Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018 Guide And General Tips

Update:  Over the past week I’ve seen and played many different comps on this mode, some very successful and others less so.  That only reinforces the fact that there are many different ways to tame this beast. This is the strategy which I found the easiest to be successful with when you don’t really know your teammates or you don’t have a team full of high ranked players. I managed to do a no damage run with the comp below multiple times with multiple different players, which to me is evidence that it works. Do feel free to share your strategies in the comments though, it’s always interesting to see how other people tackle this.

It’s October again, which means pumpkin flavored everything and, more importantly, Overwatch’s Halloween event. Blizzard didn’t make any changes to this year’s event(*) (except for nerfs and reworks for heroes in the event) aside from the fact that you can now choose from a variety of heroes in the main mode. Thanks to that it just got a little bit easier to beat this year’s event on Legendary and grab some shiny achievements while you’re at it, so if you want to know how to beat Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018 then do read on! 

* They stated, before the event came out, that it would be unchanged as they are directing resources to more important aspects of the game as for now, so don’t get too upset about that.

The Heroes

You can now choose from a variety of heroes in Junkenstein’s main mode (before you could only pick between Ana, McCree, Hanzo, and Soldier) but not every hero is truly viable on the hardest difficulties. I’ll first outline the comp with which I personally had the most success and then talk about the other heroes and their possible roles.

‘The Meta’ Comp

McCree

McCree has always been a member of the castle defenders and that hasn’t changed for Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018. He’s still a super useful hero as well, and for me he’s S tier for this event. His ultimate can wipe out an unlimited amount of enemy mobs (his weapon is called ‘six shooter’ but it has far more shots in it when he’s ulting) and take away huge chunks of the health meter of any given boss. On top of that he’s decent enough for clearing out regular mobs and his flashbang can be utilized to cancel abilities such as Roadhog’s healing.

He’s fragile and immobile though, so good aim and positioning is required when playing him. I find that the best position for McCree in general is up on the ramparts to the left, where he can easily cover the entire playing area with his ultimate, as well as clear out the left lane relatively easily since the mobs that spawn there are close enough for his shots to not be affected by falloff damage.

Ana

Another member of the original cast, Ana still serves her purpose very well. She’s got great healing, her sleep is an extremely handy weapon to use against bosses (no one likes to see Reaper wraith form away while McCree is charging his ult, for example) and her biotic nade is great burst healing (or damage) and can really mess up Roadhog’s day when he’s self healing. On top of that her ultimate helps out McCree by allowing him to kill bosses (and mobs) faster.

When things settle down she can also help along in the DPS front and her long range, no fall off damage weapon ensures that she can oversee the playing field from a relatively safe position throughout the match.

Zenyatta

Zenyatta does a number of things which greatly increase the viability of this comp, the two most important things being his damage (a Zen consistently hitting shots outputs insane amounts of damage) and his discord orb. Discord is one of the best abilities in the game if you ask me, and it also shines on Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018. Chuck a discord orb on an enemy boss and that means they receive +30% extra damage, effectively cutting the time you need to kill said boss by about a third. Make sure to always have an orb on an enemy boss whenever they’re up.

As if the two previous points weren’t enough there’s also the fact that he can heal and that he’s got a great panic button in the form of his ult. If your team is competent enough you won’t have to do a whole lot of healing, but Zen’s damage and the utility of discord orb are too good to ignore on their own, and that coupled with his healing makes him a fantastic hero for this mode.

Torbjorn

Torb has just been reworked and the jury’s still out on how good he actually is in the regular game at this point, but boy does he excel at Junkenstein’s Revenge. His new turret can be placed anywhere on the map in a pinch, meaning that you don’t have to babysit it as often and a taken down turret isn’t necessarily the end of the world. His rivet gun’s damage is super respectable on its own (his right click absolutely melts easy to hit bosses such as Roadhog) and can be boosted by his E ability, so a well-aiming Torb combined with his turret almost counts for two DPS players in this mode.

The cherry on top is his ultimate though. Because of the fact that there’s a never ending stream of zombie robots coming at you in this mode Torb has his ult up basically on cooldown, and it’s a great ult to defend the door in a pinch and to literally melt certain bosses. Lay down a nice lava carpet on the left ramparts to welcome Symmetra, for example, and watch her health disappear.

Alternatives

Obviously other teams will want to go for other techniques and strategies, so the comp I listed isn’t the only comp that you can use to achieve great results. Some heroes are definitely worth more than others in this mode, so the heroes below are listed by how useful they are (according to me, this will vary from player to player), with Hanzo being the most useful.

