An example of the sustain creep

General Discussion
42

Dive hardly had a barrier. Winston’s bubble is paper thin. One shots still existed then.

A fairly insignificant reason to the actual main one: supports were broken, more specifically Brigitte and AoE stacking. You are kinda stepping over a $100 bill to grab a penny on the side walk here.

Several pros and meta analysts can attest this fact. However, I have yet to see anyone who claimed “Snipers were the reason for GOATS” actually back up their claims by people from the pro scene (the ones who actually create and study metas) who share that opinion.

But suppose for a minute we actually play along, one shots still shouldn’t be touched until after sustain gets a full check up and rehash, until heroes like Genji, D.Va and Winston can actually do something about snipers again without getting stuffed with tons of CC and negated by high healing sources.

They have been pathetic pre Mercy rework.

You do realize that DPS got most of their buffs as a way to help them deal with GOATS, right? This was AFTER sustain got out of control.

There wasn’t anything to catch up with prior to that. Most forms of damage that didn’t kill within half a second got dumpstered because of how the game exponentially ramped up sustain.

See above again. Chip and burst both were fine and lived together harmonically before the excessive sustain ramp.

43

Yup, and they existed through all the comps. 1 shots have always been valuable.
Dive was meant to counter widow, but it didnt. And yes, winston has a barrier - if you can use it, its good.

The supports were broken because of brig. Brig counters flankers and (surprise surprise) has a shield to counter 1 shots.

1 shots should be touched now. Barriers have been nerfed which means every fight is going to have a hell of a lot less damage mitigation. To counter that, there are 2 options - more healing or less damage. Nobody wants more healing. You cant nerf damage without nerfing 1 shots first, otherwise there’s no point in picking any other hero.

Damage heroes have constantly been buffed, but yeah, there was a spike for goats that needs to be reverted - we have too many tank busters now. Other DPS has just generally got higher over time. Taking away widow, hanzo and doomfish’s 1 shots would instantly make every other DPS more competitive, and would ensure they actually need to use teamwork.

44

Again, no proof that any meta is created to counter one shots as a primary purpose.

Do most metas counter one shots? Sure. By definition of meta, it’s the most effective strategy to play in the game and trumps everything else. Metas counter one shots because one shots are part of “everything else”. Does it mean that it is the only reason any certain meta was created? Hell no.

The forums keep twisting this around snipers so much that people just kept kinda parroting it over the time. I fail to see where the credible origin of this statement is.

By credible, I mean a person who is in the pro scene or reputable analyst or coach.

You seem fixated to the idea that the primary purpose of a shield is to counter one shots. It isn’t. It might be one use of a shield, but not the primary or intended use at conception of the idea.

But you just admitted that my point was right, so cheers.

Has it occured to you that the game wanted less barriers to speed up the snail pace of the game and give chip damage slightly more purpose?

What’s the point of nerfing damage or increasing heals? The global net change of the game would be zero.

Luckily, they are not nerfing damage.

You seem greatly lost and can’t look at the game from a macro level beyond a tiny bubble of “one shots nerf nao”.

  • Other DPS were viable, competitive, and some were objectively better than one shot heroes in the past. One shots didn’t magically happen, you know. They got more and more mandatory as things got harder to kill.

  • Teamwork shouldn’t be mandatory for a DPS to do his job. It’s a perk, it’s useful to have, and sure makes life easier when the team is working with you, but it should NEVER be fully mandatory. Carry potential should remain in the game if it wished to keep calling itself a competitive shooter.

  • The changes to combat GOATS should be reverted (maybe most, but not all), I agree. But cold hard nerf to damage or one shots isn’t the right move. By nerf, I mean reducing to amounts lower than a revert.

45

So what I understand is that, for you, tanks should die first in fight, even getting full healed and using defensive cooldowns, against a solo DPS that is pressing w+m1

Like I said, why focus orisa when you can focus the Moira as Reaper, you have the tools to get behind and the tools to get out if you fail.
And where is the rest of Reaper’s team? why can’t he get help from his rein or zen or something?
Yes, fortify is strong, I’m not saying otherwise, but you aren’t suposed to just kill tanks.

Orisa was bad before 2-2-2 because you could just run her over or ignore, but brawl and dive got gutted because of armor nerfs and hero nerfs, if your counter isn’t good, you are good.

