Overwatch - Brigitte used FLAIL!

[aVocado]

yeah hitscan just wrecks pharah too hard ;-; idk if it can even be fixed

 

[Joim]

I really can't play pharah, but I think she'll be good after discord nerf since it will be harder enough to kill her so she can throw an extra rocker or two to destroy that McCree. Boom!

btw got my first legendary, spreading tranquility in ranked. I bet it was because I said in match chat: "Do you have a minute to talk about tranquility?" just before ulting to victory :^)

 

[Conni]

hopefully they buff Pharah in some way
but honestly when I watch people play her they kick ass when I play I get my ass kicked
I'm probably doing something wrong that my brain cannot comprehend

 

[LightningLuxray]

Yeah I've found at low 60s PharMercy is still really strong even with McCree, it's mainly Discord Orb that makes her difficult to use and puts a giant "kill me" sign over her head. At tournament level I've really only seen her used when McCree wasn't being used by the opponent, but I think at my level and lower (maybe even a bit higher) she's actually still a menace, she's only getting two shot if they can aim well ;). Although I do play on console so that does make her easier to use by default.

 

[jumpluff]

I agree with the above post actually, altho I am not low60s ;p

Pharah is still perfectly usable in casual and competitive play, depending on the skill level of the obligatory McCree and presence of Zenyatta. The decrease in infrasight and hitscan in the meta, for example, is actually very good for Pharah. I think it's probably not optimal to run PharahMercy but there are a whole bunch of map segments where Rocket Barrage is one of the best wiping/clearing ults on offense, particularly on payload and, like, volskaya maybe idk. She also has good counterpick equity. Once the Zen nerf goes through I think Pharah will be able to hold her own a bit better.

I'm seeing more Mercy, because even though she's hard to play and really right now outclassed by Zenyatta, that Olympic skin is awesome (and I got it \o/). Or maybe it's just because people realised they need res/invuln and know how to play Mercy and don't know how to play Zen.

New map looks incredible and I am so hyped, although scared of it becoming the new 2fort or something. x) Sad for no reverse hybrid, since that would be a lot more fun gameplay imo, especially in ranked (where I feel payload is currently the fairest minding the stupid sudden death shit that they'll be taking out and replacing with the superior time bank, and uh I guess KOTH but at most ranks people can't play KOTH so I just cry inside whenever I see we rolled Lijiang or whatever whereas I love getting it in quick play. This also has to do with leavers, since there are so many rounds in KOTH, even though they're short, people just leave).

 

[Ampharos]

yeah mercy's my most played support because i suck at zen, find lucio crazy boring, and am usually playing with my friend who mains ana zzz

honestly i still pick pharah on ilios even with all the robot monks and cowboys that can't tell time, that map (well, all three of those maps) just works super well for her

 

[Conni]

Mercy is fine but her offensive isn't as good as other supports like Zen and Ana. Mercy's healing is probably better tho. Also her ult is a game changer in modes like capture points or KOTL. She doesn't have a lot of offensive choices so she has to latch on and rely on the hero you're healing. Guardian Angel is not that good compared to other support hero abilities, but it's still useful in it's own way :P

 

[SgtWoodsy]

I think it's probably not optimal to run PharahMercy

Maybe but you wouldn't want to break up the Pharmercy ship

 

[jumpluff]

Mercy is fine but her offensive isn't as good as other supports like Zen and Ana. Mercy's healing is probably better tho. Also her ult is a game changer in modes like capture points or KOTL. She doesn't have a lot of offensive choices so she has to latch on and rely on the hero you're healing. Guardian Angel is not that good compared to other support hero abilities, but it's still useful in it's own way :P

Mercy's healing is better than theirs by a long shot but Zen's ult is usually better than Mercy's and always more reliable, and that offensive can't be ignored. Ana's offensive is honestly mediocre imo, what's really her selling point is her Sleep Dart (+ she has great range + she has Nano Boost every 8 seconds + healing buff works well with Lúcio/Mercy). Lúcio is the pref with the lesser-healing supports because of his AoE heal + they're immobile so Speed Boost can help compensate for that a little. I rather have Transcendence in almost all situations than Resurrect, especially on capture points (because that means it's harder for Mercy to hide). I think that right now Mercy's Res is actually the most useful when you're pushing the payload (Transcendence is really nice on chokepoints on those maps and in situations where you're dealing with wipes towards the end, but in open spaces or areas where Mercy can hide to pull off or charge her ult a little Resurrect can be stupid strong just not being greedy and ressing a Rein). Payload is minor AoE heal too which helps her survivability a bit around the objective ime, though you shouldn't be sitting on the payload too much unless your team is really awful.

