Grading the PTR Patch

General Discussion
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So Jeff pulled me back in with the promise of faster balance patches and some big announcement this week. Let’s take a look at how this patch stacks up:

Hanzo Storm Arrow Nerf
Finally. Seriously, finally. More important than anything else, Hanzo can no longer burn through shields. This means he can’t be the defacto dps in every situation. He’s still an excellent choice in many scenarios.

McCree More Health, Lower Fire Rate, Ult Buff
This looks fine. McCree would have been the Hanzo replacement, but now he’s strong against dive. Good changes.

Reaper Life Steal Nerf
This is an example of being lazy. Reaper destroys lower ranks but is terrible versus coordinated teams. Rather than nerfing his noob stomp low skill issue while giving him high skill options for better players, they just nerfed him into Symmetra territory.

Orisa Nerfs
Everything here is great except the damage reduction is double what it should have been. The idea is to reign in double shields, not make Orisa a dull character to play with little impact.

Sigma Nerfs
Again, everything here is good except the ultimate nerf is a little much. Sigma’s skill floor is now even higher, which means he’s worthless at lower ranks but should be fine everywhere else.

Now all this said, the balance patch is still very underwhelming. So many heroes remain completely irrelevant and weak. Sombra, Symmetra, Pharah, Torbjorn, Bastion, Ash, D.Va, etc, are significantly weak to the point of being a detriment. All you have to do is give Symmetra a buff where her secondary orbs pass through shields. If you had this, you likely wouldn’t even need to nerf Sigma and Orisa since that would exponentially punish more shields. Give Torbjorn his armor back on his secondary fire while Hammer is equipped so that there’s a counter to double sniper and one shot kill comps. Give Pharah a new trait in which she receives less healing while in the air so that you can finally resolve the Pharmercy issue that has always kept Pharah from being relevant.

I can keep going but the bottom line is that while some of these changes are good (except that tank queues are undoubtedly going up), they aren’t creative, they don’t fix fundamental issues, and there’s a ton of antiquated, dusty heroes that need to be viable.

C- is the grade.

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A nerf to hanzo and double shield, are a good buff to torb, sombra and other dps.

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I got on here, prepping to give my response to your post.

But honestly, I am so sick and tired of hearing about this patch that I just don’t have the energy.

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you want to watch youtube instead bro

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That and I desperately need a Corona.

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here enjoy a scotsman taking apart a powerbank
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McCree is actually weaker against dive. Especially against speedy characters like newly buffed Tracer, doomfist, Genji, etc.
Makris fire rate on live was what could keep those characters in check by competent McCree. Now competent tracers and doomfist will destroy him. 50 HP isn’t much compared to the fire rate nerf.

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Unfortunately Torbjorn depends on shields as much as he does well when they’re gone. And since all he provides is damage, the meta will always go against whatever damage heroes deal less than the most damage. This is the biggest problem with the homogenization of damage characters.

As for Sombra, she’s just bad. Same goes for Symmetra. They’re basically throw picks at this time.

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What does this even mean? Looks like hyperbole to me. “now he’s strong against dive” how do you know that? Let me borrow your time machine please.

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It means if McCree hadn’t been changed, he would have become the de facto S Tier damage character while Hanzo became slightly less effective. As is they both come down from their power creep a bit.

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Right… so you’re arguing he’s A tier right now then? Even B tier?

I still want to use that time machine too.

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Cute snark.

McCree is probably fine except at very high ranks where Widow will be much better against his slower fire rate. This likely results in Widow v Widow much more often. Mei remains the best second damage choice, moreso now that shield tanks are significantly nerfed… except at high ranks where Rein Sigma quite good.

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I grade the patch: A-

The only bad thing I see is that Orisa’s damage reduction isn’t compensated for with a reduced ult charge cost. It will only take longer to get ult now.

Every other nerf was justified in my opinion. McCree’s fire rate and Baptiste fire rate were both reverts, even Orisa’s Fortify was a partial revert (and since then she has +50 armor hp!).

Reaper’s life steal was just annoying to deal with for all tanks, Hanzo now has to choose to use his Storm Arrow as a finisher or “burst poke” instead of an “I kill now”-mode.

For Sigma’s ult nerf, I think it is entirely justified and was surprised it wasn’t a thing when he was introduced. All Sigma needs to do is “press left click” and suddenly you can’t stop the 50hp+50% hp damage coming in. The animation also clearly, to me at least, shows that it is the character doing the “smash to the ground” part, which he shouldn’t be able to do when he is dead or sleeping, haha. His ult is also not blocked by barriers at all, as far as I know, just adding to its strengths.

And Baptiste’s healing was overtuned anyway in combination with his Immortality Field, AoE heal ability and AoE from the healing grenades. All that still makes him a very strong healer on top of his vertical mobility.

While the patch didn’t buff any characters, I do think it nerfed all the right parts. Even Orisa’s Halt nerf only made it less frustrating to play against without nerfing its effective range.

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The only thing you and I differ on is that there are too many heroes who need major changes to be viable for me to give them better than a C.

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That’s understandable. I personally wished they reverted Sym’s teleporter change to its pre-infinite duration state.

But I am glad that they do a lot of good changes now instead of waiting a month and then hit us with 20 more changes at once, haha. Baby steps, right?

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i like most of your ideas except for that Pharah nerfy

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If it was what allowed her to be buffed without breaking Mercy, I’m all for it.

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I believe future balance patches will find themselves having to
-Buff Orisa’s shield now she’s way easier to kill and lower impact in general
-Sigma will probably have to receive a small buff, such as a slightly better barrier, the cooldown nerf on his barrier reverted, or allowing him to use Kinetic Grasp during his ultimate.
-Mei will need a rework since she’s the best tank in the game and is absolutely overdue looking into
-D.va will likely see a slight critbox reduction

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If I would grade it from 0 to 5 I’d give it a 0,5. They’d get a whole 1 for targeting the top meta heroes, but since Reaper is in there too they won’t even get that. Horrible patch, will probably uninstall unless the dev update and the following patch don’t show that they actually know what they’re doing

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There are still no changes for Bastion, but the fact Hanzo got nerfed I give it a solid grade B.