I guess I must have been carried by my team in the past, 1-4 for both tank and support placements. Dropped from mid-gold to high silver, averaging 1800 across the two. Doing DPS placements still but not optimistic here.
did my dps placements just to finish it out and see where i placed and ended up 200 SR higher than the others and made gold so.... hell if I know. I've played well over 400 hours on tanks and supports combined and ignored dps basically since the game came out, so it's a little...i guess, disappointing and surprising? that dps ended up in gold (if only barely) and my mains ended up in silver.
I also found my dps SR is now consistently my highest. Part is due to a lot of completely incompetent dps (meaning my decent presence is a major upgrade) and part is the carry potential.
Some is that many dps players don’t see peeling as part of their role, thus making those playing Mei, McCree, etc. failing to help their healers.
For example, as Mei, I generally ward off flankers and wall off poorly positioned enemies, rather than going on long flanks that expose my team to a reaper or trace. While this reduces my damage stats, it enables my tanks to get free kills on walled off enemies and keeps my supports alive. This playstyle relies heavily on gamesense (head on a swivel), timing, and icicle accuracy, but it is super effective and hard for disorganized teams to counter.
Yeah I ended up playing a peeling mcree as well, just hung back with my team for the selective flashbang and took potshots at pharah when necessary + body shots on everyone else so more competent people can get the picks. My Mei wall positioning is 50/50 on whether it ends up being useful so I just tried to freeze people and use my icicles for cover fire/accidental headshots.
Perhaps not surprisingly, my best game was with a team full of people with PMA who coordinated in a constructive manner, and my worst game was with 6 people in voice and none of them talking or listening to my calls (until the end of the game to complain about everyone else, naturally). Honestly, I don't know why they were in voice at all if that was all they were going to do.
I guess I'll try out a few more matches to see if the SR swing theory is true, I'm not terribly optimistic though.
Edit: I should add that despite my experience in placements, 2/2/2 is still an improvement. I still feel moments where its like, man, I wish I could swap to support since we clearly have a dps Moira -- but overall it does feel more consistent even if the end result was showing me just how much I still suck at this game.
mightyjongyo on
0
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
Would you rather someone lurk in voice chat, or not join at all? Because I'm always lurking in comp voice chat (I refuse to join voice chat in qp). The way I see it, at least I will hear if someone actually has something constructive to say, and I know myself well enough that almost every time I want to yell something into voice chat in the heat of the moment, it will either be wrong, unhelpful, or both, so it is usually best for me to keep my mouth shut.
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
0
Options
mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Lurking is fine because like you said, even if you don't want to shotcall/callout it's still helpful if the rest of your team is. Most people who are like this will either type responses in chat or use the default "understood" response to show they're listening, or you can see them moving to respond. I do this sometimes too! I also refuse voice in QP so I totally get that perspective.
But... if you're not responding via gameplay, or you just use voice to grief, then I'd say you* might as well spare us all the hassle and leave voice.
*the general 'you' of course, just to be clear
+3
Options
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
It's actually better when not everyone has a microphone in comms, it gives those who do an easier time conveying clear information
But I think it's important to at least be in the channel for Competitive. Having a team with a diminished capacity to instantaneously communicate and coordinate to the same depth compared to a whole team in voice chat, is objectively a handicap
I took Stylosa's latest advice and Sym really does feel like easy mode. You can just walk up to people and delete them, and if you coordinate your team you can do some dumb flanks with the teleporter.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Im always lurking. You'd think QP would be a cesspool but on PC 99% of the time its quiet and sometimes people actually do make good calls. Unless its some sort of between comp season break, then its just barrens chat.
0
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I really don't understand my McCree.
Some games I'm just completely terrible and don't do anything other games I get 60+% kp and PotG.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
+1
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
Yeh, now that I get the 3 charge E-heal thing (there is a number above the button to track it just like Old Sym), Brig is fine again. Her shield nerf is still kind of wtf why. But for me playing any healer, other than pre-patch Brig, is a synonym for "spend most of the game respawning". So maybe this is as it should be.
