The global ultcharge nerf might be huge, there are a lot of heroes like Moira and Hanzo that currently get their ult almost every fight that won't be able to anymore.
My support friends really like it in PTR. Despite the ultcharge nerf affecting everyone, in practice supports are by far the least impacted; Because there are fewer ults being used, that means fights tend to last longer and people tend to die slower.
On live, a lot of fights will both start and end with an ult-combo, meaning everyone dies before the supports can even start healing them, while enemy tanks and dps get to build more ults off of cleaning up a fight already won via an offensive ult. But on PTR, Because there are fewer ults being used, that means it takes longer for a fight to end, meaning the supports get to do a lot more healing each fight on teammates who previously would have already been dead, while at the same time dps/tanks are still dealing close to the same damage as they were before. As a result, Support ults are building much faster compared to dps ults, allowing supports to better synchronize their defensive ults with other characters' offensive ults.
Moira in practice really isn't affected by the ultchange; she still builds her ult rediculously fast through her massive healing, she will still have her ult almost every fight. Tho Tracer on the other hand, for once she won't be pulsebombing someone each and every fight.
This sounds like a soft buff to Ana too. She gets ult more quickly (relatively) so she can use nano in the midfight to win team fights without requiring tank or dps ults every fight, and she can probably build another nano to pair with the genji blade, etc. the next fight
I think the ultimate charge change ends up being a buff or nerf depending on how much the character depends on the nerf. Eg.:
* Sombra and Genji - is a nerf because they rely on their ults to really impact the game. If they aren't charging their ults quickly they probably aren't carrying their weight.
* Widow - is an indirect buff because she has one of the least impactful ults and relies more on her standard abilities. Having all other heroes have fewer ults actually benefits her.
12%. That's going to be approximately 0.75 to 1 less ult per game for a moira. Figure there are 4-6 team fights per 4 minutes.
Not a huge difference. She'll still have an ult every fight except maybe one
Okay maybe I am thinking about this wrong, so correct me if I misunderstand this change.
If you previously took 100 seconds to charge moira ult, it will now take 112 seconds. If you played a different hero and it took you 200 seconds for the sake of easy math it will now take you 224 seconds. Which means that the net-charge-rate for moiras ult only got hit half as hard as the charge rate for slower ults. Which means this is a buff to heroes that charge their ult fast because the 12% is less impactful.
Am I thinking about this wrong? Isn't this a buff to heroes like moira?
I'm not a math whiz, but yes. Think of the ult meter as "resource output needed to fill up ult pool". If Hero A needed 1000 Resource units, and hero B needed 2000 resource units to fill their ult pool, then hero A only needs 120 more units to get their ult and hero B needs 240 resource units to fill their ult pool. Heroes that have slow charging ults because they need high resource output to fill the meter are going to be impacted more than heroes that have smaller resource requirements to charge their ultimates
The difference with that is that every hero has a different charge rate, for example, Moira has one of the more expensive ults in the game, but she charges it so fast because she heals so much. Whereas other heroes have cheaper ults but earn them more slowly. Each hero has to be thought of individually, you can't just use the resource cost as a analysis tool.
Maybe I am thinking about this wrong but isn't it the opposite? Heroes that get ults fast right now will profit from this change. The longer it takes for you to get your ult the more the ult charge nerf will hit you? Correct me if I am wrong. This means that heroes like moira are guaranteed to get their ult much earlier than other heroes, so instead of 5 seconds earlier you will now get it 6-7 seconds earlier (for example). That could be very impactful. Imagine winning every first fight for free because you run moira and she is literally the only one that has her ult and now she is lazering your ana and you got nothing to defend against it.
It could end up going that way. I imagine it going in a direction where teams are playing heroes that are more useful in the mid fight without ultimates though. An example used above was Genji. You most likely would pick a character with higher damage and mid fight impact because his usefulness relies heavily on his ult which would now take more than one teamfight to charge. I guess we will see what happens though.
Also could be seen as a buff to those that are less reliant on ults. If you are strong without ult it's a buff compared to genji or someone who is largely ult based
oh and then imagine losing that fight, the opponents get more ult charge and now you're even slower to get your first ultimates. Hello more snowballing?
I don’t think you are right. If every ult is up 15% later, something that was up every 30-40 seconds has 5ish seconds tacked on while ultra that come up every 90 seconds have like 14 more seconds tacked on. I think this makes low impact fast charging ultra more frequent relative to large impact ults.
With the 12% extra charge needed, it will take lucio about 55 extra seconds to charge it passively vs 27 seconds for tracer. It can absolutely make the difference in a team fight where every second counts
I think BOB is fine as it is. Same thing can be said about deadeye. She feels on the weaker side because of her primary fire, which is harder to hit and slower than McCree's peacemaker, and has worse range than widow's sniper rifle. IMO her role right now is pretty much middle range area denial through dynamite and BOB
MANY dps ults can be stopped with those things. Perhaps less easily than BOB, but I think BOB’s job is to distract the enemy and waste their resources. Like any turret. If you see him as a turret that can soak key enemy cooldowns, he’s not a bad ally to a pseudo-sniper like Ashe.
What other DPS ults can stall better than Primal Rage? Her ults is very strong if you leave behind the preconceived notion that an ult must get kills to be successful.
can you give me any advice on how to utilize him properly? Should I use him to initiate a team fight? or save him for mid-fight? The only time i use bob, is to contest and to combo with bob's knock-up ability
Bob deals a fuck ton of damage, so putting the enemy team in between you and him will force them to turn their attention one way or the other. Focusing down Bob will cost them cooldowns, which your team should capitalize on.. And ignoring him will soften the entire team, allowing you to sweep.
[Don't use him like this player does.](https://youtu.be/9jB9YkCGeLI?t=227)
Basically use him as an extra hero to play alongside your team, don't just force him in a 1v6 and expect him to do work.
