Why Should You Warm Up?

Warming up before playing ranked is a simple to ensure your session starts off strong. Practicing as little as ten minutes before queueing can give you a major boost in aim, awareness, and reaction speed. All three of these are vital when playing competitively, so you should try adding a warm up to your daily routine. Overwatch has a wide variety of heroes, each with unique playstyles, so in this guide I'll present you several different warm ups you can do for each of the main three aiming styles.

Single Shot Hitscan

The heroes that fall into this category are McCree, Widowmaker, Roadhog and Reaper. The thing that separates them from other heroes is that they shoot one bullet at a time that instantly hits it's target. Since bullet travel time isn't an issue, these heroes usually incorporate more 'flick shots'. This is when you flick your shots rather than following the enemy with your crosshair. Here's some different ways to practice this.

· Custom Game ( versus Ana Bots): Create a custom game and fill the enemy team with six Ana bots set to 'Hard' difficulty. Go inside the game settings and change the mode to 'Skirmish" and enable 'Headshots Only'. Ana can't headshot, so this will provide you a safe space to practice landing your flicks. You can choose between any of the heroes in this category, but I recommend using McCree. He's a pretty basic hitscan hero, so warming up with him will translate to the rest of them. You want to be prepared to fight some real opponents, so try switching up your angles/range after every few kills. I also recommend both swapping back and forth between targets, and moving while shooting. You can be as fancy with this as you want, and it'll depend on your preferred hero. You can grappling midair with Widow and trying to land shots, or killing three enemies with a single clip as Reaper. Playing versus Ana bots is a great platform, and you can use it however you please.

· Custom Game ( versus Lucio Bots): This is similar to fighting Ana's, but this time you'll select all Lucio's, and keep 'Headshots Only' disabled. Ana is fantastic for practicing your headshots, but you need to warm up your regular bodyshots too. Lucio is the best choice for this, because his passive speed boost can make him a pesky target to hit. Just like when your playing versus the Ana's, you'll want to constantly be switching up the situation by varying your angle/range to the target. Since headshots only is no longer enabled, you can also use the rest of your abilities versus the bots. This means you practice McCree Flashbang combos, or some fancy Roadhog hooks.

· Practice Range: The practice range is the original way to warm up, and it's stood the test of time. You can play and do whatever you want, but to maximize your warm up I suggest doing the drills presented in this video made by Overwatchdojo. They cover eight drills that you can do over ten minutes to warm up every aspect of your aim. This one is aimed towards McCree, but will help with your other heroes as well. The practice range is a massive sandbox, so you can ever develop your own drills if you so choose.

Projectile

Projectile based heroes have travel time on their bullets. This category includes Pharah, Junkrat, Hanzo, Zenyatta, Lucio, Torbjorn, Genji, Mercy, Mei, Ana and D.Va (out of suit). Rather than relying on pure precision, performing on these heroes is dependant on knowing the travel time of their projectiles. This varies from hero to hero, so you'll have to warm up on the specific one you feel like playing. Here's some warm ups that'll help with this.

· Custom Game (Lucio Bots): Since Pharah and Junkrat can't headshot, and the other heroes will struggle to land them, I recommend playing against Lucio rather than Ana. Projectiles are purely based on feel, so you need to warm up until you perfect the timing. This timing is highly affected by range, so you'll want to be constantly changing it to see whether that's something you're having a problem with. Most of these heroes also prefer taking the high ground, so you should get some high ground to practice your vertical aim.

· Quick Play: The practice range doesn't really suit projectile heroes, so go on and queue some good ol' quick play. Quick Play isn't always the best thing in the world, but at least you're facing your some real players. Since projectiles rely on you knowing timing and predicting movement, this is one of the best environments to iron out any issues you might have before queueing ranked. Obviously your situation will vary depending on the map you're playing, and the skill of your opponents, but try to do everything you'd do in an actual competitive game. This means both flicking and tracking shots, firing from multiple ranges, and comboing ultimates as best as possible.

Tracking

Tracking heroes consist of Soldier 76, Tracer, Sombra, Bastion, D.va, and Zarya (her beam). Rather than leading or flicking their shots, these heroes tend to constantly follow the enemy with their crosshair. This is because their damage comes in the form of multiple small hits, rather than a single big one. Warming up on tracking heroes is pretty easy, because the aiming style is nothing fancy.

· Custom Game (Lucio Bots): Just like the previous custom games with Lucio bots, except this time you should play as either Soldier or Tracer. Switch between both spamming your shots at opponents, and shooting small burst fires from far range. Besides that there's nothing super specific that you need to be looking out for on these heroes. Just do this until you feel confident that you can track enemies even when they might make the slightest movements.

· Custom Game (Ana Bots): While it might be easy to land bodyshots, your highest damage potential comes from headshots. Since the hitbox of a head is much smaller than that of the body, consistently landing these shots requires a lot more precise. You don't have that kind of precision right when you hop on the game, so doing this for ten to fifteen minutes before queueing can prove majorly useful.

· Practice Range: Overwatchdojo also made a video containing eight drills you can do as Tracer. Just like the McCree video, this contains drills that focus on each individual part of your aim. They recommend doing this for a minimum of ten minutes a day, but you can play around with this as much as you want. If anything treat this as a baseline, and modify it until you find a warm up that's perfect for you. 

Winston/Reinhardt/Symmetra

These three are the outliers of the group because they attack in unique ways. While you can practice hitting targets with Reinhardt's Fire Strike and Symmetra's Energy Ball, their kits don't mesh well with any form of warm up rather than quick play. This is due to the fact that they are less focused on aiming, and more on knowing when to aggress/fall back. That being said these heroes do still require a certain amount of mechanical skill, so warming up in quick play is something that you should be doing.

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