Clarification: I’m not saying any of these heroes need nerfs.
Was playing a game in lijiang today.
We were destroying this team with a relatively off meta comp. I think we had D.va Orisa mercy lucio reaper and some other dps? I forgot tho he kept swapping. They were playing double shield (orisa sigma) with zen mercy, with widow and doomfist. So like, both teams were relatively off meta.
Next round, they swap to Rein Zarya Brig Ana Mcree
We get destroyed, Nothing we could do. They ended up spawn camping us.
Just because of the heroes they picked. It wasn’t even their whole team that swapped it was just a few players.
You could always mirror them. When you’re being spawn camped, it’s also good to try to have somebody go Sombra, Tracer, or Ball just to get to the point and force them to go back to defend it. Or Lucio to speed everyone past them since that comp has no mobility. That would require your team to be willing to coordinate, of course, which might have made the match a lost cause already if they weren’t willing to do that before.
Yeah, that’s why I actually enjoyed hero bans. Removing the meta heroes was nice, because it made a lot of different things viable.
Now that we have it removed in lower ranks, we’re going to be stuck with McCree, Moira/Ana, and Reinhardt for a long time because they’re not as problematic in higher ranks (and they get to keep hero bans).
the game will have a meta every time. is imposible to dont have one best meta on the game… the problem with ow is that we have to play the same meta for like 6 months…
Some groups of players ‘bluff’ their actual skill in order to pad the pickrate ratio of less played heroes, when it’s 1-1 they begin playing seriously and steamroll, it wasn’t just only them playing meta.
That’s just an anecdote. While playing the meta comp can help and be a factor, there are tons of reasons for you losing that game. I could cite tons of games I played that were off-meta vs meta and that we won (& that’d be basically all my wins, cause I’m a Sombra main).
There’s no need to exaggerate and saying meta comps are an automatic win. Even the strongest meta requires many factors to be aligned in order to work in comp. Playing off-meta may be more if a challenge, but it’s not a guaranteed defeat.
It does make a difference on how powerful meta are relative to the others
Taken during Orisa/Sigma meta (a.k.a. Double Shield)
They may have been meta, but they certainly weren’t dominating the ladder, you weren’t getting mirror matches since the other tanks were still viable. Compare that to Rein/Zar meta
the thing with this, it’s just a meta that could be replaced in a single day if someone was to work out a different way to beating things more effectively.
but because how easy it is to just follow a meta than it is to find a new meta, very few people actually try.
people get stuck in a mindset that certain things are key to winning, but if you figure out that they aren’t universaly true and other keys to winning are just as viable or even better,
then you might have found the key to the kingdom.
the only issue then is finding people that you can organize to play this meta succesfully without it being too hard to comprehend or execute.
to me metas are nothing more than an effective strategy that’s easy and popular.
because if it is popular it’s more guaranteed other players will have learned to play with this strategy and you don’t have to teach them how to play it.
a good example was the roadhog/orisa comp, orisa and roadhog was really not even on the map before halt+hook became popularized and became a widespread phenomenon.
Isn’t the next step after finding out the meta that you should think of strategies on how to counter that meta?
I mean, there is always sure going to be a meta… and well the high success rate / viability is what makes it a meta, with that it’s easier to win of course.
What I like about meta is that it’s something you can master. It’s something you practice and get better at. It’s actually the closest thing we get to teamplay because when people play meta they have a higher chance of understanding how to play and who has what responsibility rather than when people just pick 6 different heroes with no real understanding of how to make it work.
It’s because meta in OW is so stale and without any counter play.
Overwatch typically relies on you counter picking to win, I recall the devs at some point saying it’s to create diversity (ironic I know). The idea is if they pick hero A, you go B. Rather than simply knowing A’s weakness and learning how to win fights against them. The problem is the enemy can discover a comp where all of their counter picks are checked, meaning they have an answer for everything, and it gets so bad you have no choice but to mirror them.
This problem only got worse when they added Role Que, because though it’s more structured, it also means your damage better know what counters Echo or Pharah.
Also, when I think counter play, I think how can I win aside from switching. That’s how it worked in TF2 at least, each class her certain quirks you could recognize and work with.
If the meta has a reliable counter strategy, then the meta will evolve to mitigate it in some way - either the meta will change completely, or the counter hero(es) will be absorbed into the current meta.
If the counter strategy isn’t reliable enough to consistently secure wins, it won’t become meta.
