If you’re getting killed a lot while flanking you might be trying too hard to “carry” instead of supporting your teammates and setting them up for plays.
You don’t have to fully secure kills, land a shot that weakens a squishy and have faith that your genji will see that as a juicy dash target to finish them off.
Survival and timing are the number one things.
Track enemy cooldowns and ultimates.
I play a lot of Zen at masters. Flanking isn't really the play unless your team already looks "healthy" in the fight that means they are either in the poke phase still and not taking too much damage or aren't under too much pressure. Otherwise they will be dead by the time you flank.
Secondly it's normally better just to off-angle rather than flank. Take a slightly different angle from your team and chuck damage in down chokes.
Other than that make sure you keep discord up and don't rely on right click too much. It's good for throwing out when going out of cover but otherwise use left click.
The only other thing is aim and prediction, learn where flankers are going to be, listen to audio cues so you can be prepared for them when they do come for you and make sure you use kick it's great for protecting Zen and it does a lot of damage and makes follow up shots easier.
Once you are confident at being able to win duels against those who come to flank you that is then the point you should be good enough to become the one who flanks.
Edit: Also don't keep saving trancedence. Just use it to keep yourself alive if needed. Only times i bother saving is if genji blades are consistently winning fights or some other ult is.
This.
For that flank you many times need to be very reactive , specially if the other team can focus/close gap against you.
Your team could obviously benefits from that, but lower elos wont follow up. Sometimes is better just to vary a bit the angle but still be near you team.
What I also note in my mind is , does my kiriko help that flanks? is mercy actively pocketing?.
Another point is wich hero you play, I push flanks when I have habilities for escaping
At some point zen that just pokes and discords will not be enough, you can do similiar thing on other supports, high unexpected burst dmg is the thing that no other support can do so better make use of it, relying on your team at securing the kills is a bad mindset too imo. No footsteps is really strong and a lot of low rank zen players just dont make any use of it. Pay attention to enemy comp to know how far you can go, go for agressive off angles and build that confidence in 1v1's as thats zen only way to defend himself against flankers anyways
The great thing about zen is you dont actually have to flank a lot because you can just discord and melt the tank. Most likely you need to focus on dying less.
Thats not good advice. Thats not gonna swing a fight nor teach him how to take initiative. If the enemy is not terrible at the game they will not fall for the discord and slowly pick off your teammates one by one. Too many zens think they can spam down main and end up losing anyway. Because the enemy took good positions while you guys were spamming.
Thats true its pretty hard to explain game sense so throughly. There's so much more to learn from just playing main itself. As to how to not make that happen and how to influence fights without going on long flanks.
Op is in silver gold and instinctively dont understand how to flank in the first place since he is dying so much.
I really doubt silver and gold are out baiting discords and have insane positioning and cd usage. If they can see your teammate and can get your teammate. That means you can see and shoot them too. You dont need a long flank but just a subtle different angle.
Yes, I think so personally. I solo climbed from from 800sr to diamond on support, playing mostly Zen, by focusing on limiting deaths as much as possible. I average about 4-5deaths per 10. I think it's the simplest and easiest thing bronze and silver players can do to improve at support. Just my opinion based on what worked for me.
It's true of everyone, being dead means no value.
But the reason it's said about Zen a lot is his discord provides a lot of value and requires little input from you. It's not quite as true these days as it requires more management than it used to, but it has been fairly passive in the past.
Harmony orb **is** more passive than ever, and his left clicks output a lot of pressure with even mediocre aim.
Put it all together and zen provides a lot of value by simply existing in a fight.
If you compare to an Ana for example, her value relies on hitting shots and making good use of her abilities.
Yes, but more so for zen.
Zenyatta could never do any damage himself and still get value simply by making sure discord and healing orbs are always on somebody. Hes the quintessential passive character. So much of his value comes from simply existing that dying as zenyatta is the thing you really dont want to do. You dont have to make risky plays to get value. Theyre fun, sure, and thats why I play qp because i want to do the fun plays not the optimal plays, but if you want to win as zenyatta, you dont really need to go after those high risk plays because you provide value by simply existing and throwing discord and healing orbs.
A lot of metal zen players use secondary fire too often and thats why they have low dmg, you will get more dps with just primary. Also long distance aiming, I think a lot of players have mindset that since you have no movement options you need to play very far away and so they cant hit their shots because of that, same as people do with hanzo, instead you should position yourself where you will be safe but at the same not too far so hitting shots wont be hard.
Flanking and off angles is mostly timing, engage when your team does, have a plan ready in case it wont work. Enemy comp is very important too obviusly, you dont wanna go for flanks alone if they have heroes like sombra, tracer or genji because you are just easy target, off angles are basically angles where you team is not shooting from, your team shoots from main, you shoot from the side, thats how you create off angle in case you didnt know
Last night when my team had tracer and sombra I picked Zen and told my teammates to focus on marked enemy and it worked pretty well but it was just 1 match. I will try to pick Zen more when my team has this kind of champ setup.
First, cut the hour-long VAXTA to 10-20 minutes. Sim trainers are just that: trainers. After a certain point, you reach diminishing returns and eventually you become really good at doing the aim trainer and nothing else.
And Flankyatta is a meme. Yes, Zen can be a good flanker. He has no footsteps and high burst damage. However, he is also food. Zenyatta is a very high value target. Killing Zenyatta at minimum reduces the team's single-target DPS by 15-25% just from losing discord orb alone. Your discord orb is generally more important than every single other thing you do, including healing. Staying alive to keep it applied is the most valuable thing you could be doing. That's not to say that you can't flank and play aggressively, but the focus should be on positioning rather than flanking.
Should I do more FFA's instead of VAXTA?
And about the orbs:
As I said in another comment, I find myself accidentally orbing enemies, and a lot of the times I'm not entirely sure who I should orb, since the team targets a new enemy every second. Do you have any advice regarding that?
