H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
So over the last half-dozen pages or so, people have been saying we need to nerf Symmetra and Torbjorn's turrets, and rework Bastion to get rid of turret mode. Countdown to "Orisa is basically a turret with her deployable shields, fortify, and gatling, she should be reworked"?
And yet just a few pages ago, Musicool was complaining about how Hog and Doomfist got changed, and linked a video where Skyline's saying the game's being harmed by these normalizing hero reworks. Like, do you not see the double-standard here? It was a mistake that they changed the heros you liked to play as to be less unique and nerf certain meta comps, but Blizzard are fools for not changing the heros you don't like to play against to be less unique and discourage their meta comps.
The wacky weirdness and mechanical originality of Overwatch's heroes was without question one of its biggest draws for me, months before I got the game (Zenyatta and Tracer, specifically) - I love than Rein can exist and has a place and certain unequaled strengths in a game alongside Standard Shooter Bro and Grimdark Edgelord Personified and Healing Music Dude. That is absolutely one of Overwatch's strengths - it's inspiring, and sparks the imagination.
The changes to Sym and Torb didn't make them so much normalized heroes as it did kind of sand down the degree to which they would feast when times got good. Once Sym had her shield gen down on point B Hanamura and she's running around with 275HP, your team is gonna' have a really good time. Once Torb has his team all festooned in +75 armor, the next teamfight is going to go very well, which will in turn provide yet more scrap for armor - and if a team has both? Hoo dawgies.
In the specific cases of Torb and Sym, though - on console, at least - I hate them with such a burning passion that I'd be fine-just-fine if they were deleted from the game. The only good thing about 'em is how good it feels to kill 'em. Let the remaining characters have to aim or be relegated to 60DPS (Winston). No pirate ship would ever stop me if it didn't have a Torb or cluster of Sym turrets preventing me from getting close enough to one-clip the Bastion.
Also how on Earth has Doomfist been "normalized?" He's still the beefcake flying around one-shotting squishies through walls in my games.
Also...
I never play comp. I pretty much only do my placements each season, and some seasons I forget to - but with the end of last season I could finally get my third golden gun! That's right. I'm averaging like one a year lol.
Went with Zenyatta and almost-immediately regretted it when my next game was Vs. a Sombra and a decent Genji, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I am a gold gun Zen ^.^ trust me, teammates, for I shall heal you from afar and debuff your targets, yessiree! And I shall have Trance ready to go when that Reaper ults - trust me! Trust these gold balls!
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Forget Mystery Heroes, its all about Mystery Abilities.
Random heroes with randomly selected Primary, secondary, and ult Abilities. Look at that Bastion, he has Torb turrets and Rez? (Well no, no one wants that but shut up) Why does that Sym blink and have a grappling hook?! WHY IS HOG WALL-RIDING?@!?
I think my definition of "normalizing" would be nerfing a character's strengths and buffing their weaknesses. Most Overwatch heroes are really good at something and really bad at something, which is how the really powerful abilities in this game are balanced. It's just a fine line of balancing that to make the characters interesting but not too bursty/niche.
So over the last half-dozen pages or so, people have been saying we need to nerf Symmetra and Torbjorn's turrets, and rework Bastion to get rid of turret mode. Countdown to "Orisa is basically a turret with her deployable shields, fortify, and gatling, she should be reworked"?
And yet just a few pages ago, Musicool was complaining about how Hog and Doomfist got changed, and linked a video where Skyline's saying the game's being harmed by these normalizing hero reworks. Like, do you not see the double-standard here? It was a mistake that they changed the heros you liked to play as to be less unique and nerf certain meta comps, but Blizzard are fools for not changing the heros you don't like to play against to be less unique and discourage their meta comps.
I'm not sure whether you're saying the group is being inconsistent or just me.
Because if the second, well, I already considered this possible inconsistency in my head before making even that first post about Skyline's point. I thought it through and resolved it. And in fact, a previous poster picked up on that through-line already whether or not they realised it at the time. Would you like to hear that reasoning? I kinda suggested it earlier but I can clarify and emphasise. I'm asking because I'm legit unsure whether you're talking to me specifically or all of us generally.
Btw, thanks guys for all the thoughts and posts! I like talking about this stuff with cool people.
I think my definition of "normalizing" would be nerfing a character's strengths and buffing their weaknesses. Most Overwatch heroes are really good at something and really bad at something, which is how the really powerful abilities in this game are balanced. It's just a fine line of balancing that to make the characters interesting but not too bursty/niche.
Weren't Doom's strengths buffed tho?
Like his long-CD abilities are now on way shorter CDs, his knuckle dusters do more damage and he gets more shields back when punch/slam/uppercut/ult hits an enemy.
Like slam and punch had their distances nerfed a long time ago I guess? Which I guess makes him less Doom-y, but he's more Doom-y in other areas.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I think my definition of "normalizing" would be nerfing a character's strengths and buffing their weaknesses. Most Overwatch heroes are really good at something and really bad at something, which is how the really powerful abilities in this game are balanced. It's just a fine line of balancing that to make the characters interesting but not too bursty/niche.
Weren't Doom's strengths buffed tho?
Like his long-CD abilities are now on way shorter CDs, his knuckle dusters do more damage and he gets more shields back when punch/slam/uppercut/ult hits an enemy.
Like slam and punch had their distances nerfed a long time ago I guess? Which I guess makes him less Doom-y, but he's more Doom-y in other areas.
Doomfist is almost incapable of being normalized because he's fundamentally weird. I can't even remember all the stuff they've done with him, I know his hitbox got nerfed early on and then they nerfed him further after people started mastering him too much.
Was his hitbox smaller at launch? I seriously don't remember that.
Oh do you mean the hurtbox on his punch? That I remember because the area of effect on that thing was patently ridiculous - it was three times wider than Doom himself and extended like three meters out in front of him. He could punch towards a car you were hiding behind, be stopped by the car's geometry on his side and you'd be dead on the other side because the hitbox was that big lol.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Was his hitbox smaller at launch? I seriously don't remember that.
His punch hitbox was super huge on release (that's what we're talking about right?) so much so that it was nerfed within a couple of weeks IIRC.
Also his strengths as a brawler were buffed while his strengths as a crazy-mobile fist-powered assassin were nerfed...kinda. I don't know. New Doom felt weird to me so I didn't play him much so don't really know what he's about these days.
Also Hammond was released around that time and Hammond is my spirit animal. Hammond feels like a much more pure iteration of what Doomfist is or was meant to be. Just a super-mobile brawler whose biggest limitation is so often just running out of damage and having to run away and reset.
So over the last half-dozen pages or so, people have been saying we need to nerf Symmetra and Torbjorn's turrets, and rework Bastion to get rid of turret mode. Countdown to "Orisa is basically a turret with her deployable shields, fortify, and gatling, she should be reworked"?
And yet just a few pages ago, Musicool was complaining about how Hog and Doomfist got changed, and linked a video where Skyline's saying the game's being harmed by these normalizing hero reworks. Like, do you not see the double-standard here? It was a mistake that they changed the heros you liked to play as to be less unique and nerf certain meta comps, but Blizzard are fools for not changing the heros you don't like to play against to be less unique and discourage their meta comps.
