I know this is going to sound whinny and that’s because it is. Can’t wait for all the high ranks to come and crap on me for posting this and getting all the “uuhuhuhuhuhuhu just get good nerd!!!”.
I don’t like how the game is so meta based. I’m a Genji main and it’s not breaking news that Genji isn’t the best pick at the moment. Every game I always get the “genji take reaper” “genji can you take reaper you are throwing” etc etc. And I know it’s a meta game but I don’t find meta heroes like Reaper to be fun. I find my mains fun and that’s why I main them. I love Genji and Tracer, and just because they’re not meta I have to struggle more than a Reaper or a Mei player and that just seems unfair to me. I know I just need to “get good”. I remember a Necros stream where he said “Genji is like playing the game on Hardmode, Doom is like playing the game in easy mode” which is the problem I am experiencing. Why should it be harder for me just because I don’t main a meta hero just because I generally don’t find them fun to play?
that was pretty much how it was back then, but you know what.
even though i got a lot of flack for playing reaper i still played him.
times change and metas too, and i really don’t think any hero is every completely unviable.
to me it’s all about making the best out of the situation.
i mean i would get frustrated for losing too so i started experimenting with every character in the game, i still think reaper is my favourite, but sometimes not losing felt good too and not constantly getting barraged with “reaper swap” was a nice change of pace once in a while.
but the reality of it became that i started liking to play more heroes than just reaper so i could for all intents and purposes “flex” and still be happy playing the game, sure i could have been happier but i did force my pick sometimes.
and it’s ok i think.
you don’t have to play meta to play the game.
just because it’s harder doesn’t detract from the fun of playing the character right? so the only reasonable thing for you to do is to try and play around that meta with your character pick whatever it may be.
i’ve fought full hitscan teams as pharah without mercy and still won and played well enough to be an asset to the team.
i’ve played bastion as a part of a dive team too, it was different and took some getting used to, but it’s doable as long as you know what to do in an unoptimal scenario.
Because this video game is about point control and payload meters gained. The game is constructed in a way that you are supposed to play more than 1-2 heroes.
Raw skill on a hero is not what wins games. Cuz you see, it’s not about what you can do on Genji, but what can you do with 5 other teammates against 6 enemies, how do you synergise, how are you going to beat them together.
Picking heroes is sorta meant to be like chess plays, that’s why heroes have asymmetrical design (counters and hard counters) and that’s why one tricking gets “punished”
How a hero plays is secondary, what the hero does for his team is primary.
Also you can’t really play Genji to his full potential if you don’t have a team that enables him, or an enemy to kill/contest without feeding.
So much of Genji’s skill comes down to: Did I finish off targets my dive tanks damaged?
Did I peel for my support and saved him from death?
Did I bait out tranq with blade so my Zarya can grav?
But why on earth would someone, no matter how much you love him, play Genji against Winston/Hammond, Brig/Moira? It’s not even playing on hard mode, it’s pure defying overwatch game mechanics and bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Cuz Overwatch is 6v6 moba and not an arcade game. Arcade games are balanced so every hero is viable against any hero. Overwatch is the complete opposite of that.
I also feel like Blizzard is making the Pve game (like those hero missions) for players like you, so you can play the hero you like as much as you want and even progress on him with talents.
Cuz this “I wanna play Genji in competitive in any composition scenario” is never gonna work or fly
In a competitive environment, you should adapt.
It’s called competitive for a reason, but the problem is that people don’t see it like “I join the game and pick and play what is and I can play best”, they see it “I join with a couple of heroes I like and I want to play”
There is nothing casual about competitive but Blizzard tried to make it happen and that is one of the reason why comp is such a big mess
Edit: I have no problems when play off meta heroes if they can make them work without being a burden on the team
“I just want to main one or two characters” is a terrible mentality to have.
Doesn’t matter what you play (DPS, Tank, Healer), you are a liability on a team if you have this mentality. You’re harming your team and more importantly yourself.
You’re becoming a problem your team has to solve, as opposed to a solution for a problem. It’s made even worse by the fact that your queuing up as DPS… the role that requires the most flexibility.