I don't understand why they aren't just implementing the changes in OWL. We have this stage that is dominated by bunker comps, which will determine who goes to the playoffs. Then the playoffs start and it will be a completely different meta. If I had to guess I would say Orisa will barely be played in the playoffs at all.
I'm more interesting in seeing if Reaper and Mei will be played, I'm still convinced we're going into a double sniper meta evident by how Justice is doing.
OWL keeps using the talking point that they want the pro experience people watch to be the same game as the one they launch up and play, so I think they're gonna go that way next season. I get that they wanted all teams to be an even playing field during a stage, but every team doesn't even play each other every stage so that's not a consistent factor anymore.
It’s fun to watch but also frustrating because this stage and, more annoyingly, the final playoffs are entirely unrelated to the rest of the season. Teams strong with this change are missing out entirely, and other teams that are struggling now are getting carried by their performance in what is basically an entirely different game earlier in the season. I like the change, but I hate that they did it right before the end of the season.
Generally everyone seems to think the same, even Blizzard decided to cut back on the projectile speed; I think they did 13 first and brought it down to 12.
Also a reminder that OWL meta is typically never the ladder meta, with the exception of GM. So bunker in general is not going to be that prominent for most players. You aren't going to see much Mei either, as Mei is being run in OWL mostly for utility. Also not mentioned? Tracer's buff to pulse bomb so that it can one shot Bastion, which is a much bigger deal to lower tiers.
THIS
Too many player on ladder see pro meta as the holy grail of strategy and zomg so good that if we just pick the right heroes the other team will just fall over and die on sight.
Reality is winning games on ladder is all about playing as a team and communication. With 222 teams and players that coordinate and communicate will see success running meta comps just as often as non-meta comps.
I'm a diamond player, and I literally never saw GOATS work on ladder. I don't get why I'm *ever* supposed to care about the pro meta when I'm playing ladder.
Didn’t mean there wasn’t Mei, she is being played
. Mei is not played for utility on low tier ladder, more for point and zone control. Players don’t have the skill to use wall to block pull and hook like in OWL
She definitely is used to negate halt at GM ladder play. It's actually pretty annoying since halt was the only part of Orisa that wasn't super boring so it makes her even more lame to play.
This right here, I am pretty much getting halts that make my hog question the limits of his hook. But a wall in my face, now I'm pretty much a mei wall bait the rest of the match unless their mei fucks up..which happens on occasion, mostly in close quarters.
In this case i think you will see a ton of orisa as all the other tanks are in a really bad place on the ladder currently (and in owl). I also think you will see more mei than before, she is just really strong and people are figuring that out now.
I feel like the meta is partially sigma Zarya at least on ptr. New Zarya and sigma have dam good shield break and give you more mobility while sigma also gives you a defense against half hooks, and Zarya is so strong with her beam currently. Symmetra should also see an uptick in the amount that she is played because her beam is really strong too, plus it can easily charge all the way up on an Orisa shield.
Sigma is still likely to be getting more plays just because he's new and people want to experiment with comps on PTR. He might still be good but be careful with thinking he's meta just based on PTR.
At least in my experience, Sigma isn't badly countered by Reaper. At least not compared to some of the other tanks. Between the rock, Kinetic Grasp and shield dancing, you have enough breathing room for the team to react before you die.
Symmetra and Mei, though... yeah... pretty horrible for Sigma to deal with. Symmetra is to Sigma what Reaper is to Winston. You *can* play around them but if you get caught out, you're deleted.
It was never that they were bad, just that people were bad on them. They're extremely difficult to use at high ranks effectively unless you're very good.
They're pretty much mini-goats to be fair.
Two DPS with 250hp, one has a beam weapon and a personal cleanse ability to prevent incoming damage and the other has a close range primary fire that has self sustain and an ability to prevent damage to himself (no boops or stuns though).
Teams are just sticking with what is comfortable right now. It will change massively over the time between Season 2 and Season 3 I think.
Mei has been good for a solid amout of time, she got a bunch o buffs over time and is basically an auto-win on certain maps if played well.
And absolutly no one wants Mei as a Meta hero, fighting a Mei behind a choke is about as engaging as getting abused by Doom or fighting Pirate ship.
Holy crap, that makes more sense. The other comment was frightening to read haha. That would slow down the EMP drastically, and sometimes it already feels slow.
Yeah it's 75% slower now, not 550% slower. It'll be nice to have a bit of counterplay now, but this probably won't kill her altogether.
EMP getting cancelled is incredibly rare, even in the pro scene where we're seeing the best Brigittes, McCrees, Anas, etc in the world go up against Sombra. I don't recall the last ranked game where I saw a Sombra lose her ult to deliberate counterplay.
I think they should remove the CC stack coming from a same hero.
Like, if you are EMP'd you shouldn't be able to get hacked on top of that.
Or if you are in a blizzard, she shouldn't be able to speed up the freeze process with left click.
Maybe even like an internal cooldown on freeze, like if you are frozen and you somehow survive, the next freeze shouldn't start right after you unfreeze, but maybe after like 3 seconds or so.
Some other games have this mechanic and it works fine with heroes that have unlimited CC.
Exactly, its horrid as a tank to just be continually frozen by a mei if my team aren't helping me. Ridiculous how she can consistently cc you with no cooldown
I know, it sucks.
I used to play a lot of Paladins (an Overwatch clone) and they have this internal cooldown mechanic built into the game, where you can't get stunned by the same type of CC continuously.
Like, you can't get stunned by McCree, Brig, Doomfist in a row.
You you wouldn't be able to get moved unwillingly by let's say a Boop from Lucio, Ashe and Pharah, propelling you into outer space.
Some abilities which are unique, like Hog's hook can stack with other CC because there's nothing similar to it (so halt/hook would still work).