Edit: I've noticed two changes recently
One is I've had a few games now where there's a Sigma that just kills me every time we meet. It isn't close, he just wins. Against a Mei. There's some kind of rock stun combo that is kind of brutal. Especially for a tank I keep deprioritizing because I keep forgetting he is a tank because he is not nearly big enough to be a tank.
The other is there seems to be a lot more of us Mei's running around. Some of them are better than me. Did they buff Mei in some way I didn't notice?
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 is I've had a few games now where there's a Sigma that just kills me every time we meet. It isn't close, he just wins. Against a Mei. There's some kind of rock stun combo that is kind of brutal. Especially for a tank I keep deprioritizing because I keep forgetting he is a tank because he is not nearly big enough to be a tank.
The other is there seems to be a lot more of us Mei's running around. Some of them are better than me. Did they buff Mei in some way I didn't notice?
Mei isn't amazing Vs. Sigma because her strength - keeping someone in one spot - is what a Sigma will do naturally, if left undisturbed in its habitat. Sigma's rock combo (Accretion knocks down a target for 80 damage and an easy primary fire for 120) can instantly delete a 200HP hero, but not Mei. If you wanna' rock Sigma's (lack of) socks, dive heroes absolutely destroy him. That said, his only escape outside of his barrier is his absorb thingie which Mei's spray completely ignores, so she's not terrible V him either.
Mei is more popular right now because
The beam bug fix is a gentle buff to Mei
Mei saw more play in the recent 2-2-2 OWL games, which massively influenced her popularity
She works very, very well with Sigma on her team and we're seein' a lot of those too
The 2-2-2 change makes counterpicking within your role more important, and she is effective against current heavyweights Doom and Hammond
Mei and Sym really came out of the shadows this patch.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
One is I've had a few games now where there's a Sigma that just kills me every time we meet. It isn't close, he just wins. Against a Mei. There's some kind of rock stun combo that is kind of brutal. Especially for a tank I keep deprioritizing because I keep forgetting he is a tank because he is not nearly big enough to be a tank.
The other is there seems to be a lot more of us Mei's running around. Some of them are better than me. Did they buff Mei in some way I didn't notice?
Mei isn't amazing Vs. Sigma because her strength - keeping someone in one spot - is what a Sigma will do naturally, if left undisturbed in its habitat. Sigma's rock combo (Accretion knocks down a target for 80 damage and an easy primary fire for 120) can instantly delete a 200HP hero, but not Mei. If you wanna' rock Sigma's (lack of) socks, dive heroes absolutely destroy him. That said, his only escape outside of his barrier is his absorb thingie which Mei's spray completely ignores, so she's not terrible V him either.
Mei is more popular right now because
The beam bug fix is a gentle buff to Mei
Mei saw more play in the recent 2-2-2 OWL games, which massively influenced her popularity
She works very, very well with Sigma on her team and we're seein' a lot of those too
The 2-2-2 change makes counterpicking within your role more important, and she is effective against current heavyweights Doom and Hammond
Mei and Sym really came out of the shadows this patch.
"More play", meaning she's in nearly every map (often on both teams) that's been played for the last 3 weeks of OWL.
Sigma has the one super good 200 damage combo which he can use for self-defense - you need to dodge that rock. Beyond that though he's pretty helpless at close range, unless the Sigma player is a god at landing those orbs, which he most likely isn't.
Think of the rock as a Roadhog hook and treat Sigma accordingly. He's not a main tank, he's an offtank with pretty scary kill potential, but unlike Roadhog he's quite vulnerable.
+2
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
She works very, very well with Sigma
Out of curiosity, how so? Sigma abilities seems to be extremely similar to Orisa. Lots of direct damage at range, lots of shields. Big differences being, he doesn't have the Orb pull or the anti-CC skin ability, but his shield is dramatically more adaptable since he seems to be able to redeploy it at will, and his ult is actually good.
I'm not sure what any of that has to do with Mei. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't see what you mean.
edit: If I have cryo up, I can just eat a Roadhog hook combo and still cryo with 10-20 HP left over. I do not fear the hook. It may be this is also true of Sigma rocks. I will have to pay more attention.
