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I'm noticing a lot lately, particularly on Hanamura B, that the defensive team will stack a couple of Torbjorns with a Bastion. Their remaining team comp will usually be a healer, some sort of harasser/flanker to keep people from taking long-range potshots, and then probably another harasser or a Reinhardt to shield the stationary defense.

I'm finding these sorts of defensive compositions incredibly difficult to beat, assuming the enemy players are competent. It's difficult to take out the Torbjorns first because they can decently hang in the back and hide, and taking out their turrets usually only buys you seconds before the next turret is back up. Even peeking out to snipe at them with Widow/Pharah/S76 is tough because with 2 turrets, you get shredded quickly. A Reinhardt on offense can help but Bastion can shred his shield pretty quickly, not leaving a lot of time to take out the turrets/Bastion before you're under heavy fire.

In particular, when playing against this on a PUG, it can be very very difficult to coordinate an offensive strategy to deal with it. That said, I'm not even sure what kind of offensive strategy to recommend or how to deal with it if I'm in a group of friends willing to cooperate. What's the best way to bust up this kind of defense and capture the point?

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  • Hanamura is just a terribly designed chokepoint. Wait until you have a bunch of ults, then hope for the best; you won't be able to coordinate your team into breaking that defense in the scenario you've described. Jun 29, 2016 at 14:58
  • @Sterno Try countering Bastion as Hanzo, Genji, or Widowmaker. -@PlayOverwatch
    – Dragonrage
    Jun 29, 2016 at 16:29
  • @Dragonrage Against one, sure. Against 2-3, it is not effective, in my experience. Particularly on Hanamura B where the turrets can hit you from most sniping spots.
    – Sterno
    Jun 29, 2016 at 16:37
  • Take more than one tank, maybe even 3 or 4. Then a junk rat/ phara with a reaper or tracer
    – Datner
    Jun 30, 2016 at 11:31

3 Answers 3

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Recently I was the defender you described. We didn't have a Bastion but we had a lot of Torbjorns.

What you are looking for is someone who can do a lot of splash damage from a good distance. While defending B my concerns were D'Va ult, Phara flanking from behind (generally anyone that can scale the left side where there isn't a path - had a Reaper few others come behind us a couple of times).

But the hero that annoyed us the most was a JunkRat. He was sitting nicely hidden in one of the rooms with a health pack and was spamming his primary fire. While doing so he'd bounce his balls on the walls and generally land them around us. He did quite a lot of damage and what probably saved was me getting really angry at him and going solo (even ulting to stay alive) and hunt him down.

More situational would be a well placed Hanzo ult, that would go trough the most entities.

TLDR: Junkrat behind a cover will do the job.

Here are some compositions that do NOT work: (But can be found in the answers bellow)

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  • Junkrat's definitely a problem as Tjorborn, and I usually break that situation up with a Pharah going over the left, so +1. After you go over the left, you can usually get the the health pack over there and then start hitting B from behind/above.
    – DCShannon
    Jun 29, 2016 at 15:05
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    Hanzo's ult doesn't damage turrets, so that wouldn't necessarily be effective. D.Va's ult or Tracer's ult usually do better jobs at clearing out nests. Jun 29, 2016 at 18:39
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    TL;DR: Demoman > Engineer. God, did nobody play TF2? How is this not widely known? Jun 30, 2016 at 4:32
  • Against multiple Torbjorns, I'd be less confident in Pharah. Unless she can outrange the turrets or peek-spam from a corner, the turrets absolutely shred her. Especially when there is another turret providing cover for the first turret. Source: Pharah main. German Ikea-gineers make me cry.
    – KizTrap
    Aug 15, 2016 at 12:58
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As you somewhat mentioned, the most difficult part of this is going to be the timing and team coordination rather than what the actual team composition is. This is one of the situations that makes playing solo somewhat more difficult.