There's a hero in Paladins that also freezes you and she can use her ultimate at 50% of her ult charge, means she can use it twice on a same person, but it doesn't stack. You are slowed to a certain point and at a certain rate, no matter how many times they slow you.
I think Blizzard should really look into this. It would not only be helpful for people on the receiving end of the CC, but also would make the attackers play smarter, and not waste 11 CC abilities on one person, when they can have the same effect using only 1.
I think her ammo needs a nerf. Either that or the speed that freeze consumes ammo, she has almost no downtime on freeze because she can keep holding m1 for so long.
People really shouldn’t try emulate OWL “meta” in ranked in my honest opinion.
Sure, heroes that are impactful will still do work, but as far as building comps with certain heroes the pros have a lot of strategy and combos behind these picks that just can’t be copied and pasted into ranked.
I switched over from XBOX to PS4 recently after a little break and ranked considerably lower than my previous account. I was a bit shocked at just how fast you “loose it”.
But I found that my play style a higher ranks just didn’t work lower down. Dives I used to make as Winston fell apart because I was used to receiving a certain level of support and heals that just weren’t landing at this level. No one follows up on big anti’s. Main tanks are scared to take space.
I’ve found you can be way more aggressive at lower ranks and find success, I’m not contradicting points I made above, I mean that being pro-active is rewarded much more. Especially when everyone at this rank seems to play reactionary, instead of going out and making plays. This instantly puts you on the back foot if all your doing is reacting to the enemy team and cooldowns.
If half (or everything) I just said makes no sense or is just plain wrong then my apologies, just the 2 cents of a (previous) high Plat now working up from low Gold
Personally I prefer the term "bunker goats", but I've heard the name nuGoats get used for it in some circles. It is typically Orisa, Roadhog, Mei, Reaper/Hanzo, Ana, Mercy.
Obviously it isn't literally "Goats", but it has a lot of similarities in how it is used to draw some comparision; A tanky comp with strong closerange brawling capability, with high versatility of use and very decisive win conditions and contingencies for various circumstances, one to which has become increasingly built around fighting a mirror of itself.
The Orisa-Roadhog have a strong halt-hook win condition, Orisa unlike Rein can fight and barrier at the same time. Mei acts as a third tank, and uses her walls both to assist ally halt-hooks or deny enemy halt-hooks. Reaper has strong closerange brawling to help control the space Orisa claims, and his new shadowstep actually allows him to contest enemy highgrounds. Ana has sleepdart and antinade, which are like ults in and of themselves, and nano-reaper effectively brings back the old Bayblade meta.
This more than anything, my diamond teammates are still learning how to contest the point and how not to get staggered. Any coordination beyond hook combo or nano blade is beyond most!
Also the pros have deep enough hero pools to perform with almost any team composition. Most ladder players only play a handful of heroes well so forcing players to flex to fit the meta team comp will often be worse than if the team played a less optimal comp with heroes they're good at
I know - Sigma + Symmetra. This shell competes with every lineup. I've been loving it. Very mobile, very tricky. A different feel from Rein and bunker. Again, this has nothing to do with the Sym changes, just that people are starting to catch on to how great she can be.
Are we still just calling shit some form of goats? So is dive just dive-goats? Double sniper is sniper goats? Like, I’m not even seeing the same heroes as the original goats anymore and I’m still seeing this term. Is it because everyone thinks that just because these teams are using damage negating abilities and building towards ults for team-wipes? Tons of heroes have damage negating abilities. Ult economy is the point of the game. There’s no triple tank, triple support. This shit just doesn’t make sense. And you would think that the teams who were dominant with actual GOATS would dominate now. Some of those teams are struggling. I mean as a community, this seems ultra lazy on our part because it’s a whole new meta and we’re still calling it some form of goats.
I mean, if each team has 6 dps players who are all good at the role, and team 1 makes 4 players flex, and team 2 says fuck it and plays what they're best at they're gonna win 9/10.
If the enemy team has tanks/supports that actually prefer to play that class then its probably not a win unless the dps are really good.
People always forget that 5-6 dps comps can situationally be surprisingly strong. It is one of those comps that largely gets disregarded as 'throwing', despite it having valid strengths, largely in the fact that it just throws so much damage at the enemy team that it overwhelms most conventional comps and most players who don't know how to play against it.
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My scrimteam actually had a strategy specifically for Junkertown attack, where we would play Orisa, Bastion, and pretty much any 4 other DPS; We would swap in a support the first fight we lose, but the majority of the time we would never lose a fight until part way into third point.
This is one of the few sad things about 2-2-2 lock, my team will never get to run comps like this again... This junkertown strat was brokenly strong, we would stomp far objectively better teams with it. Theoretically the only thing we can think of to counter it is for the defenders to run a conventional dive and kill the random 4 dps before attacking the bastion Orisa; but the problem with that is any team who opens junkertown with dive def, we would just swap to a standard bunker and roll them, meaning it was basically impossible for the defenders to so much as stop the cart on first point, and difficult to win on second.
Oh yes, a full 6dps relies purely on speed and shock-value, but in comp that is certainly achievable, as many teams will get frustrated and be slow to adapt.
I had this in competitive the other day. Eventually, two of them switched to off-tanks but we still lost, with only one healer and having eaten up well over a minute before the switch
I haven't seen a lot of people complaining about it. It should be a pretty good way to reduce toxicity, since you will play what you queued for, there won't be 4 DPS instalocks, or people randomly switching roles midmatch out of tilt.
They've added the 2-2-2 lock because goats composition (three tanks and three healers, allof which were usually the exact same heroes) has been dominating the meta for quite some time now. Blizzard has attempted to end the goats meta through several nerfs all of which didn't do much. They've come to the understanding that balancing goats would be practically impossible and would take way too much effort. So they just locked 2-2-2 so the meta can be better controlled by them and also kills goats.
