In love with Junkrat.

[Zydrate]

Yea, I rarely ever get Widowmaker. Sometimes I can use my mine-jump to get to her easy enough but then I have the challenge of my main attack being on cooldown and relying on grenades alone.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I hate Junkrat with the power of a thousand decaying stars.

I'm with you on this. I really really struggle against Junkrat.
I just can't counter him. I'm told he has loads of counters, but my (probably useless) anecdotal experience says otherwise.

Go Genji = he just traps you, baits out and waits out your deflect, and then blows you to pieces.
Go Pharah = get shot out of the sky by Junkrats friends.
Go D.Va = he just walks backwards while shooting at you (because D.Va moves sooo FUCKING slowly while shooting, and you need to be shooting at point-blank with D.Va otherwise she does basically no damage).
Go Winston = he just uses his mine to launch himself backwards and out of your attack radius, and then shoots you while your jump is on cooldown.
Go Zarya = Gets loads of charge, but you still get blown up anyway because your shield bubble only lasts for 2 seconds, and it takes more time than that to kill him (especially when he launches himself backwards and out of your range like he always fucking does).
Rein = Okay, I wouldn't use Rein to counter a Junkrat, but it's worth mentioning that Rat spam destroys Rein's shield faster than any other non-ult attack in the game. So what tends to happen is our Rein shield gets wrecked, and then the rest of us get wrecked too.

Now, I know I suck at the game (no need to remind me of that), but are there any reliable and (hopefully?) easy counters to Junkrat and his grenade spam?

Don't get close to him, by the way you're sounding, it sounds like you charge in or focus on close encounters, keep junkrat away and pick him off with mcree/pharah/(mei's alt fire)/roadhog alt fire/zarya alt fire/snipers/soldier burst fire

as a junkrat main (he was my main when the game started, since then I've switched to lucio and zen), I constantly used the map to my advantage and baited people into chasing me, between the trap, mine that does damage, and using walls to bounce grenades off of and keep me safe, people were far in over their head when they took the bait to chase me around corners/into rooms. If you force junkrat to use his mine and it doesn't damage you, then just pick him off from a distance, he'll inevitably pop out at some point, don't take the bait and chase into close range, it makes it super easy to angle his grenades into exploding on you all in a row, which is why he's so powerful at chokepoints on certain maps.

also I haven't heard it mentioned much before, and most people get around to it at some point, but if you're getting frustrated by a hero, go play them in quickplay/practice so you understand them and the cooldowns they have, my entire strategy for zarya revolves around baiting her bubbles, then I go aggressive as possible, I don't care if I die, if I take down that fucking asshole then it's a win in my book.

 

[IceForce]

Don't get close to him, by the way you're sounding, it sounds like you charge in or focus on close encounters, keep junkrat away and pick him off with mcree/pharah/(mei's alt fire)/roadhog alt fire/zarya alt fire/snipers/soldier burst fire

I main Tracer, so yeah, I am often up in people's faces because that's where I can get the reliable damage done.

But fair do's. Soldier / McCree / or anyone else with reliable ranged damage seems to be the way to go.

my entire strategy for zarya revolves around baiting her bubbles, then I go aggressive as possible, I don't care if I die, if I take down that fucking asshole then it's a win in my book.

Oh definitely. Zarya is a fairly high-priority target. Because every time she dies it resets her charge back to zero again. Meaning, when a team's Zarya goes down, it often has a bigger impact on the team fight than most other heroes going down.