Is the forum extremely bias Against flankers?

General Discussion
1

In my personal opinion, these are the main flankers of the game:
Tracer, Genji, Doomfist, Pharah, Sombra, Reaper.

Since Reaper cannot flank properly, I am going to exclude him.

As for the remaining roster: Tracer, Genji, Sombra, Doomfist, and Pharah, these heroes are the one that got called out for being op the most whenever they are viable on the ladder.

Those same heroes are also the one that tends to receive the “please delete these heroes treatment” on the forum, the only exception is Brig (I will be honest and say that she was indeed oppressive to almost everyone upon her release), but I do not condone any delete movement from the whiny folks.

Why did I come to this conclusion?
During goats meta, no damage heroes are viable, yet majority of the top “nerf post” are doomfist, tracer, and genji, and I ever saw a few Sombra nerf posts here and there when she was at the bottom half of the general ladder.

Since Doomfist and Sombra are both currently in a near-death situation, most people actually said they are fine with that, and Pharah is struggling hard with the amount of hitscan in this game, we are back to Tracer and Genji being the two viable flankers.

Needless to say, almost every day, I saw nerf posts about these last two flankers, even when it isn’t their meta.

Tracer is currently in the bottom half of pickrate and winrate for the overall competitive elo.

That leaves only Genji as the most viable flanker in this game, all because of nanoblade, support by the most recent Ana’s buff. I still don’t get why every time Mercy got a big nerf, they always buff Ana right after. They did it during the triple tank meta, and they did it in the most recent Mercy nerf.

So for my conclusion, I want to ask this forum, why? I don’t think anyone would deny the blatantly obvious bias at this point.
If I can see it, I’m sure you can see it, and I’m sure the devs can see it too.

Edit: adding Bastion and Torb as flankers, they can be on the same level as Doom and Sombra.

6 Likes
2

Flankers, in general, are supposed to be annoying.

What often gets confused is the blurred line between OP and annoying. People seem to forget that its a flankers job to be annoying.

It also doesn’t help a majority of anti flank heroes are extremely weak, making flankers look stronger than they really are.

9 Likes
3

3 reasons. from biggest problem to least problem. I’ll talk about Tracer, but, to a lesser degree Genji / Sombra has the same problems. Pharah / Reaper has the same problem BUT only at low ranks (where the average skill doesn’t mean their hitscan counters are not actually counters, but, they are still strong) - at high ranks, I think they need buffs (which reaper is going to get, but I expect that will make him more hated at low ranks, and not help at high ranks).

firstly - smurfs
They are the favourite heroes to smurf the lower ranks.

That leads to a LOT of hate towards them.

Combine it with a low pick rate in lower ranks, and it means when you see a Tracer, there is a pretty good chance someone has thrown down and is going to mess the lower ranks up with her.

That generates a whole lot of hate.

Now, nerfing her isn’t the answer here, because she isn’t normally a problem at any rank other than GM if you are playing against people of the same actual SR.

But, people get totally wrecked by a smurfing tracer, and can’t do anything about it. So, they ask for nerfs, because they think the hero ITSELF is the problem.

You want to fix the hate towards genji / tracer? Get Blizzard to take a hard stance on throwers.

secondly - historically, supports haven’t had a counter to her, but she countered the supports.

There wasn’t a support to switch to IF you were being hard countered by Tracer, so, people were pretty annoyed by that. They are still annoyed as a residual thing.

That has been fixed BUT, people worry that with only one counter, if that counter gets nerfed to uselessness, they will have no counters, which causes angst.

Thirdly, the whole attitude some of the Tracer/Genji mains had on the forum.

Basically, getting told to git gud as a response to being smurfed isn’t great.
Bring told that actually Healers counter Tracer rather than the other way around, is pretty delusional.
Being told that Mercy has a 50/50 chance to win a fight with Tracer/Genjiis bone headed.

