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[Anne]

Haven't played any ranked this season so can't comment on that. Changes will probably push dive comp more in ladder compared to last season at least. Seen a lot of dive comp in quick play though when playing with gaffers but that might just be because people like to DPS and its QP :/

I'm pretty sure that has to be because of QP. If you check out the stats we know about S3 pickrates:

A lot of the core dive characters don't get spikes in usage until they are in M/GM. I know this is all of S3 so yeah, but anecdotally even post nerfs people just cling to the safe tank and 2/2/2 line ups. If you go to the bnet boards (yeah I know) even the higher ranking posters (diamond+, top 10%) are all still very convinced they are trapped in trip tank hell and Ana is the end all be all goddess.

They need to find a way to get people to explore other ways to play the game, and a lot of it comes down to having a bad UX on top of very unclear balance to people that aren't extremely literate in the game :T

The fact that a lot of this makes some sense if you are literate in the game while people say "lol Blizzard balance" speaks volumes for why they are looking at making these changes. They gotta start steering their general playerbase into some of this stuff.

It's too late for D.Va players though. That was an astronomical fuck up.

 

[ISOM]

I am sick of Widows in both Comp and QP. She's pretty fucking powerful even on console now. Constantly being one shot in the head as Soldier or Tracer even when I'm running around and blinking like a madman was infuriating. Widows don't need to be touched at all. The charged shot triggers me so much.

PC players warned console players about Widow.

 

[Data West]

The person who's going to inform rein's death.

oh you mean winston and zen

 

[Newtype-001]

"Did Runner hit him too?!?"

Lmao Doas great

 

[LiK]

PC players warned console players about Widow.

I was hoping she would stay trash-tier on console but players have learned to play her with a gamepad.

 

[Data West]

Does Blizz watch these tournaments and see how absurd point As on 2 cps go compared to Point B or what

 

[Anne]

Does Blizz watch these tournaments and see how absurd point As on 2 cps go compared to Point B or what

Yeah, they actually made it easier to cap in 1.8, but this tournament is on 1.7 still.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Does Blizz watch these tournaments and see how absurd point As on 2 cps go compared to Point B or what

This is pre-patch servers.

 

[Data West]

Yeah, they actually made it easier to cap in 1.8, but this tournament is on 1.7 still.

This is pre-patch servers.

yeah i just heard the commentator mention it

 

[Jellie]

I'm pretty sure that has to be because of QP. If you check out the stats we know about S3 pickrates:



A lot of the core dive characters don't get spikes in usage until they are in M/GM. I know this is all of S3 so yeah, but anecdotally even post nerfs people just cling to the safe tank and 2/2/2 line ups. If you go to the bnet boards (yeah I know) even the higher ranking posters (diamond+, top 10%) are all still very convinced they are trapped in trip tank hell and Ana is the end all be all goddess.

They need to find a way to get people to explore other ways to play the game, and a lot of it comes down to having a bad UX on top of very unclear balance to people that aren't extremely literate in the game :T

The fact that a lot of this makes some sense if you are literate in the game while people say "lol Blizzard balance" speaks volumes for why they are looking at making these changes. They gotta start steering their general playerbase into some of this stuff.

It's too late for D.Va players though. That was an astronomical fuck up.

Hmm Winston usage peaks in diamond and dips in master/GM even though he is core to dive comps. That's kinda weird. Yeah people don't like changes and still ask for 2-2-2 or triple tank in season 3, at least in diamond. Did see an increase in dive comp towards the end of the season in my games and they had a high success rate.

High level ranked tends to try and copy the pro meta so the usage of dive might have eventually increased without these changes once people had watched enough of it.

 

[antitrop]

Unbelievable. Was a mercy and had a team with 4 damage dealers and they just could not get past Reinhardt. Four dps characters. They should tear throught that shield in seconds? Why do my teammates have to suck so bad today. I guess I've won too much lately and now the matchmaking forces me to lose.

I ran into this a lot in Platinum, where people wouldn't know what to do against a Rein and just endlessly flank to no success. Hasn't been an issue in Diamond, though.

