I honestly wasn't all that impressed with Decay overall, although that could be the meta matchup as much as anything. But hopefully they can get one if not two rockstar DPS, because their core supports are solid and OGE/Space tank line could be hot fire.
Kind of apropos of nothing, but it occurred to me last night.
Indivisible, the next game from Lab Zero Games (Skullgirls) just came out. It's beautiful, funny, and all-around great. I Kickstarted it years ago and I've been dying for its release.
Both my podcasting buddies have been playing Borderlands 3 and I bought it 'cause one of them wouldn't stop posting pictures of Jakobs gun porn. It'm about halfway or one-third through, I think. Killed the first vault beast.
One of my most-anticipated indies of the decade, Children of Morta is finally out of early access and available now on PSN. A Diablo-esque pixel-art Roguelite, it looks like everything I love combined.
Ori and the Blind Forest, the gorgeous and critically-acclaimed Metroidvania, is now available on my Switch.
Any single shred of gaming time I from Friday evening to this morning was spent in Overwatch, mostly running around as Wisp Tracer. All these awesome new games, and I don't wanna' work, I just wanna' bang on my drum all day.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Kind of apropos of nothing, but it occurred to me last night.
Indivisible, the next game from Lab Zero Games (Skullgirls) just came out. It's beautiful, funny, and all-around great. I Kickstarted it years ago and I've been dying for its release.
Both my podcasting buddies have been playing Borderlands 3 and I bought it 'cause one of them wouldn't stop posting pictures of Jakobs gun porn. It'm about halfway or one-third through, I think. Killed the first vault beast.
One of my most-anticipated indies of the decade, Children of Morta is finally out of early access and available now on PSN. A Diablo-esque pixel-art Roguelite, it looks like everything I love combined.
Ori and the Blind Forest, the gorgeous and critically-acclaimed Metroidvania, is now available on my Switch.
Any single shred of gaming time I from Friday evening to this morning was spent in Overwatch, mostly running around as Wisp Tracer. All these awesome new games, and I don't wanna' work, I just wanna' bang on my drum all day.
If it helps, I've been playing Indivisible as my most recent exercise game (on a stationary bike) since I'm a massive Valkyrie Profile fan, and while the sprite work is amazing and the writing pretty solid, I've been rather unimpressed with the rest. There are a lot of parts where it's clear that something's just plain unfinished (there's a character who's literally missing animation frames, and multiple without special attacks at all), and important core mechanics are wonky and/or not explained at all. Combat is also deceptively simplistic and repetitive, partly because it's super hard to actually tell what characters are more effective than others, which is crazy because the difficulty is all over the place. I also can't fathom what they were thinking with the progression of the second act of the game. It's designed explicitly to force a shitload of backtracking seemingly just to pad the playtime out. It definitely needed quite a bit more playtesting and cleanup in general, and I'm not certain how much of it can be smoothed over in post. The documentation stuff, sure. The combat stuff, not so certain. The act 2 bullshit? That'd require redoing at least three gigantic maps, so... very unlikely.
Ugh few things worse than seeing the yellow flip out of the lootbox only for it to be last year's halloween Mei skin.
Um vanilla legendary dupe. Or coins.
When you already have Paja-mei all current mei skins are inconsequential. There are still a good number of vanilla legendaries i would still use, and coins would allow me to buy new Halloween skins.
Ugh few things worse than seeing the yellow flip out of the lootbox only for it to be last year's halloween Mei skin.
Um vanilla legendary dupe. Or coins.
When you already have Paja-mei all current mei skins are inconsequential. There are still a good number of vanilla legendaries i would still use, and coins would allow me to buy new Halloween skins.
Waitwaitwait. Let's be specific. Was Jiangshi a dupe, or are you looking an elegant, cute gift horse in its undead mouth?
Granted, it's no Pharoah.
...got Pharaoh tonight ^.^
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Ugh few things worse than seeing the yellow flip out of the lootbox only for it to be last year's halloween Mei skin.
Um vanilla legendary dupe. Or coins.
When you already have Paja-mei all current mei skins are inconsequential. There are still a good number of vanilla legendaries i would still use, and coins would allow me to buy new Halloween skins.
Waitwaitwait. Let's be specific. Was Jiangshi a dupe, or are you looking an elegant, cute gift horse in its undead mouth?
Granted, it's no Pharoah.
...got Pharaoh tonight ^.^
Gift horse in the mouth of course. This is the internet afterall.
But for serious it just doesn't do it for me. Adds to the collection i suppose.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Kind of apropos of nothing, but it occurred to me last night.
Indivisible, the next game from Lab Zero Games (Skullgirls) just came out. It's beautiful, funny, and all-around great. I Kickstarted it years ago and I've been dying for its release.
Both my podcasting buddies have been playing Borderlands 3 and I bought it 'cause one of them wouldn't stop posting pictures of Jakobs gun porn. It'm about halfway or one-third through, I think. Killed the first vault beast.
One of my most-anticipated indies of the decade, Children of Morta is finally out of early access and available now on PSN. A Diablo-esque pixel-art Roguelite, it looks like everything I love combined.
Ori and the Blind Forest, the gorgeous and critically-acclaimed Metroidvania, is now available on my Switch.
Any single shred of gaming time I from Friday evening to this morning was spent in Overwatch, mostly running around as Wisp Tracer. All these awesome new games, and I don't wanna' work, I just wanna' bang on my drum all day.
