Neither of those things feel fun, they're just frustrating and make you feel helpless. It brings back the same issue that a lot of MOBAs have, in that my individual skill and contribution don't fucking matter because all it takes is one or two weak links or incompetent boobs to bring everything down and turn my game into a respawn simulator.
Not to be a goose, but that's kind of an inherent issue with playing any team games. Either you queue as a pre-made team, or you subject yourself to the whims of fate, because weak links will always drag their team down. That's not an Overwatch-specific problem.
Every time I start to get serious enough about a game that I'm evaluating my teammates' behavior and identifying their mistakes, that game is ruined for me. It gets to the point where I only have fun when I win and when I lose I feel frustrated. That's not why I spend my time playing games.
There were times when I was playing the first Splatoon where I would get pissed about some of the lop-sided matches I'd occasionally get placed into (not "my teammates suck" but rather "the enemy team is way better than us, WTF matchmaker?"), but I can't say I've ever been confident enough in my own play in a FPS to seriously worry about my teammates' performance. I'd say it must be nice to be that good, but the downsides are obvious.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
So far re: Sombra I find it's kinda feast or famine in terms of damage output and building ult charge. It feels pretty matchup-dependent sometimes.
As much as they put in the effort to change her skillset a while back to give her more value across the board, everything about Sombra still feels like I'm just racing to EMP as fast as possible
I think McCree's simplicity is fine. Point at heads, click. There should be a hero like that, not everybody needs a lot of versatility (or god forbid, more mobility).
Agreed. McCree's greatest defense remains his M1 in a relatively-simple "click heads" proposition. As a Tracer, if I want to WTFPWN you, I need to spend time getting in position, get right next to your head and drill it full of holes for one perfect second of tracking - and then get out alive. Sombra has to stay in even longer, and Genji has to get that close and execute a lot of technically-perfect stuff to pull it off before trying to escape. Soldier can do it once every 6 seconds or whatever the helix CD is, Mei has to land 2 perfect headshots with a delay-fire projectile...
A technically-skilled McCree can do it at 20 yards in 0.5 seconds. And if this PTR patch goes through it'll be 0.4.
He might be okay.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
76 needs to have wilder spread and/or longer rocket cooldown (and greater self damage on it), it was weak to give him those first 5 shots as hitscan freebies.
edit: and Torbjorn and Baptiste shouldn't be allowed in team deathmatch, it's the most blatantly scummy thing, more than Mercy rez taking away a kill. They wouln't allow Lucio and Mercy in 1v1, there's precedent here.
Agree on the rocket CD. And Torbjorn and Symm should be deleted.
Baptiste I don't mind. He's a big hitbox for a support, and fairly easy to kill when the lamp's on CD.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
EMP can also take a long time to build compared to other ults,
Haha what?
Re: McCree - the thing is he's insanely dangerous at close range and about as dangerous as Ashe at mid range. He needs a weakness and his mobility is it.
Which suggests to me the highly-mobile Soldier should probably have a longer CD on his Helix. At least Reaper's useless beyond 10 yards.
I think Reaper may actually be the closest design-wise to McCree. Both have 2 save-my-ass moves, but fade and shadow step are a lot more flexible and useful than roll.
But he's still got Flash...
Maybe it's just a PC thing I dunno, but on average a Sombra has to work a lot harder to build her ult compared to a lot of others (especially other DPS). Considering the time she has to spend getting into position, and then how quickly she can be forced to leave a fight, it can be really tough to build it up. She's very much an in-out-in-out hero, so if she's not getting serious value while she's in then it's gonna take a while compared to heroes with more staying power and damage consistency.
Of course that depends on enemy comp - if you're getting in behind tank-heavy comps where you can just dump into huge bodies while other DPS might have trouble approaching, it's obvs gonna be a lot easier. A Sombra getting it done will have ult every fight, but one that's struggling it's gonna be like every 2.5, much more feast or famine than some other heroes in my experience.
Doesn't it only take like 3-4 hacked health packs on your tanks for her to get ult?
Patched that out a while back. For me, Sombra takes a long time to build ult if she's popping out of stealth, landing half a clip and teleporting 75 yards away to heal, place tele on heal and go back. That Sombra is gonna' get ult slowly, and she should, 'cause she's playing so conservatively.
If she uses Tele to reposition mid fight and (oh heavens be kind) gets some heals as she's hackin' folks from above, dropping down to pour damage in, repositioning to finish the fight... she gets it like super quick. Like a Tracer, she can have it up almost every teamfight.