But the Zen nerf may change things. I think Blizz is also looking into giving Mercy some more more innate mobility since most people don't know how it works and will just put you in awful situations without thinking. I saw a suggestion for giving her the ability to lay a little ball of light (the same that spawns on corpses) herself so she can fly to that. That would be really strong on some maps and not so strong on others possibly, but what I like about it is mostly some people are just dumb and won't get in your damn line of sight to let you lshift to them. Mercy and Ana both have something awkward about them and that's that they're designed to babysit but they need intense babysitting themselves often, especially Mercy. Lúcio and Zen are much more self-sufficient (even though Zen is immobile and Ana has her Sleep Dart).

Mercy still strong though, just outclassed atm by ridiculously good Zenyatta's ability to bring dps to the team and the fact Transcendence on a viable Zenyatta brings as much or more to the table. Also McCree being nuts right now is awful for her, even though Widow is gone, and Genji and Winston being very common (Mercy has a way to run away from Winston at least, but you better hope it's a long way away). Zen is thriving with Widow gone, Mercy not so much.

Although speaking of meta factors, Mercy + Zarya is dope as fuck. I love picking Mercy when we have a good Zarya.

 

[sandshrewz]

Mercy healing >> Zen healing. But Zen can pocket heal dangerous targets like Genji that Mercy can't follow cos range rip. I play a lot of Ana and the only time where I'm actually shooting at enemies is like Pharah, sentries, or like some flanker pestering me. Or your teammates are so healthy that you'll probably farm more ult by damaging. But her pure damage output is still pretty okay though. And no headshot requirement :D Also lol quick scoping for like with Ana. Her healing is >= Zen. She can heal players deep in like Genji if you position at a slightly higher angle so your teammates don't bodyblock it. And she absolutely just keeps tanks alive with either M1 no scope spamming, or stack that with heal grenade in a pinch lols. In a typical 2 tank line up, it's pretty much guarantee outheal Zen no including Transcendence. I do outheal Mercy on occasion. Lucio's loan heal output wise is the highest simply due to the AOE and no input nature of it lol. It basically mitigates chip damage all the time. Lucio saves you the trouble of having to top up people that are missing like what 20 hp ?

I only recently switched my Guardian Angel to prefer beam target. It feels so much better LOL. A lot of random mobility and made me survive better than I already am. I can purposefully just heal some guy, lose LOS to him, and STILL fly to him because of the setting. It's great. Just don't fly through a door and hit your head on the door xD

I really hope Mercy gets a bit of change to make her less Rez-centric. Rez is such an unfun ult to use and fight against. Hide and seek all day :C Whereas Zen / Lucio are like let's stay around and then ult when we have to. Mercy can't even linger to heal people :( and if your enemy team has a Mercy, you basically have to go around killing her. It's like if you Dragonblade, they can Sound Barrier/Trans, but hey you forced their ult, you can just back off for now and milk the last 2s of your ult or kill some overextended people. Whereas if it's Mercy, you have to run around and make sure she dies before your ult ends. Not nice for both sides e_e

Oh and Ana is really really fun ! I think I just like seeing tanks live forever lol. But also sad when you can't heal through a Defense Matrix or Barrier cos they just nope your healing .-.

 

[Minwu]

Ana can actually heal nearly twice as fast as Mercy, and outheals Lucio's passive healing on 6 targets; you usually won't notice it when your Tracer and Genji are dodging all of your shots, or you just have several minorly damaged allies, but the pure HP/s potential of her rifle comes in handy when you need to bring your tanks up to full fast. I think she has a lot more potential than we've seen so far, even in pro play, just because of the nature of a sniper class (with 11 targets instead of the usual 6). Still not the best at solo healing though, if only because it's a shame to have to use your grenade on yourself so often. I think she works best partnered with a Lucio.