If it helps, I've been playing Indivisible as my most recent exercise game (on a stationary bike) since I'm a massive Valkyrie Profile fan, and while the sprite work is amazing and the writing pretty solid, I've been rather unimpressed with the rest. There are a lot of parts where it's clear that something's just plain unfinished (there's a character who's literally missing animation frames, and multiple without special attacks at all), and important core mechanics are wonky and/or not explained at all. Combat is also deceptively simplistic and repetitive, partly because it's super hard to actually tell what characters are more effective than others, which is crazy because the difficulty is all over the place. I also can't fathom what they were thinking with the progression of the second act of the game. It's designed explicitly to force a shitload of backtracking seemingly just to pad the playtime out. It definitely needed quite a bit more playtesting and cleanup in general, and I'm not certain how much of it can be smoothed over in post. The documentation stuff, sure. The combat stuff, not so certain. The act 2 bullshit? That'd require redoing at least three gigantic maps, so... very unlikely.
Hmm...I see, I was looking at Indivisible so some of this is concerning.
Ugh few things worse than seeing the yellow flip out of the lootbox only for it to be last year's halloween Mei skin.
Um vanilla legendary dupe. Or coins.
When you already have Paja-mei all current mei skins are inconsequential. There are still a good number of vanilla legendaries i would still use, and coins would allow me to buy new Halloween skins.
Waitwaitwait. Let's be specific. Was Jiangshi a dupe, or are you looking an elegant, cute gift horse in its undead mouth?
Granted, it's no Pharoah.
...got Pharaoh tonight ^.^
Gift horse in the mouth of course. This is the internet afterall.
But for serious it just doesn't do it for me. Adds to the collection i suppose.
PajaMei is the best Mei skin, that's true...
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited October 2019
After playing with the Tanks after this patch I would say that it feels a little better overall. Sigma is still strong but had more exploitable gaps. And Roadhog is a lot more viable again mainly because of the Sigma nerfs but the extra shot helps more than you would think.
I still think Orisa is the tank that can be used in most situations with the other being a little more situational. I could see her getting another minor nerf maybe reducing her walk speed while shooting to a between point of what it was and what it is now but nothing too big.
Reinhardt and Zarya are good but they value changes depending on the map.
D.Va/Winston still need a bit of work though.
TBH outside of buffs/nerfs I think more options are simply needed.
Ewww no Orisa doesn't need more nerfs. She's an immobile tank and her shield's cooldown is equivalent to Winston's (!?) - the nerfs to address her synergy with Sigma came down too hard on our sweet innocent girl.
The combination of Sigma and Orisa is a bit much, I agree, but I feel like they're just rolling back years of little adjustments that eventually got Orisa to Good. And not small, thoughtful adjustments but just whackin' her with a big frickin' hammer. Like this:
Honestly I think she's fine but if folks keep crying about the meta I could see more nerfs just to placate them.
This is kind of a chicken or egg thing. Is it the combination of our beefy heals, now, that permit the use of Sig - ostensibly a flexible anchor tank - as an offtank?
Is it a holdover of the principles of Goats? Rein and Sig is one thing, but they're being run with Reaper, Mei and Doomfist - the three DPS with the largest health pools - essentially echoing one of the great strengths of the Goats comp. And they're kept alive through their self-heal or self-shield abilities, and those big heals.
It could be, simply, that Heal Creep is the root cause of Sig Orisa. I say leave Mercy at 50HPS, but reduce all other healing output to reflect 50 HPS as Standard Primary Healer Numbers. Meaning Ana now heals 60 per shot, Moira maxes out at 70 with the orb and her spray combined, and Bap's grenades can be reduced to 45.
Harmony orb can stay at 30. That's fine.
Holy shit I just made Soldier meta again.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Unless you're going to drastically increase the time to kill, healing (and barriers) kind of need to stay strong. A lot of DPS just need one lucky shot and they insta-kill everything but tanks, and have spammy abilities specifically for that. I feel like there does need to be some kind of reckoning to balance out the sustain vs burst DPS types since the burst, Reaper and Doom especially, have become too good at everything and don't have their effectiveness reduced anywhere near enough by their even softish counters. I don't see them nerfing damage across the board to get there. I see them... I don't know... introducing a CC-heavy short range tank and saying "Here's your counter to Doom/Mei/Reaper/Sym who's ridiculously hard countered by Soldier/Widow/Pharah/Junk" and calling it a day, oblivious to it just being tank-Brig. But even more likely, I imagine Blizzcon will bring a new DPS that will make literally everybody miserable with like... double stacking poison or something.
Second I'll take Brig: The Tank but Without Giving Everyone Armor All The Time any day. I don't fear the bash - I fear the repair pack and the ult lol.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Consider what they did in the last patch - Sigma and Orisa both got shield uptime nerfs, Winston and Dva got shield uptime buffs. They've been normalizing the tanks a bit to increase diversity and decrease the prevalence of just dumping into shields with little feedback. I don't think they're going to fundamentally change the holy trinity, that's just how Overwatch's meta ended up working out, love it or hate it. You can't realistically change that unless Overwatch 2 is a full departure remake of the core game. But I do think there are some tricks left to them to balance out the queue times by luring DPSers to tank.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I am terribly bad at every tank that is not Orisa. I mean I'm also bad at Orisa, but that's due to my bad situational awareness and general lack of tanking experience. I like that her bullets are projectile like an icicle or a rocket. I'm much better at leading shots than hitscan. I also like that I can save people from a distance by chucking the shield into the middle of a fight and leaning on left click.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
In Plat/Dia its pretty common to see dps players just queueing for tank and running Ball+Pig. They also inevitably complain about having all the medals while doing basically nothing to protect the dps.
