About the Mei buffs and bugs

(This could become the Meigathread continue, because for an unknown reason i can’t edit anymore the main Meigathread’s original thread)
Update 1: in PTR Mei got a beta-like revert: now icicles don’t have anymore falloff, i think this buff makes totally sense because if we buff hitscans like Bastion, McCree and Soldier76, Mei becomes pretty useless, and also she has too many disadvantages on secondary fire, so getting rid of falloff makes her more useful and powerful. In a Seagull’s live, Geoff Goodman wasn’t sure about bringing to live patch this buff, i completely think it should, because the icicles feel more powerful and more rewarding for players with good aim, there is no reason to leave Mei in this state with a locked potential

BTW, sometimes i think devs don’t want to buff Mei properly, because they fear to make her too powerful. Many influencers added fuel to the story: “If Mei gets buffed too much she becomes oppressive” and i think this influenced devs.
But, giving her 10 icicles, the freeze piercing throught enemies and increased defreeze time what did? Quite nothing, these “buffs” are pretty handy, but lowered her skill floor without fixing her true problems: making her more efficient and useful for the team.
I reflected about some of her abilities and i will explain why some of the buffs did nothing or what major flaws could have her kit:

Frost stream

Increasing the defreeze time of enemies gave us more possibilities to do the famous “freeze+heashot” combo, but at higher levels if you play Mei expect to get engaged by a flanker or at long distance, but this still pretty useful in some situations.
Making freeze pierce throught enemies is not a big deal IMO, because is not common enemies stack one behind the other, also freezing a group of enemies is not worth the risk: you need at least to be assisted by an healer or another DPS, but enemies will tend to separate a bit to make our attemp useless.
One of the major flaws of this mechanic is this: if you have a bit of mobility or enought damage, you can outperform an enemy Mei. This ability makes becomes nearly useless, making it more a tool to punish enemies that overextend or get caught out of position.
Personally i don’t know how this ability could be balanced to make it more useful.

Icicles

Reducing the icicles cost to 20 ammos (10 icicles in total) is pretty handy but didn’t solved much the damage output issue. If you remember, Mei one time used to “snipe” because the icicles didn’t had falloff, so she was called “MeiCree”; falloff has been added to make her icicles less powerful. I understand this because she’s not meant to be a sniper, but the falloff seems to be too much, because the icicles has 3 disavantages: falloff, projectile nature and cast time, this means means we don’t have a consistent damage.
A solution to this could be increasing her fire ratio, so she shoots the same ammount of icicles but in less time, so we increase her DPS, or tuning/removing falloff.
Update: in PTR Mei got a revert like she was in beta: now she hasn’t anymore falloff on icicles, and makes sense because it’s the only projectile weapon with falloff and cast time in the game, so is less powerful than a pure hitscan. Also with the recent buff in PTR of McCree, Bastion and S76 there is no reason to leave Mei underpowered compared to them.

Cryofreeze

The Cryofreeze not cleaning Ana’s grenade debuff was a bug that has been fixed only after an year, but an issue called “favor the shooter”, caused by latency, still persist: if you press shift to enter in cryo, and in the same moment you get stunned/hooked/killed/earth-shattered/hacked, you get out of cryo even if you pressed shift and cooldown starts. This makes the cryofreeze a russian roulette: sometimes works and you save yourself, other times you die and you cause a loss for the team.

Fixing this issue, favoring the cryofreeze over the shooter would make this ability more reliable, and abling Mei to bait cooldowns.

Ice wall

This ability is pretty handy but has a big drawback: your teammates doesn’t know where are you placing the wall, and this causes issues in coordination, because you risk to block ulting teammates or similar episodes. Devs wanted to make a clear ice wall to see throught it, but wasn’t possible due to engine limitations. This could be fixed making the blueprint visible to teammates, this would allow more coordination.
Also this ability has another problem: works well on small chokes closing them, but works bad on wider chokes, leaving a little space to pass throught. Adding a column could be helpful, i don’t have at the moment ideas of how could be balanced the wall.

Blizzard

I think the Blizzard is a bit redundant: is like a graviton, but wider, lasts more but unreliable:

  1. We have a 0,5s cast time (the time where the drone spawns) and a 0,8s setup time (time between the drone touches the ground and actives), in total it needs 1,3s before starting freezing. If i remember correctly, the cast time has been added because Mei had a bug that caused her to lose the ultimate.
  2. During the cast time, even if the drone is out of the hand and Mei gets stunned/dies, the drone disappears. (The ultimate reworks was meant to punish more often bad ultimates, but indirectly nerfed too much Mei)
  3. Every enemy with an escape ability or a good mobility, can escape easily the ultimate, making our attemp nearly useless.

The ultimate could be fixed reverting two things: reducing activation time, making the activation quicker with a faster setup time and tuning the cast time (removing it or at least reduce the window where Mei can be stunned to only the moment when she has the drone in the hand).
Here’s a Reddit thread about the ultimate’s inconsistency:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/7gwtrw/fix_meis_ultimate_it_is_very_inconstant_and/

Bugs

I leave here 2 reddit threads about her bugs, with videos:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/7ko6mx/mei_bug_list_with_examples/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/8u0s1f/blizzard_its_been_at_least_nine_months_can_we_fix/

I already have and i manage another thread where i talk with other players about Mei balancing in general, but i decided to make another one, to have more space to express my thoughs and explain the flaws of her kit more freely:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/mei-gathread-mei-buff-proposals-and-issues-discussion. I think Mei shouldn’t be an oppressive hero or a must pick in every situation, but she shouldn’t be even an extremely situational hero or a troll pick. Let me know what do you think.