I'm not sure whether you're saying the group is being inconsistent or just me.
Because if the second, well, I already considered this possible inconsistency in my head before making even that first post about Skyline's point. I thought it through and resolved it. And in fact, a previous poster picked up on that through-line already whether or not they realised it at the time. Would you like to hear that reasoning? I kinda suggested it earlier but I can clarify and emphasise. I'm asking because I'm legit unsure whether you're talking to me specifically or all of us generally.
Btw, thanks guys for all the thoughts and posts! I like talking about this stuff with cool people.
The inconsistency part was mostly towards you, yeah. To be fair, I noticed that you agreed with one post and awesomed the other when I argued (on page 67) that given their respective standings Symm and Torb should not be nerfed just to make Sombra's life easier. The argument here seems similar to me? Like them, Bastion is a niche character, and just cause it makes things difficult for the enemy unless they adjust for its presence doesn't seem like it needs to be changed. Bastion on its own can be countered by certain heroes solo, and bunker strats require a team's coordination to counter because the team is coordinating with each other. I don't really see a problem with any of that.
I don't know, I'm really not the right person to engage in a debate on this. I mean, I'm just a bronze tier piker, so I don't consider myself an expert on balance or anything. But in general the complaints people were making about Bastion reminded me of the complaints from the other day about Torb and Symm's turrets and the suggestions that they should all be deactivated when the character was hacked, and so forth and so on. It kinda feels like the old balance complaint joke
Dear Blizzard,
Nerf paper. Scissors is fine.
Sincerely,
Rock
The vast majority of my play time is on Dva, Junkrat, and Zen, but I don't like when people basically want an entire playstyle removed and try to pass it off as 'balance ideas for the good of the game'.
It's why I don't play very much TBH. Way too many people thinking the problem with their team is not having the meta comp that's popular right now instead of bad play.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Ehhhh. I mean to a degree unless you're way outclassing the enemy, you're gonna need to swap to counter certain things. Not even necessarily the popular meta comp, just things like maybe don't play pharah when they have two good snipers and a torb turret. It's like the enemy team has scissors but your team is just playing paper because...reasons I guess.
Regarding wanting things removed from game, that's usually dependent on what tilted me on my last game . If I was playing Rein you bet I want Mei and Sombra removed asap, lol.
Bastion’s ult should turn him into a gundam. Or a spiral fighter from gurren lagann. Or let him mount on another player’s shoulders like a mini bot. Or an Eva.
Also bastion is bad design because he’s boring as fuck to play with or against for most players, and basically warps the entire game around himself (el presidente), leaving far less decision space for all 11 other players.
He should just turn into a tiny pistol that a teammate can fire. Like Megatron in G1 Transformers.
More seriously, I think my preferred design direction with Bastion would be to make him more varied so you want to use both of his forms. I feel that would be more interesting for me to personally play than currently where you just go robot to reposition and spend pretty much all your time fighting as a turret. Mind I don't know exactly what they should do to facilitate that, or if that would make him more balanced, just that it feels like a more interesting gameplay gimmick.
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
His current teardown time is fucking awful, and prohibits any sort of interesting formswitching.
When you compare this to something like learning how to corner and spinhop properly as Heavy in TF2, or when Valve gave him the ability to drop Sandviches for him or the medic... Bastion's actually a worse design, gameplay wise!
Normalizing a hero isn't just buffing weaknesses and nerfing strengths. It's also making changes that make than jacks of all trades rather than specialists. It's ok to have specialists.
The one change that I could get behind for Bastion is to drop his turret damage but give him back headshots.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Also bastion is bad design because he’s boring as fuck to play with or against for most players, and basically warps the entire game around himself (el presidente), leaving far less decision space for all 11 other players.
Overwatch is a force protection tactic in modern warfare where one small unit or military vehicle supports another while it is executing fire and movement tactics. An overwatching unit takes a position where it can observe the terrain ahead, especially likely enemy positions. This allows it to provide effective covering fire for advancing friendly units
Overwatch requires weapons effective at suppressive fire, like machine guns. Bastion plays like a machine gunner, constrained by set-up and tear-down times, it has to carefully choose good firing positions because it can't afford to reposition in the middle of a firefight. But boy does it pack a wallop. Maybe some people think that's a cool play-style? Why is their playtime less valuable then others?
Every competitive multiplayer game has certain weapons or classes that people hate. It's pretty fair odds that if you play any given game long enough, there'll be something you don't play as that you'll start to loathe playing against. Snipers are a perennial target, but rocket launchers, shotguns, flamethrowers, and melee (with any combination of stealth &/or high mobility) have all been popular examples over the years. People will joke about how their unfavorite should be deleted from the game, & they'll suggest nerfs that would put it six feet under, competitively speaking. And yet developers across the industry keep including these options and trying to strike some kind of balance instead.
Hell, look at all the moaning people used to do about Junkrat in deathmatch. Imagine if, instead of giving him that series of nerfs and compensatory buffs, they'd decided that 'heroes shouldn't be able to spam explosions' and thus made his grenades into cannonballs that only did damage on a direct hit, replaced the remote mines with concussive mines that only boop, and the tire with a miniature Reinhardt drone that has to pin targets for damage. IIRC, surrealitycheck's a Grand Masters-rank Junkrat main, I wonder how they'd feel about that take?
Like, there are people on these forums who've said Mei should be removed from the game, others argued for major global nerfs to healing (I think this was during that period where they were getting all the POTGs), and every now and then one poster (I forget who) argues that Mercy shouldn't even have the single-target resurrect ability because 'mah picks!'. But I think at some point you might just need to consider the possibility that you're being spoilsports.
I'd like to see a hero who is basically anti-bunker. A Junkrat or secondary fire Roadhog type hero who does maybe 0.75 damage to normal health, but 1.5x to barriers and all placeable items on the map.
This would probably hurt Rein the most, but I think a fair balance would be when he rushes or fire strikes someone he gets 20% damage reduction. Basically it would allow a Rein who loses his shield to either go for broke with an offensive move while waiting for the shield to recharge a bit.
The issue isn't lack of bunker busters, the issue is players who either refuse to switch, don't know which heroes to switch to, or just plain don't understand how to peek at a target without overly exposing themselves.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Pubbie Hanjo: "I need to bust this bunker. Let me rattle off all 5 storm arrows before my tanks can provide me adequate cover to do so."
*dies*
e: Also, didn't the new short story describe Mauga as having some sort of deflector shield? I didn't actually read it cause I didn't like the writing in the last one but I thought I heard that.
If that's actually deflecting damage back at the enemy that could be a pretty decent answer to bunkers.
I still like my idea of a tank that can absorb incoming damage and either redirect it as a blast or use it to recharge his barrier.