Second I'll take Brig: The Tank but Without Giving Everyone Armor All The Time any day. I don't fear the bash - I fear the repair pack and the ult lol.
I'm conflicted on CC. On one hand, with the counter to constant problems like Reaper, Doom, and Genji being CC, it's clearly not enough of a thing because those are always running rampant, but the ones who take the brunt of CC are tanks, not those clowns. Being CC locked is fucking miserable, and damage is so high that a tank that can't protect itself with their abilities is instantly vaporized. I don't think I mind CC on tanks as much as I do on the DPS who tend to be able to just point in your general direction with flashbang or slam and then chop off another 200 HP for free.
ArcTangent on
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
TBH if OW2 is a thing I think that's where we will see more drastic changes.
I don't think CC should really be the answer to flankers, though. The issue with Doom and Reaper isn't really that they're hard to hit - it's that when you do it doesn't matter because they're so tanky.
Doom's counter is simply Sombra. Even a solid shield bash, halt or flash will often permit a Doom to escape - it merely opens an opportunity that will only count if someone else is also shooting at the Doom. That can be resolved by reducing his survivability a touch more.
Genji's counter (IMO) remains Winston, who can keep up with Genji's mobility and ignore his deflect and bouncy ways with the Tesla. CC is a far harder counter to Genji than it is Doom or Reaper, who are beefier targets and can survive a flash + fan.
Reaper, IMO, is the odd man out, here. His strongest counter in my opinion has always been Ana, who will always force a fade with a well-place BioNade, but Current Reaper will fade that off and then just keep on shooting to stay alive. And that's the problem, I think. With Reaper and Doom, at least. They're each very survivable without the help of their team - which might be okay if they weren't so potently lethal, and at such great speed. Doomfist will one-shot a squishy with punch or give 'em a one-two with slam and uppercut, and Reaper can accomplish the same DPS - 260! - over the course of 0.5 seconds!
He puts out a sustained 260 DPS, not counting headshots. Consider headshots and he's exceeding Bastion's DPS without the counterweight of immobility and a huge hitbox.
It's okay for Mei to be as beefy and survivable as she is because she can't do that shit to you. Mei can't suddenly appear, smash you into the nearest wall for an insta-kill and survive the peel from your team. She can slowly freeze you and hopefully land that headshot for a sweet, sweet 150 HP if played perfectly.
Maybe it's not okay for Doom and Reaper to be that beefy. Maybe 200 HP is enough for each of 'em, and both lifesteal and Doom's self-shields could do with a nerf while we're at it.
Although maybe I'm just biased because like two-thirds of the roster can accidentally one shot Tracer.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
they could add a few major things to change the dynamic
out of combat for a certain period of time, players start regening health
more ways to neutralize shields besides just damage (think ana grenade specific for shields only)
intercept abilities for friendlies, think WoW warrior running to help an ally, line of sight only
they've done a lot with "zones of control" like torb lava, hamball mines, but they still don't have static grounds of healing, or grounds of shielding (old sym had this)
-out-of-combat health regen - this nerfs support ult charge rate and massively buffs flankers. Kinda' kills those nervous moments where it's one DPS and one tank, exhausted and low health, on the point, praying their support gets here before enemy respawns do. And say goodbye to all those times you bagged a Doom/Tracer/Reaper/Genji going for a health pack. They won't need 'em. If it's even as much as a payload's HP regen, that'd often be way more valuable than giving up a position or getting into a risky one.
-nade works because everyone on the enemy team wants healing. A specifically anti-shield attack is kinda' nah because you've got this one character whose entire deal is neutralizing only four (or 6, counting Sym and Brig) enemy heroes.
That is the most-situational hero in the world, and do we really want a single character who specifically fucks with the four barrier tanks? It's adding another no-fun hero. Like Sombra's a low-grade no-fun hero for the whole family, Luke Shieldkiller is a no-fun hero specifically for eliminating the fun of those heroes it's already hard to convince people to play.
-intercept abilities. I like it. But I also think of how frustrating it is to go after a target and "bwomm" Zarya bubble and it's like... I like it - but not too much, now. It should be exclusive to tanks.
Part of why attacking a target who suddenly get's Invulnerability Fielded or Brig Armor'd is frustrating is because, goddamnit, I got through the shield, I timed it so Zarya doesn't have her barrier, I've got a bead on my target and there's another pre-emptive defensive ability to negotiate. Oooh, here's an idea:
Tanks should be able to reduce/stop/mitigate/deflect/absorb incoming damage. Exclusively. (Edit: except for self-only abilities like fade, wraith, etc.)
Supports should be able to clean up the effects of damage. Not stop them. Not ever. This would make defending one's team the sole purview of tanks, and... I guess remove a lot of utility from Support. And mean I could never have my dream Mercy Ult of a one-sec invulnerability AoE. And I say so be it.
-zones of control: I agree, but I'm also okay with the amount of visual clutter we have right now, too. I like the idea, I'm just worried about the execution.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Overwatch is basically founded on the premise that you can give all your characters crazy OP abilities, and it'll work out because all the other characters have them too. It's like Mr Burns' immune system.
