Five heroes fly. Everyone else jumps three metres.
Start with the two constants, because they define the whole matchup.
Indefinite flight is limited to five heroes: Angela, Human Torch, Iron Man, Storm and Ultron. Doctor Strange and Star-Lord get temporary flight, which makes them hovering targets rather than true flyers.
Every hero jumps exactly 3 metres. No exceptions. The documented ways higher are Luna Snow’s Smooth Skate at 6, Captain America and Black Widow’s Fearless Leap at 5, Squirrel Girl’s Tail Bounce at 9 — and those are horizontal escapes as much as vertical ones.
So for the overwhelming majority of the roster, “getting up to them” is not a play. A flyer is not a target you chase, it is a target you angle against.
What a flyer gives up
Flight is bought with three things:
- Cover. Ground heroes can step behind geometry. A flyer in the open air has geometry behind them, not in front.
- Positional commitment. A flyer that is overhead cannot quickly be somewhere else, because descent costs the same as ascent.
- Health. Vanguards have 500 to 850; Duelists and Strategists have 250 to 300. Flyers sit in the small pool, which means 1.25 seconds at 200 damage per second.
That third point is the answer to the whole question. A flyer is a 250-to-300 health target with no cover and a predictable position. What they have is a sightline nobody is watching.
The counters, in order of reliability
A covered sightline. The counter to a flyer is not a hero, it is a piece of geometry — a doorway you can shoot through while standing behind, or a roof edge that hides you until the shot. A flyer tracking you across open ground will lose to a ground player who only exposes for the shot.
Angle, not range. Standing directly under a flyer is the worst position: they can see you and you cannot easily see them. Standing 30 metres away with cover is far better, because you are 30 metres of horizontal separation and they are still in the air where their movement is legible.
Pressure that forces descent. A flyer who is taking damage has to leave or die, because their pool is 250 to 300. Two players committing to one flyer usually removes them faster than one player chasing.
Ignore them when they are not converting. A flyer that is not hitting anything is not a threat. The most common error is a team that spends the whole fight looking up while the objective is lost on the floor — on Domination, the score climbs 1% every ~1.2 seconds for whoever holds it, whether or not anyone is flying.
What not to do
Do not jump at them. Three metres, every time. It is a wasted second and it puts you in a predictable arc.
Do not chase them into the open. A flyer retreating over open ground is baiting you out of cover, where their team’s ground players can see you.
Do not mirror-pick a flyer you cannot play. Switch role before you switch hero. The roles guide explains why the Duelist slot is the one you can afford to give up least.
If you want to know which heroes the flyers actually threaten, the heroes database lists range and role together, and the counter picks guide covers the specific swaps. For the general principle behind the angle argument, the positioning guide is the longer read.