SirToasty on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Hell, look at all the moaning people used to do about Junkrat in deathmatch. Imagine if, instead of giving him that series of nerfs and compensatory buffs, they'd decided that 'heroes shouldn't be able to spam explosions' and thus made his grenades into cannonballs that only did damage on a direct hit, replaced the remote mines with concussive mines that only boop, and the tire with a miniature Reinhardt drone that has to pin targets for damage. IIRC, surrealitycheck's a masters-rank Junkrat main, I wonder how they'd feel about that take?
how dare u im gm now dont make me post the thicc frog
one completely disgraceful answer to orisa is damage boosted junkrat and it already exists and NOBODY USES IT
her shield has 900hp, a single magazine from junkrat with mercy damage boost does 850 damage in like 3seconds. you can shoot the shield from out of los and then sneeze on it and its gone. there are also a bunch of maps where bunker is literally impossible to hold vs rat because u can always get an angle that lets u shoot grenades behind the shield (hanamura point 1, volskaya, numbani, hollywood, havana)
the point is that this stuff exists and people dont know about it or play around it so really the only conclusion is do more glute exercises
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Hell, look at all the moaning people used to do about Junkrat in deathmatch. Imagine if, instead of giving him that series of nerfs and compensatory buffs, they'd decided that 'heroes shouldn't be able to spam explosions' and thus made his grenades into cannonballs that only did damage on a direct hit, replaced the remote mines with concussive mines that only boop, and the tire with a miniature Reinhardt drone that has to pin targets for damage. IIRC, surrealitycheck's a masters-rank Junkrat main, I wonder how they'd feel about that take?
how dare u im gm now dont make me post the thicc frog
Oh snap, that's awesome! Sorry I got that mixed up.
So over the last half-dozen pages or so, people have been saying we need to nerf Symmetra and Torbjorn's turrets, and rework Bastion to get rid of turret mode. Countdown to "Orisa is basically a turret with her deployable shields, fortify, and gatling, she should be reworked"?
And yet just a few pages ago, Musicool was complaining about how Hog and Doomfist got changed, and linked a video where Skyline's saying the game's being harmed by these normalizing hero reworks. Like, do you not see the double-standard here? It was a mistake that they changed the heros you liked to play as to be less unique and nerf certain meta comps, but Blizzard are fools for not changing the heros you don't like to play against to be less unique and discourage their meta comps.
I'm not sure whether you're saying the group is being inconsistent or just me.
Because if the second, well, I already considered this possible inconsistency in my head before making even that first post about Skyline's point. I thought it through and resolved it. And in fact, a previous poster picked up on that through-line already whether or not they realised it at the time. Would you like to hear that reasoning? I kinda suggested it earlier but I can clarify and emphasise. I'm asking because I'm legit unsure whether you're talking to me specifically or all of us generally.
Btw, thanks guys for all the thoughts and posts! I like talking about this stuff with cool people.
The inconsistency part was mostly towards you, yeah. To be fair, I noticed that you agreed with one post and awesomed the other when I argued (on page 67) that given their respective standings Symm and Torb should not be nerfed just to make Sombra's life easier. The argument here seems similar to me? Like them, Bastion is a niche character, and just cause it makes things difficult for the enemy unless they adjust for its presence doesn't seem like it needs to be changed. Bastion on its own can be countered by certain heroes solo, and bunker strats require a team's coordination to counter because the team is coordinating with each other. I don't really see a problem with any of that.
I don't know, I'm really not the right person to engage in a debate on this. I mean, I'm just a bronze tier piker, so I don't consider myself an expert on balance or anything. But in general the complaints people were making about Bastion reminded me of the complaints from the other day about Torb and Symm's turrets and the suggestions that they should all be deactivated when the character was hacked, and so forth and so on. It kinda feels like the old balance complaint joke
Dear Blizzard,
Nerf paper. Scissors is fine.
Sincerely,
Rock
The vast majority of my play time is on Dva, Junkrat, and Zen, but I don't like when people basically want an entire playstyle removed and try to pass it off as 'balance ideas for the good of the game'.
Ok!
Agrees and Awesomes:
I Agreed and Awesomed a few posts that I didn't 100% agree with because I agreed with something cool they said and I wanted to recognise that. I'm juststoked that we're all talking about those nifty design and balanceideas that I like talking about, so I wanted to throw some thanks and praise around to the people who are doing it, whether or not I agreed with everything they said.
On niches
As with most principles, I'd be stupid to follow this one to the ends of the earth. Some niches are genuinely bad and warp the game around them. Or if they don't go that far then combine so well with some other niche playstyle or hero to become a sum-of-its-parts monster that warps the design of the game and/or the hero's design. As an example, we all know that Pharah has to be balanced based on the potential of Pharmercy simply because those two heroes' strengths and weaknesses complement each other so well that it's honestly to the detriment of them both. So in a weird way, protecting certain heroes with certain niches ultimately ruins the future balance prospects of not just that hero, but other heroes as well.
Bastion and Baptiste (and to an extent Orisa) are like that. What the heroes do individually and the niche/role they each fill isn't inherently bad, but it's inherently bad when combined, and if we aren't clear where the problem really lies and fix THAT problem, then more heroes will get overnerfed or homogenised than need to be.
Because Bastion and Baptiste go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like Huskar and Dazzle. Bastion is OW's Huskar and Baptiste is OW's Dazzle. And those two heroes in DotA have had an over decades long love affair that hasn't been totally healthy for either of them but Huskar especially. Huskar is (or was? more on that later) a cheese pick much like Bastion in that in 90% of games he's inappropriate, but in those 10% MY GOD. It feels unfair.
So what does Huskar/Dazzle do and why is it like Bastion/Baptiste? Well, when Huskar is at low health he has immense attack speed and dps - much like Bastion while being relatively resistant to damage - much like Bastion. So the way to kill Huskar/Bastion is to burst him down quickly before he 1v5s your whole team.
Enter Dazzle/Baptiste. Both have the same basic skill. In DotA it's called Shallow Grave and it's single target; in OW it's AoE. There's nothing wrong with these skills by themselves, but they happen to paper over the ONE big weakness holding back Huskar/Bastion: that the enemy team can and wants to kill you quickly before you can 1v5 them like a goddamn raidboss.
Hell, there's another hero in DotA who has (or had? More on this soon!) a similar problem as Bastion does, but this time at the compositional level: Drow Ranger. Drow Ranger supercharges ranged heroes on her team. So at high level she's picked almost exclusively as part of a 'Drow strat': 4 ranged heroes who group up early and hit towers behind one big ole tanky melee core. It's a cheese comp, and Drow had to be balanced around this cheese comp for the longest time.
Until now! Maybe.
Because in the past few months Icefrog finally got around to reworking Huskar and Drow. While he's had to tinker further with Drow, it's clear what his intention was: to maintain what's cool about these heroes and their identities while also separating them from the cheese that was holding them back. And this is what I'm suggesting we must do with Bastion. Not cry foul at Baptiste for having a scary and new shiny thing. Look at the source of the problem: that his lamp protects heroes who can 1v6 if given a couple of seconds of standing their ground and being unkillable. The worst example of that is Bastion. So let's change Bastion, but, because yes I do like niches, without totally destroying what makes him cool.
