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[Flying Dice]

Self-Destruct

    Ultimate cost decreased by 15%
    Explosion delay reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
    Explosion no longer damages D.Va (the player who activates it)

Yuuuuus!

[EnigmaticHat]

YES. we need more non-ultimate crowd control. (I hate genji & tracer so much)

There's a short delay between pressing E and firing, it's a single projectile that effects one target, has a 12 second cooldown, and if the enemy takes damage they get back up. Does that even count as crowd control?

DOTA 2, a MOBA with unusually crazy CC, has a character who specializes in single target disables.  His signature stun works in *exactly* the same way except that any ally of the stunned person can save them by transferring the stun to themselves.  They've literally taken one of the strongest non-ultimate CC abilities any popular multiplayer game will allow players to have, removed two of its weakness, increased its range, and then stuck it in a game that has very weak CC overall.  WTF.

Sure, bad/pub teams will cancel it constantly by accident.  But still, this is seriously the next best thing to a 1HKO.  Literally just tag someone with it, and then either
A. use it as setup for another CC like charge, trap, or hook
B.  move into position, and then attack them with a high damage attack or ideally more than one at once
C. use the downed player as a trap to catch the rest of the team with an AoE or CC ult as they move in to save the person
D. leave them asleep and kill their allies because its 6 fucking seconds

Like seriously, that ability could be 1 second long and it would still BS.  On a healer no less.  WTF.  What's kind of amazing is that its ALSO perfect for canceling earth shatter, tank form, deadeye, dragon blade, any number of ults really, and Blizzard has chosen to highlight this in their character intro.  Like "oh yeah, we added a long-ranged damage/healing hybrid who has a 50% stun uptime, clearly that's not good enough so let's show off how she can press not-Q to cancel PoTG."  Like you could do nothing but hit tranq darts whenever they're off cooldown, literally nothing, and if no one helped finish off the stunned characters you would still be turning the game into 5 v 5.5.  Think about that.

[Folly]

DOTA 2, a MOBA with unusually crazy CC, has a who specializes in single target disables.  His signature stun works in *exactly* the same way except that any ally of the stunned person can save them by transferring the stun to themselves.  They've literally taken one of the strongest non-ultimate CC abilities any popular multiplayer game will allow players to have, removed two of its weakness, increased its range, and then stuck it in a game that has very weak CC overall.  WTF.

It's not like DOTA invented sleep effects that break on damage. The earliest example I can think of is most of the Final Fantasy games. Everquest also had mesmerize effects that worked like that. I'm sure there are many other examples.


In other news, I've had 4 games today where an enemy left in the last minute before I won resulting in me gaining about 5% of a rank. Really hope they fix this mess soon.

[PTTG??]

have you actually played with/as her

Good question.

[EnigmaticHat]

DOTA 2, a MOBA with unusually crazy CC, has a who specializes in single target disables.  His signature stun works in *exactly* the same way except that any ally of the stunned person can save them by transferring the stun to themselves.  They've literally taken one of the strongest non-ultimate CC abilities any popular multiplayer game will allow players to have, removed two of its weakness, increased its range, and then stuck it in a game that has very weak CC overall.  WTF.

It's not like DOTA invented sleep effects that break on damage. The earliest example I can think of is most of the Final Fantasy games. Everquest also had mesmerize effects that worked like that. I'm sure there are many other examples.


In other news, I've had 4 games today where an enemy left in the last minute before I won resulting in me gaining about 5% of a rank. Really hope they fix this mess soon.

Literally at no point in that did I question that Ana is an original character with original mechanics.  That wasn't my point.  All online multiplayer games limit effects that cause people to lose control of their characters (AKA CC) because mechanics like that are always frustrating and extremely powerful.  There's a sliding scale of how much CC a game lets you have.  Overwatch and DOTA are on opposite ends of the scale, but for some reason Blizzard has decided that Overwatch needs a CC that would be considered extremely high end in DOTA.

