There are very few things more essential to winning in competitive than landing your ultimate ability at the right time. If used correctly, a character’s ultimate ability can literally be the difference between winning and losing.
Obviously, it’s not as simple as just using it whenever you feel like it. Communicating with your teammates in order to sync up multiple ultimate abilities that could assist yours is crucial. Not to mention that setting it up in a manner where the opposing team won’t just neutralize it is equally important.
Pretty much every ultimate ability in the game can be highly useful if used correctly.
However, there are some abilities that one could argue are a bit more useful than others. The kind of abilities that can make your heart drop if you’re on the wrong side of it.
So without further ado, I present to you what I believe are the Top 5 ultimate abilities in “Overwatch”.
5. D.Va - Self-Destruct/Call Mech
Some of you might be rolling your eyes on this one thinking it’s very avoidable making it practically useless if used incorrectly, but here me out on this one. If you manage to set it up right, D.Va’s Self-Destruct ability can wipe an entire team from the point or the objective in the blink of an eye. Obviously, it doesn’t always work out that way, which is also fine. Even if you don’t manage to get a quadruple-kill with her ultimate ability, just the presence of her ability will force pretty much the entire the opposing team to get off the point or objective which can provide your team extra time to either setup for a push or to return to the point/objective.
You could definitely argue that an ultimate ability like Mei’s Blizzard does pretty much the same thing. However, one key difference between hers and D.Vas is that D.Va’s ultimate ability has far more flexibility compared to Mei’s ultimate ability. While Mei needs to be near the enemy team in order to use her Blizzard ability, D.Va can just use her boosters to launch her ultimate ability from safety, while also potentially catching the other team by surprise.
Not to mention that D.Va can just call back her mech immediately after using her ultimate ability and start charging up her next Self-Destruct which loads up fairly quickly.
4. Sombra - EMP
There’s been a lot of debate as to what Sombra really is. While she’s technically considered a DPS character, based on her kit and the way she’s most effectively used, she resembles that of a support character more so than a DPS.
Perhaps no ability in her kit exemplifies this more than her ultimate ability EMP. When Sombra activates it, she hacks everybody in a wide radius disabling shields, abilities, and even other ultimate abilities. In order to use this ultimate ability effectively, Sombra needs to be near the enemy team which shouldn’t be a problem when you account for her invisibility and teleporting abilities.
Because of the nature of her EMP ability, Sombra requires virtually no setup to use it at its maximum potential. Obviously, your team needs to be setup to make a push once it's activated, but as I mentioned earlier, communication with the rest of your team is essential for pretty much every ultimate ability in the game.
The only real downside to it is that it’s best used for attack. While it can effectively be used on defense as well, the likelihood of someone picking Sombra for defense is pretty slim.
3. Zenyatta - Transcendence
A lot of people tend to complain about Zenyatta considering the fact that he’s a pretty weak healer. In fact, the debate surrounding his usage is the practically the opposite of Sombra’s in which some people argue that Zenyatta is more like a DPS character than a healing/support character. However, despite the lackluster amount of healing his orb of harmony ability produces, his ultimate ability Transcendence is another story. Whether you’re attacking, defending, moving the payload, stopping the payload, or trying to capture the objective, Zenyatta’s Transcendence can be game changing in virtually any situation.
Not only does his ability make Zenyatta invincible, but makes the rest of your team borderline invincible as well. While plenty of people would argue that Lucio is a better overall healer than Zenyatta, when you compare their ultimate abilities, it’s no contest. Zenyatta’s ultimate ability is hands down the best healing ability in the game.
2. Mercy - Resurrect
Mercy is already considered the best overall healer in the game considering her output when it comes to healing and damage boosting. While she can’t really do much else in terms of dishing out her own damage like Lucio and Zenyatta, at the same time, she doesn’t really have to. As long as she’s doing her job well, there’s no need for her to fight whatsoever.
When it comes to her ultimate ability, there is perhaps no support character in the game that has a better ultimate ability than her. Mercy’s ultimate ability allows her to resurrect teammates within her radius at full health.
An ability as useful as hers can easily make or break games. Just when it looks like the defending team has successfully fought off the attacking team’s push, Mercy can swoop right in and essentially resurrect her whole team. Obviously, there are downsides to her ultimate ability such as resurrecting teammates while the other team is clearly still setup to wipe your team once again. But overall, there’s nothing more irksome in “Overwatch” than barely fighting off an enemy team’s push only to have their Mercy bring everyone back.
1. Zarya - Graviton Surge
I dare you to find an ultimate ability as useful or versatile as Zarya’s Graviton Surge. Her ultimate ability fires a gravity bomb which sucks up any combatant near it while simultaneously damaging them. When it comes to setting up for pretty much every Tank and DPS character’s ultimate abilities, Zarya’s Graviton Surge is basically the lynchpin that makes them effective. No matter what game mode you’re playing, Zarya’s ultimate ability is useful for essentially any situation, not to mention that it has one of the quickest charge-ups in the game.
The only downside to it is that some characters have abilities that allow them to escape her Graviton Surge. However, with the upcoming update, her ultimate ability will receive a buff which will make it nigh impossible to escape.
Good luck finding a game without at least one Zarya in it once this update drops.
Other ultimates
If you feel like there was an ultimate ability I left out that’s every bit as effective and crucial to winning as the ones I mentioned, please feel free to mention it in the comment section.