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
Sigma is like a backup shield tank, his shield is considerably weaker than Orisa or Rein. Less health than Rein, doesn't refresh instantly like Orisa's. But it adds up to a lot when paired with a proper main tank's shield. That's one thing I find frustrating about him - double shield comps suck, the game is now even more about shooting shields than it was before. I want them to figure out a way to dial back the role of shields in a game a little bit.
Out of curiosity, how so? Sigma abilities seems to be extremely similar to Orisa. Lots of direct damage at range, lots of shields. Big differences being, he doesn't have the Orb pull or the anti-CC skin ability, but his shield is dramatically more adaptable since he seems to be able to redeploy it at will, and his ult is actually good.
I'm not sure what any of that has to do with Mei. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't see what you mean.
I don't think Sigma compares well to Orisa at all. Orisa has the best survivability of any tank in the game and the ability to hold a single point while influencing the fight across vast distances with her primary and Halt while actually being relatively weak at point-blank range. Rein and Sigma, meanwhile, can only influence a fight over a relatively short area - 10-15 meters for Sigma, 5-10 for Rein - and they own that space. Sigma in particular has rather low survivability for a tank. His shield is the weakest of the three and his Absorb ability is, frankly, shitty. He cannot guarantee decent damage within that short range like Rein does - he has to land those weird-feelin' skillshots with Accretion and his M1. (Accretion, I feel, is less wonky to use than people are saying - once you get used to the timing it's way easier to smack someone with that rock than it is to get them in a Rein pin.)
Mei takes his strength - controlling a smaller area - and amplifies it significantly. All his projectiles feel weird to shoot, but that's not a problem when a Mei has slowed or frozen their target. His primary has a very low range, but that's not a problem when Mei is walling off targets nearby for you. She operates in precisely the same short-range space that he does, her kit is largely designed to facilitate others' damage within that range, but perhaps most importantly Mei's powerful anti-mobility skills shore up Sigma's greatest weakness - he is incredibly vulnerable to dive.
Imo.
Also I don't think Gravatic Flux is good, I think it's OP - which might be addressed when the bug of people outside its radius getting pulled up is handled, but... even then... It's a CC ult, so it exists in the same space as Blizzard, Grav and Shatter, yeah? Okay, now imagine that when Zarya Gravs you or Rein Shatters, it does 50 damage as it sucks you in and then (if you're, say, Roadhog), 300 damage when it spits you out. Now, I have it on good authority that 350 damage is a reasonable number for a damage-dealing ult to do, but certainly not across 20 meters and certainly not while denying any and all movement from the enemy team in the process.
That's insane. That's like Riptire had a crazy night with Grav in a bouncy castle and nine months later Gravatic Flux was born. Like either set me up to have someone kill me with your ult or kill me with your ult, but both at once in a single character is pretty dumb when compared to the rest of the roster - particularly when Grav and Shatter can both be totally negated by a simple CD ability like a barrier, deflect, matrix, et cetera.
What counters Gravatic Flux? You can't hold up a barrier to Sigma and block it like a Shatter. You can't eat it like a Grav fired into a Matrix or deflecting Genji with a simple cooldown ability. Nope. The only thing that can counter Gravatic Flux is a Zenaytta ult. Maybe. Or shooting the Sigma in the head before he fires the levitation off, but one could say that's the counter to Grav and Shatter too.
Ridiculous.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
0
Options
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I swapped to Sigma at the very end of a Nepal Shrine round having never played him before because a Genji was terrorizing us and I wanted to rock him.
I killed him with the rock almost immediately and we won the last fight.
+1
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
That all makes sense. I swear I've been hit by rocks both large and small from across the map, but I might have been wrong about where he was at those times. And I had no idea the shield had lower health than other tank shields. That seems right and proper considering he can just put it wherever, whenever.
Mei is almost immune to Sigma's ult... even if cryo is on cooldown, landing on your wall will save you from most of the damage. However, if the rest of the team is killed by it, you're still going to have a rough time.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
The rock stuns longer the further it flies, so the Sigma is incentivized to go for the long bombs - and you can totally do it. We've all seen Twitch clips of a Mercy on the wing getting knocked out of the air by a long-range-and-thus-2.5-second-stun with Accretion - but those are like those Pharah clips where one Pharah manages to land a direct hit on the other at 40 yards.