 

[Data West]

taimou dead and sprayd

ez

 

[Anne]

Hmm Winston usage peaks in diamond and dips in master/GM even though he is core to dive comps. That's kinda weird. Yeah people don't like changes and still ask for 2-2-2 or triple tank in season 3, at least in diamond. Did see an increase in dive comp towards the end of the season in my games and they had a high success rate.

High level ranked tends to try and copy the pro meta so the usage of dive might have eventually increased without these changes once people had watched enough of it.

Winston is a bit of a weirdo, but just in general his usage rate is too low across the board.

There is a bit of trickle down happening, but honestly they messed up stupidly hard with Ana/D.Va. They let that go on for so long, and now that it's changed there's just this huge gap between people that learned the game that way and those that actually learned the game and picked up new stuff.

Personally I think dive is just too hard after moving on from D.Va/Ana stuff. I have never seen a strategy as easy to do as D.Va/Ana and be effective up to the pro level ever. Not even old Zerg mechanics were that stupid. Blizz let that rock for many months during the first year the game was out, and people just assumed that's how the game is supposed to work. Now they're trying to push players in another direction.

Blizzard has done this a lot (see how I pointed out SC and SC2 as a perfect example) and it leads to the player perception of balance just taking turns. Hopefully they don't overdo it this time. They probably will though.

 

[LiK]

No surprise, Ana mains are pissed as fuck in the OW PTR forums about the update.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Hey, don't lump all ana mains together. I'm fine-ish with it, or at least can respect the direction they're going in. Don't agree with all of it though.

Spoiler

I was a zen main before I was an ana main though.

 

[Skii]

Really interesting set of changes that will end up benefiting what I usually play. I feel like Ana's nerfs are a bit too much. Like I dont understand why Blizzard has to do 2 things at once. Maybe the nerfs are fine but it just seems illogical to change 2 major things at once when you're balancing a hero.

Maybe Ana's grenade should still heal her for 100 considering she has no other ways of healing herself. Zen can passively heal 150 HP, Mercy can heal all her HP and same with Lucio.

 

[Jellie]

Winston is a bit of a weirdo, but just in general his usage rate is too low across the board.

There is a bit of trickle down happening, but honestly they messed up stupidly hard with Ana/D.Va. They let that go on for so long, and now that it's changed there's just this huge gap between people that learned the game that way and those that actually learned the game and picked up new stuff.

Personally I think dive is just too hard after moving on from D.Va/Ana stuff. I have never seen a strategy as easy to do as D.Va/Ana and be effective up to the pro level ever. Not even old Zerg mechanics were that stupid. Blizz let that rock for many months during the first year the game was out, and people just assumed that's how the game is supposed to work. Now they're trying to push players in another direction.

Blizzard has done this a lot (see how I pointed out SC and SC2 as a perfect example) and it leads to the player perception of balance just taking turns. Hopefully they don't overdo it this time. They probably will though.

Not sure who to play after these Ana nerfs. I got the PC version when Ana was getting popular so I pretty much learned the game that way, at least on PC. Don't think my aim is good enough for dive comp either, especially the DPS.

No surprise, Ana mains are pissed as fuck in the OW PTR forums about the update.

They said they wouldn't change Sombra much to prevent another Ana situation then do huge changes to Bastion and then Ana after so I can see why they are. If they did it more incremental and wanted to see the effects then maybe there would be less people pissed. Maybe Blizzard are just tired of seeing their previous changes having little effect.

Really interesting set of changes that will end up benefiting what I usually play. I feel like Ana's nerfs are a bit too much. Like I dont understand why Blizzard has to do 2 things at once. Maybe the nerfs are fine but it just seems illogical to change 2 major things at once when you're balancing a hero.

Maybe Ana's grenade should still heal her for 100 considering she has no other ways of healing herself. Zen can passively heal 150 HP, Mercy can heal all her HP and same with Lucio.

When they nerfed discord, they buffed his damage so he could still deal with flankers. Ana has nothing except her dart now which is hard to hit.

