If he had an ability that could 1-shot instead, on a fairly low CD like DF.
The thing with projectile snipers is that spamming is always going to be a thing.
With so many shields about, your best bet it to spam arrows at head height and hopefully a brief shield drop will result in a kill.
It’s a shame because without shields, spamming is actually detrimental and you should actively be going for more skillful shots but this is not the game Overwatch is.
Although I doubt a change like this would ever happen to Hanzo. Personally i just hate Storm arrows and want to see it go.
3 Likes
Storm arrows is still way better than scatter arrow was
Rewarding snipers for aiming at the target’s feet? Absolute nonsense
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I would like it if Hanzo actually played like a sniper.
The man has a legit machine gun so it’s pretty difficult to dive him as a tank.
125 per shot is ridiculous how he can play. Hanzo can play side by side with tanks and get value because of his high damage.
Hanzo is the one true hero I fear because he can randomly headshot me at anytime.
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It is in terms of consistency, overall balance and “playability”, Storm arrows is indeed far superior to Scatter. People hated scatter for a reason.
However, Storm arrows is SUCH a boring ability! I absolutely hate using it. You might of hated scatter but damn was it a fun ability.
You could pull such insane shenanigans with Scatter, 1-shotting heroes is fun. 1-shotting tanks, queue evil laughing. Bouncing mechanic also made it a more interesting ability, as you could get some super cheeky kills by shooting side of doorways etc.
Literally my main problem with Storm is that it is boring, simple as that.
7 Likes
I never minded the bouncing mechanic of scatter, that was all well and good. It was the ability to one shot a tank that made it no bueno, especially since it was easier to do than on a squishy!
But yeah, if it weren’t for the visual on Storm arrows, that would certainly be one of the least interesting abilities ever. That title still goes to Symmetra 1.0 shields however imo
Why is the location of the aim point important? The ease of hitting it should be the deciding factor. Scatter Arrow’s effective target size was a bit too generous for the floor shot, but that could have easily been fixed.
It certainly is much easier to aim at the floor than the head, and awarded much more damage on top of that. There were a myriad of issues with that ability, and that’s why it no longer exists.
There were only two issues with Scatter Arrow that we don’t also have with Ashe’s Dynamite: the exceedingly rare but possible random kill shot from the other side of the map, and the total damage dealt for a perfect hit. All it needed was a damage nerf from 75 per projectile (450 total) to 50 per projectile (300 total) requiring 4 instead of 3 of the 6 projectiles to actually hit the target.
We did not need Hanzo’s most mechanically interesting ability completely removed from the game. That simple damage nerf would have fixed most of its problems.
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I don’t think so, it was just a flawed ability overall since it functioned like a shotgun when it hit a surface.
Snipers are rewarded so much for hitting a target in the head because that’s the hardest shot to make. Having an ability that does more damage than a standard headshot that’s also easier to aim just doesn’t make sense.
Using it on the floor even removed part of the aiming equation on Hanzo since you didn’t have to account for the projectile drop at that point.
The only way they could’ve fixed scatter’s fundamental flaw would’ve been to make the projectiles bounce outward rather than forward. That would’ve prevented it from being used like a shotgun, but would’ve also severely damaged the ability’s potential to even do damage.
Actually I strongly disagree with this.
On any target that was a signifcant distance away, getting the correct height of your arrow using Scatter was actually pretty difficult. I would say even more difficult than his primary.
Scatter likes a steep angle when it hits a surface so the arrows bounce upwards into the body of your enemy.
Distant enemies would cause a very low angle, meaning most of the arrows would just hit the feet of the enemy or pass through them. Which meant you had to very careful when you aimed scatter at distant enemies or try to get high ground on them to make it easier.
2 Likes
i’d accept hanzo having no one-shot if he actually was torb.
but he’s not so hanzo is ok.
there’s a reason why he’s not meta, but also a big reason why he’s really annoying to deal with.
the fact that you could one-shot tanks.
and generally one-shot any 200 hp hero with a lot less accuracy made it extremely annoying and most likely op as all hell as an ability.
i liked the concept of it, but not used like that constantly for easier kills in general.
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I can see that
Regardless, in most situations slapping someone with a scatter was just objectively better than a headshot. Enemies above you, far away from you, or in midair were the only times that wasn’t the case.
Not to say one should always use an ability the moment it comes off cooldown, but damage-wise scatter was just objectively better than his primary in most scenarios.
