Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Egan_BW]

It's blizzard, of course that's what they do.

[EnigmaticHat]

Honestly OW's balance changes have felt fairly desperate to me.  Since release at top level play we've basically had an 8 hero meta (for a given map, at top level play, there are rarely more than 8 viable heroes for both sides combined).  The only thing they've done that ever changed this was the one hero limit, because now the absolute worst the meta for a map can be is 6 hero.  Prior to that there was a point where top level Lijiang tower had a 3 hero meta, where between them both sides playing optimally would have 4 clones each of the same 3 people.  Now we "merely" have 4 characters for most maps that get cloned once.

But nothing else has really helped.  They keep batting down each meta and then a new, equally static meta emerges over the course of about 3 days.  Nerf ridiculous release McCree to merely a normal level of broken, Genji devours the entire meta.  Throw Zen's ult through the roof to counter dragonstrike and then separately nerf Genji, now no one ever dies because Zen + Lucio and both are 90% pick rates.  Introduce Ana to "counter healers", forget that all teams need at least 2 healers so now Ana is 100% pick and the usual suspects are still present for healers.  Entire meta bends around Ana.

They need to stop balancing around those competitive tier lists and start playing their own game.  Lot of characters have been made less fun at lower level play because of failed attempts to make esport competitive more varied.

If you ask me, they need to make their maps consistent first.  Characters are so wildly different in power level on each map (for example, Pharah on LT: Night Gardens vs Nepal: Shrine) that you just can't straight compare characters in terms of effectiveness, and that kinda kills competitive balance.  For example, as long as Hanamura is in the game we can't have choke holding characters like Torb buffed past a certain point, even tho those characters are perpetually underpowered on most maps.  They need to make gameplay relevant values more standard.  Even things that should have been standard from the start, like distance from the objective to spawn, or the height of the skybox/killfloor, or whether there are walkable roofs present, vary wildly between maps or even inside the same map.

[Putnam]

They also nerfed his boop.
I'm going to miss useful Lucio.

...Sonic blast is boop. They buffed boop. They buffed it a lot.

Playing it in the PTR as a Lucio main, this shit is broken. New Lucio is absolutely stupid if you're capable of moving around.

I'm completely serious, I think that he's too powerful in the PTR. His healing is too good combined with the rest of his kit. He's a better healer than Zenyatta now when he's in range, which is not hard when you're so goddamn fast.

I guess if you played the rather boring and not that useful kind of Lucio that just sort of sticks around and buffs the team, it's a nerf, but to an active Lucio who knows how to move, it's a huge buff.

[King Kitteh]

Increased speed while wall riding sounds epic!

[Leafsnail]

Lucio has been like a 95% pick forever. He really needs a nerf. IDK if this rework actually amounts to one.

Honestly OW's balance changes have felt fairly desperate to me.  Since release at top level play we've basically had an 8 hero meta (for a given map, at top level play, there are rarely more than 8 viable heroes for both sides combined).  The only thing they've done that ever changed this was the one hero limit, because now the absolute worst the meta for a map can be is 6 hero.  Prior to that there was a point where top level Lijiang tower had a 3 hero meta, where between them both sides playing optimally would have 4 clones each of the same 3 people.  Now we "merely" have 4 characters for most maps that get cloned once.

But nothing else has really helped.  They keep batting down each meta and then a new, equally static meta emerges over the course of about 3 days.  Nerf ridiculous release McCree to merely a normal level of broken, Genji devours the entire meta.  Throw Zen's ult through the roof to counter dragonstrike and then separately nerf Genji, now no one ever dies because Zen + Lucio and both are 90% pick rates.  Introduce Ana to "counter healers", forget that all teams need at least 2 healers so now Ana is 100% pick and the usual suspects are still present for healers.  Entire meta bends around Ana.

They need to stop balancing around those competitive tier lists and start playing their own game.  Lot of characters have been made less fun at lower level play because of failed attempts to make esport competitive more varied.

If you ask me, they need to make their maps consistent first.  Characters are so wildly different in power level on each map (for example, Pharah on LT: Night Gardens vs Nepal: Shrine) that you just can't straight compare characters in terms of effectiveness, and that kinda kills competitive balance.  For example, as long as Hanamura is in the game we can't have choke holding characters like Torb buffed past a certain point, even tho those characters are perpetually underpowered on most maps.  They need to make gameplay relevant values more standard.  Even things that should have been standard from the start, like distance from the objective to spawn, or the height of the skybox/killfloor, or whether there are walkable roofs present, vary wildly between maps or even inside the same map.

I think the current tournament meta is actually ok. There are a couple of heroes who are too good (Lucio and Ana) and a bunch of heroes who are too bad (the Defence heroes plus Reaper and Sombra) but otherwise there's a good amount of variety and most heroes have at least some niche.  The teams range from very spread out and aggressive ones (eg Winston + 3 divers) to much more compact ones looking for a straight fight (eg Reinhardt + other tanks or long range DPS) with plenty of stuff in between.

