Hard heroes arent supposed to be more powerful, thats the point

General Discussion
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Okay, let me pull the context for this quote, then.

By coordination, I didn’t mean teamwork. I meant more hand-eye coordination. So sorry if there was confusion there!

And what about gamesense? Shouldn’t this apply to gamesense as well?

Winston still needs to track. He doesn’t need to be as precise as a Zarya, but he still has to track.

Yet Mercy needs all that in spades, at a much higher intensity than any other hero. And again, context.

Your Widow isn’t going to have to keep track of when the enemy Reinhardt has Shatter because she is almost never in range of it. Mercy, however, does because she can fly all over the map with GA.

And going back to the definition of mechanical skill, Brig does need it if she wants to pull off her stun combo. Or if she wants to land her Whip Shot. She just doesn’t need as much as say, McCree. But she still needs it.

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Hard to learn == High impact when mastered.

Easy to learn == Low Impact when mastered.

Seems fair to me. Unless you want free stuff.

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That is ironic given that you are literally asking for the characters to be relatively overpowered as long as you took the time to learn them. Like, do people even think about what they are saying… or do you just hope nobody will notice the blatant contradiction?

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The only hero in the game that required zero mechanical skill was Symmetra 2.0. The most mechanical skill you can put out of Sym2 was orb+melee to instakill Tracer, and that was it. Everything else was pure game sense, timing, positioning and strategy.

Winston requires mechanical skill for his jumps and to slap enemies where he wants instead of randomly. Reinhardt requires mechanical skill to hit Firestrikes and quickly swap between hammer and shield. Brigitte requires mechanical skill to land whip shots and to execute her combo.

It’s not as much mechanical skill as Genji or Doomfist, but it is mechanical skill regardless.

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NOTE: The forums think I have an Image in my response and I’m sick of retyping it.

Your coordination thing, Fine ok agreed.
Winston doesn’t track he puts his cone of dmg on enemies. Tracking is keeping your crosshair on targets for a duration of time.

Back to my example,
Both Garbage men and Brain Surgeons need to have “gamesense”. In my example Gamesense is the ability to function as a person. Everyone needs to do it. Garbage men need to lift and walk, Surgeons need to stand and talk with with patient about rough things. But on top of that Surgeons need to have precision, steady hands, patience, they need to be intelligent. They need to have a high skill set. That is why they get paid/rewarded more than Garbage men. They go further than having “gamesense”

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And back to my response, all heroes also need mechanical skill. All heroes use mechanical skill to different extents, just like they require gamesense to different extents. It really isn’t fair to treat it like that’s not the case.

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Because a hero is difficult to learn most will not master them. Actually most will be a detriment to their team since the harder hero is less impactful when not mastered. In this situation the easy hero may be the better option. In most situation the easy hero will probably be better because they are…easier. It’s only when the difficult hero is mastered that you see the difference. I don’t see the contradiction. If you could point it out more clearly?

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Once they are mastered, playing them is free. A Genji with 100 hours is going to stomp a Brig with 100 hours. You are arguing because it took Genji x amount of time to learn where Brig stomped him, this is okay moving forward indefinitely. That is obviously fallacious by nature.

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That’s not really the case though Heroes like Brig, Reaper, Moira, Mercy, etc don’t need any mechanical skill that every other hero also needs. Like you could say, “Mercy needs good movement” which is true, but everyone needs good movement so it basically cancels out. But then you could say, “Mccree needs to have good aim” This is true and a good example because it doesn’t get canceled out. Not every other hero needs to have good aim. So that extra requirement to be good at Mccree should be rewarded.

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So your argument is that someone who works harder should not be rewarded more. We’ll never agree on this so I think we’ll end it here.

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But mechanical skill is not just aim. In fact, I went through the trouble of looking at the subreddits for Overwatch, DOTA 2, and League of Legends. Each of them had a thread discussing what encompasses mechanical skill, and here’s what I found:

Overwatch:

Mechanical skill is referring to actually physically performing your abilities. Things like aim and more nuanced things like executing Ana’s combo to kill sleeping targets or rocket jumps with soldier or whatever. Things like game sense and awareness and positioning are a separate category outside of mechanical skill.

DOTA 2:

It means clicking in the right place and pressing the right keys at the right time to do what your brain wants to do.