So what makes Bastion cool? It's not just Sentry mode. It's that he's a fucking transformer with guns! It's that he's a 300 hp tanky-ass robot purveyor of death who's all like NYEERRRRRR and BRRRRRTBRRRRT and BOOOM and BRRRT BRRRT and then Optimus Prime comes out of the trees and is all like "Bastion the Autobots need your help coz you're a cool ass gun mech!" and Bastion is all like BLEEPBLOOP and turns into a MUTHAFUCKIN TANK and then he ROCKET JUMPS TO THE MOON and runs around there in low gravity the baddies and...
Sorry I got a little carried away there. Sentry is cool. But it's only a part of his coolness. And right now it's such a stifling, one-dimensional coolness. So let's redefine - or rediscover perhaps - Bastion's niche, what makes Bastion really cool and makes people excited to pick Bastion. It's because he's a fucking Transformer in the Overwatch world. He's cool because he's (meant to be) a really dangerous dps who can actually take a couple of hits too, because he's 300hp (and originally even had a shield too! 'Tanky ass dps' was part of his original sell! His OG niche. We realised he couldn't stay how he was, but my point is that Bastion's niche and cool factor is more than just "play Time Crisis 2, but in Overwatch". He has and had other things going for him. So let's tilt into those things.
And by doing so, by doing my rework, let's also make other niches healthier.
"Wait what?"
Yes, let's do that.
Double-sniper, Goats, and why 2/2/2 doesn't fix the burst damage problem that got us into this mess
So I think we all know by now that OW has a burst damage problem. And our kneejerk response has generally been "let's nerf burst damage!" Mine too! I wanted Widow and Hanzo nerfed or just out of the game and you can see me post about it several times in the last few months. Until I watched the Skyline video. And then I realised I was ALSO talking about homogenising the game, at least in this instance. That's kinda why I linked Skyline's video. Because it's really pointing towards another way besides role queue.
(also, sidenote: it's why you'll notice my last complaint about Widow was before the Skyline vid. Because I am actually super concerned with having consistent beliefs and re-examining what I believe and when I find inconsistencies I change my mind to some position that isn't inconsistent anymore. I changed my mind on Widow and whether she's the real problem or lack of soft counters in the dps slot are 'The Real Problem'. I'm not even totally sure so I'm mostly staying away from Widow in particular until I learn something new. And given all that effort, I'm a little grouchy that so many people have rushed to tell me I'm not doing something that I painstakingly double-check on all the damn time.)
The problem isn't JUST burst damage, and most egregiously right now, snipers. It's that no, or almost no, sustained dps hero has any way of surviving that burst damage. That's why you get double sniper or Goats or even bunker. Those are the three responses to the burst damage problem really: BE the burst damage comp; or be so damn tanky as a team that burst damage means nothing to you. So in a sense, when some of us have complained about tanks+healers having too much tankiness for their still-decent sustained dps, the problem is arguably the opposite: there just aren't any sustained dps heroes with any tankiness. Oh wait! There are a couple and they're the ones that we're worried about being too strong in bunker comp once 2/2/2 comes! Torbjorn, with his new 350hp overcharge! Bastion! Mei even!
(Incidentally, this is why Soldier isn't really a pure sustained dps hero: if he was he'd be shitty because he dies to any burst damage that breathes on him. His saving grace is in his burst damage - his helix grenade. He's a hybrid, not a sustained damage dps. His sprint also helps, this is true.)
There's no point in running a sustained-damage dps if it blows up instantly. That's what Goats was about: just running quasi-dps tanks like DVa, Zarya and Brig.
So what I'm saying is, we don't need to nerf Widow. Well, maybe? I dunno. But we won't be sure until we try something that OW hasn't tried enough of.
Sustained damage dps heroes who can actually survive burst damage.
Torbjorn. Mei, sorta. Bastion but less feast or famine and less bullshit when combined with Imm Field and Rez. A Bastion who can't be one-shot at all from the front - not in any mode - but also can't abuse that fact with an OP Sentry mode combined with Imm Field and Rez.
Now the reasonable criticism her is what happens when these heroes are strong and get the treatment I'm suggesting they need? Well, first, you nerf their ability to abuse Imm Field and Rez. Y'know, those two support abilities that define the heroes they're on, that give those heroes a niche and an identity and therefore shouldn't be nerfed until Bap and Mercy are more like the baseline support. And like I've said above, that means that specifically Bastion's Sentry mode needs a nerf. We need to focus on the other more interesting parts of his character identity.
The thing is, when I'm saying we need to rework Bastion I'm not being inconsistent, because I'm not suggesting he shouldn't have a niche. I'm suggesting, firstly, that we should focus on his BETTER niche properties. The properties that make him interesting AND soft counter other heroes with strong niches that we've all wondered whether they should be nerfed or simply removed from the game. Y'know, because they aren't more like Soldier with his more predictable TTK and his bland, boring playstyle. I'm suggesting that we should introduce heroes that soft counter the niches of other heroes (burst heroes) WHILE letting those burst heroes stay strong in their own way. And with regards to 2/2/2, I'm admitting that YES, some heroes and comps like bunker might be OP within a 2/2/2 style even with the changes I'm suggesting, but that's only because all the best responses to bunker will have been stripped away by 2/2/2 and this ride towards making everyone's health pools and mobility and dps and hps more and more like everybody else's.
That's not an inconsistent set of claims, people just thought it was because they read my comments already opposed to them and not so much interest in asking me follow-up questions. So thanks @H3Knuckles for asking me what I meant in the end.
We need an OW dps hero with something like DotA's blademail - a damage reflect ability that punishes burst heroes or forces them to disengage if they don't want to kill themselves. Also a soft and partial counter to many grav combos, which is another problem this game suffers from under the misattributed guise of 'ult economy is too important'!
We need a dps with Templar Assassin's Refract: a kind of shield that reduces the next X damage instances to 0. That's a hero that counters a KIND of burst - snipers for instance - but not sustained damage or OTHER kinds of burst - like Tracer. Side note: I think Sombra could be saved as a hero concept if we made her more like TA, and I will physically fight you if you disagree. :P
We need more heroes guys. We don't need 2/2/2. We need more heroes. And they need to be weirder. Like Wrecking Ball and Orisa. Y'know, those heroes who have enabled entirely new playstyles even in the face of what we thought was an omnipresent monolith like Goats. We need more heroes. New heroes, different heroes, crazy heroes with crazy concepts. Those heroes will solve old problems with new solutions. Which is why I'm tired of Blizzard taking 4 fucking months to release them.
Yes, all of this is more work than locking 2/2/2 and calling it a day. But work is what we pay Blizzard to do. And this work will make OW a better game.
I'm off for a bit because all this OW talk has gotten me excited to play Overwatch! Thanks for all the comments guys, I loved the debate.
Also, new news! Seagull wants bans, and I agree with him to a point. I think a well-designed ban system solves many of the problems we want 2/2/2 to solve without also throwing out the baby.
