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[Nazo]

I was thinking about the Bastion buff last night and I came to the realization that this could have been avoided if Blizzard had listened to PTR feedback. I remember like a month ago when the buff first hit the PTR that there where a bunch of people saying he was OP. Hell I remember it was even trending on Facebook at the time. I personally thought they were assuredly going to change it by the time it hit live but here we are. Like, why does Blizzard have the PTR in the first place if they are just going to blatantly ignore player out cry. If they're just going to treat the PTR as more of a preview than an actual public TEST realm than I don't see much of a point to it.

but...like, why can't blizzard work in increments, jeez

They've had this problem since the game came out. I honestly think they're afraid if they make small incremental changes they won't either be enough of a change or will be that noticeable to the player base at large. It seems like they'ed rather throw caution (and balance) to the wind and just slap on huge buffs and or nerfs.

 

[DevilDog]

In this scenario with a lack of Reinhardt, something to also consider is the lack of a defending Reinhardt as well and what that does for making advances, and the utility of the other tanks to make for sudden defensive measures. Zarya loves spam, D.Va eats it up, and Winston can still be the disruptor. CP is still choked to a point of strangulation though, but eh, the mode sucks either way.

What this mean for advances is everyone going dive comp. Zarya loves spam, but for less than 1 second till her shield gets shredded and a widowmaker headshots her and leaves her for dead. D.va eats spam up, for 4 seconds, and then she has to recharge and hope that none of her teammates peek again.

Winston is a good disruptor indeed, but it depends a lot on what the enemy team is running and the map. One nightmarish scenario, is that without rein, winston will just get chain healed by ana from across the map.

I was thinking about the Bastion buff last night and I came to the realization that this could have been avoided if Blizzard had listened to PTR feedback. I remember like a month ago when the buff first hit the PTR that there where a bunch of people saying he was OP. Hell I remember it was even trending on Facebook at the time. I personally thought they were assuredly going to change it by the time it hit live but here we are. Like, why does Blizzard have the PTR in the first place if they are just going to blatantly ignore player out cry. If there just going to treat the PTR as more of a preview than an actual public TEST realm than I don't see much of a point to it.

Jeff made a video about this

but I still agree with your first point. I'm starting to think Blizzard is slowly starting to lagg behind the competitive scene.

 

[Antiwhippy]

The competitive scene isn't even really using bastion all that much currently, though there are many factors with this (unfamiliarity being chief amongst it). I think for now people are feeling their way around it but it seems that people think that it isn't as bad as they thought it was. Matches I've seen with him, he gets neutered pretty easily by a dive comp, and he's still not great on attack.

He is pretty strong for the lower levels though, and blizzard can't just balance according to the highest of levels.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Then overwatch might as well be team deathmatch really, less mobile heroes are pretty much useless, and positioning means nothing.

Of all the characters and abilities that exist in the game, a lack of solely Reinhardt makes characters without mobility options and positioning useless? I think that's making an incredibly damning claim on Overwatch as it currently exists. But the TDM aspect of the game still applies with or without him -- you get the numbers advantage by killing and make your advance. I think the game could play fine without him, not that it's what I'm saying should happen or anything, it's just that when talking about Reinhardt's impact and what things would be like without him, it really needs to be contextualized that you can't take current experiences into account because he wouldn't exist for either team and that would make a huge difference across the board in how skirmishes work.

 

[Apathy]

BTW, you want to see delusional dva mains, https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753395783?page=1

 

[Nazo]

Jeff made a video about this

but I still agree with your first point. I'm starting to think Blizzard is slowly starting to lagg behind the competitive scene.

I remember watching this before and just watched the first few minuets to refresh myself on what he said and making sure the of the games stability is definitely a good reason to have the PTR and I honestly forgot about that. I can totally get behind that. But first and foremost in the video he says that the PTR is to test new changes and get player feedback and they failed to do that this go around for some reason and that's just lame.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Of all the characters and abilities that exist in the game, a lack of solely Reinhardt makes characters without mobility options and positioning useless? I think that's making an incredibly damning claim on Overwatch as it currently exists. But the TDM aspect of the game still applies with or without him -- you get the numbers advantage by killing and make your advance. I think the game could play fine without him, not that it's what I'm saying should happen or anything, it's just that when talking about Reinhardt's impact and what things would be like without him, it really needs to be contextualized that you can't take current experiences into account because he wouldn't exist for either team and that would make a huge difference across the board in how skirmishes work.