I mean, its one of two point and click CCs in the entire game and its like 6x as long as the second highest non-ultimate stun, and twice as long as the game's two roots.  On a healer.  That's not raising any red flags for anyone?

have you actually played with/as her

No, the PTR doesn't work for me I was too busy asking my intellectual betters what the difference between a flashbang and a tranq dart is.

Have watched videos tho and read about it tho, seen nothing that would disagree with me.  Sounds like the PTR isn't terribly informative either what with everyone playing as her.

[EnigmaticHat]

That's fair.  And I did say I'm willing to wait and see.  But... I'm pretty confident this is not just OP, its as bad or worse than fan the hammer was on release.  My money is on that ability not reaching the main servers in its current state.

[Flying Dice]

It's on a healer-support whose main weapon does low-alpha DoT. Moreover, it's tied to her pistol, so I expect relatively limited range and/or not being hitscan, which means more difficult to target and the potential for a Genji deflect that doesn't rely on prediction the way his Flashbang deflect does.

Also, reflect on the irony of bitching about point-and-click ranged hard CC in the same sentence as defending poor, vulnerable McCree. 

[EnigmaticHat]

Point and click as in it fires at people directly in front of you and at a good range.  As in "point and click adventure", which is how I often talk about snipers.  McCree's fashbang is certainly excessive for Overwatch but at least its short range and its AoE is pretty small.

But yeah, I've hated McCree since release and the only reason I'm OK with him now is because pub McCrees can't aim and thus essentially have NOTHING except the flashbang and ult.  Ana clearly has things going for her other than the one stun.

[Flying Dice]

That's another thing to consider, it's single-target. McCree's might be short-ranged, but you can catch a lot of people in it if they cluster, say, on a cart or behind a Rein shield.

I mean, she's next to defenseless, since her only weapons are a pistol and a DoT sniper rifle and she lacks any sort of mobility skill. She can't combo the sleep into a kill herself, so it's either an assist move or an escape.

Perfect for disabling camping Widowmakers and Bastions, too. If she had some mobility she might actually be a really interesting aggressive flanking support who wants to get behind the enemy team and harass them, sort of like a Tracer, except focused more on utility than damage, since she could still fill her healing role from that sort of position.

[Flying Dice]

Okay, looking at how she plays, the dart seems fairly hard to land against moving targets at any sort of range. The grenade actually looks to be much more powerful, since it's basically the anti-support tool. In particular Ana's kit as a whole seems to really counter Mercy, both by debuffing her heal target at a critical moment and by putting her to sleep when she tries to get out to ult. I actually think that that's a big part of why they changed Mercy's ult to let her move while using it, otherwise any half-decent Ana could hard-counter her constantly.

Also saw something interesting commented on, that there's good benefit to spamming shots into messy brawls, since any missed shot/grenade stands a decent chance of still doing something useful.

[Flying Dice]

Thank fuck, now I can finish my placements.

[Folly]

Well they seem to have fixed, or at least greatly improved, the ranking adjustment in regards to leavers. I've had several matches today where my allies left and I only lost a little bit of rank, as well as several matches where my enemies left and I still got a good amount of rank gain.

Also, for some reason, every match I've been paired with people averaging 10 ranks above me. Between having competent allies and fair ranking adjustments, I've managed to go from 35->45 today.

[Levi]

I've managed to go from 35->45 today.

Wow, that is a massive jump. 

I had some good games today.  I'm starting to think I can only aim after some vodka...

[sjm9876]

Yeah, I'd say the group matchmaking needs to be improved but I've no idea how they'd go about it. Having played with some mates in a 5-stack, even with all of us being relatively competent at the game, our winrate was only like 30%. Cause whilst level means bugger all most of the time, when against a 5-stack who're all double starred (100 levels each I believe?), and all the exact same level as each other, it's a sure sign you're gonna get stomped. That round was brutal :/

Still, I've not had that issue in 3-stacks, so something's going right there. (Haven't played in a 4.)

