Take Down Supports First
Supports are a fundamental part of any team on any game mode. Providing boosts or a source of health regeneration for the rest of the team, these characters make up for their lack of offensive power with the ability to keep the rest of their team in the game. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that as soon as you spot a Support character boosting the stats of its team members that you make them your first priority. Unloading clip after clip of ammo at a Tank Hero is going to get you nowhere if there’s a Support stood nearby healing them the whole time. In fact, it’s a sure-fire way to draw attention to yourself and wind up dead.
Your first priority when you’re joining a fray should be to take down the Support characters. With these out of the way, the rest of the team should fall much faster and allow you to either start advancing or pushing back the Payload.
Change Your Hero to Adapt to the Situation
While everyone is going to have a Hero that they main, learn to change who you’re playing as to adapt to the situation at hand. If your team is defending and the opponent is just about to finish off the match, throw in a Support or Offensive character to dish out the pain and give one last push. If you notice a bunch of vantage points that’d be perfect for picking off your opponent, change to a Hero with a long-range weapon. Of course, this shouldn’t be the only thing that decides what Hero you’re choosing.
You should also be taking into account the dynamic of your team. Are you all leaning toward Offensive or Tank characters? Choose a Support to give them a bit of additional help. You’ll also want to take into account the Heroes that the opposing team has chosen. Each Hero has their weaknesses and a Hero that can counter them. Use this knowledge to your advantage and never remain static with your character of choice.
Work as a Team
It’s easy to just think about yourself in the heat of the action. Bullets and projectiles are flying around, Ultimates are being executed left, right, and center, and the Payload is edging its way forward. However, the best way to either push it forward faster, or stop it dead in its tracks is to start communicating and work as a team. Use the abilities that each member of your team has as part of a combo and you’ll find that you’ll not only start raking in the kills much faster, but the opponent will struggle to get a foot-hold on the objective.
Just as we previously mentioned, always remember to choose your Hero to compliment the selections of your teammates. Don’t all go and pick snipers or Tank characters; you’re only leaving yourselves vulnerable to a quick and easy counterattack.
Push at the Right Times
When you’ve just been taken down in a round of Escort, you’ll often find yourself rushing back to the Payload to either continue to push it forward or force it back if you’re defending. However, take a moment once you’ve respawned to group up with at least one other member of your team. Rushing right back into the action may seem like the best thing to do, and sometimes it is if you’re getting dangerously close to losing the match, but more often than not, you’re just setting yourself up to be swarmed by enemies.
Instead, take a moment to either check out who’s waiting to respawn on both sides (if the opposing team has few players alive then a quick attack may be the best option), and move forward with the company of a teammate. Two guns are far more deadly than one, and a Support’s abilities won’t go a miss either.
Don’t Forget It’s Objective-Based
Just like all of the game modes in Overwatch, Escort is objective-based. So while it’s easy to get caught up just running around the map and unleashing hell on every enemy you come across, this may not necessarily be what’s going to help win it for your team. Use your offensive skills and apply them to either escorting or defending the Payload. It’s a simple tip, but it’s one that many players will find themselves forgetting.
Don’t be that guy who goes off to the other side of the map in search of that one enemy who keeps taking them down. Keep focused on the objective and take pleasure knowing that your team emerged victorious, rather than the fact that you got the most kills.
Symmetra’s Teleport
Symmetra’s Teleport is devastatingly effective in Overwatch, particularly in Escort. In fact, it can be the difference between winning and losing a match when you’re defending. Symmetra places an exit pad at her current location and an entry pad at your team’s spawn point. This can be used by the whole team to quickly get right back into the battle when you’ve just respawned, rather than slowly making your way half-way across the map and wasting valuable time.
If your team is struggling to get back into the action fast enough to counter your opponents efforts, choosing Symmetra as your Hero and trying to use her Ultimate is a great way to speed up proceedings. It’s also a great way to ensure that your team can join the action as a team, rather than individually, which will help you push or defend the Payload more effectively.
Pushing the Payload Either Way
Overwatch’s Escort is all about the attacking team pushing the Payload forward to the final checkpoint, and the defending team trying to stop them in their tracks. This basically means that the mode is essentially a reverse tug of war, with each team trying to push the Payload forward. However, what you may not know about Escort is the fact that the more members of your team that surrounds the Payload, the faster it will move for the offensive team. On the other hand, if you’re defending, you can actually push the Payload back, albeit very slowly. It requires a lot of your team members to be around and very few, if none at all, of the other team to be nearby. It may not seem like a lot, but a few meters back can be the difference between winning and losing.
Therefore, whenever you can you’ll want to make sure that as much of your team as possible are surrounding the Payload. Although, you’ll need to make sure that it’s safe to do so, and nobody is about to devastate you with an AoE attack any time soon.
Turrets On Payload
Finally, you’ll want to make use of turrets in Escort. While these stationery weapons are pretty effective in most of Overwatch’s game modes, they can be particularly handy if you place them on top of the Payload in Escort. Only a few of Overwatch’s Heroes actually have the ability to drop turrets, however, so you’ll need to make sure you pick one of the characters that can. Torbjorn has upgradeable turrets, Symmetra has speed-reducing turrets, and Bastion is essentially a giant turret itself. If you can place any of these (or yourself in the case of Bastion) on top of the Payload, then you’ll be able to stop your opponents from being able to successfully push the Payload forward or back, depending which team you’re on.
And that’s all of our tips for Overwatch’s Escort game mode. For more tips, tricks, and guides, be sure to check out our Overwatch wiki.
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