‘Main’ing, as in, “I main Fizz in League of Legends” is a term from MOBAs, so players can let people know what character they are going to be, and for MOBAs it makes sense. The maps never change that much, and since you can’t swap characters mid-round it lets the other players know to either drop out and find another team or to pick one of their other characters in a different class. Not to mention they probably only want to invest their real money on only a couple of heroes.
With Overwatch‘s group of crazy heroes players have started to bring the same approach, but the problem is that it doesn’t work. Since the maps and situations do change you need to branch out and use the entire roster to the best of your ability. Last night my brother and I were playing and we got the payload within a couple of feet of where it needed to go, but the other team’s defense got impenetrable because they changed up their characters, so we in turn needed to change ours.
I changed from Lúcio to Mercy so that instead of doing some healing to the whole team I could keep just one person alive to keep the payload moving, and my brother changed from Reinhardt to Zarya to give himself a little more movement and offensive capability, so that the opposing team just didn’t set up shop in front of his shield. The result? We got that payload to move those last few feet in the last few seconds. If we hadn’t changed we probably would have lost.
That is because with Overwatch it is best not to think of the characters as heroes that need to be mastered, but instead as load-outs to be swapped when the need arises. I needed to switch to Mercy because she is the beam heal not the area heal. It is no different then in Battlefield to swap out the long range rifle for the short range SMG for that final push. If I had been stubborn and just decided that I was going to ‘main’ Lúcio we probably wouldn’t have been able to keep someone on the payload, and we probably would have lost (it was my brother’s idea to have me switch by the way), but over and over I will hear the words, ‘I main so and so’. Please don’t. Use the character who’s kit best serves the current situation. If the situation changes, change your hero too.
