Heroes that nobody wants in their games tend to be a major source of ridicule among the Overwatch fanbase. Usually, these are low-tier heroes or heroes who are very easy to play poorly.
- Hanzo is a powerful hero in the right hands, and accomplishes virtually nothing of value in the wrong ones, which is to say, a lot of Hanzo players. This has led to the not-entirely-unfounded "Hanzo mains" stereotype: a player instant-locks Hanzo, claiming they "main" him, play very badly, and then blame the rest of their team for things going wrong, which consequently and unfortunately makes any Hanzo players easy targets, even if they turn out to be good. Even Jeff Kaplan himself is aware of this status
and occasionally pokes fun at it. An alternative version of the stereotype has the player waiting until all five teammates have picked their Heroes and then, in spite of the lack of a healer, pick him anyway, forcing someone else to switch just so the team can have a healer. And of course, this only ever happens with your Hanzo. The enemy Hanzo is always accurate and can headshot you in the toe. And even if you are a skilled Hanzo player yourself and genuinely terrorize the enemy team, expect your teammates to say "Hanzo, you did okay," at best. - Widowmaker gets similar treatment to Hanzo, with the stereotype that Widow players think they're hotshots only to play badly, but also that they refuse to get near objectives, which her playstyle usually discourages. She also shares a stereotype with Hanzo as the last player to pick a hero in a comp that requires a healer or a tank will end up picking either one of them.
- Genji is another case of a Difficult, but Awesome hero who's very easy to play poorly, though he's more recognized for diving straight into the enemy team and feeding them, or in the case of healers: screaming "I need healing!" after losing two hit points.
- Winston has a very wild relationship with this trope. For most of the game's early life, he tended to have low play rates in general due to his lack of damage and simple kit that made him be considered weak or reserved for mindless noobs (hence "No aim, no brain, Winston main"). This was in spite of the fact he was an almost regular pick in professional play, since his kit was still incredibly useful most of the time in spite of its deceptive simplicity. Following seasons 4-5 and the advent of the Dive Meta, however, he was looked down upon for basically the opposite reason of being really powerful and common, and while the meta has passed, his power is now much more well-known now.
- Reinhardt gets shades of this, as he's meant to be the team's frontline defense, yet players tend to irresponsibly use his Charge to lunge away from the team's position into the midst of the enemy team, not only leaving their teammates to die, but also getting killed themselves in the process. This leads to jokes about Reinhardt boasting about being the team's shield, and then charging away two seconds later.
- In a more sympathetic light, some view him as this trope from the fact that his worthlessness is more to blame on his team, where he actually does try to do his job and protect his team, but can't since nobody stands behind the damn rectangle, preferring to leap into death instead, resulting in jokes that Reinhardt's shield has a bug that renders it invisible to teammates. Of course, depending on who you play with, both of these interpretations can be valid.
- Reinhardt also gets this status from a completely different respect, where he's seen as the absolute biggest victim of the increasing amount of hard crowd-control in the game. Even when he's technically viable, fans have taken to identifying him as the punching bag of every Doomfist, Brigitte, Wrecking Ball, and more, constantly getting stunlocked before he can even do anything (it's telling that Blizzard eventually had to add in a passive ability to make him slightly more resistant to knockback).
- Sombra attracted a lot of bile and mockery for several months after her release for being considered an underpowered and overshadowed hero, to a point where many Sombra players have recalled instances where they were told to "switch to Hanzo" as soon as they chose her. This mentality has died down somewhat after several buffs over time made her more balanced and commonplace, though since the changes were so gradual, you may occasionally still run into people calling her a wasted hero pick.
- In a non-gameplay sense, Zarya is pitied by many players for her skin designs, none of which have appealed to many players. Her "goth" skins in particular are seen as a major case of WTH, Costuming Department?. Her "Totally 80's" Halloween costume is officially the most divisive skin the art team themselves has ever developed. Jeff Kaplan said that half the team loved it, and the other half hated it. He reminded them that every now and then, it's okay to be wrong.
- Soldier: 76 has been occasionally criticized for being more of a generic FPS character in a game filled with much flashier heroes. He's sometimes lambasted for trying to appeal to the "cod kids", though most believe that that's the entire point of his character design.
- Roadhog's reputation plummeted drastically following equally drastic nerfs in June 2017, to the point where most of the playerbase flat-out considered him unplayable for several months, not helped by Blizzard's awareness of his state and Jeff Kaplan even joking about his reputation. Until he was finally patched months later, many fans lamented Roadhog's state at how a once-beloved hero had fallen from grace to seemingly die from Blizzard's negligence so dramatically.
- Following Roadhog's Rescue From The Scrappy Heap, Doomfist seems to have taken his place, having faced a similar predicament. Initially very powerful mainly due to the crazy-huge Hitbox Dissonance on most of his abilities, he was nerfed rather hard with his hitboxes "fixed" (with many reports of them now suffering the other end of Hitbox Dissonance), and combined with people just figuring out how to properly counter him, his reputation dropped off from "the most anticipated hero yet" to "This guy was in the game?" near instantly. The fact his kit has a ton of glaring, recurring bugs which have remained untreated for months doesn't really help.
- Following Roadhog's Rescue From The Scrappy Heap, Doomfist seems to have taken his place, having faced a similar predicament. Initially very powerful mainly due to the crazy-huge Hitbox Dissonance on most of his abilities, he was nerfed rather hard with his hitboxes "fixed" (with many reports of them now suffering the other end of Hitbox Dissonance), and combined with people just figuring out how to properly counter him, his reputation dropped off from "the most anticipated hero yet" to "This guy was in the game?" near instantly. The fact his kit has a ton of glaring, recurring bugs
- Pharah, as her Ultimate can be quite devastating, yet it leaves her stationary, allowing her to be easily picked off by many other high-damage heroes, especially snipers, who can deplete her 200 HP in an instant. Every Pharah "main" has had at least one occurrence of deploying her Ultimate, only to be killed in the middle of it, resulting in the iconic "JUSTICE RAINS FROM—AUGH!"
- Bastion is often associated with shitty players due to its ease in racking up kills, farming Play of the Game, and general cheapness in design. Naturally, this had led Bastion to become the butt of many jokes since Day 1.
- In the opposite direction, the healer Heroes have big-time Butt-Monkey status due to being under-picked and people playing them because they have to and not because they want to, and then having to maintain five players who won't get on the payload or objective, won't stay grouped up, spam their "I need healing!" lines without making an effort to come to their healers, and keep dying before they can be patched up. All the while being disrespected by their fellow players for being "Easy Mode" or "No Brain" heroes due to more lenient aim requirements. Cue fanart and memes of Mercy in particular cleaning out a few glasses as a result.
