Hit points

Hit points (HP) represent how much damage a hero or object can take. The health bar shows the amount of HP, divided into bars each worth 25.

A hero's HP is "low" at 50% and "critical" at 25%. Their location will be shown to all friendly healers.

If a hero's HP becomes 35% or lower, a gasp sound effect is played and blood appears around the borders of the screen. The exception to this is 150 HP heroes who get it at 70 HP.

Priority Order

When being healed, the priority order is Health > Armor > Shields.

When taking damage, the priority order is Non-Recoverable HP (Shields > Armor) > Recoverable HP (Shields > Armor > Health). The only exception is EMP, which only damages shields and bypasses any temporary armor.

If there are shields above armor, and an instance of damage destroys the shields and damages the armor, armor will reduce that damage based on how much damage the armor would take. For example, suppose Wrecking Ball has 99 temporary shields from Adaptive Shield and he gets hit by Fire Strike (100 damage). The armor would take 1 damage, a number less than 6, so it reduces the damage by 0.5 instead of 3. Wrecking Ball takes 99.5 damage from the Fire Strike.

Recoverable HP

HP that can be healed. There are three types: health, armor, and shields.

Health

The most basic form of HP is health. Health is depleted when there is no armor or shields to protect it, and is the first to be replenished when being healed.

If a hero's health comes to 0, they will die.

Health is colored white.

Armor

Some heroes have a type of HP called armor. For every instance of damage, armor reduces the damage taken by 3, but if the damage is less than 6, armor takes away half instead. As such, armor is extremely effective against attacks that consist of multiple instances of damage (e.g. shotguns) and is less effective against single instances of damage that are above 6. Even if the armor runs out, as long as there was at least 1 point of armor before taking damage, the damage will be reduced.

Armor is the very last damage modifier to be applied. For example, if a fortified Orisa would take 100 damage, Fortify halves it to 50, then armor takes away another 3; the damage is 47. If she would take 10 damage, Fortify halves it to 5, then because 5 is less than 6, armor halves it again; the damage is 2.5.

Against beams and damage-over-time effects, armor works differently: armor reduces the damage of beams by 20% and does nothing against damage-over-time.

Armor is colored yellow.

Beam-type damage (20% reduction)

• Mei: Endothermic Blaster (primary fire)
• Moira: Biotic Grasp (alternate fire), Coalescence
• Symmetra: Photon Projector (primary fire), Sentry Turret
• Winston: Tesla Cannon
• Zarya: Particle Cannon (primary fire)

Damage-over-time effects (no reduction)

• Ana: Biotic Rifle
• Ashe: Dynamite
• Hanzo: Dragonstrike
• Mei: Blizzard
• Moira: Biotic Orb
• Torbjörn: Molten Core (also does additional damage to armor)
• Widowmaker: Venom Mine
• Zarya: Graviton Surge

Shields

Some heroes have a type of HP called shields. Symmetra's Teleporter also has shields. Barriers are made entirely of shields.

On heroes and Symmetra's Teleporter, shields automatically regenerate at a rate of 30 shields per second after avoiding damage for 3 seconds. On Reinhardt's Barrier Field, Brigitte's Barrier Shield, and Sigma's Experimental Barrier, they regenerate at various rates after being inactive for 2 seconds.

Shields are destroyed by Sombra's EMP.

The regeneration of shields is treated as a form of healing, meaning Biotic Grenade can amplify or block it.

Shields are colored cyan.

Non-Recoverable HP

HP that cannot be healed and are only temporary, generated by hero abilities.

There are two types of non-recoverable HP: armor and shields. Non-recoverable HP always goes on top of recoverable HP.

Temporary Armor

Non-recoverable armor reduces damage like regular armor.

Temporary armor is colored orange.

Abilities that grant Temporary Armor:

Brigitte:

• Repair Pack: Provides a target up to 75 temporary armor when over-healing. Lasts 5 seconds
• Rally: Provides self and nearby allies up to 100 temporary armor at a rate of 15 armor per 0.5 seconds. Lasts 30 seconds

Torbjörn:

• Overload: Provides self 100 temporary armor. Lasts 5 seconds

Temporary Shields

Non-recoverable shields, or temporary personal shields, are susceptible to EMP like regular shields but do not regenerate and often decay by themselves.

Temporary shields are colored dark blue.

