Could we acknowledge that aim is a skill?

General Discussion
163

Iirc (though don’t quote me):

  1. On her release, Ana had a nerf (several times I believe) because she was too strong, but they nerfed her way too much. Yes actually, it was the fact she could deal a lot of damage, her biotic grenade dealt a lot of healing. I can’t recall if the cooldowns were too fast either. Also, at the time of her release, the amount of support we have in comparison to now was vastly different, pinning her with not a big roster, now her nerfs just made Ana worse.

  2. Other supports do not need nerfing (Though for Brig, the community will say so lol) If you nerf supports like Moira who are balanced, for no reason, or Lucio, Zen etc. it will just make an even more of a mess, especially since they don’t need it and Ana needs a buff significantly.

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164

As long as they can keep Brig “balanced” I don’t mind but we all have seen how successful that has been so far lol

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Weak yes, but compared to what?
Healers? Yes.
Dps? No.

Sustained dps heroes are no longer viable because of healing.

Hanzo is pretty good yes. But you could still just dive him, block everything he does with DM, and kill him quickly.

Brigitte also destroyed the game for everybody else.
Tracer and Genji were nowhere near as big of an issue as Brigitte is.

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166

Yeah but you are not using the definition correctly then.
The positioning and the TYPE of positioning varies from hero to hero.
The positioning required as Reinhardt is totally different as the one from Winston and both are tanks. Saying that Rein requires more because has 0 mobility compared to Winston is simply wrong.

If Winston jumps at the bad spot, his target escapes, and he dies. Escapes are not 100% available and you still have to count that. Tracer needs to position her self at the exact spot, with amazing awareness and game sense in order to one clip someone ( not miss due to spread, being 2mt away ) and in a place where that target cant escape nor she can be shot from a different angle.

Its a different type of positioning, yes more forgiving but still required.

Pharah on the other hand, if the enemy team doesnt have hitscans … yeah requires 0 positioning. You just need to be fairly “in range” of the enemy and blast them to death. Now when theres a widow, her positioning requirement changes.

Same with soldier. Soldier requires little positioning. Get high ground, assist, dont show up much. If the enemy doesnt have mobile characters to get where he is … yeah almost 0 positioning required etc.

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Aiming is skill yes.

So is every other kind of skill in this game.

People have no problem acknowledging aiming as skill, instead they have difficulty acknowledging skill when aim is not the focus.

People also have difficulties acknowledging different amounts of other skill besides aiming. That someone playing Rein is infact better than the other dude playing Rein because the first rein player has vastly more game sense.

People also do not want to acknowledge the fact that yes, you need different quantities of game sense in a different way when you play mccree versus winston. You do not need the game sense to position versus a pharah or flankers as hitscan player if you play winston and at the same time, you do not need the game sense to dive targets and target prioritization and disengagement if you played mccree.

People also fail to acknowledge other mechanical aspects besides aiming as skill. Pressing shift as winston and jumping at enemies is simple in theory just like point and click with cursor, but micromanaging leaps, turns, curves and momentum, landing zones and cooldown and executing the perfect kind of jump you want at any given moment is not so simple anymore and requires muscle memory training just like if somebody was to pick up Genji and train animation canceling.

So in the end, people fail to acknowledge that non-aim centric heroes can and will require quite a bit of both mechanical and game sense training to git gud.

That includes Mercy. Micromanaging her guardian angel flight paths on a lot faster cooldown is just one of the skills that separate Ark from rest of the Mercy players.

Failing to acknowledge different skills besides aiming is basically saying Fissure is not better than Iremiix, despite Fissure’s high skill level single-handedly lifting Los Angeles Gladiators from the mud, both figuratively and literally.

What continues to grind people’s gears is the “holier-than-thou” attitude that implies people who play aim-centric mechanical skill heroes are automatically better than those that do not play widow or mccree. They are not.

If we stopped that elitist attitude and started acknowledging skill as a whole, we’d all be in much better place as a community.

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168

Hmmm, then this is a combination of game sense and position.

Flankers need to position themselves so they can get in when they are needed and where they are needed; but, also get out very quickly.

Game Sense is required to avoid getting stunned/hacked and therefore avoid getting punished.

If the flanker has bad game sense; then, they will put them selves into a situation where they can get countered and die.
If they don’t get countered; then, the other team just didn’t take the opportunity to punish them or messed up the opportunity.

