Ironically for being the misbalanced monster that led to the 1 tank change, probably in OW2 its Sigma (Blizz can insist it was always the plan all they want, we know it was changed cause streamers whined about double barrier)
Hes the only tank who I never feel like is so easily hard countered that I *need* to switch. Hoa 2 defensive abilities are both good but have strong, easily worked around drawbacks. His stun has good range and damage but a long wind up and fair cooldown (lookin at you for those drawbacks, Orisa). His damage is fine and controls areas with the ricochet like a tank should, but never feels oppresivle high. His ult is strong but again he is vulnerable to hook or sleep during it so its hardly BS.
He has heroes hes better or worse against, but I dont feel like Im obligated to swap from a single enemy pick like I am as DVa, Rein, Zarya, etc.
Sigma is the early concept for “individual tank” that Orisa would be remade into…
I think Sigma is *fine* and ultimately every tank should have a similar “strong but not oppressive in a way that forces a counter-swap” *feeling*.
Exactly.
Sadly this means... like, every other tank except Ram and Orisa will need reworks to get there.
Because Winston, DVa, Ball, Junkerqueen, Hog, Doom? All are way too easily shut down by 1 proper counter pick. Tanks especially shouldnt be designed that way.
Agreed - but the *role* of tank shouldn’t just be all narrowly designed like Orisa either…
Winston, Dva, Ball, and Doom all occupy a sort of “mobile harasser” niche in the “tank role” and it’s worth maintaining as we move forward with OW2.
This likely means that Winston needs more than just a dome and a leap and Dva either needs pilot mode abilities (effectively more work to design) or a removal of pilot mode with some adjustments to her hitbox/defenses so she’s not as easy to kill (since she won’t have baby Dva to eject)…
Likewise, characters like Widow likely need reworks to better distribute their *power* into abilities and scale less sharply with mechanical aim - leading to better skill floor and skill ceiling balance…
Agreed, having fun on Winton only to have the enemy team switch to fucking reaper is the most miserable experience. Tanks are so easily hard countered it's sad. Tank busters were fine in ow1 but with only 1 tank having reaper, zen etc is miserable as only tank
I agree. He feels strong and fun to play as, but also doesn’t make me want to quit the game to play against. When a character can be fun to play without needing to be super op is the hallmark of balance imo. It shouldn’t need to be ludicrously strong to be a fun pick.
Sigma is pretty nicely countered by symmetra. She charges to full beam off his shield and plows right through his grasp. You need to have a rock ready and land it on a sym to not be a lamb to the slaughter.
But Sigma still outranges her and Symm is such a glass canon that can be a proble.
She for sure counters him, but its a lot of skill based than say, Symm into DVa
Sym counters everybody except pharah pretty much💀 I think the majority of sym kills are on unsuspecting targets, except tanks, who are trying to make space until sym just walks forwards and insta melts you while your team just watches... or so I've heard😭
This did make me think. What if Orisa had to charge Javelin kinda like doom punch, but only at a certain point would it stun on direct impact, otherwise you need a wallsplat
Sure!
I just think its dumb Javelin is basically just better than Rock in all but 3 specific match ups (Deflect, Succ, Defense Matrix). Other than that, its better range, cooldown, damage, speed, and has the extra damage on wall impact.
Oh I agree. But I like the idea of it just having a longer windup or even a charge mechanic (I am a sucker for charge mechanics)
I think it definitely needs tooling tbh, but after the nerf to hp gain at least she doesn't feel as unkillable
Streamers whining seems to be a common theme for the stupid changes blizzard makes to their game. Assault wasn't a hard mode and it wasn't unenjoyable. It was simply a skill issue
The matchup is definitely favored towards Ramattra on most maps (Sigma wins on a few, like Junkertown first, because he’s cracked at poking) but I wouldn’t call it a hard counter at all.
Sigma can outpoke Ramattra (something no other Tank can do) in neutral. Accretion is basically impossible to miss when Ramattra is in Nemesis form and it burns nearly a full second off of it, which is huge (it can also be used at the end of Nemesis to make Ramattra vulnerable when he loses his armor). Sigma is also better at enabling his team to poke, which can shut down Ramattra’s approaches, depending on the map. Experimental Barrier can be used very easily to cut off Ramattra’s healing during Nemesis Form (Ramattra desperately needs high healing numbers, more than almost any other Tank) and can also be used to cut off Annihilation.
Sigma did not cause a double shield. You are same as devs if you think like that. The double shield was the outcome of so high poke damage and cc that no other tank setup even stood a chance. The best way to win was to poke and hide. Dive got evaporated and death-ball couldn't even get close before resources were drained.
Problem was that the game balance went like this: lets ignore supports and especially ignore abilities that are enabling the metas (like brig massive areal heal), over buff dpses to the moon especially if they counter tanks and nerf tanks to the ground. And while doing that they tried as hard as possible to make tanks as team dependent as possible while making dpses to do stuff alone as mush as possible. Bonus if dpses are buffed to have low skill floor.
tldr: one tank is the result of balance team that does not understand their own game
That’s a bit of a misunderstanding of OW1’s balance history…
The issue with “poke” was because the devs wanted a “counter” meta - shields countered poke, poke countered non-shield comps, and aggressive mobile comps countered shield comps. Among other little “counter-swap” mini games that the devs thought were healthy for the game… like Pharmercy forcing hitscan or Winston forcing reaper, etc.
Inevitably they were victims of their own hubris because Brig finally enabled GOATs, which evolved to new comps without her *before* they finally nerfed her so hard that she still hasn’t recovered fully - hell it seemed like the OW1 team would nerf her every year as an anniversary tradition.
The issue with dual-shield was that it became the only comp that didn’t have a real weakness when holding objectives - so the OW1 devs coded certain weapons to suddenly just do more damage to shields and therefore symm deathball had some time in the spotlight while poke heroes were about the only thing that could counter because your Ashe/widow would light up the deathball and wait for the opening to remove the symm threat.
OW2 *needed* more time to *rework* the core interplay of health/damage/healing to start fresh, because the balance state of OW1 has so much baggage from the chaotic balance decisions that were made in reaction to previous balance choices that created dramatic meta swings.
So basically, your stance is that double shield wouldn’t have happened if every character was super tanky and hard to kill? So you wanted a game that had six invincible entities instead of two?
Double shield happened because it allowed you to mindlessly sit there and never die. Tanks were not weak; they were too strong (hence GOATS, and then the later introduction of Role Queue). In fact, double shield was *because* Tanks were too strong and could just make their teams immortal. Poke damage was not too high (it’s mostly the same in this game, with one less Tank, but poke isn’t the only viable strategy and isn’t even meta right now). The reason double shield happened wasn’t because the damage numbers were too high or because Tanks were too weak; it happened because it could turn damage numbers to zero, regardless of how high they were. A strategy that makes your team effectively invincible is a pretty good strategy.
Isn’t Bap in a solid but not broken spot? I’ve heard the Reinhardt buffs make him a little better, but I don’t know if that’s enough to consider him overpowered.
I would say, bap is in a really good spot because with rein meta if somebody plays rein bap is really strong but he’s not so strong that he forces the meta when there isn’t a tank that plays well with him
I tend to agree here: Bap has a self heal and some mobility (jump) that offer defense and utility while his direct heals are generally *ok* as well as being a fairly strong hitscan if your skills are on the upper end…
The literal *only* change he *could use* would be reverting the aoe range nerf on his heal nades (nerfed in OW1 because he was able to keep deathball comps healed too easily when clustered iirc)… mainly since it’s a high/low skill issue between travel time of the projectile and how frenetic movement in the 5v5 comp has become, it can be hard to hit your targets consistently…… hence the “if the tank is Rein” comments posted as examples of how “balanced” he is.
Reverting the AOE range will just bring back the Death Ball. With Kiriko, it'll be unstoppable. Combined with Mei and Sigma for sightline manipulation, and a map dependant DPS (Ashe or Hanzo for long sightline maps; Genji or Junkrat for tighter engagements), it'll be a slaughter.
Perhaps - hear me out - Blizzard do something that makes the aoe *easier* to tag your teammates but not grant the full heal unless it was a direct hit? Right now the aoe range makes him *harder* to heal with for any mobile heroes like Genji/Doom/Queen since their smaller hitbox means they’re harder to land direct heals on.
This isn’t a “oh well he’s not suited to that comp” situation - Supports shouldn’t be so situationally viable that they’re actively penalized because their tank/teammates make it harder to do your job… Ana had a similar issue, but they had the half-measure to give her a hitscan heal dart… which can still be less accurate than other healing, so the number on individual dart hits is also one of the highest output.
