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[onepiecefan]

Any one else have problems with lag? I'm playing on ps4 in eu, and it's unplayable atm.

Not on atm but when the patch went live I remember there was some pretty crazy lag that I hadn't experienced before, probably because so many people were on. I imagine it's not to dissimilar atm, considering we're in the free weekend.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Alright, now I got the chance to actually watch some overwatch videos it actually seems like zarya's tickrate buff is actually a buff for DVA too because now armour properly negates her damage?

 

[Garrett Hawke]

I was right, the Overwatch ps4 pro patch did basically nothing.

Locked at 1080p and with better AF. Nothing else. https://youtu.be/DrWoDjj6xHI

Soooo lazy.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Patches done. Yay~

Time to see what this overwatch game is all about.

edit: holy crap sombra's gun feels way worse than I expected.

 

[Kito]

How does Sombra hack Torbjorn's turret? While it's firing at someone else?

Sometimes the turret will have a blindspot you can hack from, but other times you're better off stealthing to get super close and shooting it down.

 

[Redmoon]

Did a 1v1 on my alt. Was pretty fun to play. Every character I wasn't good at that got picked I lost lol. Went 4-5.

Might play this and 3v3 more eventually.

 

[Don Draper's Hat]

Does a hacked turret just die or does it start shooting at the opposing team?

 

[Bananastand]

I just want to win 1 vs. 1 one time so I will never, ever, ever play it again. I'm so fucking terrible at it and I'm usually pretty good in a team.

 

[AbaFadi]

Patches done. Yay~

Time to see what this overwatch game is all about.

edit: holy crap sombra's gun feels way worse than I expected.

If you get close enough Sombra's gun can melt a 200 health target relatively quick if you can land your shots.

 

[ISOM]

I just want to win 1 vs. 1 one time so I will never, ever, ever play it again. I'm so fucking terrible at it and I'm usually pretty good in a team.

Won it my first try and haven't gotten an interest in playing it again.

 

[WaffleTaco]

I love 1v1. I mainly use it as a warm up and play about two games. It helps you know the characters a lot better, especially when wanting facing off them in an actual game. I can usually win most of them, I just wish they didn't have characters like: Torb, Bastion, Sym. They rely too much on waiting for someone to come to you.

 

[Antiwhippy]

First day back in comp, up 1 game won overall with 2W1L.

The L had a guy go sombra on attack at eichenwilde.

I'll take it.

Also I might collapse any moment from jet lag so it probably wasn't too bad overall.

 

[Auctopus]

I was looking forward to blasting away some free weekenders but Kaplan seems to have personally implemented an algorithm that puts them all on my team.

 

[Skii]

I wonder if the best team comp now is Soldier, Sombra, Dva, Zarya, Zenyatta/Ana, Lucio.

All the ults there just synergise so well and these heroes just seem insanely powerful at the moment.

 

[Blues1990]

I wonder if the best team comp now is Soldier, Sombra, Dva, Zarya, Zenyatta/Ana, Lucio.

All the ults there just synergise so well and these heroes just seem insanely powerful at the moment.

With the exception of Lucio, I would think that team would excel excellently.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Lucio is still good if you use him primarily as a speed booster.

Or more accurately if you're in a team that have enough teamwork and knowledge to utilise speedboost.

Also he's still good with ana. Biotic grenade allows him to heal quite a bit still and you need speedboost now that nano no longer gives you speed.

 

[Anne]

I wonder if the best team comp now is Soldier, Sombra, Dva, Zarya, Zenyatta/Ana, Lucio.

All the ults there just synergise so well and these heroes just seem insanely powerful at the moment.

The fighting ability of that team is kinda eh. Those characters are all really good, but the comp itself lacks a lot of synergy in fighting and playing on the map. There's a lot more to a comp than just getting a bunch of good chars/ults. The old S1 cancer comp for instance was not just good because it had good characters. They all created this type of super dive that was extremely hard to counter. S2 comps with beyblade and Mei and stuff are designed with a lot of synergy too, even if a character (like Mei) isn't exceptionally strong by themselves.

