We should not nerf him for the sake of it. We need to decide carefully what to nerf, and even give a buff if he needs it. Otherwise he will end up like what happened with Sigma.
The problem is wall is what she has. Freezygun is garbage. Her right click compared to the rest of the DPS lineup is also bad.
You are right in that the wall IS the strongest part of her kit. But, nerfing the only good part in her kit isn’t the answer for a hero which is already doing awfully.
Move her to tank, where the wall does what it is MEANT to do. It makes space because it is a threat to people pushing into the space you have.
Revert it imo. They never should have nerfed it in the first place.
As for the wall, the only thing I would suggest would probably like decrease the health, or make it smaller and increase the health idk.
Not a Mei player clearly
20 seconds isn’t too long (Rally lasts longer); but I don’t think it would hurt to reduce their duration to 15 seconds. It would last as long as Valkyrie does.
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See his mines I like, because they fence off an area, but they have counterplay.
I was watching a Fitzy streaming, he said that wan’t the shield the stuff that needed nerf, but the mines duration that last way too much
i think the nerf to mines should be the trigger range. you should be able to crouch walk to safety if you’re careful not to trigger them, but as they are they cannot be avoided if they land on either side of you. even staying still doesn’t defeat the trigger, they go off instantly. there should be some dead zones or some way to outsmart the ult if it doesn’t directly touch you/get even close to you. it would make aiming the mines matter more. as it is I just dva ult every hammond ult cause there’s no use taking chances, even if I die to the mines to clear them.
OK we agree on a fundamental point then. Let me explain why I think buffing a Hammond counter would be better than nerfing him directly:
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In this scenario (Mei buffed), what is the likelihood that ALL Hammond players will have to deal with a Mei in all of their matches? They will have to face Mei fairly often if she gets buffed, but not always just like I don’t have to ALWAYS deal with a Pharah when I play Junkrat and do well. Counters are often used, but not always used and this is especially true in this 2-2-2 environment.
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It will give the opportunity to dedicated Hammond players to learn how to play around their counters. There are people who are passionate enough at Pharah that they play around hitscans. Hammond players can definitely play around a good Mei; it will be a piece of cake compared to dealing with Sombra (which is a super hard counter they already have to deal with).
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It will give Mei a place in the game and a strong niche at dealing with unshielded tanks. It can solve the complaints of tanks like Hammond and Hog getting away with too much, without making them thrash in all scenarios. As someone above already said, Mei’s strenght against main tanks comes from her wall; if you leave her wall as it is and buff her primary/other aspects of her kit, she won’t be as oppressive to the likes of Reinhardt or Orisa, while shining against Hammond, Hog and D.va.
Let me add some comments here. Maybe this shouldn’t be done before we solve the major tank problem (which is the issue of like 2/3 of the tank roster being thrash right now). Orisa, D.va and Winston should be looked at and brought back to viability before we buff any sort of tank buster.
Second, I don’t really have experience at game design. But from a logical perspective, making a specific counter to X character sounds almost always better than directly nerfing the character, unless the character we’re talking about is disproportionately oppressive (not Hammond’s case) or unless the counter to the character becomes oppressive to everybody else (which I don’t think is Mei’s case).
This is pretty much my stance. I don’t think buffing a tank buster right now is a good plan. Even if I main said tank buster.
The issue is, you end up with that hero being meta, not because they are good, but because they are the only defense you have.
When they get nerfed not to be hard meta, you end up with the thing they were built to counter being so.
See Brig, and Tracer. Brig being the only effective counter to Tracer means EITHER Brig is effective, and Tracer is out of the game, or, Brig isn’t effective, and Tracer is #1 pick in GM.
It is unstable as hell, and that can be good, and it can be bad.
You need SOME counters to a hero, and they need to be able to stand on their own feet outside of being a counter.
Mei could be part of that, but, not while the tanks are hurting like they are.
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Just to add another opinion here: I’ve read many people talking about this idea of reworking Mei into a tank. I don’t have a strong stance on this; maybe it could be done for the better and maybe it could work well, but I’m strongly skeptical that they will do any kind of strong rework like this at this point of the game. One user (forgot his name) mentioned it is good to have hybrid sorts of characters in the roster as well, so Mei becomes an option for DPS who are playing with tanks that are doing a poor job. So there’s that.
But again, I’m not inherently against the idea.
I am VERY pro it, as a Mei main.
Yep, I don’t expect it will happen.
