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.
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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.
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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.
mei is still a better match up than a tracer tagging you the entire match and following up when you escape
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.
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I barely use the beam.
I very much prefer to dink people with icicles so I’m probably not gonna use the extra 40 damage thing too often either.
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ya honestly that slow isn’t worth it. The freeze was barely worth it if there wasn’t 1 of the dozen counters one the field for it.
Yeah, I know I may be in the minority but I prefer the versatility the icicle provides because if you know how to use it well, you can engage many more ways and ranges than if you mainly rely on the beam. I’ve seen plenty of Meis who died and/or didn’t secure a kill because they just didn’t/couldn’t use icicle. I guess that’s why I don’t personally care too much about the changes but I do hope they make the character still feel good for people who have a different playstyle than mine.
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I primarily beam most of my games, and just get clever with my walls to get around it’s limits. Be it I can poke holes in the average Pharah if need be.
This just kind of kills my damage pressure tho.
Like unless it’s really spammy in how quick you can get that bonus 40 damage.
or it’s an AOE burst damage sort of a deal, then I really so no benefit in all of this.
Idk man I’m just explaining the reason for the 40 damage since you seemed to have trouble rationalizing it.
I mean if you struggle to headshot a slowed target, at close range, you dont deserve the kill. Meanwhile if you hit the target for 190 they should probably be dead and if they are not just melee them right after and they are.
It’s still pretty bad M8, regardless. Considering I’m doing more damage by just hold left click with the 100 damage beam.
Especially considering that pierces and doesn’t reset the slow.
I’m not struggling to hit head shots. At least no more then the average mei.
I’m pointing out this effect literally won’t trigger in many different duels.
Because most of the characters I listed can cleanse the slow the moment you attempt to use the secondary fire.
Or have tools to deflect/block/dm/or a mobility tool that isn’t effected by slows. like tracer can freely blink, and genji dash.
Litterially half the cast if not more has easy ways of disrupting this combo, and is one of the reason why OW1 mei was so bad for years.
Everyone is freaking out about 40 damage, but when Mei finally does get her slow effect off everyone will just use some movement or block ability to dodge Mei’s clearly telegraphed icicle. I can’t think of many scenarios where this would be better than just does 100 DPS on her primary, but there are a lot where it’s significantly worse.
The patch notes don’t include a lot of important numbers so maybe it’s better than it looks, but it looks grim.
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So from an OW1 Mei main and having read multiple times, I believe this is how it works.
You touch them with 1 tick and it’s an instant slow. Then it will go from 30-50% through 31, 32, 33 etc. just like OW1 but stops at 50. The time it takes to go from 50-frozen in OW1, they will be at 50 until they reach the “frozen” state, except in this game it will be a flat 75% slow for 1.5 seconds.
From this point, if you hit them with icicle, it will break their frozen state but icicle will do 40 damage more.
All in all, it’s a massively nerfed version of OW1 Mei. Icicle breaking the 75% slow is a monumentally stupid change since this isn’t how the frozen status effect worked and given Mei has not only a windup, but a wind down time AND the enemy isn’t hindered, they will just jump making the headshot near impossible due to her wonky icicle hitboxes and prevent you getting a kill.
I’m more worried there will be no visual effect for “frozen” enemies and you won’t actually know when they have hit 75% slow. This effect should really inflict the new hindered status effect.
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