OVERWATCH'S ZARYA

Putting the hero in hero shooter.

- Tyler Colp

There are 36 heroes in Overwatch 2 and none of them are as tremendous as Zarya. I’m not talking about win rates or damage per second, I’m talking about Zarya as a piece of design. She’s a hero that’s intrinsically linked to Overwatch as a collaborative hero shooter. She simply can’t do anything alone, and playing her is an exercise in learning the rhythms and tendencies of your teammates.

Aleksandra Zaryanova is a Russian weightlifter and soldier who lugs around a massive gun that shoots raw energy in the form of explosive orbs and a massive beam. She can wrap her teammates or herself in a protective barrier, or bubble, and when damage is dealt to it, she gains power. Zarya thrives on enemy mistakes. If you don’t have any trigger discipline or lose the mind game of whether or not the opposing Zarya is going to cast a barrier onto someone, you not only deal zero damage to your target, but you just made things worse for everyone on your team.

Without energy, Zarya tickles her foes, but once she starts to climb toward the 100 energy cap, she starts to put out more damage than any other hero in the tank role. Her two barriers define how threatening she is in each clash between Overwatch’s two teams. If you screw up your barrier timing, you lose precious energy and make yourself vulnerable as the cooldown ticks away.