 

[hypernima]

I really hate people that say "These guys aren't that good" as we get steamrolled by the other team.

 

[Anne]

Not sure who to play after these Ana nerfs. I got the PC version when Ana was getting popular so I pretty much learned the game that way, at least on PC. Don't think my aim is good enough for dive comp either, especially the DPS.

You can still play Ana tbh. I'm sure you can learn new characters and play the game and be fine.

What I mean by not knowing is the game is there are millions of people that don't know anything about the game outside of what's in the game. No streams, forums, nothing. There are a lot that only use bnet. There are a lot that just know what they know from friends online. and all that.

A good portion of those people actually think the correct way Blizzard intended for them to pick D.Va is to dive through an entire enemy team to single out people, then just win the 1v1. People that have no idea there are strats out there outside of tank + Ana. People who think Winston, McCree, D.Va, etc are all unusable garbage because they can't force themselves through any situation with them.

And like, I can't blame them. The game straight up teaches you the wrong shit, and a lot of the things balance wise aren't very clear. Blizzard's messaging on things like "roles" and "counters" is pretty horrendous for learning how the game works.

Tbh I'm astonished anybody that doesn't visit a competitive forum for this game knows even the basics of how some of this stuff works it's that bad. The only real reason that would be is the twitch.tv phenomenon with a bit of trickle down stuff through the playerbase, but it's clearly not enough.

 

[LiK]

I really hate people that say "These guys aren't that good" as we get steamrolled by the other team.

Trying to be optimistic.

 

[TheLetdown]

Really interesting set of changes that will end up benefiting what I usually play. I feel like Ana's nerfs are a bit too much. Like I dont understand why Blizzard has to do 2 things at once. Maybe the nerfs are fine but it just seems illogical to change 2 major things at once when you're balancing a hero.

Maybe Ana's grenade should still heal her for 100 considering she has no other ways of healing herself. Zen can passively heal 150 HP, Mercy can heal all her HP and same with Lucio.

I'd be fine with this attempt if they held to their initial idea of the PTR. "These changes will rarely make it 1:1 into the live game!"

And then so many of them did. Blatant ones, like Sniper McCree, which had a lot of vocal disdain in PTR.

I agree that doubling down on Ana at once seems like overkill.

Really excited for Winston to get some love. Isn't this a revert to the way it was a while ago? He's already so much fun. This is going to be huge, especially since people have this shitty habit where they completely stop shooting at his bubble when it goes down in favor of waiting it out, for no real reason.

 

[LiK]

Winston barrier buff was a long time coming. Never understood why the CD didn't happen right after using it. Such a nice change that I might play him more when that comes out.

But I am still super happy about Junk. I'm already a crazy ass Junk and this makes it even better for me in close quarters against flankers.

 

[Jellie]

You can still play Ana tbh. I'm sure you can learn new characters and play the game and be fine.

What I mean by not knowing is the game is there are millions of people that don't know anything about the game outside of what's in the game. No streams, forums, nothing. There are a lot that only use bnet. There are a lot that just know what they know from friends online. and all that.

A good portion of those people actually think the correct way Blizzard intended for them to pick D.Va is to dive through an entire enemy team to single out people, then just win the 1v1. People that have no idea there are strats out there outside of tank + Ana. People who think Winston, McCree, D.Va, etc are all unusable garbage because they can't force themselves through any situation with them.

And like, I can't blame them. The game straight up teaches you the wrong shit, and a lot of the things balance wise aren't very clear. Blizzard's messaging on things like "roles" and "counters" is pretty horrendous for learning how the game works.

Tbh I'm astonished anybody that doesn't visit a competitive forum for this game knows even the basics of how some of this stuff works it's that bad. The only real reason that would be is the twitch.tv phenomenon with a bit of trickle down stuff through the playerbase, but it's clearly not enough.

