Overwatch - Brigitte used FLAIL!

Joim

Pixels matter
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My smurf was floating on low diamond and I said: let's get it to masters, but playing only offmeta, mainly Genji. I did it, now let's get GM playing Genji :D
 

sandshrewz

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So I felt like writing stuff somewhere, might do a series over here for fun if anyone wants to read haha... if no one does then I'll just pen down my thoughts in words xD

sandz OW Design Review #1 - Hero Difficulty

Not all heroes are made equally hard to play with; some are very mechanically inclined and would take countless hours to be able to exploit the hero's strengths to the fullest or to an acceptable level. Other heroes have simpler kits to be effective with. Mechanical skills can range from movement, aim, precise combos, etc. While some may argue that all heroes should be mechanically difficult to play, I think it's beneficial for the game to have a mix of heroes with different amount of mechanical skill requirement, and generally different difficulty levels in being effective to the same extent.

Having less demanding heroes isn't just to cater for the casual players, though it rightfully does make the game more enjoyable to those players. Easier heroes are also a boon to the professional scene. There already is a split between professional projectile and hitscan players. Very few can actually play both projectile and hitscan at an equal an acceptable level in the pro scene. Most teams also limit themselves to two DPS slots, some are double hitscan inclined, some go for one hitscan, one projectile. However, the ideal case is for both DPS players to be adept at both projectiles and hitscan. Most pro players are inflexible in hero picks to some degree; hardly any can truly flex among all the DPS heroes. With the limitation of players, they already directly influence the DPS meta in the pro scene. This already is a limiting factor to the number of strategies teams can employ and how well they can switch heroes. Teams can counter team by exploiting the weakness in flexibility of team composition. There's been times where projectile players found themselves switching to play hitscan, trying and failing to counter a Pharah, while their hitscan player was stuck on a utility pick like Mei with an ultimate an unable to switch off and better counter the Pharah. The reverse happens too.

Projectile / hitscan aside, given that players are already often limited by their own skill and preferences, it wouldn't be good if all heroes were made to be mechanically intensive. You'd end up with players not having a wide enough hero pool, causing further rigidity in their team compositions. Having easier to pick up heroes means there would be a wider pool of heroes for all players to be sufficiently effective with an increases chances of such heroes being picked to properly meet the situation rather than feeling forced into the heroes they're better at even if the situation is disadvantageous to stay on them. Overall, easier heroes increase diversity in the pro play; players are bound by time, often spent in scrims and it would be too time intensive to pick up that many different heroes if they were all too demanding to play effectively. Ideally players should have a much wider comfortable hero pool than we see now but it would take more time for players to practice and get used to increasing the variety of picks. This would also widen the meta seen in pro levels.

Having easier heroes isn't a bad thing. Problem only arises when the less demanding heroes end up becoming less risky and yet mostly equally or even more effective to play with than the mechanically intensive heroes. I think you guys know what I'm driving at, but that's for another time.

--

Did you enjoy reading/should I continue to write more ? haha. If so what topics would you guys want to see? Was thinking of map/mode design or going through heroes one by one. Feel free to suggest heh :O!
 
Finally hit Platinum today! It's been a roller coaster of a climb lol. Placed high silver and immediately went gold and fell back to high silver. I started grouping with irl friends who just got the game and I fell all the way to 1600. After this I doubled down on playing my good heroes instead of trying to pick team needs and solo q'ed back up to low gold. Stayed there for about two weeks until my friends improved and found heroes they enjoyed/were good at. I'm currently on a 12 game win streak so if I win like 3 more in a row I'll hit diamond lol. I'm pretty confident it can be done since we've curbstomped the other teams in pretty much every game on the win streak.
 

sandshrewz

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Just wanted to share this if it may be of help to anyone. Not sure if it's applicable to everyone or if it's specific to each rig you're using. I'm using a lower end laptop, i7 and NVIDIA 940M, and always played on low everything 50% render scale. Didn't realise I could up some of the graphic settings without much if any impact to FPS. Game looks so much prettier with the model/texture details and anti-aliasing cos 50% render scale with everything low is really badddd that I don't even know what I shoot at sometimes xD

Most importantly, YES I CAN SEE FIREWORKS NOW.
 