Lucio is still mad good, speedboost bot gonna hit E. Aura spot healing still good enough to get through some close calls. High level play right now is really funny because we're at a "everybody is seeing play" point right now anyways. Those ult changes seriously fucked up a lot of old strats.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Also at some point.

You're gonna need a reinhardt.

You just do.

 

[Anne]

Also at some point.

You're gonna need a reinhardt.

You just do.

Yup. Or a McCree. You still more or less need Tracer/Genji for KOTH. Winston is still a better dive tank than D.Va Rein is at the worst he has ever been right now, but he's going to get picked. 2/2/2 is actually kinda eh right now compared to things like 3/1/2. The list of stuff goes on.

 

[Red Arremer]

Overwatch really needs more characters who can fill the same main tank role as Reinhardt does.

 

[Antiwhippy]

I think it's just comp and map dependant, which is honestly how it should be. People can opt for winston instead of rein depending on those 2.

Like, if you're running a genji/tracer/reaper based offense, what's the point of a rein?

 

[Blues1990]

Lucio is still good if you use him primarily as a speed booster.

Or more accurately if you're in a team that have enough teamwork and knowledge to utilise speedboost.

Also he's still good with ana. Biotic grenade allows him to heal quite a bit still and you need speedboost now that nano no longer gives you speed.

I'm really not looking forward to being a simple speedboost bot in Season 3, as I usually fly solo and not a lot of people select the Support Heroes. Crippling Lucio's healing potential is making my life a headache right now.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Yeah, it's a hard decision honestly I think with how blizzard should go about balancing him, but I think it's the right decision to make him more of a specialist.

Learn ana! She's still good, she's still a lot of fun, she's still the actual best healer at healing.

 

[Anne]

Overwatch really needs more characters who can fill the same main tank role as Reinhardt does.

I think the game has developed in a way so that it's not that bad with how he is anymore. The 5 tanks are all kind of extreme in their niches right now anyways. You have a poking tank, a diving tank, a pick tank, a fighting/peeling tank, and whatever the hell D.Va is. There are lots of different strats that those tanks fill in on. Like, Rein is the poke tank but he's trash at peeling and engaging. The only tank really super good at engaging is Winston, do we need another engage tank too? The only tank that can shield and peel in a large area is Zarya, do we need another that can do that too? The only thing about Rein is he lacks a lot of crossover abilities the other chars have.

I will say the Rein issue probably has a lot more to do with maps and modes. The fact linear maps have sections where Rein just covers a lot makes him crazy good. The fact those maps also have chokes you have to move slowly into makes him must pick (side note: when Mei started making that less appealing Rein got worse). So having another tank that can safely push a team through those spaces would be pretty nice, yeah. That's really what it boils down to, and it leaves a lot more room than just "someone who can block damage".

I think a tank that excels at creating space somewhere in a different range would be nice. The ranges that the tanks can control are pretty wildly apart and have lots of gaps. You either get Winston creating too much forward space at once or Rein slowly crawling to give you some. D.Va can do that on some maps but ehhh.

Edit: I will say that having a tank other than Rein that can reliably counterplay something like another Rein's ult would be nice too >_>

 

[Astral/H3X]

Winston is better for diving than Dva, but Dva is better at soaking up huge amounts of burst damage, since her DM has more uptime than bubble shield, and also ignores damage.

Also you can project it, which leads to moments where you know that roadhog is pissed at you for nulling almost his entire ult.

FWIW the last few days I've been doing better as Dva than Winston.

 

[NeoRaider]

Did they do something to Soldier? Increased his dmg??
He can kill you so fast now, and i don't even want to talk about his Ulti. WTF?

 

[Antiwhippy]

17dmg per bullet increased to 20dmg.

 

[Redmoon]

All the weeks I've spent playing D.va almost exclusively.

Really took its toll on my aiming capability with 76. Feels like I'm back at square 1 for aiming with him :<

 

[Skii]

The fighting ability of that team is kinda eh. Those characters are all really good, but the comp itself lacks a lot of synergy in fighting and playing on the map. There's a lot more to a comp than just getting a bunch of good chars/ults. The old S1 cancer comp for instance was not just good because it had good characters. They all created this type of super dive that was extremely hard to counter. S2 comps with beyblade and Mei and stuff are designed with a lot of synergy too, even if a character (like Mei) isn't exceptionally strong by themselves.