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
I do agree that 2/2/2 is a bad idea, and that new heroes with new mechanics is a good way to try and shake up a stagnant meta (although I'd caution that people really seem to resent how things shook out with Brig, who basically existed to end the dive meta).
I still don't agree about Bastion though. Rambling about Transformers for a bit is not an argument that the aspects of the character you find more appealing should override aspects that other people might enjoy. And again, you cast it in this very melodramatic way that his niche 'warps the game around it' but you don't really back that up with anything more than sentiment. Bastion requires effective counterpicks, but so do a lot of the other heroes in the game. Bastion enables a particular comp & strategy that requires the opposing team to adapt their comp to counter it, just like the dive heroes did, or Pharmercy, or how Brigitte & Baptiste do. The tools to deal with it are already in the game. When Bastion doesn't have an exceptional pick rate and other hero combinations have similar impact on the meta of a given match, I just can't agree that it is 'warping' anything. In your own words bunker is one of three effective comps right now? So you want to lower that to two comps, albeit with a wider pool of heroes for the more dominant comp to use (because adding tanky sustained dps heroes to occasionally take the place of off-tanks with sustained dps seems like a distinction without a difference). How is that supposed to be an improvement? That is literally making the game more homogeneous. You just can't get around that fact.
Even if we concede that the problem with GOATS meta having been dominant long enough to get stale is the fault of too much burst damage and a lack of counter options for it (but seriously, in a game built solely with sustained damage GOATS would still be a thing, & probably even worse given armor performs better against multiple small hits than it does bursty chunks), why is it Bastion's responsibility to be changed to deal with it? And why is your solution to change Bastion to be more like other heroes that already exist (D.Va, Orisa, Wrecking Ball, Zarya)? They each have sustained dps, can deny headshots, and have a lot of health. Two of them even have multiple forms they switch between.
Also, a minor nitpick: isn't the damage reflect ability you suggest exactly what Genji can do currently?
Bans with otherwise free swapping is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure if there are enough heroes to make it work. You can basically decide what their comp is by banning one tank.
Bans with otherwise free swapping is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure if there are enough heroes to make it work. You can basically decide what their comp is by banning one tank.
Yeah we would need a lot more tanks with at least a little overlap in terms of role for that to really work.
Just as an example, in Jayne's ban enabled tourney, if teams wanted to run Rein GOATs but Rein was banned, they just ran Orisa GOATs which is substantially less fun to watch than Rein GOATs.
SirToasty on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited July 2019
2/2/2 is also an atrocious idea for so many reasons
i get 5min queues as it is lets make it worse rip (unless you do a preference thing where you say 1st pref dps with sr x 2nd pref support with sr y 3rd pref tank with sr z and it fills you into games at those different ranges as needed)
but also i have won so many comp games with dumb comps rolling over good comps. in fact some of the most fun ive ever had in overwatch is when your team locks like 5dps and a mercy and you just frag out and everybody has fun. it also very much feeds into a sense about how heroes work that is not correct - eg in many circumstances dual tank + hog on eg koth is NOT a triple tank lineup - its a 2tank and fat offdps lineup. one of the most common swaps i do is going from a 2nd dps to hog into monkey dva simply because of how the hero actually functions in that matchup, and if im role locked thats not doable. this also hurts players like my boi mouffin who has 3 top 10 dva one trick accounts - he plays dva like a mix of a fat assassin and a disruptor, has gold or silver damage most games, and frequently is playing effectively in a "dps" slot. if he is dropped into a 2/2/2 lineup instalocking dva his second tank is limited to going orisa or monkey, which is not what most people are going to be interested in (orisa dva being a soft counter to hog orisa just because you can dm the succs)
not a fan of the idea
would much rather have limited bans
it also plays into the obsession players have with "team comp" being the deciding factor - if you are somebody with a strong tank hero preference you are CONSTANTLY going to be expected to switch to whatever your team thinks is "needed" despite most players being literally incapable of making those judgements
I feel like I'm alone in not wanting bans or 2 2 2.
I too enjoy the zany shit, and will be very very sad to see it go. Just delete Torb and Sym.
Bam. Game fixed.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Oh, @Musicool I hate to be a bore, but I had one last thought I wanted to add, and then I promise I'll drop it: what DotA does with its character balance decisions really doesn't reflect on what OW should do, it's a very different game, not least because
DotA doesn't allow character switching mid-match
Typical DotA games last twice as long as Overwatch comp rounds/QP matches
Wait wait I got it. The next short story solidifies hero 31 - it's a Talon tank, and at the end of the story they (gasp!) kill Brigitte!
And that day a patch goes up and poof she's gone and Torb and New Tank have all sorts of juicy lines for each other.
Wait. No - Torb dies too.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited July 2019
Picking a Bastion doesn't enable a team comp so much as it forces one. Pharah doesn't need an optimal comp built around her to be effective and doing so doesn't make her an unstoppable god-killer with which an entire team has to adjust their movement/positioning where suddenly the difference between life and death behind barriers is a second of exposure.
Imo on the spectrum of DPS Bastion comparatively forces more counterpicking than counterplay which I think is overall less creative. I don't look at static defense heroes like Symm or Torb, or high burst damage heroes like Reaper or Widow and go "man we need an X or Y" to the same extent I do when I see a Bastion
And now with Immortality Field the options for counterplay (RIP pulse bomb regardless) just shrunk again
Isn't Brigitte considered fairly underpowered outside of well-organized GOATS?
I don't get why she's still loathed. Is it purely because she counters popular DPS that her hate is so disproportionate?
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I feel like the solution to balance problems in overwatch is always just add more heroes
If the meta is getting stagnant faster than heroes are being added then add heroes faster, but only if its actually getting stagnant, not just if every stream watcher and wanna be GM saying its boring
Like Brig was a great solution to dive, way better then just deleting tracer or genji or giving them huge reworks
Posts
And yet just a few pages ago, Musicool was complaining about how Hog and Doomfist got changed, and linked a video where Skyline's saying the game's being harmed by these normalizing hero reworks. Like, do you not see the double-standard here? It was a mistake that they changed the heros you liked to play as to be less unique and nerf certain meta comps, but Blizzard are fools for not changing the heros you don't like to play against to be less unique and discourage their meta comps.
The changes to Sym and Torb didn't make them so much normalized heroes as it did kind of sand down the degree to which they would feast when times got good. Once Sym had her shield gen down on point B Hanamura and she's running around with 275HP, your team is gonna' have a really good time. Once Torb has his team all festooned in +75 armor, the next teamfight is going to go very well, which will in turn provide yet more scrap for armor - and if a team has both? Hoo dawgies.
In the specific cases of Torb and Sym, though - on console, at least - I hate them with such a burning passion that I'd be fine-just-fine if they were deleted from the game. The only good thing about 'em is how good it feels to kill 'em. Let the remaining characters have to aim or be relegated to 60DPS (Winston). No pirate ship would ever stop me if it didn't have a Torb or cluster of Sym turrets preventing me from getting close enough to one-clip the Bastion.