For her to be viable, she needs something to prevent a Reaper from just shooting at her for free since her shield doesn’t move. And even with fortify, you steal are scared of a reaper, did you try to play orisa back when armor still had 5 damage reduction?

46

Comparing only to reaper, a low skill hero that shouldn’t be top of the meta anyways… widow still two taps her.
Reaper can still shred her with normal fire.
If her fortify is up just don’t engage her with reaper, this making her the ONLY tank that has a way of really fending reapers damage off.

47

How exactly is a solo reaper going to kill an Orisa by W+M1 into her full team? There is literally so much CC available that Reaper should easily be forced to use Wraith to either get out or stay and feed.

The whole “Orisa needs something to stop Reaper from killing her” argument is compeltely nonsensical because like I said, there is so much sustain and CC in the game now as part of the overall powercreep. You keep bringing up the point that all 6 enemy players need to be involved in fragging 1 Orisa but somehow the entirety of Orisa’s team shouldn’t help prevent that from happening?

Orisa should be the main target in the game atm because she’s the hero up front protecting the rest of her team from taking damage. Your argument that people should be killing the supports first is hillarious because people hated that so much during Dive that they created Brig to kill dive which along with Moira’s heals makes it near impossible to kill anything not to mention Baptiste and his immortality field.

If you try to flank a healer to frag them you are just going to end up feeding because they have too much healing, sustain and CC available to them. The mechanical requirments to duel flankers as a support has also been reduced over time with Brig being a melee hero and Moira having such a large hitbox on her right click that even the tiniest hero turns into Roadhog.

Orisa wasn’t bad before 2-2-2, she was a bunker hero and bunker’s weren’t effective unless we are talking about pirateship. Running over an Orisa is exactly the counterplay to her. her dying to that is fine.

Yes, I have played Orisa back when she didn’t have all the other buffs as well as reduced cooldown on Fortify.

48

So the thing is, everything he went over applied to live for 2 years before GOATS got armor nerfed, well before Orisa was remotely meta. (Also when Mercy’s, Ana’s and soon Moira’s healing were all stronger).

For example, with his Death Blossom clip, Orisa took 180 armor damage. She’s always had 200 armor and Fortify has always had the 50% damage reduction. The only difference is that armor is getting buffed back up to what it used to always be.

I agree that the CD reduction might be a little much, but ultimately the video proves nothing beyond how theory testing numbers is always scary when you throw away all context behind them.

49

Orisa didn’t have all the other buffs when she had the armor buff from before, it’s all that together that’s the problem. She’s not a slow long range poke hero anymore, she’s a brawler.

50

can you imagine if orisa only has that abilty every 8 seconds and you should be aware of when she dont have it? crazy gamesense, absolutely crazy!!!

51

Now, that’s a fair argument.

But as far as the video is concerned, which purely went over the math behind armor and fortify, that’s irrelevant. That’s just what I’m saying. If you think she’s too much as she is due to other reasons, you might be right, but the video doesn’t actually help you at all because she was like that for a long time, but the video would have you think this is some sort of brand new epidemic.

52

It’s not like she has a shield that goes on cooldown immediately after being fired or one of the strongest CC abilities, one of the most impactful ults or lowered cooldown on Fortify. Imagine thinking that something as basic as being aware of your cooldowns and knowing how to position yourself is being used as an argument as to why a tank needs to be this busted.

53

This is horrible. If Orisa meta persists for six month again I can’t play this anymore. There’s no hero in this game that drains me as much as Orisa. The reason this game feels so horrible unsatisfying lately is because of all the damage sponging going on. This horrible interaction adds more to it. Let people die in game Blizzard, pls. It’s a shooter.

I’ve been saying it a lot and I’m gonna keep saying it: we will not have a fun meta as long as it revolves around Orisa. This hero will kill the enjoyment for tank players. Kill this hero now please.

54

Only proof i have that all metas are anti sniper are pros comments, the success in my own games, and the fact that a no barrier meta never existed.

I didnt say the purpose of shields is to counter 1 shots, i said they’re there to counter huge damage, which is a consequence of 1 shots. Brig’s barrier however does actually cover her head, therefore giving her some safety vs 1 shots.