My dart usage has gotten worse I think so I'm just gonna get eaten by flankers if I Ana. Can still heal sqeeshies but my accuracy drops from 70+ to 65+ I think so won't perform as well. What heroes can have a big impact that don't require amazing aim like Tracer. I've been trying Sombra lately cos EMP is really good and easy to charge up but with less tanks she might be less useful now so I dunno. Plus she doesn't get picked much either now. She does well against Tracer and Genji at least if they focus on somebody else so maybe I can just help support getting dived on?

 

[TheLetdown]

Winston barrier buff was a long time coming. Never understood why the CD didn't happen right after using it. Such a nice change that I might play him more when that comes out.

But I am still super happy about Junk. I'm already a crazy ass Junk and this makes it even better for me in close quarters against flankers.

EDIT: Talking about Junk here.

Hell yeah. I play him a lot like you play him. Aggressive, bouncing around. Just not as consistently well.

That change really suits that playstyle and will hopefully encourage more of it, since the common method of people spamming around corners safely usually just leads to feeding the enemy's ult more than anything.

 

[Anne]

Tbh I'd just bite the bullet and learn how to aim. At the end of the day it is an FPS game. Take those Ls until you can get it down.

I had to do that too at some point. Everybody does.

 

[Antiwhippy]

Taimou seriously throwing on tracer.

 

[tabs2002]

Taimou playing way worse than Esca but the commentators aren't calling him out

 

[Jellie]

Tbh I'd just bite the bullet and learn how to aim. At the end of the day it is an FPS game. Take those Ls until you can get it down.

I had to do that too at some point. Everybody does.

Yeah just not gonna go near comp till I do I guess. Any tips to get better with aiming?

 

[RemiLP]

Taimou playing way worse than Esca but the commentators aren't calling him out

yeah, thats weird. Have no idea why taimou thought it was a good idea to play tracer on defence, when his not even that good on her.

 

[Anne]

Yeah just not gonna go near comp till I do I guess. Any tips to get better with aiming?

Tune your DPI/Sens properly, spend time building muscle memory, intentionally aim in ways that you may not be comfortable with now but are ultimately better (keeping your wrist up, not aiming with your feet, etc).

 

[ISOM]

Taimou throwing.

 

[hypernima]

Trying to be optimistic.

Nothing but throwers in all my matches this morning.

I just stayed in spawn and cried tbh. I've had the same widow in the last two games who has not got one pick.

 

[Anne]

No more western teams in APEX S2 :T

5th place+ will be all KR teams. That's frightening.

 

[Jellie]

Taimou playing way worse than Esca but the commentators aren't calling him out

Hanzo ults into nothing. It's ok because he can get another one.

Tune your DPI/Sens properly, spend time building muscle memory, intentionally aim in ways that you may not be comfortable with now but are ultimately better (keeping your wrist up, not aiming with your feet, etc).

Think my DPI/sens is ok. Its 1000/4.5. Maybe I could go down to 3s through increments.
Is mucle memory only for flick aiming or tracking too?
What does aiming with your feet mean?

 

[Vital Tundra]

WOw those Ana needs. Finally she's put in her got damn place.

 

[Anne]

Think my DPI/sens is ok. Its 1000/4.5. Maybe I could go down to 3s through increments.
Is mucle memory only for flick aiming or tracking too?
What does aiming with your feet mean?

Your sens seems fine, you just might have to mess with it a bit as you work on your aim is all. You'll need to build muscle memory for everything.

Aiming with your feet is when people will use A and D strafing to aim their shots rather than their mouse. Strafe aiming/shooting is a valid thing to do sometimes, but players tend to get into a bad habit of relying on it too much.

 

[Antiwhippy]

I like that EnvyUS is trying something new, but they really need a specialist projectile player. Especially if these changes go live, be prepared to live in genji hell again.

Also taimou on tracer is the most tilt-inducing thing ever.

 

[Jellie]

Your sens seems fine, you just might have to mess with it a bit as you work on your aim is all. You'll need to build muscle memory for everything.

Aiming with your feet is when people will use A and D strafing to aim their shots rather than their mouse. Strafe aiming/shooting is a valid thing to do sometimes, but players tend to get into a bad habit of relying on it too much.