Just played Orisa in an Orisa, Sig, Bastion, Mercy, Moira defense on Numbani.
Maybe she's not over nerfed 'cause that went very well. But the Bastion being a good shot probably helped a lot too...
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
4 games of DPS Comp. I knew I did well... it felt like I was playing some top notch (for me) Mei. Well above my average. In the right places, fighting the right people, setting up fantastic flanks and freezing tons of people (card for 30 frozen for 1:03). I looked it up on overbuff later and yes, indeed, for the session I got very high percentile elims, obj kills, and obj time, and slightly above average damage (which is really good for me) and below average deaths (also good for me).
And yet it did not matter, I still went 1W-3L. So that was frustrating.
At least I know I can play like that. I just wish it had been with more... synergistic teams.
edit: I just remembered the replay system exists. I'm going to have to watch all four of those at some point and see if I had any moments worth sharing. It felt like I had at least two...
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
One of my fondest memories of OG Overwatch was a QP game - Route 66 attack - in which we somehow ended up as 6 Meis before the doors opened.
"I think this game is gonna' be pretty... cool," I purred into the mic. Oh, the weather and temperature-related puns were on tap that day, let me tell you. Haters in voice were advised to "chill out," and if they used bad language were admonished that "that... snow way to talk to a lady." Good times.
And speaking of Ye Olde Days, I played like 3 games of QP classic last night. One game we started out right as 2-2-2 for some reason, and every other game was 4DPS, 1 supp 1 tank. All wins!
I still prefer 2-2-2 though. I just wish we had better tanks in there. They're all so F'ing timid. Any tank with a barrier is just like "you guys go on ahead, I'mma' stay over here away from the payload where it's safe."
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
4 games of DPS Comp. I knew I did well... it felt like I was playing some top notch (for me) Mei. Well above my average. In the right places, fighting the right people, setting up fantastic flanks and freezing tons of people (card for 30 frozen for 1:03). I looked it up on overbuff later and yes, indeed, for the session I got very high percentile elims, obj kills, and obj time, and slightly above average damage (which is really good for me) and below average deaths (also good for me).
And yet it did not matter, I still went 1W-3L. So that was frustrating.
At least I know I can play like that. I just wish it had been with more... synergistic teams.
edit: I just remembered the replay system exists. I'm going to have to watch all four of those at some point and see if I had any moments worth sharing. It felt like I had at least two...
Sometimes you have games where you are kind of clearly your team's designated carry. You're just somehow like a full rank above your other 5 teammates and 5 out of 6 of the reds. (If you're that much better than all of the reds, you're about to have a very good game.)
Those games can absolutely be losses as you click heads left and right and buy all kinds of space and achieve a solid 4:1 KD, if your team really is that much worse than you, and/or slightly worse than the reds, and/or the reds have a carry at your level of their own, and they will absolutely obliterate your team like you can theirs if you can't goe toe-to-toe and focus them out of the fight, first, every time. (Or obliterating their team so hard they get no support when they go to 1v6 yours.)
Frustrating, but at least we're not like throwing down to bronze so we can stomp folks intentionally. Luck of the draw. And landing midrange headshot icicles as Mei never gets old.
Also yeah I wanna' see these vids.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I play QP and honestly just don't stress that much about losing. If I performed well and we still lost, I figure there's nothing I could have done. If I'm performing badly I switch heroes promptly. If I'm still performing badly no matter what hero I pick, then I figure our team is just far outmatched and the game is a write-off. Still not that big a deal.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I play QP and honestly just don't stress that much about losing. If I performed well and we still lost, I figure there's nothing I could have done. If I'm performing badly I switch heroes promptly. If I'm still performing badly no matter what hero I pick, then I figure our team is just far outmatched and the game is a write-off. Still not that big a deal.
This is important. I find it hard... not so much losing, but losing matches I felt like we *should* have won, were it not for "unforced errors".
But yes, the key to all competative online games is trying to be kind of zen about it all. Win or lose: it is still a video game at the end of the day. And people who are calm tend to have better aim, reaction times, etc.
I try.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I still prefer 2-2-2 though. I just wish we had better tanks in there. They're all so F'ing timid. Any tank with a barrier is just like "you guys go on ahead, I'mma' stay over here away from the payload where it's safe."
I queue for all roles, so I usually end up with tank. And the problem I constantly see is either the rest of the team doesn't make a move when the tank initiates and creates an opening, or they rush out ahead of the tank for no reason. To this day, McCrees, Junkrats, and Soldiers seemed convinced that friendly Rein shields block their shots, and that they have to step up past your shield to shoot.
I still prefer 2-2-2 though. I just wish we had better tanks in there. They're all so F'ing timid. Any tank with a barrier is just like "you guys go on ahead, I'mma' stay over here away from the payload where it's safe."
I queue for all roles, so I usually end up with tank. And the problem I constantly see is either the rest of the team doesn't make a move when the tank initiates and creates an opening, or they rush out ahead of the tank for no reason. To this day, McCrees, Junkrats, and Soldiers seemed convinced that friendly Rein shields block their shots, and that they have to step up past your shield to shoot.
I'd suggest not playing Rein if your teammates don't know how to work with his shield. Sometimes you've just got to play the hand you're dealt.