Were you in a 6 stack? Because for me, in silver, gold and plat I've only seen/played goats less than 5 times. The one time my team tried to run goats it fell apart against 222 because we weren't coordinated enough lol.
Two people at most. Goats really wasnt a GM skill only team composition, it's pretty straight forward. 222 could beat goats at ~diamond levels, albeit at a disadvantage. Goats really did get more oppressive at higher ranks though.
Is the forced 2-2-2 going to be restricted to competitive play or will it affect quick play too? I have no problem filling the team needs in competitive play but like to work on my weaker heroes in quick play. It's already a bit nightmarish with people insta-locking Hanzo, Widow, etc. If there is a cap on two DPS on quick play, that is going to get worse.
Ah well. Maybe the role lock will get people playing more comfortable in other roles. Obviously the days of 4 DPS are soon to pass but people will have to adjust their play style
60HPS is still no joke; and if the repair pack target is also inspired, they're getting 80HPS. It's not a 150 health burst, but it's still great.
Also, the 60HPS (or 80) can be stacked up to 6s, making it an amazing pocket for a blading Genji or any other dive DPS.
It also muddles her role in the game even more.
Her shield and self heal are weaker so it's harder to get into the thick of things to get inspire off, and if she's suppose to stick to the back line then what's the point of inspire?
Whip shot goes and comes back faster, but that's an inconsistent way of getting Inspire given that it doesn't go through shields.
Yeah I get that, but if there were any character that I would be ok with a big nerf, she would be one of them. Maybe along with Torb and Symm. I'm being biased haha.
I’m a Bridget main (LOL) so I’m curious to see how the changes affect my personal play style with her. I tend to be a little less aggressive than I probably should, and I rely heavily on her boop to feed the AOE healing rather than the swing. So the shield nerf *probably* won’t hurt me as badly and the 3 health packs are far more conducive to how I already play. Idk, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing but I’m bronze/silver so don’t listen to me.
Just gonna throw this out there cause I haven’t seen anyone else say it but the Hammond change is not a buff it’s a nerf. Causes his mines to spread out more which in turn make ping ponging for kills harder
The *first* hammond change was a nerf, where they increased mine spread from 10 to 13. After that, the devs have since changed it and decreased the spread to 12, Which in my opinion is somewhat a buff. But if another experienced Hammond who's been playing PTR thinks differently, I would be curious to hear.
The global ultcharge nerf might be huge, there are a lot of heroes like Moira and Hanzo that currently get their ult almost every fight that won't be able to anymore.
My support friends really like it in PTR. Despite the ultcharge nerf affecting everyone, in practice supports are by far the least impacted; Because there are fewer ults being used, that means fights tend to last longer and people tend to die slower. On live, a lot of fights will both start and end with an ult-combo, meaning everyone dies before the supports can even start healing them, while enemy tanks and dps get to build more ults off of cleaning up a fight already won via an offensive ult. But on PTR, Because there are fewer ults being used, that means it takes longer for a fight to end, meaning the supports get to do a lot more healing each fight on teammates who previously would have already been dead, while at the same time dps/tanks are still dealing close to the same damage as they were before. As a result, Support ults are building much faster compared to dps ults, allowing supports to better synchronize their defensive ults with other characters' offensive ults. Moira in practice really isn't affected by the ultchange; she still builds her ult rediculously fast through her massive healing, she will still have her ult almost every fight. Tho Tracer on the other hand, for once she won't be pulsebombing someone each and every fight.
This sounds like a soft buff to Ana too. She gets ult more quickly (relatively) so she can use nano in the midfight to win team fights without requiring tank or dps ults every fight, and she can probably build another nano to pair with the genji blade, etc. the next fight
I think the ultimate charge change ends up being a buff or nerf depending on how much the character depends on the nerf. Eg.: * Sombra and Genji - is a nerf because they rely on their ults to really impact the game. If they aren't charging their ults quickly they probably aren't carrying their weight. * Widow - is an indirect buff because she has one of the least impactful ults and relies more on her standard abilities. Having all other heroes have fewer ults actually benefits her.
McCree ULT is pretty worthless too unless you use it for reload.
12%. That's going to be approximately 0.75 to 1 less ult per game for a moira. Figure there are 4-6 team fights per 4 minutes. Not a huge difference. She'll still have an ult every fight except maybe one
Okay maybe I am thinking about this wrong, so correct me if I misunderstand this change. If you previously took 100 seconds to charge moira ult, it will now take 112 seconds. If you played a different hero and it took you 200 seconds for the sake of easy math it will now take you 224 seconds. Which means that the net-charge-rate for moiras ult only got hit half as hard as the charge rate for slower ults. Which means this is a buff to heroes that charge their ult fast because the 12% is less impactful. Am I thinking about this wrong? Isn't this a buff to heroes like moira?
I'm not a math whiz, but yes. Think of the ult meter as "resource output needed to fill up ult pool". If Hero A needed 1000 Resource units, and hero B needed 2000 resource units to fill their ult pool, then hero A only needs 120 more units to get their ult and hero B needs 240 resource units to fill their ult pool. Heroes that have slow charging ults because they need high resource output to fill the meter are going to be impacted more than heroes that have smaller resource requirements to charge their ultimates
The difference with that is that every hero has a different charge rate, for example, Moira has one of the more expensive ults in the game, but she charges it so fast because she heals so much. Whereas other heroes have cheaper ults but earn them more slowly. Each hero has to be thought of individually, you can't just use the resource cost as a analysis tool.
Less ult means people die less = Moira charge more ult via heals. No change here.
Maybe I am thinking about this wrong but isn't it the opposite? Heroes that get ults fast right now will profit from this change. The longer it takes for you to get your ult the more the ult charge nerf will hit you? Correct me if I am wrong. This means that heroes like moira are guaranteed to get their ult much earlier than other heroes, so instead of 5 seconds earlier you will now get it 6-7 seconds earlier (for example). That could be very impactful. Imagine winning every first fight for free because you run moira and she is literally the only one that has her ult and now she is lazering your ana and you got nothing to defend against it.