If she's played like "whelp - didn't get a pick but Rein's hacked - back in 20 seconds everyone!" then, yeah. Slow ult.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Yeah, which is unfortunately a lot of Sombras at a lot of levels. I guess that's what I mean, though - the playstyle you need to build ult fast on a Sombra requires a lot more finesse and hero knowledge than it does on, say, a Soldier or Bastion. A lot of DPS ult building is mainly just "sit behind tanks, click on heads" (or "sneak behind, click on heads, use cooldowns to get out" in the case of close-range flankers). An average-skill Junkrat is gonna build ult way faster than an average-skill Sombra.
A Sombra that really understands her kit and playstyle is gonna have ult for every teamfight, and that shit is terrifying
Houk the Namebringer on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
played perhaps too many games somewhat chemically impaired and this one in particular seemed like the impairment was perhaps conducive to high quality rat left clicks of a truly random nature
Neither of those things feel fun, they're just frustrating and make you feel helpless. It brings back the same issue that a lot of MOBAs have, in that my individual skill and contribution don't fucking matter because all it takes is one or two weak links or incompetent boobs to bring everything down and turn my game into a respawn simulator.
Not to be a goose, but that's kind of an inherent issue with playing any team games. Either you queue as a pre-made team, or you subject yourself to the whims of fate, because weak links will always drag their team down. That's not an Overwatch-specific problem.
Nah, not back in the good ol' days of Unreal Tournament 2004 or Halo. One or two good players could carry an entire team. Even Team Fortress 2 was much more flexible when it came to individual skill.
The problem with Overwatch is a combination lack of flexibility on a character to character basis, and supports.
Each character fulfills a specific niche, with other characters that nearly or compeltely nullify your kit, and there's jack shit you can do about it except switch to something you might not even have any experience with and also lose all your ult charge (In a game where the team with the most ults to blow tends to win, that's absolutely devastating).
And then you have the supports. Those other games I mentioned had very limited options for recovering lost health outside of healthpacks, or a single healer class that can heal one person at a time at a fixed rate. Overwatch has enough healers that that if you have 2 then unless you all focus fire one person at a time, have a sniper good enough to consistently delete people, or are able to get at the supports first, no one person can dish out enough damage to down anyone else in a reasonable amount of time.
The last point is why Ana and Sombra are my favorite characters in the context of Overwatches gameplay loop: They're the only ones that can shut down healing and disable the tools that are the rock to your teams scissors.
Yeah, which is unfortunately a lot of Sombras at a lot of levels. I guess that's what I mean, though - the playstyle you need to build ult fast on a Sombra requires a lot more finesse and hero knowledge than it does on, say, a Soldier or Bastion. A lot of DPS ult building is mainly just "sit behind tanks, click on heads" (or "sneak behind, click on heads, use cooldowns to get out" in the case of close-range flankers). An average-skill Junkrat is gonna build ult way faster than an average-skill Sombra.
A Sombra that really understands her kit and playstyle is gonna have ult for every teamfight, and that shit is terrifying
Oh, yeah, that's another thing I notice new Sombra players (and myself sometimes) tend to forget: You don't EXCLUSIVELY have to sneak behind enemy lines and wait to ambush people. You can totally get stuck in wif da boyz while they're slugging it out over a point. She can stick by her tanks and spray some good damage out to help secure kills, and if you hide behind a shield you can keep your hack at the ready to punish anyone who pushes towards your team. I tend to actually get MORE hacks off in big team brawls because people tend to not prioritize you when the screen is covered in bullets and particle effects.
I think McCree's simplicity is fine. Point at heads, click. There should be a hero like that, not everybody needs a lot of versatility (or god forbid, more mobility).
As an incredibly casual OW player who basically only plays McCree this is the entire appeal to me. I got into OW because of friends, and I wanted something simple and familiar.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
the joke that the devs are playing on us of course being that mccree is quite possibly the hardest dps to play
Oh, yeah, that's another thing I notice new Sombra players (and myself sometimes) tend to forget: You don't EXCLUSIVELY have to sneak behind enemy lines and wait to ambush people. You can totally get stuck in wif da boyz while they're slugging it out over a point. She can stick by her tanks and spray some good damage out to help secure kills, and if you hide behind a shield you can keep your hack at the ready to punish anyone who pushes towards your team. I tend to actually get MORE hacks off in big team brawls because people tend to not prioritize you when the screen is covered in bullets and particle effects.
