Welcome to another episode of “Counters of the Storm” where I try to highlight a Hero’s strengths and weaknesses and ways you can play around them.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments or share your own experience, what and whatnot works against the Hero.
What's in Mei's kit?
She has:
- Slows on everything like Jaina.
- Q: a small Blind aoe.
- W: a zoning delayed stun (like a weakened Jaina Blizzard but the “third wave” stuns).
- E: the ability to turn herself into “Forales’ grenade”. Or we can say that she has Etc’s Q+W but without the Stun.
- D: a Trait that gives her Unstoppable, Shields, HPreg for selfstun (looks like an Iceblock, but it’s not).
And her Heroics:
- R1: the Lovechild of Fals’ Gust and Mura’s Playmaker. A projectile Gorge.
- R2: the Lovechild of Medivh’s Leyline and Tassassin’s Wall.
How to counter her?
Due to her baseline Blind (and latter talents that has some resembles with Arthas), plus her selfstun Trait, she’s better to be countered with Mages or Hybrids rather than pure AA Heroes.
Due to her “tanking via high hp and armors”, % dmg is really effective against her.
Since she doesn’t have “set up CC” (CC you can do on your own and get follow ups) but “follow up CC” (CC that needs previous CC to work with (I’m talking about her W)), Mobile Heroes are good against her (which are also good to avoid her Heroics, even jumping/blinking over her wall).
And since unlike Etc -who has CC during his slide- or Butcher -who is Unstoppable in the meantime-, Mei can be CCed more easily, so Heroes like Raynor (Q), Valla (R2: RoV), Lúcio (Q), Misha (W), Etc (W) can deny her to go where she wants.
It’s also worth mentioning that she is rather weak regarding PvE, so macro heavy playstyles can leave her helpless (especially at lower lvls). She’s pretty team dependant.
And last but not least, due to her telegraphed or delayed CCs (and her selfstunning lifesaving D), she’s limited in peeling ppl off from her allies.
So what should we're paying attention to?
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Heroes and Abilities that can push you back into her W for the stun. Or can keep you there for the duration.
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her Trait when you try to CC her or focus her down (especially at lvl 20 where she has her own version of "unkillable).
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her E’s knockback which triggers even if you stop it via CC (if you use melee CC on her, you’ll get knocked away).
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her attempt to flank you and use Avalanche to send you all under their forts (or into a “mere” wombo) or just steal your camps (especially the bosses).
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D during camp taking. Unlike real Iceblocks/Stasises, she can capture camps during her Trait.
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talent that shuts down Structeres for a short period of time (like Sylvanas or Sindragosa) which enables her and her team to dive a bit more recklessly than others.
Suggested counters:
% dmg (not countered by Blinds):
Mobility (against W and R):
- Genji (who can also get free Deflect shots from her Blizzard)
- Lúcio (movespeed for whole team)
- Zeratul (“can’t touch this”)
Trait counter:
- Ana (no heals)
- Varian (just like with Jojo, no Shield = no Unstoppable)
- Maiev (easy-to-hit for her Time Stop Heroic)
- Kael (since it’s not a Stasis, she spreads Living Bomb during her Trait)
- Orphea (R1: Eternal Feast, good against (self-)“stunned” enemies)
Slide counters (E) (Ranged CCs):
- BW (poly and EW)
- Raynor (Q)
- Kael (E)
- Etc (W)
- Lúcio (Q)
11 Likes
The only real counter to Mei is the upcoming blizzard nerf hammer
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Looking at her stats, she does seem to overperform, but this post is not about that.
Since she shouldn’t be nerfed into the ground, knowing what works against her is still valuable.
And during her “reign”, if you play into her weaknesses you can make her more bearable 
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DoTs (Lunara & Gul’dan) can be inconvenient for her as they will still chew away at the shields if she uses her trait. The trait does not make her untargetable, nor does it remove DoTs or anything else that isn’t removed by Unstoppable.
While it is quite likely that some of her current performance is down to over tuned talents, I would expect that another part of it is due to people not having learned how to play against her yet.
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I didn’t add DoTs because her Shield and Heal with the talented 50 spell Armor is pretty good against that. And she can talent into sustained healing too.
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I don’t recomend this though, unless you really need to deflect to save your life.
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It’s a rather risky move, because you can end up dying if someone makes you stay for the end-stun, but it’s still a lot of free dmg, since Blizzard ticks 8 times before the stun and working with 6 tick it’s still 330 dmg from Deflect and he can jump or dash away. But yea. Risky.
I listed him for his ability to just dodge everything Mei does. He can even jump over her Wall or Dash away if Avalanche somehow hit him.
Not really because it is risky, it’s just because 90% of the time you don’t want to waste deflect like that 
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I dont think malthael is a good counter. Yes you have a antiheal and you can stick with her. So bodyblocking her is a risky thing. If you are behind her she can avalange you. She also has a nasty blind and slows which counter him in general.
Also if you stand in her W and you wont escape you will (most likely) loose your stacks because of the time of the slow/stun.
So your basicly forced to go black harvest for the later fights
I think someone with CC unstopable like dehaka and leoric (as you mentioned) do more
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What counts as overperforming? If anything she’s working as intended. She doesn’t need changes, she’s perfectly fine as she is.
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Malthael does % dmg that cannot be blinded (unlike Tychus, Imperius and many others). That’s really useful against a “bulky” Hero like her.
He also has antiheal, yes. He also has W and FotR to dodge her abilities.
Sure, you can’t bodyblock her cuz she might snowballify you, but you don’t need to.
And Malthael also has Unstoppable or a timed 50 spell armor for 4 sec, which can mean a lot if he somehow can’t escape from Mei’s stun.
56% wr in Masters with reaaaally high popularity.
And she has high stats despite her insane popularity even in lower ranks.
I think Blizzard uses diamond+ for balance purposes, not only masters. In diamond+ she has 52% winrate, which is balanced.
In SL all ranks she also has 52% winrate.
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Not enough games yet to see if she’s really overperforming, IMO. AFAIK heroesprofile counts bans as “games played” and with 80% banrate in Masters that means she really isn’t used much yet. She almost has the same number of games as Anu’barak who currently has 60% winrate (vs Mei’s 56.7%).
So I wouldn’t be hasty. She certainly doesn’t have the same meteoric rise as Cassia and DW, at least.
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Agree that HP has low number of matches yet and I don’t say she’s op (or not). I just list things I think are working against her
It’s also a thing that people learn. Once her speeds and values are more familiar to everyone, there’ll be less games she wins on shock value.
Only if he applied his trait using his E or already applied it with auto attacks before being blinded. If he hasn’t engaged at all, blinds will keep him from marking his enemies unless he uses his E.
I’m not sure he’s the best counter for her to be honest. I don’t know how effective his Last Rites would be against her with her really low cd heal/shield/unstoppable.
Or Massacre or Tourmented Souls.
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But Massacre requires someone to be marked before he applies additional marks, rolling back to needing to use his E if he’s blinded. And as for Tormented Souls I think it would rely more on what other teammates the enemy Mei has. I’m not sure which ult is specifically better against Mei.
It’s entirely okay to dispense knowledge about Mei and how to fight her. Like others already put it a new hero can have inflated winrates for a while until people get used to them. I gave context regarding those stats and how they don’t tell much yet. Only that Mei isn’t massively OP or entirely underpowered since her WR is in the healthy 50s.
Every hero in masters has over 50 winrate last time i checked. At least the vast majority
“Mei is popular” no crap this happens every time theres a new hero
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