Astra

talk to me nice
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Bastion actually looks like a good pick right now. Hopefully he'll be the ultimate key to reduce the amount of tanks.
Mercy being invulnerable during ult is quite nice, as I usually die flying in to ult. Hopefully this can raise her usage a bit.
CTF is now a gamemode, sweet.
All the sensitivity options will be very nice, ESPECIALLY for Ana.
 

Dread Arceus

total cockhead
  • rip boostio 2017
  • fuck yes ctf, i always wanted another game mode i'll never play
  • hopefully bastion doesn't take the symmetra route and become overly-dominant with little skill needed.
  • it looks like you can now heal through ice block if i'm reading that right, so that's cool
  • mercy changes are nice, but she's still gonna be total shit lol
  • eichenwalde being less of a headache is nice i guess, wish they fixed numbani/2cp instead tho
  • "Fixed a bug that allowed Roadhog to turn freely while pulling a hooked target" is a curious line...was he not supposed to do that?
overall good-sounding changes
 

HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
disappointed by no roadhog nerfs, i think hes one of the largest issues with the game in its current state.

thank god they finally fixed widow hook

really looking forward to new bastion, gonna be cool to see how it pans out. Ill probably hate him once he hits live though.

Like that mercy is getting buffed. Slightly more usable i guess but ana is still a better mercy. At least you dont have to rez your team into a 5v6 anymore.
 

HotFuzzBall

fuzzy-chan \(ㆁヮㆁ✿)
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this is my new favorite video ty reddit


Anyways, while the Mercy buffs were much needed and really good for her, I don't think the Ana/Lucio duo is going to end anytime soon unless Blizzard chooses to gut them completely. Mercy just isn't up there yet imo which saddens me because she's my favorite healer.

I wonder if Sombra will come back (or at least be apart of the meta) now that Bastion looks better than before. Hacking Bastion forces him out of his sentry mode which means he loses the 35% damage reduction and a lot of dps.
 

sandshrewz

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Just making a random post here cos I decided to give recording softwares a try for the lols. Am using plays.tv and testing out different recording settings so that it doesn't impact my fps that much; want to try and maintain 60+ fps as much as possible. Pardon the shitty quality xD (and yes I have weird binds)

Yea recently I've been using Zen's right click a lot more lmao. Feel bad for disregarding M2 for the most part until recently. As long as no one can dive you then Zen's M2 is actually pretty darn strong and worth using so long as you got the aim for it. I actually have better accuracy using M2 for most of the match. It's pretty worth like being slower to Discord enemies by like 1s since you can gain a boatload of ult charge from good hits and you occasionally get a kill if people walk into it from a distance lol. It's pretty much Zen's version of long range Scatter but better. Feel guilty once in awhile killing random people with M2 xD Just don't get caught with the self-stun duration when someone dives you lol. M1 aim is still really important for consistent DMing.

Is fun !! Can't wait for S3 to end and just use the weapon CP and be done with competitive hehe. Gold balls hype :D Also hype for sensitivity options for auto target abilities. Though tbh auto target abilities should work like S76's tac visor imo with multi-layered conditions rather than a simple sensitivity option. But w/evs it's better than nothing.
 

Matthew

I love weather; Sun for days
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I was unaware that NRG picked up IDDQD and possibly Harbleu. That at least fills out the roster a bit more with IDDQD on hitscan, Har on the hog, and Seagull on off-tank weird / dps choice.

Maybe they will become a decent team?

As a random sidenote my favorite team is Fnatic but literally only because of Custa.
 
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aVocado

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harbleu is still with coL, I don't think he's leaving for nrg.