I'm glad someone mentioned it. You only need to sneak around as Sombra if you need to actually be sneaky. Obviously the pros are very good at finding the right target and building a ton of charge off of them while also being sneaky but just being with your team and laying out the chip damage is gonna build your ult much faster than trying to find the perfect moment to hack someone in the backline.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
the joke that the devs are playing on us of course being that mccree is quite possibly the hardest dps to play
Certainly the least-forgiving.
well i mean hes 100% the hardest due to how his skills work
i dont mean the highest skill cap because a character like eg tracer has an effectively infinite skill cap due to how crazy her positioning possibilities are and how much creativity you can express through very specifically calculated rewinds etc, but for a lot of the dps their skills are very straightforward and solve specific problems.
if youre soldier you have e that you cant fuck up, it gives hp, rocket that is a nice little speedy projectile that is obviously for burst and sprint. if youre tracer you have 3 dodges and a panic button. if youre pharah your entire kit is designed around a totally unique movement mechanic that lets you control your position and exposure to enemies in a way that lets you either totally counter short range heroes or give you the real opportunity to outplay sightlines with a bit of thought. even ashe has a non line of sight damage ability and a panic button that moves her and is a knockback that has very simple use cases (monkey jump at me monkey get shotgunned backwards see you monkey)
mccree has the worst movement ability in the game that takes him about 2cm that is also an essential part of his dps decision making because it reloads, a flashbang that is powerful but also the entire cornerstone of his defense and an ultimate that is probably the hardest to use well against good players in the game. even fan the hammer has a surprising level of depth to it - if you press it badly ayyy you just dumped your mag for nothing and you better roll or be useless while you reload. its a doomfist with 300hp from shield? headshot into 5shot fan will probably get him (140 + 250) but a straight fan will only kill him if you land every shot inside 20m, and if you miss even one woops. full hp zarya with no shield? headshot flashbang fan wont get her unless you roll... etc etc. this kind of intuition about your damage output takes a surprisingly long time to develop
i think for characters with no mobility (zen is rather similar) you end up in this strange situation where just the choice of your position, angle, engagement etc requires you to have really strong intuitions about where the enemy team are, where they are going to be and what your team can do to help you. if you are mccree sometimes the ONLY thing you can do is rely on your tanks/healers and, uh, thats not gonna go to well in the average solo q game. and to make it worse some things you can do to "counter" certain ults - eg double headshotting an ulting genji who has no deflect - are just very mechanically demanding. ironically this is less hard for junkrat simply because you have much more movement flexibility (although you can still feed like an animal as i am wont to do)
there are very few top500 mccree mains any more - even players with absolutely nuts aim like calvin will frequently have games where they just never get to do much and end up switching - and while in one sense this is sort of how the game is i have a lot of sympathy for players who want to play mccree in eg diamond where their counters have all the tools they need to get them relatively easily while the mccree has to actually outplay them over and over. and he simply isnt as oppressive as widow due to his mechanical limitations
surrealitycheck on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Neither of those things feel fun, they're just frustrating and make you feel helpless. It brings back the same issue that a lot of MOBAs have, in that my individual skill and contribution don't fucking matter because all it takes is one or two weak links or incompetent boobs to bring everything down and turn my game into a respawn simulator.
Not to be a goose, but that's kind of an inherent issue with playing any team games. Either you queue as a pre-made team, or you subject yourself to the whims of fate, because weak links will always drag their team down. That's not an Overwatch-specific problem.
Nah, not back in the good ol' days of Unreal Tournament 2004 or Halo. One or two good players could carry an entire team. Even Team Fortress 2 was much more flexible when it came to individual skill.
you absolutely can carry in overwatch. ABSOLUTELY
even with quite strange picks. i went level 25 account to masters with an 85% win rate just instalocking hog on a smurf. i had 65% wr getting to gm on rat earlier this season. its just... a broader sense of "carrying" and "skill" than i think conventional fps games. in q3 you just gotta aim well move well and frag the fuck out. in overwatch you can be an absolute aim god but without game awareness, positioning etc you cant cash in on that. some players carry games through pure game sense. one of my biggest weaknesses is that i frequently dont keep track of what is going on and feed like an animal even if my mechanical aim is quite good and my movement is fine!