Sure, it's possible. It's also possible to get a 6K with Pulse Bomb, but I'm not gonna' spend too much time tryin' to make it happen.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
0
Options
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
edited August 2019
Ligma (nailed it!) is making a strong case for Deadeye to be faster on fire and not nearly a projectile like it currently is, and I think a really nice Ashe buff would be her dynamite does double damage to a barrier and lasts a second longer on them. Hell I'd even like to let it make the barrier be on fire so you scare the enemy from dancing back and forth in close quarters, dab on Barrierwatch.
Ligma (nailed it!) is making a strong case for Deadeye to be faster on fire and not nearly a projectile like it currently is shield shatter numbers, and I think a really nice Ashe buff would be her dynamite does double damage to a barrier and lasts a second longer on them. Hell I'd even like to let it make the barrier be on fire so you scare the enemy from dancing back and forth in close quarters, dab on Barrierwatch.
On fire barriers that hurt both teams is something i can get behind.
Self-repair no longer consumes resource while Bastion is at full health.
Bastion now correctly initiates .25 sec of recovery time when canceling Self-repair with weapon fire.
Symmetra
Primary Fire
Beam width lowered from 0.3 meters to 0.15
Beam DPS per level lowered from 65/130/195 to 60/120/180
Zarya
Primary Fire
Beam width no longer scales with energy (from 0.1 to 0.2) and is now always 0.15.
Max Beam DPS lowered from 190 to 170
Sigma
Hyper Spheres
Explosion damaged reduced from 35 to 30
Experimental Barrier
Added a toggle option for deploying Sigma’s Experimental Barrier
Accretion
Explosion damage increased from 50 to 60
Gravitic Flux
Intro cast time increased from 0.4 seconds to 0.6
Bye bye beam heroes.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
Last patch was a bug fix of some sort, so presumably now the beam is just reliably thin. Whereas before it would just sometimes work sometimes not, I guess?
The beams were apparently incorrectly dealing the wrong percentage of damage when the beam hit a target for just an instant, or drifted off idk really. The fix made the beam damage work as intended - which is pretty beefy.
So yeah they'll now retain the reliability this patch fixes and be harder to get value with. Fine at high SR, poor value at low SR.
I like it. Now nerf turret damage on console.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
That all makes sense. I swear I've been hit by rocks both large and small from across the map, but I might have been wrong about where he was at those times. And I had no idea the shield had lower health than other tank shields. That seems right and proper considering he can just put it wherever, whenever.
Mei is almost immune to Sigma's ult... even if cryo is on cooldown, landing on your wall will save you from most of the damage. However, if the rest of the team is killed by it, you're still going to have a rough time.
It doesn't. It has 1500 HP vs. Orisa's 900 and Winston's 600 but being a regenerative barrier rather than a cooldown means the uptime is lower than Orisa's despite the higher health.
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
Last patch was a bug fix of some sort, so presumably now the beam is just reliably thin. Whereas before it would just sometimes work sometimes not, I guess?
Correct, the damage was balanced for a beam that didn't work properly. Now it works properly with the same numbers so it puts out a lot more damage, so they're backing the damage down to be more reasonable. Now it has similar damage to before but is reliable and consistent.
That all makes sense. I swear I've been hit by rocks both large and small from across the map, but I might have been wrong about where he was at those times. And I had no idea the shield had lower health than other tank shields. That seems right and proper considering he can just put it wherever, whenever.
Mei is almost immune to Sigma's ult... even if cryo is on cooldown, landing on your wall will save you from most of the damage. However, if the rest of the team is killed by it, you're still going to have a rough time.
It doesn't. It has 1500 HP vs. Orisa's 900 and Winston's 600 but being a regenerative barrier rather than a cooldown means the uptime is lower than Orisa's despite the higher health.
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
Last patch was a bug fix of some sort, so presumably now the beam is just reliably thin. Whereas before it would just sometimes work sometimes not, I guess?