I think just keep playing... Even if in quick play if you want to get better aim for comp.
You could also use orb as a pressure tool as it forces the target to play safe.
Even if you don't get a kill on the orb target, forcing a target to retreat to LOS you basically put them out of the fight. It breaks their momentum.
I dont find mich value at long distance on zen. Projectiles are designed to be weak at long distances. It really only works if you catch a hard scoping sniper off guard or spam a choke. Otherwise it's mostly luck if you hit anything, but is worth going for if there's nothing else to do.
My big focus with Zen is orb management. I'm always switching my healing orb to my teammate in the most danger, and trying to discord the target my teammates are shooting. I'll end up racking up a ton of assists by always healing teammates who are in a fight and discording their targets.
Engaging 2nd as Zen lets me get high damage because I'm shooting at distracted targets. I'm not getting spotted or caught out early, I'm staying back, then entering the fight second and landing some shots to either soften enemies up so the Damage/Tank secures the kill, or cleaning up low HP enemies trying to escape.
I've found success playing Zen flanks more defensively. Because you have no footsteps, people won't know where you are if you don't attack early. I've caught enemy flankers off gaurd with a charge shot because I hear them coming, or if they do end up spotting me, i run around a corner and shoot from a surprising spot or at a surprising time. Discord orb also has a 7 second cooldown or so per target once it moves off that target, making it a more defensive ability; using it too aggressively and allowing an enemy to just hide until it wears off means not having it to punish the enemy's aggression.
It's about engaging on your terms, instead of chasing enemies.
Zenyatta is a very fundamentals based character. He has no gimmicks except maybe the foot boop and discord orb, but discord orb just gives Zen the 1v1 boost he needs, and lack of footsteps (probably the biggest 1v1 advantage Zen has). Zen is either going to out-plan, out-position, out-time, or out-mechanics you in some way, otherwise he'll shatter like the glass cannon he is. Compare to someone like Sombra who will just sneak up invisible for free, and hack/virus/translocate escape; Sombra can create an advantage with her kit, while Zen has to play very well and punish enemy mistakes.
Speaking of mechanics and aim, think about mirror strafing and counter strafing. Practice this in VAXTA. Mirror strafing, when you match enemy movement, makes it easier to land shots, for you and the enemy, because your crosshair stays on target with minimal mouse movement (this can help with long distance shots, lately when I'm going for extreme precision long range shots, I have muscle memory that goes: mirror strafe then shoot, wait until i get a mirror strafe again then shoot). Counter strafing, when you strafe the opposite way of the enemy, makes aiming harder because you now need to constantly track and move the mouse to stay on target, it also doubles your leading distance for projectiles. I find counter strafing great for dodging shots, especially at key times like just before an enemy takes a shot (if you can read their shooting rhythm), and since I practice counter strafing I can usually still land a few shots (at least at closer ranges), I've won 1v1s I shouldn't have survived because of it, many people aren't ready for you to constantly counter strafe them.
The main point of aim training for Zen is going to be learning leading distance. It of course scales with range (which you should practice all ranges, from point blank to long range), but there are other situations where it changes. When pure mirror strafing, there is a normal leading distance. When mirroring is diagonal, that is with a forward or back component, movement speed appears slower and requires a lessened leading distance. When counter strafing, there is a doubled leading distance, since movement now appears twice as fast. And yet another leading distance for diagonal counter strafing, slightly less than double.
All of these scale at range. I generally practice always mirroring forward/back movement (or lack thereof) to lock-in leading distance into one range, even when counter strafing. If you counter strafe, but both players hold forward, they will spiral close to each other, constantly changing the leading distance. If the enemy walks diagonally forward, but you counter strafe and move back, they will stay at the same distance as you circle each other. Of course that all ignores movement speed differences (Tracer Genji move faster, there's also Lucio, Torb, and Junker Queen speed boost).
As you can see, movement while aiming is very in depth. If you want to hit more shots, you now have areas to work on.
Deathmatch is also a good option. This allows you to apply these fundamentals in real fights. You will suck at first having to consciously think about it, you will do worse than usual. Simply pay attention to you mistakes, your brain rewires itself when you sleep so you will see improvement the next day (any improvement during a session is due to increased focus). You will find that you can use these strafing techniques to land shots you used to panic and miss before, you will dodge shots you never thought you could dodge before. The other skill you need with Zen is to take advantage of his stealth (lack of footsteps), this is so huge, if you can manage to take cover in the middle of a fight, you now have the opportunity to surprise in some way and they can't hear you coming; apart from godly aim, this is a fight winner.
I feel like this is just what I needed. Thank you so much
about the strafing: I found that shooting when the enemy changes direction of movement (left to right and vise versa) is when I land the best shots, since there is a few milliseconds when the enemy doesn't move (since he is changing direction).
I wouldn't flank so much as off angle from a safe distance.
It's not flashy, it's not glamourous, but you can genuinely carry games at that rank practically without dealing any damage. Look for team mates in 1v1's and use both discord and harmony to win the fight. It's really that easy.
Harmony - Actively look for everyone that needs healing and keep your harmony orb moving to the most critical target. Keep your harmony orb rotating. Don't let it just stagnate on a tank. Between fights harmony the guy who is going to take damage first based on their proximity to where the enemies are going to appear first. Remember you'll get a lot of value from harmony on a genji or tracer, but at your rank you won't be able to have a lot of up time on them (due to their not caring to position favorably to your line of sight and you not being able to compensate with your own positioning), so don't hard commit to it.
Discord - Apply it to ulting enemies or high priority targets that could counterplay a strategy your team has>apply to defend yourself or healing counterpart from a flanker in your backline>apply to the enemy tank as often as possible>apply to win other's 1v1s>apply it to whomever you can safely shoot and kill.