My conscious mind tells me that a 50% winrate is actually the ideal - I remind my brother of it a lot and it's my general philosophy - but I have been salty as fuck lately. And it's usually less about people doing stupid shit (my brother will play Soldier as a flanker, which is to say my brother will run Soldier out the side, die, and repeat over and over despite very polite suggestions that he may find a barrier between him and the enemy team beneficial) than it is about people just doing nothing at all. Like, dying because you and a teammate walk into a room with a McCree, going for the McCree because damn there's 2 of us, and the teammate not only doesn't shoot at the McCree or use any abilities but just watches me die and then dies themselves.
Made it from Monday at 10:30PM to Friday at like 9am without a cigarette last week, at which point I enjoyed a midyear review at work. Which said
-I get all my work done, and have a reputation as being one of the few people in the office you can count on to get shit done.
-100% of my time out of the office is taken up by caring for a close relative with late-stage Alzheimers, and I regularly need to use my allocation of family-care leave (Canadian) to manage those responsibilities. I have a certain number of hours of that leave for precisely this purpose
-I'm so reliable about pre-reporting such absences to ensure coverage is maintained that if I were ever to not come in without reporting it, my boss would assume I'd been killed or otherwise rendered unable to access a phone.
-my boss personally approves each such leave request, and has regularly recommended to me that I'm not using enough of my sick time to permit some self-care
-while managing to do all my work despite a frankly insane load, my heavy stressors outside the office, self-reporting precisely as policy requires and only using approved leave... I am somehow a "reliability concern" and my boss wants me to work on that.
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUCK YYYYYOUUUUUUUU
...so I walked out of that meeting, straight into a colleague's office and said "cigarette," and smoked all weekend. Because caring for Alzheimers patients is not something you wanna do while having a nic fit.
I weaned myself off Monday night with 1.5 cigs for the day, and a half of one last night before bed. Champix is actually huge for managing like 90% of physical cravings, it seems.
But TL:DR I have had the shortest temper with teammates this week as I wean myself off again. I'm never in voice, thank God, but I've been complaining to my brother constantly. My team arrives at the choke, I land behind the reds, get 2 picks, turn around to see how things are going and the entire enemy team is looking at me because the five other players with blue nametags, seemingly, don't even exist - or at least don't threaten any action that may require attention. "What are these people DOING!?" I exclaim before death.
Last night I was trying to kill a particularly slippery enemy Mercy - repeatedly calling out when I got her under 50HP, and my brother, on D.Va, who can hit her from 50 yards with his unmissable-at-that-range spread and ensure her self-heal can't kick in, ignores it and keeps on shooting at the roadhog being healed by the Ana. I knew how angry I'd been getting, I knew it wasn't helping, but I got so pissed I just stopped doing callouts altogether.
In another round with another slippery Mercy no one else ever shot at, they had an Orisa and Sig, with an absolutely vicious Ashe and a Sombra, and an Ana, and my brother and the other tank run Roadhog and Hammond in to this. Except my brother doesn't actually do shit on Hammond (he plays Sombra the same way - getting a hack off, disappearing, rarely shooting at anyone) - on Hammond he just rolls past, goes for a health pack, rolls past again. He's basically just gone, as Hammond. Consider it a 5v6 for the whole match. The Roadhog, of course, is a huge ult charge for the Ashe who can't miss him and is tossing Bob out every thirty seconds (my brother is amazed by how often she's ulting and I zip my fuckin' lip and don't say "WELL DUH!!" and just kinda' shrug "huh, that's weird, isn't it?"). Roadhog, additionally, can't stay alive because there are no shields to stop the Ana nades that keep finding him when he tries to huff. I can't kill the Ashe because I can't manage to get the Mercy with no help from a tank, no heal from a support, and Ashe is being blue-beamed the entire time.
Rarely, I manage to get one of them alone and I can wreck that Ashe when she's not being pocketed. But she's always being pocketed. Must be nice.
So we have no barriers Vs. this absolutely dominant sniper. We have a dive tank who never considers going for the Ashe who's dominating us (for my part, I continued to try to get the Mercy before trying for the Ashe), never makes an attempt on the Mercy and never dives anything with the intention of killing it. The enemy team has two barriers our Ana couldn't heal through, and I'll go in there and kill their supports, and the rest of my team dies. It's pretty much a stomp. We have no defensive abilities or ults, and while a dive comp Vs. double barrier is The Good Choice, it hinges on, y'know, a dive tank attempting an actual dive.
And my brother is amazed that we don't win that game. I don't tell him he was running Hammond into Sombra and what the fuck did he expect? I didn't say "you can totally play Vs. a hero that counters you if you have the skill to do it, and you're a shitty Hammond, Chris" I just said "well, they had a sniper DPS and an Ana and we had no barriers, and no one thought to try to kill the Mercy. So yeah, of course we lost."
And he's just real quiet and at that point I broke again, and smoked that one-half cigarette before bed.
My brother should be scheduled to work tonight. I'mma' just watch some cartoons and chill the fuck out.
Edit: nah that's not true I'mma' go for that Bap skin. 3 wins to go.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I still prefer 2-2-2 though. I just wish we had better tanks in there. They're all so F'ing timid. Any tank with a barrier is just like "you guys go on ahead, I'mma' stay over here away from the payload where it's safe."
I queue for all roles, so I usually end up with tank. And the problem I constantly see is either the rest of the team doesn't make a move when the tank initiates and creates an opening, or they rush out ahead of the tank for no reason. To this day, McCrees, Junkrats, and Soldiers seemed convinced that friendly Rein shields block their shots, and that they have to step up past your shield to shoot.