“the game” doesnt want anything, its the devs that want things. And yeah, the point of compensating with damage/healing is to do exactly that - keep the fight length the same. The nerfs to barriers were to make the game more active and not about shooting barriers (nobody likes shooting barriers) - they’ve not mentioned at all that they’re unhappy with fight lengths. I personally think the barrier nerfs were the first phase, and damage changes are on their way.

I’m literally a game designer and have been for 19 years, my job is to look at things from the macro level. I’m guessing you play a lot of widow, not so much tanks and healers?

  • 1 shots are the pin that everything hangs on - even if sniper’s have had a hard time, that means the meta swayed to far against them. Literally every hero released since Ana has had an anti-sniper element to them and they’re STILL DOING WELL.
  • Teamwork/investment should be mandatory to get an instant kill, not for every DPS to do their job or have carry potential.
  • Nerfing 1 shots means other damage can go down. Barrier health has gone down, so all the damage and healing creep needs attention. The only way damage creep can be fixed is to reduce the only stable point since the game’s release - 1 shots.
55

Post them.

Not proof of the question at hand

Not proof. Barriers aren’t solely selected to counter one shots.

Your implication was that a good reason why Brigitte was broken was that she had a shield that could prevent one shots. I would rank that feature REALLY low on the list of things that made Brigitte break the game.

Damage was obviously not nerfed to speed up the fights. That goes hand in hand with giving main tanks more speed and CC resistance, along with a Moira healing nerf.

There is zero point in nerfing overall damage if we are trying to achieve those results.

Barriers are major factors of drawing out the fight though.

I doesn’t seem to me you are doing a good job at looking at the game from a macro level. All I see is twisting almost every element in the game to be an antagonist to one shots. Perhaps all those years made you complacent.

Used to, until Ashe’s release. I play Ashe 80% of my DPS time now.

Tanks, no. I hate the role.
Healers, a lot. Ana is my most played Comp hero in my OW career, and I am currently clocking time on Baptiste.

This is exactly why you I think you are focused too hard on a tiny bubble instead of macro level. Brigitte had a 500 HP shield that just protected herself from snipers, but doesn’t exert pressure herself. But oh boy the things she had done to the heroes that countered Widow, as well as how well she protected her from dives.

Moira has a range limit that prevents her from dueling snipers unless she goes deep. She counters flankers by simply existing where she is supposed to be in her own back line.

There might have been some anti-sniper elements in the new heroes, but they wrecked Dive and flankers way harder, while simultaneously helping her on the teammate side.

Hard disagree.

And none of those steps are to be taken until chip damage first become relevant, and later become problematic. You want “other damage” to go down when I can’t see a compelling reason why, at least yet.

I mean, this just straight out an admission of what I’m saying. One shots have been stable since realease, but keep growing in relevance. The only logic behind it is how the game evolved AROUND THEM to make them the only effective method, as they themselves are not part of any creep. To solve that creep, address that creep. Don’t address the thing that is unrelated to it.

56

Healing hasn’t had any increase in over a year as a heads up

57

her effective hp is allready stupid while using fortify, that hasn’t changed since her release.
but guess what, she’s good close up with characters that has multiple damage instances, unlike some other characters that die to them.

all that really happened was that she was appropriated to be that now with the decrease in barrier health, meaning spam damage or single target damage characters like junkrat and pharah are better against orisa and allways have been but the barrier was too much for them to play around.

so we’ll have to see what happens.

58

Wait for a few seconds, and then burn her down one all of the cooldowns are off

Or just anti her.

I mean in your example you are pushing a scenario where people are burning their resources in a such a way she is a dead duck the moment they come off.

59

Game was dying fast enough as it was. And these changes aren’t going to fix the issues of sustain and an under-performing DPS class as a whole.

This will be the final nail in the coffin to what is already a game on the brink of death.

60

If you really want Orisa to be phased out, then nerf snipers. Snipers, by design, encourage people to play safe and avoid stepping out into the open or leaving themselves vulnerable.

Other tanks like Reinhardt could easily give Orisa a run for her money, if they weren’t worried about having all of their teammates get murdered by snipers the moment their barrier breaks.

61

The armor change was this year, Ana has been healing at the same rate for a while now and Moira is getting nerfed a fair bit. Bap, while a strong healer, is still slower than Ana and pre-nerf Moira.