Overwatch: How to effectively communicate with your team

Communication is a key skill in competitive Overwatch. Being able to effectively communicate with your team will help you coordinate abilities, locate enemies, and make successful pushes and defensive holds. Here are some tips for good communication.

Be respectful to your Overwatch team

You shouldn’t ever be negative or toxic. While this should go without saying, people are still nasty to one another quite often. If you want to communicate effectively, you need to be positive and encouraging to your teammates. Try to lift them up, not bring them down. At the very least, maintain a neutral and objective attitude.

Telling people they suck, demanding them to switch heroes, and making passive-aggressive comments about how people are playing are all examples of things to avoid. These comments will do nothing to help you win Overwatch games. They will, however, distract people from playing the game and potentially tilt them.

Don’t crowd the voice chat

When multiple people are trying to talk, it can be difficult to keep track of everything behind said. When you make callouts, try to keep it simple. Something like “Sombra behind” is enough. You can see who’s talking in the top right corner of the screen. You can see who all is in the chat by opening the group’s page.

If you watch high SR games, you will hear them use terms like “Rein one”, “Zarya no ult”, or “Zen has ult”. These terms are used to keeping things short and sweet. Try to learn and use popular Overwatch terms that your team will understand.

Only make important callouts

This goes hand in hand with not crowding the chat in Overwatch. Making small talk and casual conversation is fine before the game begins. But once the game starts, stick to making meaningful callouts. Try to coordinate abilities, track enemy cooldowns, and call out enemy locations.

Making demands of other players should always be avoided. If you think it’s important for someone to swap heroes, ask them politely. If someone isn’t in voice chat and you’d like them to join, ask politely. They may not want to do either of these things, so let them be and focus on communicating with the rest of the team.

The idea of having a voice chat in Overwatch is for players to relay knowledge to one another and form a plan. The more you practice communicating, the better you will get at it. Don’t be afraid to join the chat and make your voice heard.