Having said that, depending on your team situation, you might need to pick something that compliments what your team has already selected. In the case of a lot of Torbs/Bastion's, I would pick something that forces the Bastion to get out of his stationary mode. Things that can be good for that: Hanzo's ult, Junkrat's primary fire, Pharrah rockets, etc.

Depending on your team's willingness to coordinate, sometimes Roadhog can be good against Bastion. If you can get close enough it'll either force him to move for fear of being hooked, or he'll get hooked and die.

As someone supporting your team moving into position to accomplish these things, you might want a Reinhart or even Mei. Even though Bastion melts the shield very quickly, the idea is getting close enough that you force the Bastion out of position, or at least get close enough that people can use ults or do some damage.

You can also attempt to get beside/behind them from the ledge on the right (if you're on offense) and the staircase that goes down to the hallway behind the point. Tracer, Reaper, even Junkrat might be good for this, since you can get to that spot relatively easily on those heroes.

So it depends on your team's level of coordination and communication. In most cases I'd say your best bet is to try to pick something that compliments what your team has already picked, and keep an eye on when they switch. Just remember to be flexible in situations like this. I may add more to this answer later if that is alright.

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In order:

1) Junkrat 2) Reinhardt 3) Lucio / Mercy

If your team has Junkrat, pick Reinhardt. If they have both of those, pick Lucio, maybe Mercy.

Junkrat does so much splash damage that unless they're really well spaced out (Which they probably won't be on Hanamura), you'll be able to hit pretty much all of them at once just with primary fire, which makes it a lot easier than having to rely on the special abilities or even Ults of other characters, which will have a cooldown, have a higher risk of missing and it'll be worse when they do.

If your team has a Junkrat, then unless they're super incompetent (Like running in and not dying continually), they'll have that covered and you should probably go with Reinhardt to shield, push the position and try to soak up as much damage as possible, giving your team the ability to actually attack and get something done. This is especially effective if you're being directly backed up by Lucio or Mercy.

If your team happens to have Junkrat AND Reinhardt and something's still lacking, I'd go with Lucio. With Lucio, you can use the speed to rapidly get everyone up to the position where they need to be and then switch to healing to give everyone, especially the Reinhardt, some much needed longevity versus the hail of turret fire. If your other teammates, especially the Junkrat, are particularly good at not dying, then it might also be worth picking Mercy to give the Reinhardt more active healing, with the potential to Res at a critical moment.

Assaulting Torbs and Bastions is never fun. I personally hate both of them as characters and think they have no business plaguing Overwatch with their mechanical shenanigans, but that's just my opinion and should probably be saved for another day. I hope your luck improves with Hanamura in the future.

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  • I disagree on the usefulness of Reinhardt here. Yes his shield is great, but take into consideration the pure monster-amount of damage Bastion puts out in his turret mode, plus Torbjorn turrets. Your shield will melt in a matter of seconds, and at that point Reinhardt is relatively useless to the team. Jun 29, 2016 at 17:00
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    You need a tank in this situation otherwise Bastion + Torbjorn turrets are going to melt EVERYBODY over and over with little contest. Roadhog can't hook turrets. D.Va's defense matrix only lasts 3 seconds, Zarya's personal shield only lasts 2 seconds and can only absorb 200 damage. Winston might work, leaping in behind them and dropping a barrier, lasting just long enough with the extra 600 to split the enemy fire in two different directions. But really, only Reinhardt can offer a 500 Health Body + 2000 Health Barrier. Jun 29, 2016 at 17:24
  • The other support that would work well here is Zenyatta - Discord Orbs for the Bastions, plus a good amount of damage from him directly, and then Transcendence will heal you through any possible damage this composition can throw out there, allowing you to completely break their defense. Jun 30, 2016 at 9:44
  • @Kaizerwolf See Which character is best for killing Bastion from behind Reinhardt? Once the barrier goes down, that's what the healer is for.
    – DCShannon
    Jun 30, 2016 at 14:39

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