That also goes against your recent edit. A silver is much more likely to screw up punishing or not even realize that they could have punished an enemy while a GM is very unlikely to miss that chance. They may not punish him properly; but, they are probably going to try.

GM play is not similar to a Silver play. If you mess up it is up to the enemy team to punish you. The higher rank you are, the more likely the enemy team will be able to successfully punish you.

I believe a coach once said something along this lines… For a GM to play like a Bronze they need to look at the situation. Realize that they can team wipe the enemy team right now. Turn around and jump off a cliff.

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169

She actually got buffs when she was released.
Then they nerfed nano boost, because Reinhardt and Reaper were basically unstoppable.
Then came the tank meta, where they nerfed her grenade and her damage slightly later. (Also many tanks got nerfs.)
But the damage actually got buffed back halfway.
The cooldowns didn’t get changed.
Basically she heals less and does 10 less damage per shot compared to when she was OP, but then we got a Mercy rework to heal more, and Moira also heals more.

People declared Moira to be balanced at day 1, and refused to even consider the opposite.
Ana is THE balanced support, and other supports should be adjusted around her.

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When was aim considered not a skill?

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Winston aim is not a skill. :slight_smile:

But in all seriousness, aim in general is always a skill.

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It is definitely more gamesense.

As for the rank discussion I said it is irrelevant, you brought rank into this.
A GM team can punish very well, but against a GM flanker who will have incredible gamesense to not put himself into that scenario.

A silver team will punish sometimes, against a silver flanker with less game sense, if he had better gamesense he would not be silver.

Both rank and position seem irrelevant in this scenario.

The point of my initial statement was the positioning of the flanker is forgiving due to their escape mechanic. Their engagement selection is much more their required skill. And that falls under gamesense yes.

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one tricks nomnomnonmom

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If we stopped that elitist attitude and started acknowledging skill as a whole, we’d all be in much better place as a community.

I mean, what else are they gonna brag about to make themselves feel on top? Its always better to feel superior to someone else in this game because of something you have that they do not have.

And when you get killed by something they dont have but you do, thats where the “no aim, no skill and braindead” phrase comes in.

One word is the best thing to describe it as a whole. Insecurity.

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175

You are going to dismiss massive balance issues with this one word? Really?

177

Playing Moira is far easier than playing Tracer, McCree or Widow “very well”.

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178

Yay, more aim threads. Judging on the content of this, it went perfectly. /s

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This doesn’t work. This is how Tracer became the uncontested best DPS the higher in the ranks you go, because no one could consistently counter her with aim. This is why Pharah is such a pain to deal with on console. Having a hero who’s harder to hit than they can hit you isn’t really good for anything.

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180

Hmmm. Oops.

I don’t think it’s an issue though. Flankers require positioning to take opportunities.

Since they are in such dangerous positions when flanking, they need escape mechanics to get out quickly and safely. Messing up the escape mechanics means death.

Examples (including divers due to similarities):

  • Genjis dashes in; but, can’t dash out due to CD
  • Winston jumps in with a 5 section CD on top of the enemy team
  • Tracer engages without recall

Position is required to engage efficiently and effectively. Game sense is required to be an effective flanker. In order to be an effective flanker they need the ability to escape after engaging.

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I didn’t mention Winston in this as his role is not necessarily to get kills but to disrupt the other team’s positioning and separate them. If he gets kills great.
But he also falls under engagement selection.

Pharah or any hero requires 0 positioning when there is no counter present. Hell if anything can’t kill me why wouldn’t I be in a spot that may be higher risk normally but optimal for killing for me?

Soldier’s selection of high ground itself is positioning.

It seems like you just took exception to the initial comment because you thought I was downplaying flankers, and I’m guessing you play one, but I play Genji and Tracer too. And positioning is much more forgiving on those heroes. But any hero that plays with the team mass, is punished more for poor positioning, because often it will punish more than just them. Pharah does not fall into this group nor does Widow.

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I don’t ask for everything to be hitscan. I just consider that non-aiming heroes don’t need more “other skills” than heroes who need aim.

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Tracer being better than other high skill heroes is a completely different kind of issue than Tracer destroying people who can’t aim at all.

You could have just nerfed recall by 2s, and Tracer would be much less of an issue, but instead Brigitte happened…