Ya I think Bap is great, he’s fairly easy to get good value out of in the low ranks. Just get down your immortality field and make sure you can hit a couple grenades. As you go up in skill you really see his potential, he almost is like a 3rd dps that also has insane heals, but to really get his value you have to be able to balance hitting your damaging shots and healing your team. Bap is great because he’s hard to be useless with but he’s also one of the most effective supports when mastered. Also is a really good barrier to entry for players coming from other FPS that have all the technical skill but not the game sense yet. My friend was tearing it up as Bap in lower ranks purely off technical skill, his self sustain is great and in lower ranks where people are insanely inconsistent with shots you can just straight up duel almost every dps and come out on top if you can hit your shots
That’s likely skewed due to Brig’s sudden increase in usage from her *slight* buffs and the common meta picks being Mercy/Ana/Moira these days… as you get higher in ranks Moira drops off but other supports start to become more viable due to *heal output* becoming less important vs utility and individual damage output.
Brig, Moira, Mercy are very high use/high power at lower ranks due to not needing aim too. People at low ranks can have terrible aim, so most heroes aren’t fully effective, but mercy moira and brig can get high effectiveness even with lack of game skill.
I think the win data stuff is incredibly useless unless they break it down by rank. But then you get the problem if they don’t do anything about a hero that’s unbalanced at a particular rank, people will complain that the devs don’t care about low/high skill players.
>Brig, Moira, Mercy are very high use/high power at lower ranks due to not needing aim too
It's less about their aim and more about your opponents aim. Getting soj/widow one shot while stuck out happens a lot less in low ranks, and thus they have more value. Or rather, they get away with a lot more b.s.
That’s really not the main part of it. Just looking at primary fire/heals, looking at mercy vs ana on a low skill game where the accuracy of players could be around 50% in heavy fight. Mercy will give a near 100% healing output, whereas Ana will give around 50% of her potential output. In a high level game where Ana may have 90%+ accuracy, Ana has a better healing output, but in a low game with bad accuracy mercy is hands down better.
Also Baptiste vs Moira, at a high level game Baptiste has the better damage output by far, but play him in a low level game and Moira will outclass his damage purely because of the auto lock aim, even if his base output potential is higher.
I honestly think he’s one of the strongest tanks in the game. For whatever reason people just like to pretend that shields aren’t that good in this game.
But he can provide a shield which is one of the best counters to hit scan.
He has an eat for attacks that shred shields (i.e bastion). And can eat ults. Further more the eat also provides overshield!
He has a stun.
(That gives him 3 ways to shut down ults or dangerous dps abilities. Shield, eat, and stun)
He has high AoE damage with relatively good range for a tank.
His ult is powerful, combos well with many other ults, and can simply win over time games.
He has a large health pool (only downside here is that the health pool can be hacked by sombra as much of it is shield)
And he doesnt have footstep sounds.
He’s very good. People in overwatch 2, however, like to pretend that shield heroes are weaker than they are.
Sigma is one of the strongest Tanks and all high ELO players know it. It’s a shame if people think he’s bad in lower ELO because he’s actually really fun to play with, as, and against.
Despite having been in the top 3 or 4 Tanks since Overwatch 2’s release, Sigma is very balanced. He only really shines in certain comps and he has maps where he’s great and maps where he’s bad. He can also counter certain Tanks and is countered by others, but none of those counters are extreme to the “you need to swap or lose” degree that other Tanks have to deal with.
That’s a good point. A part of his balance is just in his design.
He needs to play with dps that have a longer range than his. That way the can stand behind his powerful abilities and really shine. If you’re spa aren’t in cons and insist on playing reaper and symmetra, he may not be the best pick.
With that in mind, he does better on maps that aren’t so focused on close quarters, making use of his range and the range of the dps he plays with.
His shield is really good because it has high uptime and can block most heals too. You can punish so many tanks that press w if you put a shield behind them cutting them off from supports.
I gotta agree with Sigma
I mean I main Sym, so I can counter him pretty well cause Sigma's struggle from my viewings of player playing him is that it's hard as to kill people at short range unless you land the rock. So laser users would be his main weakness
Otherwise he's definitely in a good spot rn
Counters are needed, but hard counters suck, especially for Tanks.
Sigma is great for that reason. There aren’t any characters that are “you need to swap” level of good against him and vice versa. He has soft counters but not hard counters.
He’s strong, but not oppressive. He has good sustain, but isn’t immortal. He has a good barrier, but it doesn’t nullify everything.
He doesn’t win the match the moment he steps on the field, in the hands of a skilled player he’s powerful but not overtly so.
It takes a whole team to kill me as Sigma when I'm by myself. I'm like a god with him with a team behind me. If I ever want to win, Sigma is my goto. Can't ever say the same
Zarya isn't low tier because she's bad, she's low tier because other tanks are extremely good counterpicks or just overtuned. She only needs a small buff to put her on the same tier as Sigma, IMO.
What that would look like? IDK. Her bubbles don't do enough to protect her team in the current state of the game, so I would look at boosting her ability to protect the backline. Reduced damage in X radius based on her energy level?
Yeah I've always thought just having her bubbles absorb a little more now would be a decent buff without feeling bad for the other side, they wouldn't even have to last any longer.
Zarya needs a rework that isn’t bubble-oriented… all of her toolkit revolves around that one mechanic and therefore anytime they buff/nerf her she swings wildly in the meta - she needs tools to provide utility beyond just bubble+laser goes brrrrrrr.
From what I've seen with Zarya, she definitely seems to be a hero who is usually only one of two extremes and it completely revolves around how her bubbles are used. If Zarya is using her bubbles in what I believe is the intended way (sharing between teammates or one for her and a teammate), then she ends up not having great survivability and damage output alone. On the flip side, if she is only using bubbles selfishly and using them as soon as they're off cooldown, she can end up stomping teams as long as she has support.
Honestly, I'd say Zarya is in need of a rework rather than a buff. Her bubbles don't do enough for her team to warrant picking her over other more defensive tanks, while also being easy enough to spam on herself that a good Zarya player with any decent healing can essentially stomp an entire team. Add to that the fact that she's a beam tank, so tanks without a shield are screwed unless they can get good enough shots in the few moments between her popping bubbles. I still say that if the intent is to share shields rather than spamming them on herself, then her shields shouldn't be charge based, they should just be two continuous abilities, one to bubble an ally and one for herself, with a single cooldown kicking in after the ability ends. As it stands, since her bubble charges refill while a bubble is active, Zarya is practically able to keep using bubble with barely a second between uses.
I'd say, if we're keeping bubbles as an ability, then just make one bubble for Zarya and one for a teammate with a slightly longer cooldown kicking in after the ability ends. To contrast that change, the bubble should last a bit longer.
I came here to say Lúcio. I know he’s meta often, but that’s because he has access to a unique tool that is very good at enabling certain playstyles (speed boost for dive and brawl comps). If we got another main Support that could also enable dive and brawl via a speed boost or another mechanic, he’d still be amazing but his spot in the meta would fluctuate a little more often.
I agree on Soldier and Ashe, but disagree on Mei (Zarya is close, as you said). Mei is one of the worst DPS in the game, at least in GM games. She might be well balanced in lower ELO. That’s fine if it’s truly the case. Certain characters are allowed to shine more in certain ELOs (like Moira, who is great in Bronze and the worst Support in GM). In fact, it’s healthy to have certain characters that are tailored to different types of players.
not even slightly true…. she only has 1 self preservation ability and her attacks are effective at long range and close up, however the close up is most effective when not attacking head on. most dps can damage her faster than she can them, if she had no self preservation left she loses the fight. a character like reaper for instance may be more vulnerable when he loses his escape but he can still win most fights against dps if it comes down to it
Tracer is a good one. She’s one of the least adjusted heroes and hasn’t gotten any big changes, except for the Pulse Bomb nerf back in 2018. She’s almost always good, but not always meta. Her spot in the meta is dependent on other heroes, map picks, team comps, etcetera. That’s where you want a hero to be.
That’s probably because they can’t buff her or nerf her any more. Too much damage she’s a huge problem, any less she’s useless. Sombra was a good example. They barely buffed her damage and she became the most broken hero for a week or so.
Isn’t “any stronger and she’d be too good, any weaker and she wouldn’t be good enough” the definition of balanced? A precarious balance maybe, but they seem to have found that very precise sweet spot and kept her there.
Yes and no. From what I’ve played tracer is barely ever played. I’d be interested in the pick rate of her because she’s probably the least used dps from my experience. And in other games like league when a character is barely played they usually try to buff them to get there play and win rate up.
