Serious question here, are they incapable of simply nerfing supports who aren’t Ana without giving them some sort of compensation?
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Obvious answer: No. He did not.
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At least as a Kiriko I can admit the suzu burst heal buff was a wee bit too much. Zen mains in the discord tell me it’s the only reason he is viable which is hilarious.
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They may not be wrong, but that has more to do with the other supports than Zen himself. 200 hp Zen is balanced (in my opinion). But he has to compete with a handful of supports that are very strong. So if he wants to be picked over them, he himself has to be strong too. So instead of bringing the problem supports down to his level, he was brought up to their level. Just a massive feelsbad.
Edit: Again, that’s just my opinion. That’s how I see it as a neutral party with no skin in the game. Support is my least played role, though I still have over 1000 hours on it. Zen is my most played support though, I should note.
Edit 2: when I say “a handful of supports” I really do mean just a few of them. I do not mean all other supports. Want to make sure to make that very clear.
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I generally hate playing with a Zenyatta in most any position because of how dive weak he is as a character. It is generally more difficult to kill the flanker as Zenyatta than the inverse with how stationery he is as a character. He has to play the projectile game which is way harder to land against speedy/small targets than all of the hitscan characters (tracer/sombra).
He brings his legs up perfectly in the air for Tracer to dead on center her shots or even for Genji to alt fire close range to hit all three shuriken, or even a Sombra to land her virus and land that 160 DPS.
One of the most powerful ways to cripple any team is taking out Zenyatta, so when any support in the back is too easy to kill, the ENTIRE team suffers for it.
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Zen’s extra hp has nothing to do with other supports. He has extra HP because they nerfed his discord in a way that was a buff to more mobile characters who already had a huge advantage over him. He can still get obliterated by those characters but not as fast due to the hp which gives him a little more time to get peeled for.
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It’s kinda funny, but despite the fact a lot of people say Zen is bad against Dive.
It’s truly fascinating how much damage a full right click does to Winston’s face and how kick is impressive as a defensive tool against Genji players lmaooo.
They also buffed his Harmony orb and his discord range in the same patch. To me, that was enough compensation. You could argue it was not enough to offset the discord nerf/rework, but something this community doesn’t seem to understand sometimes is that a net nerf is okay sometimes. I would argue he was net buffed with those changes plus the HP buff (which the devs have themselves admitted is the single most impactful change they can make to a hero).
Zen + Brig solves this issue.
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This causes a great deal of other team issues that are all caused by Zenyatta as a pick. Many tanks are very, very heal hungry and simply collapse from the lack of sustain. Mauga cannot function between overdrives without decent healing. Orisa is all about mitigation of damage, but still demands a high level of healing output to stay up.
This is not a super friendly ladder soloQ type of team. If you are trying to pick Brig to keep him resilient to dive, you tend to be overtaxed on everyone else on your team that didnt’ swap into a comp that is ideal for Zenyatta.
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Zen is literally one of the Top 3 picked supports in Asia where they pretty much ONLY run Dive comps?
Zen/ Brig is one of the best combos over there right now
Even Kiriko and Baptiste, who people cry about being overpowered, are niche picks
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zen’s pickrate in asia is carried by OP tracer and their dive meta. Doom and winston are also meta over there. Zen being top3 support on asia is not surprising at all
zen isnt bad, he’s mid. His one tricks are performing about as well as moira one tricks in EU and NA. There’s far fewer people playing him these days tho.
He’s strong in theory, but comparatively he’s mid because there’s a few supports that are very overtuned. He is overshadowed by ana, kiri, bap and brig. He’s the same kind of power level as lucio, mercy and moira atm on ladder in the west where dive isnt totally ubiquitous
he’s definitely not weak, but he’s not overtuned either. When they finally meaningfully nerf ana, kiri and bap, then zen/brig would likely be meta
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My counter argument to this would be that tank players have to adapt to their team comp just as much as the enemies team comp. If they can’t, they absolutely should get punished. That’s an essential part of playing tank effectively.
Look, I hear what you’re saying and I see your point and respect it. Truly, I do. But my point is that it works just fine at the top end. I think this is a “players need to git gud” situation. If a player loses because they fail to adapt or don’t know how to play with or against a certain comp, that’s probably how it should go. The point is that you take that as a learning experience and go “why didn’t that work, and what do I need to do differently next time”. Then next time try to apply that idea and see if it works. If it doesn’t, repeat the process. That’s improving in a nutshell.
