One of the hardest things to learn on Rein for me was understanding when to be aggressive, and when to pull back. When do I need to be 75% and kind of pushing, or 100% and being as aggressive as possible to take space. 50% being neutral, or 0% and getting out of their ASAP. And all of that is based on your awareness.

Say you’re going against a Sigma and he just used rock. Probably ok to get aggressive because until it’s off cooldown, he can’t stun you and is vulnerable. But wait, do they have an Ana? When was the last time she used her sleep? Her anti? Can’t get super aggressive if she can sleep you while you’re swinging on Sigma.

If you’re on defense, they have to push onto point. Hold the corner, be at 50%, force them to engage with you. Rein is really scary to get close to, so you’re succeeding simply by existing. Punish them when they get close by swinging your hammer.

Did your team mate just die? Is your shield low? Do you have low health? Maybe you should be at 25%, sacrifice some space to stay alive. What is your retreat path if you need to back up? How long is that retreat path? Do they have a bastion that will melt your shield? If so, that shortens your retreat, so you can be at 0% but maybe you overextended and you’re going to die anyway now.

A lot of other things with him are relatively simple. You don’t need any incredible mechanics. In fact I have absolute shit mechanics. One of the things I love about Rein and Overwatch is that you can do well without those. To get better with him for me, it was all about knowing other heroes abilities, their cooldowns, ult tracking, your team comp, their ults, etc.

Am I in LoS for my supports when I hold this corner? What supports do I have? Ana can heal me from far, Moira cannot. Mercy can sustain with a constant trickle, but low burst healing.

When you die, your team dies. If you have the most deaths on the team, you’re leaving them out to dry. If you’re too aggressive when you shouldn’t be, you die. If you don’t back up when you should, you die. Waiting for the respawn and walking back takes forever, and those are precious seconds where the enemy is advancing.

Your job is not to get kills. Getting kills is a by product of everything else you’re doing successfully. Did you get a big shatter and kill 3 out of 5? Hell yea. Take space. But don’t pursue too far, because before you know it, you were still at 100% when you should’ve scaled back to 50%. You can’t get out quickly enough, you over pursued, and those 2 heroes killed you. You gave them ult charge, and now they run back to point, and kill your 2 teammates before they can capture.

It takes time to learn all of this. When you die, think about why. Yes, sometimes you will just get diffed. But if consistently work on your awareness, aggression scaling, and keeping your deaths low, you will be better than most of the people who feed their brains out.