Oh, yeah, that's another thing I notice new Sombra players (and myself sometimes) tend to forget: You don't EXCLUSIVELY have to sneak behind enemy lines and wait to ambush people. You can totally get stuck in wif da boyz while they're slugging it out over a point. She can stick by her tanks and spray some good damage out to help secure kills, and if you hide behind a shield you can keep your hack at the ready to punish anyone who pushes towards your team. I tend to actually get MORE hacks off in big team brawls because people tend to not prioritize you when the screen is covered in bullets and particle effects.
I'm glad someone mentioned it. You only need to sneak around as Sombra if you need to actually be sneaky. Obviously the pros are very good at finding the right target and building a ton of charge off of them while also being sneaky but just being with your team and laying out the chip damage is gonna build your ult much faster than trying to find the perfect moment to hack someone in the backline.
This is something that people get wrong with all the flankers. Everybody needs to participate in the team fights. If you're a flanker then you should ideally be hitting them from behind at the same time as your team pushes in. But if you can't make that happen, just pushing in with them is the next best thing. Don't spend more time sneaking than you spend fighting.
Oh, yeah, that's another thing I notice new Sombra players (and myself sometimes) tend to forget: You don't EXCLUSIVELY have to sneak behind enemy lines and wait to ambush people. You can totally get stuck in wif da boyz while they're slugging it out over a point. She can stick by her tanks and spray some good damage out to help secure kills, and if you hide behind a shield you can keep your hack at the ready to punish anyone who pushes towards your team. I tend to actually get MORE hacks off in big team brawls because people tend to not prioritize you when the screen is covered in bullets and particle effects.
I'm glad someone mentioned it. You only need to sneak around as Sombra if you need to actually be sneaky. Obviously the pros are very good at finding the right target and building a ton of charge off of them while also being sneaky but just being with your team and laying out the chip damage is gonna build your ult much faster than trying to find the perfect moment to hack someone in the backline.
This is something that people get wrong with all the flankers. Everybody needs to participate in the team fights. If you're a flanker then you should ideally be hitting them from behind at the same time as your team pushes in. But if you can't make that happen, just pushing in with them is the next best thing. Don't spend more time sneaking than you spend fighting.
100% this.
Flankers are flankers but we also need to be the reliable, consistent damage our tanks can count on to finish picks they start or soften targets for them to pick when they move forward. Once the fight begins, we need to be alongside everyone else helping out or we're leaving out team severely weakened.
It's like your team is a giant mech from an old anime made up of six parts. Rein is the head and he's got the shield, Hog is the body and he can take the hits, your supports are the legs and they keep everything upright and the DPS are the fists ready to slam into whatever the head tells them to.
If the DPS isn't in there punching, it's just an armless wretch trying to kick or headbutt everyone to death. That's just silly. And to take the analogy to its natural conclusion, if the supports are trying to frag out and aren't healing, you're basically just the Black Knight from Holy Grail.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
make McCree's headshot count 150 HP and he will immediately arise to perfection.
It might be more that it becomes easy to get PotG when the reds let you get away with dumb shit lol - that said, I'm not sure a Pharah getting into a sneaky flank position to ult is dumb shit.
I've got a Tracer PotG where I had burned a bunch of blinks juking around a Rein's shield and the PotG begins just as I finish him off. Then, out of blinks, I lay into (I think?) a Hanzo from 20 yards and get the killing blow, walk forward with my team, one-clip a Tracer in front of me with her back to me, walk around the payload and one-clip a Moira.
A full Tracer PotG with no Pulse Bomb, no rewind, and no blinks. 'Cause they let me.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Mystery Ults. You can pick whatever hero you want but your ult is randomized.
Can we see what ult we have in the symbol or does it represent he character we're on?
Cause if it's a mystery until you use it that might be super interesting. Unless you're Sym. And I guess Nano would be given away by the reticle (if you're not playing Zen or Brig.)
Edit: also it changes every time you ult.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I think the problem would be 90% solved if Blizzard just put something like the OWL team comp indicators in the main game. [edited for space]
The only genuine counter-argument for the idea that I can think of is that it would blunt any surprise picks. IMO that's just saying "let's not raise the level of play at all ranks so that players can occasionally pull off a niche cheese tactic!" But even if we assume that this is a valid strategy that we should even consider protecting - by sheer obfuscation - I just think the pros outweigh the one con by a country mile..