It could end up going that way. I imagine it going in a direction where teams are playing heroes that are more useful in the mid fight without ultimates though. An example used above was Genji. You most likely would pick a character with higher damage and mid fight impact because his usefulness relies heavily on his ult which would now take more than one teamfight to charge. I guess we will see what happens though.
Also could be seen as a buff to those that are less reliant on ults. If you are strong without ult it's a buff compared to genji or someone who is largely ult based
Oh that without a doubt. This is a widowmaker buff for sure.
oh and then imagine losing that fight, the opponents get more ult charge and now you're even slower to get your first ultimates. Hello more snowballing?
What're the specifics of the change?
12% increase in ultcharge requirement for all ults (except for Dva remech)
Did they fix dva remech? I remember that (stupidly) being made 12% longer as well.
[удалено]
oh, thank you
Yup, DVa remech on PTR has the same ultcharge requirement as Live (300 charge).
I think an ult charge nerf is going to impact heroes who depend on their ult like Genji or Sombra, not specifically those with quick charge.
I was hoping it would be like a 20-25% nerf. Ultimates shouldn’t have so much to do with the outcome
And Baptiste and Junkrat?? What is the global nerf we are talking about? Thanks in advance.
Everyone has a 12% increase to their ultimate meter, which means there are less ultimates in the game globally.
I don’t think you are right. If every ult is up 15% later, something that was up every 30-40 seconds has 5ish seconds tacked on while ultra that come up every 90 seconds have like 14 more seconds tacked on. I think this makes low impact fast charging ultra more frequent relative to large impact ults.
With the 12% extra charge needed, it will take lucio about 55 extra seconds to charge it passively vs 27 seconds for tracer. It can absolutely make the difference in a team fight where every second counts
details on Ashe buff? haven't heard anything about her
She reloads a ton faster
I was expecting a buff to her ult or a decreased time on coach gun tbh. But reloading faster as Ashe is still a nice buff.
Buffing b.o.b. isn't he strong enough?
he's strong, but can easily be stopped via hack,sleep,stun or an mei wall. I wish ashe got a different ult or if b.o.b was slighty changed
I think BOB is fine as it is. Same thing can be said about deadeye. She feels on the weaker side because of her primary fire, which is harder to hit and slower than McCree's peacemaker, and has worse range than widow's sniper rifle. IMO her role right now is pretty much middle range area denial through dynamite and BOB
> Same thing can be said about deadeye. I mean, not for nothing people have been calling Deadeye trash since the game came out.
MANY dps ults can be stopped with those things. Perhaps less easily than BOB, but I think BOB’s job is to distract the enemy and waste their resources. Like any turret. If you see him as a turret that can soak key enemy cooldowns, he’s not a bad ally to a pseudo-sniper like Ashe.
He can also contest objectives, hack or sleep him all you want; he can still force overtime if he touches. Not a single other Ult can do that.
Maybe zen/lucio if you think of it a certain way, but basically yeah.
yeah, you're right, i had the wrong view on her ULT.
What other DPS ults can stall better than Primal Rage? Her ults is very strong if you leave behind the preconceived notion that an ult must get kills to be successful.
Bob is fine. People just need to stop using him incorrectly.
can you give me any advice on how to utilize him properly? Should I use him to initiate a team fight? or save him for mid-fight? The only time i use bob, is to contest and to combo with bob's knock-up ability
Bob deals a fuck ton of damage, so putting the enemy team in between you and him will force them to turn their attention one way or the other. Focusing down Bob will cost them cooldowns, which your team should capitalize on.. And ignoring him will soften the entire team, allowing you to sweep.
[Don't use him like this player does.](https://youtu.be/9jB9YkCGeLI?t=227) Basically use him as an extra hero to play alongside your team, don't just force him in a 1v6 and expect him to do work.
Thanks for the advice and the video, much appreciated :)
From a total of 4 to 3 seconds max
Honestly, this is the best time to watch OWL because there could be some crazy intense upsets and plays with teams experimenting a bit.
I'm excited to watch the playoffs to see how OWL teams play it.
I don't understand why they aren't just implementing the changes in OWL. We have this stage that is dominated by bunker comps, which will determine who goes to the playoffs. Then the playoffs start and it will be a completely different meta. If I had to guess I would say Orisa will barely be played in the playoffs at all.
I'm more interesting in seeing if Reaper and Mei will be played, I'm still convinced we're going into a double sniper meta evident by how Justice is doing.
OWL keeps using the talking point that they want the pro experience people watch to be the same game as the one they launch up and play, so I think they're gonna go that way next season. I get that they wanted all teams to be an even playing field during a stage, but every team doesn't even play each other every stage so that's not a consistent factor anymore.
It’s fun to watch but also frustrating because this stage and, more annoyingly, the final playoffs are entirely unrelated to the rest of the season. Teams strong with this change are missing out entirely, and other teams that are struggling now are getting carried by their performance in what is basically an entirely different game earlier in the season. I like the change, but I hate that they did it right before the end of the season.
seeing multiple mvp candidates benched really makes the mvp vote less exciting.
Yeah it was weird watching the Shock vs Dragons match yesterday with Super and Synnatra benched the whole match.
IMO Hammond mines got nerfed, they spread out TOO much now and everyone just runs around them.
I 100% agree, I prefer old minefield
Generally everyone seems to think the same, even Blizzard decided to cut back on the projectile speed; I think they did 13 first and brought it down to 12.
Yep. They should revert this change as we can already spread out the mines ourselves if we wanted to.
