I’m a Mei tourist, so I have questions that I hope someone more experienced with Mei can answer. Will the bonus icicle damage only work after building up the “super slow”? Does the standard slow even last long enough to fire off an icicle? How long does it take to build up to the super slow?
I get that this change was probably made to screw over WBs but I’m wondering how much worse off (or better?) Mei is at peeling for supports. A 115 bodyshot icicle might just give a Tracer a bit of a nasty shock.
Goes from 30-50% until it builds up to the big slow that keeps them at 75% for 1.5s landing secondary fire shots will “detonate” the slow and deal additional 40 damage. I’m assuming after this you have to reapply the slow.
That means a alt fire headshot on someone slowed will do 165 damage
I’m skeptical about this change. Her slow has no effect on skills that grant movement, so it’s effectively useless against skills like Blink, Echo Flight, Dva Booster, Cassidy Roll, Doom Jump, etc. These changes do nothing with her interactions against high mobility dps / tanks.
From the patch notes, Cassidy is FAR better as a CC user because he locks all movement abilities like Zarya.
The 55 DPS reduction makes her significantly worse up close, because she can’t kill confirm as effectively.
These changes essentially force her back into a Tank Punisher role, which is a huge regression because this is the same exact role she had in OW 1 where she was consistently one of the worst dps in game. Now that she doesn’t even have freeze, I don’t see how this is beneficial outside of punishing Ball and Junker Queen, who are huge problems atm.
Ah, okay, so unless Mei get this “super slow” off then she’s out of luck. Dang. And I assume that the likes of Tracer are going to use burst mobility to get away well before the super slow kicks in.
It kinda sucks that all the DPS beam heroes have to deal with gimmicks.
My guess is that they specifically wanted someone to punish Ball. Oh well.
Sure I agree with doom a decent amount and echo (but you are mei fighting echo, use your secondary) But that is why wall is a thing. Cassidy cant escape anyway, tracer you one shot with secondary to the head, and Dva form my knowledge does get slowed during boosters. Wall is a big form of CC, just indirect.
We gotta test. This isn’t something we’ve had before.
just barely. I’m less of a # and more of a feel player so I’ll get back to you on how many you can cram in before no more slow. Also wondering if it “bursting” gets rid of the slow which would be… annoying. By numbers you should be able to cram in 2 shots before the slow fades… but this is by the old logic that Mei’s beam is not quite a beam but weird projectiles that have traveltime. You USED to be able to fire the beam till ALMOST frozen, and while the last bit traveled you warmed up M2 so you could get 2 dinks in before they unfroze. … but now it “bursts” so we’ll see what that does.
It says in the patch notes that alt fire does 40 more damage while in the super slow so yes it’s only during that
It’s probably going to remove the slow instantly so you can’t chain 2 hits in the most you’ll get maybe like 1/million you do it so perfect you get 3 since it’s 0.5s to charge an icicle. It will be good enough unless they’re receiving constant healing you will straight up kill a 200 hp hero from slowing them + bonus icicle damage
You are joking right, she is going to be broken, she can basically do her ow1 bs again only your enemy has a small window to react, and her +40 damage to slowed targets means she does 115 DMG in a BODY SHOT that’s massive damage as a zen connoisseur that scares me.
Honestly with how they mess up Mei’s power interactions all the time I’m thinking wait till it’s in game to make calls.
It’s also weird that if bursting the super slow DOES remove the slow entirely you might sometimes just keep pulsing the slow so your team can finish a tank rather than popping your M2 for damage since it’ll “free” them.
Maybe Tracer doesn’t cause Ball players to vomit blood the way that a super slow can, and that’s what they’re aiming for. Meanwhile, Sombra’s due for a rework that should be with us in just a few years’ time, so perhaps that’ll impact the Sombra-Ball interaction. Does it make sense to hand the baton over to Mei before the rework? Probably not, but that doesn’t always stand in their way.