[EnigmaticHat]

So, new character analysis time:

Spoiler: Zenyatta (click to show/hide)

Zenyatta has been changed the least, a pretty simple and needed couple of buffs with no kit changes.  With his new health, 76 feels like the best analog to how Zenyatta plays.  You're a generalist who's got damage and healing including self healing (aka shields).  Sadly no mobility abilities but on the other hand Zen's kit has more long ranged impact than 76's so it matters less.  With the health and ult buffs Zen can now be brave when he has his ult charged, moreso even than your average 200-250 health character could be.  Still not a tank by any stretch of the imagination.  If anything, what this update changes is I can be my favorite tank shredding healer without people flaming me in chat.

Spoiler: D'va (click to show/hide)

D'va is fucking cool now.  In addition to everything she could do before she's now Reinhardt-.  She can be in front of the team tanking everything; her defense matrix isn't quite as large or longlasting as barriers, and it doesn't protect from as many things, but it can be toggled and more importantly it can block INFINITE damage within its other limits.  The low duration means that in her capacity as a tank (which she actually IS now) she'll want to be on voice comms telling her teammates when to go in and shoot at the enemy.  The self destruct buff is scary.  Its always been one of those abilities balanced so that with equal skill and situational advantage it won't hit the enemy.  That's still true to a point but... if you're out of position or you don't have a barrier tank, you better watch out because you can be blown up real fast.  My favorite thing about it is the lack of self damage.  Now you can use self destruct as it was clearly intended to be used, AKA as a second health bar similar to primal rage.  Die in the middle of the enemy team, drop self destruct (you can still hit q during the eject delay), than pepper them with pistol shots as they run away.

Spoiler: Ana (click to show/hide)

Ana is... I don't fully grasp the character yet although people have complimented me so I must be doing something right.  She was billed as a sniper healer and that's true but it doesn't do justice to how she plays.  She's totally capable of being Mercy and standing a short distance behind her allies doing nothing but healing (although she'll be significantly worse than Mercy if that's all she does).  Ana doesn't threaten the enemy in the same capacity that a skilled Hanzo or Widowmaker does.  Her healing is like Zenyatta but better in every way except that its more active to use.  She can heal long ranged targets very well, but has problems with allies who break line of sight frequently.  Her grenade is powerful, arguably way TOO powerful, when used on enemies (one shot and one grenade and a normal health character is on the edge of death, and cannot be healed).  And still I almost never use it for that, because it covers the weaknesses of Ana's healing (no self healing, difficult to hit dodgey characters with) too well.  Ana does like long sightlines, but if anything the deciding factor for whether to play her isn't the map, it isn't the enemy team, it isn't the mode.  Its who your allies are.  Nano boost can be exceedingly useless or exceedingly powerful depending on who you use it on.  It provides speed, damage, and survivability, so you want a character that needs all of those things.  With no ults, Reaper and Reinhardt seem to be the go-to buff targets.  They're tough, they're damaging, and they have a burning desire to be close to people they don't like.  Pharah is also potentially *really* good when nano boosted, but I wouldn't trust a pub Pharah to be able to land rockets with that kind of pressure.  I imagine a good Symmetra, Torb, Zarya or Winston could also be solid targets but pubs aren't exactly swimming with those.  When ults come into play you've got more options: Genji, Reaper, Bastion, Roadhog, maybe more I've forgotten.  Few characters (and fewer PLAYERS) can make good use of the nano boost.  And its very easy to apply in the wrong situation or even to the wrong person (like Zarya's bubbles).  But when it works, man does it clean house.  It cements Ana as a healer who's best when you're in voice comms with good players.

I haven't learned to aim the dart yet and its usefulness is limited in pubs (of course).  Still think its too strong but we'll see what happens when there are highly skilled Anas running around.  Maybe I am wrong and nothing will make it work.  Still unsure.  What it is *definitely* good for is if a single person jumps you you can tag them and then just walk away.  Its long cooldown means you definitely want to hold on to it for a rainy day.  Multiple times I've thrown it out at random only to shortly after be in a situation where I need it to survive.