Coincidentally, ster is one of the few really good Anas I've gotten to watch, and I made a mistake in not voting for him for the World Cup...

 

[Blazade]

I don't know about tournament play, but in ranked or quickplay rez seems like it's really difficult to pull off effectively since you need a good team. You have people complaining in here about going up to spawn or feeding at high ranks, how can you expect them to be intuitive enough at gamesense to die at a similar time and place? Unless something like Genji Ult or any Zarya Ult combo goes off, there's not a whole lot of coordination, and honestly the aforementioned two situations could use an extra bit of counterpressure.

I think Mercy's in a fine place right now, even if she's niche usable it's way better than the auto include we got before Anna's inclusion and Zen's Buff. Out of all the supports, she's the one I find hardest to play.

 

[Minwu]

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20243886#patchnotes

Season 2 changes live in the PTR! Some nice hero changes, including Mei and Mercy buffs, and Hanzo QoL. Genji changes were probably justified but rip the triple jump :'(

 

[Astra]

Genji is pretty much dead, Hanzo is back with his bullshit arrows and more, Lucio seems to be not required on team comps and Mercy seems to be up to par with Lucio and Zenyatta.
It's like every Sm4sh patch except you actually get the details.
So does Genji need that nerf? imo its overkill
also the new legendary Dva emote is amazing

 

[Nayrz]

Genji nerfs are fine and the overreaction is insane across the board imo. I did my placement matches on the PTR and faced/played with some good Genjis (you know, the ones that were actually the issue), and they were just fine. Bad Genjis are probably fkd as now he's no longer a freelo machine at all ranks. The players I faced/played altered their playstyle that little bit to compensate for the 6s ult and one or two even said in chat that he is still fine. Forcing his reflect during his ult time is actually a counterplay now as it drains a shit ton of his time during the ult, compared to before where he can still kill people despite forcing a support ult in some cases. Let's not forget that the hitboxes revert actually benefits Genji too.

placement result (7-3)

Hanzo is likely to not be a troll pick anymore, but probably not OP as he is a defense hero and also has a garbage ult. Could be wrong here. The rest of the balance changes are decent, and the new competitive mode changes are excellent (even if the PTR is stuffed full of "lol its just ptr im gonna act retarded in comp mode") players atm... my 3 losses were all literally due to that :( I am surprised Zarya has got no nerfs so far though

 

[Astra]

I'm aware some people are over reacting to the Genji nerfs, but in my opinion they should revert the triple jump removal and the melee dash cancel nerf. Dragonblade seems to be all right at the moment as well as everything else.

Also the Reaper Shadow Step bug fixes are pretty much the Removed Herobrine of Overwatch, not implying Minecraft is still relevant in present day.

 

[Nayrz]

Blizzard are showing rather clearly that they don't like their heroes having "hidden power" in the form of things they can do or have in their kits that make them better that isn't exactly public knowledge or mentioned by the game. It's a pretty obvious pattern, think of all the similarities between these nerfs: Widowmaker's ult callout now being global, her scope nerf making it difficult to snapshot, 76s spread nerf, Torb's faster turret building animation cancel, and now Genji's animation cancel + wall ride reset (it isn't a triple jump). I personally thought the rmb melee dash combo was bullshit even if it was super hard to pull off vs aware opponents, why should Genji be able to theoretically 1 shot a 200 hp hero in the blink of an eye with no counterplay? Some look at it as taking the skill out of the heroes but I mean once you knew that it existed it wasn't very skillful at all (you could argue the animation cancel is skillful but that seems to have become a balance problem) and the 76/Genji tricks can even be done with macros if a player really wanted to. Overwatch is a "casual shooter" so Blizzard's viewpoint on these hidden mechanics is understandable, but might bring up concerns down the line.

