Hear me out: Make Mei tank. Increase her HP to 400. Iceblock is bigger to be used as a wall easier. Ice wall stays as is but the side faceing you becomes a small ramp for your team to walk up for sudo-high ground. Thoughts?
8 Likes
I don’t know about the specifics, but I’ve been team “Mei should be a tank” for a long time now.
8 Likes
That just sounds like a very weak tank. She isn’t even scary up close these days.
3 Likes
People have teased that all the way back in OW1 where Mei even got a short experimental alongside Doomfist to turn her into a tank. Gave her increased hitbox, more health, and some other changes.
In the end, Mei going into OW2 stayed a DPS while Doomfist got changed. I feel their design philosophy for Mei they want to keep in the DPS category and I have to agree. Dooms old get in, disrupt people, get out fit WAY more in line along side Hammond than DPS.
In a roleQ world, having hybrid characters lets you have diversity within the slots without making them fully beholden to a typical tank archetype. So, I really don’t want ot see Mei go into a tank. I want her to stay a supportive DPS that has some unique properties compared to all the boring as$ DPS that only do damage and nothing else.
Just as I never want to see Brigitte get moved from the support role to the tank role.
3 Likes
The cutiest tank ever!
2 Likes
Bring back her left click freeze, buff her wall health, give her two charges on wall, give her 550hp and we’re done.
3 Likes
makes more sense make mei a tank than stupid doomfist, so useless, she have a lot of tanking habilities but i think a big problem is the hitbox, too small
2 Likes
Basically this. Fair amount of people are already struggling enough with the JQ one tricks.
No she doesn’t.
Wall: Would be a TERRIBLE tank ability. Sure, it temporarily blocks off the enemy firing, but it also blocks of your own team firing. It even blocks off your teams vision. As a result wall doesn’t work as a barrier or as a mitigation tool as it mitigates just as much for the enemy. Wall is an isolation ability. It is used to secure kills, not tank.
To make it work as a tank you would have to rework it to allow your team to use it to mitigate damage while still being able to do damage. But then in can’t also be an isolation tool, so that has to change. There might be a few ways you can come up to do that, but all of them will just end up being a new ability that only vaguely resembles wall
Ice Block: Would be the worst tank ability. A self stun is not a good defensive. They figured out that being locked in place as a tank was a bad idea back in 2017 (when they let Hog move while using Take a Breather). And that was when there were two tanks, it would be MUCH worse now if your tanks defensive was a self stun.
To make it work Mei would have to be able to move when using it. And you can’t have an immune tank moving around, so they would have to remove that aspect of it. Basically you end up with Take a Breather. In other words a completely different ability.
So, both her abilities have to be reworked. What about her primary and secondary? Yep, them as well.
For all the people that hate her slow now, imagine it on a tank. Having a much higher survivability, getting healer focus, and you have a miserable experience for close range heroes, especially other tanks. So, it would have to be changed to something only vaguely close.
And her alt fire, that would have to go as well. If you notice something about all the tanks, all their abilities have pretty limited range. A projectile like hers, while hard to hit with at range, is still more effective than tanks have. So, they have to nerf that.
In the end, to make Mei a tank you would have to significantly change ALL of her abilities to make it work. She wouldn’t play even remotely close to the same. You are just talking about making a completely new hero that just uses her model.
It really doesn’t. Doomfist’s changes mostly left his abilities the same. He needed less changes than Mei would. And even then, he feels quite a bit different to play as a tank vs as a dps. Mei would be so much worse.
Historically he was about two things: Quick kills and Disruption.
Making him a tank just shifted more value into disruption and removed much of the quick kill options. He was always a little like Ball with disruption. They just leaned into that.
And Doom changing to tank was, imo, a bad option. It was just the least bad option. There was no world where Doomfist could ever be balanced in OW2 as a dps.
Wow…such an original idea…
And Kiriko a DPS as shes more good at that than healing
We dial up her primary fire and since tanks can CC she can freeze people again
1 Like
just have torb build mei a mech
snowball?
SNOWQUEEN!
And make the dps roster even more homogenized? Please leave my favorite dps alone.
She is the only dps that is really a play maker. The rest are damage bots aside from symm tele/slow. She also has an amazing dps hitbox, but that will be butchered if she becomes a tank.
