Overwatch is such a tightly balanced game, it's easy to notice when one hero's powerlevel stands out. This power often manifest itself in extreme flexibility or abilities that control the ebb and flow of the match; things that poor Torbjörn just can't do. On that same note, while Torbjörn is situational, it's foolish to call him underpowered. Player skill and adaptability will always be the biggest determining factor to a heroes power level; after all the games balanced is based around the ability to switch heroes at any moment.
And yet, here we are. These 5 heroes show the earliest signs of being competitive staples and here is why:
Mercy
An organized team always gets better with a Mercy. High level TF2 is was defined by the Medic's powerful Uber, and Mercy's ultimate ability is creating a similar meta. The ability to ressurect your entire team crazy powerful, especially when you are trying to capture a point or get the game winning push of the payload. It's strength is similar to Symettra's Teleporter, only it's much harder for the enemy team to play around.
The healing Mercy provides is a given, but it's the damage boosting capability that really takes her to the next level. Known simply as "The Combo" her deadly pairing with the next hero on this list is a well accepted strategy with very little downsides.
Widowmaker
Widowmaker can already 1-shot 150 HP heroes , but in order to do so she must fully charge her sniper rounds. However, when paired with a dedicated Mercy boosting her damage, Widowmaker's surprisingly fast sniper rifle becomes lethal in unavoidable ways.
Her her grappling hook is a much needed bit of mobility for a sniper class, but it's the quick rate of fire from her sniper rifle that makes Widowmaker so powerful. Useful both offense and defense, Widowmaker scales with player skill almost exponentially so it is no wonder she is so powerful in the right hands. She is the best counter to Pharah, which automatically makes her useful.
Oh, and I heard granting your entire team vision of the enemy in an FPS game is pretty powerful.
Pharah
Rockets are an important part of class based shooters. They control space, punish stationary targets, and allow a player to remain mobile while covering different areas. Pharah does two things really well and it turns out they are very important to competitive play: flanking and quickly establishing the high ground advantage.
With these two abilities, Pharah becomes the hero of choice for a star player to carry a game. Pharah can quickly eliminate enemy supports out of position and single handedly disrupt an entire push if she manages to safely flank the enemy. On top of all of this, her ultimately ability synergies extremely well with large aoe ultimates, creating a "wombo-combo" that can wipe entire teams.
Check out A_Seagull's insane Pharah play during some scrimmages against Blizzard Developers and his current competitive Overwatch group. The action starts at around the 7 hour and 54 minute mark and continues from there. No hero is capable of the amazing feats Pharah can accomplish when a skilled player is controlling her.
Reinhardt
Reinhardt has a lot of great things going for him. When pushing a payload, he provides inevitable progress even in the face of overwhelming enemy fire. As long as his shield holds, you can expect a couple seconds of uninterrupted payload movement. He synergises with the majority of support and defensive heroes, and in close quarters is an absolute beast.
The most powerful of all his abilities is the AoE stun his ultimate provides. It's essentially unavoidable and if Reinhardt hits 2-3 heroes (which isn't hard to do) he immediately wins the skirmish for his team, capturing any objective or moving the payload forward to his content.
As long as Overwatch is about objective control, Reinhardt will be here to stay.
D.Va
Out of the 3 new heroes released since BlizzCon, D.Va shows the most promise of being a competitive staple. Her ability to negate all enemy fire power (Including most heroes ultimate abilities) is extremely effective in protecting allies and countering enemy combos, but what really makes D.Va powerful is her mobility.
D.Va's rocket flight is on a surprisingly low cooldown, allowing her unprecedented movement options. This allows D.Va to break enemy lines and hunt down squishy snipers or supports that are separated from the group. Two D.Va's on the same team with the same goal of constant disruption can get very frusterating to play again, especially when they have Harmony Orbs from an allied Zenyatta.
D.Va can play recklessly and soak tons of damage, as she essentially has two different health bars. One for her mech, and one for the pilot. In pilot form, D.Va is fragile but dishes out a surprisingly high ammount of DPS with her pistol. Having to kill her twice is very annoying for the opponent, especially when pilot D.Va manages to survive long enough to summon another full HP mech that is still behind enemy lines.
Her ultimate is easily avoidable, but it's true power lies in it's zone control. It forces an enemy to retreat, allowing your team to move in and better position your self for taking the objective or further pushing the payload.
Honorable mentions
Junkrat
Junkrat dishes out an absurd amount of damage and can essentially spam his grenades freely with no consequence. He is the best tool for breaking down enemy Reinhardts (and Winstons) and builds his ultimate ability very fast due to his effective spam. Junkrat is almost at Pharah levels of power, but he isn't has effective on the offense as he is on defense.
Zarya
The most important thing Zarya brings to a team is the ability to shield allies and her devastating ultimate ability. She is the most important part of AoE wombo combo's and synergizes extremely well with Hanzo, Pharah and other AoE damage ultimates. Zarya is best paired with a more dedicated tank like Reinhardt, with Zarya shielding high priority allies like Mercy or Pharah when they start to take damage. Her damage is relatively low however, so she doesn't quite make the top 5 list.
McCree
Pre-nerf McCree would of easily been on the top 5 list, but that age of Overwatch has ended. Before the nerfs to his long distance damage, McCree stood out like a sore thumb, able to fill the role of both sniper and aggressive flank at the same time. He is still absolutely devastating from a medium distance (Especially when damage boosted) and his ability to essential kill any hero 1v1 makes him a powerful choice when your team is being overwhelmed by enemy flanks. McCree's role is currently being threatened by Genji, so for now he stays on the honorable mention list.
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