Also how on Earth has Doomfist been "normalized?" He's still the beefcake flying around one-shotting squishies through walls in my games.
Also...
I never play comp. I pretty much only do my placements each season, and some seasons I forget to - but with the end of last season I could finally get my third golden gun! That's right. I'm averaging like one a year lol.
Went with Zenyatta and almost-immediately regretted it when my next game was Vs. a Sombra and a decent Genji, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I am a gold gun Zen ^.^ trust me, teammates, for I shall heal you from afar and debuff your targets, yessiree! And I shall have Trance ready to go when that Reaper ults - trust me! Trust these gold balls!
Forget Mystery Heroes, its all about Mystery Abilities.
Random heroes with randomly selected Primary, secondary, and ult Abilities. Look at that Bastion, he has Torb turrets and Rez? (Well no, no one wants that but shut up) Why does that Sym blink and have a grappling hook?! WHY IS HOG WALL-RIDING?@!?
Actually....why isn't Hog wall-riding?
Physics.
You tell that to little miss zippy you're so fond of :-p
Shia_le_beouf_MAGIC.gif
I'm not sure whether you're saying the group is being inconsistent or just me.
Because if the second, well, I already considered this possible inconsistency in my head before making even that first post about Skyline's point. I thought it through and resolved it. And in fact, a previous poster picked up on that through-line already whether or not they realised it at the time. Would you like to hear that reasoning? I kinda suggested it earlier but I can clarify and emphasise. I'm asking because I'm legit unsure whether you're talking to me specifically or all of us generally.
Btw, thanks guys for all the thoughts and posts! I like talking about this stuff with cool people.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Weren't Doom's strengths buffed tho?
Like his long-CD abilities are now on way shorter CDs, his knuckle dusters do more damage and he gets more shields back when punch/slam/uppercut/ult hits an enemy.
Like slam and punch had their distances nerfed a long time ago I guess? Which I guess makes him less Doom-y, but he's more Doom-y in other areas.
Doomfist is almost incapable of being normalized because he's fundamentally weird. I can't even remember all the stuff they've done with him, I know his hitbox got nerfed early on and then they nerfed him further after people started mastering him too much.
Oh do you mean the hurtbox on his punch? That I remember because the area of effect on that thing was patently ridiculous - it was three times wider than Doom himself and extended like three meters out in front of him. He could punch towards a car you were hiding behind, be stopped by the car's geometry on his side and you'd be dead on the other side because the hitbox was that big lol.
His punch hitbox was super huge on release (that's what we're talking about right?) so much so that it was nerfed within a couple of weeks IIRC.
Also his strengths as a brawler were buffed while his strengths as a crazy-mobile fist-powered assassin were nerfed...kinda. I don't know. New Doom felt weird to me so I didn't play him much so don't really know what he's about these days.
Also Hammond was released around that time and Hammond is my spirit animal. Hammond feels like a much more pure iteration of what Doomfist is or was meant to be. Just a super-mobile brawler whose biggest limitation is so often just running out of damage and having to run away and reset.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
The inconsistency part was mostly towards you, yeah. To be fair, I noticed that you agreed with one post and awesomed the other when I argued (on page 67) that given their respective standings Symm and Torb should not be nerfed just to make Sombra's life easier. The argument here seems similar to me? Like them, Bastion is a niche character, and just cause it makes things difficult for the enemy unless they adjust for its presence doesn't seem like it needs to be changed. Bastion on its own can be countered by certain heroes solo, and bunker strats require a team's coordination to counter because the team is coordinating with each other. I don't really see a problem with any of that.
I don't know, I'm really not the right person to engage in a debate on this. I mean, I'm just a bronze tier piker, so I don't consider myself an expert on balance or anything. But in general the complaints people were making about Bastion reminded me of the complaints from the other day about Torb and Symm's turrets and the suggestions that they should all be deactivated when the character was hacked, and so forth and so on. It kinda feels like the old balance complaint joke The vast majority of my play time is on Dva, Junkrat, and Zen, but I don't like when people basically want an entire playstyle removed and try to pass it off as 'balance ideas for the good of the game'.
Regarding wanting things removed from game, that's usually dependent on what tilted me on my last game
More seriously, I think my preferred design direction with Bastion would be to make him more varied so you want to use both of his forms. I feel that would be more interesting for me to personally play than currently where you just go robot to reposition and spend pretty much all your time fighting as a turret. Mind I don't know exactly what they should do to facilitate that, or if that would make him more balanced, just that it feels like a more interesting gameplay gimmick.
When you compare this to something like learning how to corner and spinhop properly as Heavy in TF2, or when Valve gave him the ability to drop Sandviches for him or the medic... Bastion's actually a worse design, gameplay wise!
The one change that I could get behind for Bastion is to drop his turret damage but give him back headshots.
You know where the term Overwatch comes from?
Overwatch requires weapons effective at suppressive fire, like machine guns. Bastion plays like a machine gunner, constrained by set-up and tear-down times, it has to carefully choose good firing positions because it can't afford to reposition in the middle of a firefight. But boy does it pack a wallop. Maybe some people think that's a cool play-style? Why is their playtime less valuable then others?
Every competitive multiplayer game has certain weapons or classes that people hate. It's pretty fair odds that if you play any given game long enough, there'll be something you don't play as that you'll start to loathe playing against. Snipers are a perennial target, but rocket launchers, shotguns, flamethrowers, and melee (with any combination of stealth &/or high mobility) have all been popular examples over the years. People will joke about how their unfavorite should be deleted from the game, & they'll suggest nerfs that would put it six feet under, competitively speaking. And yet developers across the industry keep including these options and trying to strike some kind of balance instead.
Hell, look at all the moaning people used to do about Junkrat in deathmatch. Imagine if, instead of giving him that series of nerfs and compensatory buffs, they'd decided that 'heroes shouldn't be able to spam explosions' and thus made his grenades into cannonballs that only did damage on a direct hit, replaced the remote mines with concussive mines that only boop, and the tire with a miniature Reinhardt drone that has to pin targets for damage. IIRC, surrealitycheck's a Grand Masters-rank Junkrat main, I wonder how they'd feel about that take?
Like, there are people on these forums who've said Mei should be removed from the game, others argued for major global nerfs to healing (I think this was during that period where they were getting all the POTGs), and every now and then one poster (I forget who) argues that Mercy shouldn't even have the single-target resurrect ability because 'mah picks!'. But I think at some point you might just need to consider the possibility that you're being spoilsports.
Edit: bolded rank correction, see below.
Let teams have a second junkrat
I'd like to see a hero who is basically anti-bunker. A Junkrat or secondary fire Roadhog type hero who does maybe 0.75 damage to normal health, but 1.5x to barriers and all placeable items on the map.
This would probably hurt Rein the most, but I think a fair balance would be when he rushes or fire strikes someone he gets 20% damage reduction. Basically it would allow a Rein who loses his shield to either go for broke with an offensive move while waiting for the shield to recharge a bit.