Scatter really wasn’t as easy as people make it out to be, otherwise pros would have used him all the time.
1-shotting a squishie with Scatter was harder than landing a hook for example. Hook you just had to aim directly at the enemy and land a bodyshot with an enlarged hitbox. Scatter, you had to take into account geometry and was rendered null and void if the enemy was doing any sort of platforming. Basically it was a ton more inconsistent.
Same with 1-shotting tanks, it could be done but on any hero besides Orisa it was very hard to do.
Roadhog back then also dealt 450 damage on a headshot with his LMB and RMB, it was just incredibly hard to do.
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no it wasn’t that hard to kill 200-250 hp targets with scatter using the ground, the only time it was a bit difficult was when they were jumping in your face as they would have a chance of jumping over it and create enough time to kill you before you got a scattershot off.
i played hanzo and got scattered by hanzos back then too.
it was in most situations a free kill on a 10 second cooldown.
this is kind of the crux of it, they didn’t play him not because shatter wasn’t good, but because he could mostly only guarantee one kill at best with scatter if the enemy wasn’t aware of the scatter.
why play a character that mostly can only reliably kill every 10 seconds when you can pick a character that can kill others within about every 0.5 seconds.
hanzo was unreliable and still is and that’s why he’s not meta most of the time.
but for general purpose use, scatter was too strong against the vast majority of the playerbase as it was.
and i would like to have it back but not in the same state as it was back then. i would have loved if they gave it the mccree FTH treatment, but they didn’t.
but storm arrows are pretty nice too, it really helps a lot more against divers more uniformly, maybe even too well tbh.
also roadhog also got nerfed a lot between now and then.
I do make it out to be easier than it was for sure, but the fact that Hanzo(and Roadhog) could do that much damage in one shot was not okay.
Damaging abilities need to have reasons not to use them in specific scenarios if it is something that does the same job as the primary attack.
Storm arrows is a good example of this. While it does do damage faster than Hanzo’s primary fire, it’s not all at once like scatter was. This makes there a reason to go for a headshot sometimes with the primary over just going for storm arrows since if you land that headshot it will kill faster than the ability would.
Scatter arrow also had tradeoffs, but they were niche all things considered. Hanzo has no problem getting on an enemy’s level if they are above him, he already lacks at long range as is, and Mercy and Pharah were the only characters with sustained air time. It just made the ability better to use over the primary if you were confident in the shot, and the reward for a good shot was almost twice as much as the primary.
It was a free kill if the enemy was on a flat surface, at equal or lower height than Hanzo. Was not too far or not too close. Was not using any movement abilities. etc
However, this is Overwatch. The simple act of standing on the payload made Scatter incredibly hard to use. Have you seen the geometry on the payload??? Scatter would go everywhere hitting it.
If Scatter was brang back now, it would perform even worse as basically every hero introduced since it was removed would largely be immune.
I am curious how Sigma would fair, as he literally floats and Zen was already hard to Scatter.
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using sonar arrow and wall climb it wasn’t that hard to create those scenarios.
if scatter arrow was re-introduced hanzo would be worse now because it was more often a one-kill, not a multi kill like storm arrows can be.
that’s the gist of it.
if sigma ate it, he’d gain a lot of hp, if he didn’t he’d probably die if he was caught unaware for a split second.
hanzo is by far my favorite character, and i was real disappointed when they removed scatter arrow. it was one of the most unique abilities in the game, but i understand that it was busted and had to go.
if i could redesign hanzo, i would replace storm arrow, its a lazy uninspired ability. my suggestion is below
NEW ABILITY - STORMBRINGER
bound to E, 4 second duration, 10 second cooldown (begins at the end of the duration)
- for the duration of the ability, hanzo’s wall climb is replaced with a wallrun similar to Lucio albeit slower, and without lucios wallskimming tech.
- hanzo also runs roughly twice his normal run speed and draws his bow 1/3 faster for the duration
make hanzo the mobile assassin sniper, like an offensive alternative to widowmaker
Wouldn’t that be really weak on its own?
Hanzo already received lunge with Storm arrows in his current state.
A weaker version of Lucio wallride for 4 seconds, seems pretty weak even with the 33% increased draw speed.
However I have to admit, it would be really cool! He would have to be able to lunge off walls as well to other walls to complete the theme.