Devs, could you clarify your thinking around Lucio’s wall-riding in terms of direction?
Putting myself in your shoes from user experience and balance: the wall-riding skill curve is very assymetric right now. ‘Rollout’* Lucio mains move around the map in a way that is categorically different from mainstream, flex Lucios who haven’t dove deeply into wall-ride mechanics. Unlike a top level Genji or Tracer whose skill is leveraging the abilities advertised in the hero info screen, rollout Lucios appear to use hidden mobility tricks that aren’t immediately obvious to the average player.
Importantly, if someone playing another hero is frustrated by these high-mobility Lucios, they can’t just switch to an area denial hero like Winston and counter the Lucio. So unlike frustratingly evasive high-mobility, high-skill Genji or Tracer players, a high skill Lucio isn’t as easily remedied by a low-skill floor counterpick.
My question for the devs is: are either of these issues a problem that you want to remedy? I’m referring to the unusual, asymmetric skill curve or the less straightforward counterplay compared to other hitscan-defying mobile heroes like Tracer and Genji.
Obviously, as a rollout Lucio, I think Overwatch’s wall-riding is a jewel in the game’s crown: an unprecedented user experience far more empowered and elegant than other games with aerials and wall-rides like warframe or titanfall. I compare high-mobility Lucios to high-skill Pharahs: they create a skill arms race with hitscan to counter them and there’s no easy AoE counterpick like against Tracer/Genji.
In short, are you intentionally skillproofing the wallride experience? Your team is no doubt aware that Lucios have always been able to ride around corners without changes like these (as seen in the classic Jamie Allegro Wall Riding Fundamentals video). Corner riding isn’t a problem needing a solution. Isn’t it a challenge surface for players to apply skill to, to receive a reward, like most other enjoyably challenging facets of videogames?
Without beating a dead horse, these and other recent changes to wall-riding and momentum–some spillover from Doomfist/Winston changes–have created roadblocks between rollout Lucios and their techniques and we’re having to ‘avoid’ the improvement to maintain our performance standard (in this case to maintain momentum we must disengage pre-corner wrap now whereas before we were able to aimfor the corner edge to maximize distance). We’re big boys who can take a nerf, but we just wanna know, give it to us straight, are we a problem that needs fixing?
*rollout Lucio AKA /r/LucioRollouts/