I'd suggest not playing Rein if your teammates don't know how to work with his shield. Sometimes you've just got to play the hand you're dealt.
Yup. Sometimes I play Orisa like in the middle of a spread-out team, and I'm lobbing shields this way and that just to drop them between my DPS and whoever they're tryin' to kill.
...I guess Sigma would be better for that style, come to think of it.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Posts
Indivisible, the next game from Lab Zero Games (Skullgirls) just came out. It's beautiful, funny, and all-around great. I Kickstarted it years ago and I've been dying for its release.
Both my podcasting buddies have been playing Borderlands 3 and I bought it 'cause one of them wouldn't stop posting pictures of Jakobs gun porn. It'm about halfway or one-third through, I think. Killed the first vault beast.
One of my most-anticipated indies of the decade, Children of Morta is finally out of early access and available now on PSN. A Diablo-esque pixel-art Roguelite, it looks like everything I love combined.
Ori and the Blind Forest, the gorgeous and critically-acclaimed Metroidvania, is now available on my Switch.
Any single shred of gaming time I from Friday evening to this morning was spent in Overwatch, mostly running around as Wisp Tracer. All these awesome new games, and I don't wanna' work, I just wanna' bang on my drum all day.
If it helps, I've been playing Indivisible as my most recent exercise game (on a stationary bike) since I'm a massive Valkyrie Profile fan, and while the sprite work is amazing and the writing pretty solid, I've been rather unimpressed with the rest. There are a lot of parts where it's clear that something's just plain unfinished (there's a character who's literally missing animation frames, and multiple without special attacks at all), and important core mechanics are wonky and/or not explained at all. Combat is also deceptively simplistic and repetitive, partly because it's super hard to actually tell what characters are more effective than others, which is crazy because the difficulty is all over the place. I also can't fathom what they were thinking with the progression of the second act of the game. It's designed explicitly to force a shitload of backtracking seemingly just to pad the playtime out. It definitely needed quite a bit more playtesting and cleanup in general, and I'm not certain how much of it can be smoothed over in post. The documentation stuff, sure. The combat stuff, not so certain. The act 2 bullshit? That'd require redoing at least three gigantic maps, so... very unlikely.
Oh edit and in my defense I was clearly going for the health pack until Mercy hooked up! (Fist shake!!)
Um vanilla legendary dupe. Or coins.
When you already have Paja-mei all current mei skins are inconsequential. There are still a good number of vanilla legendaries i would still use, and coins would allow me to buy new Halloween skins.
Waitwaitwait. Let's be specific. Was Jiangshi a dupe, or are you looking an elegant, cute gift horse in its undead mouth?
Granted, it's no Pharoah.
...got Pharaoh tonight ^.^
Gift horse in the mouth of course. This is the internet afterall.
But for serious it just doesn't do it for me. Adds to the collection i suppose.
Hmm...I see, I was looking at Indivisible so some of this is concerning.
PajaMei is the best Mei skin, that's true...
I still think Orisa is the tank that can be used in most situations with the other being a little more situational. I could see her getting another minor nerf maybe reducing her walk speed while shooting to a between point of what it was and what it is now but nothing too big.
Reinhardt and Zarya are good but they value changes depending on the map.
D.Va/Winston still need a bit of work though.
TBH outside of buffs/nerfs I think more options are simply needed.
The combination of Sigma and Orisa is a bit much, I agree, but I feel like they're just rolling back years of little adjustments that eventually got Orisa to Good. And not small, thoughtful adjustments but just whackin' her with a big frickin' hammer. Like this:
Honestly I think she's fine but if folks keep crying about the meta I could see more nerfs just to placate them.
This is kind of a chicken or egg thing. Is it the combination of our beefy heals, now, that permit the use of Sig - ostensibly a flexible anchor tank - as an offtank?
Is it a holdover of the principles of Goats? Rein and Sig is one thing, but they're being run with Reaper, Mei and Doomfist - the three DPS with the largest health pools - essentially echoing one of the great strengths of the Goats comp. And they're kept alive through their self-heal or self-shield abilities, and those big heals.
It could be, simply, that Heal Creep is the root cause of Sig Orisa. I say leave Mercy at 50HPS, but reduce all other healing output to reflect 50 HPS as Standard Primary Healer Numbers. Meaning Ana now heals 60 per shot, Moira maxes out at 70 with the orb and her spray combined, and Bap's grenades can be reduced to 45.
Harmony orb can stay at 30. That's fine.
Holy shit I just made Soldier meta again.
Second I'll take Brig: The Tank but Without Giving Everyone Armor All The Time any day. I don't fear the bash - I fear the repair pack and the ult lol.
I'm conflicted on CC. On one hand, with the counter to constant problems like Reaper, Doom, and Genji being CC, it's clearly not enough of a thing because those are always running rampant, but the ones who take the brunt of CC are tanks, not those clowns. Being CC locked is fucking miserable, and damage is so high that a tank that can't protect itself with their abilities is instantly vaporized. I don't think I mind CC on tanks as much as I do on the DPS who tend to be able to just point in your general direction with flashbang or slam and then chop off another 200 HP for free.
Like complete hero reworks.
Doom's counter is simply Sombra. Even a solid shield bash, halt or flash will often permit a Doom to escape - it merely opens an opportunity that will only count if someone else is also shooting at the Doom. That can be resolved by reducing his survivability a touch more.
