Overwatch's latest seasonal event is underway, introducing balance changes, new skins, and a new four-player PvE brawl: Overwatch Uprising. The brawl follows in the footsteps of the Halloween Terror event Junkenstein's Revenge and pits a team of four against waves of AI-controlled enemies on the streets of King's Row.
Set seven years in Overwatch's past, Uprising is the story of when an Overwatch strike team—Reinhardt, Tracer, Torbjörn, and Mercy—were sent to take back King's Row from a faction of omnic insurgents known as Null Sector.
The event runs from today through May 1. Here's some tips to get you started taking the city back from the omnics:
Know the fight
Overwatch Uprising is a bit more substantial than the previous PvE event, Junkenstein's Revenge. This time around, players will fight across the entire King's Row map, rather than simply defend a single point.
The fight begins in the sewers of King's Row. Your first task is to disable three cannons that the omnics have set up across the city. This translates into three capture-point battles where you must assault a point and then defend it for a minute or so while the point is secured. The first fight takes place in a side room off one of the streets, the second is close to the statue near the normal point A of King's Row, while the third is in the chapel that normally serves as the attacking team's spawn room. These first few fights only see a couple of easy-to-kill omnics called Nulltroopers, fairly basic soldier bots, and the bit-tougher Eradicators, which carry a small shield and can fire bursts of rockets.
Once the cannons are disabled, it's time to move the payload. But the payload isn't moving. No, it's not because no one is pushing the cart—before you can escort the payload, you've got to activate it, which means defending the area for four minutes from several waves of attackers. At this point, the omnics you encounter start ramping up in difficulty. You'll see Slicers, small dog-like bots that beeline for the payload and do a bunch of damage, Detonators, big bulb-shaped robots that will explode if not killed in time, and Bastion units that will set up and turret you and the payload to death.
After a four-minute defense, the payload will finally get on the move. Your job is to escort it to King's Row's regular first checkpoint, during which you have to fend off a torrent of these same enemies, as well as Bastion units in Tank form.
Once you hit the checkpoint, the event enters its final phase. Once the doors blow open (the payload is a battering-ram bomb, this time), your team has 10 minutes to kill the four Orisa units inside (while fighting off all the previous omnics too, of course).
The Uprising event can be played on four difficulty modes: Normal, Hard, Expert, and Legendary. Things are, obviously, quite easy on Normal mode, but the difficulty ramps up considerably from there. Expert mode takes some serious coordination, and it's easy to get overrun. Legendary is a monster undertaking—you and your teammates all need to seriously be on your game if you expect to survive.
Know your role
Unlike Junkenstein's Revenge, where players would respawn every 10 seconds regardless of the other players' actions, Uprising employs a teammate-revive system where you have to stand near your fallen friends and hold a key for a few seconds in order to get them back in the fight. If all four of you go down at once, the fight's over. This means it's extremely important to know your role, and don't get out of position—especially on the higher difficulty modes.
Reinhardt
Obviously, Reinhardt's job is to stand in front and shield his allies, but his Fire Strike and Charge are powerful weapons against the Null Sector forces. Eradicators should be Rein's bread and butter, since their shields do little to protect against Fire Strike or Charge. Ditto for the later fights against Bastion units (charge them in Turret mode), but be sure that charging won't leave you too far out of position. Getting separated from your team can mean a quick death for you and a lost fight for King's Row.
Torbjörn
Torbjörn's main job is to set up his turret in defensible positions and cover the team's flank. There's a handful of fights where you have omnics attacking from all directions, so Torbjörn and his turret should lock down whatever area Reinhardt isn't holding off. A good example is the second capture point of the first phase—Rein will likely be holding the choke in front of the statue, but omnics will also hit your backside from the payload area. It's also Torbjörn's job to provide armor for the team—prioritize Mercy and Tracer, as the 75 armor helps them out a lot more than it does Reinhardt. As for your ultimate, it's a good idea to save Molten Core for if (god forbid) Reinhardt goes down. Otherwise keep your turret up and help Tracer out with the DPS.
Tracer
As the primary DPS character, Tracer's job is to kill everything. She's fast but squishy, so be sure to grab armor from Torbjörn for a bit of extra HP. Rein and Torb should be able to handle the squishy Nulltroopers and Slicers fairly easily, so Tracer should mostly be focusing on the more difficult omnic forces. Blink behind Eradicators and unload your pistols into their unshielded backsides, and save Pulse Bomb for the dangerous Bastion and Orisa units.
Mercy
Mercy's job is fairly self-explanatory: keep the team healed and support when everyone's topped off. The question then comes on what to do when everyone is healthy. Under normal circumstances, Mercys are better off damage boosting than whipping out her pistol, but none of the team here make for great beam targets in the way that a Soldier or Pharah are. It's a good idea to boost Rein while he's Fire Striking, or Torbjörn during Molten Core, but otherwise Mercy can do a surprising amount of cleanup with the pistol. Of course, stay alive at all costs—a critical Resurrect can mean the difference between victory and a wipe.