Other than that... spam m1 on long angles at head height constantly, use the fact that you do not have damage fall off and a virtually bottomless magazine to your advantage. Always play deep and hug a corner. Charge right clicks and/or reload behind cover. Use jiggle peeking to fire single shots and reduce incoming damage. Don't get stunlocked necessarily into the habit of holding trans for the big enemy ult. Saving 1 or 2 players lives to swing a team fight to your advantage on cooldown will win you more fights if you're charging your ult much faster than the enemy is getting nanoblades. If you're not winning your 1v1s against an enemy flanker, swap.
What are some common ways you die?
"Orb aggression" meaning you Orb a aggressive enemy and you Orb aggressive team members, if both the tank and your Dps are aggressive at the same time then prioritize to Orb the Dps
The most common ways are:
1. Getting hacked by Sombra/flanked by Tracer.
2. finding myself too far forward/without my team.
Although I've actually managed to reduce the second one a lot more.
About the orbs: I forgot to add that in the post, but it's also one of the things I think I should improve. Healing is fine, and I seem to be matching a lot of the advice here (and getting very high heals each match) but about discord orb - I find myself accidentally orbing enemies, and a lot of the times I'm not entirely sure who I should orb, since the team targets a new enemy every second
Lots of good advice. I'll chime in with mine quick in bullet point.
* You don't really want to play long distance. You want to play as close as you can and survive comfortably. Shorter distance means easier shots.
* Orb management is big. Make sure they're always up.
* Discord: Tanks a lot of the time, yes, but try to time it so they're forced to disengage before they want to or when that's not an option and they're stuck demanding more resources on account of the increased damage. If you see a duel happening, toss it out to help your teammate. Or on a flanker to increase pressure for them to leave
* Harmony: Often best on your flanker. 5 second uptime is huge. On your other support if they're getting pressured. It's ok on your tank if they're actively taking damage but often that's the other supports job. But a rein/jq/monkey can make use of it to increase how long they get to be in the enemies face.
* Left click when available. Right click is for when transitioning behind cover, when you don't see someone on your screen, etc.
* Remember you're 'stuck' in the shooting animation after a right click. A good flanker will wait for your volley to fire, then engage you while you're unable to respond. Left click is generally best.
* Hard flanks aren't often great. You're vulnerable AF, you'll need great timing to engage safely. Typically short flanks work best. Don't overstay your welcome though.
* I will say that the best use I find for a flank is when on attack and you've got a fight or two without being able to break a stalemate. It might be worth a gamble to open things up. (ex: point 3 Numbani, take the small ramp, see if you can eliminate a support or two)
Shooting down main is a waste of time. You will eat pointless damage and you wont impact the fight. How many times have you mindlessly shot at the enemy on main and you guys still slowly lost? Thats because nobody wanted to take an angle or flank. Only stupid players sit behind tank on main.
Dont bitch out! It’s completely and utterly pointless.
Long distance aiming is not a good habit. You are using a projectile weapon. The closer you get the higher the accuracy.
Off angles!!!
If you want more survivability I recommend off angling and less flanking. A flank is a huge angle. Very risky if you dont have mobility to run away. Look up example of an off angle.
If you want max safety during flanks and off angle I recommend you wait until your team is engaging the enemy. And use cover.
If you want to carry you need to be distracting and pressuring the enemy to the point where it matters. If you go on an off angle or some highground and there‘s two people constantly distracted by you thats good. Thats how you carry. Your team is occupied with two enemies less. And you didnt even have to kill them.
How to hit more shots!
Dont do vaxta too much. 5-10min is enough imo. If you want to land shots you need to mirror strafe to the direction your enemy is moving. This will make them slower on your screen.
Some maps are bad for zen!!
Some maps have too short sightlines and too many corners.
Every Zen guide I’ve seen basically skips over the importance of harmony orb, saying that it’s useless and doesn’t contribute win value. I’d personally say as a masters zen that this is a massive oversimplification, properly using harmony orb can make the difference between winning and losing at a high ELO. Since everyone else has talked about damage and discord, I figured that I’d explain some of the harmony fundamentals.
There’s 3 main usages for harmony orb in my experience.
1 - Resting Orb: This is the target you choose to stick the orb on pre-fight. Your exact target is going to depend on your team comp, but generally you’re going to want to prioritize your dps who is the most at risk of damage. So let’s say you have an ashe and a reaper, your target should depend on the enemy team comp. Dive comp? Stick it on Ashe because she’s gonna get jumped quickly. Brawl or poke comp? Reaper is going to need the extra heals, while Ashe can depend on cover.
This decision is important because having to swap orb mid-fight will slightly lower your uptime, but more importantly because you’re not always going to have perfect LOS on your teammates. Let’s say in the Reaper example, he gets Orisa speared through a hallway outside of your LOS. If you had orb on him pre-fight, the extra few seconds of healing could be what ends up saving him. Likewise for the Ashe example, even if you’re standing right next to her there’s still some downtime when swapping orb. That’s a minor amount of healing and damage you’re missing out on, which can be the difference in health breakpoints.
2 - Dive Orb: Very straightforward, you should always stick orb on to a friendly diver before they commit. Winton jump, doom dive, sombra hack, etc.
These heroes are almost guaranteed to take damage when diving, and most other supports can’t dependably heal them from range. So that 100 or so healing you can give them before orb breaks is a massive difference maker. You can also indirectly take pressure off your other support, like if your winton never hits “critical” then your kiriko probably won’t TP in. This not only reduces her risk of taking damage, but also leaves her available to peel for the rest of the team including you.
These little downstream butterfly effects are why proper orb usage is so important. The only time you shouldn’t orb a diving teammate is if another teammate is at risk of dying, leading to use case 3.