Higher mechanical skill means you can execute more actions, or more difficult actions and make fewer mistakes.

With infinite mechanical skill, DoTA would turn into a pure strategy & gambling game.

League of Legends:

Basically every action that depends greatly on your physical ability or reflexes. Last hitting, zoning, how fast can you perform certain combos, and so on.

So, as a general rule, gamesense is everything you have to do mentally. Mechanical skill is everything you have to do physically.

Following that logic, Mercy’s mechanical skill comes from knowing when to cancel GA, knowing how to Super Jump or Bunny Hop and knowing when to do those things.

Brig’s mechanical skill comes from landing her combo or hitting her Whip Shot from a distance.

So again: Every hero requires gamesense. Every hero requires mechanics.

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Also, I am pretty sure that Reaper and Moira still need tracking if they want to do damage. Just…putting that out there for ya.

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Yeah I agree with all of that. But the point I’m making is that the heroes who require more from the player in terms of mechanical skill, should reward those who have more mechanical skill. A little Mercy super jump for example shouldn’t be more rewarding than having to have really good aim, bcuz one requires a much higher amount of mechanics than the other. Again this can apply to my ex: Does the garbage man have some skills? Maybe but they aren’t as strict or demanding than the brain surgeons skills.

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Haven’t read the whole thread, but okay. Here is a thought exercise.

Say this game has two heroes competing for the same role. One hero, X, is purposely made to be very easy to play and hard to mess up, and the other, Y, is meant to be very punishing. They have stats across the tiers that reflect this. When played at 100% efficiency, they have the same maximum value.

Now, consider the following.

  • If I am a low to mid tier player who mains the role X and Y are meant to fill, regardless of my skill on either X or Y, I am either going to have the vast majority of my time on X or I will be fighting auto suspensions for playing Y. Players generally do not want heroes that are inconsistent or easy to rob value from on their team in these tiers unless the other options are themselves underpowered.
  • Players, even ones that are the best heroes in the world at their respective roles, are not robots. That means that they are prone to egregious, game-losing errors all the same.

With this in mind, what reason is there for Y to exist? You won’t play them in Bronze, because Bronze players are bad and will get punished for trying to play them, and you won’t play them in pro play because X gives the same value without running the risk of accidentally throwing the game for making one wrong move. This leads to Y only existing for players to get frustrated at.

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I mean, yeah they can be rewarding. That rush of dopamine when you land that headshot as Widow or 2-tap a Tracer is as McCree is rewarding in that instant. Landing a Sleep Dart on a Dragonblading Genji is rewarding too. In that instant. I am still hesitant to favor making them more powerful solely because of the aim requirement, though. Ana’s in that spot versus Mercy and Moira and look at how the main supports are doing right now. Not too well.

For tanks and supports especially (can’t really speak too much on DPS), the main roles should be at about the same power and the off-roles should be at about the same power. Ana should be at about the same power as Mercy. Because they still have their roles. Ana is good in tanky comps; Mercy is good at squishy comps. Orisa is good at static deathballs whereas Reinhardt is good at moving deathballs. So I feel Orisa should be at a similar level too. Plus, she requires more aim so I’m surprised there isn’t more of an outcry between those two.

And honestly? I think a better example would be a regular garbage man and a garbage man who can do sweet flourishes or make the garbage bags in the truck from the 3-pt line. They do the same jobs. It’s just that the latter makes it look a bit cooler.

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If only “hard skill” heroes must worth to play, so why we have the others? a hard skill hero doesn’t mean he need be the “ultimate killing machine”

Exactly, you mastered a “hard skill” hero, you are good with him, you are hard to kill, thats your reward, mostly for bragging rights, if a widowmaker main mop the floor with us and is dominating us and give us a little of trash talk… hell we gonna be salty, but we can concede that since he is a beast with that hero is so hard to master.

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There isn’t an outcry bcuz most people realize that she isn’t underpowered. Remember the Junk spam meta where Rein was useless because his shield was torn apart. Orisa is good against spam. She also gets run over by Lucio deathballs.