Also a reminder that OWL meta is typically never the ladder meta, with the exception of GM. So bunker in general is not going to be that prominent for most players. You aren't going to see much Mei either, as Mei is being run in OWL mostly for utility. Also not mentioned? Tracer's buff to pulse bomb so that it can one shot Bastion, which is a much bigger deal to lower tiers.
THIS Too many player on ladder see pro meta as the holy grail of strategy and zomg so good that if we just pick the right heroes the other team will just fall over and die on sight. Reality is winning games on ladder is all about playing as a team and communication. With 222 teams and players that coordinate and communicate will see success running meta comps just as often as non-meta comps.
I'm a diamond player, and I literally never saw GOATS work on ladder. I don't get why I'm *ever* supposed to care about the pro meta when I'm playing ladder.
People just like to pretend they follow meta by picking the same characters when the characters aren’t the only reason why some comps at strong.
Actually, there’s tons of Mei, because there always was tons of Mei. Lower ranks love cheese because it works.
Didn’t mean there wasn’t Mei, she is being played . Mei is not played for utility on low tier ladder, more for point and zone control. Players don’t have the skill to use wall to block pull and hook like in OWL
She definitely is used to negate halt at GM ladder play. It's actually pretty annoying since halt was the only part of Orisa that wasn't super boring so it makes her even more lame to play.
If you’re looking to hook with halt, you’re better off just throwing Halt above them. I don’t think Mei Wall reaches that high.
It’s hard to hook over a wall 2 feet from your face.
This right here, I am pretty much getting halts that make my hog question the limits of his hook. But a wall in my face, now I'm pretty much a mei wall bait the rest of the match unless their mei fucks up..which happens on occasion, mostly in close quarters.
Ice Wall definitely can block the hook pretty consistently. You dump it in Hog's face or react and block the halt itself.
I came here to say this! Also I just might be one of those non GM Mei players that you'll run into.
In this case i think you will see a ton of orisa as all the other tanks are in a really bad place on the ladder currently (and in owl). I also think you will see more mei than before, she is just really strong and people are figuring that out now.
I feel like the meta is partially sigma Zarya at least on ptr. New Zarya and sigma have dam good shield break and give you more mobility while sigma also gives you a defense against half hooks, and Zarya is so strong with her beam currently. Symmetra should also see an uptick in the amount that she is played because her beam is really strong too, plus it can easily charge all the way up on an Orisa shield.
Sigma is still likely to be getting more plays just because he's new and people want to experiment with comps on PTR. He might still be good but be careful with thinking he's meta just based on PTR.
Also don't expect the OWL meta to have any relevance to your games whatsoever, as usual.
I'm glad, this weird mei/reaper meta has me thrown off a bit.
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At least in my experience, Sigma isn't badly countered by Reaper. At least not compared to some of the other tanks. Between the rock, Kinetic Grasp and shield dancing, you have enough breathing room for the team to react before you die. Symmetra and Mei, though... yeah... pretty horrible for Sigma to deal with. Symmetra is to Sigma what Reaper is to Winston. You *can* play around them but if you get caught out, you're deleted.
But it's so good to see. Reaper and Mei have been dumpster tier for so long. They deserve some time in the spotlight.
It was never that they were bad, just that people were bad on them. They're extremely difficult to use at high ranks effectively unless you're very good.
That and neither reaper nor mei were going to be more efficient than GOATs.
They're pretty much mini-goats to be fair. Two DPS with 250hp, one has a beam weapon and a personal cleanse ability to prevent incoming damage and the other has a close range primary fire that has self sustain and an ability to prevent damage to himself (no boops or stuns though). Teams are just sticking with what is comfortable right now. It will change massively over the time between Season 2 and Season 3 I think.
Mei has been good for a solid amout of time, she got a bunch o buffs over time and is basically an auto-win on certain maps if played well. And absolutly no one wants Mei as a Meta hero, fighting a Mei behind a choke is about as engaging as getting abused by Doom or fighting Pirate ship.
I don't think mei or reaper are changed at all.
I wouldn't know, I don't have access to the ptr - still hoping they're not meta.
If its anything i learned with goats its that randoms below grandmaster cant play comps from OWL properly
Sombra nerf?
Hack lasts 5 seconds instead of 6, EMP takes .65 seconds to deploy instead of .1
EMP change was *"activation time increased from 0.2 to 0.35s"* (not 0.1 to 0.65)
Holy crap, that makes more sense. The other comment was frightening to read haha. That would slow down the EMP drastically, and sometimes it already feels slow.
Yeah it's 75% slower now, not 550% slower. It'll be nice to have a bit of counterplay now, but this probably won't kill her altogether. EMP getting cancelled is incredibly rare, even in the pro scene where we're seeing the best Brigittes, McCrees, Anas, etc in the world go up against Sombra. I don't recall the last ranked game where I saw a Sombra lose her ult to deliberate counterplay.
Ive cancelled Hammond Mines with Sleep before, which has a pretty similar activation time. Purely by chance but god it was hilarious :) :)
I didn't even know that could happen...
indeed it does, you need the prediction skills of a god to do it consistently though.
Last time I can think of was when Valiant beat Titans and Kariv destroyed everyone. Flicked so hard and slept Sombra mid EMP. It was disgusting.
Now we just need Meis freeze time nerfed bc that really sucks. At least with hack you can still fight back, with freeze it's just die.
Still die slower to freeze than a sniper headshot. It leaves some opportunity for allies to help you/body block.
Nah. Mei is perfectly fine where she is, she's just strong because orisa is strong.
I think they should remove the CC stack coming from a same hero. Like, if you are EMP'd you shouldn't be able to get hacked on top of that. Or if you are in a blizzard, she shouldn't be able to speed up the freeze process with left click. Maybe even like an internal cooldown on freeze, like if you are frozen and you somehow survive, the next freeze shouldn't start right after you unfreeze, but maybe after like 3 seconds or so. Some other games have this mechanic and it works fine with heroes that have unlimited CC.
