Blizzard, ADDRESS THE ASHE-MERCY BREAKPOINT

General Discussion
21

Few things here buddy.

  1. What exactly is the value that Widowmaker provides?
    Is it the ability to 1-shot all but 9 classes with a headshot? If so, Ashe with a Mercy boosting her still can’t do that. Its close, but 221 damage is not 300. Additionally, unlike Widowmaker, Ashe has falloff on her shots. Ashe has to be closer to the fight compared to Widow to get that full value. At max range, even a Widowmaker body shot will do more damage than a boosted Ashe headshot (110 vs 120).

  2. Number of players required.
    If we were to assume that Ashe+Mercy does the same work as Widowmaker, we need to acknowledge that the value that a single player playing Widowmaker is equivalent to two players playing Ashe and Mercy. Now ya said they are worth more, but are they together more than twice the value compared to the single Widowmaker? I don’t necessarily think so, as the team loses out on a healer than.

  3. Hitscan is hitscan.
    Widow and Ashe require the same amount of aiming since their weapons are both hitscan. No charge time yes, but the Widow’s charge time is up to 0.9 seconds. Ashe’s rate of fire is 0.7 seconds. Pretty minor difference. Funny enough, they both have an AoE ability that does damage over time. Major difference being one gets 100 base damage too and the other lets ya see them through walls (both good for each hero for different reasons)

  4. 1-shot Pharah with Mercy…no.
    Ya wouldn’t like that. If Pharah+Mercy could one shot things (assuming ya meant a 200 health hero only), than Pharah’s base rockets would be doing some 154 damage. I like Pharah, she is one of my favorite DPS heroes and generally characters in the game. But even I wouldn’t like 154 damage rockets. It wouldn’t be fair, as the rockets are not that hard to hit. Maybe on the small nimble heroes, but tanks and less mobile heroes would constantly get upset by Pharahs.

  5. “And now what?”
    Ya say that this is an issue. What about it? What would you recommend? Simply stating “I don’t like this” isn’t exactly helpful. Its important to think what are some ideas that could change things. Should Ashe’s damage be decreased? Greater falloff damage scale and/or range? Does the dynamite need to be toned back? Does Mercy’s damage beam need some tweaks? Does Widow need some buffs?
    Its important to bring up points for your claim (which there are few and with some holes), but its also important to either have an idea for potential changes or prompt brainstorming/ideas in order to potentially make some changes. As it currently stands, this just kind of comes off as an upset tweet or something.

1 Like
22

Ashe-Mercy can remove 3 enemies faster than Widow can alone, assuming equal skill and not even counting BOB.

23

And again you take 1 widow god vs 1 bronze widow. No its 2 good widows hitting their shots guess which one will win the one who knows where the other is or the one who doesn’t?

Again in Bronze world? You hook Bob when he gets cast and just drag him behind the wall or into a pit. Its not hard to do and there is pretty much nothing Ashe can do to you or to avoid that happening nor do you take any damage which means you still have your breather to get out. Btw if you wanna trade an ult for an ult you can use whole hog to push him away from a save distance.

surviving through an ult unharmed is oftentimes more important then getting a kill. Especially if you tip the ult economy in your favor that way. There just is no point in trading out 1 Support life for 1 support life and 2 DPS Life because Hog didn’t deal with Bob as efficient as possible.

Ball has adaptive shields and Hypermobility for a reason. You push bob off and then you can get back to annoying their backline or whatever you deem worthy of your balltime or you could ignore bob keep annoying the supports who keep each other alive all the while bob kills your dps and/or supports because your second tank is busy holding a frontline.

even if you kept bubble just for grenade you could only save 2 out of 6 players and its still gg. So I would rather use my Bubbles to keep them initally alive from Bob and work something out from there.

And thats exactly the point you slept on. There is 6 players on both teams and 1 ability off CD might already be enough to completely deal with Bob. A lot of the time you don’t even need an Ultimate to deal with him which will always tip the ult economy in your favor.

please tell me how booping him off a ledge or into a position where he has no LOS is not a counter to Bob or how it has some serious downsides.

How many times does a 5v6 decide the fight instantly in GM? Almost every time? Because thats pretty much what widows ult is allowing you to do in a lot of cases. Get one cheeky kill on a squishy. This means in 50% of the cases a support is removed and no counterplay was available except for hiding at a spot the widow can’t reach without getting killed. However this also means that you have to give up crazy amounts of space or a good widow will find an angle to keep pressure on the enemy team.