27 Likes

I think one of the reasons Mei is seldom played is because her alternate fire is so difficult to use properly. Not only is there ramp up, but there’s projectile time and then having to predict enemy movement on top if it.

I think she would see more play time if icicles were just easier to use. That’s how I feel, anyway.

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And it is the only projectile with fall-off making it worthless to go for long ranged shots.

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If you click on icicles schedule, you can see what i wrote about them…
I agree with the fact icicles hare pretty hard to use, majorly because of the drawbacks that affects them. Also is not only a question of a portion of her kit that affects her pick rate, but the caratheristics of the kit in its completeness that defines the viability of an hero

They should look into a passive or buffing her ultimate right now. Also, long time no see Str1kernaut. How you doing as of late.

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Maybe because my other thread is not much active or famous as before. I kinda felt i needed a new thread, like to start over and focus more on the flaws of her kit. Also i decided to use again the snowball propic because it make like my identity on the forum

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I still want cryofreeze to regen ammo too :confused:

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I definitely notice the increased defreeze duration…I don’t know though, I don’t encounter Mei very often, and I’m biased when I play her myself, but I think I can say that the heroes I can freeze are the same, and the ones who can escape, can do it just like before. There is a bit of impact against Rein and Brigitte when they are spinning the shield around between Mei and something else.

WHAT IS UP WITH THE ULT THOUGH. Ever since they went overboard with its size, then reduced it again, over a year ago, it’s so easy to escape even with regular walking. Without a graviton you might as well just solo ult someone, and you better make sure you get them right in the center, and they have no mobility cooldowns, and you use primary fire to stack freeze faster.

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Not to mention it likes to disappear in midair if she gets stunned or dies after throwing Snowball.

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I don’t think Mei will ever be meta or as viable as other heroes.

She’s a tank/dps heroes. I think this is what is holding her back.
She lacks the damage to be on par with DPS’ers and she lacks the health pool to be on par with tanks.

I do not think Mei is extremely unbalanced, but she does has some issues that are holding her back.

Her role, her ultimate and bugs.

  • Crowd Control on a tank/dps hybrid hero is a fun concept, but it doesn’t really work in a fast paced game like Overwatch.
  • Her ultimate is easy to avoid to escape and to cancel. Not to mention that it is also unreliable because you can lose it midair thanks to stuns. Latency is the cause of this, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. The ultimate changes were do to make it more consistent, but projectile ultimates became a lot less consistent with it.
  • Her bugs, like being able to get stunned out of Cryo-Freeze needs to be fixed as well.

I think that Mei needs a different role in the game to be more viable. Either make her a full tank (the game could always use more tanks) or make her more like a damage dealer.

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I mentioned this in the Blizzard tab, i used “hide details” for every ability to make the thread cleaner and prevent a text wall.

Personally i don’t think as i said before Mei should be a must pick every situation, but i intended to say with this thread what i thought about these buffs and what did IMO. Just fixing her major issues like bugs and latencies would make her more viable, then we have 2 paths as you said: make her a pure tank or making her a damage dealer increasing her DPS. But there’s still something that makes me think: her primary fire, do we really need it? Could be replaced by something else?

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Yeah, I saw it, I was just responding directly to Feculator to expand on the issues with Mei’s ult.

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Oh my god, this too. Did you know it happens to every projectile, such as Pharah rockets?

Most days of the week I can stoop to fanboy levels of praise for “Blizzard polish” and defend them, but this is unacceptable man. I know they care about the reputation they have for polish, and they leave this horse**** unfixed for this long?

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Yeah, the projectile thing is super annoying. I have a lot of time on Ana, so Nano gets deleted as well. As well as Tracer’s.

Like, primary attacks disappearing, ok…so yeah that is annoying. But an entire ultimate?? And then I don’t get refunded??? Utter irritation.

I know the rebuttal for that is “well don’t ult in a stupid situation you big silly.” But the issue is the Ultimate LEFT my hand and I see it in mid-air, but then it vanishes. I hear the Ultimate line, I see it, and then I get stunned and my crap is gone.

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I hope they either make her heal faster in cryofreeze (it would do the same amount of healing and last the same amount of time, but would be capped at 150 hp healed) that way you could pop out more unexpectedly. Or they could reload her weapon while in cryofreeze (like reaper in wraith form).
I think either of these buffs would help her a lot.

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You mean this issue happens also for Ana? I knew it happened mostly to Mei and Tracer

Yeah, it’s happened to me a few times :frowning: it’s a liiiittle harder to have it happen to Ana since nano is much, much faster, but I’ve had it completely taken from me after being stunned on one occasion and shot in the head from a Hanzo on another.

I was disappointed.

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Only Zarya is safe from not losing her ultimate when she is stunned.
Unlike any other projectile ultimate in the game has Zarya’s ultimate no cast time.

I don’t understand why it is okay to have projectile ultimates dissappear mid air when the player is stunned, but is it bad that transformation can’t be interrupted with stuns. That’s backwards if you’d ask me.

I’m certain the developers are aware of the disappearing projectiles ultimates, but they either don’t want to respond to it and think it’s fine or they don’t know how to fix it.

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Feels pretty unfair, it’s like a grenade a projectile ultimate: once you throw it shouldn’t disappear if you die, because they’re two different objects, is not a gib

i’ve said it before and i’ll keep saying it, a bugged hero can never be balanced.
Either they’re not strong enough to be worth the inconsistency that comes with bugs, or they’re so strong (OP) that the bugs don’t even matter.

Bugfixes first, balance after.

But then again, 1 meaningful bug fix for her in 2 years doesnt give us a lot of hope on that part.

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