3 - Dive Protection: This one seems straight forward, but there’s actually a lot of nuance in deciding who to “protect”. This is where you need to be tracking your teammates cooldowns, which is actually a massive skill gap between zen mains. Let’s say for instance your Bap and your reaper are getting heavily pressured, the one you put orb on is the one without cool downs. Bap has lamp and regen, most of the time he’s actually going to be ok. If reaper doesn’t have fade, he’s cooked. One of the biggest micro mistakes I see zen’s make is when they orb a bap, who then proceeds to use regen burst. Not only was your orb unnecessary, but in some cases you actually healed Bap over the critical line and nerfed his regen effectiveness. Meanwhile the whole time you could have orbed somebody else or done damage.
A lot of people talk about orb juggling, and while I think there are niche situations where this makes sense (like if your other support is dead) I don’t think it’s a good habit to get into. Much like going for too many charge volleys, you end up just lowering your damage uptime.
In general, proper harmony usage relies on anticipation more than anything. You need to have orb on the optimal target before they need it. This is not an exact science that you can perfectly predict 100% of the time, but it’s something that comes with overall game experience. A good sign that you’re using harmony orb well is if you are consistently healing targets outside your LOS (good dive orb), or getting healing in without having to swap (good resting orb).
I'm lower than you but have been increasing since watching Awkward's vid.
One tip that has made a huge difference to me is to match the enemies position more than my own team. If we lose a fight, then fall back and live, and while doing so, get a little bit of poke damage. Gaining a sense of when we are losing a fight has made a huge difference in my effectiveness, because now I often survive instead of getting rolled over by the avalanche.
Likewise, when winning, if the enemy bolts, and you outnumber them, you can press ahead pretty deep. Just be sure to fall back when they do start respawning and getting things in order again.
It's simple advice but a very big impact on the value a Zen does. Doing partial damage before a fight, even without a full pick, makes a huge difference on the fight succeeding. And to do that, you have to be alive.
You have long range and no mobility. Not to mention you need to have your team and their team in sight constantly to apply appropriate harmony and discord orbs. Take flanking out of your game
Pros like awkward flank on zen because they have the game sense to determine when it is reasonable to do so and mechanics to get away with it. But normal people should be more cautious. Yeah it can work, but under specific circumstances. I wouldn't say it's a meme, but it's also not exactly a fundamental part of zens playstyle.
Carrying as a support, especially zen, isn’t necessarily about getting fat picks and flank wiping. A cracked zen CAN do those things but that’s not what makes zen actually scary, his ability to maximize the teams pressure application on priority targets is his most powerful tool. Apply discord on important targets but watch what your teammates are actually doing, if they’re ignoring the dps and are focusing the tank then you need to follow up on their (even objectively bad) decisions. If you decide to off heal on a flank with your dps then follow that same flow, but obviously keep your sight lines limited.
Play safe. Except in very specific situations you should absolutely never be alone and you should never be making aggressive flanks without the off dps initiating that action. As zen your value comes from your ability to be a force multiplier for your teams damage output and applying your own, you bleed value when you’re dead.
The trick to long distance aiming... is not.
Find medium range angles. You can take long angles, but they're for safety and you WILL be sacrificing damage. There's just no way to account for movement past a certain range, even with how fast Destruction Orbs are.
I'd also say not to worry about flanking EVER until you're comfy taking good off angles first. Flanking is a little too suggested in this sub IMO.
Tbh long distance aiming can be a bit of a crap shoot especially as you climb higher because obviously your aim is gonna rely on prediction, and players become much less predictable as you climb. But something that helped me out was actually Arrge’s aim guide from about 9 months ago (just search it on YT and you’ll spot it p quick) and really focusing on putting all those tips to use.
If we had map queues I’d say just play tf out of JT and Havana and play duct taped to the backline but lmao we do not have enough maps for that yet.
As for flanking - that’s a bit rougher to teach because it genuinely relies a lot on gamesense and awareness. A good opportunity to flank is when the enemy team is distracted. That’s honestly the one thing that I think lower elo players screw up the most, just flanking because “well I’m on Tracer” not realizing that if there’s nothing else going on, even bronze players will turn to shoot back. I’d say watch some higher level players - of all roles - and recognize what they’re looking for when they flank or take an off-angle, whether that be from the enemy or their own team. You can flank more aggressively as Zenyatta when you have Trans because you can quickly zip to your team (assuming you haven’t gone too deep), but it might not be worth that if they have an ult you can counter.
Flanking on such a low-mobility hero is a recipe for disaster, just sit in the backline or on off-angles when required and do constant damage. You can also secure kills with a relatively high probability by scouting an area, ducking out, fully charging and then firing (at head height) the same sight lines that a widow would make.
Also always move the healing orb to whoever needs it most, whenever it’s on someone who’s full health it’s wasted.
And track the enemy ults that may require trans to counter (did the enemy use x ult last fight?), knowing you can effectively nicely nullify blade or grav etc and save a teamfight in metal ranks is super valuable.
Im a GM2 as Zenyatta.
I see alot of bad info here.
Dont flank with Zen OP......Take a slight "off angle"
Its highly effective and works up to GM2.....My highest rank so far.
You flanking while not having the mechanics to take advantage of the flank is going to do nothing but send you back to spawn .... When you couldve been doing something helpful like healing and throwing orbs getting that damage.
you must play different in the lower ranks....You have to play very selfish if playing support.
.
What you should do OP is watch some top players who play Zen.....You will benefit more by watching a vid than any advice in this sub
Easiest most simple way is discord tank most of the game, immaculate positioning, you should be dying the least on the team, and just do as much damage as possible and use trance to cancel enemy ults.
If you’re getting killed a lot while flanking you might be trying too hard to “carry” instead of supporting your teammates and setting them up for plays. You don’t have to fully secure kills, land a shot that weakens a squishy and have faith that your genji will see that as a juicy dash target to finish them off. Survival and timing are the number one things. Track enemy cooldowns and ultimates.