Correct, the damage was balanced for a beam that didn't work properly. Now it works properly with the same numbers so it puts out a lot more damage, so they're backing the damage down to be more reasonable. Now it has similar damage to before but is reliable and consistent.
My point is Sym was weak with those numbers, not balanced. They gave her a substantial DPS nerf when they moved her into damage.
That all makes sense. I swear I've been hit by rocks both large and small from across the map, but I might have been wrong about where he was at those times. And I had no idea the shield had lower health than other tank shields. That seems right and proper considering he can just put it wherever, whenever.
Mei is almost immune to Sigma's ult... even if cryo is on cooldown, landing on your wall will save you from most of the damage. However, if the rest of the team is killed by it, you're still going to have a rough time.
It doesn't. It has 1500 HP vs. Orisa's 900 and Winston's 600 but being a regenerative barrier rather than a cooldown means the uptime is lower than Orisa's despite the higher health.
The beam nerfs are because they fixed beam hit detection in the last patch to be more reliable, so they were overtuned after that.
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
Last patch was a bug fix of some sort, so presumably now the beam is just reliably thin. Whereas before it would just sometimes work sometimes not, I guess?
Correct, the damage was balanced for a beam that didn't work properly. Now it works properly with the same numbers so it puts out a lot more damage, so they're backing the damage down to be more reasonable. Now it has similar damage to before but is reliable and consistent.
My point is Sym was weak with those numbers, not balanced. They gave her a substantial DPS nerf when they moved her into damage.
Remember that the numbers don't have to change for a hero to become stronger or weaker. More consistency is a straight buff. We're also seeing a lot of double barrier and Symm thrives against that. Despite the slightly reduced damage, she still tops out at 170 DPS and she can get it easily with so many barriers out. She's become stronger by virtue of the battle conditions changing in her favor.
For a more direct example, when McCree had no damage falloff, Pharah was unusable. When they changed McCree, Pharah became viable. Later they tweaked McCree even more and he really wasn't all that great against Pharah anymore and Pharah became very strong as a result. During that time Pharah wasn't touched.
0
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I'm more concerned about the width change than a 10 point damage nerf.
All it means is at full charge you delete a 200 squishie in 1.11 seconds vs. 1.05 seconds.
I'm bummed about the Zarya beam change just on a surface "good feeling" level, because there's something very satisfying about seeing the beam get bigger as you get more charge. It's like a little cosmetic reward for using your bubbles well.
On the flipside, it's gonna be a lot harder for the enemy to tell at a glance when you're high charge, which should give a little advantage (you can still look for how bright her back is glowing, but the bigger beam was always super easy to recognize).
I think we can't really speak to how the beam changes will impact Sym and Zarya until we get our personal mitts on them, but the Sigma damage change is kind of a big deal. That was Sigma's one-shot combo, and with this change the entire squishy roster has been removed from consideration, save Tracer and Babby D.Va.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Posts
Yeah I ended up playing a peeling mcree as well, just hung back with my team for the selective flashbang and took potshots at pharah when necessary + body shots on everyone else so more competent people can get the picks. My Mei wall positioning is 50/50 on whether it ends up being useful so I just tried to freeze people and use my icicles for cover fire/accidental headshots.
Perhaps not surprisingly, my best game was with a team full of people with PMA who coordinated in a constructive manner, and my worst game was with 6 people in voice and none of them talking or listening to my calls (until the end of the game to complain about everyone else, naturally). Honestly, I don't know why they were in voice at all if that was all they were going to do.
I guess I'll try out a few more matches to see if the SR swing theory is true, I'm not terribly optimistic though.
Edit: I should add that despite my experience in placements, 2/2/2 is still an improvement. I still feel moments where its like, man, I wish I could swap to support since we clearly have a dps Moira -- but overall it does feel more consistent even if the end result was showing me just how much I still suck at this game.
But... if you're not responding via gameplay, or you just use voice to grief, then I'd say you* might as well spare us all the hassle and leave voice.
*the general 'you' of course, just to be clear
But I think it's important to at least be in the channel for Competitive. Having a team with a diminished capacity to instantaneously communicate and coordinate to the same depth compared to a whole team in voice chat, is objectively a handicap
Some games I'm just completely terrible and don't do anything other games I get 60+% kp and PotG.