Think back about earlier double sniper iterations, about Pines Widow back in Season 1 of the OWL and why GOATS had to be created. And thats also the direction we are heading back to now. Widow is becoming a strong pick again right now. Especially on maps where she can fight outside of Ashes effective Range so ashe+Mercy can’t one shot her anymore.

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24

Nah fam widow obviously broken coz reasons lol. I swear the community starting to sound like chips when he does a 6k with doom in top 500 in a way that required the mechanical skill of a monkey and any sub diamond player could even do at the same lvl but still proceeds to cry about window even when she is not even meta. Per always attracting non FPS players to a FPS game, huge mistake, coz as it turns out they are the whiniest bunch of people on the whole planet.

25

Not sure what you’re getting at but I’d argue Widow has one of the best ults in the game. Can be used anywhere on the map and benefits everyone on your team. You’d need to be purposely trying to screw it up in order to find a situation where it’s not useful. People sleep on Infrasite at lower ranks because “muh damage”. It’s ridiculously good.

BOB on the other hand, while he can be used to make some game changing plays, he’s ultimately just a roided up turret that’s more often than not used as a distraction. All it takes is a few seconds of focus from the enemy team to completely shut down BOB. Even less if you have a hero on your team that can move him out of position or stun him for an extended period of time.

BOB only really scores kills if you’re already winning the teamfight. Infrasite can end a teamfight before it starts.

26

Mercy mains pointed out that this pocket style is extremely unhealthy for the game a year ago.
Its absolutely boring for the Mercy player to blue-beam the dps the whole game and frustrating for the enemy that Mercy makes already broken Snipers even more OP.
I knew that people will complain about this combo, it was only a matter of time when she becomes meta again.
The problem is that you cant nerf her since pocketing dps is the only reason you would run Mercy.
I guess the only solution is #ReworkMercy

2 Likes
27

Ashe barely has half the effective range of widowmaker

28

If they were to nerf Mercy’s damage boost to fix the break point, they would have to nerf it significantly. Even at +20% damage boost Ashe will be able to one shot at 204 damage.

If they nerf Ashe’s damage by 5 she will be able to one shot at 208 damage with 30% damage boost. If they were to also nerf Mercy’s damage boost down to 25%, it will still be able to one shot at 200DPS.

So what would be the best way about nerfing it? It’s true Ashe becomes a better Widowmaker with Mercy. But that’s two heroes working together, of course it should be better, right?

29

dude BOB is the most useless ult in the game. Arguablly more useless than whole hog.

and widow’s ult is the strongest in the game, can confirm as a widow main

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30

As a widow main, our ult is only good for dueling other hitscan and specifically widowmaker / hanzo / ashe. It is the single most useless ult that I would gladly change for any other ult. Everyone who says otherwise, is not a widowmaker main and is just theory crafting bs or is trolling from a new account.

Ashe is the better option than widow vast majority of the time right now - especially with a mercy pocket. Which is why I’ve switched to Ashe on every map but gibraltar and ruins. Realistically, most maps are played in ashe’s kill range and she brings far more utility, consistency and damage to the table than widowmaker can ever make up for.

31

You have taken my threats lightly.
Please put your head right here in this guillotine.

32

She also has one of the largest head hitboxes of the dps category ( a fairly large part of her hat counts as part of her head hit box for some reason, more so than McCree’s). And unlike a lot of other heroes, her crouch barely shifts her head hitbox as well.

33

Widow’s walls is an incredibly powerful ult, while Bob is okish, wdym?

34

I think what they’re going for is a fire rate thing. You can’t really spam out shots on widow like you can with ashe, and while that doesn’t make it “easier to aim” per shot, having more bites of the apple makes it easier in a sense :thinking: :man_shrugging:t2:

35

How can anyone take you serious with a name like that though?

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36

How…?

Geniunely, How?

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37

hsshhqhh

this guy…

i can see that its requires two spific heros to get a broken mechanic.

38

They did, it was on the experimental mode.

https://twitter.com/Haezurath/status/1299110636933255168?s=20

Ashe’s falloff ensures that she can’t oneshot people anymore even with a boost from her typical engagement range.

39

I wish they would just replace Damage Boost. It always creates issues and forces hero combos to a point where one hero is useless without the other. I don’t know how Mercy mains see this, but I’d rather have something else as blue beam. Damage Reduction, Shield Granting, maybe even a “neutralizer” that deals good damage to barriers.

40

I mean Ashe is strong. The only dependent ones are Pharah and Symmetra