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[Overwatch 11.0] Moira, new Support Healer and new map announced!
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Before people could auto-group with randos, you could assume a group was premade, and yet the QP matchmaker would throw a handful of solos or 2-mans against a 6-man premade. And of course they'd win.
Now there's no possible way to tell if a group is premade or just a bunch of randos farming XP. I don't know if we lost because they'd been playing together since beta, or because we couldn't fight our way out of a wet paper bag and we just lost to folks that were not even taking it seriously.
Comp.
As for one tricking, I'm ok with specializing on a role. But only playing one character, to the exclusion of anyone else, is one tricking. It doesn't work as a strategy to win. Even top notch pros who are synonymous with a hero (say, sinatraa and effect with tracer) can play other heroes at a top level (zarya and genji respectively). There may be personal SR reasons to one trick mercy, but not to maximize team winning.
On the upside, I got all the SR back thanks to a run of better games. On that run, I played mercy, Ana, Lucio, zen, Winston, and dva to fill team needs and the situation.
I even got sweet revenge on the dumbass widow/Hanzo duo. I ralphed the widow when he peeked, and later as lucio wall rode to a quad headshot on Hanzo. Best served cold.
I won the last one I was in for the exact reason that I lost the previous one that happened
Once Torb establishes the vantage points it's a super strong way to defend the objective, but actually even getting to that point is such a fucking uphill struggle that it's essentially at best a 5-and-a-half vs. 6 and actually capturing the point is supremely difficult if the team doesn't get first pick
It was like that the whole time for the match that we won and I didn't feel comfortable playing that setup all the way up to victory
On top of getting shit picks to counter them (mercys and Anas, not even a Hanzo or Widowmaker) they built ults so fast and dropped so much armor you couldn't make a dent.
And when he works elsewhere, it's either good luck or good thinking. Good luck if the enemy team is dumb enough to never counter him in any way and just keep trying to do things like force Genji at you, good thinking if those turrets and armor packs are making life hell for the high-mobility enemies.
He's definitely not a character anybody should be instalocking, that's for sure. Good in the right combinations and the right places, but not versatile enough to be a generally solid pick for payloads or point captures.
I disagree! I'd rather see him on KotH maps than pretty much anywhere else. His whole thing is creating a zone where there's an extra thing you need to worry about, and that's extra strong on KotH maps if you're constantly placing and re-placing your turret, both to force the defending team back and away, and/or while they're busy dealing with the people in their face from a push, and to make it harder for the attacking team to make their way in. Almost any time there's a few dead moments, you should be placing a new turret. Make them always be guessing. Force them to go extra slow because they don't know where they're suddenly going to be shot at. Especially turrets set at very sharp angles to entry points are a nightmare to deal with, especially if they require turning your back to the enemy or looking away from them entirely (eg something way the fuck up high). And a smartly player will add a third angle.
And who cares if it's 'easy' to take one down in a somewhat isolated position via looping way the fuck around in a big flank? That takes them out of the fight for longer than it takes to set up a new one in some other spot, they get no ult for it, and you do.
it's not their fault that the system rewards mercy one tricks with lots of SR because mercy is the most commonly played one trick and if you're using your positioning and game sense right you can consistently rise to ranks above where your technical skill would allow you to be
so if you get multiple mercy one tricks in one match only one can really pick mercy when really if you wanted to one trick a support you should one trick zenyatta or lucio
especially when zenyatta is super sweet and is usually a good compliment but actually requires some good mechanics and much more awareness because of the lack of escapes
How does one know folks are exploiting characters for SR gain, especially in the case of supports, and not just stuck constantly playing that role?
Also what percentage of games played do they attribute to someone being a "one trick" 90, 95?
And that's if your team even has the point to defend. If you're trying to take the point from the enemy, for turrets to do anything they have to be placed right out in the open of some approach angle and then it's really easy for the enemy to swat them. And if the turrets aren't in play, then there is just Torb's moderate firepower and low mobility whereas several other attack and defense characters have much, much better tools to push with.
As far as "pulling" somebody with from the group to make them deal with a turret, there's so much flanking on KOTH maps anyway that the turret is pretty much just on the way to a flanking position. Hell, somebody like Winston doesn't even care; he can quickly reach any useful KOTH turret position, throw down a shield, and safely stand on the other side of it to kill the turret (and Torb, if he makes the bad decision of trying to stay with the turret). And that's exactly the sort of thing Winston should be doing anyway, so the fact that he's away from the group briefly means he's doing his job.