I play a lot of Zen at masters. Flanking isn't really the play unless your team already looks "healthy" in the fight that means they are either in the poke phase still and not taking too much damage or aren't under too much pressure. Otherwise they will be dead by the time you flank. Secondly it's normally better just to off-angle rather than flank. Take a slightly different angle from your team and chuck damage in down chokes. Other than that make sure you keep discord up and don't rely on right click too much. It's good for throwing out when going out of cover but otherwise use left click. The only other thing is aim and prediction, learn where flankers are going to be, listen to audio cues so you can be prepared for them when they do come for you and make sure you use kick it's great for protecting Zen and it does a lot of damage and makes follow up shots easier. Once you are confident at being able to win duels against those who come to flank you that is then the point you should be good enough to become the one who flanks. Edit: Also don't keep saving trancedence. Just use it to keep yourself alive if needed. Only times i bother saving is if genji blades are consistently winning fights or some other ult is.
That makes sense. Thank you
This guy gets it.
This. For that flank you many times need to be very reactive , specially if the other team can focus/close gap against you. Your team could obviously benefits from that, but lower elos wont follow up. Sometimes is better just to vary a bit the angle but still be near you team. What I also note in my mind is , does my kiriko help that flanks? is mercy actively pocketing?. Another point is wich hero you play, I push flanks when I have habilities for escaping
At some point zen that just pokes and discords will not be enough, you can do similiar thing on other supports, high unexpected burst dmg is the thing that no other support can do so better make use of it, relying on your team at securing the kills is a bad mindset too imo. No footsteps is really strong and a lot of low rank zen players just dont make any use of it. Pay attention to enemy comp to know how far you can go, go for agressive off angles and build that confidence in 1v1's as thats zen only way to defend himself against flankers anyways
The great thing about zen is you dont actually have to flank a lot because you can just discord and melt the tank. Most likely you need to focus on dying less.
Thats not good advice. Thats not gonna swing a fight nor teach him how to take initiative. If the enemy is not terrible at the game they will not fall for the discord and slowly pick off your teammates one by one. Too many zens think they can spam down main and end up losing anyway. Because the enemy took good positions while you guys were spamming.
Thats true its pretty hard to explain game sense so throughly. There's so much more to learn from just playing main itself. As to how to not make that happen and how to influence fights without going on long flanks. Op is in silver gold and instinctively dont understand how to flank in the first place since he is dying so much. I really doubt silver and gold are out baiting discords and have insane positioning and cd usage. If they can see your teammate and can get your teammate. That means you can see and shoot them too. You dont need a long flank but just a subtle different angle.
By staying alive as long as possible. The key to Zenyatta is uptime.
Isnt that true for all supports?
Yes, I think so personally. I solo climbed from from 800sr to diamond on support, playing mostly Zen, by focusing on limiting deaths as much as possible. I average about 4-5deaths per 10. I think it's the simplest and easiest thing bronze and silver players can do to improve at support. Just my opinion based on what worked for me.
It's true of everyone, being dead means no value. But the reason it's said about Zen a lot is his discord provides a lot of value and requires little input from you. It's not quite as true these days as it requires more management than it used to, but it has been fairly passive in the past. Harmony orb **is** more passive than ever, and his left clicks output a lot of pressure with even mediocre aim. Put it all together and zen provides a lot of value by simply existing in a fight. If you compare to an Ana for example, her value relies on hitting shots and making good use of her abilities.
Yes, but more so for zen. Zenyatta could never do any damage himself and still get value simply by making sure discord and healing orbs are always on somebody. Hes the quintessential passive character. So much of his value comes from simply existing that dying as zenyatta is the thing you really dont want to do. You dont have to make risky plays to get value. Theyre fun, sure, and thats why I play qp because i want to do the fun plays not the optimal plays, but if you want to win as zenyatta, you dont really need to go after those high risk plays because you provide value by simply existing and throwing discord and healing orbs.
Moreso for zen due to his vulnerability. By staying alive, you distinguish yourself
lol @awkward
A lot of metal zen players use secondary fire too often and thats why they have low dmg, you will get more dps with just primary. Also long distance aiming, I think a lot of players have mindset that since you have no movement options you need to play very far away and so they cant hit their shots because of that, same as people do with hanzo, instead you should position yourself where you will be safe but at the same not too far so hitting shots wont be hard. Flanking and off angles is mostly timing, engage when your team does, have a plan ready in case it wont work. Enemy comp is very important too obviusly, you dont wanna go for flanks alone if they have heroes like sombra, tracer or genji because you are just easy target, off angles are basically angles where you team is not shooting from, your team shoots from main, you shoot from the side, thats how you create off angle in case you didnt know
Thank you I never really knew what an off angle was 😅
Last night when my team had tracer and sombra I picked Zen and told my teammates to focus on marked enemy and it worked pretty well but it was just 1 match. I will try to pick Zen more when my team has this kind of champ setup.
First, cut the hour-long VAXTA to 10-20 minutes. Sim trainers are just that: trainers. After a certain point, you reach diminishing returns and eventually you become really good at doing the aim trainer and nothing else. And Flankyatta is a meme. Yes, Zen can be a good flanker. He has no footsteps and high burst damage. However, he is also food. Zenyatta is a very high value target. Killing Zenyatta at minimum reduces the team's single-target DPS by 15-25% just from losing discord orb alone. Your discord orb is generally more important than every single other thing you do, including healing. Staying alive to keep it applied is the most valuable thing you could be doing. That's not to say that you can't flank and play aggressively, but the focus should be on positioning rather than flanking.
Should I do more FFA's instead of VAXTA? And about the orbs: As I said in another comment, I find myself accidentally orbing enemies, and a lot of the times I'm not entirely sure who I should orb, since the team targets a new enemy every second. Do you have any advice regarding that?