Genji's counter (IMO) remains Winston, who can keep up with Genji's mobility and ignore his deflect and bouncy ways with the Tesla. CC is a far harder counter to Genji than it is Doom or Reaper, who are beefier targets and can survive a flash + fan.
Reaper, IMO, is the odd man out, here. His strongest counter in my opinion has always been Ana, who will always force a fade with a well-place BioNade, but Current Reaper will fade that off and then just keep on shooting to stay alive. And that's the problem, I think. With Reaper and Doom, at least. They're each very survivable without the help of their team - which might be okay if they weren't so potently lethal, and at such great speed. Doomfist will one-shot a squishy with punch or give 'em a one-two with slam and uppercut, and Reaper can accomplish the same DPS - 260! - over the course of 0.5 seconds!
He puts out a sustained 260 DPS, not counting headshots. Consider headshots and he's exceeding Bastion's DPS without the counterweight of immobility and a huge hitbox.
It's okay for Mei to be as beefy and survivable as she is because she can't do that shit to you. Mei can't suddenly appear, smash you into the nearest wall for an insta-kill and survive the peel from your team. She can slowly freeze you and hopefully land that headshot for a sweet, sweet 150 HP if played perfectly.
Maybe it's not okay for Doom and Reaper to be that beefy. Maybe 200 HP is enough for each of 'em, and both lifesteal and Doom's self-shields could do with a nerf while we're at it.
Although maybe I'm just biased because like two-thirds of the roster can accidentally one shot Tracer.
out of combat for a certain period of time, players start regening health
more ways to neutralize shields besides just damage (think ana grenade specific for shields only)
intercept abilities for friendlies, think WoW warrior running to help an ally, line of sight only
they've done a lot with "zones of control" like torb lava, hamball mines, but they still don't have static grounds of healing, or grounds of shielding (old sym had this)
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
-out-of-combat health regen - this nerfs support ult charge rate and massively buffs flankers. Kinda' kills those nervous moments where it's one DPS and one tank, exhausted and low health, on the point, praying their support gets here before enemy respawns do. And say goodbye to all those times you bagged a Doom/Tracer/Reaper/Genji going for a health pack. They won't need 'em. If it's even as much as a payload's HP regen, that'd often be way more valuable than giving up a position or getting into a risky one.
-nade works because everyone on the enemy team wants healing. A specifically anti-shield attack is kinda' nah because you've got this one character whose entire deal is neutralizing only four (or 6, counting Sym and Brig) enemy heroes.
That is the most-situational hero in the world, and do we really want a single character who specifically fucks with the four barrier tanks? It's adding another no-fun hero. Like Sombra's a low-grade no-fun hero for the whole family, Luke Shieldkiller is a no-fun hero specifically for eliminating the fun of those heroes it's already hard to convince people to play.
-intercept abilities. I like it. But I also think of how frustrating it is to go after a target and "bwomm" Zarya bubble and it's like... I like it - but not too much, now. It should be exclusive to tanks.
Part of why attacking a target who suddenly get's Invulnerability Fielded or Brig Armor'd is frustrating is because, goddamnit, I got through the shield, I timed it so Zarya doesn't have her barrier, I've got a bead on my target and there's another pre-emptive defensive ability to negotiate. Oooh, here's an idea:
Tanks should be able to reduce/stop/mitigate/deflect/absorb incoming damage. Exclusively. (Edit: except for self-only abilities like fade, wraith, etc.)
Supports should be able to clean up the effects of damage. Not stop them. Not ever. This would make defending one's team the sole purview of tanks, and... I guess remove a lot of utility from Support. And mean I could never have my dream Mercy Ult of a one-sec invulnerability AoE. And I say so be it.
-zones of control: I agree, but I'm also okay with the amount of visual clutter we have right now, too. I like the idea, I'm just worried about the execution.
Once you start making big system changes, you set off a cascade of further changes, and before too long everybody needs a full rework.
Maybe she's not over nerfed 'cause that went very well. But the Bastion being a good shot probably helped a lot too...
And yet it did not matter, I still went 1W-3L. So that was frustrating.
At least I know I can play like that. I just wish it had been with more... synergistic teams.
edit: I just remembered the replay system exists. I'm going to have to watch all four of those at some point and see if I had any moments worth sharing. It felt like I had at least two...
"I think this game is gonna' be pretty... cool," I purred into the mic. Oh, the weather and temperature-related puns were on tap that day, let me tell you. Haters in voice were advised to "chill out," and if they used bad language were admonished that "that... snow way to talk to a lady." Good times.
And speaking of Ye Olde Days, I played like 3 games of QP classic last night. One game we started out right as 2-2-2 for some reason, and every other game was 4DPS, 1 supp 1 tank. All wins!
I still prefer 2-2-2 though. I just wish we had better tanks in there. They're all so F'ing timid. Any tank with a barrier is just like "you guys go on ahead, I'mma' stay over here away from the payload where it's safe."
Sometimes you have games where you are kind of clearly your team's designated carry. You're just somehow like a full rank above your other 5 teammates and 5 out of 6 of the reds. (If you're that much better than all of the reds, you're about to have a very good game.)
Those games can absolutely be losses as you click heads left and right and buy all kinds of space and achieve a solid 4:1 KD, if your team really is that much worse than you, and/or slightly worse than the reds, and/or the reds have a carry at your level of their own, and they will absolutely obliterate your team like you can theirs if you can't goe toe-to-toe and focus them out of the fight, first, every time. (Or obliterating their team so hard they get no support when they go to 1v6 yours.)