Anyway, this has kind of gotten away from the original argument about Zen having 225 hp, but I feel that I had to point that out from a macro perspective to effectively make my point.
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The point I’m generally getting at is that Zenyatta is not a super flexible pick. Buffs to Zenyatta to keep him flexible is preferred. Which is why 225hp is perfectly fine to me. Though I’d still prefer he get some type of mobility adjustment to keep him flexible to avoid being gimped by focus fired by like 2+ people. Which is his biggest weakness.
Sure, he can fight his way out of a 1v1, but when people focus fire you on support (which is what everyone generally wants to do to win fights the fastest), he puts simply so much strain on the team to function.
Yeah, I feel like Zen needs 225hp, but I’d rather he got a mobility option to avoid being dunked on for his inflexiblity to position rapidly or escape like a fade, ifield, regen burst, etc.
Zenyatta literally has no barrier, the only way to save himself from death is his ult, and he moves incredibly slow relying on cover.
Why are you complaining about him again?
Not every support should be as flexible as Kiriko, Ana, and Baptiste IMO. Having no mobility has always been a key weakness for him but he is rewarded for positioning himself well.
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Should any hero be winning 2v1s consistently (unless the person playing them is just much better than their opponents)? I’d say the 1v1 is a good balance barometer for most heroes (not all though, this doesn’t work for Rein and Mercy, for example). I always thought that at 200hp the Zen vs Tracer 1v1, for example, was very skill dependent. I suppose you could argue the Tracer had a slight advantage, but you could absolutely outskill her as Zen. Now I’d say it probably goes the other way. As a Zen player myself I am not even remotely scared of Tracer. That’s probably not great.
If you wanted to give Zen some slight mobility options I’d be fine with that if you put the hp back. Zen’s whole thing (again, I am saying this as my opinion, not passing this off as fact) is that he is supposed to be a glass cannon that really needs to always be critically thinking about his positioning.
Edit: to be clear I’d prefer they didn’t give him mobility.
What most people should want is the promise at early OW2. The idea you can play most anything you want and not be amazingly hard countered. Many supports are in pretty good generalist toolkits to allow that. Zenyatta is simply the opposite where he’s generally a liability for a team than a great boon. Even Lucio/Brig are in better overall generalist positions than Zenyatta right now.
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This I agree with whole-heartedly.
I do hear what you’re saying that an entire team comp swap absolute dumpsters the hero, but he is not the only hero that is like that (far from it, in fact). In a perfect world everything would be equally viable against everything and with everything, but that’s not how the game functions right now, and probably never will be. If their entire team swaps, your team probably needs more than just one swap to counter it. The sad reality is that you can only control yourself though, so if that happens where your one hero made their entire team swap, you should probably take that as a win and go something that counters their win-condition(s).
Glass cannons are feast/famine design which Blizzard has been neutering. Hog was a great feast/famine design. Did you land your hook for a kill? Did you get stunned out of breather? Should these two things (which frequently occur), you are a HUGE liability for your team.
Zenyatta doesn’t need to win a 1v2. He simply needs to not be destroyed every single time it happens. Which means having self-sustain or mobility to survive focus fire or dives. DPS and tank can all get double support pocket. Who is there to pocket the support? No one. Tanks shouldn’t be backline defending and DPS are not designed to backline defend either. They are all dmg no utility. Supports need self peeling in this environment.
Ball players are easily gimped by sombra picks and other easy to use heroes. Pharah is heavily held back by hitscan as well as obsoleting many projectile hero picks because of flight. People do not enjoy playing with or against widowmaker since if you are not getting high kill shots, you are a liability as well as no one enjoys dealing with 1shots which ignore most gameplay interactions like grouping up, focus fire, reactions to healing, reactions to position, etc.
The successful designs to play with and against are not these feast or famine glass cannon designs. Zenyatta I’m feeling needs a bit of a redesign to be less feast/famine. He’s not too far off compared to a ball or widow who I want changed first, but I really do dislike what Zenyatta offers for a team.
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I wouldn’t call all supports generalist or flex, I remember people claiming Illari was pretty flexible early on only for her to fit into poke compositions. Mercy is the only support I can think of that is close to the flexibility of Ana, Baptiste, and Kiriko. Maybe, well hopefully Space Ranger fits into this category,