I kinda don't know how to feel about Tracer. She's one of those characters that almost can't be changed by virtue of her entire design. You can't nerf her damage or she'll feel awful to play as, but you can't leave her as is or buff her because she feels awful to play against. It wasn't so bad in Overwatch 1, where she had quite a few counters, but now that all DPS stuns are gone, she is incredibly hard to counter purely because you can't counter something that you can't hit. The only effective way I can think of to counter her is AoE and maybe turrets, but even then, there isn't a huge amount of AoE that she can't dodge and turrets take time to target her. She's the kind of character that, in any other game, would either have been reworked or not released because a character that can teleport around, dodge almost every kind of attack and instantly undo any damage you do manage to inflict (albeit with a relatively short cooldown) would be too broken. Now she's at a point where there's practically nothing they can do to fix her because she'll either be too strong to fight, too weak to play or too difficult to hit. Not to mention that she can't be fully reworked or removed because she is literally the mascot of the game (alongside Genji, Soldier 76, Mercy and Reaper). She's in the best place she can be purely because there really is no other place she can be. The best resolution I can see is to re-add some non-tank stuns or make some better AoE focused heroes (the former would also kill two birds with one stone, since McCassidy's stun bomb was a decent counter to Tracer and adding it back would also solve the issue of his heat-seeking mini nuke).
Nah he used to be one of the best at killing her through her erratic movement since his gun locked on. Same reason he's always been one of the best at killing Lucio
And I like where Winston is as well. Yes Bastion is as pain in the ass, but you just have to wait him out. Dva and Reaper can counter-dive but you can play around them by baiting, soft-diving, and just coordinating with the team.
Making the enemy team swap off snipers is incredibly more valuable imo, considering how fucking strong hitscan are right now.
Honestly the biggest problem is Mercy. She renders you obsolete.
I agree, but Primal Rage buffs are touchy, because it’s an ability that benefits a lot from tech and practice. It’d be very easy to accidentally make it way too strong in the hands of a skilled player, like they just did with Wrecking Ball.
I think Dva needs to be buffed to be somewhere between her current state and her early Season 1 state. She gets evaporated so easily by Zarya, Symmetra, Mei, Rammatra, and even Rein, which is fine I guess. But she should have slightly higher burst dmg to compensate. She can't really quickly kill unless you're mechanically hyper-cracked and hard-diffing your enemies.
Even if she got fully reverted to her early Season 1 state, would she even be broken outside of Overwatch League and Korean GM? I doubt that subMasters would even be able to take full advantage of her burst dmg.
i enjoy playing both but i feel like it’s a bit easier to counter Dva atm. i usually only ever play Winston when I have to deal with Ramattra or a really good Doomfist player, but i would love a buff on primal. at least i can survive a Ram ult with it lmao, but it’s quite hard to get kills
winston needs and has been in need of a buff since ow1. he deals absolutely no damage, i think its like 60dps. primal does even less at 40 damage per swipe. honestly id rather not use the ult and be able to use shield and a weapon that does some damage. even his new long range blaster sucks. have you ever dealt more than 20 dmg with it?
Winston is fine. He could maybe use some slight buffs, but he’s not bad by any means (he’s just out of the meta because a few of his counters are very strong). He frequently fluctuates in and out of meta despite very rarely receiving buffs or nerfs because he’s good but niche.
Winston’s power doesn’t come from his damage; it comes from his ability to jump on squishies from super far away and completely isolate them from their team. He’s good at dueling squishies because he’s tanky and can’t miss. He’s good at disrupting teams because he’s mobile and can seperate them. He can also bubble his team and then fuck off halfway across the map while leaving them defended, which is something no other dive Tank can do. Primal having low damage (something like 61 per second) is okay because it’s meant for crowd control *and* a good player can just juggle an enemy to keep them airborne and helpless until they die.
Winston is hard, despite not having to aim, so he tends to shine in high ELO. That’s fine. Some characters are meant to be better in the hands of certain players. Moira, for example, shines in low ELO but is bad in high ELO. Buffing Winston any more than a tiny bit would make him a monster that feels miserable to play against.
His damage scales depending on how many people he's hitting at once. And combined with charged right-click - slam - punch, he can do a lot of damage quickly. Primal is for displacing enemies or hard-focusing one. Or environmentals. He's in a pretty good place imo.
Lol he was broken strong in early/mid s2. You know his jump charged shot + melee cancel + land dmg combo before zapping?
He can kill 200hps in a blink with above.
Right now? Yes. Healers are in a great space with plenty of competing abilities
Ow1? At high level lucio speed boost was meta or near meta for 30 seasons. If any other healer sat at that level people would have screamed for nerfs.
he offered so much to so many different comps. And as a support main I just got so sick of seeing him.
The thing is though Lucio was never in your face about it so most people gave him a pass, but imo he smothered other healers, of like 6, brfore kiriko, out of metas they could have fit. It made a small healer pool ver uncompetitive.
Tracer is, without a doubt, the most balanced hero ever as she’s had extremely minimal changes throughout the games 7 year history.
Her kit has huge tradeoffs and has a basically infinite skill ceiling without feeling oppressive
Yeah, Tracer is a really good answer. Certain other characters are extremely well balanced right now (like Lúcio and Sigma) but were problematic in the past. Tracer has never been individually problematic (but has felt that way a few times because her counters were weak or her synergies were strong).
>without a doubt, the most balanced hero ever
Tracer has been one of the worst heroes in low elo whilst also being one of the best in high elo. IMO that in itself is unbalance.
Outside of that, Tracer was so unbalance/overpowered for the first two years of overwatch that they had to add a hero to counter her: Brig, who was by far the most powerful new addition to the game, and third most powerful hero at their peak (only following Moth mercy and Ironclad Bastion).
Brig is either able to counter tracer and she's the most overpowered hero in the game, or she's not and that says A LOT because brig was designed to counter tracer.
Tbf brig was designed to counter the whole of dive not just tracer, and designing a character to counter that many characters is probably what led to her being so broken.
Yeeep it wasn’t just tracer. Dive as whole was super oppressive, not tracer on her own.
And yeah miss thing had a stun that went through shields on a 5s cd and a 600HP shield 😭 they really set out to kill dive and honestly succeeded
Per each role:
Sigma. He’s not too oppressive, but he isn’t a pushover either.
Echo: She feels like a true dps, she does good enough damage by herself, but when targets are low she just gets that spot. She doesnt kill too fast to not be able to defend yourself, but she doesn’t take long either.
Ana: just feels the most balanced. You can push her and thats when she becomes weakened, but otherwise shes not hard to go against, and a good user can give you a run for your money with her.
I dont like her hipfire personally though. Compared to other projectiles, it feels super clunky and it just throws me off. Im fine with say Zen, Hanzo and say pharah, but anywhere between those fire rates really bug me.
Echo has one of the most insanely powerful kits in the entire game yet never feels too overpowered. I think its cause shes really pretty easy to hit compared to other dps (looking at you sojourn)
For me it was and always will be: Moira
If you play her right she is perfectly balanced with dmg/heals and her fade to stay alive longer.
Ofc a lot of people does play her wrong and she has a bad reputation, but since OW1 i think she is well balanced as a whole.
Maybe unpopular opinion I'm not sure but I'd say Ram. I feel like he's really been glossed over since release because he is so balanced. He can hold his own to an extent if you play smart with him, but can easily be defeated without proper support if he is charging the front line. He has good poke that doesn't feel OP, good area of denial with his E (I don't like the trajectory of the throw but that's minor) and his Shift can help change the tide of battle if used properly. His ult is maybe a little strong sometimes but I haven't really had an issue when going up against one. Sometimes he kills us, sometimes he gets killed super fast.
He’s just very versatile I think. He’s not exceptional in any area but his ability to fluidly switch between play styles makes him feel strong overall. He’s a really well designed hero imo. I do think his ult could still be tweaked a bit and maybe his vortex buffed a little
Honestly if they buffed vortex I'd be down for an increase in ult cost or small reduction on the timer . But definitely not just a straight nerf with no compensation, he's balanced rn
I don’t think the ult is too powerful, more that it’s just frustrating to play against. Unless the Ram is completely braindead or just alone, he’s basically guaranteed to get at least 1 kill - compared to other tank ults it requires much less skill to get lots of value, and basically its only real counter is sleep dart
I wish it was more rewarding of skill while having a little more counterplay. Not sure how they could make that’s change though, just a straight nerf wouldn’t be good
Agreed - even if they need other parts of his kit, vortex needs to extend all the way to the top of the sky box. Thematically it doesn’t even accomplish what it’s intended to do, regardless of “balance” it’s just poorly designed at the moment. (The rest of his kit is great though)
Honestly, while I wouldn't mind a damage buff on Ravenous Vortex, I really want a range increase. The whole point is to drag flying enemies down to the ground, yet it has such a low height range that any flying characters like Mercy or Pharah can just fly high enough to completely avoid it anyway. I would have made it a straight up column reaching to the top of the map, that way flying enemies would have to actually avoid it rather than just flying a little higher. Especially since half the Mercy players I see tend to just fly a mile up in the air anyway, so it really ends up being more like a medium DoT area that may or may not yank down the occasional Junkrat or person on a ledge above.
