Overwatch Terms, Abbreviations, & Their Meanings
( FP's Overwatch Strategy Guide )
A lot of times as your playing Overwatch you may come across various terms and abbreviations said by other players and you might have no clue what they mean. You may also come across these terms through out my guide. This list will help educate yourself on all these terms and abbreviations used for Overwatch.
Overwatch Basics
Hero Introductions |
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General
FPS - (First Person Shooter). FPS is a type of game where you see your character in first person (usually only your weapon is visible on screen) while aiming and shooting things with some kind of weapon. This is different from MMOs where its 3rd person (you can see your entire character) and usually no precise aiming is involved (like World of Warcraft).
Fall Damage - How much damage is taken away when landing from falling from long heights. Overwatch has no fall damage, as you can fall from really high heights, then land and take no damage from it.
Friendly Fire - This refers to being able to shoot and damage your own teammates. Overwatch does NOT use Friendly Fire. In fact there is nothing in Overwatch that can be used to damage your own teammates.
Respawn - After dying you will "respawn" back to the game at your team's spawn location.
Noob (or newb and newbie) - This means a new player. This is also commonly used to insult players to say that they suck.
Clutch - This means to perform under pressure. This can also refer to the crucial moment that comes between winning and losing.
Squishy - This refers to a hero that doesn't have many hitpoints and can easily die with just a small amount of damage. Tracer and Zenyatta are the squishiest heroes in Overwatch as they both only have 150 HP.
Network / Systems
Framerate - Sometimes FPS can also mean Frames Per Second (or framerate), which refers to how many frames are rendering per second, generally the higher the better.
Lag - This is a delay in the connection between you and the server. This is usually caused from a bad internet connection or an issue on the server.
Ping - The connection (in milliseconds) from you and the server. For FPS games, a low Ping time is crucial for increased performance.
Abilities
AoE - (Area of Effect). The area in which an ability can have an effect on. For example, when Mei uses her Blizzard ability, the area of effect is about an 8 meter radius.
Splash Damage - Some weapons can hit multiple enemies at once with a single projectile's splash damage. Here is the full list of weapons that do splash damage in Overwatch:
- Pharah's rockets
- Pharah's Concussive Blast
- Soldier 76's Helix Rockets
- Tracer's Pulse Bomb
- Junkrat's Frag Launcher grenades
- Junkrat's Concussion Mine
- Junkrat's Rip-Tire
- Junkrat's Total Mayhem (death bombs)
- Winston's Jump Pack (once he lands)
- Zarya's Charged Particle shots
- Bastion's Tank Form
- D.va's Self-Destruct
Counter - When a particular unit or strategy is more powerful than another unit or strategy.
Hard Counter (sometimes called Strong Counter) - When a particular unit or strategy overpowers another unit or strategy. "Pharah is a hard counter to Reinhardt"
Soft Counter - When a particular ability or strategy only has a small advantage over another ability or strategy.
Melee - Attacks done in close range, usually your fists or some type of hand held weapon you swing at the enemy to hit them up close.
Aura - An ability that passively emanates from around a specific hero in a certain radius. The ability is generally always on, unless switched to a different aura. This ability will be shared amongst the allies who is inside the radius of the aura. Currently in Overwatch, Lucio is the only hero who has auras. Lucio has his speed aura and heal aura.
Nerfed - This means that a hero or ability got weakened because it proved to be to powerful.
OP - Overpowered. For Overwatch, this can refer to a hero being overpowered or an ability to be overpowered.
Wombo Combo - This term originated from the Super Smash Bros game and it generally means a combination of attacks that is very deadly and hard to avoid. In Overwatch this generally means when an ultimate gets combed with another ultimate. A good example of this is Zarya's ultimate Graviton Surge wombo combos with another allied ultimate such as Pharah's Barrage or D.va's ultimate Self-Destruct. There are many more, such as Reinhardt's ultimate Earthshatter wombo combos with Genji's ultimate Dragonblade.
Basic Weapons
DPS - Damage Per Second. This can also simply refer to how much damage something does. Here is a full Overwatch DPS chart.
Recoil - This means a gun will have less accuracy the longer the trigger is held down for it. The only weapons that have a recoil in Overwatch is Soldier 76's Pulse Rifle and Bastions Recon/Sentry gun. These weapons can take advantage of Burst Fire to increase accuracy at longer ranges.
Burst Fire - Also called Pulse Shots. This means readily pressing the fire button to increase accuracy at longer ranges instead of shooting continuously. In Overwatch the only weapons this effects is Soldier 76's Pulse Rifle and Bastion's Recon Sub Machine gun, and also his gatling gun in Sentry Mode.
Weapon Accuracy - How many shots connected to an enemy target vs how many shots missed. A high weapon accuracy means you've landed most of your shots, and missed very little.
Headshot - Hitting an enemy in the head. Overwatch utilizes headshots and headshots will do twice the damage to shots made to the head with most of the weapons in Overwatch (but not all).