Sounds to me like you're a DPS.
Also this. So long, 500 HP shield Brig! You were a dirty thrill.
Edit: I've noticed two changes recently
One is I've had a few games now where there's a Sigma that just kills me every time we meet. It isn't close, he just wins. Against a Mei. There's some kind of rock stun combo that is kind of brutal. Especially for a tank I keep deprioritizing because I keep forgetting he is a tank because he is not nearly big enough to be a tank.
The other is there seems to be a lot more of us Mei's running around. Some of them are better than me. Did they buff Mei in some way I didn't notice?
Mei isn't amazing Vs. Sigma because her strength - keeping someone in one spot - is what a Sigma will do naturally, if left undisturbed in its habitat. Sigma's rock combo (Accretion knocks down a target for 80 damage and an easy primary fire for 120) can instantly delete a 200HP hero, but not Mei. If you wanna' rock Sigma's (lack of) socks, dive heroes absolutely destroy him. That said, his only escape outside of his barrier is his absorb thingie which Mei's spray completely ignores, so she's not terrible V him either.
Mei is more popular right now because
Mei and Sym really came out of the shadows this patch.
"More play", meaning she's in nearly every map (often on both teams) that's been played for the last 3 weeks of OWL.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Yeah. He's the tallest hero in the game.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Think of the rock as a Roadhog hook and treat Sigma accordingly. He's not a main tank, he's an offtank with pretty scary kill potential, but unlike Roadhog he's quite vulnerable.
Out of curiosity, how so? Sigma abilities seems to be extremely similar to Orisa. Lots of direct damage at range, lots of shields. Big differences being, he doesn't have the Orb pull or the anti-CC skin ability, but his shield is dramatically more adaptable since he seems to be able to redeploy it at will, and his ult is actually good.
I'm not sure what any of that has to do with Mei. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't see what you mean.
edit: If I have cryo up, I can just eat a Roadhog hook combo and still cryo with 10-20 HP left over. I do not fear the hook. It may be this is also true of Sigma rocks. I will have to pay more attention.
I don't think Sigma compares well to Orisa at all. Orisa has the best survivability of any tank in the game and the ability to hold a single point while influencing the fight across vast distances with her primary and Halt while actually being relatively weak at point-blank range. Rein and Sigma, meanwhile, can only influence a fight over a relatively short area - 10-15 meters for Sigma, 5-10 for Rein - and they own that space. Sigma in particular has rather low survivability for a tank. His shield is the weakest of the three and his Absorb ability is, frankly, shitty. He cannot guarantee decent damage within that short range like Rein does - he has to land those weird-feelin' skillshots with Accretion and his M1. (Accretion, I feel, is less wonky to use than people are saying - once you get used to the timing it's way easier to smack someone with that rock than it is to get them in a Rein pin.)
Mei takes his strength - controlling a smaller area - and amplifies it significantly. All his projectiles feel weird to shoot, but that's not a problem when a Mei has slowed or frozen their target. His primary has a very low range, but that's not a problem when Mei is walling off targets nearby for you. She operates in precisely the same short-range space that he does, her kit is largely designed to facilitate others' damage within that range, but perhaps most importantly Mei's powerful anti-mobility skills shore up Sigma's greatest weakness - he is incredibly vulnerable to dive.
Imo.
Also I don't think Gravatic Flux is good, I think it's OP - which might be addressed when the bug of people outside its radius getting pulled up is handled, but... even then... It's a CC ult, so it exists in the same space as Blizzard, Grav and Shatter, yeah? Okay, now imagine that when Zarya Gravs you or Rein Shatters, it does 50 damage as it sucks you in and then (if you're, say, Roadhog), 300 damage when it spits you out. Now, I have it on good authority that 350 damage is a reasonable number for a damage-dealing ult to do, but certainly not across 20 meters and certainly not while denying any and all movement from the enemy team in the process.