1 Like
It was a massive mistake to rework Doomfist into a tank; I would not even call him a tank right now because his tanking ability only protects himself, not his team. Every support can heal allies, so every tank should be able to mitigate damage done to their allies. They needed to keep Doomfist as a DPS, but focus on reducing/removing his CC. Doomfist’s character fits better as a DPS hero.
How to Design Doomfist for Damage Role in OW2
Rising Uppercut
- Remove Power Block for Rising Uppercut
- Reduce upwards travel and knock-up of Uppercut
Seismic Slam
- Now also allows for aiming towards the ground to move downward
Rocket Punch
- Remove stun from Punch completely
- Rocket Punch no longer stunning would mean his Punch’s wall impact damage would be removed (because enemies would be able to use abilities before hitting a wall, which would make its value inconsistent)
- Punch impact damage & charge up time would need buffed to compensate
- Reduce Rocket Punch knock-back
Meteor Strike
- Remove the slow on enemies from Meteor Strike
- Buff outer-ring damage
From here it would just be trying to get the numbers right. This Doomfist state would be a lot easier to balance since he has a lot less CC.
1 Like
“Tank Mei” could be fun but I think anything short of a whole visual/kit rework would feel a bit weak and lazy. Basically, I don’t want them to just scale her up like Doom.
I’d love to see Snowball get upgraded and just be a large hovering bot that Mei could place (like she places her walls) and recall to her back
Maybe she moves/skates faster while Snowball is placed and then goes to her normal speed while carrying Snowball
It could literally be anything - I want it to feel like a fully fleshed out kit instead of just a class swap and done
Let’s talk about this.
Again, let me reiterate: Switching Doom to a tank was a bad option.
In fact, I think switching any hero’s role should only be done as a last resort.
But, back to Doom. There are a couple problems he had going into OW2.
First: Doom was a VERY poorly balanced hero in OW1. The biggest problem was balancing around CC.
In the absence of CC he was practically unstoppable. His kill potential was crazy high. He could dive in, kill a target super quickly and exit. Very few heroes had any hope of killing him unless he was CCed. And very few heroes could survive him if he was not CCed. This made him actually quite OP in any match without CC on the other team. But…
Add in a CC hero and suddenly Doom could die. And often quite easily. Add in two, and it was really rough to play Doom fist. Add in three… You get the picture. The more CC the enemy had the more Doom became a terrible pick. And he dropped to a bad pick really quickly.
So, with the near complete removal of CC outside of tanks (which Doom could easily avoid) in matches Doom would have had (in addition to other changes we will talk about) to either lose his potential to quickly kill a target, massively weaken his survivabilty, or heavily nerf his escape options. The problem is that the choices become: 1) make him an ineffective dps or 2) a glass cannon that just dies super fast or 3) remove most of his mobility. None of which would have felt good for any Doom player.
Second: Doom in OW1 was basically all CC (and largely still is).
And to be clear, it is not just the stuns and slows. The ability to consistently and repeatedly knock people up and back over and over again he can CC people even without factoring in the stuns and slow. All of that would have to be either removed or heavily curtailed. And it would end up being completely different playstyle than he had before.
The reality is that had Doom remained in the dps category he would either have been an ineffective, annoying dps (bad option) or a glass cannon that diving would typically be suicide (bad option). And both of those would also involve a significant change to his play style.
Now, while moving him to a tank was also a bad option it did allow him to keep most of his playstyle. He still knocks people around. He still has his mobility. Sure, he can’t kill as fast, but he can survive longer. Yes, it is a bad option. But it actually retains more of his identity than what would have had to happen to keep him as dps. A bad option, but less bad than the others.
He protects his team the same way Orisa, JQ or Hag do, by body blocking and eating the damage with a CD. He also protects his team like Ball does by displacing and disrupting the enemy. Not every tank needs a matrix or barrier to do the job.
My take: If you want an ice based tank the better answer is just make a new hero.
Reworking Mei into an effective tank would require a completely new kite. Which means effectively what you are doing is making a new hero, deleting Mei, and then slapping Mei’s model on the new hero. That seems counter productive and a waste when you can just make a completely new hero and keep Mei.
1 Like
They tested Mei as tank internally around the same time they were testing Doom tank. They were open about the possibility. The fact that they didn’t go through with it probably means that she was better fit for DPS.
Mei is a small character.
She wouldn’t stand out as a tank.
give her a mech suit