I actually think it's good to have map variety and different heroes being good on different maps - it means the game is more varied and there are a greater range of strategies being deployed by teams. The alternative of playing on a bunch of interchangeable maps seems far worse to me, and if characters can't have their own niches on specific maps that means we're even more likely to have a very narrow metagame.

Current hero pick percentages in tournaments are here if anyone's interested:
https://www.winstonslab.com/

[EnigmaticHat]

"Welcome to Barrierwatch" ~A quickplay player today.

I'm inclined to agree with them.  There's something kinda odd about working your way through an Orisa barrier, then a Rein barrier, only to see a Winston barrier pop up where the other two were.

It didn't actually hurt the quality of games that I could see.  When both teams have Orisa/Rein plus any two other tanks, it becomes a battle of who can find an angle to get through the other team's barriers because you're unlikely to be able to score kills with ranged fire against the enemy team's front.  A lot of times the battles descended into people giving up on long range combat and using their perfectly functional guns as close combat weapons.  If that's not a superhero staple I don't know what is.

Orisa herself is heavily team dependent.  She has Zarya's health, but her head hitbox feels like its the size of Zarya's entire body and her gun slows her.  Orisa needs some fairly intense healer babysitting AND she needs her team to have on-point long range DPS.  In spite of that, I would not describe her as a weak character.  If anything she's just as powerful as Rein.  Getting pulled in by her right click is often a death sentence due to the intense slow attached to it.  Her shield seems weak until you realize that if she can start the fight with it already up, she can often rebuild it before anyone dies.  The result is a character with 200 less barrier HP than Rein, who can fire a gun CONSTANTLY while the barrier is up.  Her gun is finicky but has zero damage falloff, you can actually put up a decent show harassing Widowmakers at long range.  Not that you should.  See: massive head hitbox.

Overall, I'd say with a reliable team she's like Rein but more fun and active.  With an unreliable team you'll find yourself wounding but never killing enemies, and bleeding health shockingly fast whenever your barrier goes down.  Orisa's ult never changes the outcome of my games, BTW.  Either you've got Mercy and two great DPS characters and you wipe the floor with the enemy team before you can even build ult, or you don't and the totem is useless.  The being said on paper its power is completely obscene and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed somehow.

[MrRoboto75]

The lengths they go to to make sombra relevant

[somemildmanneredidiot]

It probably says something that I forgot that Sombra's ult pops barriers.

[Man of Paper]

It does, doesn't it. You'd think that's something I'd remember as a Rein secondary. Kind of on the fringe between being a Rein or Lucio main, but I used to be hard Rein. Now I got a golden booper, so I dunno.

[EvilTwin]

It does, doesn't it. You'd think that's something I'd remember as a Rein secondary. Kind of on the fringe between being a Rein or Lucio main, but I used to be hard Rein. Now I got a golden booper, so I dunno.

Golden booper + more mobile Lucio with the buffs would be enough to shift the balance there I'd think.

[MrRoboto75]

Doomfist is a guy that exists.  On PTR anyway.  Unlike Orisa, people will probably remember Doomfist exists.

He seems pretty fun to play, and he isn't too bad to play against.  The big highlight is how utterly mobile he his.  All of his abilities shift him around.  Charge over here, jump up there with a shurioken, leap over here to slam the ground, and repeat.  Success really depends on how well you can string abilities together, as well as your ability to choose fights, much like a Winston or Genji.  Poor Doomfist players may easily find themselves knee deep in enemy territory without a team to lean on.

He does have quite a few counters.  Getting hacked leaves him dead in the water with only his tiny shotgun.  Reaper does well since Doomfist demands close range combat anyway, and his hitbox is meaty enough for Reaper's shotguns.  Pharah is obviously to high to hit (but not impossible).

[SOLDIER First]

Also, Orisa basically counters everything Doomfist has.

[EnigmaticHat]

PTR isn't usually representative or particularly fun so I'm waiting to try Doomfist.  Mostly I'm sitting and crying that Roadhog got nerfed.  All the independent tanks have been nerfed, meanwhile DPS is getting yet another hero with damage, mobility, survivability and healing all built into the same package.

One thing that is kind of funny about Doomfist from watching him is how hilariously lopsided his damage is.  Most of his abilities are like "oh, maybe if I chain this with something else I *might* get a kill if the other guy isn't getting healed."  Basically Sombra level damage (putting aside god tier Sombras).  And then you have his right click, which is a straight up one-shot skill-shot albeit a finicky one.  So yeah, guy named after his weapon put most of his eggs in the same basket, whudda thunk it.

[MrRoboto75]

Pre nerf Hog would have rendered DF dead on arrival though.

[EnigmaticHat]

Well... so?  DPS players already have more than half the roster, tanks and supports only get 6 and 4 characters respectively.  They should have designed Doomfist differently instead of changing Roadhog.

Particularly since all they did was nuke Roadhog's old playstyle without giving him a new one.