Lucio is still mad good, speedboost bot gonna hit E. Aura spot healing still good enough to get through some close calls. High level play right now is really funny because we're at a "everybody is seeing play" point right now anyways. Those ult changes seriously fucked up a lot of old strats.

Yeah my only concern is that it has some dive heroes vs heroes that need a good line of defence/attack. The problem is that this meta is defined by who can keep their Rein alive the longest. Whoever loses their Rein first is almost always the team that loses the fight. And Rein can't actually do much when the fight erupts especially without the increased speed for Nanoboost. I don't know if the addition of Sombra and an improved Soldier is the point where running a Rein just isn't optimal anymore. There's just so much more DPS in this game and far more disruption with antiheals and hacking.

 

[Psychoward]

17dmg per bullet increased to 20dmg.

Thought it was 21? Which would mean an extra 100 potential damage per clip


Edit: also wtf is diving

 

[Blues1990]

Yeah, it's a hard decision honestly I think with how blizzard should go about balancing him, but I think it's the right decision to make him more of a specialist.

Learn ana! She's still good, she's still a lot of fun, she's still the actual best healer at healing.

How is Lucio a specialist? Because everyone sees him as a glorified taxi cab with roller skates?

The thing is, Lucio's pick rate has nothing to do with him being a strong healer, or strong in general. He's picked because every other support is a ''victim'' with no mobility. He's picked because he touch to the most basic mechanic, which is engage/disengage. He's not strong, just needed because no support hero has an alternative to that very basic mechanic, and they honestly should spend more effort into introducing an alternative over nerfing a perfectly fine hero, all because they are too lazy to fix Mercy or making Symmetra a more viable "Support" hero.

Hell, the game needs more reliable AOE healing options, as Soldier 76's Biotic Field doesn't cut the cheese.

 

[NeoRaider]

17dmg per bullet increased to 20dmg.

Did he needed that? I mean... why Blizzard?

 

[Antiwhippy]

That's what I mean. Make him a engage/disengage specialist and not also a fairly competent aoe healer.

I'm also not sure if that's enough to make people make hard decisions about him just because ana can heal so much.

I do agree about having more aoe heal types, but maybe not couple it with something as essential as speed. I dunno though. I do think the healer section is a bit muddled right now. What exactly is the point of mercy...?

 

[Anne]

Edit: also wtf is diving

You "dive" deep into an enemy team quickly to try and secure kills. Like with Winston you jump in pretty hard looking to put down pressure on somebody as quickly as possible. To follow up a Winston dive you usually have somebody with mobility or positioning power to move in after him and actually get the kill. A dive heavy team is like Winston/Zarya/Tracer/Genjie/Zenyatta/Lucio since you can just go in super super deep with all the mobility and safe damage. S1 was basically the entire meta of that. Nowadays you still see it with things like that, but also with things like Reaper/Winston/Ana/Lucio you could do disgusting things.

Please, Lucio is broke as fuck if you allow him to have both adequate healing and speed. Blizzard chose to leave him with speed and take away the healing. Yes, we need either other mobility options or a complete nuke to speedboost or Lucio will just be picked. That doesn't mean he should be good at healing along with speedboost just because.

 

[Blues1990]

That's what I mean. Make him a engage/disengage specialist and not also a fairly competent aoe healer.

I'm also not sure if that's enough to make people make hard decisions about him just because ana can heal so much.

I do agree about having more aoe heal types, but maybe not couple it with something as essential as speed. I dunno though. I do think the healer section is a bit muddled right now. What exactly is the point of mercy...?

It would be interesting if Lucio had to use his speed to move between allies to heal with close range healing, rather than having an AoE heal and giving a limited AOE healing ability to Mercy (in combination with her regular healing). That would make Lucio's fast speed be an inseparable pat of his ability to heal.