I think it would be super useful to have team player portraits displayed up top right with indicators for who's currently dead/respawning/has ult openly displayed for teammate's UI, as opposed to having to tab for that information
Information accessibility in general could just lead to better Overwatch play across the board
Maybe split the difference? Put OWL-style team rosters across the top of the screen, but still conceal who enemy players switched to until they enter LOS of a member of your team (or a friendly turret, BOB, Widowmaker ult, sonar arrow, etc).
I would be fine with never showing enemy stats as a portrait bar outside of what's already in-game but including a team display similar or identical to the pve events. I'm honestly not sure what the theory is behind NOT doing that in normal play. They clearly already have the tools to do it, and it would probably increase team awareness across the board just by being turned on, even for people not on voice. Like, why NOT do it? I don't understand their reasoning here.
even with quite strange picks. i went level 25 account to masters with an 85% win rate just instalocking hog on a smurf. i had 65% wr getting to gm on rat earlier this season. its just... a broader sense of "carrying" and "skill" than i think conventional fps games. in q3 you just gotta aim well move well and frag the fuck out. in overwatch you can be an absolute aim god but without game awareness, positioning etc you cant cash in on that. some players carry games through pure game sense. one of my biggest weaknesses is that i frequently dont keep track of what is going on and feed like an animal even if my mechanical aim is quite good and my movement is fine!
In my experience it requires an absolutely insanely lopsided skill divide to carry in Overwatch, and even then you still NEED your team. You legit have to be so good that you're essentially a robot, or your opponents have to be significantly less skilled than you, and you need someone else for them to shoot at while you do your thing.
I don't remember if it was Twitch or some youtube channel, but there was a series of exhibition matches where some Top 500 player would face off solo against a team of bronze players. He could consistently get 3 picks on them with a degree of variance before combined arms took him down. And that was with custom rules to boost his characters health.
Unreal Tournament? You could still win the entire match even if your whole team left or died. The game rewarded you for simply being that good.
I mean, if you want to solo carry or rely purely on individual skill there's usually a deathmatch mode in the arcade? As frustrating it as it is to lose a match because half your team can't seem to point and shoot well (lord this happens to me constantly), I think the team focus also serves to keep swaggering egos in check a bit which is an important value added benefit for me. Do I want to see lone wolf players constantly crowing about how they're carrying the match and everyone else is a loser? No, no I don't. My matches are already herding cats trying to get teams to push together. If solo skill was rewarded any more than it already is there would be even less incentive to work with the rest of your team. There's no I in team or Overwatch!
even with quite strange picks. i went level 25 account to masters with an 85% win rate just instalocking hog on a smurf. i had 65% wr getting to gm on rat earlier this season. its just... a broader sense of "carrying" and "skill" than i think conventional fps games. in q3 you just gotta aim well move well and frag the fuck out. in overwatch you can be an absolute aim god but without game awareness, positioning etc you cant cash in on that. some players carry games through pure game sense. one of my biggest weaknesses is that i frequently dont keep track of what is going on and feed like an animal even if my mechanical aim is quite good and my movement is fine!
In my experience it requires an absolutely insanely lopsided skill divide to carry in Overwatch, and even then you still NEED your team. You legit have to be so good that you're essentially a robot, or your opponents have to be significantly less skilled than you, and you need someone else for them to shoot at while you do your thing.
I don't remember if it was Twitch or some youtube channel, but there was a series of exhibition matches where some Top 500 player would face off solo against a team of bronze players. He could consistently get 3 picks on them with a degree of variance before combined arms took him down. And that was with custom rules to boost his characters health.
Unreal Tournament? You could still win the entire match even if your whole team left or died. The game rewarded you for simply being that good.
I'm not interested in playing a co-op game where 5 of the 6 teammates are functionally useless as long as the 6th one is good enough. I don't want to be on the team with the god player because then I may as well not even be playing, and obviously I don't want to be on the team against the god player because then I may as well just go afk and wait for the match to be over. I know everyone likes to complain about how they'd be GM top 500 if it weren't for all those other idiots on their team, but most of the time that's a self-inflicted fiction and I'd rather not have every game be carried by the one person who clicks on heads better. So yeah, I'm fine with things as they are.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
There's also the similar issue where 5/6 of the team is reasonably competent, but that one Genji that just doesn't know how to stay alive or do any damage ends up ruining the match anyway. The opposite of carrying.
This is usually the same guy that then complains about the team sucking.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
The other day I was in a lobby with a Zen for 3 rounds in a row. Went 3 and 0. I don't know why he never switched off - maybe he was like "good practice!" or somethin' - but I've never had a Zen ult so often when jumped. He used Trance like Tracers use recall.
