Overwatch: How to quickly build ultimate charge with every character

A new video from Overwatch YouTuber Kappachino explains how players can work to increase the speed of charging their ultimate abilities.

Ultimates are key in Overwatch. They’re what win or lose teamfights in most occasions, so having the ability available for whatever situations your squad might face is pretty important.

There’s one big problem though: ultimates can take quite a while to charge. But the latest video from Kappachino explains how to best gain ultimate charge with each type of hero.

Each hero in Overwatch requires a different number of “points” to fully charge their ultimate, which is why Lucio’s ultimate seems to take longer to charge than Mercy’s (because it does).

This graph shows how much charge each hero needs to build in order to use their ultimate.

Three ways to gain ultimate charge

According to kappachino, there are three main ways for players to charge ultimate abilites in Overwatch: passively, by dealing damage or by healing.

The first method, passive charge, happens no matter what the player is doing. Every 1 second, the player gains 5 points of ultimate charge, no matter the hero.

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Dealing damage, as least for DPS and Tank heroes, is one of the most obvious ways to gain ultimate charge and Kappachino went into more detail about how exactly the system works.

It’s pretty easy to grasp that one point of damage equals one point of ultimate charge for heroes, but damage against temporary barriers, like Lucio’s Sound Barrier and Doomfist’s passive, also counts.

The exceptions to this are Hammond, whose temporary shield doesn’t grant any ultimate charge, and B.O.B., who gives no charge based on damage done to him.

Finally, as all support players should know, healing is the third way to gain ultimate charge. As with damage, one point of healing equals one point of ultimate charge.

But, this only works against enemy damage, so you can’t build ultimate off of Zarya shooting at her feet in spawn, for example.

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That is just the basics of what Kappachino covers in the full YouTube video, which is definitely worth a watch if you want to get better at building ult charge.