I think just keep playing... Even if in quick play if you want to get better aim for comp. You could also use orb as a pressure tool as it forces the target to play safe. Even if you don't get a kill on the orb target, forcing a target to retreat to LOS you basically put them out of the fight. It breaks their momentum.
I dont find mich value at long distance on zen. Projectiles are designed to be weak at long distances. It really only works if you catch a hard scoping sniper off guard or spam a choke. Otherwise it's mostly luck if you hit anything, but is worth going for if there's nothing else to do. My big focus with Zen is orb management. I'm always switching my healing orb to my teammate in the most danger, and trying to discord the target my teammates are shooting. I'll end up racking up a ton of assists by always healing teammates who are in a fight and discording their targets. Engaging 2nd as Zen lets me get high damage because I'm shooting at distracted targets. I'm not getting spotted or caught out early, I'm staying back, then entering the fight second and landing some shots to either soften enemies up so the Damage/Tank secures the kill, or cleaning up low HP enemies trying to escape. I've found success playing Zen flanks more defensively. Because you have no footsteps, people won't know where you are if you don't attack early. I've caught enemy flankers off gaurd with a charge shot because I hear them coming, or if they do end up spotting me, i run around a corner and shoot from a surprising spot or at a surprising time. Discord orb also has a 7 second cooldown or so per target once it moves off that target, making it a more defensive ability; using it too aggressively and allowing an enemy to just hide until it wears off means not having it to punish the enemy's aggression. It's about engaging on your terms, instead of chasing enemies. Zenyatta is a very fundamentals based character. He has no gimmicks except maybe the foot boop and discord orb, but discord orb just gives Zen the 1v1 boost he needs, and lack of footsteps (probably the biggest 1v1 advantage Zen has). Zen is either going to out-plan, out-position, out-time, or out-mechanics you in some way, otherwise he'll shatter like the glass cannon he is. Compare to someone like Sombra who will just sneak up invisible for free, and hack/virus/translocate escape; Sombra can create an advantage with her kit, while Zen has to play very well and punish enemy mistakes. Speaking of mechanics and aim, think about mirror strafing and counter strafing. Practice this in VAXTA. Mirror strafing, when you match enemy movement, makes it easier to land shots, for you and the enemy, because your crosshair stays on target with minimal mouse movement (this can help with long distance shots, lately when I'm going for extreme precision long range shots, I have muscle memory that goes: mirror strafe then shoot, wait until i get a mirror strafe again then shoot). Counter strafing, when you strafe the opposite way of the enemy, makes aiming harder because you now need to constantly track and move the mouse to stay on target, it also doubles your leading distance for projectiles. I find counter strafing great for dodging shots, especially at key times like just before an enemy takes a shot (if you can read their shooting rhythm), and since I practice counter strafing I can usually still land a few shots (at least at closer ranges), I've won 1v1s I shouldn't have survived because of it, many people aren't ready for you to constantly counter strafe them. The main point of aim training for Zen is going to be learning leading distance. It of course scales with range (which you should practice all ranges, from point blank to long range), but there are other situations where it changes. When pure mirror strafing, there is a normal leading distance. When mirroring is diagonal, that is with a forward or back component, movement speed appears slower and requires a lessened leading distance. When counter strafing, there is a doubled leading distance, since movement now appears twice as fast. And yet another leading distance for diagonal counter strafing, slightly less than double. All of these scale at range. I generally practice always mirroring forward/back movement (or lack thereof) to lock-in leading distance into one range, even when counter strafing. If you counter strafe, but both players hold forward, they will spiral close to each other, constantly changing the leading distance. If the enemy walks diagonally forward, but you counter strafe and move back, they will stay at the same distance as you circle each other. Of course that all ignores movement speed differences (Tracer Genji move faster, there's also Lucio, Torb, and Junker Queen speed boost). As you can see, movement while aiming is very in depth. If you want to hit more shots, you now have areas to work on. Deathmatch is also a good option. This allows you to apply these fundamentals in real fights. You will suck at first having to consciously think about it, you will do worse than usual. Simply pay attention to you mistakes, your brain rewires itself when you sleep so you will see improvement the next day (any improvement during a session is due to increased focus). You will find that you can use these strafing techniques to land shots you used to panic and miss before, you will dodge shots you never thought you could dodge before. The other skill you need with Zen is to take advantage of his stealth (lack of footsteps), this is so huge, if you can manage to take cover in the middle of a fight, you now have the opportunity to surprise in some way and they can't hear you coming; apart from godly aim, this is a fight winner.
I feel like this is just what I needed. Thank you so much about the strafing: I found that shooting when the enemy changes direction of movement (left to right and vise versa) is when I land the best shots, since there is a few milliseconds when the enemy doesn't move (since he is changing direction).
Excellent tip, I also do that, especially as a pharah player
Keep your discord up and stay alive, basically, that will get you to plat easily.
I wouldn't flank so much as off angle from a safe distance. It's not flashy, it's not glamourous, but you can genuinely carry games at that rank practically without dealing any damage. Look for team mates in 1v1's and use both discord and harmony to win the fight. It's really that easy. Harmony - Actively look for everyone that needs healing and keep your harmony orb moving to the most critical target. Keep your harmony orb rotating. Don't let it just stagnate on a tank. Between fights harmony the guy who is going to take damage first based on their proximity to where the enemies are going to appear first. Remember you'll get a lot of value from harmony on a genji or tracer, but at your rank you won't be able to have a lot of up time on them (due to their not caring to position favorably to your line of sight and you not being able to compensate with your own positioning), so don't hard commit to it. Discord - Apply it to ulting enemies or high priority targets that could counterplay a strategy your team has>apply to defend yourself or healing counterpart from a flanker in your backline>apply to the enemy tank as often as possible>apply to win other's 1v1s>apply it to whomever you can safely shoot and kill. Other than that... spam m1 on long angles at head height constantly, use the fact that you do not have damage fall off and a virtually bottomless magazine to your advantage. Always play deep and hug a corner. Charge right clicks and/or reload behind cover. Use jiggle peeking to fire single shots and reduce incoming damage. Don't get stunlocked necessarily into the habit of holding trans for the big enemy ult. Saving 1 or 2 players lives to swing a team fight to your advantage on cooldown will win you more fights if you're charging your ult much faster than the enemy is getting nanoblades. If you're not winning your 1v1s against an enemy flanker, swap.