Gonna try 4 sens now.
Don't think I use foot aiming but I'll look out for it incase I did it without realising since I didn't know what it was before.

 

[Akuun]

Ana nerfs look way overboard. She needed nerfing, yes, but that's a nerf truck.

I ran into this a lot in Platinum, where people wouldn't know what to do against a Rein and just endlessly flank to no success. Hasn't been an issue in Diamond, though.

I think one big problem is that a lot of people don't seem to understand that spamming at Rein's shield is a thing. So some teams go like 4-5 dps and then only like one guy shoots at the shield because everyone else assumes that wearing down the shield isn't important or something.

 

[Antiwhippy]

I think one big problem is that a lot of people don't seem to understand that spamming at Rein's shield is a thing. So some teams go like 4-5 dps and then only like one guy shoots at the shield because everyone else assumes that wearing down the shield isn't important or something.

Tbf if a team goes 4-5 dps they might as well try dive flanking because they're just going to get shredded when they try to break the shield with no protection of their own lmao.

 

[Data West]

Ana nerfs look way overboard. She needed nerfing, yes, but that's a nerf truck.

She needed a nerf truck

 

[aeolist]

there will still be plenty of ana, just not a must-have every single game

 

[Antiwhippy]

People bitched about zen before they bitched about ana. If zen turns into a 100% pick again would they be happier than the current state?

Here's the thing too, you see all these kr genjis destroying teams. How much better could they get if they can have 100% guarantee that their target is going to get discorded?

 

[Akuun]

People might like the Zen-based meta until they get tired of getting discord orbed into oblivion.

 

[Anne]

I would rather just have 4 supports within some acceptable range of usefulness rather than just having x+Lucio be 80%+ pickrate.

Nerfing Ana is the best bet because her overlap and utility is just madness. Now she still has the most utility and overlap, but she pays for it so hard you might now want her always while before there was no reason not to take her except to optimize some niche strategy. The question is whether or not she'll be too weak to be used at all in which case she'll be replaced by Zen or Mercy.

Buffing Zen to such a major degree while nerfing Ana at the same time seems like a recipe to make it so that yeah Zen is just the pick all the time over her. There are a lot of reasons why I'm really not down with this Zen buff /yet/. It might be a good buff but there's just too many things moving atm and it's too scary.

I don't expect 25/25/25/25 at all. I think Lucio will still be 80%+ for awhile. I just would like to see a bit more variety in that second slot. Even 50/25/25 might be fine.

 

[Data West]

People bitched about zen before they bitched about ana. If zen turns into a 100% pick again would they be happier than the current state?

Here's the thing too, you see all these kr genjis destroying teams. How much better could they get if they can have 100% guarantee that their target is going to get discorded?

Zen doesn't give all his allies 50% damage buffs essentially anymore.

Zen has some pretty hard counters. Ana has 'counters'

 

[Symphonic]

Winston



Ana



Dang Blizz. You could have balanced her instead of slitting her throat.

 

[Mr Git]

I like the proposed PTR changes for Junkrat and Sombra. I end up sniffing out enemy Sombras a lot due to hearing her voice lines from a distance, it's nice they're reducing that. Still haven't even watched any footage of Orisa, how're people finding her?

 

[Antiwhippy]

Zen doesn't give all his allies 50% damage buffs essentially anymore.

Zen has some pretty hard counters. Ana has 'counters'

He has counters sure, but what I'm afraid the most is his counters and what he counters railroads team composition.

While yeah, ana is picked a lot now, but what i like it's that she does enable more than just one play style. You can run her in an entrenched comp like triple tank, a more balanced comp like 2/2/2 rein, or dive.

You can't run an entrenched comp with zen unless you're accompanied by a more consistent burst healer, 222 rein is ok but you sure as hell can run him with dive, and I'm afraid if this change would tip the balance too far to dive. It's actually kind of beautiful how many different comps there are nowadays. I hope this doesn't break it.

 

[Greddleok]

So is D.Va a useless pick now? Man, that puts a real downer on the game for me. I love D.Va.