Critical Hit - In Overwatch, this basically means the same thing as a Headshot.
Damage Fall Off - (also called fall off distance damage). This means that the damage from a projectile or bullet will do less damage the further it travels before hitting a target. Here is every weapon in Overwatch that has fall off distance damage:
- Bastion's Recon and Sentry gun
- D.va's Fusion Cannons
- McCree's Peacekeeper
- Mei's Icicles
- Reaper's shotguns
- Roadhog's Scrap Gun
- Torbjorn's Rivet Gun (Alt-Fire only)
- Tracer's Pulse Pistols
Hitscan - This is a term meaning if the weapon fires bullets that have no travel time at all and will instantly hit the target upon firing. All hitscan weapons in Overwatch include:
- McCree's Peacekeeper
- Ana's Scoped Biotic Rifle
- D.Va's Fusion Cannons
- Soldier 76's Pulse Rifle & Tactical Visor ultimate
- Tracer's Pulse Pistols
- Reaper's Hellfire Shotguns
- Widowmaker's Assault & Sniper Rifle
- Bastion Recon's submachine gun and Sentry's gatling gun
Map specific
Choke Point - Sometimes this is called "Choke" for short. This term refers to an entrance to another area. Sometimes there can be several choke points that lead to the same area. "Watch out, the enemies are going through the upper choke point to objective A."
CP - Short for Control Point.
Player/Team Roles
Harass - Aggressive offensive pressure on the enemy, or repeated small-scale attacks on (an enemy). These heroes excel at harassing the enemy:
- Tracer
- Reaper
- Genji
- D.va
- Winston
Flank - This means to surprise attack the enemy from the side or from the back instead of head-on. This is similar to harassing.
CC (Crowd Control) - This is when you have an ability or strategy where you can control how many enemies you can fight at once by blocking the other ones off some how. An example of this is Mei can use her Ice Wall to block an enemy behind it away from your team while exposing only a few enemies to your team at once. Another example is Roadhog can Chain Hook an enemy into him so him and his allies can easily take him out while the other enemies are far away.
Push - This means to coordinate an attack with your entire team to a specific spot on the map (usually towards the objective). This involves waiting until everyone is together and ready for the attack. Ultimates are usually involved to increase the Push's success rate.
Scout - This means to look around the map to see what the enemy is up to. That player then reports his findings to the rest of his team via communication. Some heroes in Overwatch are better at scouting than others. Most of these heroes are the same ones that are good at harassing, such as:
- Tracer
- Reaper
- Genji
- D.va
- Winston
Kills / Death
Elimination - This means a kill that you were involved in. In Overwatch if you made even just a hit on an enemy and then that enemy dies either by you or one of your allies, then you will get an elimination for that kill.
Final Blow - This means you made the final strike on an enemy that made the kill. Final blows also count as an elimination.
Kill Feed - The list of heroes that have died and who killed the hero. In Overwatch, the kill feed is currently located in the upper right hand side of the screen and can optionally be turned off. I highly recommend leaving it on as it provides valuable information on the status of the game.
Kill Cam - After dying the game will default to showing you a "kill cam", showing you exactly how you died with a reply of what happened with the enemy's point of view. You can optionally skip this, but I recommend watching these as it will help you improve your gameplay by figuring out what you should have done differently to prevent the death from happening in the first place.
Kill Streak - How many kills you've made with one life.
KD (or K/D) = Kill to Death ratio. The formula is kills divided by deaths. Example: 2 KD ratio, which means 2 kills for every 1 death. Another example: 0.2 Kill to Death ratio, which would mean 1 kill for every 5 deaths on average.
Frag - Means a kill. Can also mean an elimination.
Gestures
GG (or gg) - Simply means: good game.
GJ - Good Job.
WP - Well Played.
GL - Good luck.
GLHF - Good luck, have fun.
N1 - Nice one.
Matchmaking
PUG (sometimes called PUB, Pick Up Group, or Public Game) - This means playing a game with players that are randomly selected for you. These players could be people you have never met before but are generally around your same skill level.
Scrim - This is a match between two clans (or group). This is the opposite of a PUB, in which you know every player on your team.
Comp - Short for Competitive play.
Skirmish - In Overwatch, while waiting for an actual match to start the game can put you into a Skirmish. This is basically a practice mode that has no impact on your statistics and is merely in place to let you explore the maps and test out your abilities while also fighting other players on the opposing team. It's better than waiting in a lobby screen waiting for players to join, right?
If there was any terms or abbreviations I left out that you feel should have been included in this list, then please comment down below.
Overwatch Hero Introductions - Basics Guide
How the Mechanics Work in Overwatch
How Headshots Work In Overwatch
Overwatch Game Modes Overview
Overwatch Health Types & Hitpoint Basics
Overwatch Terms, Abbreviations, & Their Meanings
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Easiest and Hardest Overwatch Heroes to Master
My Hotkey
Bindings For Overwatch & Why I Use Them
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