Frustrating, but at least we're not like throwing down to bronze so we can stomp folks intentionally. Luck of the draw. And landing midrange headshot icicles as Mei never gets old.
Also yeah I wanna' see these vids.
This is important. I find it hard... not so much losing, but losing matches I felt like we *should* have won, were it not for "unforced errors".
But yes, the key to all competative online games is trying to be kind of zen about it all. Win or lose: it is still a video game at the end of the day. And people who are calm tend to have better aim, reaction times, etc.
I try.
I queue for all roles, so I usually end up with tank. And the problem I constantly see is either the rest of the team doesn't make a move when the tank initiates and creates an opening, or they rush out ahead of the tank for no reason. To this day, McCrees, Junkrats, and Soldiers seemed convinced that friendly Rein shields block their shots, and that they have to step up past your shield to shoot.
I'd suggest not playing Rein if your teammates don't know how to work with his shield. Sometimes you've just got to play the hand you're dealt.
Made it from Monday at 10:30PM to Friday at like 9am without a cigarette last week, at which point I enjoyed a midyear review at work. Which said
-100% of my time out of the office is taken up by caring for a close relative with late-stage Alzheimers, and I regularly need to use my allocation of family-care leave (Canadian) to manage those responsibilities. I have a certain number of hours of that leave for precisely this purpose
-I'm so reliable about pre-reporting such absences to ensure coverage is maintained that if I were ever to not come in without reporting it, my boss would assume I'd been killed or otherwise rendered unable to access a phone.
-my boss personally approves each such leave request, and has regularly recommended to me that I'm not using enough of my sick time to permit some self-care
-while managing to do all my work despite a frankly insane load, my heavy stressors outside the office, self-reporting precisely as policy requires and only using approved leave... I am somehow a "reliability concern" and my boss wants me to work on that.
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUCK YYYYYOUUUUUUUU
I weaned myself off Monday night with 1.5 cigs for the day, and a half of one last night before bed. Champix is actually huge for managing like 90% of physical cravings, it seems.
But TL:DR I have had the shortest temper with teammates this week as I wean myself off again. I'm never in voice, thank God, but I've been complaining to my brother constantly. My team arrives at the choke, I land behind the reds, get 2 picks, turn around to see how things are going and the entire enemy team is looking at me because the five other players with blue nametags, seemingly, don't even exist - or at least don't threaten any action that may require attention. "What are these people DOING!?" I exclaim before death.
Last night I was trying to kill a particularly slippery enemy Mercy - repeatedly calling out when I got her under 50HP, and my brother, on D.Va, who can hit her from 50 yards with his unmissable-at-that-range spread and ensure her self-heal can't kick in, ignores it and keeps on shooting at the roadhog being healed by the Ana. I knew how angry I'd been getting, I knew it wasn't helping, but I got so pissed I just stopped doing callouts altogether.
In another round with another slippery Mercy no one else ever shot at, they had an Orisa and Sig, with an absolutely vicious Ashe and a Sombra, and an Ana, and my brother and the other tank run Roadhog and Hammond in to this. Except my brother doesn't actually do shit on Hammond (he plays Sombra the same way - getting a hack off, disappearing, rarely shooting at anyone) - on Hammond he just rolls past, goes for a health pack, rolls past again. He's basically just gone, as Hammond. Consider it a 5v6 for the whole match. The Roadhog, of course, is a huge ult charge for the Ashe who can't miss him and is tossing Bob out every thirty seconds (my brother is amazed by how often she's ulting and I zip my fuckin' lip and don't say "WELL DUH!!" and just kinda' shrug "huh, that's weird, isn't it?"). Roadhog, additionally, can't stay alive because there are no shields to stop the Ana nades that keep finding him when he tries to huff. I can't kill the Ashe because I can't manage to get the Mercy with no help from a tank, no heal from a support, and Ashe is being blue-beamed the entire time.
Rarely, I manage to get one of them alone and I can wreck that Ashe when she's not being pocketed. But she's always being pocketed. Must be nice.
So we have no barriers Vs. this absolutely dominant sniper. We have a dive tank who never considers going for the Ashe who's dominating us (for my part, I continued to try to get the Mercy before trying for the Ashe), never makes an attempt on the Mercy and never dives anything with the intention of killing it. The enemy team has two barriers our Ana couldn't heal through, and I'll go in there and kill their supports, and the rest of my team dies. It's pretty much a stomp. We have no defensive abilities or ults, and while a dive comp Vs. double barrier is The Good Choice, it hinges on, y'know, a dive tank attempting an actual dive.
And my brother is amazed that we don't win that game. I don't tell him he was running Hammond into Sombra and what the fuck did he expect? I didn't say "you can totally play Vs. a hero that counters you if you have the skill to do it, and you're a shitty Hammond, Chris" I just said "well, they had a sniper DPS and an Ana and we had no barriers, and no one thought to try to kill the Mercy. So yeah, of course we lost."
And he's just real quiet and at that point I broke again, and smoked that one-half cigarette before bed.
My brother should be scheduled to work tonight. I'mma' just watch some cartoons and chill the fuck out.
Edit: nah that's not true I'mma' go for that Bap skin. 3 wins to go.
Yup. Sometimes I play Orisa like in the middle of a spread-out team, and I'm lobbing shields this way and that just to drop them between my DPS and whoever they're tryin' to kill.
...I guess Sigma would be better for that style, come to think of it.