The OverThinker: How To Eat Ultimates as D.Va

Hey everyone, welcome back to The OverThinker, where we dive deep into topics concerning the core game of Overwatch. It's been a while since my last upload in this series, but I'm back with something unique and hopefully useful! In this post, I'll be sharing my insights into eating ultimates as D.Va, which is something I've gotten fairly good at in recent times.

Currently, D.Va is my most-played hero; I've got around 200 hours on her on ladder, and have learnt how to use her kit in various situations on all kinds of maps. She's a very powerful hero by design and utility, but is also very easy to play incorrectly. Unlike Roadhog, Zarya, and even Sigma, D.Va's offensive tools are the least impressive parts of her kit. She's an 'off-tank' in the true sense of the term, and playing her requires a unique approach and mindset that you can't use with any other of Overwatch's 32 characters.

When you play D.Va, you're supposed to be the primary source of peel for your team, and need to have a good read on your opponents' positioning, ability usage, and ultimates, since it helps you decide where to position yourself, how aggressive to be, and most importantly, when and where to use your Matrix. Defence Matrix is one of the strongest abilities in the game, since you can use it to disrupt your opponents, eat critical cooldowns, and also nullify certain ultimates.

The ultimates I'm going to talk about in this post are all one-time casts, and specifically those which produce an icon in the kill feed whenever you eat them. These are:

1. Hanzo's Dragonstrike, the arrow of which you can eat before the twin dragons appear;
2. Mei's Blizzard, which you can eat before Snowball comes to a halt and starts freezing its surroundings;
3. Tracer's Pulse Bomb, which you can eat before it sticks to you, a teammate, or a surface, and
4. Zarya's Graviton Surge, which you can eat before it hits you, a teammate, or a surface.

Although these are just 4 ultimates out of 32, they are quite powerful, and if you manage to eat them, you can ruin the enemy team's plans, combos, as well as ult economy, all of which would be worth the effort.

To be able to eat an ultimate, you need to read your opponents and figure out when and where they're going to ult, and even though it's not an easy task, I've got a few tips to help you out.

Eating an ultimate is a super-high-value play most of the time

There are 4 primary ways in which players tend to use the ultimates listed above, so use the following information to help yourself predict their use:

1. Ultimate Combos 

Ult Combos have been the bread-and-butter of Overwatch tactics since the very beginning. They're generally low-risk and high-reward, which makes them great tools to use for easy fight wins. The simple and predictable nature of these combos also makes them fairly easy to anticipate with semi-decent ult tracking, which is a skill every Overwatch player must have and improve upon.

As D.Va, you need to put yourself in the enemy team's shoes and think about what their ideal situation would be to use their ult combos.

For instance, if the enemy team has a Zarya and a Hanzo, you know they're likely to use a Grav-Dragon combo at some point, and it would be ideal for them to use it when your team is clumped up. With this information, Matrix the Zarya as soon as your team groups up near her, in order to either force her to hold on to the Grav, or make a mistake and get her ult eaten. If you eat the Grav, that's great! If you don't, try and eat the follow-up Dragonstrike instead!

Simply put, read into the enemy team's ult economy and know when to expect an ult combo to be used on your team. It sounds quite generic, but trust me, keeping this in mind is good enough to start practising your ult-eating skills.

Here's one occasion where I anticipated the enemy team's Grav-Blade combo, and baited the Grav with the help of my team.

Some ults are often used in unison with one-another, which makes them predictable

2. Final Fight Yeets

In ranked, it's not uncommon to see players press Q when the round is about to end, either to clean up in the final fight, to try and make a clutch play, or to celebrate an obvious victory. If the enemy team is in one of the first two situations, and you think that an enemy Zarya, Mei or Hanzo has their ult, you can all but expect they'll throw them out at the first chance they get. What I try to do in these situations as D.Va is take up an off-angle close to the ult-holder and cover them with my Matrix. Your target will most likely be focused on the objective at that point, and might not expect your Matrix to cancel their ultimate, so they'll yeet it out, and you'll deny them any value.

With Tracer it can be a little trickier since she's a very mobile character, so your best bet is to keep a close eye on her, and anticipate where and when she's going to use her Pulse Bomb. She has to be pretty close to her target to do so, so if she blinks towards you or a teammate, cover her with your Matrix and hope she throws her Bomb into it.

Here's a clip of me anticipating a Pulse Bomb yeet during the final moments of the match, and successfully denying it.

3. Counter-Plays

There are times when the enemy team uses their ultimates in retaliation to your own in order to minimise the value you get from them. Classic examples of this are Defensive Ultimates i.e. Transcendence and Sound Barrier, but there are also times when you can counter one offensive ultimate with another. For instance, you can use Junkrat's RIP-tire to one-shot a blading Genji, or land a fat 'Counter-Shatter' as Reinhardt. As D.Va, there are times when you can use these expected reactions to your advantage. You'll just need to predict what reactions your team's ultimates might invite, and use your Matrix accordingly. For example, if you're in a match with a Genji on your team and a Zarya on the other, you can wait for your Genji to pull out his blade, and then Matrix the enemy Zarya in case she uses her Grav to trap him. This reaction is even easier to anticipate if the enemy team doesn't have a defensive ult to counter the blade. On another occasion, your Rein might land a fat Shatter and the enemy Mei might use Blizzard to zone your team out, unless you eat it of course!

At every chance you get, think about how the enemy team will react to your ultimates and try and do something about it; this will really help sharpen your gamesense and awareness, which is always a good thing.

Since I spoke about eating a Grav onto a blading Genji, here's a clip of me actually doing it.

Off-angle eat attempts are usually and obviously more successful than head-on ones

4. Desperation/Panic Ults

In Overwatch, you may sometimes find yourself in a great position to win, right before the enemy team makes an unexpected/clutch play, which completely throws off your game plan and causes you to panic. A common side-effect of this is using your ultimate quickly and without thinking, out of sheer desperation; a mistake we D.Va players can easily exploit.

Panic ults aren't difficult to anticipate, since it's pretty obvious when someone makes a high-impact play. It could be something as basic as winning a Widow duel in the final fight, or something more spectacular like getting a 4-man EMP. Regardless of what it is, if you sense that the enemy team is backed into a corner all of a sudden, get that Matrix out and envelop whomever you think is going to use an edible ultimate.

Here's a clip of me eating a panic Grav after our team got a sudden first pick and started pressing our advantage.

Now, remember that all the tips I've shared above are situational and only involve preemptive Matrix usage. Reacting to ults after they've been thrown out is a different ballgame altogether, and fast reflexes are the only solution to that.

In conclusion, eating ultimates is one of the highest-skill plays you can make as D.Va, but being able to do so regularly and confidently requires a ton of practice and focus. Hopefully, D.Va enthusiasts can use the tips I've provided as a starting point to achieve a good level of proficiency in that regard, and hone their gamesense and awareness in the process.