*dies*
e: Also, didn't the new short story describe Mauga as having some sort of deflector shield? I didn't actually read it cause I didn't like the writing in the last one but I thought I heard that.
If that's actually deflecting damage back at the enemy that could be a pretty decent answer to bunkers.
I still like my idea of a tank that can absorb incoming damage and either redirect it as a blast or use it to recharge his barrier.
how dare u im gm now dont make me post the thicc frog
one completely disgraceful answer to orisa is damage boosted junkrat and it already exists and NOBODY USES IT
her shield has 900hp, a single magazine from junkrat with mercy damage boost does 850 damage in like 3seconds. you can shoot the shield from out of los and then sneeze on it and its gone. there are also a bunch of maps where bunker is literally impossible to hold vs rat because u can always get an angle that lets u shoot grenades behind the shield (hanamura point 1, volskaya, numbani, hollywood, havana)
the point is that this stuff exists and people dont know about it or play around it so really the only conclusion is do more glute exercises
Oh snap, that's awesome! Sorry I got that mixed up.
I edited the post with the correction.
Ok!
Agrees and Awesomes:
On niches
Bastion and Baptiste (and to an extent Orisa) are like that. What the heroes do individually and the niche/role they each fill isn't inherently bad, but it's inherently bad when combined, and if we aren't clear where the problem really lies and fix THAT problem, then more heroes will get overnerfed or homogenised than need to be.
Because Bastion and Baptiste go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like Huskar and Dazzle. Bastion is OW's Huskar and Baptiste is OW's Dazzle. And those two heroes in DotA have had an over decades long love affair that hasn't been totally healthy for either of them but Huskar especially. Huskar is (or was? more on that later) a cheese pick much like Bastion in that in 90% of games he's inappropriate, but in those 10% MY GOD. It feels unfair.
So what does Huskar/Dazzle do and why is it like Bastion/Baptiste? Well, when Huskar is at low health he has immense attack speed and dps - much like Bastion while being relatively resistant to damage - much like Bastion. So the way to kill Huskar/Bastion is to burst him down quickly before he 1v5s your whole team.
Enter Dazzle/Baptiste. Both have the same basic skill. In DotA it's called Shallow Grave and it's single target; in OW it's AoE. There's nothing wrong with these skills by themselves, but they happen to paper over the ONE big weakness holding back Huskar/Bastion: that the enemy team can and wants to kill you quickly before you can 1v5 them like a goddamn raidboss.
Hell, there's another hero in DotA who has (or had? More on this soon!) a similar problem as Bastion does, but this time at the compositional level: Drow Ranger. Drow Ranger supercharges ranged heroes on her team. So at high level she's picked almost exclusively as part of a 'Drow strat': 4 ranged heroes who group up early and hit towers behind one big ole tanky melee core. It's a cheese comp, and Drow had to be balanced around this cheese comp for the longest time.
Until now! Maybe.
Because in the past few months Icefrog finally got around to reworking Huskar and Drow. While he's had to tinker further with Drow, it's clear what his intention was: to maintain what's cool about these heroes and their identities while also separating them from the cheese that was holding them back. And this is what I'm suggesting we must do with Bastion. Not cry foul at Baptiste for having a scary and new shiny thing. Look at the source of the problem: that his lamp protects heroes who can 1v6 if given a couple of seconds of standing their ground and being unkillable. The worst example of that is Bastion. So let's change Bastion, but, because yes I do like niches, without totally destroying what makes him cool.
So what makes Bastion cool? It's not just Sentry mode. It's that he's a fucking transformer with guns! It's that he's a 300 hp tanky-ass robot purveyor of death who's all like NYEERRRRRR and BRRRRRTBRRRRT and BOOOM and BRRRT BRRRT and then Optimus Prime comes out of the trees and is all like "Bastion the Autobots need your help coz you're a cool ass gun mech!" and Bastion is all like BLEEPBLOOP and turns into a MUTHAFUCKIN TANK and then he ROCKET JUMPS TO THE MOON and runs around there in low gravity the baddies and...
Sorry I got a little carried away there. Sentry is cool. But it's only a part of his coolness. And right now it's such a stifling, one-dimensional coolness. So let's redefine - or rediscover perhaps - Bastion's niche, what makes Bastion really cool and makes people excited to pick Bastion. It's because he's a fucking Transformer in the Overwatch world. He's cool because he's (meant to be) a really dangerous dps who can actually take a couple of hits too, because he's 300hp (and originally even had a shield too! 'Tanky ass dps' was part of his original sell! His OG niche. We realised he couldn't stay how he was, but my point is that Bastion's niche and cool factor is more than just "play Time Crisis 2, but in Overwatch". He has and had other things going for him. So let's tilt into those things.
And by doing so, by doing my rework, let's also make other niches healthier.
"Wait what?"
Yes, let's do that.
Double-sniper, Goats, and why 2/2/2 doesn't fix the burst damage problem that got us into this mess
(also, sidenote: it's why you'll notice my last complaint about Widow was before the Skyline vid. Because I am actually super concerned with having consistent beliefs and re-examining what I believe and when I find inconsistencies I change my mind to some position that isn't inconsistent anymore. I changed my mind on Widow and whether she's the real problem or lack of soft counters in the dps slot are 'The Real Problem'. I'm not even totally sure so I'm mostly staying away from Widow in particular until I learn something new. And given all that effort, I'm a little grouchy that so many people have rushed to tell me I'm not doing something that I painstakingly double-check on all the damn time.)
The problem isn't JUST burst damage, and most egregiously right now, snipers. It's that no, or almost no, sustained dps hero has any way of surviving that burst damage. That's why you get double sniper or Goats or even bunker. Those are the three responses to the burst damage problem really: BE the burst damage comp; or be so damn tanky as a team that burst damage means nothing to you. So in a sense, when some of us have complained about tanks+healers having too much tankiness for their still-decent sustained dps, the problem is arguably the opposite: there just aren't any sustained dps heroes with any tankiness. Oh wait! There are a couple and they're the ones that we're worried about being too strong in bunker comp once 2/2/2 comes! Torbjorn, with his new 350hp overcharge! Bastion! Mei even!
(Incidentally, this is why Soldier isn't really a pure sustained dps hero: if he was he'd be shitty because he dies to any burst damage that breathes on him. His saving grace is in his burst damage - his helix grenade. He's a hybrid, not a sustained damage dps. His sprint also helps, this is true.)
There's no point in running a sustained-damage dps if it blows up instantly. That's what Goats was about: just running quasi-dps tanks like DVa, Zarya and Brig.
So what I'm saying is, we don't need to nerf Widow. Well, maybe? I dunno. But we won't be sure until we try something that OW hasn't tried enough of.
Sustained damage dps heroes who can actually survive burst damage.
Torbjorn. Mei, sorta. Bastion but less feast or famine and less bullshit when combined with Imm Field and Rez. A Bastion who can't be one-shot at all from the front - not in any mode - but also can't abuse that fact with an OP Sentry mode combined with Imm Field and Rez.