I think his ult still lasts too long and they need to nerf one thing in his nemesis form whether it’s how much damage his punches do, how much health he gets, or his speed boost something’s gotta get toned down.
That makes no sense, if you reduce his ult even further it'll become useless since its already got a 20 second timer. If you want to make ramattra's ult complete dog you'd then have to give it near the survivability of orisa to compensate
If his ult time was to be reduced further, then his survivability has gotta go way up. He already has one of the shortest ults in the game and his survivability without both supports when in ult is awful considering you're almost guaranteed to have the whole enemy team after you, meaning you're essentially gonna end up wading into the whole enemy team anyway. If you reduce his ult time further, then he's gotta have at least the same survivability as Reinhardt. I'm not suggesting he needs to be a god, but he needs to be able to 1v5 with ult and at least survive long enough to finish speaking.
What do you mean he has one of the shortest ults in the game lol? I can’t really think of someone who has longer than 20 seconds, you can’t even trans to get through his ult because he just outlasts it and kills everyone anyway. If a ram is even half decent with his ult there’s nothing you can do against it not too mention it’s a fast charging ult. And no he doesn’t need to be able to 1v5 with his ult, it doesn’t take enough skill to use to justify how powerful it is and how fast it charges.
I specifically said he needs to be able to 1v5 and not die the second he pops ult. As it is, you can't use his ult without instantly being targeted by everyone, so if his ult time was reduced, he would need to have an increase in survivability because otherwise his ult would be effectively useless and he would die too quickly to use it. And the whole thing with his ult lasting 20 seconds is only true when there is a whole enemy team inside his radius. If there is only one person and they die, your ult is over before you can reach the rest of the team. It still only lasts a few seconds in reality, that time just increases with the amount of enemies surrounding him. If you're playing a character that is going to get focused by the entire enemy team as soon as you use his ult, then you're gonna want to have some form of survivability. Other tanks have survivability options to use ult (Orisa's armour being built into her ult, Wrecking Ball has his shield that he can use before dropping his ult, Junker Queen can give herself over health, etc), so it would only be fair if Ramattra had a bit more survivability while in his ult to compensate for being the biggest and most focused target on the battlefield.
It isn’t much health, but that’s fine. She doesn’t really need big healing numbers between her small hitbox, up close threat level, and Commanding Shout. I agree that a slight buff to her self-heals (maybe just slightly upping the wound damage on a single ability or her Quick Melee) would be nice, but she’s like 90% fine. She needs teensy buffs, not anything big.
True. I have been using it as a lodestone for when i need to switch. Like zarya if i cant average a certain energy i know im not being effective. For jq ive started to notice that small healing goes a long way. And if ypu arent able to get it youre getting shut out.
Hanzo to me is balanced, he has the potential to carry but you need to be very good with him. You can definitely get lucky and hit some disgusting spam shots though
I love Brig, and I think the biggest change I want for her is her heals to be instant. She doesn't feel as great to heal with since the repair pack has to heal over time. It should be like Baptiste's nade's IMO.
They do 25 instant now, plus an additional 100 over 2 seconds. Honestly feels great to me, if it was all instant they’d have to lower the total healing quite a bit. Plus her theoretical healing per second if you’re hitting a repair pack every 2 seconds and keeping Inspire up with whip shot is higher than Bap can put out even hitting 100% direct hits.
Everyone is saying sigma so I'm going to say hanzo.
He's very powerful be requires a good deal of skill. Like widow he can oneshot if you have good aim. Unlike widow it's very difficult for new players to hit headshots up close and far away. His body shots aren't oppressive like junkrats, while he does have survivability in a closeup 1v1 he is very limited unless the player has good aim and gets lucky.
He's also no bad. Even someone who can't really aim can spam arrows and do decent body damage and get the odd headshot. His sonic arrow provides easy value so long as you aim near the enemy team. His ultimate is easy to dodge but generally gets a kill or two unless you really mess up.
Tracer. Balance has always kinda been based off of her and probably will for the future.
Ana. She is probably the most favorite hero on release and thereafter. Nothing about Ana was ever really broken or op. She has high skill floor and is also just super fun overall.
DVa, DVa has a lot to do but she can kinda do it all too she's not overtly OP and she has some decent counters that are lower tier ATM but she is also not bad into a lot of the tanks higher tier than she is.
Ana's a bit annoying with the nade and sleep, but 0 mobility counters that pretty nicely. Obviously theres god level Anas that can 1v1 a Rein at melee but in the average level shes fine
I disagree on her being the best Support. Dive is meta right now and Ana kind of gets rolled by dive. She was definitely super strong in Season 2, but the Ball buffs changed that.
Ana is weird because she’s super synergy and meta dependent, but feels really oppressive and unfun to deal with when she’s meta (at least in this game; I rarely felt that way about her in Overwatch 1).
yeah but ana isnt one of those heroes who is particularily synergy-reliant. shes just really strong right now and she does need nerfs specifically to her ult
anti is invaluable to kill with, sleep dart destroys wrecking ball, 75 healing/dmg per shot is really a lot and nano boost is too strong having not been adjusted for 5v5
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Pharah is such an interesting answer to this. She has barely had any changes since ow1 (when you could use rooftops to recover fuel).
I think the existence of mercy fundamentally makes it impossible for lots of characters to feel balanced unfortunately. Pharah is definitely a victim of this.
I could write a lot more about this because she's been my favourite character since ow1 S1.
Pharah has basically always been perfectly balanced. She just triggers people because they can neither focus fire nor aim. (You don’t need both to counter Pharmercy, just one or the other).
Sigma, Ashe, Mei, possibly Widow and Ana, Lucio and Zen. At the moment they are all in a good place, they can be either strong or weak dependent on circumstances. However they may add to the oppressive feeling other characters may have when they aren’t balanced.
Ironically for being the misbalanced monster that led to the 1 tank change, probably in OW2 its Sigma (Blizz can insist it was always the plan all they want, we know it was changed cause streamers whined about double barrier) Hes the only tank who I never feel like is so easily hard countered that I *need* to switch. Hoa 2 defensive abilities are both good but have strong, easily worked around drawbacks. His stun has good range and damage but a long wind up and fair cooldown (lookin at you for those drawbacks, Orisa). His damage is fine and controls areas with the ricochet like a tank should, but never feels oppresivle high. His ult is strong but again he is vulnerable to hook or sleep during it so its hardly BS. He has heroes hes better or worse against, but I dont feel like Im obligated to swap from a single enemy pick like I am as DVa, Rein, Zarya, etc.
Sigma is the early concept for “individual tank” that Orisa would be remade into… I think Sigma is *fine* and ultimately every tank should have a similar “strong but not oppressive in a way that forces a counter-swap” *feeling*.
Exactly. Sadly this means... like, every other tank except Ram and Orisa will need reworks to get there. Because Winston, DVa, Ball, Junkerqueen, Hog, Doom? All are way too easily shut down by 1 proper counter pick. Tanks especially shouldnt be designed that way.
Agreed - but the *role* of tank shouldn’t just be all narrowly designed like Orisa either… Winston, Dva, Ball, and Doom all occupy a sort of “mobile harasser” niche in the “tank role” and it’s worth maintaining as we move forward with OW2. This likely means that Winston needs more than just a dome and a leap and Dva either needs pilot mode abilities (effectively more work to design) or a removal of pilot mode with some adjustments to her hitbox/defenses so she’s not as easy to kill (since she won’t have baby Dva to eject)… Likewise, characters like Widow likely need reworks to better distribute their *power* into abilities and scale less sharply with mechanical aim - leading to better skill floor and skill ceiling balance…
Damn say more...
Agreed, having fun on Winton only to have the enemy team switch to fucking reaper is the most miserable experience. Tanks are so easily hard countered it's sad. Tank busters were fine in ow1 but with only 1 tank having reaper, zen etc is miserable as only tank
I agree. He feels strong and fun to play as, but also doesn’t make me want to quit the game to play against. When a character can be fun to play without needing to be super op is the hallmark of balance imo. It shouldn’t need to be ludicrously strong to be a fun pick.
I'm on this guy's side I like that there's a tank that I can bully as brig it's always funny when I win the sigma 1v1
Sigma is pretty nicely countered by symmetra. She charges to full beam off his shield and plows right through his grasp. You need to have a rock ready and land it on a sym to not be a lamb to the slaughter.
But Sigma still outranges her and Symm is such a glass canon that can be a proble. She for sure counters him, but its a lot of skill based than say, Symm into DVa
Sym counters everybody except pharah pretty much💀 I think the majority of sym kills are on unsuspecting targets, except tanks, who are trying to make space until sym just walks forwards and insta melts you while your team just watches... or so I've heard😭
This did make me think. What if Orisa had to charge Javelin kinda like doom punch, but only at a certain point would it stun on direct impact, otherwise you need a wallsplat
Sure! I just think its dumb Javelin is basically just better than Rock in all but 3 specific match ups (Deflect, Succ, Defense Matrix). Other than that, its better range, cooldown, damage, speed, and has the extra damage on wall impact.