I’d need to do a VERY large write up on this, but ultimately.
Tanks / Supports are MUCH more dependent on each other, having a DPS who is actually a tank, means that hero can only be strong in OWL, and not on the ladder, because of this.
They are stronger in organized play, because they get all of the advantages of having that dependency with people who know how to use it in the best way. Their problems are minimized, and the advantages are maximized.
But to balance for that, they have to nerf the hero into the ground on the ladder. Which is EXACTLY what happened to Mei.
You buff her, and she will be #1 OWL pick almost instantly, so they will nerf her again - for as long as she is a Tank in the DPS role.
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Except Mei isn’t a Hammond counter she’s a tank counter. She screws Rein and Winston over just as if not harder. And she’d probs become a mini must pick again
I think this would be good
I mean, Geoff himself is the one who brought up this concept a few months ago in a Reddit AMA. He said they discuss Tank Mei rework and Support Sym, Tank brig, and DPS Hog “consistently” for OW2
Is Mei that much of a tankbuster? I play mostly tanks and I’d rather face Mei than Hanzo all day, even if it’s a very good Mei.
In my experience:
1 - Mei doesn’t really counter Winston. A competent Winston will do one hell of a shield dancing thingy around Mei so she can’t freeze him. Actually, I’d say a good Winston soft counters Mei from my experience
2 - Mei’s match against Rein is kinda neutral. If she’s in a good map for her like Hanamura and walls him, he’s dead sure, but there’s a lot Rein can do against Mei. For one, his shield block her primary and two, I have over 100 hours on Rein and always timed my charge perfectly so I killed the Mei right after she got out of cryofreeze mode. Her cryo mode makes it very easy to charge her, just like Meteor Strike makes it very easy to charge DF if you land exactly where he is going to fall. You can also do the shield hop thing where you swing the hammer, deal damage to her and immediately shield yourself so you don’t give her time to freeze you, making her primary fire totally useless and forcing her to retreat.
3 - Orisa is basically the same as Rein; she has to be careful about the walls, but aside from that, she can get away from Mei pretty easily if she times the Fortify well. She can even avoid her ult entirely.
Granted, I’m humble enough to admit that I’m Plat (peak 2.9) and tricks that work down here may not work in the highest levels of play. I have no idea how like Masters+ tank players deal with Mei, but this is my experience. She is very strong against unshielded tanks, not so much against our shielded tanks.
Hanzo? He breaks shields fast AF (which isn’t Mei’s case), completely f***s you up from afar and is basically immune to being dived except if you’re a very good Hammond. If the Hanzo is being pocketed then, you’re a completely hopeless tank who will have to pray your DPS is competent enough to deal with him so you can play the game.
About the idea of reworking Mei into a tank thing; it is completely OK IMO, I had no idea it was officially mentioned. Interesting to know.
It’s not about “busting” tanks it’s about countering them in infuriating and frustrating ways with CC.
Walling off Rein’s when they walk through chokes so they helplessly get pounced on, unable to run and out of LoS of their healers.
Freezing Winston and Dva with relative ease through DM, also screwing them over with wall
Hard to dive bc of Ice Block
Blizz right now has been working on trying to make tanking less frustrating to play and to do this they specifically nerfed Mei CC and wall multiple times. That’s why those things will never get buffed
Even in GM and OWL, Mei walls screws over the tanks. It’s funny because the tank players are generally pretty smart and good up there, but they still get caught out in it. Even in OWL if you watched several months ago when Mei was meta, every fight was just tanks being walled. She also has enough durability and area control (especially her ult) to act as a third tank in a way, which lets teams recreate Goats-esque comps
Yeah, Hanzo and Reaper and Echo are tank busters. Mei is a tank…bully? Screws with them, makes their life frustrating, ruins their experience, etc.
Yeah! They said they’d have to rework her kit around a fair bit but it’d be interesting for sure. Would be kinda cool if they incorporated her being able to slide on her own ice to move faster, lol.
I like Mei, I mained her when I first bought OW because I saw how much people hated her xD I hope they figure out the best route for her
Piledriver hitbox needs a vertical reduction.
I will say, though, since you went to all the trouble of waking me up, you must really love to test. I love it too. There's just one small thing we have to take care of first...
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The problem is, he is a hero that has zero consequences. He can mess up and overextend at will and it takes an entire other teams effort to punish him, and even then its a 50/50. He is a stupid hero.