Disappearing Pulse Bombs, Blizzards, etc

honestly this is the most annoying thing about overwatch since they added the instant ult drainage. you throw your pulse bomb, you get stunned at the same time, and your pulse bomb is gone, along with your ult charge. its a projectile, not a transformation ability, so therefore it should continue along its trajectory until it hits something, and stay there regardless of death or stuns. surefour experienced something similar but on ana, where he got stunned right when he used his nano boost(which im pretty sure is an instant ability). this also applies to mei as well, and sometimes pharah. please fix this, because its making me pull my hair out. there are many issues with the game but this one is the only one that bothers me out of all of them, and im sure many people feel the same.

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Yup. Bloggerman has a whole thread documenting for strongly lag affects this.
[PROOF] Projectile Ults blocked by Lag
Lag can increase the cast time needed by 50%.

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This is a latency issue, not a gameplay issue.

Thank you for linking the thread I made.
I’m glad it’s already being shared to help other players understand this problem.

You really should read the thread GreyFalcon posted. It can help you understand why ultimates dissappear mid air and why this isn’t a bug.

Overwatch patch note October 10 2017

Another piece of feedback we often hear is that it’s difficult to understand which abilities are interruptible and which are not. For clarity, most of Overwatch’s ultimates fall into three basic categories:

  • Transformation Ultimates:

These add significant passive benefits to your heroes, while allowing the use of weapons and abilities.

Ultimates in this category: Bastion’s Configuration: Tank, Genji’s Dragonblade, Mercy’s Valkyrie, Soldier: 76’s Tactical Visor, Torbjörn’s Molten Core, and Widowmaker’s Infra-Sight.

  • Channeled Ultimates:

These force your hero into a new mode and render your other abilities unusable while active. In most cases, these abilities can be interrupted at any point to cancel them.

Ultimates in this category: Doomfist’s Meteor Strike, McCree’s Deadeye, Pharah’s Barrage, Reaper’s Death Blossom, Roadhog’s Whole Hog, and Zenyatta’s Transcendence (though, Zenyatta’s ultimate renders him immune to interruptions).

  • Cast-Time Ultimates:

These abilities require a small window of time to pass before they become effective. If they’re interrupted during this window, they are canceled.

Ultimates in this category: Ana’s Nano Boost, D.Va’s Call Mech and Self-Destruct, Hanzo’s Dragonstrike, Junkrat’s Rip-Tire, Lúcio’s Sound Barrier, Mei’s Blizzard, Orisa’s Supercharger, Reinhardt’s Earthshatter, Sombra’s EMP, Symmetra’s Shield Generator and Teleporter, Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, and Zarya’s Graviton Surge.

Most abilities fit neatly within these categories but we did make some changes to outliers such as Genji’s Dragonblade and Orisa’s Supercharger to make them more consistent. Additionally, any ultimate that can be interrupted by a stun (Channeled ultimates and Cast-Time ultimates) can now be interrupted by Sombra’s Hack as well. Overall these changes should make it much easier to understand the ultimate mechanics and how they interact in combat

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I’m not saying its a bug, i’m saying its the dumbest thing to have a projectile ult disappear after its thrown

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This is a latency issue. And a gameplay issue.

Lag shouldn’t be regularly increasing cast time needed. Sometimes upwards of 50% more.

Both abilities should trigger if there’s lag.

[PROOF] Projectile Ults blocked by Lag

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I agree that it’s disheartening, but latency is causing it.

Blizzard can’t fix this unless they change the rules of projectile ultimates just like what they did with transformation ultimates.

The most infuriating and non sense thing in this game is losing a nano boost because when you press Q you instantly die. DF doesn’t lose meteor strike UNTIL HE IS GONE so why should she lose nano boost that fast? i mean these bugs are on live since the ults patch came and that was like what? a year ago? and they didn’t even address the issue yet.

This game runs on favor the shooter. It isn’t fair to a McCree who reacts to an Earthshatter or Blizzard with Flashbang to have that play cancelled.

It isn’t going to change.

They could just make a netcode rule for projectile Ults that syncs projectile Ults casting with the Ult users client-side timings.

I’ve been saying that the netcode, or at least network quality of this game has been going down to the drain rather rapidly lately. I have strong suspicions it’s what’s caused Reinhardt’s and Roadhog’s bugs to pop up in force.

There are plenty of exceptions to “Favor the shooter”.

So it shouldn’t be that hard to make “Favor the Projectile Ult” be a rule that overrides it.


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That isn’t going to happen. They made it very clear that the act of stopping an ultimate is more important than getting it off back when they took the ultimate charge away from interrupted casts.

I think they might change their mind when they realize Mei is having to deal with ults getting cancelled 50% longer than they were designed to.

Not for the McCree who cancelled it. He reacted to the default cast time.

And his stun would still go through.
Both his stun and the Ult would go through.

Which is dramatically more fair than the server deliberately favoring one side of a matchup over the other.

No it isn’t. The McCree hit a well-timed stun to cancel the ultimate.

If ultimate were favored over stuns, it would be impossible to cancel any cast-time ultimate, especially if that player in particular has high ping.

I think the devs can be swayed by the argument that lag shouldn’t be making gameplay abilities stronger.

Remember Sombra hack?

They seem like they’d rather have it a glitchy mess, than have it receive the advantages of getting favored by Lag.

They should at the very least make the cast time window for projectiles much smaller than it is. Very fast reactions and predictions would still be rewarded and fewer ults would disappear into the void. Zarya doesn’t have this issue and her’s is a ‘projectile’ as well - why do it for her’s but not Tracer’s or Mei’s?