But, yeah. Mercy is the most healing oriented of the Supports, but is also the most team-dependent. Aside from being the resident reset button with legs, I don't know what her purpose is.

Please, Lucio is broke as fuck if you allow him to have both adequate healing and speed. Blizzard chose to leave him with speed and take away the healing. Yes, we need either other mobility options or a complete nuke to speedboost or Lucio will just be picked. That doesn't mean he should be good at healing along with speedboost just because.

Lucio was balanced just fine at launch. People didn't start to complain about him until relatively recently. What happened?

 

[Antiwhippy]

Thing is mercy should be the best healer of the group based on her limitations, but they gave that to ana anyway just because... I dunno? Maybe they just think she's more fun? I certainly think so.

And ana can anti-heal as well. She's just ridiculously stacked honestly. In that she has a ridiculous amount of utility, not the other meaning.

 

[Anne]

Lucio was balanced just fine at launch. People didn't start to complain about him until relatively recently. What happened?

Myself and many other people in the competitive part of the community, including pros, have been saying he's broke since beta. The general community for the game didn't pick up on that until at some point in S1 where it was hard to avoid the reality.

I have a lot of general gripes with this community and the way Blizzard communicates/teaches the general playerbase, and this whole "Lucio is fine" thing is one of the most annoying results of it.

Thing is mercy should be the best healer of the group based on her limitations, but they gave that to ana anyway just because... I dunno? Maybe they just think she's more fun? I certainly think so.

I'm straight up going to say that Ana was an accident. Blizzard had no clue what the hell they were making with that character. Mercy is still better at other things, it's just those things haven't been as valuable as Ana the last couple patches. I think the entire roadmap for what supports were supposed to be got entirely fucked up by Blizzard not understanding the extent of the support metagaming until very recently.

I think Blizzard stuck to their initial design targets for far too long in general tbh. They're just now overhauling a ton of shit that reflect that and things are taking awhile to really form.

 

[Antiwhippy]

I think ana was just them going "How do we make a super fun healer that would appeal to DPS" and nobody said no to every suggestion written down.

I honestly think her kit could probably be spread between 2 characters. Whatever though, I'm glad she's how she is even though she does make the healer meta a bit weird.

 

[Anne]

I think ana was just them going "How do we make a super fun healer that would appeal to DPS" and nobody said no to every suggestion written down.

I honestly think her kit should probably be spread between 2 characters.

Tbf I believe she was designed at a point in time where Blizzard was still balancing supports to be played in solo scenarios. At least, I think that way because it makes no sense otherwise. All the supports have been /stupidly/ strong at various points, and I really don't have an explanation for that other than they weren't designing/balancing them with the idea in mind that they would more or less never be solo. I'm willing to bet they had a rule of "must be able to succeed solo" that they didn't want to budge on until recently. Unfortunately this never led to solo supports really; it just created the stupid power levels we've seen them have over the cycle of the game.

The entire idea of sticking too close to a design document in spite of community influence reeks of Blizzard. Their balance decisions aren't terrible by any means, I just think they've been really conservative in regards to that vision and it shows the most in supports. The recent stuff though is a lot more promising. Now I just hope they clean up some of the community perception problems they introduced early on as well.

Edit: In more fairness, when I first looked at the game solo support made sense to me based on other things in similar genres. It's also an ideal scenario because it gives players more options in choosing characters since there are less slots forced into support. Just happens to turn out that the way OW works in order to be able to reliably solo heal you need either a completely crazy amount of power on a support or the majority of your team needs strong self sustainability :T

 

[Antiwhippy]

Yeah I think that makes sense, though that makes you wonder wtf they were thinking with day one zen. I know he was pretty crazy in the beta though.

Also been catching up to the tournaments, and I know it's still early in the meta so who the fuck knows how things will turn out this time, but it warms my heart to see mei play still, and being effective too, mostly from recry and zappis. More specialised now, but that's fine.

 

[Blues1990]

Myself and many other people in the competitive part of the community, including pros, have been saying he's broke since beta. The general community for the game didn't pick up on that until at some point in S1 where it was hard to avoid the reality.