I mean we can. It's called the discord meta.

It's pretty much "see which winston/genji combo comes up on top and pray to god".

Withotu rein so many character will have no way to approach some points on the map without being cut down. How are you going to walk into a widow or a roadhog without protection? How do you approach a soldier just camping the top spot with an ana? The answer is pretty much winston and genji jumping on them.

 

[Skii]

BTW, you want to see delusional dva mains, https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753395783?page=1

*triggered*

 

[Rickenslacker]

I mean we can. It's called the discord meta.

It's pretty much "see which winston/genji combo comes up on top and pray to god".

Withotu rein so many character will have no way to approach some points on the map without being cut down. How are you going to walk into a widow or a roadhog without protection? How do you approach a soldier just camping the top spot with an ana? The answer is pretty much winston and genji jumping on them.

For the sake of discussion, which characters? The only characters in the game that have a lack of any kind of mobility option outside of the standard are Bastion (disregarding ult), Torbjorn, Symmetra, Roadhog, Zenyatta, Ana, and McCree, and I don't think it's Reinhardt that specifically enables any of them. Also, are the characters that would have difficulty having difficulty because an enemy Rein enables a strong opposing defense?

 

[Apathy]

*triggered*

And that's why dva mains in the forums should not be listened to.

 

[Red Arremer]

he says that the PTR is to test new changes and get player feedback and they failed to do that this go around

Not only this go around. They've always just tossed all the changes they made to PTR onto Live without actually listening to player feedback.
Of course, his argument that the PTR isn't used by a lot of players and that there's a lot of armchair analysts in the community that are very vocal isn't wrong, but it also ignores the fact that you don't have to have a gorillion people test the changes to know how they can impact the gameplay.
Bastion's original passive percentage made him survive a Tracer ult stuck onto him when in turret form. It let him outheal Reaper's ultimate at point blank. And that's without an actual healer on his ass. You don't need to have played the PTR to know that's just too powerful.

And this is also the reason I fully expect that D.Va bug that's on PTR currently to go onto Live before they fix it.

 

[Apathy]

Not only this go around. They've always just tossed all the changes they made to PTR onto Live without actually listening to player feedback.
Of course, his argument that the PTR isn't used by a lot of players and that there's a lot of armchair analysts in the community that are very vocal isn't wrong, but it also ignores the fact that you don't have to have a gorillion people test the changes to know how they can impact the gameplay.
Bastion's original passive percentage made him survive a Tracer ult stuck onto him when in turret form. It let him outheal Reaper's ultimate at point blank. And that's without an actual healer on his ass. You don't need to have played the PTR to know that's just too powerful.

And this is also the reason I fully expect that D.Va bug that's on PTR currently to go onto Live before they fix it.

What dva bug?

 

[Data West]

They said they receive very little feedback from PTR and try to encourage more players to play it. But then they push the PTR changes live anyways.


It's almost like PTR isn't working and you should stop relying on your players to do the testing for you in PTR when most will wait for live. Pay a fucking third party to test the balance for you. Test is internally more. The PTR isn't working for that and you saying 'pls test more' isn't changing that

 

[Red Arremer]

What dva bug?

When you recall a mecha after losing your first one in a life, that mecha's defense matrix doesn't absorb bullets anymore. The only way to get it working again is to actually die.

 

[Antiwhippy]

For the sake of discussion, which characters? The only characters in the game that have a lack of any kind of mobility option outside of the standard are Bastion (disregarding ult), Torbjorn, Symmetra, Roadhog, Zenyatta, Ana, and McCree, and I don't think it's Reinhardt that specifically enables any of them. Also, are the characters that would have difficulty having difficulty because an enemy Rein enables a strong opposing defense?

