It is terrible game design when the Game Director himself believes that you should be able to play whatever you choose.
If one hero is able to single-handedly force someone off their hero, that is not only unfun, but that is contradictory to the beliefs of the developers.
“I’m playing X so you aren’t allowed to play Y” is a terrible balance philosophy
I don’t see the issue here.
The characters who are good in all situations are generally never going to excel at something, always being worse off than a niche hero in their niche. Tracer and Widowmaker during peak dive are basically the only DPS exceptions to this rule.
EDIT: Hell on ladder, no niche hero is ever truly ‘forced’ to swap. I could play Mei all game on every map and still climb, even on maps and in comps that don’t support her niche, because hero pick is largely irrelevant on ladder, unless you’re in a meta like we are currently, where a comp like GOATS just rolls over Genji or Tracer for example, effectively hard countering them.
genji doesn’t have a hard counter but he doesn’t hard counter heroes himself
you cannot pick genji to counter mccree or counter widow, that just depends on the genji player but he is rewarded by not being hard countered himself
I’ve been trying to say this since the rework of Symmetra.
Symmetra was a Hero that was amazing against Genji. Her beam went thru his deflect, her beam also locked onto him so his mobility was to no help. Her turrets helped a lot against Genji as well. Sadly, all there’s left for Symmetra on that part are her turrets, and that is not enough to counter Genji.
There are other Heroes that also lack reliable counters. For example, Doomfist, Tracer and Reaper. There are a few others, but they got at least a few more counters. But what actually counters these heroes is good aim, but that is not something everyone got, at least not in lower SR ranges.
There was a change to Pharah a while back, a change that would buff her on console and nerf her on PC, I think? It was something like that, or if it would nerf her in low SR matches, and buff her in high SR matches… Not sure, either way, a lot more Heroes need those kind of changes. You need to really look over how each Hero acts in different SR ranges.
Especially when Smurfs are a huge issue. It’s impossible to win a game if you got a really good smurf Tracer, Reaper, Doomfist, Genji or Hitscan against you. A person who only plays that one Hero.
This isn’t an issue for just the heroes you listed.
A good player could take a bad hero into a trash rank and dominate with it. Example: Dafran stomping people on a Torbjorn only account during placements.
A GM Zenyatta player or Lucio player could also make a fresh account and rank up to GM through just fragging alone too.
You want genji counters? Okay. lets go.
Brig
Moira
Zarya
Hog
Pharah
Sombra
Sym
Mei
Winston
Torb
“Stupidity is not a right”
Genji himself is almost fine. He’s only so flexible because the counters to make mobile characters actually manageable do not exist in reliable forms.
Rework slows to hurt evasive characters but not already-slow characters:
Slows as of right now just screw over slow enmies. Enemies with wall climbs, hovers, and so on are not screwed over. They get to escape slows for free, which is pretty much the opposite of how the 2 should interact. Sym’s beams are garbo even with the crazy slow, so obviously making them disable movement abilities completely while mostly destroying the slow effect is the way to go. Make slows scary for the characters who are mobile. Make slows an inconvenience for those who aren’t mobile… So basically the opposite of what it is now. :^)
I think Genji is perfectly balanced already, the abundance of CC in the game already is fine.
If we make a new hero to be another counter to flankers, we could implement your idea of “hurting mobility abilities but not mobility as a whole”, but right now if we reworked all CC/Slows, it could drastically effect the hero balance of heroes like Mei, Sombra etc.
Some of the changes you listed also still hurt everyone, since jump strafing is a universally known way to avoid shots.
We had one. Her name was Symmetra. She did her job well. Then all the Genji mains complained and Symmetra got ner----- excuse me, “reworked”, and now she just sucks.
Why must you lie?
scapeGOATS, new meta, gotta love it.
Not at all.
Since the rework is just to slows. Which only exist in 4 forms.
Slows that come from Stuns are just movement speed debuffs to make sure Stuns actually work. So it’s not subject to the balance changes of slow.
Make Slow disable jumping, which is tied to many mobile passives - the things that should be countered by Slow in the first place. Lower Slow’s actual slow-rates for channeling abilities (#1/#2 from above). Jumping randomly is very bad practice (except at lower tiers of play) and is something many character don’t need to do. So suddenly Sym/Mei can now counter Heroes they were made to counter in the first place while characters they aren’t supposed to counter aren’t oppressed with Slows.
If anything it’d be nerfing the thing that makes the characters annoying to fight while buffing an aspect they’re SUPPOSED to be good at (but currently are not, hence them being non-viable).
Sym’s little movement disable is just so she can actually Carwash Flankers who don’t take a second to check their surroundings. And all they have to do is just destroy 1 of the 2 fragile turrets (or 2 of the 3 if the Sym is bad) to NYOOM to safety.
Honestly, the scapegoats that happen on this forum daily remind me of those times where a load of people rush into a store but can’t get through the door because everyone is rushing in at once, then blame the door for being too small.
Strafe jumping isn’t a bad practice at all.
Have you seen most people in OWL? They usually ADAD strafe while jumping while they are going towards the point. I saw a lot of this during Season 1
While I don’t think your idea is completely bad, it just seems like a rework of a hero’s slowing abilities, especially for a hero like Mei who is currently pretty balanced, could hurt or help her more than expected. It’d be a decent idea to place on a future new hero though.
Why is this thread still alive…
And why are people still arguing about stupid…?
Genji has many reliable counters that’s why he’s never been meta because you need to outplay your opponents and you can’t always do that.
No you won’t get away from Winston.
McCree is same. He’ll just track and trace.
Sym says hi, and laughs while you try get near the objective and fail every time.
Let’s not forget Torb, Brig, Hog, Rein or any other tank.
Also, why is nobody talking about Bastion.
He will melt you before you even get half way through any stupid combo you’re thinking about.
It’s not hard to kill any squishy especially one that runs around thinking their sneaky. You’re not.
People have been playing this game longer than you and know the hero better than you.
You’re not MLG pro Gengu.
Oh hunTy… No.
She’s a character who is far too niche. A goddess at chokepoints, garbage elsewhere. And “niche” in this game is the sweet and cute way to say “a noob stomper who is barely-viable, wow, please fix this character asap.”
There are characters who aren’t as good at her at chokes, but they’re much better elsewhere and also less disruptive for their teammates. A character who can be OK in all areas or more than 1 area is balanced and harder to counter. A character who is only good in 1 area is easy to hard-counter (which is why Mei/Sym/Bastion/etc crumble the second they start getting countered). A niche character doesn’t belong in this kind of game. They only belong in games where all characters are niche (where a roster is usually just 3-9 characters big).
Considering I don’t necessarily agree or disagree entirely with you, I’d just like to agree to disagree if that’s alright.
Jesus Christ lol