Stop pushing on Push in Overwatch 2

Ever think about a football team winning by not kicking the ball? You read that right. In a strange twist of fate, sometimes playing the objective is not always the best option.

As the Overwatch League heads into its sixth season, the best teams in the world are starting to see the light. Pushing the push bot on Push might push you farther from the pursuit of perfection.

The problem

To begin this confusing dance, let's review the win conditions of Push. To claim victory in Overwatch 2's newest core game mode, a team must either escort the Push bot to the final checkpoint or hold the lead of the farthest distance pushed once the playtime runs out.

Ideally, in every game, you leisurely stroll to the end of the map, claim victory, and remove all variance from the equation.

However, the latter of the two options is what is leveraged most of the time due to a few factors. As you progress through Push maps the map geometry tends to favour the opposing side. On top of that, the spawn points naturally also favour the enemy team as well. This inherent defender's advantage makes a full capture on Push fairly rare.

With that in mind, what is stopping teams from pushing the bot past the natural defences of the enemy team, stepping back, and regrouping to utilise map geometry to your advantage?

To put it simply, why should you push the bot past the sightlines of highly defensible positions?

You shouldn't, at least not all the time.

So, do you want to see a striker just leave the football on the pitch and actively run away from it?

Esperança's first checkpoint is placed in a valley with oppressive high ground, which the Los Angeles Gladiators used to their advantage in their recent match against the Washington Justice in the Overwatch League Pro-Am.

Immediately after capturing the checkpoint, the Gladiators retreat to the high ground at their backs, leaving the bot in the welcoming hands of the Justice.

With a considerable lead, Los Angeles actually stands to gain from abandoning the Push bot and repositioning, metaphorically "dropping the ball" and running away from it.

This begs a few questions. However, we'll tackle the obvious one first; why?

Why does not playing the objective make sense?

Why in the world are we running from the ball?

Let's again recall back to Push's secondary win condition. If a team has the farthest recorded distance pushed, they don't technically have to do anything. They could sit on their lead and just burn the clock. 

They're incentivised by the possibility of ending the match outright by reaching the end but that's usually incredibly difficult for two evenly-matched teams. 

So if the juice isn't worth the squeeze, it is far better to play for position rather than a demanding lead. And it just so happens Esperança has a very strong plateau to mount.

In the case of the Gladiators and the Justice, the former benefits quite heavily from playing from the bridge. Not only does it grant L.A. the perks of holding the high ground but it, almost more importantly, limits the surface area of Washington's dive attempts.

Tracer has to spend more time traversing the elevation, and once she arrives, she can only attack in one direction.

Alongside that, Washington's Winston cannot just jump into Los Angeles position without paying a heft toll. There is no cover to play around, and it's likely that after one too many missteps, the Winston could out-range your supports.

In an attempt to break the stronghold the Gladiators set up, Justice sends their Hanzo and Ana to play a side angle. In theory, this creates pressure and ideally corrals Los Angeles into a more advantageous position for the Justice to capitalise. And while the logic is there, the support sent isn't correct because what's stopping L.A. from rushing down the enemy's weak side flank?

If you can't match Lucio's speed, you're just trading your queen for the daydream of capturing a few pawns to open up a check.

Without going too deep into analysing the Pro-Am group stage games, the question is; has this happened before?

Do we have examples of other teams forfeiting objective presence for a stronger map position?

Luckily, we do!

A strange dual-inverse example happened fairly recently in Overwatch Contenders Korea. In this case, Dreamers are the ones capturing the first checkpoint, however, they struggle to leverage it into a team fight win.

Remember Push's secondary win condition.

Dreamers have the right idea, but can't rest on their laurels because they don't have the lead. On the flip side, Team Diamond is not rushed at all. They know how strong a position Esperança's high ground is, they know they have the lead, so they opt not to push. They're content burning the clock.

This creates an odd game state where both teams are stalemated. No one is attacking because both teams are playing for positional advantage, however, one has the priority to do so. In this case, Team Diamond is leveraging their lead against Dreamer's optimal position.

Slowly Dreamers realise they can't wait forever, so nearly two whole minutes go by before they have to concede their position and reach for an engagement.