Let's see. I think it's easier to list the characters can easily reach the high grounds that pretty much defines overwatch defense. Here are those who can: Winston, Dva, Genji, Pharah, tracer, mercy kinda, and... no one else, though I possibly missed some.

Let's say you're attacking on king's row. If there's no winston, & no reinhardt, and all you have are a bunch of dps players walking in, they're either going to be instagib at the first choke because defenders can spam the shit out of it. Or they can split up the main path and hotel path and get cut down because they have to split and the defense team doesn't.

Thing about overwatch defense is that it relegates you to some set paths, and that defense always gets the pick of positioning. So what can you do? You either get a mobile cover that allows you to reposition to a more favourable position, or you go "fuck positioning" and dive in to deathmatch on the point.

You're not really solving a diversity problem, you're just replacing one thing with another.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

When you recall a mecha after losing your first one in a life, that mecha's defense matrix doesn't absorb bullets anymore. The only way to get it working again is to actually die.

l m a o

they truly hate her now

 

[Red Arremer]

Let's see. I think it's easier to list the characters can easily reach the high grounds that pretty much defines overwatch defense. Here are those who can: Winston, Dva, Genji, Pharah, tracer, mercy kinda, and... no one else, though I possibly missed some.

Soldier, Zarya and Junkrat (lol) can rocket/grenade jump, Hanzo can climb, Reaper and Sombra can teleport, Widow can grapple, Lucio can wallglide, and Mei can use her wall to lift non-mobile characters as well as herself up.

 

[aeolist]

wooo just got my first sextuple kill as rein

zarya ult setup obviously

 

[Anne]

The new gate on Eichenwalde might have a few bugs

https://gfycat.com/HairyPalatableAlaskankleekai

 

[aeolist]

BTW, you want to see delusional dva mains, https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753395783?page=1

she's good again with the matrix upgrade, don't know why people are complaining still

 

[TheOddOne]

Yeah, I've seen my fair share of D.Va's in my matches and she is still very viable.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Soldier, Zarya and Junkrat (lol) can rocket/grenade jump, Hanzo can climb, Reaper and Sombra can teleport, Widow can grapple, Lucio can wallglide, and Mei can use her wall to lift non-mobile characters as well as herself up.

They can't rocket jump to the heights needed to reach those defenses (except junkrat, but lol junkrat), hanzo and widow are good ones that I forgot but the snipers pretty much need to position themselves in a way to avoid being dove on, should have mentioned lucio, reaper and sombra has too much of a delay to really be useful for that purpose (reaper especially) and the mei thing is cute but unreliable. Plus the whole thing is about how to approach them while they're shooting the shit out of you.

 

[Apathy]

l m a o

they truly hate her now

That'll get fixed, it's too big not to

she's good again with the matrix upgrade, don't know why people are complaining still

She's great at protecting teammates now and can still get people off some high ground positions (and harass widows) again, if people stopped trying to go in full solo into a group of enemies and just hold down left click they might actually live

 

[Skii]

And that's why dva mains in the forums should not be listened to.

I've never really looked at the forums but after today I genuinely feel sorry for the developers. The amount of shit opinions they have to wade through to try and balance heroes is shocking.

 

[aeolist]

She's great at protecting teammates now and can still get people off some high ground positions (and harass widows) again, if people stopped trying to go in full solo into a group of enemies and just hold down left click they might actually live

yeah she's amazing against hog especially. i guess people are still just trying to play her the same instead of adapting.

 

[Red Arremer]

They can't rocket jump to the heights needed to reach those defenses

Well I wasn't sure which defenses you were referring to, though I suppose there are a few that they can't reach rocket jumping, sure.

As for the rest of your post: I didn't disagree or anything, I just wanted to list all the characters that have vertical mobility one way or another and could reach high ground.

 

[Apathy]

I've never really looked at the forums but after today I genuinely feel sorry for the developers. The amount of shit opinions they have to wade through to try and balance heroes is shocking.

Some people take certain characters nerfs too personally and rather than to adapt any to force the old style of play. Hell, the game is also built around changing characters mid game if you need to counter something but how often do people actually change to try something different rather than continue to go into a meat grinder. You'd think the game locks you into a toon at the start the way some people play.