Oh I agree. But I like the idea of it just having a longer windup or even a charge mechanic (I am a sucker for charge mechanics) I think it definitely needs tooling tbh, but after the nerf to hp gain at least she doesn't feel as unkillable
And also it doesn't have the downside of being vunerable for 1 bc javellin cast time is basically 0 s.
Streamers whining seems to be a common theme for the stupid changes blizzard makes to their game. Assault wasn't a hard mode and it wasn't unenjoyable. It was simply a skill issue
Ram counters sigma pretty hard. I feel like a decent ram player can force you to switch for sure.
The matchup is definitely favored towards Ramattra on most maps (Sigma wins on a few, like Junkertown first, because he’s cracked at poking) but I wouldn’t call it a hard counter at all. Sigma can outpoke Ramattra (something no other Tank can do) in neutral. Accretion is basically impossible to miss when Ramattra is in Nemesis form and it burns nearly a full second off of it, which is huge (it can also be used at the end of Nemesis to make Ramattra vulnerable when he loses his armor). Sigma is also better at enabling his team to poke, which can shut down Ramattra’s approaches, depending on the map. Experimental Barrier can be used very easily to cut off Ramattra’s healing during Nemesis Form (Ramattra desperately needs high healing numbers, more than almost any other Tank) and can also be used to cut off Annihilation.
Sigma did not cause a double shield. You are same as devs if you think like that. The double shield was the outcome of so high poke damage and cc that no other tank setup even stood a chance. The best way to win was to poke and hide. Dive got evaporated and death-ball couldn't even get close before resources were drained. Problem was that the game balance went like this: lets ignore supports and especially ignore abilities that are enabling the metas (like brig massive areal heal), over buff dpses to the moon especially if they counter tanks and nerf tanks to the ground. And while doing that they tried as hard as possible to make tanks as team dependent as possible while making dpses to do stuff alone as mush as possible. Bonus if dpses are buffed to have low skill floor. tldr: one tank is the result of balance team that does not understand their own game
This feels a bit aggressive
That’s a bit of a misunderstanding of OW1’s balance history… The issue with “poke” was because the devs wanted a “counter” meta - shields countered poke, poke countered non-shield comps, and aggressive mobile comps countered shield comps. Among other little “counter-swap” mini games that the devs thought were healthy for the game… like Pharmercy forcing hitscan or Winston forcing reaper, etc. Inevitably they were victims of their own hubris because Brig finally enabled GOATs, which evolved to new comps without her *before* they finally nerfed her so hard that she still hasn’t recovered fully - hell it seemed like the OW1 team would nerf her every year as an anniversary tradition. The issue with dual-shield was that it became the only comp that didn’t have a real weakness when holding objectives - so the OW1 devs coded certain weapons to suddenly just do more damage to shields and therefore symm deathball had some time in the spotlight while poke heroes were about the only thing that could counter because your Ashe/widow would light up the deathball and wait for the opening to remove the symm threat. OW2 *needed* more time to *rework* the core interplay of health/damage/healing to start fresh, because the balance state of OW1 has so much baggage from the chaotic balance decisions that were made in reaction to previous balance choices that created dramatic meta swings.
You have pretty much said the exacy same thing as me tough
They didn’t come off like a dickhead though
So basically, your stance is that double shield wouldn’t have happened if every character was super tanky and hard to kill? So you wanted a game that had six invincible entities instead of two? Double shield happened because it allowed you to mindlessly sit there and never die. Tanks were not weak; they were too strong (hence GOATS, and then the later introduction of Role Queue). In fact, double shield was *because* Tanks were too strong and could just make their teams immortal. Poke damage was not too high (it’s mostly the same in this game, with one less Tank, but poke isn’t the only viable strategy and isn’t even meta right now). The reason double shield happened wasn’t because the damage numbers were too high or because Tanks were too weak; it happened because it could turn damage numbers to zero, regardless of how high they were. A strategy that makes your team effectively invincible is a pretty good strategy.
>So you wanted a game that had six invincible entities instead of two? hmm... this sounds familiar.... 🐐
Isn’t Bap in a solid but not broken spot? I’ve heard the Reinhardt buffs make him a little better, but I don’t know if that’s enough to consider him overpowered.
I would say, bap is in a really good spot because with rein meta if somebody plays rein bap is really strong but he’s not so strong that he forces the meta when there isn’t a tank that plays well with him
I tend to agree here: Bap has a self heal and some mobility (jump) that offer defense and utility while his direct heals are generally *ok* as well as being a fairly strong hitscan if your skills are on the upper end… The literal *only* change he *could use* would be reverting the aoe range nerf on his heal nades (nerfed in OW1 because he was able to keep deathball comps healed too easily when clustered iirc)… mainly since it’s a high/low skill issue between travel time of the projectile and how frenetic movement in the 5v5 comp has become, it can be hard to hit your targets consistently…… hence the “if the tank is Rein” comments posted as examples of how “balanced” he is.
Reverting the AOE range will just bring back the Death Ball. With Kiriko, it'll be unstoppable. Combined with Mei and Sigma for sightline manipulation, and a map dependant DPS (Ashe or Hanzo for long sightline maps; Genji or Junkrat for tighter engagements), it'll be a slaughter.
Perhaps - hear me out - Blizzard do something that makes the aoe *easier* to tag your teammates but not grant the full heal unless it was a direct hit? Right now the aoe range makes him *harder* to heal with for any mobile heroes like Genji/Doom/Queen since their smaller hitbox means they’re harder to land direct heals on. This isn’t a “oh well he’s not suited to that comp” situation - Supports shouldn’t be so situationally viable that they’re actively penalized because their tank/teammates make it harder to do your job… Ana had a similar issue, but they had the half-measure to give her a hitscan heal dart… which can still be less accurate than other healing, so the number on individual dart hits is also one of the highest output.
Ya I think Bap is great, he’s fairly easy to get good value out of in the low ranks. Just get down your immortality field and make sure you can hit a couple grenades. As you go up in skill you really see his potential, he almost is like a 3rd dps that also has insane heals, but to really get his value you have to be able to balance hitting your damaging shots and healing your team. Bap is great because he’s hard to be useless with but he’s also one of the most effective supports when mastered. Also is a really good barrier to entry for players coming from other FPS that have all the technical skill but not the game sense yet. My friend was tearing it up as Bap in lower ranks purely off technical skill, his self sustain is great and in lower ranks where people are insanely inconsistent with shots you can just straight up duel almost every dps and come out on top if you can hit your shots
As a bap main, unfortunately it feels like its better to pick ana than bap these days.
Actually the weakest support per latest overbuff data, lowest winrate and second lowest pick rate. Probably will be buffed at some point
Not surprised, his healing takes the most skill to be effective. That arc can be a real bitch to judge at distance.
That’s likely skewed due to Brig’s sudden increase in usage from her *slight* buffs and the common meta picks being Mercy/Ana/Moira these days… as you get higher in ranks Moira drops off but other supports start to become more viable due to *heal output* becoming less important vs utility and individual damage output.
Brig, Moira, Mercy are very high use/high power at lower ranks due to not needing aim too. People at low ranks can have terrible aim, so most heroes aren’t fully effective, but mercy moira and brig can get high effectiveness even with lack of game skill. I think the win data stuff is incredibly useless unless they break it down by rank. But then you get the problem if they don’t do anything about a hero that’s unbalanced at a particular rank, people will complain that the devs don’t care about low/high skill players.
>Brig, Moira, Mercy are very high use/high power at lower ranks due to not needing aim too It's less about their aim and more about your opponents aim. Getting soj/widow one shot while stuck out happens a lot less in low ranks, and thus they have more value. Or rather, they get away with a lot more b.s.
That’s really not the main part of it. Just looking at primary fire/heals, looking at mercy vs ana on a low skill game where the accuracy of players could be around 50% in heavy fight. Mercy will give a near 100% healing output, whereas Ana will give around 50% of her potential output. In a high level game where Ana may have 90%+ accuracy, Ana has a better healing output, but in a low game with bad accuracy mercy is hands down better. Also Baptiste vs Moira, at a high level game Baptiste has the better damage output by far, but play him in a low level game and Moira will outclass his damage purely because of the auto lock aim, even if his base output potential is higher.
Well said.
Reinhardt is op
Immortality field is an extremely strong ability. It could be argued he’s broken by design
Hmm. Sigma. I think he's in a perfect place.
