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- Mar 19, 2016
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Hanzo Shimada
Let's breakdown this hunk of a man!
The Kit
Wall climb
Hanzo's passive allows him to scale walls in-game up to 4 meters vertically at 7.15 m/s. This is Hanzo's most important ability allowing him access to high ground where he is most valuable.
Storm Bow
Hanzo's primary fire and only weapon is his storm bow. The weapon has some crazy stats on it! Ranging from 27.2-125 damage per hit and 54.4-250 damage per headshot. This damage allows Hanzo to deal heavy damage to tanks and detrimental damage to flankers like Genji and Tracer, with a meele (30 damage) body shot (125 damage) allowing him to one-shot a close-range tracer!
While firing each fully charged arrow at 110 m/s this sniper is not a fun hero to turn a corner and see.
Storm Arrows
Hanzo's storm arrows are the perfect burst damage for this hero. This ability lines up 5 supercharged arrows for Hanzo to rapid-fire without charging each shot. Being able to fire 1 shot every .25 seconds at base damage of 70 means you can put out 350 damage in 1.25 seconds, and if you account for headshots you can bump those numbers to 700 damage in a little over a second. Talk about tank buster!
Sonic Arrow
Hanzo's sonic arrow I would call his signature ability besides his ultimate. A single arrow locked and loaded with essentially wallhacks. This arrow allows Hanzo and his team to see enemies through walls in a 9-meter radius of the location it lands. This arrow also can hit opponents and stick to them essentially moving the wallhacks around following the enemy.
Lunge
Hanzo has the ability to double jump horizontally. With his lunge ability, he can launch himself 7.85 meters at 15 m/s. A greatly needed addition to his kit!
Finally the Ultimate
Dragonstrike
Hanzo's ultimate is an arrow shot forward that summons two dragons in a single direction infinitely moving forward dealing 150 DPS. A great zoning ultimate that when comboed can result in teamkills.
Personal statement
Before going into this, I have over 1000 hours on Hanzo in Grandmaster+ SR ranges with over 500 hours on 4.4/4.5 rated teams playing Hanzo.
Hanzos' best friend is storm arrow, sonic arrow should have a near 100% uptime while storm arrow should be used whenever available, from breaking shields to bursting tanks you should always be using this ability. Holding the high ground with your tanks while running brawl/spam is very important. Currently playing Winston/Zarya/Hanzo/tracer/brig/ana is very viable with your core being centered around your Zarya and Hanzo providing insane amounts of damage.
Hanzo's ability to check tracer is very important in the current metagame, while Hanzo isn't a must pick tracer has a near 100% scrim pick rate and a very high competitive pick rate-making her checks increasingly important. Having a tracer check in place of a counter like McCree has its ups and downs, good Hanzo can easily deal with tracer while mediocre ones will have a harder time and just play McCree.
His ability to headshot Zarya for 75% health is a great tool to force out personal bubble allowing your team an opportunity to engage, with Zarya being a very important hero in the current metagame, in addition, your combo potential with dragon strike into a friendly Zarya graviton allows for big team wipe potential.
In this meta and more shield based metas Hanzo's ability to burst through shields with storm arrow comes to great use, currently melting a Winston bubble and in the past assisting to break through Orisa's and Sigma's barriers.
Solo carry potential
Hanzo has huge solo carry potential with high damage headshots one-shotting most of the Overwatch lineup coupled with movement that a counterpart sniper, like Widowmaker, is unable to achieve. Projectile or not Hanzo's arrows are nothing to mess around with and the sonic arrow will lead good Hanzo to get multiple picks before a fight can even begin.
Obviously in ranked where teams rarely play together a hero with one-shot ability has much more solo carry potential making Hanzo super strong in most metas on the ladder.
I may be biased as the"cheating Hanzo main" that I am but Hanzo is a great hero with a niche market that I feel has much potential in the current metagame.