Dva mains, more so than anyone else, seem to not want to change. The forums are so clogged with threads about her that they are unbearable.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Let's see. I think it's easier to list the characters can easily reach the high grounds that pretty much defines overwatch defense. Here are those who can: Winston, Dva, Genji, Pharah, tracer, mercy kinda, and... no one else, though I possibly missed some.

Let's say you're attacking on king's row. If there's no winston, & no reinhardt, and all you have are a bunch of dps players walking in, they're either going to be instagib at the first choke because defenders can spam the shit out of it. Or they can split up the main path and hotel path and get cut down because they have to split and the defense team doesn't.

Thing about overwatch defense is that it relegates you to some set paths, and that defense always gets the pick of positioning. So what can you do? You either get a mobile cover that allows you to reposition to a more favourable position, or you go "fuck positioning" and dive in to deathmatch on the point.

You're not really solving a diversity problem, you're just replacing one thing with another.

I think we can roll with the King's Row example, while defense has the benefit of positioning, attackers have spawn advantage. With the hypothetical of Rein completely out of the picture, it makes defense significantly more vulnerable, and with this I think you could legitimately run with any other pair of the remaining four tanks and have it work. D.Va can make an opening at the initial choke, Zarya can farm energy, Winston can disrupt, Roadhog can pick. Without having to make your moments between a quickly regenerating 2000HP sponge, you have way more options for combat in general -- and if that makes things too TDM-y, I guess I just prefer my FPS being about combat. *shrug*

It is a replacement though, I agree. One I would personally prefer. I do think it would allow for more flexibility in the tank space, but with Orisa coming I think even this hypothetical is a wash, haha.

 

[veloxStrix]

I was thinking about the Bastion buff last night and I came to the realization that this could have been avoided if Blizzard had listened to PTR feedback. I remember like a month ago when the buff first hit the PTR that there where a bunch of people saying he was OP. Hell I remember it was even trending on Facebook at the time. I personally thought they were assuredly going to change it by the time it hit live but here we are. Like, why does Blizzard have the PTR in the first place if they are just going to blatantly ignore player out cry. If they're just going to treat the PTR as more of a preview than an actual public TEST realm than I don't see much of a point to it.

The PTR doesn't have much of a point. But more, in my opinion, because no one actually plays the game on the PTR. It's just a ton of people running around playing buffed/nerfed characters + whatever sniper they can't usually play on the main server. Very rarely are there two healers on a team and there is almost no coordination to speak of.

So how do you judge whether a character is too strong in competitive when the vast majority of test cases involve playing that character with and against a completely uncoordinated team made of people from every rank imaginable? Blizzard either needs to add some incentive to actually win in PTR or just accept that it is a bug-testing server rather than a way to balance characters before they hit live.

 

[V-Faction]

The new gate on Eichenwalde might have a few bugs

https://gfycat.com/HairyPalatableAlaskankleekai

Nah, I think that's just Lucio's gimmick. What a wacky guy!

 

[bs000]

did not have a good day. 3300 to 2600

 

[Terareflection]

So frustrating having a team that won't communicate even though they have mics... :/

 

[ISOM]

So frustrating having a team that won't communicate even though they have mics... :/

I love that. Gets asked if I can join team chat then proceeds to here nothing else for the rest of the match. LOL

 

[Joshmyersbv]

did not have a good day. 3300 to 2600

Damn, I feel for you man. You should had stopped playing when you dropped around 3000 sr. I know its hard to do when your mind set is "I can stop losing streak" but sometimes you have to slow down and take a breath.

 

[Terareflection]

I love that. Gets asked if I can join team chat then proceeds to here nothing else for the rest of the match. LOL

More often, I find that those people just complain about character selection the whole match and contribute nothing.

Well, in that same match, I had gold elims with Soldier in one round after playing Mercy for the first two.

I guess I shouldn't expect as much.

 

[Joshmyersbv]

More often, I find that those people just complain about character selection the whole match and contribute nothing.

Well, in that same match, I had gold elims with Soldier in one round after playing Mercy for the first two.

I guess I shouldn't expect as much.