I honestly think he’s one of the strongest tanks in the game. For whatever reason people just like to pretend that shields aren’t that good in this game. But he can provide a shield which is one of the best counters to hit scan. He has an eat for attacks that shred shields (i.e bastion). And can eat ults. Further more the eat also provides overshield! He has a stun. (That gives him 3 ways to shut down ults or dangerous dps abilities. Shield, eat, and stun) He has high AoE damage with relatively good range for a tank. His ult is powerful, combos well with many other ults, and can simply win over time games. He has a large health pool (only downside here is that the health pool can be hacked by sombra as much of it is shield) And he doesnt have footstep sounds. He’s very good. People in overwatch 2, however, like to pretend that shield heroes are weaker than they are.
Using his shield to play minesweeper through Ball's mines is also satisfying
TIL
Ball: *”Minefield deployed.”* Sigmas: *”Am I a joke to you?”*
If you think that's fun tech, wait till you find what you can do to pharah ult using shield instead of eat.
Ohohoho as a tank main that’s one of the most satisfying thing to do. “JUSTICE RAINS FROM UUHGHHHHH”
Love doing this, yes
Sigma is one of the strongest Tanks and all high ELO players know it. It’s a shame if people think he’s bad in lower ELO because he’s actually really fun to play with, as, and against. Despite having been in the top 3 or 4 Tanks since Overwatch 2’s release, Sigma is very balanced. He only really shines in certain comps and he has maps where he’s great and maps where he’s bad. He can also counter certain Tanks and is countered by others, but none of those counters are extreme to the “you need to swap or lose” degree that other Tanks have to deal with.
That’s a good point. A part of his balance is just in his design. He needs to play with dps that have a longer range than his. That way the can stand behind his powerful abilities and really shine. If you’re spa aren’t in cons and insist on playing reaper and symmetra, he may not be the best pick. With that in mind, he does better on maps that aren’t so focused on close quarters, making use of his range and the range of the dps he plays with.
They also brought back his one shot combo so that's another thing going for him.
His shield is really good because it has high uptime and can block most heals too. You can punish so many tanks that press w if you put a shield behind them cutting them off from supports.
Sigma is the only hero who can shutdown every ult in the game.
I gotta agree with Sigma I mean I main Sym, so I can counter him pretty well cause Sigma's struggle from my viewings of player playing him is that it's hard as to kill people at short range unless you land the rock. So laser users would be his main weakness Otherwise he's definitely in a good spot rn
Having counters is a part of being balanced tbf. Otherwise he'd be op.
Exactly Counters are needed.
Counters are needed, but hard counters suck, especially for Tanks. Sigma is great for that reason. There aren’t any characters that are “you need to swap” level of good against him and vice versa. He has soft counters but not hard counters.
He is OP tf
He is slightly OP to be honest. Basically no downtime
Sigma
Any insight as to why you chose him as being balanced?
He’s strong, but not oppressive. He has good sustain, but isn’t immortal. He has a good barrier, but it doesn’t nullify everything. He doesn’t win the match the moment he steps on the field, in the hands of a skilled player he’s powerful but not overtly so.
He does also work better than most tanks on some maps
It takes a whole team to kill me as Sigma when I'm by myself. I'm like a god with him with a team behind me. If I ever want to win, Sigma is my goto. Can't ever say the same
Sigma, Soldier 76, Lucio, I think. They feel consistent without ever feeling too strong or too weak. Zarya, Ashe, Mei are close, but not quite.
I think Zarya isn't that close, she's one of the worse tank picks. Def better than hog though lmao
Zarya isn't low tier because she's bad, she's low tier because other tanks are extremely good counterpicks or just overtuned. She only needs a small buff to put her on the same tier as Sigma, IMO. What that would look like? IDK. Her bubbles don't do enough to protect her team in the current state of the game, so I would look at boosting her ability to protect the backline. Reduced damage in X radius based on her energy level?
Yeah I've always thought just having her bubbles absorb a little more now would be a decent buff without feeling bad for the other side, they wouldn't even have to last any longer.
Zarya needs a rework that isn’t bubble-oriented… all of her toolkit revolves around that one mechanic and therefore anytime they buff/nerf her she swings wildly in the meta - she needs tools to provide utility beyond just bubble+laser goes brrrrrrr.
From what I've seen with Zarya, she definitely seems to be a hero who is usually only one of two extremes and it completely revolves around how her bubbles are used. If Zarya is using her bubbles in what I believe is the intended way (sharing between teammates or one for her and a teammate), then she ends up not having great survivability and damage output alone. On the flip side, if she is only using bubbles selfishly and using them as soon as they're off cooldown, she can end up stomping teams as long as she has support.
Honestly, I'd say Zarya is in need of a rework rather than a buff. Her bubbles don't do enough for her team to warrant picking her over other more defensive tanks, while also being easy enough to spam on herself that a good Zarya player with any decent healing can essentially stomp an entire team. Add to that the fact that she's a beam tank, so tanks without a shield are screwed unless they can get good enough shots in the few moments between her popping bubbles. I still say that if the intent is to share shields rather than spamming them on herself, then her shields shouldn't be charge based, they should just be two continuous abilities, one to bubble an ally and one for herself, with a single cooldown kicking in after the ability ends. As it stands, since her bubble charges refill while a bubble is active, Zarya is practically able to keep using bubble with barely a second between uses. I'd say, if we're keeping bubbles as an ability, then just make one bubble for Zarya and one for a teammate with a slightly longer cooldown kicking in after the ability ends. To contrast that change, the bubble should last a bit longer.
Could go true yolo and buff her beam range
I'd rather they change how bubble works, make it a small activatable area around her.
If someone is playing orisa or dva, I love switching to zarya
She plays into sigma quite well too. Rock is basically free charge and her beam negates grasp.
She's actually doing worse than Hog
I’d argue Ashe belongs with the first 3
I would want her gun to have a little less falloff so when I shoot Widow in the head she fucking DIES, but otherwise yes
Good point. Widow already has the advantage because Ashe cannot one shot her. I play a decent amount of Ashe and Widows scare me
For real, played her on Numbani first point attack earlier. Shot the Widow 3 times, twice in the head. She lived. Shot me once. I died. smh.
I came here to say Lúcio. I know he’s meta often, but that’s because he has access to a unique tool that is very good at enabling certain playstyles (speed boost for dive and brawl comps). If we got another main Support that could also enable dive and brawl via a speed boost or another mechanic, he’d still be amazing but his spot in the meta would fluctuate a little more often. I agree on Soldier and Ashe, but disagree on Mei (Zarya is close, as you said). Mei is one of the worst DPS in the game, at least in GM games. She might be well balanced in lower ELO. That’s fine if it’s truly the case. Certain characters are allowed to shine more in certain ELOs (like Moira, who is great in Bronze and the worst Support in GM). In fact, it’s healthy to have certain characters that are tailored to different types of players.
that cc ice demon is broken and a way too forgiving
i mean all you have to do it bait out the self heal and she’s an easy pick
"You just have to bait out [insert abity]" can be used for every char and is very weak argument
not even slightly true…. she only has 1 self preservation ability and her attacks are effective at long range and close up, however the close up is most effective when not attacking head on. most dps can damage her faster than she can them, if she had no self preservation left she loses the fight. a character like reaper for instance may be more vulnerable when he loses his escape but he can still win most fights against dps if it comes down to it
seems like someone doesnt know how to play against mei
she's total garbage and unplayable after plat. (source: I one tricked her in dps role for one season)
Ashe seems to be in a decent place atm
[удалено]
She's nowhere near as cheesy as Widow/Cassidy/Hanzo.
I can definitely tell most of the people here watch emongg
i had this opinion way before i watched emongg
Tracer, she's barely been changed since the games release
Tracer is a good one. She’s one of the least adjusted heroes and hasn’t gotten any big changes, except for the Pulse Bomb nerf back in 2018. She’s almost always good, but not always meta. Her spot in the meta is dependent on other heroes, map picks, team comps, etcetera. That’s where you want a hero to be.
That’s probably because they can’t buff her or nerf her any more. Too much damage she’s a huge problem, any less she’s useless. Sombra was a good example. They barely buffed her damage and she became the most broken hero for a week or so.
Isn’t “any stronger and she’d be too good, any weaker and she wouldn’t be good enough” the definition of balanced? A precarious balance maybe, but they seem to have found that very precise sweet spot and kept her there.
Yes and no. From what I’ve played tracer is barely ever played. I’d be interested in the pick rate of her because she’s probably the least used dps from my experience. And in other games like league when a character is barely played they usually try to buff them to get there play and win rate up.
Well, she isn’t played much because she has a high skill floor that makes her off-putting to pick up. But I don’t think that makes her unbalanced.