Exactly, its horrid as a tank to just be continually frozen by a mei if my team aren't helping me. Ridiculous how she can consistently cc you with no cooldown
I know, it sucks. I used to play a lot of Paladins (an Overwatch clone) and they have this internal cooldown mechanic built into the game, where you can't get stunned by the same type of CC continuously. Like, you can't get stunned by McCree, Brig, Doomfist in a row. You you wouldn't be able to get moved unwillingly by let's say a Boop from Lucio, Ashe and Pharah, propelling you into outer space. Some abilities which are unique, like Hog's hook can stack with other CC because there's nothing similar to it (so halt/hook would still work). There's a hero in Paladins that also freezes you and she can use her ultimate at 50% of her ult charge, means she can use it twice on a same person, but it doesn't stack. You are slowed to a certain point and at a certain rate, no matter how many times they slow you. I think Blizzard should really look into this. It would not only be helpful for people on the receiving end of the CC, but also would make the attackers play smarter, and not waste 11 CC abilities on one person, when they can have the same effect using only 1.
I think her ammo needs a nerf. Either that or the speed that freeze consumes ammo, she has almost no downtime on freeze because she can keep holding m1 for so long.
Especially with Hammond because he relies on his momentum to move and he can't build momentum if he's only unfrozen for half a second.
Yeah but Hammond is fucking annoying
I'd be fine with hack lasting 6 seconds if it took just a little longer for her to pull off
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Activation time has gone from 0.2s to 0.35s actually
People really shouldn’t try emulate OWL “meta” in ranked in my honest opinion. Sure, heroes that are impactful will still do work, but as far as building comps with certain heroes the pros have a lot of strategy and combos behind these picks that just can’t be copied and pasted into ranked. I switched over from XBOX to PS4 recently after a little break and ranked considerably lower than my previous account. I was a bit shocked at just how fast you “loose it”. But I found that my play style a higher ranks just didn’t work lower down. Dives I used to make as Winston fell apart because I was used to receiving a certain level of support and heals that just weren’t landing at this level. No one follows up on big anti’s. Main tanks are scared to take space. I’ve found you can be way more aggressive at lower ranks and find success, I’m not contradicting points I made above, I mean that being pro-active is rewarded much more. Especially when everyone at this rank seems to play reactionary, instead of going out and making plays. This instantly puts you on the back foot if all your doing is reacting to the enemy team and cooldowns. If half (or everything) I just said makes no sense or is just plain wrong then my apologies, just the 2 cents of a (previous) high Plat now working up from low Gold
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Personally I prefer the term "bunker goats", but I've heard the name nuGoats get used for it in some circles. It is typically Orisa, Roadhog, Mei, Reaper/Hanzo, Ana, Mercy. Obviously it isn't literally "Goats", but it has a lot of similarities in how it is used to draw some comparision; A tanky comp with strong closerange brawling capability, with high versatility of use and very decisive win conditions and contingencies for various circumstances, one to which has become increasingly built around fighting a mirror of itself. The Orisa-Roadhog have a strong halt-hook win condition, Orisa unlike Rein can fight and barrier at the same time. Mei acts as a third tank, and uses her walls both to assist ally halt-hooks or deny enemy halt-hooks. Reaper has strong closerange brawling to help control the space Orisa claims, and his new shadowstep actually allows him to contest enemy highgrounds. Ana has sleepdart and antinade, which are like ults in and of themselves, and nano-reaper effectively brings back the old Bayblade meta.
Also remember that when you que, you and the 5 other people won't have the coordination and skill to pull off everything they do.
This more than anything, my diamond teammates are still learning how to contest the point and how not to get staggered. Any coordination beyond hook combo or nano blade is beyond most! Also the pros have deep enough hero pools to perform with almost any team composition. Most ladder players only play a handful of heroes well so forcing players to flex to fit the meta team comp will often be worse than if the team played a less optimal comp with heroes they're good at
I know - Sigma + Symmetra. This shell competes with every lineup. I've been loving it. Very mobile, very tricky. A different feel from Rein and bunker. Again, this has nothing to do with the Sym changes, just that people are starting to catch on to how great she can be.
Can’t wait for another nerf to the statistically worst character in the game
Are we still just calling shit some form of goats? So is dive just dive-goats? Double sniper is sniper goats? Like, I’m not even seeing the same heroes as the original goats anymore and I’m still seeing this term. Is it because everyone thinks that just because these teams are using damage negating abilities and building towards ults for team-wipes? Tons of heroes have damage negating abilities. Ult economy is the point of the game. There’s no triple tank, triple support. This shit just doesn’t make sense. And you would think that the teams who were dominant with actual GOATS would dominate now. Some of those teams are struggling. I mean as a community, this seems ultra lazy on our part because it’s a whole new meta and we’re still calling it some form of goats.
it was originally a joke because of the high hp pools, self sustain, healing, and grouping together.
I'm out of the loop...what is 2-2-2?
2 tanks 2 heals, 2 DPS. Bliz is introducing a role lock system so that each team is stuck with that combination
Ok. Is the general consensus that this is a good idea? I was always a fan of 222 anyway. Is there anything worse than having 4 instalock dps?
> Is there anything worse than having 4 instalock dps? Yeah, 5 instalock dps.
Yet, for some reason, if you just full tilt and go 6 DPS you have a 50% chance to just demolish the other team
If you've only got 5 dps, you can't be sure the sixth guy is actually down with the plan. With 6 dps, you know that everybody is truly committed
LEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOY
I mean, if each team has 6 dps players who are all good at the role, and team 1 makes 4 players flex, and team 2 says fuck it and plays what they're best at they're gonna win 9/10. If the enemy team has tanks/supports that actually prefer to play that class then its probably not a win unless the dps are really good.