And it was an all-round fun 3 rounds so I made a video out of it.
I think the worst Rein potg I got was a mei ulting my team and I was partially in it so I just charged at her and hit her and dragged her into a wall and her team insta killed me but my team survived.
I think the worst Rein potg I got was a mei ulting my team and I was partially in it so I just charged at her and hit her and dragged her into a wall and her team insta killed me but my team survived.
I had one in the first few months of playing the game where I was charging someone off of the map but their Mei froze me just before I went off, so my pin target went off the map and I stayed up.
Got all the skins except mei, and i have enough to buy it if i don't get it before the end. Also, i love the toxic hog skin. Poison in the hook with an injection needle! So evil. Been having fun tearing it up as hog this weekend. Also a few plays of the game as brig this weekend, getting better with her too.
Love the skins for this event. Good job all around.
I know it would break the game, but the poison theme of hog's skin, and the taser effects on brig's mace made me daydream about choosing elemental effects for various characters and having to do additional counter-balancing versus the elemental effects the enemy team is deploying.
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Not to be a goose, but that's kind of an inherent issue with playing any team games. Either you queue as a pre-made team, or you subject yourself to the whims of fate, because weak links will always drag their team down. That's not an Overwatch-specific problem.
There were times when I was playing the first Splatoon where I would get pissed about some of the lop-sided matches I'd occasionally get placed into (not "my teammates suck" but rather "the enemy team is way better than us, WTF matchmaker?"), but I can't say I've ever been confident enough in my own play in a FPS to seriously worry about my teammates' performance. I'd say it must be nice to be that good, but the downsides are obvious.
As much as they put in the effort to change her skillset a while back to give her more value across the board, everything about Sombra still feels like I'm just racing to EMP as fast as possible
Agreed. McCree's greatest defense remains his M1 in a relatively-simple "click heads" proposition. As a Tracer, if I want to WTFPWN you, I need to spend time getting in position, get right next to your head and drill it full of holes for one perfect second of tracking - and then get out alive. Sombra has to stay in even longer, and Genji has to get that close and execute a lot of technically-perfect stuff to pull it off before trying to escape. Soldier can do it once every 6 seconds or whatever the helix CD is, Mei has to land 2 perfect headshots with a delay-fire projectile...
A technically-skilled McCree can do it at 20 yards in 0.5 seconds. And if this PTR patch goes through it'll be 0.4.
He might be okay.
Agree on the rocket CD. And Torbjorn and Symm should be deleted.
Baptiste I don't mind. He's a big hitbox for a support, and fairly easy to kill when the lamp's on CD.
Maybe it's just a PC thing I dunno, but on average a Sombra has to work a lot harder to build her ult compared to a lot of others (especially other DPS). Considering the time she has to spend getting into position, and then how quickly she can be forced to leave a fight, it can be really tough to build it up. She's very much an in-out-in-out hero, so if she's not getting serious value while she's in then it's gonna take a while compared to heroes with more staying power and damage consistency.
Of course that depends on enemy comp - if you're getting in behind tank-heavy comps where you can just dump into huge bodies while other DPS might have trouble approaching, it's obvs gonna be a lot easier. A Sombra getting it done will have ult every fight, but one that's struggling it's gonna be like every 2.5, much more feast or famine than some other heroes in my experience.
Patched that out a while back. For me, Sombra takes a long time to build ult if she's popping out of stealth, landing half a clip and teleporting 75 yards away to heal, place tele on heal and go back. That Sombra is gonna' get ult slowly, and she should, 'cause she's playing so conservatively.
If she uses Tele to reposition mid fight and (oh heavens be kind) gets some heals as she's hackin' folks from above, dropping down to pour damage in, repositioning to finish the fight... she gets it like super quick. Like a Tracer, she can have it up almost every teamfight.
If she's played like "whelp - didn't get a pick but Rein's hacked - back in 20 seconds everyone!" then, yeah. Slow ult.
A Sombra that really understands her kit and playstyle is gonna have ult for every teamfight, and that shit is terrifying
Nah, not back in the good ol' days of Unreal Tournament 2004 or Halo. One or two good players could carry an entire team. Even Team Fortress 2 was much more flexible when it came to individual skill.
The problem with Overwatch is a combination lack of flexibility on a character to character basis, and supports.
