defense matrix on it, allowing her to distract turrets for her teammates to kill. Also, when she gets her ultimate, she can easily clear a room or point where the turrets are setting up by boosting into an eject and letting the mech drop in on the turrets.
  • Winston can thrown up a shield around a turret and completely prevent it from shooting his teammates outside. Also, his tesla can hit multiple targets which can help clear multiple turrets at a time. It may be a good idea to run multiple Winstons to counter multiple Torbjörns.
  • Hanzo and Widowmaker can shoot down turrets for long range. Without getting hit by the turret. Hanzo has the added benefit of being able to arc arrows so he can hide at a slightly lower elevation and still hit the turrets.
  • Junkrat can get his primary fire into hard to reach rooms to clear out turrets inside by bouncing them off walls. He can also arc his shots over walls to clear out turrets behind a wall. His ultimate can also quickly kill Torbjörns and their turrets if it isn't destroyed.
  • Not as obvious, but Tracer can dart around a wall and get damage down on a Torbjörn or his turret and recall to safety. Doing this can eventually wear them down, and with ultimate up you can drop that on a Torbjörn to instantly kill him.
  • Zarya can put up a barrier on whoever is being targeted by the turret and gain free charge while providing protection for his teammate. She can then used her super charged weapon to quickly damage turrets and destroy them.
  • McCree, if he can find a good flank on the turret, can actually flash bang the turret so he can flash bang into fan the hammer for some good damage on the turret. He can kill the turret with this combo if he lands all of his fan the hammer shots.
  • Mei is also a great counter to turrets, as she can wall them off to prevent LOS so that the turret cannot fire on her team. She can also freeze turrets with her primary fire or her ultimate.

Note: You should always have a healer to heal anyone who is taking damage while taking out the turret. Mercy can also damage boost people who are safe from the turret damage in order to more quickly kill it, and Lúcio's sound barrier can help negate most of the damage and give people enough health to kill the turrets. Sound barrier and resurrection can also help counter Molten Core.

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    Winston is TERRIBLE against Torbjorn because Winston does almost no damage (~20/s) to armor, while Torbjorns can give themselves 75 armor. I'd go as far as saying Torbjorn is a hard-counter to Winston.
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 16:05
  • @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft Winston can throw up a shield around a turret and completely negate that turret from shooting his team outside the turret. That makes Torbjörn mostly useless. Winston isn't supposed to be a high dps hero, he is supposed to be a a disruptive tank. And if you have a double Winston's you can clear or negate turrets pretty well.
    – Dragonrage ♦
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 16:38
  • Does fan the hammer do enough damage after the patch to kill a turret? I recall it does less than 300 damage now.
    – DaaaahWhoosh
    Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 19:44
  • @DaaaahWhoosh i'll have to test that. you can always do the flash fan roll fan combo though.
    – Dragonrage ♦
    Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 20:13
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I'd say something you are comfortable doing medium to long range damage with

Hanzo, Pharah, Widowmaker, Soldier 76, Zenyatta come to mind

If the turrets are 'Level 2', they have 300 health, so ideally you want to be able to do those 300 points of damage while receiving as little damage as possible.

A Reinhardt + 1 or more Soldier 76's would be a good combination. Soldier 76's shots + his rockets (right-click) can take out a Torbjorn turret in a few seconds.

Without a Reinhardt assisting, maybe Pharah would be a good choice, but I would suggest trying to corner-peak the turrets in this case. It should take 2-3 rockets to kill a turret, but if you are flying as Pharah, you could take a significant amount of damage or die. So again, without Reinhardt assisting, this is why I'd suggest corner-peaking to take the shots.

I could also suggest Junkrat. If you know the location of some of the turrets, you can usually find a spot you can hit them without actually seeing the turret. That is, you can launch Junkrat's grenades over a building, bounce them off a wall etc. to hit the turret without exposing yourself.

So I guess there are lots of options, but in general the idea seems to be you want to deal as much damage in as small an amount of time as possible, while reducing your exposure to the turre

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  • My most recent suffering against this composition has been in Volskaya, and a Pharrah was rendered almost useless, because more than half the turrets were covered, or hidden inside buildings. Which is also a problem for the snipers.
    – fcm
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:19
  • If they're hidden inside buildings then their line of sight for firing is generally pretty limited. Usually it's a doorway. That still leaves peaking the doorway as a viable option, as you can generally output more damage doing that than the turret can while you're peaking. The problem too is how coordinated your team is. If there's no coordination, taking out 5-6 turrets is going to be much more difficult.
    – pay
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:27
  • Coordination is usually between 2-3 people that I play with. It's extremely hard to find this kind of composition against full 6-player groups, I guess people like to play decently this way. About peeking, even doing that is hard because if you try, there's another sentry firing at you, or torb himself.
    – fcm
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:30
  • I find Torb himself embarrassingly easy to kill unless he's ulting. Especially for Soldier 76. But funny enough, while solo queuing last night my team just randomly selected all Torbjorn, except 1 person, and we won. Except we were on offense, and it still worked...
    – pay
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:37
  • +1 for corner-peaking with Pharah. Was looking for an answer mentioning that. You can just fire a rocket and then hide while the next one is getting ready. Depending on which way the turret is facing, it might not even hit you by the time you're back in cover.
    – DCShannon
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 20:05
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I do love this strategy!

