Most of the tanks in Overwatch have clearly defined roles. Reinhardt is the frontline shield, Winston is the backline harasser and master of objective control, Roadhog is the ganker, and D.Va is a hybrid backline harasser and frontline shield (although in fairness she is fairly weak at both roles right now). Zarya is much more difficult to define. She can situationally do large amounts of damage, has an ultimate designed for comboing, and can use barriers to protect allies from damage. The closest definition of her role in a team would be bruiser, but with unique mechanics to give her the damage potential necessary to strongly affect a team fight.

Basics

Starting off with the basics, Zarya has a 400 HP pool which is the lowest of any of the tanks. 200 of this is shields, which heals itself after 3 seconds of not taking damage. This allows Zarya to be fairly self sufficient by not requiring constant healing and allows the supports to focus on other teammates. Any healing effects go to your normal health first, so the shields are never a hindrance and only an advantage. It is also good to know that shields get the armor effect from Torbjorn armor packs, but still get damaged first allowing excellent synergy between the two heroes by essentially giving Zarya 200 regenerating armor before getting to the pack's HP.

Junkrats HATE her! Counter ultimates with this one simple trick!

Abilities

Usually I start with the primary and alternate fire for the weapons, but I feel as though Zarya's passive and two abilities are the most important to start out with due to their effect on her gun. These mechanics are kind of strange, and I feel as though they are still not widely understood even though they are essential to being effective with Zarya. Her passive Energy charges whenever the barriers from her abilities are damaged. These barriers are two different abilities with very similar mechanics. Particle Barrier puts a 200 HP barrier on yourself that lasts 2 seconds with a 10 seconds cooldown, while Projected Barrier puts a 200 HP barrier on an ally that lasts 2 seconds with an 8 second cooldown. These barriers prevent stuns and freezes and absorb any damage instance while they are active, so overflow damage from a RIP-tire or a D.Va ultimate will entirely get absorbed. These barriers also increase the hit box size of whoever has it applied, so they can be used to take hits that normally would pass by and hit allies. Damage prevented by the barriers do not charge her ultimate. For every 5 damage absorbed Zarya gets 3 energy on her passive, with a maximum possible of 50 energy per barrier and up to a total maximum of 100 energy. This energy decays at a rate of 2 per second regardless of how much you fire your weapon. This energy increases the damage you do with both your primary and alternate fire, so getting a high energy is essential to success as Zarya. To sum this up Zarya wants to get her barriers damaged, so when playing against an enemy Zarya you want to avoid damaging them as much as possible.

Zarya's gun gets more powerful based on her current energy level. Her primary fire shoots out a beam limited to 15 meters in range (for a good idea of how far this is, go into the practice range and fire at some of the bots while walking in and out). This beam does 95 damage per second at zero energy up to 190 damage per second at 100 energy, and can fire for a total of 5 seconds before reloading (20 rounds per second with a clip of 100). The hit box on the weapon also increases, although exact numbers are much more difficult to determine. This beam does not deal precision damage, so aim for the center of mass rather than heads with this weapon. Another strange part about her primary fire is that it comes from her right side rather than from the center of her character. This means that at short range her beam shoots to the right of the reticle, meaning you need to aim slightly to the left at very close range targets. (The damage numbers you find at various sources online are different than these. I derived mine by testing against target bots and recording the amount of ammo to kill at minimum and maximum charge. It took me 43 rounds and 22 rounds respectively, which checks out to 4.75-9.5 damage per round based on energy level with a rate of fire of 20 rounds per second.)

Her alternate fire shoots out a longer range grenade that deals 47 damage at zero energy up to 95 damage at maximum energy and uses 25 of her 100 rounds, and she can fire one when at less than 25 ammo. The area of effect on the grenades increases as her energy increases as well. This can be used to rocket jump, but her mobility is still very limited. These fire at a rate of once per second, so the DPS is much lower on her alternate fire than her primary fire, but against grouped enemies it can do more total damage.

The uses of these weapons are usually pretty defined, with the primary fire being single target short range damage and the alternate being for groups or for harass damage during longer range combat. It is sometimes better to change from this, for example when you are at high energy it can be tempting to fire grenades during team fights to try and maximize damage when it is more efficient to use primary fire and melt the lower HP heroes to take them out of the fight faster individually especially if the target is a Lucio or Mercy. Deciding which weapon is right for the job is fairly situational and with practice it will become clearer which to use when.

Finally her ultimate Graviton Surge, which deals a small 22 damage over 4 seconds and pulls enemies into the center of it. This fires exactly like the grenade, and does not activate until it hits terrain, or an enemy. Many times it is better to fire it at the ground where you want enemies grouped rather than try to hit them directly, as a miss can cause it to have no effect and disperse harmlessly behind the entire enemy team. Enemies can still take actions during the ultimate, such as Reinhardt putting up his shield to negate some of the damage your team putting out. Mercy can fly to an ally during it to escape and Reaper can Wraith Form out of it. Also know that D.Va can shoot it down before it even activates with her Defense Matrix and even worse Genji can deflect it and use it against you. A popular use for this is comboing with other ultimates such as a Dragonstrike or a Barrage, which is highly effective. However, it is sometimes better to use it simply when you are at high energy and can pick off two or three enemies, especially if one of those enemies is the support or a particularly dangerous foe. Graviton Surge is fairly slow to charge, so making the most of its uses is crucial to maximizing Zarya's effectiveness.

Sometimes Graviton Surge is just what you needed to win

Conclusion

Zarya fulfills a unique role best used as a secondary tank adding DPS, damage protection, and easier team wipe potential. Zarya acts as a bully to the enemy team, and with effective use of her barriers she can increase both her allies staying power as well as her damage. Zarya is best used on attack, especially against a more disorganized team that is prone to shooting her barriers such as will be seen in solo queue scenarios. On payload attack in particular, the health regeneration from the payload along with her shields gives her even stronger staying power allowing the support to focus on others. On defense she can be strong as well, but the barriers are usually less effective in those situations. If she can maintain high energy, Zarya can dominate a game by being both difficult to kill and having incredible damage potential.

Get your own AKRacing Chair here and support our players, all profit goes towards the teams!