Each character fulfills a specific niche, with other characters that nearly or compeltely nullify your kit, and there's jack shit you can do about it except switch to something you might not even have any experience with and also lose all your ult charge (In a game where the team with the most ults to blow tends to win, that's absolutely devastating).
And then you have the supports. Those other games I mentioned had very limited options for recovering lost health outside of healthpacks, or a single healer class that can heal one person at a time at a fixed rate. Overwatch has enough healers that that if you have 2 then unless you all focus fire one person at a time, have a sniper good enough to consistently delete people, or are able to get at the supports first, no one person can dish out enough damage to down anyone else in a reasonable amount of time.
The last point is why Ana and Sombra are my favorite characters in the context of Overwatches gameplay loop: They're the only ones that can shut down healing and disable the tools that are the rock to your teams scissors.
Oh, yeah, that's another thing I notice new Sombra players (and myself sometimes) tend to forget: You don't EXCLUSIVELY have to sneak behind enemy lines and wait to ambush people. You can totally get stuck in wif da boyz while they're slugging it out over a point. She can stick by her tanks and spray some good damage out to help secure kills, and if you hide behind a shield you can keep your hack at the ready to punish anyone who pushes towards your team. I tend to actually get MORE hacks off in big team brawls because people tend to not prioritize you when the screen is covered in bullets and particle effects.
As an incredibly casual OW player who basically only plays McCree this is the entire appeal to me. I got into OW because of friends, and I wanted something simple and familiar.
Certainly the least-forgiving.
I'm glad someone mentioned it. You only need to sneak around as Sombra if you need to actually be sneaky. Obviously the pros are very good at finding the right target and building a ton of charge off of them while also being sneaky but just being with your team and laying out the chip damage is gonna build your ult much faster than trying to find the perfect moment to hack someone in the backline.
well i mean hes 100% the hardest due to how his skills work
i dont mean the highest skill cap because a character like eg tracer has an effectively infinite skill cap due to how crazy her positioning possibilities are and how much creativity you can express through very specifically calculated rewinds etc, but for a lot of the dps their skills are very straightforward and solve specific problems.
if youre soldier you have e that you cant fuck up, it gives hp, rocket that is a nice little speedy projectile that is obviously for burst and sprint. if youre tracer you have 3 dodges and a panic button. if youre pharah your entire kit is designed around a totally unique movement mechanic that lets you control your position and exposure to enemies in a way that lets you either totally counter short range heroes or give you the real opportunity to outplay sightlines with a bit of thought. even ashe has a non line of sight damage ability and a panic button that moves her and is a knockback that has very simple use cases (monkey jump at me monkey get shotgunned backwards see you monkey)
mccree has the worst movement ability in the game that takes him about 2cm that is also an essential part of his dps decision making because it reloads, a flashbang that is powerful but also the entire cornerstone of his defense and an ultimate that is probably the hardest to use well against good players in the game. even fan the hammer has a surprising level of depth to it - if you press it badly ayyy you just dumped your mag for nothing and you better roll or be useless while you reload. its a doomfist with 300hp from shield? headshot into 5shot fan will probably get him (140 + 250) but a straight fan will only kill him if you land every shot inside 20m, and if you miss even one woops. full hp zarya with no shield? headshot flashbang fan wont get her unless you roll... etc etc. this kind of intuition about your damage output takes a surprisingly long time to develop
i think for characters with no mobility (zen is rather similar) you end up in this strange situation where just the choice of your position, angle, engagement etc requires you to have really strong intuitions about where the enemy team are, where they are going to be and what your team can do to help you. if you are mccree sometimes the ONLY thing you can do is rely on your tanks/healers and, uh, thats not gonna go to well in the average solo q game. and to make it worse some things you can do to "counter" certain ults - eg double headshotting an ulting genji who has no deflect - are just very mechanically demanding. ironically this is less hard for junkrat simply because you have much more movement flexibility (although you can still feed like an animal as i am wont to do)
there are very few top500 mccree mains any more - even players with absolutely nuts aim like calvin will frequently have games where they just never get to do much and end up switching - and while in one sense this is sort of how the game is i have a lot of sympathy for players who want to play mccree in eg diamond where their counters have all the tools they need to get them relatively easily while the mccree has to actually outplay them over and over. and he simply isnt as oppressive as widow due to his mechanical limitations
you absolutely can carry in overwatch. ABSOLUTELY
even with quite strange picks. i went level 25 account to masters with an 85% win rate just instalocking hog on a smurf. i had 65% wr getting to gm on rat earlier this season. its just... a broader sense of "carrying" and "skill" than i think conventional fps games. in q3 you just gotta aim well move well and frag the fuck out. in overwatch you can be an absolute aim god but without game awareness, positioning etc you cant cash in on that. some players carry games through pure game sense. one of my biggest weaknesses is that i frequently dont keep track of what is going on and feed like an animal even if my mechanical aim is quite good and my movement is fine!
