A Reinhardt Guide

Reinhardt is hardcore meta.

Have I never been happier to see my main from Season-fucking-two make a return. When I first clicked on him, I thought I would've lost all of my instinct and skill at the hero. I was ready to start from scratch and learn a new hero. Luckily for me, and you, I still had my muscle memory and 300 IQ big brain to everything about my favorite tank hero.

Shield hopping, firestriking, when to use Hammer, proper charging, and good positioning, those are a few skills that I hope to teach you in this maybe 1000 word guide. That's at least my goal for this writing. I hope to meet new faces with this guide and meet other tank mains. All criticism for mistakes made in the blog is allowed in the comments, I'll change the blog accordingly if I am proven wrong.

And thus, I present my personal Reinhardt playstyle and guide. Be warned, though, my playstyle is a ive one.

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Mjolnir

Sorry, I meant Hammer.

Hammer is a hit and run ability. And not in the case of hit someone and run away, I meant that it doesn't always do what you can mean for it to do. Before reading this section, I advise to keep a rule of thumb of only use Hammer when either:

1) The objective is being under attack

2) Your shield broke and the enemy is pushing choke

3) After shattering

That's only a basic guideline, though. Overwatch was hand developed to have a team fight turn on its head, switching the favor of both teams rapidly. Although the good use of a Reinhardt and his abilities can prevent the other team from earning the favor. This is where Reinhardt's Hammer comes in.

I especially love to use Hammer as a baiting ability. There is an extremely useful animation cancel for Hammer where you can swing, but then cancel the swing by putting up your shield. I want you to try this out in the Training range, try swinging your target, but then right as the hammer is about to hit, put up your shield. I call this trick "Hammer baiting". You can use this to bait certain abilities like Zarya bubble (She won't get any charge since you canceled Hammer), Tracer Recall, Genji deflects, Reaper Wraith, Ana Sleep, and Nade, the list goes on.

Hammer isn't only a bait tool, though. A positioning tip for Rein is to always be using the environment to your advantage. Something you'll see professionals and streamers do is always be right behind a corner near the choke. They do this so not only can there shield recharge to 3/4ths energy or recharge fully but so they can swing at the enemy Rein's shield and recharge their own at the same time. Not only are you wearing down the enemy Rein's shield down, but you're making sure that yours is staying charged, too. In the end, the Rein who has the most energy in their shield wins the Rein battle.

One last tip for Hammer is to swing once. Don't walk forward and continue to hold whatever your shoot button is bound to. Use Hammer sparingly; you need to you are the only thing keeping your team from being the enemy team's meat bag. Think of it this way, when you are trying to run long distance, do you use ALL of your strength at the beginning of the race or do you start slow and maintain that speed throughout the entire length of the race? You have to make sure you use your hammer sparingly so you're not feeding like a little bitch.

Don't do that you bronze ass motherfuc-

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Firestrike

Firestrike is split in half by the community. To some, it's a great ability for charging ult off of. It burns shields and damages the dive target is running a Winston or D.va (Which is fucking stupid if you're also using a Reinhardt, never do Dive with Rein) and it teaches good projectile aim. And for some, it teaches the Reinhardt player to be overly aggressive and force his shield to be put down. I'm a very heavy Firestrike er and I encourage the use of good Firestriking. Same with Hammer, I'm going to put a basic guideline of when to use Firestrike.

1) When fighting at choke with little to no sniper pressure

2) To animation cancel a swing

3) To pressure a team into playing ive

And that's really the only times where using a Firestrike is viable. It honestly shouldn't be used very often. It's much like charge, and there isn't much to go in depth with it. There is one REALLY useful thing you can do with it, though. Whenever trying to get Hammer damage in, and your Firestrike is off cooldown, the second your hammer s the hit, use Firestrike. There are limits to this, though. And I'm going to explain them.