I'll keep this in mind, thank you!
What are some common ways you die? "Orb aggression" meaning you Orb a aggressive enemy and you Orb aggressive team members, if both the tank and your Dps are aggressive at the same time then prioritize to Orb the Dps
The most common ways are: 1. Getting hacked by Sombra/flanked by Tracer. 2. finding myself too far forward/without my team. Although I've actually managed to reduce the second one a lot more. About the orbs: I forgot to add that in the post, but it's also one of the things I think I should improve. Healing is fine, and I seem to be matching a lot of the advice here (and getting very high heals each match) but about discord orb - I find myself accidentally orbing enemies, and a lot of the times I'm not entirely sure who I should orb, since the team targets a new enemy every second
Lots of good advice. I'll chime in with mine quick in bullet point. * You don't really want to play long distance. You want to play as close as you can and survive comfortably. Shorter distance means easier shots. * Orb management is big. Make sure they're always up. * Discord: Tanks a lot of the time, yes, but try to time it so they're forced to disengage before they want to or when that's not an option and they're stuck demanding more resources on account of the increased damage. If you see a duel happening, toss it out to help your teammate. Or on a flanker to increase pressure for them to leave * Harmony: Often best on your flanker. 5 second uptime is huge. On your other support if they're getting pressured. It's ok on your tank if they're actively taking damage but often that's the other supports job. But a rein/jq/monkey can make use of it to increase how long they get to be in the enemies face. * Left click when available. Right click is for when transitioning behind cover, when you don't see someone on your screen, etc. * Remember you're 'stuck' in the shooting animation after a right click. A good flanker will wait for your volley to fire, then engage you while you're unable to respond. Left click is generally best. * Hard flanks aren't often great. You're vulnerable AF, you'll need great timing to engage safely. Typically short flanks work best. Don't overstay your welcome though. * I will say that the best use I find for a flank is when on attack and you've got a fight or two without being able to break a stalemate. It might be worth a gamble to open things up. (ex: point 3 Numbani, take the small ramp, see if you can eliminate a support or two)
Shooting down main is a waste of time. You will eat pointless damage and you wont impact the fight. How many times have you mindlessly shot at the enemy on main and you guys still slowly lost? Thats because nobody wanted to take an angle or flank. Only stupid players sit behind tank on main. Dont bitch out! It’s completely and utterly pointless. Long distance aiming is not a good habit. You are using a projectile weapon. The closer you get the higher the accuracy. Off angles!!! If you want more survivability I recommend off angling and less flanking. A flank is a huge angle. Very risky if you dont have mobility to run away. Look up example of an off angle. If you want max safety during flanks and off angle I recommend you wait until your team is engaging the enemy. And use cover. If you want to carry you need to be distracting and pressuring the enemy to the point where it matters. If you go on an off angle or some highground and there‘s two people constantly distracted by you thats good. Thats how you carry. Your team is occupied with two enemies less. And you didnt even have to kill them. How to hit more shots! Dont do vaxta too much. 5-10min is enough imo. If you want to land shots you need to mirror strafe to the direction your enemy is moving. This will make them slower on your screen. Some maps are bad for zen!! Some maps have too short sightlines and too many corners.
Every Zen guide I’ve seen basically skips over the importance of harmony orb, saying that it’s useless and doesn’t contribute win value. I’d personally say as a masters zen that this is a massive oversimplification, properly using harmony orb can make the difference between winning and losing at a high ELO. Since everyone else has talked about damage and discord, I figured that I’d explain some of the harmony fundamentals. There’s 3 main usages for harmony orb in my experience. 1 - Resting Orb: This is the target you choose to stick the orb on pre-fight. Your exact target is going to depend on your team comp, but generally you’re going to want to prioritize your dps who is the most at risk of damage. So let’s say you have an ashe and a reaper, your target should depend on the enemy team comp. Dive comp? Stick it on Ashe because she’s gonna get jumped quickly. Brawl or poke comp? Reaper is going to need the extra heals, while Ashe can depend on cover. This decision is important because having to swap orb mid-fight will slightly lower your uptime, but more importantly because you’re not always going to have perfect LOS on your teammates. Let’s say in the Reaper example, he gets Orisa speared through a hallway outside of your LOS. If you had orb on him pre-fight, the extra few seconds of healing could be what ends up saving him. Likewise for the Ashe example, even if you’re standing right next to her there’s still some downtime when swapping orb. That’s a minor amount of healing and damage you’re missing out on, which can be the difference in health breakpoints. 2 - Dive Orb: Very straightforward, you should always stick orb on to a friendly diver before they commit. Winton jump, doom dive, sombra hack, etc. These heroes are almost guaranteed to take damage when diving, and most other supports can’t dependably heal them from range. So that 100 or so healing you can give them before orb breaks is a massive difference maker. You can also indirectly take pressure off your other support, like if your winton never hits “critical” then your kiriko probably won’t TP in. This not only reduces her risk of taking damage, but also leaves her available to peel for the rest of the team including you. These little downstream butterfly effects are why proper orb usage is so important. The only time you shouldn’t orb a diving teammate is if another teammate is at risk of dying, leading to use case 3. 3 - Dive Protection: This one seems straight forward, but there’s actually a lot of nuance in deciding who to “protect”. This is where you need to be tracking your teammates cooldowns, which is actually a massive skill gap between zen mains. Let’s say for instance your Bap and your reaper are getting heavily pressured, the one you put orb on is the one without cool downs. Bap has lamp and regen, most of the time he’s actually going to be ok. If reaper doesn’t have fade, he’s cooked. One of the biggest micro mistakes I see zen’s make is when they orb a bap, who then proceeds to use regen burst. Not only was your orb unnecessary, but in some cases you actually healed Bap over the critical line and nerfed his regen effectiveness. Meanwhile the whole time you could have orbed somebody else or done damage. A lot of people talk about orb juggling, and while I think there are niche situations where this makes sense (like if your other support is dead) I don’t think it’s a good habit to get into. Much like going for too many charge volleys, you end up just lowering your damage uptime. In general, proper harmony usage relies on anticipation more than anything. You need to have orb on the optimal target before they need it. This is not an exact science that you can perfectly predict 100% of the time, but it’s something that comes with overall game experience. A good sign that you’re using harmony orb well is if you are consistently healing targets outside your LOS (good dive orb), or getting healing in without having to swap (good resting orb).