 

[Ranger Mike]

Well as a melee player I can definitely tell you that these kinds of hidden mechanics can be absolutely mindbogglingly crucial but overwatch doesn't seem like the game that these kinds of mechanics bodes well in. Although yeah it could be a huge turnoff because of the lack of ability to see your progression outside of statistics. Although like in a team sport if you can do the advanced hidden tehnicques, you're on a team with other people that can't do the techniques you're at a disadvantage against a team of people that know how to do them, and a lot of the time you can't control who you play with, even if it's just one player.

 

[aVocado]

Blizzard is being really weird imo. They didn't mention why they removed cancelling melee with dash for genji, and people are speculating that they removed it for one or both of two reasons: 1) it's a hidden tech new players might not naturally know about or 2) it's too good/too strong. the 2nd part might be true, even though I don't think it is even after ~30+ hours of genji, but the first part makes no sense. You wouldn't know about widow's hook jump for example but they still let that in and explicitly said they don't mind it... so why remove genji and torb's animation cancelling?

they also didn't remove genji's ledge jump but I don't think they even know about it yet tbh, not many people do it or are even aware of it, and no one in tournament used it yet.

 

[LightningLuxray]

As someone who has 45+ hours on Mercy, Blazade is right when he says Mercy's rez can be difficult to pull off in ranked. Usually I just sit in the back and wait until I either know I'll get a high rez or one or two of our most important teammembers die. In quick play the ultimate is actually pretty meh outside of defense capture point (where your team will actually be grouped up), otherwise you'll rarely get more than a three or even two man rez and your team will just die quickly again

Lucio is still pretty much a required support, especially on KoTH; AoE healing AND speed is just to strong to pass up, even if the speed was nerfed.

Also Genji nerfs are w/e, I don't think he necessarily needed them outside of the Dragonblade nerf but at the same time I don't think they'll hurt him enough to unviability or anything. We'll just have to wait and see. I am kinda sad the wall climb ---> double jump is gone though, that was really fun to do :(

 

[jumpluff]

You still need Lúcio on koth, Luxray is right. There's essentially a game of chicken on koth where you need to be at least as fast as the enemy team and if they're 70% faster than you to the point pre-activation (or when they're holding it) you will probably have a bad time. Also, AoE heals, and that ult, especially now Zenyatta is no longer as stupid. Lúcio does lots outside of the speed so tbh I would be surprised if he loses required status on the other maps, especially assault offence.

70% speed is still a huge boost.

Mercy is back tho \o/ Anyone know how much that 20% difference makes? I feel like too much healing buff on Mercy could actually make her single-target really obnoxious on tanks. She might be a single-target healer but it's easy for her to juggle at chokes / points. Really really like that change to Resurrect, it's little things like that that make you don't feel too bad that you have Res instead of Transcendence.

Gj Nayrz

'Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s first checkpoint has been removed' this one is interesting tho. Anyone played it? I think it would be better w/o the first checkpoint so...

'These changes reduce Orb of Discord's effectiveness, but his damage-dealing potential has been increased. The amount of damage that he delivers should feel largely unaffected by the change.' Sounds Legit

Was also surprised by no Zarya changes, but tbh I wouldn't mind if more defensive heroes were kept that strong as long as their name isn't Winston

 

[Joim]

I didn't manage to get to 53 thanks to leavers and toxic players getting mad :(

I agree with mostly everything here. The genji nerfs do not affect my gameplay with him much as I'm not a pro-genji, but I'm sure it's really welcome in all games. Mei buff is nice, but I don't know if it's enough to use in competitive, but I will try it either way. I think Zenyatta will still be used and effective, it's just not a free kill on tanks anymore. Also its non-orb damage is buffed so when you spam left clicks on a corner your damage is actually buffed :^)

 

[Ampharos]

i'm actually hoping the gibraltar change comes with a slight timer tweak, i'm worried that it's gonna be too strong for the defending team just because it sometimes takes forever to get all the way through the choke under the bridge

 

[Conni]

Today I tried playing Lucio and it was p good
the speed/healing amp thing is hella useful when u r in defense and have to walk to contest the point or payload
also lucio's attack isn't that bad and Wallride can be used to gtfo. Sound Barrier is op as heck in cp tho

 

[Joim]

All aboard the Hanzo hating train now that it's firing trucks instead of arrows?