Unfortunately this has been the path OW has been taking for a long time. They homogenize their game, it’s like they are afraid of heroes being actually unique among the roster.
I think Mei will just die when she tries to freeze someone. OW1 Mei worked because her freeze stunned and acted as a defensive mechanism as well as offense. This slow doesnt take away their ability to shoot Mei and deal dmg. She just dies when she tries this against any half decent dps.
Her primary dmg gets outhealed easily and even if she gets the headshot, after 190 dmg, 200 hp heroes are still alive and anybody with a movement ability gets away scot free, not to mention that Kiriko can cleanse it anyways.
Her primary is now a niche Ball and D.Va counter, but basically useless otherwise.
Honestly, sniping people in the head was usually the best way for Mei to get damage. Its what separated high skill and low skill players. As like to be useful against your counters like Pharah you needed to land those alt fire shots.
OW2 made Mei even easier to kill people when you can obliterate someone in seconds when they move at 40% spd reduction. You do 100 DPS. Your projectile is HUGE. The slow makes tracking even easier when in range because they aren’t moving as much and a super reliable 2sec kill is kind of nutty.
The change here makes Mei a little harder to play while also offering utility against tanks. Mei has always been amazing at abusing immobile tanks with wall. The extra slow effect makes it even easier for allies to chip into a slower target without missing shots.
They said they wanted her old playstyle back which kind of works, but its no longer as free as it once was. However, slowing a target to 75% mov spd after ~2sec of build up is still an instant kill on bodyshot. 75+40dmg+55*2=225.
However, from some examples I’ve seen that 40dmg bonus is multiplied by headshots. Mei can do a MASSIVE 225 hs shot spike which is rather insane because it means a target being slowed for >2seconds and might have had all the healing removed just instant dies from being shot in the head completely ignoring healing making Mei a very scary pick character up close.
WHich is the biggest annoyance with flanking characters. Immobile characters you can walk around a corner and lose LoS and guarantee some amount of time or slowly chip away at people on the approach. Flankers get in quick and rarely go away and you can’t really keep them away unless they are dead.
Which is why torb is an amazing design. Turret WILL slow flankers rather considerably.
So most tanks can avoid or simply ignore the freeze, and can eat the slow dps projectile without much issue.
My question is how is this better in anyway.
Why does it put the power into the part of the kit that’s extremely telegraphed. Even with the freeze in OW1 the combo rarely worked out. unless you some how got into a 1v1 propper, which isn’t something that happens much on mei’s good maps.
the 40 doesn’t do double with a head shot. so were talking 190. it’s just a flat bonus for shooting someone that’s slowed.
Aslo I’m not sure were the 5 came from on the end. as that’s 75 *2 plus 40 *2 = 230.
Arguably mei had issues following up even with the freeze. As people would bait out the freeze, bubble/dm/barrier the secondary and punish the reload that happened shortly after.
But ya pretty much this. Without the initial damage pressure from the freeze it’s not really forcing the enemy into check mate or 1 shot territory. That they can’t cleanse away.
But they can react, and many heroes have tools to escape such.
Theirs no freeze. So you can just say wraith the moment starts the wind up for the right click. Which should be easy to tell considering she just stops freezing for a moment to do so.
That’s why she gets 40 extra damage for getting it off. It’s a challenge to do it, so she gets an extra reward. It’s no different than dash reset, jq’s e, or a widow headshot.
I’d rather the consistent 45 extra dps, that ignores DM and is a lot more generally useful especially when combined with damaged boosts. So I can apply constant damage pressure to everyone.
And not maybe one extra 40 points of damage. While not ever being able to do that against a large portion of the cast because they have buttons that just self cleanse them selves the slow. Or deflect/eat the projectile before it can ever do it thing.
Like this is a flat nerf. Like that extra damage needs to be a flat one shot for it to matter. Because after healing gets in the way their really only a small number of heroes that will actually consistently hit.
And it’s not the mobile heroes the devs some how thinks this hurting.