Hanzo

Hanzo is another great hero for this mode, certainly since he has his storm arrows. A Hanzo with a bit of aim can almost clear out regular mobs by himself and his ult is great for clearing out large areas of the playing field. It’s also a great tool to use against Junkrat and (to a lesser extent) Symmetra. You can definitely replace Zen (for example) with Hanzo if you feel more comfortable with him, and Hanzo is never a throw pick on this mode, but because of the synergy and all-round utility of the four heroes I mentioned above I put Hanzo as an alternative.

Soldier 76

Soldier was always the least important factor in the regular mode, and with other heroes jumping into the fray this year he’s been demoted to the bench. He’s still great at putting out consistent, reliable damage (if you can aim) and he’s good for clearing out mobs and providing emergency healing (which was basically his job for the past two events) but his ultimate doesn’t really offer anything that other heroes can’t do better this year. Overall Soldier is still decent for this mode, but that’s about it.

Brigitte

Everyone’s favorite high skill hero is insanely beefy and can provide her team with armor, but aside from that she doesn’t really offer anything truly useful. Her abilities don’t really do much against the regular mobs (aside from shield bash, which is good for blocking Roadhog’s healing) and her damage output is insanely low. She’s another hero that could work and probably will work for some people, but I wouldn’t really advice picking her for this mode. There are far more reliably damage dealers and healers for this game mode, and if everyone’s doing their job properly you don’t really need her insane survival ability.

Widowmaker

If you’ve got an aiming God on Widowmaker she can do a super job of clearing out mobs, but she offers nothing of value aside from that. In the unlikely event that your Widow player can hit a headshot almost every time on a boss during hectic fights she’s a good source of sustained damage, but her abilities offer nothing to the team and her ultimate is by far the most worthless ultimate for this gamemode.

Genji

His continuous dash makes him a great cleaner of mobs, and his deflect can be useful in some niche circumstances with bosses, but overall he doesn’t offer nearly enough to warrant a spot in a team vying for a flawless Legendary run.

Tracer

Same story as Genji. Borderline useless. She’s good for clearing out mobs, but that’s about it. Her ult is merely a tickle for the bosses and her abilities provide nothing of value for the team in this mode.

Boss Timeline

Getting the timing right is pretty essential, certainly if you want to go for a flawless run. You don’t want to be caught empty handed when a boss spawns, so if you don’t want to go for the trial-and-error way of finding out the timing I’ve got the timelines written down for you.  The timer runs down, so the first Reaper spawns with 5:40 left on the clock in the center of the screen.

I’m also going to write down basic strategies for my ‘meta comp’ underneath the bosses. The strategy is less important than it was before, since these new heroes and comps are simply way better at this mode than the four original heroes, but having a general idea of how to play can make your life easier.

 5:40 Reaper

Ana should sleep the Reaper once he’s teleported down to the ground floor, giving McCree the chance to charge a fat High Noon on the Reaper, either killing him immediately or taking away most of his health. If you want to get off to a nice start you can throw in a Nanoboost on McCree for good measure as well since you have loads of time before the next boss spawns.

This isn’t a hectic fight at all, so have your Torb remove his turret about ten seconds prior to this boss spawning (that way he gets it back after Reaper dies or gets hit by High Noon) so that his turret doesn’t wake up the sleeping Reaper.

This is by far the easiest bossfight of them all so there shouldn’t be any issues with this fight, but if it’s necessary you can pop your all of your ults, it’s gonna be a while before the next boss spawns.

3:45 Roadhog

Make sure none of you get hooked (and if it does happen have your Ana sleep Hog before he gets a shot off) but that should be rather easy since the AI Hog is pretty bad at landing hooks. Torbjorn’s turret should be able to deal with the random mobs before things get out of hand pretty easily, and if you all focus down Hog he should melt pretty quickly.

Keyword here is focus though. Sustained damage from all four heroes (Ana should sleep or bionade when Hog tries to heal) combined with discord orb will melt hog very quickly. Feel free to use ults (you should almost always feel free to use Torb’s ult) if you feel the need to, but if everyone’s on point you ideally won’t need to use too many of them.

2:45 Symmetra

Symm throws out her shield about halfway through the map so make sure you’re not isolating one of your players on the left ramparts without any way of helping that player.

Torbjorn should ideally kite Symmetra towards the stairs (but not all the way down) while he’s ulting and laying down a carpet of lava. Symm only has a very narrow pathway to travel on so she’ll be in the lava almost every step of the way, taking down a huge chunk of her health almost immediately.

Try to keep her on the ramparts throughout the fight; if the player who’s tanking her ends up taking too much damage they can quickly jump down to relative safety (Symm will not jump down to follow, she’ll only take the stairs) without dying.