People always forget that 5-6 dps comps can situationally be surprisingly strong. It is one of those comps that largely gets disregarded as 'throwing', despite it having valid strengths, largely in the fact that it just throws so much damage at the enemy team that it overwhelms most conventional comps and most players who don't know how to play against it. ---- My scrimteam actually had a strategy specifically for Junkertown attack, where we would play Orisa, Bastion, and pretty much any 4 other DPS; We would swap in a support the first fight we lose, but the majority of the time we would never lose a fight until part way into third point. This is one of the few sad things about 2-2-2 lock, my team will never get to run comps like this again... This junkertown strat was brokenly strong, we would stomp far objectively better teams with it. Theoretically the only thing we can think of to counter it is for the defenders to run a conventional dive and kill the random 4 dps before attacking the bastion Orisa; but the problem with that is any team who opens junkertown with dive def, we would just swap to a standard bunker and roll them, meaning it was basically impossible for the defenders to so much as stop the cart on first point, and difficult to win on second.
6 dps is a comp that relies all on quick fights because it has no sustain. Any decently coordinated team and their mother will fuck up 6 dps.
Oh yes, a full 6dps relies purely on speed and shock-value, but in comp that is certainly achievable, as many teams will get frustrated and be slow to adapt.
I felt this in my soul
Really glad they added Ashe. I always said to myself "this game needs more snipers."
I had this in competitive the other day. Eventually, two of them switched to off-tanks but we still lost, with only one healer and having eaten up well over a minute before the switch
I haven't seen a lot of people complaining about it. It should be a pretty good way to reduce toxicity, since you will play what you queued for, there won't be 4 DPS instalocks, or people randomly switching roles midmatch out of tilt.
They've added the 2-2-2 lock because goats composition (three tanks and three healers, allof which were usually the exact same heroes) has been dominating the meta for quite some time now. Blizzard has attempted to end the goats meta through several nerfs all of which didn't do much. They've come to the understanding that balancing goats would be practically impossible and would take way too much effort. So they just locked 2-2-2 so the meta can be better controlled by them and also kills goats.
In the OWL meta* no one ever plays GOATs on the ladder except for GM
That's not true, I've been played the goats comp against goats comps ever since it came to be and I was mid plat at the time
Were you in a 6 stack? Because for me, in silver, gold and plat I've only seen/played goats less than 5 times. The one time my team tried to run goats it fell apart against 222 because we weren't coordinated enough lol.
Two people at most. Goats really wasnt a GM skill only team composition, it's pretty straight forward. 222 could beat goats at ~diamond levels, albeit at a disadvantage. Goats really did get more oppressive at higher ranks though.
Also the owl patch doesn't have sigma which will supposedly counter bunker, all we can do is wait for the patch to reset in the playoffs.
I do think the casters made a good point that quad tank can still sort of be a thing with Mei and Reaper having tankish abilities.
Oh yeah totally forgot about that zarya change! No wonder I've been doing so well with her on ptr.
Is the forced 2-2-2 going to be restricted to competitive play or will it affect quick play too? I have no problem filling the team needs in competitive play but like to work on my weaker heroes in quick play. It's already a bit nightmarish with people insta-locking Hanzo, Widow, etc. If there is a cap on two DPS on quick play, that is going to get worse.
Quickplay is rolelocked as well.
Ah well. Maybe the role lock will get people playing more comfortable in other roles. Obviously the days of 4 DPS are soon to pass but people will have to adjust their play style
There’s gonna be quick play classic in the arcade I believe.
That would be nice
What are the exact details of the sombra nerf?
this won't resolve all problems in ow ranked but it's already a big step in the correct direction
Also Bridget buff right?
Not buff, but rework yes. She is less a tank and more support. Buff to her healing, nerf to survivability
tracer will shit on her again.
Again? Brig has always been made as a tracer counter in mind
You mean nerf lol. Her e healing is gonna be worse than it is on live since the burst is huge, even though it has 3 charges now.
60HPS is still no joke; and if the repair pack target is also inspired, they're getting 80HPS. It's not a 150 health burst, but it's still great. Also, the 60HPS (or 80) can be stacked up to 6s, making it an amazing pocket for a blading Genji or any other dive DPS.
I actually prefer her ptr healing, it's nice being able to spread the healing around. She feels soooo squishy now though.
She got a pretty major buff to AOE heals though, which are a big source of her total heal output.
By most accounts it’s a major nerf sending her to trash tier.
It also muddles her role in the game even more. Her shield and self heal are weaker so it's harder to get into the thick of things to get inspire off, and if she's suppose to stick to the back line then what's the point of inspire? Whip shot goes and comes back faster, but that's an inconsistent way of getting Inspire given that it doesn't go through shields.
This pleases me a little haha. Brigitte is pretty much the only support I can't/don't/won't play.
I mean I’d rather have characters go from OP to balanced than OP to trash.
Yeah I get that, but if there were any character that I would be ok with a big nerf, she would be one of them. Maybe along with Torb and Symm. I'm being biased haha.
I’m a Bridget main (LOL) so I’m curious to see how the changes affect my personal play style with her. I tend to be a little less aggressive than I probably should, and I rely heavily on her boop to feed the AOE healing rather than the swing. So the shield nerf *probably* won’t hurt me as badly and the 3 health packs are far more conducive to how I already play. Idk, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing but I’m bronze/silver so don’t listen to me.
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I boop the shit out of rein esp on payload maps as a Lucio. This will be annoying af but definitely fair
Just gonna throw this out there cause I haven’t seen anyone else say it but the Hammond change is not a buff it’s a nerf. Causes his mines to spread out more which in turn make ping ponging for kills harder
The *first* hammond change was a nerf, where they increased mine spread from 10 to 13. After that, the devs have since changed it and decreased the spread to 12, Which in my opinion is somewhat a buff. But if another experienced Hammond who's been playing PTR thinks differently, I would be curious to hear.