I have a lot of general gripes with this community and the way Blizzard communicates/teaches the general playerbase, and this whole "Lucio is fine" thing is one of the most annoying results of it.

Is his "brokenness" due to Lucio's passive aura that effectively become an environment effect present in every single map? Or is it that he looks at players to heal, then presses a button to SUPER heal? That comes with the territory of having such an ability, so I do not think simply adjusting his numbers is a solution.

 

[Antiwhippy]

No, it's just the fact he has speed. Having speed is better than having no speed, ergo you need speed.

 

[Anne]

Is his "brokenness" due to Lucio's passive aura that effectively become an environment effect present in every single map? Or is it that he looks at players to heal, then presses a button to SUPER heal? That comes with the territory of having such an ability, so I do not think simply adjusting his numbers is a solution.

He's busted because he adds the strongest basic CD in the game(speedboost) to a support slot with no major downside associated with it? Like I don't understand what there isn't to get about that. They wanted to keep that CD in the game so they added a (fairly mild) downside in the form of reduced healing.

I mean I'd rather they remove speedboost rather than adjust numbers. Mobility creep is fucking horrible to deal with. That's not happening at this point though, so I guess they have to hit his healing.

Him being busted has everything to do with speedboost being strong and requried in comp while also not having to give up healing power. Like that's it. Literally is just that simple.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Can you get trophies in the old Quick Play that's now in arcade, or just in new QP and Competitive?

 

[Blues1990]

He's busted because he adds the strongest basic CD in the game(speedboost) to a support slot with no major downside associated with it? Like I don't understand what there isn't to get about that. They wanted to keep that CD in the game so they added a (fairly mild) downside in the form of reduced healing.

I mean I'd rather they remove speedboost rather than adjust numbers. Mobility creep is fucking horrible to deal with. That's not happening at this point though, so I guess they have to hit his healing.

Him being busted has everything to do with speedboost being strong and requried in comp while also not having to give up healing power. Like that's it. Literally is just that simple.

In the scenario that they do remove his speed boost completely, what would you suggest to replace it?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Dear dumbass: please stop picking Reinhardt in 3v3.

 

[BigDug13]

In the scenario that they do remove his speed boost completely, what would you suggest to replace it?

Maybe defensive aura or offensive aura and replace Mercy's offensive beam with something different. I like the idea of speed boost because of how bards have been handled in MMORPG's for so long since Everquest and so it really fits with his musical support auras like a bard. But maybe it's just too necessary of a skill where that one class is basically required in every comp. The team that doesn't have speed at the high level is pretty much guaranteed to lose just like the team that doesn't have healing is guaranteed to lose. The only difference is that there are 4 classes that heal (5 with soldier but whatever) and only 1 class that can provide speed to a party.

 

[Blues1990]

Maybe defensive aura or offensive aura and replace Mercy's offensive beam with something different. I like the idea of speed boost because of how bards have been handled in MMORPG's for so long since Everquest and so it really fits with his musical support auras like a bard. But maybe it's just too necessary of a skill where that one class is basically required in every comp. The team that doesn't have speed at the high level is pretty much guaranteed to lose just like the team that doesn't have healing is guaranteed to lose. The only difference is that there are 4 classes that heal (5 with soldier but whatever) and only 1 class that can provide speed to a party.

Like a shield or regenerative armour that is there, so long as the song is playing?

 

[Anne]

In the scenario that they do remove his speed boost completely, what would you suggest to replace it?

I don't know really. It's too much to change now so RIP on the idea anyways. I just hate that the answer to mobility being broke is to add more competitive mobility into the game. That's not /exactly/ how power/mobility/x creep works, but it's pretty close. I'd rather not Lucio tier mobility be a requirement in competitive at any rate, and with it how it is now it's very hard to imagine how they would solve it.

It's really just a mess they put themselves in with no easy out. Every solution available kind of sucks. Either nerf Lucio more, add more mobility into the game, or go for a redesign. Nobody wins lol

 

[Garrett Hawke]

If they continue to nerf Lucio's healing I hope they add another low-effort healer. He was kind of my go to for solo queue quick play when I was feeling tired.