I get wanting to main certain characters, and Blizzard does a very poor job communicating what the game actually is, but this is a team game first and a hero shooter second.
Reaper is one of my main, care to explain how I struggle less than a Genji? Any single cc to me is a death sentence, sure I can wrath away but is predictable as hell and my vertical mobility is slow as hell…
Beside that, are you sure that ppl don’t tell you to switch Genji because maybe there is a monkey… emh scientist frying your healers that need help? Or that maybe the one that is kept fried is you? (just trying to figure out before yelling at ‘‘ppl are just toxic’’ (even if I know a lot are))
Ya it sucks how obsessed people are with the meta now. And it’s not really their fault, they’re kind of right. Some picks just are death sentences for your team unless you’re seriously under-ranked. Playing offmeta countered picks back then was a lot easier than it is now (given the hero wasn’t in a nearly unplayable state, like old torbjorn). Trying to play mccree during the “dive meta” was way easier than trying to play tracer or genji during… well, any of these recent metas.
It’s an unhealthy direction to push the game towards. It was silly and naive to expect people to not main heroes. Anybody who expects people to be flexing on the ladder is also, sorry, naive. That’s how any game with classes or heroes (or any form of customization) has always been.
It’s human nature to gravitate towards a few comfortable things than to practive any and everything to an equal level. And it’s also the most ideal way to improve, that’s what ends up happening in almost any competitive team-based environment. People specialize. People want to talk about how the game should be played in a competitive environment? I’ve always found that funny, because ranked is anything but a competitive environment. It incentivizes almost everything that you shouldn’t be doing in a truly team based competitive match.
The thing is this weird mentality that lower ranks are bound to play meta heroes, it’s shocking. Most metas (excluding the last one, orisa/sigma was never really about team play tbh) is more about playing together as a team- basically skill-based team play (dive/goats) not just switching to meta heroes and thinking they’re playing like how the meta is supposed to be played.
Play whatever you want, lower ranks aren’t restricted to meta.
Well that right there is the problem. You are playing a Team Based game that majorly depends on the battlefield, what is on the battlefield, and how those heroes work with their team.
If this was some kind of free for all shooter like fortnite or black ops, any hero would work because no hero needs to count on the team to be in correct positions or using abilities properly to synergize, ect. Instead, one hero could carry the entire game by constantly killing all the enemies.
But that is not how Overwatch works. You gotta think of it like a 3D Moba Hybrid Fps. It is a game where your team determines what you can and can’t do, while you enable your team to do things as well. These things can consist of space, peeling, follow up with damage or abilities, ability synergy, supporting, body blocking, ect. things that classic FPS games dont normally depend on.
The better team player you are in general, the better you will get at the game. Learning to master Overwatch is like Learning to Master Football in real life.
Moira is a perfect example actually. She can damage, she can heal, she can escape. But she is so dependant on the frontline playing correctly, that it can incredibly expose her in numerous ways if they are not positioning properly or making incredibly risky plays that don’t pay off.
Moira needs to be close to heal. Her tank suddenly charges in. You gotta make a choice here. Do you teleport to him and heal him and risk that this move he and you just made will pay off or die and feed, or should you let him simply die while you instead back off which will probably result in having to regroup anyway as it can be hard to do much when your tanks just suicided.
Moira is limited despite what you hear a lot about her. She , just like everyone else, depend on the rest of the team. The idea is to minimize the “Risks” you gotta take at any given time by making sure everyone is correctly positioning and assisting each other.
When this perfect utopia bubble is broken or has been unstable since the beginning, then everyone basically survives on constantly taking risks of exposure.
Thus is the universe of Overwatch. It’s like walking on a tightrope with no net at the bottom.
Except, when the team falls, they blame everyone else.
Reaper struggles less than Genji in that he doesn’t have lifesteal, though he has reflect but is outright ignored by beam characters. Genji doesn’t have 250 HP, whereas Reaper does. Reaper aims at your feet and gets headshots. Reaper also has a get out of jail free card but this one cleanses burn, poison, anti-nade and make him damage immune with movement speed up.