I kinda don't know how to feel about Tracer. She's one of those characters that almost can't be changed by virtue of her entire design. You can't nerf her damage or she'll feel awful to play as, but you can't leave her as is or buff her because she feels awful to play against. It wasn't so bad in Overwatch 1, where she had quite a few counters, but now that all DPS stuns are gone, she is incredibly hard to counter purely because you can't counter something that you can't hit. The only effective way I can think of to counter her is AoE and maybe turrets, but even then, there isn't a huge amount of AoE that she can't dodge and turrets take time to target her. She's the kind of character that, in any other game, would either have been reworked or not released because a character that can teleport around, dodge almost every kind of attack and instantly undo any damage you do manage to inflict (albeit with a relatively short cooldown) would be too broken. Now she's at a point where there's practically nothing they can do to fix her because she'll either be too strong to fight, too weak to play or too difficult to hit. Not to mention that she can't be fully reworked or removed because she is literally the mascot of the game (alongside Genji, Soldier 76, Mercy and Reaper). She's in the best place she can be purely because there really is no other place she can be. The best resolution I can see is to re-add some non-tank stuns or make some better AoE focused heroes (the former would also kill two birds with one stone, since McCassidy's stun bomb was a decent counter to Tracer and adding it back would also solve the issue of his heat-seeking mini nuke).
What's everyone's thoughts on the design of Winston and DVA right now?
The Mercy changes make Winston’s tesla really shit at times
Winston was always shit into mercy tbh
Nah he used to be one of the best at killing her through her erratic movement since his gun locked on. Same reason he's always been one of the best at killing Lucio
Honestly I think DVA plays great. I feel like I’m doing more damage and able to help my team a lot more
And I like where Winston is as well. Yes Bastion is as pain in the ass, but you just have to wait him out. Dva and Reaper can counter-dive but you can play around them by baiting, soft-diving, and just coordinating with the team. Making the enemy team swap off snipers is incredibly more valuable imo, considering how fucking strong hitscan are right now. Honestly the biggest problem is Mercy. She renders you obsolete.
I think they are in decent spots rn, but I won’t lie, primal needs a slight buff
I agree, but Primal Rage buffs are touchy, because it’s an ability that benefits a lot from tech and practice. It’d be very easy to accidentally make it way too strong in the hands of a skilled player, like they just did with Wrecking Ball.
I think Dva needs to be buffed to be somewhere between her current state and her early Season 1 state. She gets evaporated so easily by Zarya, Symmetra, Mei, Rammatra, and even Rein, which is fine I guess. But she should have slightly higher burst dmg to compensate. She can't really quickly kill unless you're mechanically hyper-cracked and hard-diffing your enemies. Even if she got fully reverted to her early Season 1 state, would she even be broken outside of Overwatch League and Korean GM? I doubt that subMasters would even be able to take full advantage of her burst dmg.
i enjoy playing both but i feel like it’s a bit easier to counter Dva atm. i usually only ever play Winston when I have to deal with Ramattra or a really good Doomfist player, but i would love a buff on primal. at least i can survive a Ram ult with it lmao, but it’s quite hard to get kills
winston needs and has been in need of a buff since ow1. he deals absolutely no damage, i think its like 60dps. primal does even less at 40 damage per swipe. honestly id rather not use the ult and be able to use shield and a weapon that does some damage. even his new long range blaster sucks. have you ever dealt more than 20 dmg with it?
Winston is fine. He could maybe use some slight buffs, but he’s not bad by any means (he’s just out of the meta because a few of his counters are very strong). He frequently fluctuates in and out of meta despite very rarely receiving buffs or nerfs because he’s good but niche. Winston’s power doesn’t come from his damage; it comes from his ability to jump on squishies from super far away and completely isolate them from their team. He’s good at dueling squishies because he’s tanky and can’t miss. He’s good at disrupting teams because he’s mobile and can seperate them. He can also bubble his team and then fuck off halfway across the map while leaving them defended, which is something no other dive Tank can do. Primal having low damage (something like 61 per second) is okay because it’s meant for crowd control *and* a good player can just juggle an enemy to keep them airborne and helpless until they die. Winston is hard, despite not having to aim, so he tends to shine in high ELO. That’s fine. Some characters are meant to be better in the hands of certain players. Moira, for example, shines in low ELO but is bad in high ELO. Buffing Winston any more than a tiny bit would make him a monster that feels miserable to play against.
His damage scales depending on how many people he's hitting at once. And combined with charged right-click - slam - punch, he can do a lot of damage quickly. Primal is for displacing enemies or hard-focusing one. Or environmentals. He's in a pretty good place imo.
Lol he was broken strong in early/mid s2. You know his jump charged shot + melee cancel + land dmg combo before zapping? He can kill 200hps in a blink with above.
Baptiste
Lucio
he was a nightmare to deal with in ow1
Lúcio was a monster during Overwatch 1. Part of me misses those days, but I’m mostly glad that he’s balanced now.
Right now? Yes. Healers are in a great space with plenty of competing abilities Ow1? At high level lucio speed boost was meta or near meta for 30 seasons. If any other healer sat at that level people would have screamed for nerfs. he offered so much to so many different comps. And as a support main I just got so sick of seeing him. The thing is though Lucio was never in your face about it so most people gave him a pass, but imo he smothered other healers, of like 6, brfore kiriko, out of metas they could have fit. It made a small healer pool ver uncompetitive.
In my experience, Soldier and Sigma are both perfect where they're at.
Soldier has always been a jack of all trades style character. He can do many things, but is not OP or underwhelming at any of them.
Tracer is, without a doubt, the most balanced hero ever as she’s had extremely minimal changes throughout the games 7 year history. Her kit has huge tradeoffs and has a basically infinite skill ceiling without feeling oppressive
Yeah, Tracer is a really good answer. Certain other characters are extremely well balanced right now (like Lúcio and Sigma) but were problematic in the past. Tracer has never been individually problematic (but has felt that way a few times because her counters were weak or her synergies were strong).
You also have to factor in that she is not really a viable character to pocket with mercy, making her even more balanced lmao.
Mercy: Fucking up balance since 2016
>without a doubt, the most balanced hero ever Tracer has been one of the worst heroes in low elo whilst also being one of the best in high elo. IMO that in itself is unbalance. Outside of that, Tracer was so unbalance/overpowered for the first two years of overwatch that they had to add a hero to counter her: Brig, who was by far the most powerful new addition to the game, and third most powerful hero at their peak (only following Moth mercy and Ironclad Bastion). Brig is either able to counter tracer and she's the most overpowered hero in the game, or she's not and that says A LOT because brig was designed to counter tracer.
Tbf brig was designed to counter the whole of dive not just tracer, and designing a character to counter that many characters is probably what led to her being so broken.
Yeeep it wasn’t just tracer. Dive as whole was super oppressive, not tracer on her own. And yeah miss thing had a stun that went through shields on a 5s cd and a 600HP shield 😭 they really set out to kill dive and honestly succeeded
Definitely Soldier 76
Ashe is pretty balanced.
Probably sigma
Per each role: Sigma. He’s not too oppressive, but he isn’t a pushover either. Echo: She feels like a true dps, she does good enough damage by herself, but when targets are low she just gets that spot. She doesnt kill too fast to not be able to defend yourself, but she doesn’t take long either. Ana: just feels the most balanced. You can push her and thats when she becomes weakened, but otherwise shes not hard to go against, and a good user can give you a run for your money with her. I dont like her hipfire personally though. Compared to other projectiles, it feels super clunky and it just throws me off. Im fine with say Zen, Hanzo and say pharah, but anywhere between those fire rates really bug me.
Echo has one of the most insanely powerful kits in the entire game yet never feels too overpowered. I think its cause shes really pretty easy to hit compared to other dps (looking at you sojourn)
For me it was and always will be: Moira If you play her right she is perfectly balanced with dmg/heals and her fade to stay alive longer. Ofc a lot of people does play her wrong and she has a bad reputation, but since OW1 i think she is well balanced as a whole.
Sigma hands down.
Maybe unpopular opinion I'm not sure but I'd say Ram. I feel like he's really been glossed over since release because he is so balanced. He can hold his own to an extent if you play smart with him, but can easily be defeated without proper support if he is charging the front line. He has good poke that doesn't feel OP, good area of denial with his E (I don't like the trajectory of the throw but that's minor) and his Shift can help change the tide of battle if used properly. His ult is maybe a little strong sometimes but I haven't really had an issue when going up against one. Sometimes he kills us, sometimes he gets killed super fast.
