FYI: Never give up as Lucio (video).
You’re doing the shields wrong. They’re the hardest part of her kit, and probably one of the trickier mechanics in the game overall. The shields are on high cooldown and only last a couple seconds, so you have to be very precise about when you’re using them. They’re not preemptive abilities - you have to wait until you 100% know that damage is incoming and pop them at just the right moment.
You also need to remember that half of Zarya’s health will regenerate on its own, no healer required. So you can be kind of cheeky for the first half of your healthbar, THEN pop your shield when you get into the white. Zarya’s job is to bait out heavy attacks and make people waste them on her shields (both active and passive).
I’m still pretty bad with her, but I’m trying to get better because I think she’s the only character in the game, besides Reinhardt, who is capable of being a truly mainline tank.
Rooshianity#1499
I need more friends! I play well with others!
** Vote Winston **
Whoops, Wrong game! But seriously- feel free to add me in Overwatch, I actually like to play with a team of players!
That wasn’t in blue, so it doesn’t count anyway.
I found this really great Symmetra strategy guide, so I thought I’d go ahead and share it with everyone. It totally revolutionized my play style.
This is what we in the business refer to as a “dick move”. 
Competitive mode was just released.
Sent from my XT1031 using Tapatalk
Been playing for a couple of weeks (PS4). Great fun and loving it.
Mei - I’m having the greatest success with her, a great toolkit of abilities. I love laying down icicle-sniping suppression. It has nearly instant travel time, hits hard, and seems to have a generous aim allowance for hits. The freeze spray on isolated enemies (with a pop to the head) is pure joy.
Tracer - Great fun playing as a harasser element. Was worth it to watch some YouTube guides to understand her rhythm and role. Very survivable once I settle into a blink-rewind-shoot-blink-reload-blink-etc cadence.
Widowmaker - Like her but haven’t begun to get skilled yet. I suspect I’m having a disproportionately high level of fun compared to actual team effectiveness.
D.Va - I keep trying but just doesn’t click, I can’t kill a thing and just get shredded. My highest plays and kill counts have been out-of-armor with the pistol. I see other comments of using her as a Heavy Tracer and that seems like a good idea to try out.
Others I’ve fiddled with but haven’t felt the love yet.
I play D.VA as a general mischief-maker and damage sponge. Her mech gun is good for finishing off or routing squishy classes like Mercy and such, but she shouldn’t often be going toe-to-toe with other tanks or damage classes. Boost in, shoot some folks, pop up your shield to absorb their fire, boost away, heal, repeat. If the enemy team is shooting at you instead of your teammates, that’s a win. She’s incredibly mobile, so use that to your advantage.
Kill targets of opportunity when you can. If your mech blows, get as far away from the fight as possible, and snipe from general safety until your mech recharges. D.VA’s pistol does a surprising amount of damage and is very accurate. It’s great for picking at another tank from a distance. But avoid firing at Winston unless he’s at low health, since he can quickly close long distances and wreck D.VA when she’s on foot.
When your self destruct ult is ready, use it as area-denial. It’s hard to get lots of kills with it, but it’s great for scaring everyone off the point or otherwise breaking the enemy defense. It’s more effective if you pair it up with a teammate who can slow the enemy down (like Zarya or Mei’s ults).
It’s also worth pointing out that her jet boost both damages and knocks back whomever it hits. If you’re quick and clever, you can knock bad guys off walls, disrupt ult, etc.
D.Va’s mech, unlike her pistol, is only effective at shotgun range, so if you can’t kill a thing, that’s probably why.
Also, D.va doesn’t have a crit spot on her sides or back. Most people can be headshot from any angle, but D.va can only be headshot from the front. This, combined with her high health and armor, means that you only take serious damage from the person that you’re facing. You always have time to turn around and boost out of there, so do that, go grab health packs (your booster is only on a 5 sec cooldown) and boost back to disrupt them again.
Paradoxically, D.va is my best damage/eliminations character. I get Gold and Silver medals for damage and eliminations frequently.
I took much of the D.Va advice here and tried her some more, doing rather well with her in some matches. I’ve had good results in payload-escort roles where the battles are more dynamic, but fair worse in static attack or defense. I had a couple of hilarious rounds chasing Widowmakers around the map harassing them. I’ve also noticed that you can ‘nerf this’ immediately after boosting to directionally launch her ultimate while staying safe for recovery.
I played a bunch of Symmetra and, wow, what a killer on some of the defense maps. Setting up turret zones at certain choke points, combined with her teleporter, can really lock down a defense area.
Yup. I prefer Mei to D.VA for static defense. But D.VA is perfect for harassing snipers, especially Widowmaker. WRT D.VA’s ult, you can also boost on top of enemies and then ult and steer into a straight climb, to guarantee that the mech falls exactly where you want it. The higher up you are when you start the self destruct sequence, the harder it is for your opponents to determine the source.
Actually, you get most unpredictability by ulting immediately after boosting.
The ult has a 4 second startup time. Boost lasts for 2 seconds. Technically, if you boost at any upward angle, your mech will have 2 seconds of powered time (upwards) and 2 seconds of decent before hitting the ground (assuming even ground). So, if you ult immediately after boosting, your ult will go off just as the mech hits the ground.
The longer you wait during your boost to ult, the longer your mech will have landed before it goes off. You can test this by boosting straight up and ulting at your peak (after boost runs out), you will fall at the same speed as your mech and have 2 seconds to run away.
Ah, good to know, thanks!
Last night, I was awarded Play of the Game for doing 10% damage to McCree, canceling his ult.
Some other players were annoyed, but it shows that the PotG algorithm considers more than kills over time. It realized that I prevented several teammates from dying and chose me for that.
Is this the Dwarf Fortress thread? I think this might be the dwarf fortress thread. Solo queueing is hell. No, we DON’T need a second lousy Hanzo, thank you for offering though.
Major patch release. We’re getting hero limits in competitive play. I don’t wonder what caused that at all! 
The patch is only on the Public Test Realm for now. I’m very interested in the new support character, Ana. Even more interested in the D.VA tweaks. She’s my favorite tank and I like that they’re making her shield more flexible and giving her immunity to her own ult. I may have to load up the PTR build and try it out.
Not a fan of hero limit in competitive, it’s going to be real toxic.
Speaking of which, has anyone gotten their ranking yet? I did 5 placement matches and got tired of competitive, and I’m back to quickplay. I’m really curious about my rank though, I assume it’ll be in the 40s from what I saw of my teammates and opponents.