Yep I had this happen to me yesterday. A guy that was part of a four stack sent me a message about my Winston pick the counter Symmetra's turrets. I believe he say something like "why would you pick Winston when they have a Bastion?" My response was "IDK why are you guys running Sombra, a solo heal Ana, Pharah against three of her counters (Soldier, McCree, Bastion) and Junkrat on attack?"

 

[FiveSix4Three]

Matches are absolute trash today. Teammates are so timid and won't push objectives.

All of the hanzos and attack torbs aren't helping either.

 

[RecRoulette]

BTW, you want to see delusional dva mains, https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753395783?page=1

Casual D.va scum.

 

[SilentRacoon]

More often, I find that those people just complain about character selection the whole match and contribute nothing.

Well, in that same match, I had gold elims with Soldier in one round after playing Mercy for the first two.

I guess I shouldn't expect as much.

Well I always get all sorts of insults thrown at me when I play hanzo on escort maps, even after we won and I'm gold on damage and obj eliminations, people are stubborn telling me how I could have made a better pick.

I enjoy playing him and will switch and pick accordingly if necessary, people who feel the need to lecture others in how to play and what to play are an instant mute from me.

 

[ISOM]

Well I always get all sorts of insults thrown at me when I play hanzo on escort maps, even after we won and I'm gold on damage and obj eliminations, people are stubborn telling me how I could have made a better pick.

I enjoy playing him and will switch and pick accordingly if necessary, people who feel the need to lecture others in how to play and what to play are an instant mute from me.

I had that happen to me. Stayed Hanzo even after complaints, did well/won and the guy who complained about my pick still continued to talk shit about it. I've known when to apologize after asking someone to change off a nonmeta pick when they did well. Some people just like to be asses.

 

[Ambient80]

Well I always get all sorts of insults thrown at me when I play hanzo on escort maps, even after we won and I'm gold on damage and obj eliminations, people are stubborn telling me how I could have made a better pick.

I enjoy playing him and will switch and pick accordingly if necessary, people who feel the need to lecture others in how to play and what to play are an instant mute from me.

I'm so happy that people on Xbox rarely use voice chat, and that there's no real text chat. At worst most of the time at character select they'll spam over one character to try to get someone to switch. Once the match starts you rarely hear anything else. They're often the most useless members of the team, too.

 

[Cappa]

So I've decided to instalock bastion in every match. Have climbed 400 sr since lol.

I love completely destroying enemy bastions.

 

[caesar]

I've never really looked at the forums but after today I genuinely feel sorry for the developers. The amount of shit opinions they have to wade through to try and balance heroes is shocking.

"Blizz doesn't listen to the community"

Yeah, no shit sonny.

 

[DevilDog]

"Blizz doesn't listen to the community"

Yeah, no shit sonny.

Thankfully they don't, but they should be paying attention to the pros.

 

[caesar]

Thankfully they don't, but they should be paying attention to the pros.

I think they do to a certain extent, they realise the game should be balanced around high level play and not the other way round.

 

[ImBehindYou]

So I just did my first placement matches in comp since getting the game. Lost most of them and got put around 1900 SR. I've done the whole bronze to diamond thing on League already so I know how solo Q can be, but this has been soul destroying. Played about 20 games and lost about 15 of them due to afks. I know it'll even out eventually but bleh.

 

[Data West]

Only listening to the pros is a very bad idea.

 

[DevilDog]

Genji's trash sword hit detection is making me so mad. Getting 4+ ghost hits then hear my team rage at me for wasting my ult.

I think they do to a certain extent, they realise the game should be balanced around high level play and not the other way round.

I think they are at a point where they have lagged behind the high level community, and their ego is getting in the way of balance.

Only listening to the pros is a very bad idea.

They can figure out how low-mid competitive tier works out on their own. Blizzard however, does not have enough time to spend on the game like the people on high comp.

 

[ohkay]

Pros are the most likely to find/exploit the most efficient ways to use characters, which then trickles down to the masses via streams/tournaments

 

[Betty]

8 placement matches played.

6 losses, 1 draw, 1 win.

Can someone explain why I'm being teamed against masters and diamonds, seems a little unfair.