If this seems familiar, that's because it is.

Week 15 of the 2022 Summer Showdown, the Washington Justice pairs off with the San Francisco Shock in what should be a fairly one-sided affair. The Shock are competing for top marks this season while the Justice average at best.

Nearly three minutes go by before the first kill is scored, and the objective is pushed, at all.

Two football teams, no one dribbling the ball, and actively choosing not to.

Now two things are at play here. The Junker Queen metagame that dominated most of the playtime during the summer of 2022 was focused on posturing and fishing.

Junker Queen's Jagged Blade and Commanding Shout would be used to catch and punish a target out of position. Sojourn's Rail Gun would be a tool for teams to volley back and forth in attempts to either headshot and kill someone or weaken someone enough for their Genji to quickly finish them.

This conditioned teams a few different ways. One school of thought at the time was to play slowly and fish for your opening kill. The other was to rush teams down, be proactive and force mistakes.

This technically is two examples of the former, however, the map exacerbates the problem.

Colosseo features a long runwayesque strip of real estate that houses the first fight of each instance of the map. One that oftentimes does lend itself to slower more thoughtful engagements.

Given the meta of the Summer Showdown, neither team feels pressured to give up their resources--so they didn't.

Why should either team expend resources and fight through a valley in an attempt to reach the other?

Reddit user u/Dr_Fusion479 calculated the average win percentages of Push maps where a team won the first team fight. They found that during the 2022 Overwatch League season, the team that won that first encounter had a 61.8% win rate.

This is also undercut by the fact that this win rate is boosted if you're the first team to capture the checkpoint first.

Why should either team concede a valuable team fight in the hopes of gaining marginal meterage with the push bot?

Again, strikers starring on the pitch in a football Cold War.

And funnily enough, this isn't the Shock's first time being fairly creative on Colosseo.

Nearly three months prior, the San Francisco Shock squared off against the Los Angeles Gladiators during the qualifiers for the Kickoff Clash.

With less than a minute on the clock and a considerable lead, the Shock drop the ball and hightail it back towards the centre of the map. Remember that aforementioned long stretch of land where the push bot begins its tortuous task? That's where this "final" fight will take place--all on the Shock's terms.

Trading forward ground for potential flank angles, trading objective pressure for map positioning, trading total distance pushed for time off the clock, the Shock executes a masterclass in how to play Push here.

By retreating with limited time left for the Gladiators, the Shock open up 2022's MVP and Rookie of the Year, Kim "Proper" Dong-hyun to dominate the wings of this last team fight.

The Gladiators' Tracer here has to consider the objective due to Winston's role inherently involving him engaging into the enemy and off of the bot. This means that Kevin "kevster" Persson cannot afford to mark Proper on the flank and be in range to touch the objective if needed.

And god forbid if Kevster and Corey "Reiner" Scoda both vacate the point, then that leaves the Gladiators' supports on the bot, potentially without much help for a brief window. This vulnerability could be the crack for the Shock to pounce on as well, earn some valuable kills and force an immediate retreat from L.A.

All of this has to be considered in less than 20 seconds, and it all spawns from the counter-intuition of not touching the ball.

To that note, having second thoughts on capturing objectives isn't strictly an Overwatch problem. 

League of Legends commentator and game designer David "Phreak" Turley argued that destroying one of the game's earlier goals could make it harder to win.

For those who are lost in the context, League of Legends is comprised of three "lanes" where players kill minions for gold. Each lane is safeguarded by three turrets, and at the end of the lane stands an "inhibitor". Knocking down an enemy's inhibitor adds a super-minion to the wave that buffs your minions.

This should be a good thing, right?

Not all the time.

While it seems counter-intuitive, Phreak and other experts argue that downing an enemy's inhibitor prior to 25 minutes and without earning another objective off the back of the map pressure actually makes the game harder to win.

In all of the examples listed, one team is openly trading something by forfeiting control of the objective. Be it map control or a stronger defensive option, Push is becoming more of a game of economy rather than a game of distance.

So stop pushing constantly and think: Does it make sense to gain an extra few metres or reinforce our chance to win the next team fight?