1:45 Junkrat

Junkrat actually isn’t all that dangerous as a boss, if you pay attention to him. He’s always perched up by that tower so his only source of damage are his bombs, which have travel time. Take great care to avoid those bombs (they deal a ton of damage) and you should be good. If you want to you can easily have McCree High Noon him (Nanoboosted if you so wish) for an easy kill, though you might want to wait for the next Reaper to spawn in (at 1:35) so that you can take both of ’em down in one fell swoop.

I’ll stress it again though; look out for his bombs. Even if you’re assigned to deal with mobs you should almost constantly be looking at Junkrat to see where his bombs are landing, since a stray bomb or two can make life real difficult.

1:35 Reaper

Reapers aren’t all that dangerous when focused. Make sure your most vulnerable characters (Zen and McCree) aren’t standing right next to him when he spawns in and you should be good to go if you focus him down.

If Junkrat is still alive you should focus Reaper, wait until he comes out of wraith form (Reaper goes into wraith form almost immediately upon taking a bunch of damage) and then Nanoboost McCree for the easy High Noon kill on both Reaper and Junkrat.

If Junkrat’s already dead and you still have Nanoboost and High Noon available (which ideally should be the case) you can use them just like you did with the first Reaper spawn, since you’ve got a little over a minute to get your ults back. Torb can also just ult the ground beneath Reaper, and that combined with focus fire should dispose of him quickly enough.

0:35 Reaper

There he is again, back from the dead once more. The most important thing here is to not use ults (except for Torbjorn, he seriously has his ult up almost all the time on this mode) and to focus him down as fast as possible. The next fight is way too close to get your important ults (Nano and High Noon) up in time and if you go into that fight without any ults you’re more than likely to fail.

Aside from that the same strategies apply to Reaper. Focus him, and stay away from him.

Prepare for the final fight by letting teammates without their ultimates up do most of the damage. Ideally every ult should be up for the final fight.

If Torb’s turret is positioned towards the back of the map somewhere near the door you might want to think about placing it elsewhere, since Symm will be throwing up her shield again if she’s not killed quickly enough, making the turret useless. I mostly just leave it towards the back, but it’s something to think about.

0:00 Mercy and Friends

Here we go, the last one. Much like in actual Overwatch matches it’s of vital importance that you focus the healer. Mercy must die ASAP. Don’t even bother shooting Roadhog until she’s down since he’ll be almost immortal.

Ana should sleep either the Roadhog or the Junkrat and Nanoboost McCree into High Noon. Make sure to have a healing orb on McCree and/or have your eye on him as Ana because he’s standing completely still when he’s ulting and is defenseless against Junkrat’s massive damage bombs. Ideally you position McCree towards the back of the map (on the elevated position to the right) so that he can include Symmetra in his High Noon, since she doesn’t throw out her shield immediately.

Torb should either be on the ground floor, tanking or juking Roadhog’s hook (if Roadhog hooks McCree during his ult you might as well say goodbye to your flawless run) and laying down his ultimate as often as possible or up on the ramparts taking care of Symmetra with his ult.

A fully charged Nano Noon should either kill Mercy (and Junkrat and Symmetra) or take them down almost entirely, and by then the fight is basically won. Focus Roadhog like you did when he entered the fight alone and before you know it you’ll have survived the fight.

General Tips

Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018 is way easier than it was for the past two years thanks to the inclusion of different heroes, but it’s still no cakewalk on the hardest difficulty. Here’s a small collection of tips which will get you through it a bit easier.

• Take down bosses ASAP. The biggest ‘this all got out of hand’ moments always come from having too many mobs spawn in when a boss is still alive or having multiple bosses spawn in at once. If you  focus them you’d be surprised how quickly bosses go down.
• Talk strategy. If you’re with a group of friends or randoms who want to seriously have a go at doing a flawless run it’s a good idea to quickly run through the strategies you want to use before going in. This year especially there are a lot of different tactics and ways to play, so being on the same page before the tough parts come is an essential part of a good run.
• Communicate.
• Know your role. Don’t have someone who never plays Zenyatta on the hero. One missed orb volley can mean the difference between a flawless run and a fail.
• Don’t waste ults. You don’t want to be that guy who’s sitting at 4% ult charge when the final wave spawns because you decided to High Noon three zombie robots a couple of seconds before a bossfight.
• Focus. The. Mercy.

Concluding

As usual, there are many different ways to come to a certain outcome and it’s no different with this edition of Junkenstein’s Revenge. What I described above is what worked best for me after trying out the mode with a bunch of friends and randoms. Does that mean other strategies aren’t viable? No, not at all. Feel free to come up with your own strats and ideas, that’s what all the fun is about. Good luck out there and thanks for reading!

Check out the official Overwatch Halloween comic here.