Getting in to the enemy team’s backline to flank their supports and DPS is especially important this season, since it lets you distract the squishies and leave their tank vulnerable. The new changes also encourage aggressive play and self sufficiency, which makes flankers even better, so let’s see which ones can get the most value.

1) Tracer

• Pulse Pistols: Short-range automatic weapons (220 DPS).
• Blink: Teleport in the direction you are moving.
• Recall: Travel back in time to your previous location and health.
• Pulse Bomb: Throw out a powerful sticky explosive (350 damage).

Hero score: 90/100

Tracer’s kit is the best fit for flanking this season, because her mobility is high, she has a self heal that gives her a free reload and her ultimate can oneshot anyone that isn’t a tank or Bastion.

Her poke is decent if you aren’t playing too far away, letting her soften up whoever she wants to go for early, as well as lowering the sustain of supports if she scares their healing abilities out of them.

While she can work well with most comps because she’s incredibly independent, she’s mainly best with a dive tank or other mobile DPS following up on her flanks, if the entire team is coordinating.

2) Sombra

• Machine Pistol: Short-range automatic weapon (160 DPS).
• Hack: Hold to hack. Hacked enemies cannot use abilities (for 1.5 seconds) and can be seen through walls. Hacked health packs spawn faster and can’t be used by enemies. Taking damage interrupts the hack attempt.
• Stealth: When out of combat, become invisible and move faster.
• Translocator: Throw a beacon and teleport to it. Stealth cooldown is reduced after teleporting.
• Virus: Infect enemies with a projectile that deals damage over time. Virus damages hacked enemies at a faster rate (25 impact damage on unhacked enemies, 50 on hacked ones + 100 DOT).
• EMP: Deal damage to all nearby enemies equal to a percentage of their current health, hacking them and destroying barriers near you (Damage is 25% of enemy’s health).

Hero score: 84/100

Sombra is a counter to most supports, annoys almost every tank and her recent buffs make it easier to get kills by herself, so she's a great pick this season. She's particularly good against Ball, Doomfist and Zenyatta, since she can interrupt Doomfist or Ball's mobility and get easy kills on Zenyatta because of his big hitbox.

Her virus, along with the projectile and HP changes, buffed her ability to 1 v 1 snipers too. Hanzo was the only one that could play well against her before, but he can’t oneshot her any more, which makes her matchup against him better this season. 

She’s best when run with Tracer and a dive tank, since she can still be a little inconsistent to get value with if you’re flanking on her alone, but when you get teammates that communicate with you, she can be incredibly annoying to the enemy team.

3) Genji

• Shuriken: Left click throws an accurate burst of three projectiles. Right click throws a fan of 3 projectiles in an arc (92 DPS on left click, 119.11 DPS on right click).
• Deflect: Deflect incoming projectiles towards the direction you are facing and block melee attacks.
• Swift Strike: Rapidly dash forward and inflict damage on enemies. Eliminations reset the cooldown (50 damage).
• Dragonblade: Unsheathe a deadly melee weapon (110 damage per swing).
• Cyber-Agility: Climb on walls and double jump.

Hero score: 72/100

Genji is the most opportunistic out of the three proper dive DPS, since he’s the easiest to force out of his flanks if the enemy team is running the right heroes, but his poke is better than Sombra’s or Tracer’s.

He’s reliant on his dash reset for consistency, so he’ll struggle to get much value against team comps with multiple beam weapons or easy ways to block him off, even if he feels particularly difficult to deal with when the enemy team doesn’t want to counter him.

Deflect is also a hit or miss ability, since he can use it to block spam damage or delay for his dash in a 1 v 1, but if he’s going for someone that can hit through it or they just ignore him, Genji isn’t exactly doing much until he cancels it.

4) Reaper

• Hellfire Shotguns: Short-range spread weapons (216 DPS).
• Shadow Step: Teleport to a targeted location.
• Wraith Form: Move faster and become invulnerable, but you cannot shoot.
• Death Blossom: Damage all nearby enemies (170 DPS).
• The Reaping: Dealing damage heals you.

Hero score: 66/100

The main reason for picking Reaper is how good he is at countering tanks, especially Winston, but having 300 HP and being able to spread the passive anti-healing even with his low damage pellets from far away made his flanking ability better than before.

He has an easier time killing supports this patch because his DPS is incredibly high up close, his bullets are more likely to headshot with the hitbox increase and he can probably out-sustain them during the 1 v 1 now. His main problem is that a lot of the other DPS have better range than him, so he can have a hard time getting in to good positions when he wants to flank.

Wraith Form and Death Blossom can give him free reloads if he’s in a bad situation and needs to get in some quick damage, but wraith is his only escape, so using it for extra ammo is relatively situational. His teleport should only really be used to engage since you can be killed during the animation. 

5) Pharah

• Rocket Launcher: Long-range explosive projectile weapon (140 DPS).
• Jet Dash: Boost horizontally.
• Jump Jet: Fly rapidly upwards. Grants some fuel.
• Concussive Blast: Launch an explosive blast to knock back enemies (30 damage on direct hit, 30 splash).
• Barrage: Launch a continuous volley of mini-rockets (1200 DPS).
• Hover Jets: Hold to hover.

Hero score: 64.5/100

Pharah’s new rework has skewed her new playstyle to be more of a flanking friendly one, encouraging her to be more active in the fight with her faster movement and new ability. If you play her passively like you used to, it’s going to be harder to get much done.

Unfortunately, the projectile buffs make Pharah a little easier to hit when she’s in the air, Mercy can’t pocket her as consistently as before and most of the best DPS right now counter her. She also has a harder time spreading the anti-healing passive because of the travel time on her rockets.

She’s still decent though, because she can be hard to kill up close, her left click has a generous hitbox and her jets are quiet enough to let her flank without being heard during teamfights. Her higher mobility makes it easier to get around early, unless the enemy team has a hitscan that’s paying attention. 

Using Barrage is probably going to get you killed most of the time, so as long as you can kill one or two squishies before you die, you’ve probably used it well. It’s unlikely the enemy team is going to ignore an ulting Pharah, so your teammates can push up while you distract them.

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