Feels Like Learning Heroes Is Just A Waste Of Time

General Discussion
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This games biggest skill and highest enjoyment is in learning the ins and outs of a hero, not the game. The heroes are the gameplay, sure you can learn the maps, learn when to engage/disengage, how to aim better but these aren’t what are interesting. You learn these to improve more on the heroes themselves and get the most value from them.

But when Blizzard choose to just fundamentally change heroes, abilities and/or destroy entire kits through a barrage of nerfs/reworks with no rhyme or reason what so ever it has gotten to the point that I don’t see the point in playing to learn heroes anymore. Even if the changes at the end aren’t terrible, it doesn’t change the fact that they have wasted hundreds of hours of many peoples time and it’s extremely disheartening.

  • Doomfist, you learn rollouts, how to and where to use your abilities for thousands of hours. Then the dev team remove 2 of your abilities, shift your entire roll and fundamentally change this hero destroying hundreds-thousands of hours worth of knowledge (this is coming from someone who dislikes Doom).

  • Mei has her entire kit destroyed to the point she isn’t even viable to play in OW1 outside of a team actually being organised, then gets nerfed even more in OW2 to the point she is not only less viable, but not even fun too play.

  • Reaper gets nerfed over and over to the point he is near useless. Then gets overhauled to be more viable which actually destroys what he was good at (killing tanks) to buff an aspect of his kit that isn’t good, just to have it be reverted and then further nerfed in OW2 so he isn’t good at killing squishes or tanks.

  • Orisa goes from a defensive, fortifying tank to a completely offensive one.

  • Symettra goes from Support to DPS to another DPS rework.

  • Torb is changed from armour pack giving hero to a weird offensive one.

  • Brig gets a rework to be more balanced around her CC, then has her CC removed in OW2.

  • Bastion goes from a bunker style hero who outputs high DPS and is immovable, to a moving hero who spends more time in recon than his iconic pose while staying the size of a tank and removing his self heal and has his skill shot ult replaced with a point and click adventure you can just walk out of.

  • Sombra goes from a hero you need to learn timing on to a hack bot to an assassin. 3 completely different playstyles all on the same hero.

But at the same time, heroes like Ana remain unchanged for reasons even though she has 2 abilities that on their own, single handedly shut down tanks where these abilities can be used at much further ranges than most CC abilities.

My point is, learning a hero in this game is a gamble. The enjoyment of this game is mastering a hero but when the dev team wanders on in and at a whim either fundamentally changes how a hero plays or nerfs them into irrelevancy while not giving the same treatment to other heroes, it just feels pointless trying to even learn the heroes. When hundreds of hours can be stripped away at the snap of the finger it just makes staying with this game and learning heroes unrewarding and disheartening.

I’ve got 3k hours in CSGO and multiple things changed in that game during that time, but at no point did it feel like I had wasted 500 hours of my life improving on something in that game for it to be completely overhauled. I literally didn’t play the game for 3 years, came back and while things had been changed around, in those 3 years none of my 3k hours worth of knowledge went to waste. This has never happened with any other game.

Yet in this game I have put alot of hours into learning the ins and outs of Mei, Sombra, Reaper, Orisa, Brig and Sym just for these heroes to be fundamentally changed multiple times or nerfed into irrelevancy. If it happened one or two times, it wouldn’t be so bad. But Blizzard has now gotten into a habit of instead of trying to make a kit work by changing it as little as possible from what the abilities do, they just do full on reworks or nerf a hero into oblivion when they can’t be bothered dealing with them.

Again, even if these changes end up being fun, it doesn’t change the fact it feels like a waste of time to learn any hero that isn’t considered popular because there is a chance they will just be fundamentally changed or nerfed into irrelevancy. Going through multiple reworks of the same hero and constantly having your time wasted learning heroes for them to be overhauled.

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Tldr: The game is dead and we all should wait for OW2.

What a surprise…

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The game has been existing for SIX years mate, many of the things you learned in 2h-2days, you got value from for about MONTHS minimum … are you trying to argue that because things change after SIX years you got ZERO or very low value for the time invested in learning?

Because that is going to be a bad hill to die on and make no mistake, you are wrong on this one if you think that.

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Learning certain heroes is just a waste of time. I know for a fact that I could have made life easier for myself by picking high-value low-effort heroes like Brig or Bap to win games, but I like playing Lucio, and I want to challenge myself.

It’s the same thing with DPS. If you want to win as DPS, just pick hitscan, it’s a free win. If you like projectile, sorry, you’re limited to Hanzo and Echo.

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That’s how you look at it. If you feel it’s a waste of time, then that’s your limited view of perceived value. And of course, it’s true for you that you’re wasting your time. But speak for yourself. Not everyone else.

I learn as many heroes as I can because it’s gives me the most options to experience the game in a wider array of ways. I have my main heroes. they’re my most proficient and enjoyable to play. Then I have the longer list of heroes I switch to if things aren’t working out, or I’m bored.

