I don’t know what rank you are playing at, but I assure you this isn’t true in general. D.Va does tend to have a lower deaths per 10 than other tanks because they never counted demeching as a death, but it effectively is.
Console gold?
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Winston’s pick rate in Masters is 8.1%. D.Va’s is 6.4%. Winston is literally played more than D.Va in Masters. Diamond and GM too btw. Winston is just more popular at higher ranks, always has been.
I’ll also add that even with a higher pick rate, he also has a higher win rate at those ranks than D.Va too. It’s not significantly better, but it is better.
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This confuses me because if you look at stats for something like Masters, Sigma is clearly a lot stronger. He’s got a much higher win rate and a much higher pick rate. Even JQ has both a much higher win rate and a much higher pick rate.
I think I am losing confidence in players to accurately perceive the game these days.
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I meant in lower ranks like Gold/Plat. But it’s good to hear that he has higher pickrate in upper ranks though.
I don’t know lately I’m finding winston harder to get value out of than D.va. But I also intentioally don’t play him either because D.va just feels stronger. So it could just be self-fulling prophecy.
A lot of Gold players don’t play ana that often either in my region, and without ana it’s hard for me to play winton. Whereas with D.va I feel like I can still survive relatively easily (compared to winston) even with low heal backlines.
Getting kills is much easier too, thanks to D.va’s new major perk (precision fusion). And in low ranks, it’s all about getting kills to win games, even on tank.
I’ve never had problems with DM eating orbs. It’s all down to timing. You either use lateral heal orbs, you wait for her DM to be exhausted before throwing out damage orbs, or you use weird angles/bounces to get them around her.
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It was since before Sigma’s buff. If Sigma gets nerfed, D.Va complaints go up again.
Even still, with this new patch, a lot of the GMs/Champs all said “that’s it?” when they saw D.Va’s perk nerf.
D.Va is also a general nuisance for primarily non-tank players at the upper ranks, since she revolves around straight-up denial and nuking the occasional DPS or Support from orbit within a fraction of a second.
Most players prefer shooting at a barrier over DM, as their damage is actually doing something, and that pressure has perceivable results.
You’d be surprised at how many people hate D.Va these days!
I primarily played D.Va as a tank, but I can’tsay I don’t get it. I’ve seen both sides of the coin, and I get to experience the DPS side of it more now that I’ve quit tank.
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Before his buff her win rate was still negative. The only time she has had a positive win rate in upper ranks was last patch and they nerfed her. Now she’s back where she was before.
And this is my point. I am losing faith in their opinions when they diverge so drastically from the data and not only that but my own experience as well. My experience tends to align a lot more with the stats (with some notable exceptions that I assume are a me problem) which makes me wonder why theirs doesn’t.
I think this is all it is honestly. It’s bias. It’s not reasonable or logical. It’s just emotional.
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You may rely too much on stats to color your opinion of heroes. Yes, stats are important, but it doesn’t actually say anything about perception.
Venture could have a 40% winrate, and I’d still hate them if they operated the same. I think they are the singular worst designed hero in the game.
For example, if a hero feels fair or honest, people are more willing to let a high winrate slide for a while (see Wuyang for example), at least until their constant presence becomes obnoxious.
I imagine D.Va isn’t seen in the same positive light.
Now if D.Va was to have power taken out of the more frustrating parts of her kit, and more power put into something less so, you’d see a difference in perception even if it it results in a net buff.
What that could possibly look like, I have no clue. I have no confidence in this team salvaging this format, let alone changing a hero I like into something less frustrating yet still enjoyable to play, and I’m getting tired of thinking about it.
I don’t really think that I do. D.Va is my main and I know her pretty well. And my perceptions of her have mirrored what’s happened in stats pretty closely. The stats align very well with what I feel when I play her (and frankly when I play against her too).
I felt that buff that she got and I felt the nerf too. She was meh (mostly balanced really). She got the buff and she was pretty good. I still don’t think I would have been complaining like some people, but she was at least positive in upper ranks. Then she got the nerf and that perk became not great again. So now her win rate and my feeling of how she plays have both returned to the before times.
I’m telling you, she isn’t a problem. She really isn’t. She’s very close to perfectly balanced currently. I still want my heavy rockets but if I got them they might have to nerf something.
And to a degree this is OK but it can be problematic. Reinhardt is perceived as honest, but he’s balanced in such a way that he is actually overpowered in most ranks while still only being meh at GM. People don’t complain about Rein, but for most players he is objectively stronger than D.Va is. I’m a fan of top down balancing (to a point). But Rein cannot be buffed more because he’s already really really strong in lower ranks (even though lower ranks don’t seem to mind this).
I don’t think this is possible. They tried this with D.Va actually both in OW1 and early on in OW2. This experiment has already been run and the complaints didn’t change. All that ended up happing is that D.Va became bad. Heck, you know people complained about D.Va even during version 1 of her when she was the worst hero in the entire game. I remember having arguments about it on Reddit before she got her first rework.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t work for a different hero perhaps, but for D.Va I don’t think that there is a viable way to tune her in a way that she would be both viable and that the haters would be satisfied.