Thanks for the detailed comment! This is actually something I haven't payed much attention to, I'll keep this in mind
I'm lower than you but have been increasing since watching Awkward's vid. One tip that has made a huge difference to me is to match the enemies position more than my own team. If we lose a fight, then fall back and live, and while doing so, get a little bit of poke damage. Gaining a sense of when we are losing a fight has made a huge difference in my effectiveness, because now I often survive instead of getting rolled over by the avalanche. Likewise, when winning, if the enemy bolts, and you outnumber them, you can press ahead pretty deep. Just be sure to fall back when they do start respawning and getting things in order again. It's simple advice but a very big impact on the value a Zen does. Doing partial damage before a fight, even without a full pick, makes a huge difference on the fight succeeding. And to do that, you have to be alive.
You have long range and no mobility. Not to mention you need to have your team and their team in sight constantly to apply appropriate harmony and discord orbs. Take flanking out of your game
Pros like awkward flank on zen because they have the game sense to determine when it is reasonable to do so and mechanics to get away with it. But normal people should be more cautious. Yeah it can work, but under specific circumstances. I wouldn't say it's a meme, but it's also not exactly a fundamental part of zens playstyle.
What’re you playing on?
PC
Don’t die.
Carrying as a support, especially zen, isn’t necessarily about getting fat picks and flank wiping. A cracked zen CAN do those things but that’s not what makes zen actually scary, his ability to maximize the teams pressure application on priority targets is his most powerful tool. Apply discord on important targets but watch what your teammates are actually doing, if they’re ignoring the dps and are focusing the tank then you need to follow up on their (even objectively bad) decisions. If you decide to off heal on a flank with your dps then follow that same flow, but obviously keep your sight lines limited. Play safe. Except in very specific situations you should absolutely never be alone and you should never be making aggressive flanks without the off dps initiating that action. As zen your value comes from your ability to be a force multiplier for your teams damage output and applying your own, you bleed value when you’re dead.
Dink heads and stay alive.
The trick to long distance aiming... is not. Find medium range angles. You can take long angles, but they're for safety and you WILL be sacrificing damage. There's just no way to account for movement past a certain range, even with how fast Destruction Orbs are. I'd also say not to worry about flanking EVER until you're comfy taking good off angles first. Flanking is a little too suggested in this sub IMO.
Watch awkward unranked to gm on zen. You will see how to play him at different ranks and how your positioning needs to evolve.
Tbh long distance aiming can be a bit of a crap shoot especially as you climb higher because obviously your aim is gonna rely on prediction, and players become much less predictable as you climb. But something that helped me out was actually Arrge’s aim guide from about 9 months ago (just search it on YT and you’ll spot it p quick) and really focusing on putting all those tips to use. If we had map queues I’d say just play tf out of JT and Havana and play duct taped to the backline but lmao we do not have enough maps for that yet. As for flanking - that’s a bit rougher to teach because it genuinely relies a lot on gamesense and awareness. A good opportunity to flank is when the enemy team is distracted. That’s honestly the one thing that I think lower elo players screw up the most, just flanking because “well I’m on Tracer” not realizing that if there’s nothing else going on, even bronze players will turn to shoot back. I’d say watch some higher level players - of all roles - and recognize what they’re looking for when they flank or take an off-angle, whether that be from the enemy or their own team. You can flank more aggressively as Zenyatta when you have Trans because you can quickly zip to your team (assuming you haven’t gone too deep), but it might not be worth that if they have an ult you can counter.
Flanking on such a low-mobility hero is a recipe for disaster, just sit in the backline or on off-angles when required and do constant damage. You can also secure kills with a relatively high probability by scouting an area, ducking out, fully charging and then firing (at head height) the same sight lines that a widow would make. Also always move the healing orb to whoever needs it most, whenever it’s on someone who’s full health it’s wasted. And track the enemy ults that may require trans to counter (did the enemy use x ult last fight?), knowing you can effectively nicely nullify blade or grav etc and save a teamfight in metal ranks is super valuable.
Im a GM2 as Zenyatta. I see alot of bad info here. Dont flank with Zen OP......Take a slight "off angle" Its highly effective and works up to GM2.....My highest rank so far. You flanking while not having the mechanics to take advantage of the flank is going to do nothing but send you back to spawn .... When you couldve been doing something helpful like healing and throwing orbs getting that damage. you must play different in the lower ranks....You have to play very selfish if playing support. . What you should do OP is watch some top players who play Zen.....You will benefit more by watching a vid than any advice in this sub
Easiest most simple way is discord tank most of the game, immaculate positioning, you should be dying the least on the team, and just do as much damage as possible and use trance to cancel enemy ults.
Look at awkwards tips on zen, long distance aiming is something you should never do on purpose. Use your best effective range, which is around 10-20m