That’s not a waste of time for me because I’m still having fun, whether I do good or win on them or not.

You guys might be thinking it’s a waste of time because it’s not maximizing your time spent, you’re more of a jack of all trades instead of a specialist when playing multiple heroes instead of focusing on the meta.

The whole point is to have fun. If learning something that isn’t meta is fun for you, then it’s anything but wasting time.

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This is completely wrong. Blizzard had very good reasons to change heroes. You just didn’t like the changes. Doesn’t mean blizzard is wrong in their decisions to balance the heroes.

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I’m gathering OP likes to play slow, defensive heroes that bunker up and don’t push. Overwatch is and always has been a game that rewards super aggressive play, so heroes that only thrive in an environment where the enemy team deliberately plays slow enough to get value from them need to be changed.

For example, Symmetra’s win rate is a clear indicator that her kit is still too situational, and the overall feedback is that her performance is underwhelming unless you’re already winning–this tracks with the idea that whatever Blizzard wanted her current kit to do doesn’t align with how the game is played, and none of the previous iterations did, either.

Mei is arguably the only hero on your list that got shafted by the global “only tanks can have CC” rule, but at the same time it means that all that hero power budget tied up in piercing freeze that can be reapplied with no cooldown can be put into something else. Is OW2 Mei still kind of meh? Sure, but they can continue to buff her without people complaining that freeze and wall and cryo are way too good, nerf nerf nerf weh weh wehhhh.

ps, Doomfist needed to be a tank from the start, his displacement abilities are more at home on the tank role because it enables setups like ball instead of being Better Genji.

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Aiming is the one thing being consistent throughout every patch.

Abilities will always be subjected to rework, buffed, nerfed. Some gimmicks will work, some dont. Everyone should have seen it coming into the game.

For players who dont rely too much on these gimmicks they wont have any problem with the changes.

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Careful bro, Lucio’s got a pretty low skill floor. Brig takes more effort to get consistent value any day, and Bap plain works harder to heal. Lucio provides value just by standing in range of his teammates.

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Low skill floor but high skill ceiling.

Yeah if you’re playing at absolute minimum effort teambot Lucio (which is basically playing Lucio in rush). If you want to go for frags you have to work on your movement and aim or you’re just gonna get no value.

It’s okay to be wrong you know.

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His skill floor is very low and he has the easiest healing mechanic besides arguably Zen. But his skill ceiling is very high, and a high level Lucio is expected to play more like a flanker, pressuring snipers, dueling flankers, etc. Check out some Frogger or Masaa videos.

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Lucio is easily the highest skill ceiling Support in the game. It’s not even close.

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Amen on that :+1::ghost::sob::heart:

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lucio is the probably the most respectable support to main. he has no overpowered abilities and sure, you can argue that his heal is easy to use, but it isn’t that much value and amp it up requires lots of awareness to use properly. i have a lot of respect for lucio mains (i can’t play him at all)

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The reason is that people say they hate this, that X is OP, Y is broken and so on and so on (which could also mean they weren’t that greatly-designed in the first place).

Oh, so it’s only “fun” to play Mei when you have a CC on your primary fire for free? Yeah, sure…

Good, cause Bastion beyond bad on a fundemental level. His whole gameplan was “sit still and hold primary fire”. He gets a team organized around him, he can roll, no one babysits him, he gets melted hard. Bastion was easily the most hated character at launch, only when people found better things and how easy it is to counter Bastion did he go away. He’s F-tier in OW1 and depesrately needed this rework.

More like from a hero that just straight up shuts you down if you’re on certain characters.

Maybe now. DF has been the same (with some number changes) since launch. Same with Bastion, or Sombra, or Orisa. That is why they’ve gotten the biggest changes and sequel or not-sequel, you have a giant “2” on the OW, so you know it’s a new thing.

Yup. The biggest new change you had to learn on Rein is when Sigma would block your shatter with his shield. And even that is debatable, cause other Rein already did that.

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It’s a game that will always change. You can learn from what heroes have and it influence your future gameplay. But you should expect change. As long as you enjoy stuff now is all that matters in a game.

Games are really good for the value over time.

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The core gameplay of most heroes hasn’t changed much. Orisa has changed quite a bit yea, but for the most part heroes are very much the same. Even Brig losing stun on bash doesn’t change her much

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I stopped reading after this cause this is 1000% cap (at least to me) 100dps spray mei with the speed up passive was mad fun.

Her kit isn’t destroyed, freeze is just gone. Wall is still there, and cryo still exists. Wall in ow2 is way more valuable because of one less tank and with her increased damage, any enemy you block off from their team is more than likely gonna die.

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Took you this long just to figure it out, OP?

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???

Lucio is a great hero and was meta for the first 4 years of OW life span, the only reason he isn’t meta anymore is because Baptiste has been broken for years now.

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