Generally the best counter people have used against me is Genji or D'Va (because she can deflect incoming projectiles and move faster towards the turrets) but mainly Genji.

Use his reflect to kill the Turret and then flank them properly. The more Genjis you get, the merrier.

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    Isn't Genji reflect not good against turrets though? or does it work because he reflects damage from multiple turrets in this case?
    – Predelnik
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:12
  • This sounds useful against multiple turrets shotting you at the same time, allowing you to reflect the bullets and destroy one of them. But reflect has short duration and long cooldown, and after breaking one turret, there are still 4-5 to deal with, torbs will be alerted of your presence and you'll likely be dead on the next second and a half. And Genji has nothing else to offer besides the reflect, even his ult is absolutely useless against turrets. What other heroes can be paired with him in order to get better results?
    – fcm
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:14
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    Reflect does not actually work great against turrets. You need to peek around corners and snipe to take out a turret with Genji - in which case, an actual sniper like Widowmaker or Hanzo would be a better choice.
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:17
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    Genji's reflect is terrible against turrets since they deal such low DPS.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:26
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One of the most effective counters I've seen is Zarya. Seeing how the turrets have no control to stop shooting she can exploit them and make them charge up her particle beam. Combine this with with her alt fire and recharging shield she can quickly get in and take out turrets and any Torbjörns around without having much challenge.

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    A single Zarya will never take out a turret + Torbjorn with right clicks. She just deals damage much more slowly than Torbjorn can repair.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 14:52
  • @DanmakuGrazer even when at 100% power?
    – ratchet freak
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 15:28
  • @ratchetfreak Yes. It takes all 4 shots to hit directly at 100% power to destroy one, but it won't be destroyed if Torbjorn smacks it twice.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 15:40
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    What about left click then?
    – Captain Man
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 20:45
  • Cooldown on her shield is way too long. Unless you pull it off flawlessly and drop the turret in the first attempt, the turret will inflict some serious hurt on her and possibly kill her before the second attempt.
    – Doktor J
    Commented Oct 13, 2016 at 19:22
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Personally my choice is Junkrat, but he's my choice for a lot of things. Once you get riptire you can take out a torb camping by his turret along with his turret, and even before that you can use your launch to get you to good positions to bounce your grenades off walls to hit the turrets. They run up on you? Trap. They have a reinhardt guarding it? Bounce behind the reinhardt, or use your mine to knock him elsewhere. This works best on maps where the turrets are around walls and corners and in chokepoints, long range I would suggest Widowmaker personally, though I've seen people do well with Pharah of course.

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I played this situation yesterday (on PC)

Enemy team had 5 Torbjörn and 1 Symmetra. I told my teammate to take full snipers. I personally prefer widow but it should works with Hanzo as well. Take widowmaker, only focus for the turret. If one Torbjörn is coming to you, try to kill him but when you have enough time to: Scope, 100%, shoot turret, hide, do it 3 time and even if he repair the turret, it will get destroyed. Always go for the most on side turret. Once you cleared the first, go for the second. If you see a Torbjörn creating a turret, destroy it immediately, in one shot it should be destroyed while in construction. Don't even bother killing the Torbjörn in that case -> no turret for 10 sec is enough to destroy more. If he recreate again, do the same thing, if you are 2 or 3 snipers, they shouldn't be able to construct more turrets. If they want to construct one they'll have to do it a bit more far. So you can move your payload for some meters, then do the same things over and over, win 10 meter by 10 meter, they HAVE TO go back to make more turrets, so it's good for you since the only thing that count is to get the payload at destination.

EDIT:

More of that, I played on Hanamura versus 2 Torbjörn with a widowmaker yesterday, was in attack on site B. Torbjörn can really be useless if you have a widowmaker, once you destroyed his first turret lvl 2, he'll never have time to put one more turret since you one shot it. Please if you see a Torbjörn and you are your team sniper, just focus for the turret! it take one shot to destroy them once you destroyed the first and the Torbjörn will be useless during the whole game. You have like 10-11 second before the next turret so you still can make kill then, but at first you really need to focus for the turret since really few heroes can do something against it.

EDIT 2:

About Reinhardt, it's great when their is one turret (and even their, if other enemy's heroes have mobility, you have to face the turret, and if they come behind, either you let them kill you, either you turn and the turret kill you really fast, so it's not a "long-term" option, it's in purpose to destroy the turret), but if they are multiple, Reinhardt can't do anything about it. I really think that if you have 4 or 5 Torbjörn against you, you should have 2 or 3 snipers, all the Torbjörn will be useless if you focus for turrets, one widowmaker can handle two Torbjörn, so if they have 4 Torbjörn, you take two widowmaker, only focus for turret you'll be 2 widowmaker unable to do anything else, but 4 Torbjörn will be useless too and your team is now 4 versus 2.

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  • 4xTorb + 2xPharah will make life very painful for your snipers... Widowmaker and Hanzo are rather squishy, and with the time I've logged as Pharah I've honed my sniper-elimination skills quite well. The typical airborne Pharah is an easy target for the snipers, but one who hides behind cover and pops out at the last minute makes life very unpleasant for them.
    – Doktor J
    Commented Oct 13, 2016 at 19:21

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