We could use another example. We have a race. One contestant is a professional racecar driver, the other is a 16 year old who just got his license. The 16 year old has spent no time learning how to race or anything like that. The professional has spent the past 20 years of his life learning how to race. They get to the starting line and the 16 year old is given an extremely nice car that is easy to drive and built to race. The professional racer is given a 10 year old car that isn’t easy use and hardly works at all. Who’s gonna win? This is what our problem is right now. You have people who use the nice easy car (Brig like heroes) and get as much if not more value than the players who use the old hard to use car (Tracer/Mccree heroes)

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Alright I am going to put in my two cents in this debate. The last I checked I had 136 hours on Mercy, 132 hours on Zen, 260 hours on Hanzo and about 75-80 on Ana. I clearly have a love of mechanically challenging heroes, but I do have a soft spot for Mercy, not to mention it is sometimes needed that I play her due to a disability.

In terms of Mechanical skill I’d rank these heroes as follows (This is my personal opinion from my experiance. I’m not really going to debate this too much).

  1. Hanzo
  2. Ana
  3. Zen
  4. Mercy

Hopefully this doesnt surprise anyone.

In terms of game sense I’d place the heroes like this:

  1. Mercy
  2. Zen
  3. Ana
  4. Hanzo

The reason I swapped Ana and Zen is cult economy. As Zen I need to know what I’d gonna be coming more than Ana because I can actually do a lot to prevent the bad things from happening. As Ana I can sleep them…and that’s about it.

Now. I didnt think of this previously but they are inverses of each other.

As Hanzo I am doing more to make sure I hit my shots than anything else. I am aware of my team and where ults that affect me are. As Mercy I am aware of everything including what they had for breakfast. My hand is not as strained trying to be as pinpoint accurate but, my brain is going 100 mph.

Now, do I think Ana/Mercy should be interchangeable? Not necessarily. They shouldn’t overshadow one another, where one is weak the other makes up for. Ana is good at tanks but bad at healing small mobile targets. Mercy is the opposite. Ana has a lower healing output on average but is loaded to the eyes with utility. Mercy has so much healing (sort of) to give out but lacks in utility. I believe dive should be Mercy’s playground and tank-heavy is Ana’s a standard 2-2-2 could go either way.

Take Zen and Lucio. They take different skill sets within the same role and it really depends on the comp and what is needed based on who is picked. Zen is there if you need focus fire via discord, Lucio you pick if you need more movement. They both heal about the same, they both damage about the same, their ults do the same thing. The difference is, Zen’s whole deal is being a third dps until he is needed to bust out those ult heals, and Lucio overall is trying to be hard to hit. Mechanically Lucio is less intense about aim but more so in movement and Zen is the opposite, the same can be said about Mercy and Ana.

Now, is Zen more powerful than Lucio? No. Is Lucio more powerful than Zen? Again. No. They have their niche and their strengths. Zen is just the Support everyone praises for “skill” and if you are good with him your presence is felt more…same with Ana vs Mercy.

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My biggest complaint with Orisa was that back when CC was at its peak, instead of picking the tank with anti-CC built into her kit, people asked for anti-CC for Rein instead. But that’s neither here nor there in this thread.

The disparity isn’t that bad, but I think I get what you’re saying, though. But if we’re going to give an example, it should be where both sides have a chance to win. The only disadvantage McCree like heroes have is they have to aim which really isn’t a disadvantage since no aim heroes have their own weaknesses, most notably range. Especially when it comes to dealing damage.

It’d be more like if two people were competing at a shooting range. Person A has a shotgun at 8m away and person B has a bow or something at 20m away. See who gets the most bullseyes. The shotgun has the weakness of range and spread whereas the bow has a larger distance and a slower RoF. But they’re both played in their ideal scenarios so both have a chance of winning. Move any of them closer or farther, though, and a win becomes close to guaranteed for one of them which isn’t what we want. Person A should do their job just as well as Person B does their job.

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Mccree, Tracer and Soldier 76 aren’t held down by having to aim. Mccree is held down because heroes like Hanzo and Ashe completely out perform him. And Tracer/ S76 are bad right now because of all the armor and healing in the game. They just can’t shoot through it all because it’s just too much. That’s why we never see S76 and Tracer anymore. For being DPS, they barely do any DPS. DPS players are just sick of the amount of healing there is in this game. Makes it so that the only viable DPS options are snipers, ones with one shots or ones that bring massive utility.

Edit: Let’s keep this in mind. Pro players in the OWL play S76 in the healing slot more than as a DPS. That’s ridiculous.

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