And by ducked out, I mean the power supply on my computer grenaded and I’ve been too cheap to buy another one and rewire my PC. This happened on Nov. 29th.
I had actually uninstalled two weeks before that. I was so frustrated with the games PBSR ranking system, and the direction of the games balance in general, that I felt the need to take a break. I reinstalled, played one competitive match, felt burnt out, and uninstalled again. The next day my power supply died.
I can’t say I miss it. The developers lack of transparency, the train wreck of unnecessary reworks, untouched bugs, ridiculous nerfs, cheesy low skill heroes and another stale meta (the worst we’ve had. No DPS slot? Lol…) … After over 1200 levels and 13 seasons I’m done.
Wrecking Ball was the only reason I stuck it out for a bit longer. I was basically one tricking him this season (or was it last season? I’m not sure now) and made it to Diamond. This was a huge deal for me. I really felt like I had ’beat the system’, so to speak after being in Plat for like 8 seasons, that’s why I’m content with not coming back.
I want to touch a little on competitive, because it really just feels like a pointless grind. I went to the competitive board seeking advice for ranking up, and beating the PBSR, and generated some good discussion.
I was going to make another update thread going into depth on my experience on one tricking Wrecking Ball and making it to Diamond with him, but as soon as I did, I went on a losing streak. Not all at once either. Over the course of a week I had lost %80 of my matches, and went from my career high of 3014 to 2575, which was lower than i had hit before I made the thread above.
I was hoping to level out around 2900 - 3000, but alas I felt robbed again. Long story short it doesn’t matter how many perfect plays you make, there are too many variables in the matchmaking to feel like you’re actually improving as a player. I’m ok with losing, but getting dragged back to Earth in a seemingly helpless spiral feels bad.
Now Balance… Good grief where to start.
I’ve been lurking for the past couple weeks because I still care about the game. But nerfing armor? Talk about nerfing Brigette AGAIN, but a blanket nerf to tanks? Do they honestly think that’s the problem here?
Now I’m no pro player, or a coach but I do understand how every hero plays and they’re strengths and weaknesses. But anyone who has followed any post I’ve made knows I’m not completely ignorant to balance.
Tanks, individually, are weak. They’re limited to relatively short range, high maintenance abilities to keep themselves and their team alive and can’t function without a healer.
Healers are kind of in the same boat. They have a hard time making an impact in the match without their DPS and tanks keeping them alive, and you usually need to run them in pairs in case one dies your team still has healing.
What happens when tanks are stacked? That’s right… They become fat DPS with added survivability and team wiping ultimates. Add a speed boost in there and mass healing and you’ve effectively eliminated any weaknesses tanks have individually.
DPS heroes are somewhat of a liability against this sort of comp. Flankers can’t even do their job because of all the healing and direct counters they have. 200hp gets bursted down so quickly, that you’re better off running tanks and healers to keep each other alive.
Healing > Tanks < burst damage > Damage heroes
You need tanks to survive the burst damage and stuns. You need enough healing to stop the burst damage. But since sustained DPS is a liability against multiple tanks, you end up picking burst damage, which in turn is easily countered by the tanks, and it becomes a vicious cycle of who can keep the tanks alive to get an ultimate off.
I don’t have any ideas to fix this GOATs situation we’re in and I’m usually full of them. People think that if we add more heroes to the game, it will some how balance itself and everything will eventually become equally viable. But this isn’t the case. I’ve been active the whole life time of this game and it always comes down to 7 or 8 heroes being viable in top tier play, with tanks leading the charge and defining the meta.
I think Blizzard really needs to sit down and decide what they want out of this game. There have been countless unnecessary reworks, nerfs and changes, too many to list, that have done very little to better the game, and the more you change and nerf, the more people you drive away. The cracks are starting to show. A competitive scene that alienates an entire class of heroes is the direction they wanted to go.
I didn’t mean to drone on this long. If you made it this far thanks for reading and maybe I’ll see you in Smash Bros Ultimate with the same alias.