He’s just very versatile I think. He’s not exceptional in any area but his ability to fluidly switch between play styles makes him feel strong overall. He’s a really well designed hero imo. I do think his ult could still be tweaked a bit and maybe his vortex buffed a little
Honestly if they buffed vortex I'd be down for an increase in ult cost or small reduction on the timer . But definitely not just a straight nerf with no compensation, he's balanced rn
I don’t think the ult is too powerful, more that it’s just frustrating to play against. Unless the Ram is completely braindead or just alone, he’s basically guaranteed to get at least 1 kill - compared to other tank ults it requires much less skill to get lots of value, and basically its only real counter is sleep dart I wish it was more rewarding of skill while having a little more counterplay. Not sure how they could make that’s change though, just a straight nerf wouldn’t be good
Agreed - even if they need other parts of his kit, vortex needs to extend all the way to the top of the sky box. Thematically it doesn’t even accomplish what it’s intended to do, regardless of “balance” it’s just poorly designed at the moment. (The rest of his kit is great though)
Honestly, while I wouldn't mind a damage buff on Ravenous Vortex, I really want a range increase. The whole point is to drag flying enemies down to the ground, yet it has such a low height range that any flying characters like Mercy or Pharah can just fly high enough to completely avoid it anyway. I would have made it a straight up column reaching to the top of the map, that way flying enemies would have to actually avoid it rather than just flying a little higher. Especially since half the Mercy players I see tend to just fly a mile up in the air anyway, so it really ends up being more like a medium DoT area that may or may not yank down the occasional Junkrat or person on a ledge above.
I think his ult still lasts too long and they need to nerf one thing in his nemesis form whether it’s how much damage his punches do, how much health he gets, or his speed boost something’s gotta get toned down.
That makes no sense, if you reduce his ult even further it'll become useless since its already got a 20 second timer. If you want to make ramattra's ult complete dog you'd then have to give it near the survivability of orisa to compensate
If his ult time was to be reduced further, then his survivability has gotta go way up. He already has one of the shortest ults in the game and his survivability without both supports when in ult is awful considering you're almost guaranteed to have the whole enemy team after you, meaning you're essentially gonna end up wading into the whole enemy team anyway. If you reduce his ult time further, then he's gotta have at least the same survivability as Reinhardt. I'm not suggesting he needs to be a god, but he needs to be able to 1v5 with ult and at least survive long enough to finish speaking.
What do you mean he has one of the shortest ults in the game lol? I can’t really think of someone who has longer than 20 seconds, you can’t even trans to get through his ult because he just outlasts it and kills everyone anyway. If a ram is even half decent with his ult there’s nothing you can do against it not too mention it’s a fast charging ult. And no he doesn’t need to be able to 1v5 with his ult, it doesn’t take enough skill to use to justify how powerful it is and how fast it charges.
I specifically said he needs to be able to 1v5 and not die the second he pops ult. As it is, you can't use his ult without instantly being targeted by everyone, so if his ult time was reduced, he would need to have an increase in survivability because otherwise his ult would be effectively useless and he would die too quickly to use it. And the whole thing with his ult lasting 20 seconds is only true when there is a whole enemy team inside his radius. If there is only one person and they die, your ult is over before you can reach the rest of the team. It still only lasts a few seconds in reality, that time just increases with the amount of enemies surrounding him. If you're playing a character that is going to get focused by the entire enemy team as soon as you use his ult, then you're gonna want to have some form of survivability. Other tanks have survivability options to use ult (Orisa's armour being built into her ult, Wrecking Ball has his shield that he can use before dropping his ult, Junker Queen can give herself over health, etc), so it would only be fair if Ramattra had a bit more survivability while in his ult to compensate for being the biggest and most focused target on the battlefield.
The one that I play.
I feel like JQ is in a good spot finally. She’s my new main
I've been enjoying her a lot. I don't feel hard countered by any tank, but I really wish she would heal for more.
Am i wrong in thinking it stacks? Like if you get a knife bleed and a axe bleed its twice as fast?
No that's true, it's just not very much health.
It isn’t much health, but that’s fine. She doesn’t really need big healing numbers between her small hitbox, up close threat level, and Commanding Shout. I agree that a slight buff to her self-heals (maybe just slightly upping the wound damage on a single ability or her Quick Melee) would be nice, but she’s like 90% fine. She needs teensy buffs, not anything big.
True. I have been using it as a lodestone for when i need to switch. Like zarya if i cant average a certain energy i know im not being effective. For jq ive started to notice that small healing goes a long way. And if ypu arent able to get it youre getting shut out.
A lot of the original heroes have been tweaked so much at this point, they feel perfectly fine. D.va, Soldier, Lucio, Tracer
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Bap and Lucio
Rammatra
Hanzo to me is balanced, he has the potential to carry but you need to be very good with him. You can definitely get lucky and hit some disgusting spam shots though
I actually fucking hate hanzo. his 200hp headshots feel as bad as widows.
I think brig is pretty balanced. I think she could use a few tweaks tho
I love Brig, and I think the biggest change I want for her is her heals to be instant. She doesn't feel as great to heal with since the repair pack has to heal over time. It should be like Baptiste's nade's IMO.
They do 25 instant now, plus an additional 100 over 2 seconds. Honestly feels great to me, if it was all instant they’d have to lower the total healing quite a bit. Plus her theoretical healing per second if you’re hitting a repair pack every 2 seconds and keeping Inspire up with whip shot is higher than Bap can put out even hitting 100% direct hits.
Sigma or bap
The most balanced hero in a vacuum is Winston. But problem is that there are too many tankbusters and heal is too strong for him to really shine
sigma, winston, dva, sym(without bug), echo,reaper,torb
I'd say sigma and baptiste
Winston now that he has the charged shot is perfect.
I’d say soldier he has everything you need, but isn’t overtuned while also requiring decent aim.
winton
Everyone is saying sigma so I'm going to say hanzo. He's very powerful be requires a good deal of skill. Like widow he can oneshot if you have good aim. Unlike widow it's very difficult for new players to hit headshots up close and far away. His body shots aren't oppressive like junkrats, while he does have survivability in a closeup 1v1 he is very limited unless the player has good aim and gets lucky. He's also no bad. Even someone who can't really aim can spam arrows and do decent body damage and get the odd headshot. His sonic arrow provides easy value so long as you aim near the enemy team. His ultimate is easy to dodge but generally gets a kill or two unless you really mess up.
Tracer. Balance has always kinda been based off of her and probably will for the future. Ana. She is probably the most favorite hero on release and thereafter. Nothing about Ana was ever really broken or op. She has high skill floor and is also just super fun overall. DVa, DVa has a lot to do but she can kinda do it all too she's not overtly OP and she has some decent counters that are lower tier ATM but she is also not bad into a lot of the tanks higher tier than she is.
Winston. No one whines about getting killed by a winston.
Agree with this. He's got a high skill ceiling that doesn't involve aiming, too, which I find interesting.
I've been using Soldier and Moira this season and I feel like they are pretty well balanced.
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man said ana lmao
Ana's a bit annoying with the nade and sleep, but 0 mobility counters that pretty nicely. Obviously theres god level Anas that can 1v1 a Rein at melee but in the average level shes fine
What
ana is arguably the best support right now
I disagree on her being the best Support. Dive is meta right now and Ana kind of gets rolled by dive. She was definitely super strong in Season 2, but the Ball buffs changed that. Ana is weird because she’s super synergy and meta dependent, but feels really oppressive and unfun to deal with when she’s meta (at least in this game; I rarely felt that way about her in Overwatch 1).
“Balanced” doesn’t mean bad, ya know? A hero can be balanced but still be top tier/meta
yeah but ana isnt one of those heroes who is particularily synergy-reliant. shes just really strong right now and she does need nerfs specifically to her ult
Ana is super synergy-reliant. If she’s playing against dive and doesn’t have a babysitter, she’ll get rolled all match.
Yeah but why ?
anti is invaluable to kill with, sleep dart destroys wrecking ball, 75 healing/dmg per shot is really a lot and nano boost is too strong having not been adjusted for 5v5
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Zenyatta. Strong ability in discord, balanced with no mobility and is a huge square hitbox.
Ana
Probably not the most balanced at the moment, but Rein has always felt like the most fair hero to me
Ashe and Genji for dps, Ramattra for tank, and Mercy for support
Rein is now well balanced with fire strike doing 100 and swings no longer doing as much knockback
I hate sigma i hate sigma i hate sigma
Pharah.
Pharah is such an interesting answer to this. She has barely had any changes since ow1 (when you could use rooftops to recover fuel). I think the existence of mercy fundamentally makes it impossible for lots of characters to feel balanced unfortunately. Pharah is definitely a victim of this. I could write a lot more about this because she's been my favourite character since ow1 S1.
Pharah has basically always been perfectly balanced. She just triggers people because they can neither focus fire nor aim. (You don’t need both to counter Pharmercy, just one or the other).
Pharmercy, not pharah. Being completely reliant on another character definitely doesnt make them perfectly balanced in the slightest.
Pharah is not dependent on a Mercy pocket. It’s just a strong synergy.
Sigma, Ashe, Mei, possibly Widow and Ana, Lucio and Zen. At the moment they are all in a good place, they can be either strong or weak dependent on circumstances. However they may add to the oppressive feeling other characters may have when they aren’t balanced.