This is something that people get wrong with all the flankers. Everybody needs to participate in the team fights. If you're a flanker then you should ideally be hitting them from behind at the same time as your team pushes in. But if you can't make that happen, just pushing in with them is the next best thing. Don't spend more time sneaking than you spend fighting.
100% this.
Flankers are flankers but we also need to be the reliable, consistent damage our tanks can count on to finish picks they start or soften targets for them to pick when they move forward. Once the fight begins, we need to be alongside everyone else helping out or we're leaving out team severely weakened.
It's like your team is a giant mech from an old anime made up of six parts. Rein is the head and he's got the shield, Hog is the body and he can take the hits, your supports are the legs and they keep everything upright and the DPS are the fists ready to slam into whatever the head tells them to.
If the DPS isn't in there punching, it's just an armless wretch trying to kick or headbutt everyone to death. That's just silly. And to take the analogy to its natural conclusion, if the supports are trying to frag out and aren't healing, you're basically just the Black Knight from Holy Grail.
Hissss!
I've got a Tracer PotG where I had burned a bunch of blinks juking around a Rein's shield and the PotG begins just as I finish him off. Then, out of blinks, I lay into (I think?) a Hanzo from 20 yards and get the killing blow, walk forward with my team, one-clip a Tracer in front of me with her back to me, walk around the payload and one-clip a Moira.
A full Tracer PotG with no Pulse Bomb, no rewind, and no blinks. 'Cause they let me.
You deserve it for saying my best girl should be deleted :P
I stand by it.
Mystery Ults. You can pick whatever hero you want but your ult is randomized.
Can we see what ult we have in the symbol or does it represent he character we're on?
Cause if it's a mystery until you use it that might be super interesting. Unless you're Sym. And I guess Nano would be given away by the reticle (if you're not playing Zen or Brig.)
Edit: also it changes every time you ult.
I would be fine with never showing enemy stats as a portrait bar outside of what's already in-game but including a team display similar or identical to the pve events. I'm honestly not sure what the theory is behind NOT doing that in normal play. They clearly already have the tools to do it, and it would probably increase team awareness across the board just by being turned on, even for people not on voice. Like, why NOT do it? I don't understand their reasoning here.
In my experience it requires an absolutely insanely lopsided skill divide to carry in Overwatch, and even then you still NEED your team. You legit have to be so good that you're essentially a robot, or your opponents have to be significantly less skilled than you, and you need someone else for them to shoot at while you do your thing.
I don't remember if it was Twitch or some youtube channel, but there was a series of exhibition matches where some Top 500 player would face off solo against a team of bronze players. He could consistently get 3 picks on them with a degree of variance before combined arms took him down. And that was with custom rules to boost his characters health.
Unreal Tournament? You could still win the entire match even if your whole team left or died. The game rewarded you for simply being that good.
I'm not interested in playing a co-op game where 5 of the 6 teammates are functionally useless as long as the 6th one is good enough. I don't want to be on the team with the god player because then I may as well not even be playing, and obviously I don't want to be on the team against the god player because then I may as well just go afk and wait for the match to be over. I know everyone likes to complain about how they'd be GM top 500 if it weren't for all those other idiots on their team, but most of the time that's a self-inflicted fiction and I'd rather not have every game be carried by the one person who clicks on heads better. So yeah, I'm fine with things as they are.
This is usually the same guy that then complains about the team sucking.
And it was an all-round fun 3 rounds so I made a video out of it.
sometimes things go rather well
I had one in the first few months of playing the game where I was charging someone off of the map but their Mei froze me just before I went off, so my pin target went off the map and I stayed up.
Love the skins for this event. Good job all around.
I know it would break the game, but the poison theme of hog's skin, and the taser effects on brig's mace made me daydream about choosing elemental effects for various characters and having to do additional counter-balancing versus the elemental effects the enemy team is deploying.
Oh shit wait that’s just Paladins.