Also custa plays for fnatic lmao, and they're also my fav team!
 

Matthew

I love weather; Sun for days
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IDK why I always confuse those two team names. Literally no reason.

Also harbleu sort of implied he was leaving coL to join NRG on stream, but we could just be reading into a statement too much.
 
Just making a random post here cos I decided to give recording softwares a try for the lols. Am using plays.tv and testing out different recording settings so that it doesn't impact my fps that much; want to try and maintain 60+ fps as much as possible. Pardon the shitty quality xD (and yes I have weird binds)

Yea recently I've been using Zen's right click a lot more lmao. Feel bad for disregarding M2 for the most part until recently. As long as no one can dive you then Zen's M2 is actually pretty darn strong and worth using so long as you got the aim for it. I actually have better accuracy using M2 for most of the match. It's pretty worth like being slower to Discord enemies by like 1s since you can gain a boatload of ult charge from good hits and you occasionally get a kill if people walk into it from a distance lol. It's pretty much Zen's version of long range Scatter but better. Feel guilty once in awhile killing random people with M2 xD Just don't get caught with the self-stun duration when someone dives you lol. M1 aim is still really important for consistent DMing.

Is fun !! Can't wait for S3 to end and just use the weapon CP and be done with competitive hehe. Gold balls hype :D Also hype for sensitivity options for auto target abilities. Though tbh auto target abilities should work like S76's tac visor imo with multi-layered conditions rather than a simple sensitivity option. But w/evs it's better than nothing.
do you have anything bound to capslock cause that is a pretty good alt fire bind (you get to keep discord on m2)
 

sandshrewz

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do you have anything bound to capslock cause that is a pretty good alt fire bind (you get to keep discord on m2)
Nope. I tend to fat finger capslock when hitting tab or lshift so I don't use it. Discord on E isn't that bad if you know how to press it without limiting your movement.

And I don't use my pinky to press buttons so I don't prefer aiming or holding anything with left buttons hahaha. Ana Sleep Dart is fine though cos it doesn't shoot instantly.
 

Matthew

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I fucking did it today, team. After all my bitching and moaning about shitty teams and the Xbox community, I said fuck it and brought myself from 1800 to 2500 playing only Ana with a little bit of Zarya and Zen thrown in.

My game sense is way stronger than it was a few weeks ago and playing Ana is just so damn fun. Also helps no one wants to pick support so I basically just get to do what I want.

I don't see this climb really stopping at the moment so diamond I'm gunning for you.

Edit: spoke too soon, I was paired with five stacks twice. They both had symmetra and torb mains. Fuck.
 
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HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
I started scoping more as ana and idk why I wasn't doing this in the first place. The amount of consistency you lose by trying to noscope all the time is just unacceptable unless you're a projectile god or something idk, and scope allows you to take safer positioning. Maybe that's just because of the 90 hours of widow but it works well at least for me. Won a few games the other day and got back up to 2.3k, it's not much but at least I'm not still losing SR. My zarya is pretty decent and I've been flexing off to dva if I can justify it in the situation though she's definitely not something I can autolock any longer. Hopefully I can at least get back into plat SR before the season ends.

I'm finally seeing obvious improvement in my widow play (yay). It took me a super long time but I'm finally getting better. Had some fun with her in 3v3 before year of the rooster ended and I'm glad I can usually preform pretty well with her now.
 
Yeah I've been having the same realization with Ana, I don't play her in comp but in QP I've been realizing that while it's in theory better to no scope, it's better to actually have your bullets hit than to continually try to no scope targets lol.

Also, I know this is probably a stupid question, but can you effectively play Overwatch on a laptop? With a mouse obviously. I'm just wondering because I know literally nothing about computer gaming, and I have a friend who I recently found out is a big PC gamer and I want to play Overwatch with him but I don't know if it's really laggy on a laptop or something... Also, if I did buy Overwatch on my laptop, would I be able to play it on different computers with my account or will it only be bought on this computer?
 

sandshrewz

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No scope for up to mid range, unless stationary long range target where your teammate stands there nicely for heals. Or for sneaky heals so they don't see where you are cos small projectile, but doesn't matter unless in a pinch. For harder to hit ranges/targets, scope in but be very aware of your surrounding or it's easy to get dived on or out of position if you don't unscope/swing around and check around enough.