Abilities that grant Temporary Shields:

Doomfist:

• The Best Defense...: Creates up to 150 temporary shields to self, 30 for each target hit with a normal ability and 75 for each target hit with Meteor Strike. Decays at 3 shields per second after 1 second

Lúcio:

• Sound Barrier: Creates 750 temporary shields to self and all allies within range. Decays at 125 shields per second

Sigma:

• Kinetic Grasp: Converts 40% of damage absorbed into temporary shields. Decays at 7 shields per second after 3 seconds

Wrecking Ball:

• Adaptive Shield: Creates 100 temporary shields to self, plus 100 additional shields per enemy within range. Lasts 7 seconds. Does not give enemies ultimate charge if damaged

List of hero HP

Hero	Role	Health	Armor	Shields	Temporary Armor	Temporary Shields	Total / Max
D.Va	Tank	400	200				600 [Mech]
		150					150 [Pilot]
Orisa	Tank	200	200				400
Reinhardt	Tank	300	200				500
Roadhog	Tank	600					600
Sigma	Tank	300		100		400 [Kinetic Grasp]	400 / 800
Winston	Tank	400	100				500 / 1000
		900 [Primal Rage]
Wrecking Ball	Tank	500	100			800 [Adaptive Shield]	600 / 1400
Zarya	Tank	200		200			400
Ashe	Damage	200					200
Bastion	Damage	200	100				300
Doomfist	Damage	250				150 [The Best Defense...]	250 / 400
Genji	Damage	200					200
Hanzo	Damage	200					200
Junkrat	Damage	200					200
McCree	Damage	200					200
Mei	Damage	250					250
Pharah	Damage	200					200
Reaper	Damage	250					250
Soldier: 76	Damage	200					200
Sombra	Damage	200					200
Symmetra	Damage	100		100			200
Torbjörn	Damage	200	50		100 [Overload]		250 / 350
Tracer	Damage	150					150
Widowmaker	Damage	200					200
Ana	Support	200					200
Baptiste	Support	200					200
Brigitte	Support	200	50		100 [Rally]		250 / 350
Lúcio	Support	200				750 [Sound Barrier]	200 / 950
Mercy	Support	200					200
Moira	Support	200					200
Zenyatta	Support	50		150			200

List of non-hero HP

Hero	Ability	Health	Armor	Shields	Total	Recoverability
Ashe	B.O.B.	1200			1200	Healing Non-Recoverable HP
Baptiste	Immortality Field	200			200
Brigitte	Barrier Shield			200	200	Regenerates
Junkrat	Concussion Mine	25			25
	Steel Trap	100			100
	RIP-Tire	100			100
Mei	Ice Wall	400			400
Orisa	Protective Barrier			900	900
	Supercharger	200			200
Reinhardt	Barrier Field			2000	2000	Regenerates
Sigma	Experimental Barrier			1500	1500	Regenerates
Sombra	Translocator	5			5
Symmetra	Sentry Turret	30			30
	Teleporter	50		250	300	Regenerates
	Photon Barrier			4000	4000
Torbjörn	Deploy Turret	250			250	Forge Hammer
Widowmaker	Venom Mine	1			1
Winston	Barrier Projector			700	700
Wrecking Ball	Minefield	50			50
Zarya	Particle Barrier			200	200
	Projected Barrier			200	200

Trivia

• If armor is hit, a metallic sound effect is played.
• If a hero's base shields are destroyed, the screen becomes cracked.
• The bleed effect originally occurred when a hero's HP became 75 or lower. Since this was highly inefficient for Tanks, it was replaced with a more relativistic system.
• Armor originally subtracted 5 damage and began halving at 10.
• Armor originally treated the tick rate of beams and damage-over-time effects as "instances" of damage. This resulted in some beam-damage and DoT being halved by armor. However, not all beams/DoT effects have the same tick rate, so how armor interacts with them were unpredictable.
• The priority order for damage was originally shields (non-recoverable, then recoverable), then armor (non-recoverable, then recoverable), and then health. This meant that the armor provided by Rally would go underneath the shields of heroes such as Zenyatta.
  • The Patch Notes for Patch 1.33.0.1, which issued this change, mentions "non-recoverable health" when listing the new priority order. Currently, such a concept does not exist in the game.
• Symmetra originally had an ability called Photon Shield which allowed her to create 25 recoverable shields for her teammates. When Symmetra got her first rework, Photon Shield was removed and Shield Generator was added, which gave all surrounding teammates 75 recoverable shields. This too was removed upon Symmetra's second rework. Photon Shield and Shield Generator were the only ways heroes could have recoverable HP that were not found on their base HP.
• B.O.B. is treated as an additional teammate, so he is affected by abilities that grant non-recoverable HP to allies, such as Sound Barrier and Rally. B.O.B. is the only non-hero that can have additional HP.
• The term "shields" is often informally used to refer to barriers.
  • Since barriers have shields for their HP, anything that exclusively damages shields also damages barriers. Currently, the only ability that does that is EMP; however, in the beta, Pharah's Concussive Blast used to be able to do 700 damage to shields and barriers.