IMO for some people it really isn’t even about her kit. For some people it is but, I’m going to say a large number of people who complain about her, it’s because she’s a pretty waifu with some annoying voice lines.
You see the complaints on here about having too many skins for Kiriko. People hate Mercy for existing. Even Juno has a group that likes to hate on her now. Most of the attacks are against the attractive girl characters. There is something to that. Not that everyone is about that or that there aren’t valid complaints. I get why people complain about Kiriko for example. I 100% understand the suzu complaints even if I disagree with them.
But I think there is an element of people, who at some level get upset when they get beat by a girl even when that girl is being played by a guy.
I’m not saying this is you btw. In fact, I know it isn’t. You are reasonable and always polite. I wouldn’t even say this to you if I didn’t think you wouldn’t listen to it and try to hear it out from my perspective.
What I am saying though is that I think no matter what you do to D.Va that a large number of people are still going to be unhappy and I think it has nothing to do with balance for many of them.
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What I mean is that stats can only tell you something about the strength of a hero (and not to 100% accuracy without context), not how people view them, or whether they actually like playing against them or not. For you or I who have played her a lot, we definitely would be more accepting of DVa related frustrations.
And I agree with this. I feel that this is actually the most balanced she’s ever been in OW2. I really liked Heavy Rockets and wish they’d return, but I can see why they were removed. I could just bulldoze people, no combo needed. I could see them bringing it back, but probably with a cost to her survivability somehow.
As for sexism, I really don’t see it lol. She can be obnoxious, but I think it has to do with how she interacts with her targets, not how she sounds or looks.
Nobody complains about her in 6v6, and she is strong there. I believe it is purely a format problem at this point.
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Oh, well we agree on this. From my perspective, stats are the objective part of the equation. How strong or weak a hero is, is a matter of numbers ultimately. But perception is a different matter.
This is why Kiriko (who is objectively weak) is clearly not viewed that way. You can even see that to a degree in the stats with how high her pick rate is. Not saying stats give you all the data on perception, but I think a pick rate that high with a win rate that low does say something about perception in this case.
And your earlier idea about possibly reworking, while I don’t think it’s viable for D.Va (it’s been tried) it might be for Kiriko. Maybe she could be fixed, maybe. There are things I can think of that might make everyone happy or at least force people who are just haters to come up with new excuses for it.
Honestly, it has been a hard conclusion for me to come to. But I just see the overwhelming negative feedback on the forums, reddit, twitter, etc being directed at female heroes, especially attractive ones. And like I said, it’s not always without merit. They can be OP or have balance issues like anything else. But it seems like the complaints are disproportionate in that direction. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think that I am.
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she does basically have 2 lives. still yea she probably has a low death rate i think for overall heroes
personally she is my 2nd least death hero like at an even 5.00 deaths per 10 minutes. moira is my first with 4.80 deaths per 10 minutes. i also have TONS of hours on both heroes but more on moira (like a gazillion)
thats why it always boggles my mind if i see any other player die in double digits with both heroes. a big head scratcher for me but unfortunately i see it often sometimes 
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I’m sure there is a disproportionate amount of hate towards these heroes partly due to sexism. But I also think some of the worst balance decisions ever have coincidentally come from female heroes 
. Launch brig and moth meta come to mind. With dva I think some of her hate in lower tiers comes from her being a noob stomper hero, similar to Genji in a sense. Of all the dive tanks she has the most burst dmg with missiles but at the same time she’s the most easily countered. I think this makes her kinda feast or famine where if she catches someone out of position she can kinda nuke them out of existence. But if you’re getting hard countered she can become one of the most useless tanks especially for lower ranks.
She was nerfed
For a long time she was very weak until they buffed her boosters perk to 100% more damage on impact, which made her strong. Just last patch they nerfed it all the way down to 40%. Shes fine now.
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“Very weak” is certainly a stretch. She’s been consistently pretty strong. She’s my most played tank, and I’ve never felt she was particularly weak at any point in her OW2 lifetime, even while having peaked at GM3 on tank.
I didn’t quit tanking in 5v5 entirely until 2 seasons ago, and I was two-tricking her and Zarya (minus bans).
Well, also there is a drastic difference in how she performs on console vs PC. Like she’s much much stronger on console.
I mean the amount of effort you need to put in on DVA or Rein just to have them match a middling performance from literally any other tank on the roster, is just far more than people give them credit for. Especially in 5v5. The second you get a kill its, Zarya + Brig + Sym + Moira, might as well throw in a Vendetta now too.
Is she? I haven’t played console in forever so I don’t remember. I’d assume Zarya would be much stronger in console because of her big beam but I could be wrong.
Edit: I just checked her stats on console and you appear to be correct. Dva is stronger on console. I wonder why that is?
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Just imagine DVA with aim assist, then you have your answer.
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I see you and raise you Doomfist!
That guy really wasn’t meant to be a tank.
I never found DVa to be particularly difficult, actually.