That's insane. That's like Riptire had a crazy night with Grav in a bouncy castle and nine months later Gravatic Flux was born. Like either set me up to have someone kill me with your ult or kill me with your ult, but both at once in a single character is pretty dumb when compared to the rest of the roster - particularly when Grav and Shatter can both be totally negated by a simple CD ability like a barrier, deflect, matrix, et cetera.
What counters Gravatic Flux? You can't hold up a barrier to Sigma and block it like a Shatter. You can't eat it like a Grav fired into a Matrix or deflecting Genji with a simple cooldown ability. Nope. The only thing that can counter Gravatic Flux is a Zenaytta ult. Maybe. Or shooting the Sigma in the head before he fires the levitation off, but one could say that's the counter to Grav and Shatter too.
Ridiculous.
I killed him with the rock almost immediately and we won the last fight.
Mei is almost immune to Sigma's ult... even if cryo is on cooldown, landing on your wall will save you from most of the damage. However, if the rest of the team is killed by it, you're still going to have a rough time.
Sure, it's possible. It's also possible to get a 6K with Pulse Bomb, but I'm not gonna' spend too much time tryin' to make it happen.
On fire barriers that hurt both teams is something i can get behind.
You have on fire and garbage McCree games because you're not thinking about your movement while you're aiming
HERO UPDATES
Bastion
Self-repair
Self-repair no longer consumes resource while Bastion is at full health.
Bastion now correctly initiates .25 sec of recovery time when canceling Self-repair with weapon fire.
Symmetra
Primary Fire
Beam width lowered from 0.3 meters to 0.15
Beam DPS per level lowered from 65/130/195 to 60/120/180
Zarya
Primary Fire
Beam width no longer scales with energy (from 0.1 to 0.2) and is now always 0.15.
Max Beam DPS lowered from 190 to 170
Sigma
Hyper Spheres
Explosion damaged reduced from 35 to 30
Experimental Barrier
Added a toggle option for deploying Sigma’s Experimental Barrier
Accretion
Explosion damage increased from 50 to 60
Gravitic Flux
Intro cast time increased from 0.4 seconds to 0.6
Bye bye beam heroes.
Being able to share storage of the base game files for PTR and OWL clients is awesome though
They also added Workshop support for dummy players, so you can drop in and control bots programmatically (but the AI is all manual). People could make some cool modes with that. I just really wish they would give it a scripting language, I cannot handle that editor GUI.
Except Sym was already nerfed from when they did her last rework. Also making beams more reliable and then immediately nerfing them to be less reliable..
Last patch was a bug fix of some sort, so presumably now the beam is just reliably thin. Whereas before it would just sometimes work sometimes not, I guess?
So yeah they'll now retain the reliability this patch fixes and be harder to get value with. Fine at high SR, poor value at low SR.
I like it. Now nerf turret damage on console.
It doesn't. It has 1500 HP vs. Orisa's 900 and Winston's 600 but being a regenerative barrier rather than a cooldown means the uptime is lower than Orisa's despite the higher health.
Correct, the damage was balanced for a beam that didn't work properly. Now it works properly with the same numbers so it puts out a lot more damage, so they're backing the damage down to be more reasonable. Now it has similar damage to before but is reliable and consistent.
My point is Sym was weak with those numbers, not balanced. They gave her a substantial DPS nerf when they moved her into damage.
Rip rocket Orisa
Remember that the numbers don't have to change for a hero to become stronger or weaker. More consistency is a straight buff. We're also seeing a lot of double barrier and Symm thrives against that. Despite the slightly reduced damage, she still tops out at 170 DPS and she can get it easily with so many barriers out. She's become stronger by virtue of the battle conditions changing in her favor.
For a more direct example, when McCree had no damage falloff, Pharah was unusable. When they changed McCree, Pharah became viable. Later they tweaked McCree even more and he really wasn't all that great against Pharah anymore and Pharah became very strong as a result. During that time Pharah wasn't touched.
All it means is at full charge you delete a 200 squishie in 1.11 seconds vs. 1.05 seconds.
On the flipside, it's gonna be a lot harder for the enemy to tell at a glance when you're high charge, which should give a little advantage (you can still look for how bright her back is glowing, but the bigger beam was always super easy to recognize).
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder