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[Phoenix RISING]

You can get one of them, but all at once (+mercy. With her current rez, she's part of the cancer comp) requires coordination (though Sombra helps out the most). Which is why it's problematic. It's easy as pie for the defenders to use, they just need to pick these 3 characters and natural play takes care of the rest. The attackers actually have to plan out who goes after who, when Ults are gonna be available, etc.

Indeed, it is a team-based game, so yes, you will have to depend on coordinating with your teammates to combat a coordinated team.

If you can take out one--Mercy would be ideal, but taking down Torb and/or his turret is comparably efficient--then it's up to your teammates to do their jobs. Even just making sure that Torb never gets his turret back up to level II is enough to get a push going.

Dva, as my 8 year-old son who is on the precipice of platinum on PS4 has demonstrated, is an incredibly strong deterrent to all three of those heroes, especially with her missiles.

I feel like a "meta" that includes static defense like Bastion and Torb on the same team is a result of folks not thinking outside of the box enough. There's probably some hero that everyone thinks is bad who is the answer, lol.

 

[Azoor]

You know what this game needs, a propper tutorial and and a training range that is not useless. We need a training range more akin to the on in CS:GO.

 

[LiK]

You know what this game needs, a propper tutorial and and a training range that is not useless. We need a training range more akin to the on in CS:GO.

A proper tutorial with bots explaining shit in maps would go a long a way. The one you get when you first start the game is pretty useless.

 

[Anne]

I'm actually just going to say some probably borderline conspiracy theory stuff to elaborate on my last post. After experiencing Hearthstone (legend), Overwatch (GM), and HotS(wow I'm bad at MOBAs), I'm fairly convinced that Blizzard goes out of their way to keep information away from their players. There really isn't any other reasonable explanation as to why they don't update their games with things to reflect how to build teams.

They say it's "not to enforce a meta", but I'm seriously having my doubts about that. I think it has more to do with keeping players ignorant for the sake of protecting themselves. The less you know about how a game works, the more likely it is for you to have fun doing your own thing and glossing over other major problems to an extent. In a game like Overwatch or HotS, it makes an easier time of people getting together to make a team of heroes they like. There's a lot more to it than that, but I think that's the gist of it.

I don't think that's exactly a bad thing, but to me personally it comes off as insulting the intelligence of their playerbase more than anything. Twitch and Youtube exist. They're pushing this thing as the next biggest esport in the world. Meanwhile their ranked mode is so different from the base modes that it segregates itself, and now there's a massive gulf between knowing basic information about the game and the average player. It seems kind of shitty to me to at least not make an effort to put tools in there to bridge the gap.

Again, I'm pretty sure they don't put those tools in there on purpose to keep players ignorant at this point. Again, there are very real reason to do that which I can totally respect. Lots of devs of more popular and competitive focused games do the same shit. "Protecting players form harming their own experience" is an extremely real design principle I will defend. I just think to the extent Blizzard does it is patronizing as hell while they're also trying to market their games as huge international esports.

Edit: I'm fully aware "not enforcing a meta" is the same as protecting people via ignorance. I just think that's not exactly what's being said :v

 

[Mr Git]

Looks like there is a patch for preload, interesting. Final nerfs coming soon?

Hopefully muh nothing voicelines.

 

[Kor of Memory]

Buy the event voice lines too cuz that's all I kept getting.

Don't do this. The table for getting a legendary is not the same as a common item. You're just going to increase the rate you get blue duplicates.

 

[Nepenthe]

Had some really great games just now. Most of them were wins, but the losses weren't us getting steamrolled. Culminated in all of us six-stacking and stomping the other team across Ilios and Numbani. Even killed a Winston twice in a 1v1. So many people propelled off cliffs, so much exp. It was good.

Then my latest lootbox had the Widow Odile skin in it and I'm like.

 

[mollipen]

A Mercy and Pharah raged at me in Competitive cause I decided to play as Genji since we needed one more attacker. They said I was trying to ruin their ship by bringing in homophobia and that I should be ashamed of myself. I really didn't know how to respond so after a while I changed to a tank.

Is that....normal in Comp?

...let me apologize on behalf of my people.

 

[LiK]

Don't do this. The table for getting a legendary is not the same as a common item. You're just going to increase the rate you get blue duplicates.

I thought Kaplan said all event items including things like event voicelines are in the same pool. I wasn't referring to regular voicelines.

 

[exYle]

I'm actually just going to say some probably borderline conspiracy theory stuff to elaborate on my last post. After experiencing Hearthstone (legend), Overwatch (GM), and HotS(wow I'm bad at MOBAs), I'm fairly convinced that Blizzard goes out of their way to keep information away from their players. There really isn't any other reasonable explanation as to why they don't update their games with things to reflect how to build teams.

They say it's "not to enforce a meta", but I'm seriously having my doubts about that. I think it has more to do with keeping players ignorant for the sake of protecting themselves. The less you know about how a game works, the more likely it is for you to have fun doing your own thing and glossing over other major problems to an extent. In a game like Overwatch or HotS, it makes an easier time of people getting together to make a team of heroes they like. There's a lot more to it than that, but I think that's the gist of it.

I don't think that's exactly a bad thing, but to me personally it comes off as insulting the intelligence of their playerbase more than anything. Twitch and Youtube exist. They're pushing this thing as the next biggest esport in the world. Meanwhile their ranked mode is so different from the base modes that it segregates itself, and now there's a massive gulf between knowing basic information about the game and the average player. It seems kind of shitty to me to at least not make an effort to put tools in there to bridge the gap.

Again, I'm pretty sure they don't put those tools in there on purpose to keep players ignorant at this point. Again, there are very real reason to do that which I can totally respect. Lots of devs of more popular and competitive focused games do the same shit. "Protecting players form harming their own experience" is an extremely real design principle I will defend. I just think to the extent Blizzard does it is patronizing as hell while they're also trying to market their games as huge international esports.

Edit: I'm fully aware "not enforcing a meta" is the same as protecting people via ignorance. I just think that's not exactly what's being said :v

So what would your preference be?

 

[Anne]

So what would your preference be?

Dunno. There are lots of people that like their Blizzard games and would probably like to stay ignorant of a greater metagame. If that's what Blizz is after, why change? If they expect to have it both ways where they have this audience as well as the sports audience, they might need to make some changes to their approach.

It's like trying to patch the game for top level play while the general audience literally thinks you are going in the opposite direction (hence the meme-y nature of Blizz balance discussions). You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. If they want to do both they should have better tools and community integration to at least better bridge the gap.

I don't think that's tutorials btw. That's pretty expensive and nobody plays that shit anyways and it's too late and blah blah. They need to make transitioning into comp easier and it needs to be made way more clear how teambuilding works. Ideally they would make it as easy as possible to say "I wanna play Mercy" or whatever and the game does its best job to plop you with groups of players where playing Mercy will be a sane course of action. Role select is one easy way, but I'm sure there are others.

They should probably also try not to have their general and competitive communities self segregate on reddit and stuff. It really creates an "us vs them" mentality between the two camps when I think everybody just wants a better overall experience.

 

[antitrop]

New Patch:

GENERAL UPDATES
Social

Players can now set their social status to Online, Away, Busy, or Appear Offline (Note: appearing offline does not prevent friends from seeing you if you are placed into the same match). This option can be found under the social menu

HERO UPDATES
Lúcio

Wall Ride
The speed boost that Lúcio receives after completing a wall ride has been increased by 65%
Developer Comments: A recent bug fix slowed Lúcio's Wall Ride. This change compensates for the reduced speed.

Mercy

Guardian Angel
Players can now glide past a targeted ally using the jump key
Cooldown no longer resets when Resurrect is activated
Valkyrie
No longer resets or reduces Resurrection's cooldown
Developer Comment: Valkyrie no longer resets or reduces Resurrect's cooldown. Instead, it now provides an extra 'charge,' allowing you to revive an ally even if it is still on cooldown. If the bonus charge hasn't been spent when Valkyrie ends, it will be removed.

This method makes Resurrect more flexible when used with Valkyrie. For example, in the past if you wanted to resurrect two teammates, you had to revive the first target, then activate Valkyrie (causing the Resurrect's cooldown to reset), and then revive the other target. With this change, you can now activate Valkyrie and fly in quickly to resurrect both targets instantly.

However, this still reduces the overall number of Resurrects that Mercy can provide, since Valkyrie no longer reduces its cooldown.

Zenyatta

Added a number of additional voicelines for Cultist Zenyatta

BUG FIXES
Heroes

Fixed a bug preventing Mercy's momentum from slowing down correctly when Guardian Angel was canceled
Fixed a bug preventing the visual effects on Sombra's Pumpkinette victory pose from displaying correctly

 

[Dead Prince]

is this patch on live?

couldn't they have waited until season was over to push the update though.

 

[Kysen]

Patch finally!

 

[LiK]

GENERAL UPDATES
Social
Players can now set their social status to Online, Away, Busy, or Appear Offline (Note: appearing offline does not prevent friends from seeing you if you are placed into the same match). This option can be found under the social menu

Made for Ned.

 

[rulerk1]

i thought they said that Valkyrie change wasn't gonna make it to live lol? hopefully the genji thing got changed on console

 

[Pooya]

man this is not enough, it's still 100 percent pick. nothing will change...

 

[Akuun]

The Mercy change with the charge system seems like a step in the right direction. You still have that extra res but you still can't spam res as much as before. I agree that she still seems like a must pick, though.

Incoming awkward moments and online drama when you have "appear offline" on and get matched up with someone you were trying to avoid.

 

[antitrop]

i thought they said that Valkyrie change wasn't gonna make it to live lol? hopefully the genji thing got changed on console

They said it wasn't going to make it to live soon. A lot of people missed the "soon" part.

 

[Azoor]

Seriously, the game desperately needs a better tutorial that guides you through the game's basics, team compositions, hero roles, the importance of communication, etc. To call the one we have right now bare bones is an understatement and showing the basics of how the maps work is useful as well.

Have an expanded training range, it's a very spacious map with really nothing much to do, they could do a lot more, have training bots that are hard to hit, or have bots that could only be killed with an environmental attack, the possibilities are endless! I only use the training range to test my ping and occasionally test new heroes.

 

[benicillin]

Still feel like Rez is overpowered as a normal ability (it should've stayed an ultimate!) and Mercy's ultimate is a Frankenstein mess that somehow is even less exciting to me to use than it was when they first reworked it.

 

[Kor of Memory]

I thought Kaplan said all event items including things like event voicelines are in the same pool. I wasn't referring to regular voicelines.

The pools work more complex than that.

Like, if you got every white and blue halloween item then that doesn't mean the next box you open is going to have all purple and yellows.

Think of it like this. Open Box:

1st Item:

• 50% White item
• 30% Blue item
• 15% Purple item
• 5% Yellow item

2nd Item:

• 50% White item
• 30% Blue item
• 15% Purple item
• 5% Yellow item

3rd Item:

• 50% White item
• 30% Blue item
• 15% Purple item
• 5% Yellow item

4th Item:

• 50% White item
• 30% Blue item
• 15% Purple item
• 5% Yellow item

Whatever your current "inventory" is has no impact on these percentages. Because it's after the quality role that the game looks for a new item vs a used item. As someone who has every blue and white item in the game, my loot boxes are basically

Box 1: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 2: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 3: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 4: Dup-white, Purple, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue (NEW ITEM!)
Box 5: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 6: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 7: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 8: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue
Box 9: Dup-white, Dup-Blue, Yellow, Dup-Blue (NEW ITEM!)
Box 10: Dup-white, Purple, Dup-Blue, Dup-Blue (NEW ITEM!)

 

[NeoRaider]

I don't understand Mercy changes. I am not sure what are they talking about.

 

[LiK]

I have almost everything too and I get a ton of dupes. Been complaining about it for months.

 

[Vault Dweller 111]

I don't really blame Blizzard for people not understanding mechanics. I think people just don't care.

You expect me to believe that the silver border player is playing way out in front of choke on 2CP maps because he just doesn't know any better? Nah he just doesn't give a shit. This has been happening more than ever lately when in theory all these dumb plays should only lessen as people play more. People just give less of a shit than ever.

 

[spootime]

Imagine being paid to design videogames, playing against a orisa/symm team, and thinking "man this is really fun gameplay"

 

[psyfi]

new mercy sounds dope

 

[Blues1990]

New Patch:

GENERAL UPDATES
Social

Players can now set their social status to Online, Away, Busy, or Appear Offline (Note: appearing offline does not prevent friends from seeing you if you are placed into the same match). This option can be found under the social menu

HERO UPDATES
Lúcio

Wall Ride
The speed boost that Lúcio receives after completing a wall ride has been increased by 65%
Developer Comments: A recent bug fix slowed Lúcio’s Wall Ride. This change compensates for the reduced speed.

Mercy

Guardian Angel
Players can now glide past a targeted ally using the jump key
Cooldown no longer resets when Resurrect is activated
Valkyrie
No longer resets or reduces Resurrection’s cooldown
Developer Comment: Valkyrie no longer resets or reduces Resurrect’s cooldown. Instead, it now provides an extra 'charge,' allowing you to revive an ally even if it is still on cooldown. If the bonus charge hasn’t been spent when Valkyrie ends, it will be removed.

This method makes Resurrect more flexible when used with Valkyrie. For example, in the past if you wanted to resurrect two teammates, you had to revive the first target, then activate Valkyrie (causing the Resurrect’s cooldown to reset), and then revive the other target. With this change, you can now activate Valkyrie and fly in quickly to resurrect both targets instantly.

However, this still reduces the overall number of Resurrects that Mercy can provide, since Valkyrie no longer reduces its cooldown.

Zenyatta

Added a number of additional voicelines for Cultist Zenyatta

BUG FIXES
Heroes

Fixed a bug preventing Mercy’s momentum from slowing down correctly when Guardian Angel was canceled
Fixed a bug preventing the visual effects on Sombra’s Pumpkinette victory pose from displaying correctly

Zenyatta now says "Experience oblivion." when he ults. Also, "Be one with the darkness." is what he says when he gives a harmony orb to a teammate. "Experience....Nothingness." is gone. Bummer, as I wished he had "Pass into the abyss." or "Experience insanity!" when Cthulhu Zenyatta uses transcendence.

 

[antitrop]

Zenyatta now says "Experience oblivion." when he ults. Also, "Be one with the darkness." is what he says when he gives a harmony orb to a teammate. "Experience....Nothingness." is gone. Bummer, as I wished he had "Pass into the abyss." or "Experience insanity!" when Cthulhu Zenyatta uses transcendence.

Why the hell did they change his ult line, Experience Nothingness is better.

Also his "Curses and Madness be upon you all" voice line just sounds way too happy, it should sound I dunno... a little threatening?

 

[Akuun]

Why the hell did they change his ult line, Experience Nothingness is better.

Also his "Curses and Madness be upon you all" voice line just sounds way too happy, it should sound I dunno... a little threatening?

Zen is bad at staying in character when cosplaying, I guess.

 

[Blues1990]

Why the hell did they change his ult line, Experience Nothingness is better.

Also his "Curses and Madness be upon you all" voice line just sounds way too happy, it should sound I dunno... a little threatening?

Your guess is as good as mine, man. I like the additional voice lines for his Harmony/Discord orbs, but the Ult voice line change is dumb.

 

[rulerk1]

Zenyatta now says "Experience oblivion." when he ults. Also, "Be one with the darkness." is what he says when he gives a harmony orb to a teammate. "Experience....Nothingness." is gone. Bummer, as I wished he had "Pass into the abyss." or "Experience insanity!" when Cthulhu Zenyatta uses transcendence.

i noticed when someone swithces to zen the "zen is with you" is slower and eerie. His default stance also looks like hes praying too. pretty nice

 

[Kysen]

Mercy's throwing left and right due to the nerfs. 2 rounds both mercy mains refused to play her and just threw the game, why queue if you're upset?

 

[Carl-Sagan]

Mercy's throwing left and right due to the nerfs. 2 rounds both mercy mains refused to play her and just threw the game, why queue if you're upset?

She isn't even that bad. The best thing about this change is that you're less dependent on saving that res and now you can use her ultimate whenever. You don't really get into many moments where you basically needed to res your whole team to win that engagement. The times that it does happen you'll notice the cooldown. The times that you don't the 30 seconds go fairly quick.

I'm basically a Mercy one trick and I can come to terms for this rework.

 

[Owzers]

Mercy's throwing left and right due to the nerfs. 2 rounds both mercy mains refused to play her and just threw the game, why queue if you're upset?

Protesting.

 

[ubersticky]

Werent you able to ressurect from a longer distance during Valkyrie?

 

[NeoRaider]

New Mercy is not bad at all. I still had 14 rezes in QP match. It's not as bad as i thought it will be. But i remember reading different changes when they hit PTR.
She is still the best healer imo.

BTW. I can't believe that i went from having ~6k average healing to 9k now, in 2-3 months.

 

[Kysen]

Just had another game right after my last post 3 mercy mains on my team this time. Fuck it i'm done with comp for today.

 

[TheThinWhiteDuke]

Incoming awkward moments and online drama when you have "appear offline" on and get matched up with someone you were trying to avoid.

It already happens on console.

I was grinding event lootboxes on my daughter's account, and had it set to Appear Offline to avoid her endless list of chatty friends. One of them showed up in a game, instantly started sending messages asking why I was hiding, then asking why was I ignoring him?

When I didn't answer he started focusing my poor Zen with Genji and teabagging after each kill, at which point I went Winston and cooked him repeatedly for the rest of the match (no teabagging, I'm not a savage).

 

[ubersticky]

Zen's voicelines are still glitched.

Mercy 2.5 is pretty boring now. I don't know why a 30 second charge if you only can have max 2 when your ult is only 20 seconds is even a thing? They really don't know what to do with her I guess. I'm expecting another rework/nerf/buff incoming soon.

Meanwhile Junkrat continues to bullshit.

 

[Blues1990]

Zen's voicelines are still glitched.

Mercy 2.5 is pretty boring now. I don't know why a 30 second charge if you only can have max 2 when your ult is only 20 seconds is even a thing? They really don't know what to do with her I guess. I'm expecting another rework/nerf/buff incoming soon.

Meanwhile Junkrat continues to bullshit.

And Lucio still feels like a lead weight.

 

[SgtWiggles]

So glad Mercy got nerfed, atleast it will make all of these matches where people insist on running a solo Ana or Lucio more bearable that we don't have to worry about our picks constantly getting negated making pushing the point impossible.

Now we need some around the table buffs for all the other healers (Or atleast Zen and Ana, Lucio is in a decent spot already)

 

[Nepenthe]

HERO UPDATES
Lúcio

Wall Ride
The speed boost that Lúcio receives after completing a wall ride has been increased by 65%
Developer Comments: A recent bug fix slowed Lúcio’s Wall Ride. This change compensates for the reduced speed.

Yus! Gotta go fast.

And hopefully the Lucio Mains subreddit is off of life support now.

 

[TWrecks310]

Godspeed to anyone brave enough to play right now while control maps are disabled.

There's a 33% chance to get an assault map now

 

[icecold1983]

I'm actually just going to say some probably borderline conspiracy theory stuff to elaborate on my last post. After experiencing Hearthstone (legend), Overwatch (GM), and HotS(wow I'm bad at MOBAs), I'm fairly convinced that Blizzard goes out of their way to keep information away from their players. There really isn't any other reasonable explanation as to why they don't update their games with things to reflect how to build teams.

They say it's "not to enforce a meta", but I'm seriously having my doubts about that. I think it has more to do with keeping players ignorant for the sake of protecting themselves. The less you know about how a game works, the more likely it is for you to have fun doing your own thing and glossing over other major problems to an extent. In a game like Overwatch or HotS, it makes an easier time of people getting together to make a team of heroes they like. There's a lot more to it than that, but I think that's the gist of it.

I don't think that's exactly a bad thing, but to me personally it comes off as insulting the intelligence of their playerbase more than anything. Twitch and Youtube exist. They're pushing this thing as the next biggest esport in the world. Meanwhile their ranked mode is so different from the base modes that it segregates itself, and now there's a massive gulf between knowing basic information about the game and the average player. It seems kind of shitty to me to at least not make an effort to put tools in there to bridge the gap.

Again, I'm pretty sure they don't put those tools in there on purpose to keep players ignorant at this point. Again, there are very real reason to do that which I can totally respect. Lots of devs of more popular and competitive focused games do the same shit. "Protecting players form harming their own experience" is an extremely real design principle I will defend. I just think to the extent Blizzard does it is patronizing as hell while they're also trying to market their games as huge international esports.

Edit: I'm fully aware "not enforcing a meta" is the same as protecting people via ignorance. I just think that's not exactly what's being said :v

not much there to insult

 

[dralla]

These Mercy "nerfs" barely did anything. She's still insanely good and by far the best healer and an auto-include. Resurrect should not be a normal ability, it should be tied to Valkyrie.

 

[broncobuster]

Why not just have Mercy's revive limited to 50% health?

 

[MG310]

More solo healing as Zen because we had no tank or healer and the last guy before me to pick chose Hanzo.

This time with the added bonus being that if I didn't sit on the payload it would never have moved at all. We never had more than 2 people on it for the entire attack.

 

[SgtWiggles]

Godspeed to anyone brave enough to play right now while control maps are disabled.

There's a 33% chance to get an assault map now

No control? Thats fucking amazing, I might put a few games in now then.

I'd rather run Volskaya and Hanamura any day than run Oasis or Illios again. Getting tired of having train run on my team because nobody wants to counter the Pharah rocketing everyone in the back of the head, or someone wants to run Symmetra and says "Trust me I'll switch if its not working".

 

[CelestialWolfZX]

Ugh, done the ranking matches now, L L L D L L W D W W. 2335 and into Gold Rank, out of Platinum. Gotta claw my way back up into the Platinum Leagues now before season end. The last few matches were supremely easy though, as in, we went 3-0 easy. Hope the climb up isn't too difficult.