When using hammer, it can be immediately canceled. When using Firestrike, you have to go through the entire animation and shoot the projectile until you can use another ability. That's why you must be very careful about how you use this ability. That little second it takes for you to use your ability is enough time for a Hanzo to put three Storm Arrows into your head, and enough for a Widowmaker to put a fully charged headshot into you or one of your Teammates behind you. In fact, if the enemy has a Widow, always be Hard-Shielding (Constantly holding up your shield.)

Lastly, use Firestrike kind of like Junkrat's primary fire. Spam it down a choke when there isn't much of a threat to you or your team. I especially love to spam it into the enemies spawn right at the beginning of the game to get about thirty percent ult charge. A Reinhardt with high ult charge is a Reinhardt who is going to win a team fight.

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Charge

how I said you shouldn't use Firestrike much? To pretty much never use it because of the constant sniper pressure and the need for a huge rectangular shield? Yeah, use this ability even less. Fissure, known as the number one Reinhardt in the Overwatch League (OWL), even said to never use Charge in this meta. It's virtually useless. A ive Reinhardt benefits much more from this Meta than an Aggressive one. I can play both styles, but I've learned to adapt to the slow-paced ive style.

So, as a rule of thumb, the only times to EVER use charge are to:

1) Get out from spawn (Don't use at the beginning of the round)

2) Secure a pick after a Team fight was already won

This can change, but keep this in the back of your head before charging. It's helped me come to a point to where I forget charge is an ability anymore besides for gaining ground after leaving spawn. And that's great! Not much to say on the use of Charge besides the basic fact of DON'T USE IT.

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Shield

The most important ability to Reinhardt, his bread and butter, and the most complex ability to master as a Reinhardt player. There are so many concepts to grasp to be able to truly master Shield. Let me try and attempt a quick like guideline for how and when to use a shield.

When to use shield:

1) Block major damage (Anything above 100 damage) or debuffs

2) To dance with the enemy Rein

3) To Block LOS (Line Of Sight)

4) To force the other Rein to play aggressive

How to use shield:

1) As a Punching bag

I'm going to explain what I mean by each of these. Let's start off with the "When to use Shield" section of the guideline.

What I mean by "Block major damage or debuffs" is to block anything that will put your squishies below or at half health. For example, Hanzo's arrows, Widow's shots, Soldier's Helix, McCree shots or an Ana nade. Nothing is scarier than a huge Anti-nade onto your team that you could've prevented. A pick onto your team, due to debuffs or damage, is basically an instant loss.

"To dance with the enemy Rein" means to hold take turns holding your shield up versus the enemy Rein. I said once in this guide that whichever Rein has the most energy in the shield wins, but this also means you have to USE this charge. Rein battles are just mind games, that's all it is. You win the mind games, you win the Rein battle, you win the team fight. Simple as that. But to win these Rein battles, it takes a LOT of experience. It's not something that can be simply taught inside of a blog. But you need to make sure you use your shield as a way of getting into the enemy Rein's head. If you saw the enemy Rein's shield up, you need to consider everything he could possibly due to outplay you. For example, he could bait you to Firestrike and shatter you while your shield is down (I have a horrible personal experience with that example).

"To block LOS" means to block abilities that require a LOS to use. For example, Zenyatta Transcendence. Or perhaps an Ana Biotic Grenade, Zarya bubble, Orisa Halt, or even a Torbjörn Turret if you're feeling particularly salty.

"To force the other Rein to play aggressive" means to play in a position that forces the enemy Rein to push into an unfavorable position. For example, always make sure to play on around corners. I've said this before, but to go slightly more in depth, this can make it to where the enemy Rein will be out in the open while you're hiding behind cover to avoid poke damage focus your shield.

"As a Punching bag" means to just use your shield as a way of blocking damage that could pick off teammates. A simple thing that all Reinhardts know.

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I would like to thank you for fully reading this guide, I appreciate it. Many hours went into writing this guide because I'm lazy, but thanks. This was written in the middle of an Overwatch League game, fishing and crabbing session, and breaks in between competitive matches.

Time started: June 5th, 12:34 AM

Time finished: June 16th, 6:36 PM

Words: 1801

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