Also, I know this is probably a stupid question, but can you effectively play Overwatch on a laptop? With a mouse obviously. I'm just wondering because I know literally nothing about computer gaming, and I have a friend who I recently found out is a big PC gamer and I want to play Overwatch with him but I don't know if it's really laggy on a laptop or something... Also, if I did buy Overwatch on my laptop, would I be able to play it on different computers with my account or will it only be bought on this computer?
I'm on a laptop, i7, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA 940M, runs at 60-70FPS on low settings (high anti-alias), 50% render scale. Don't think laptops have like 144Hz screens unless gaming laptops maybe? Well, more FPS is better for less input lag but it's w/e and pretty playable as long as you hit the 60FPS benchmark. And OW is a really well optimized game even with my settings it still looks beautiful and stable. Just that I sometimes can't tell what I'm shooting at from long range due to my settings so lol.

You can play on any computer so long as you log in to the same battlenet account. Your game settings aside from your video settings (not sure about network settings) will be synched to your account. Video settings are specific to the computer.

Would be good if you can post your specs here.
 

Matthew

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With Ana I think hipfire is okay if you're just sort of spamming healing into a cluster and it's not mid battle. The issue with scope healing is the hitbox is so large that often you cannot get around targets like hog or Dva (just get out of the way fuuuu).

But scope healing is my preferred way to heal, and getting quick scopes down helps you a lot of the time with targets like Phara and Genji.

My two cents.
 

aVocado

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Yeah I've been having the same realization with Ana, I don't play her in comp but in QP I've been realizing that while it's in theory better to no scope, it's better to actually have your bullets hit than to continually try to no scope targets lol.

Also, I know this is probably a stupid question, but can you effectively play Overwatch on a laptop? With a mouse obviously. I'm just wondering because I know literally nothing about computer gaming, and I have a friend who I recently found out is a big PC gamer and I want to play Overwatch with him but I don't know if it's really laggy on a laptop or something... Also, if I did buy Overwatch on my laptop, would I be able to play it on different computers with my account or will it only be bought on this computer?
I'm on a laptop and I run it consistently on 120-140 fps easily.
specs:
https://i.gyazo.com/36e59056c4c7ba09212e8a4f9f09c629.png
https://i.gyazo.com/ec85191d45e7634b5afe3ee96419dfc9.png

Also re: Ana, as an Ana main who hasn't gotten out of elo hell until I started maining Ana and I climbed all the way to 3.9k with her, I scope if I need to 100% land the heal otherwise no scope. on tracer, genji, widow, pharah etc I'll mostly always scope unless they're in that awkward range where they're too close to scope and still far enough to where you could easily miss a no scope.

Basically there is no standard criteria for when to scope and when not to. Reddit keeps telling me/other people that no scope for within 20 meters scope for further but I heavily disagree. Just play with whatever makes you comfortable but remember to not tunnel too much otherwise random shit could get you. If you're positioned on high ground or way behind your team then you'll always scope, I do this a lot and I make sure to keep an ear on flank routes near me so I could hear flankers coming.
 
i was at 3200 and inexplicably dropped back down to 2700 in the last week. I dont even know how it happened, quality of matches in diamond were really good and suddenly had a few bad games (incl several where people thought mercy was mandatory at diamond elo and complaining about ana while forcing me to solo heal either way, mercy is now my least favorite hero because of how useless she is) and i've been incredibly tilted for the past week and havent been able to recover. Even had some good personal performace as dps chars like mccree which I dont normally do but I still havent won a single game in about a week. feelsbad.
 

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