So at best, a KOTH Torb is a gamble that the enemy won't take somebody like Junkrat (if they even need to bother, because there are plenty of characters who can kill Torb turrets handily) and that your team can reliably take the point in the first place.
Hmmm... that's a very generous number.
Also like I said under that definition the # of support one tricks can be inflated easily because.
A. Supports are a vital role.
B. There are currently only 4 healer types and usually their viability shifts around with the meta. So 2 or 3 of them will always have high usage rates.
Compare that to Off/Def who not only have more characters but more situational usage.
And tanks that are usually main tank and whoever else as offtank and that gets a bit blurry.
Mercy is fine, and there are situations where she's the best pick (Pharmercy, point A on hybrid maps, point B on CP maps) but there are times where she isn't, especially against high skill flankers where a Lucio or Ana will be much more independent.
Lucio is support king so I'll leave him out of the discussion. But Ana's usage rate has been slowly decreasing as dive becomes more prevalent.
A mix of Zen being used more, her lack of mobility and recent nerfs, team playing more spread and D.Va giving her problems.
And yet, a rather large amount of time, there's only one. Both Zen and Lucio have a hard time keeping up with healing on their own, and Ana is a lot more vulnerable to flankers or just sustained attacks with her lack of mobility and self-healing, and her ult is far more offensive than defensive like all the rest.
It's pretty much Mercy 1 tricks who are the problem. She requires so little mechanical skill that having more than one Mercy main on a team can render the match unwinnable. I had a game today where we had 2 Mercy mains. Obviously, one had to play something else, so he played Dva at a bronze level. As in, he didn't know how to cancel flying, or how defense matrix worked, or how to track her shots. He basically spent the whole match pointlessly spraying into Zarya and Rein shields and got something like 2k hero dmg and 1k dmg blocked over the course of the entire match. It was painful to watch.
Also, watching him ult into an empty building was pretty amazing.
It's not about playing a role. You can be a support main and not be a 1 trick. Every support main can and should be able to handle Zen, Lucio, and Mercy at a reasonably competent level (Ana can be hit or miss because she's maybe the most mechanically demanding hero other than Tracer and Genji, possibly McCree). Zen is a staple in the current meta and leaning how to move orbs around efficiently along with charged right clicks requires some but not godly mechanics. Lucio's wallriding takes a bit of practice but he's mostly about smart decision making, movement, and spacing.
Tank mains generally should be able to handle Winston and Dva, along with the occasional Rein. Zarya plays differently and isn't 100% necessary in the toolkit.
That said, you should practice every role to some degree so you're not completely useless at it. I mostly play tank and support, but will flex onto Pharah, S76, or Tracer as needed. I'm also an ok Widow although I prefer not to (unless there is a Pharah who absolutely must die). I've spent hours with every character, with the exception of Junkrat and Bastion (who have never really been in meta). Given the game design, it's something every player should try to do, if only to understand how to counter a particular hero.
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
The only role that's nearly as constrained is Tank, and even that's only because lots of players prefer the sexy offtank role and not the workhorse main tank.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Maybe too complicated, but I do think that the rez mechanic just undoes too much damage with no real counter other than pulling the same thing in return.
Or make Mercy glow like a supercharged Zarya when Ult is up, might seem unfair but so is mitigating thousands of damage instantly.
See. The thing I'm asking is how much is that really a "one trick" issue and how much of that is a flaw in game design.
I mean at the end of the day a player placed where they placed and I find the idea that they somehow don't belong there is ridiculous.
If they don't then the system shouldn't put them there.
Problem is that it's not a strategy I see many Torb players implement. It works when they're constantly displacing and defending healers from flankers like Tracer and Genji, but I've seen players trying to swim upstream by constantly placing turrets behind locations where even Pharah can just pick them off at a distance with splash damage. Good rivet gun play and a good stream of armor helps immensely but honestly, I would rather a decent Symmetra than a Torb for area denial and extra HP on KOTH maps.
At least she got a rework with a broader skillset.
A healer that deals their damage by draining enemy HP into allies would be pretty interesting, especially if their ult could "steal" healing from enemy healers. As annoying as it can be to have Mercy flip a switch to turn a wipe into no big deal, how amazing would it be to be able to make an enemy Mercy rez your team instead? Or Zen rushes in to save his team, only you steal all the healing and he ends up keeping your team alive?
But there definitely needs to be something new in the healer group. Of the four actual healers, only three can put out enough point healing to offset heavy damage output and only two of them can reliably heal mobility characters. Three of them are also built around a buff ability and a heal ability, with Ana being the only one with abilities that don't need to heal or buff to be useful.
In that situation I would have tried going single tank Dive with Winston and Lucio.
Theory being that Winston can soften people up for your DPS and has mobility and Lucio can obviously move people around.
The one exception I think is 2CP attack, where you really should err on the side of saving the Ult.
Ward
This is somewhat of a restatement of ideas I've presented before, but I can't remember exactly when, and people are murmuring about new healers, so here it is.
Ward acts as an "evil" healer / support character. For whatever reason, Ward was infected by various pathogens and had to resort to a kind of near-future ambulatory dialysis to stay alive. (It's a pun, see. "Sick ward.")
Ward's main gun, some kind of arm-mounted launcher, has two modes of fire. Both shoot globs of the kind of biotic fluid which travel in a slow arc and produce a cloud about 3 to 5 meters wide on impact. The primary fire heals 10 damage per second for three seconds to allies in the cloud, while the secondary fire harms enemies for the same amount.
Ward's Shift skill is Blood Draw. This shoots out a tentacle to a range of up to 10 meters that latches onto the first foe it hits. Attaching the Blood Draw to a foe causes three effects:
- Slight damage over time (something like 10 / second).
- The enemy is slowed by 20%.
- Charges Ward's "Blood" resource.
(Yes, Ward gets Blood even when draining Omnics. Deal with it.)
Blood Draw ends when line-of-sight is broken (Roadhog hook rules), the enemy goes out of range, or either the enemy or Ward dies.
Ward's E skill is a toggle that allows him to drain his Blood resource over time to receive two effects:
- The power of both his primary and secondary fire is increased by 50-100% (subject to balance considerations).
- Ward regenerates his own health (10-20 per second, again, subject to balance).
Ward's ultimate, Emergency Discharge, blankets the field around him in a cloud of pathogens for five seconds. (The cloud remains in a fixed position where it was used rather than following Ward.) In addition to doing even more damage over time, enemies in the radius are inflicted with Heal Block. Unlike Ana's grenade, this is not a timed effect; the heal block is removed as soon as the enemies are no longer within the toxic cloud.
As a possible further balancing wrinkle, Ward may have a disadvantageous passive where his healing from external sources (such as health packs, allied healers, or his own primary fire) is either reduced or negated, pushing him toward the use of Blood to maintain his own health.
I'm "kupiyupaekio" on Discord.
Seriously, DVas down here in mid-gold don't use DM anywhere nearly enough. I can't even recall the last time a DVa saved my normally-support ass from a hook or ult. And especially aren't smart enough to put the DM on the person being attacked instead of choosing some random enemy and hoping that nobody else will target your poor Mercy/Lucio's ass while they flee to safety.
The best ones are chain headshots on Widows and high-noon McCrees. Best shut-downs ever
They're too busy using it to back out of a fight they should have boosted out of, and not in towards like they did.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Cool concept, kinda reminds me of the fan character Canvas
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QB6wZ
Straight up deleting them would be absolutely, 100% op and basically destroy the game instantly.
On a slightly related note, I had two games yesterday where very, very close calls ended with a victory for my team because I used my ult at just the right moment.
Once, 2:2, 99:99 (enemy holds) on nepal sanctum, where a Winston ult enabled me to drop two people into the hole and kill two others, and once, 5v6 on kings row, where a dva ult killed three people after shields were broken and we had to hold with fewer people for 35 seconds
Managing ults is basically a third of this game
The other two thirds are positioning, and protecting your healers
iiit Doomfist.
Maybe not destroying them, but a character that doesn't have their own ult and instead copies one from another character (friendly or enemy!)
I, too, want sharingan. In overwatch, too
I'll buy two celebratory loot boxes if it's really Terry Crews. I just fucking love the guy, he's so damn great in Brooklyn 99
It's just anything from the enemy with him, but yes, I too want Rubick in Overwatch. Mercy rez? Steal, wait for a few teammates to die, counter-rez. Winston jumps on top of you? Steal before he uses his shield, jump away to safety. Hanzo just scatter arrow'd your poor Orisa? Steal the scatter arrow, shoot at Hanzo's feet, give him a taste of his own medecine!
People would be rather bummed if it wasn't Terry. I mean, he wanted to be Doomfist, the entire character was sold on Terry's persona, and he's already doing voices for video games (Crackdown 3). The only obstacle I can see is bringing back all the time for event lines, which could get costly fast.
Hype!
They're a terrorist "organization".
I'm "kupiyupaekio" on Discord.