# Awareness ---- Awareness is fundamentally about using your available senses to perceive your surroundings and the situation at hand. You use the this information to make a decision. The more complete the information you have the better your decision will be. That is, if you have the capacity to make good decisions. Because Overwatch is a video game you are limited to only two senses: **Vision** - HUD *(Heads up display, ex: kill feed)* - FOV *(Field of View, ex: you see the enemy)* **Sound** - Game Sounds *(ex: hearing footsteps)* - Callouts *(ex: location calls)* There are also 3 basic types of awareness that are key to Overwatch. - *Self-Awareness* - *Team-Awareness* - *Enemy-Awareness* In this document we will learn about good awareness habits and how to apply them to our own gameplay. ---- ## Vision Your eyes are your best tools for absorbing as much information as possible. Overwatch, after all is a *video* game and the visual aspect is where the developers have put the most information for you to soak up. - *if you aren't clicking heads then you should be looking around* When looking at the enemy you should be able to determine where their attention is pointed at and what action they are performing whether that be an ability they are using, their basic m1/m2 or movement. Don't tunnel vision onto a specific enemy unless you actively need to perform an action onto them. Abuse peripheral vision. (Shaking your aim will increase your FOV) Use good LOS to see things to the sides. ### Downtime Downtime is the state your hero is in when they are at their through in terms of power. That is to say you have to reset. You can look around during: - reloads (ex: Ashe long reload) - stabilizing (ex: waiting on a corner for CDs) - charging shots (ex: hanzo with a taught arrow) You need to determine what else is happening on the map. You don't need to only look at what you already know is there and you want to go on after your reload. Minimize tunnel vision, check your flanks for possible threats. ### Pre/Post fight You want to maximize your awareness before fights and after fights. You specifically need to be as aware as possible before the mid-fight because after that you and your team's capacity to make proper decisions will be lessened. During the pre/poke phase you need to look for threats as well as your own team's positions. After that you can look to enable your teammates or yourself. Updating your information. Object permanence. Know who your threats are. Some heroes may be moving closer/further away from you. This will either make you have to play safer or let you play more aggro. ### Threats These are the *threats* you need to watch out. Different heroes will be threatened by different characters. Know your own threats and your team's. **One Shots** *distance* sojourn, widow, hanzo, snipers, heroes that can outpoke you *close range* reaper, cree. Close range stun/burst potential **Flankers** Tracer, Reaper, Genji, Sombra. **Displacement** Ball, Doom, Monkey with Primal **Combined Threats** *How is the enemy team threatening you as a group?* Killboxes, Chokes, Dives, Pull, Brawl amp speed or TP **Brawl** Holding Chokes, where is Mei and Rein? Knowing where the threats are will help you set your tempo, proactive/reactive and your aggression, aggro/passive(that basically means the same thing). Having information about your threats leads to knowing what positions to take and how to use your CDs and Ults. The HUD will let you know about which threats are alive and which teammates are left that you need to enable. ### Map Knowledge Knowing good fight placement and payload positioning can answer the following questions: - How soon does the *retaking* team need to take fight? How much time do they have to setup? - How far can the *pt.control* team take space relative to cart position? **Map Geometry** The more you understand how a map is constructed the more likely you will know where threats can come from or how to enable yourself. Where are the secret spots? ### HUD The *Heads-Up-Display* can give you all sorts of information when you make it a habit of looking at it. - *Kill Feed* - *TAB* (who is alive) - *Where is the cart?* - *How many people on point?* (6 v 5 sitation? Respawn timer?) - *Teammates Health* - *Overtime* ---- ## Sounds Sound is the fastest way to absorb information. Your brain can react faster to sound than visual stimuli. There are two main factors here, listening to the game and listening to your teammates. ### Game Sounds Learn how to abuse game sounds. Learn what every hero sounds like, their footsteps, their abilities, their guns, etc. ### Communication You are responsible for listening to what your teammates are saying. #### Ready checks Is your team or partner ready? - They aren't? what do you do? - They are? Do the engage thing! #### Communicating Threats Do you see a threat to your backline? Call it out #### Respawning Give info to your team to help them. - up 1 down 1 even - command to help a teammate - call no healers for either team - any ults the your team or the enemy team might be getting close to - any CDs that might be coming back up ---- ## Homework Check how you died in a VOD. What weren't you aware of that caused your death? How can you improve your awareness in that scenario. Sometimes it may be a vision related issue, other times it may be communication or game sounds based. Try to get the full picture. Building on the detecting threats skill. Thinking more is required which will tank your mechanics but the muscle memory will build you up.