Now the reasonable criticism her is what happens when these heroes are strong and get the treatment I'm suggesting they need? Well, first, you nerf their ability to abuse Imm Field and Rez. Y'know, those two support abilities that define the heroes they're on, that give those heroes a niche and an identity and therefore shouldn't be nerfed until Bap and Mercy are more like the baseline support. And like I've said above, that means that specifically Bastion's Sentry mode needs a nerf. We need to focus on the other more interesting parts of his character identity.
The thing is, when I'm saying we need to rework Bastion I'm not being inconsistent, because I'm not suggesting he shouldn't have a niche. I'm suggesting, firstly, that we should focus on his BETTER niche properties. The properties that make him interesting AND soft counter other heroes with strong niches that we've all wondered whether they should be nerfed or simply removed from the game. Y'know, because they aren't more like Soldier with his more predictable TTK and his bland, boring playstyle. I'm suggesting that we should introduce heroes that soft counter the niches of other heroes (burst heroes) WHILE letting those burst heroes stay strong in their own way. And with regards to 2/2/2, I'm admitting that YES, some heroes and comps like bunker might be OP within a 2/2/2 style even with the changes I'm suggesting, but that's only because all the best responses to bunker will have been stripped away by 2/2/2 and this ride towards making everyone's health pools and mobility and dps and hps more and more like everybody else's.
That's not an inconsistent set of claims, people just thought it was because they read my comments already opposed to them and not so much interest in asking me follow-up questions. So thanks @H3Knuckles for asking me what I meant in the end.
We need an OW dps hero with something like DotA's blademail - a damage reflect ability that punishes burst heroes or forces them to disengage if they don't want to kill themselves. Also a soft and partial counter to many grav combos, which is another problem this game suffers from under the misattributed guise of 'ult economy is too important'!
We need a dps with Templar Assassin's Refract: a kind of shield that reduces the next X damage instances to 0. That's a hero that counters a KIND of burst - snipers for instance - but not sustained damage or OTHER kinds of burst - like Tracer. Side note: I think Sombra could be saved as a hero concept if we made her more like TA, and I will physically fight you if you disagree. :P
We need more heroes guys. We don't need 2/2/2. We need more heroes. And they need to be weirder. Like Wrecking Ball and Orisa. Y'know, those heroes who have enabled entirely new playstyles even in the face of what we thought was an omnipresent monolith like Goats. We need more heroes. New heroes, different heroes, crazy heroes with crazy concepts. Those heroes will solve old problems with new solutions. Which is why I'm tired of Blizzard taking 4 fucking months to release them.
Yes, all of this is more work than locking 2/2/2 and calling it a day. But work is what we pay Blizzard to do. And this work will make OW a better game.
I'm off for a bit because all this OW talk has gotten me excited to play Overwatch! Thanks for all the comments guys, I loved the debate.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I still don't agree about Bastion though. Rambling about Transformers for a bit is not an argument that the aspects of the character you find more appealing should override aspects that other people might enjoy. And again, you cast it in this very melodramatic way that his niche 'warps the game around it' but you don't really back that up with anything more than sentiment. Bastion requires effective counterpicks, but so do a lot of the other heroes in the game. Bastion enables a particular comp & strategy that requires the opposing team to adapt their comp to counter it, just like the dive heroes did, or Pharmercy, or how Brigitte & Baptiste do. The tools to deal with it are already in the game. When Bastion doesn't have an exceptional pick rate and other hero combinations have similar impact on the meta of a given match, I just can't agree that it is 'warping' anything. In your own words bunker is one of three effective comps right now? So you want to lower that to two comps, albeit with a wider pool of heroes for the more dominant comp to use (because adding tanky sustained dps heroes to occasionally take the place of off-tanks with sustained dps seems like a distinction without a difference). How is that supposed to be an improvement? That is literally making the game more homogeneous. You just can't get around that fact.
Even if we concede that the problem with GOATS meta having been dominant long enough to get stale is the fault of too much burst damage and a lack of counter options for it (but seriously, in a game built solely with sustained damage GOATS would still be a thing, & probably even worse given armor performs better against multiple small hits than it does bursty chunks), why is it Bastion's responsibility to be changed to deal with it? And why is your solution to change Bastion to be more like other heroes that already exist (D.Va, Orisa, Wrecking Ball, Zarya)? They each have sustained dps, can deny headshots, and have a lot of health. Two of them even have multiple forms they switch between.
Also, a minor nitpick: isn't the damage reflect ability you suggest exactly what Genji can do currently?
Yeah we would need a lot more tanks with at least a little overlap in terms of role for that to really work.
Just as an example, in Jayne's ban enabled tourney, if teams wanted to run Rein GOATs but Rein was banned, they just ran Orisa GOATs which is substantially less fun to watch than Rein GOATs.
i get 5min queues as it is lets make it worse rip (unless you do a preference thing where you say 1st pref dps with sr x 2nd pref support with sr y 3rd pref tank with sr z and it fills you into games at those different ranges as needed)
but also i have won so many comp games with dumb comps rolling over good comps. in fact some of the most fun ive ever had in overwatch is when your team locks like 5dps and a mercy and you just frag out and everybody has fun. it also very much feeds into a sense about how heroes work that is not correct - eg in many circumstances dual tank + hog on eg koth is NOT a triple tank lineup - its a 2tank and fat offdps lineup. one of the most common swaps i do is going from a 2nd dps to hog into monkey dva simply because of how the hero actually functions in that matchup, and if im role locked thats not doable. this also hurts players like my boi mouffin who has 3 top 10 dva one trick accounts - he plays dva like a mix of a fat assassin and a disruptor, has gold or silver damage most games, and frequently is playing effectively in a "dps" slot. if he is dropped into a 2/2/2 lineup instalocking dva his second tank is limited to going orisa or monkey, which is not what most people are going to be interested in (orisa dva being a soft counter to hog orisa just because you can dm the succs)
not a fan of the idea
would much rather have limited bans
it also plays into the obsession players have with "team comp" being the deciding factor - if you are somebody with a strong tank hero preference you are CONSTANTLY going to be expected to switch to whatever your team thinks is "needed" despite most players being literally incapable of making those judgements
I too enjoy the zany shit, and will be very very sad to see it go. Just delete Torb and Sym.
Bam. Game fixed.
And that day a patch goes up and poof she's gone and Torb and New Tank have all sorts of juicy lines for each other.
Wait. No - Torb dies too.
Imo on the spectrum of DPS Bastion comparatively forces more counterpicking than counterplay which I think is overall less creative. I don't look at static defense heroes like Symm or Torb, or high burst damage heroes like Reaper or Widow and go "man we need an X or Y" to the same extent I do when I see a Bastion
And now with Immortality Field the options for counterplay (RIP pulse bomb regardless) just shrunk again
I don't get why she's still loathed. Is it purely because she counters popular DPS that her hate is so disproportionate?
If the meta is getting stagnant faster than heroes are being added then add heroes faster, but only if its actually getting stagnant, not just if every stream watcher and wanna be GM saying its boring
Like Brig was a great solution to dive, way better then just deleting tracer or genji or giving them huge reworks