People hate that stuff, so people react badly to it - MUCH of it is driven by the hate that Tracer/Genji receives - people hate them, and keep trying to have them nerfed through no fault of the hero design, the mains get sick of it, but it all ends up pretty combative. No doubt we will see this EXACT thing happen in this thread, since all threads on this topic see it.

TD;DR problem isn’t with the heros, but rather the people who smurf with it - for Tracer / Genji / Sombra. Reaper / Pharah are real strong at low ranks, because their usual counters don’t have the skill to be actual counters to them, which frustrates players.

9 Likes
4

I will note that smurf is your main concern regarding flankers.
I would like to say that in all my year of gaming, that is the most stupid reason I have ever seen when it comes to nerf or buff a hero.

Every games have smurf, overwatch will not be an exception. No game has ever escape smurf before. It is impossible to eliminate them.

The only way you can reduce the amount of smurfs is for you to play a pve game, not overwatch.

In your paragraph, tracer is your main concern, so I will do a little bit of math.
At your rank (silver), Tracer is sitting at the third least pick heroes, the two least picked are doomfist and sombra.

According to what I heard about smurfs in this game, they are basically “everywhere” in your rank, players justify their hate for flankers by calling “smurfs”, but 3 of the least pick heroes in your rank are all flankers.

If you do a little of math, that didn’t add up.

Most of all, Genji, Tracer, Sombra, and Doom all have below 50% winrate in your rank. With Tracer (your main concern), having a total of 43% winrate. Are they really smurf?

1 Like
5

I think you didn’t read what I said.

It wasn’t me saying she should be nerfed BECAUSE she shouldn’t be.

it was me saying

Them being the least picked is WHY it is a problem. Stay with me here.

Say you have a hero with a REALLY low pick rate, but, is smurfed at the same rate as everyone else.

If you are going into a fight, and see a tracer, there is a HIGHER percentage chance she is a smurf.

Get the problem? It is a perception thing. You asked why the forum was biased towards flankers.

I was answering that. I don’t have a problem with her myself, which is why I said, nerfing her would be dumb.

1 Like
6

You forgot Bastion. he he he.

7

if someone wants to throw, why would they be playing genji or tracer?

It is way easier to throw as a tank or support since they are way more subtle, and harder to tell whether they’re throwing or not, and they are more likely to avoid being report.

Maybe the tracer and genji on your team are just pure bad so you thought they’re throwing?

1 Like
8

The majority of the forums are support mains. And they probably wouldn’t like flankers.

9

it is the percentage of people playing outside of their SR as the flankers which make people hate them.

But that requires throwing to do so. Rather than just having an Alt. (which is why we need a nice term for SR manipulation rather than smurf, because people get confused between smurf and alt, and some people say smurfing requires using an alt etc.)

It is just the number of people playing outside of their actual SR range with these heroes is way too high.

Is it something you can fix by nerfing? hell no.

You COULD ban people who were in plat earlier in the season who drop to bronze, since they didn’t do it by having a few bad games. Diamond to silver, etc…

You absolutely should ban anyone in a “Throwing to Bronze” LFG.

It is hard to detect when someone is throwing, it is EASY to detect the results once they start playing to their full potential when they are at least 2000sr below where they should be.

But, they don’t do that unless there is throwing involved first.

10

I believe it is you who didn’t read what I said.
I asked you why would someone be throwing as Genji and Tracer? Since it is more obvious to people when the flankers are not killing anyone. Therefore, they should gain more report and are more likely to get banned in comparison to people who throw as other heroes.

Second, how do you know if someone is throwing? What specific action did they do that you view them as throwers? Being bad at the game is not the same as throwing.

You said you don’t want the flankers to be nerf, but my thread is aiming at people who want them to be nerf.

I agree with you that throwers need to be ban. It seemed like your problem has nothing to do with flankers whatsoever.

11

you don’t… .but you can detect them once they go loud and play as a person 2000 or so SR higher than where they are placed.

however, they don’t end up there without throwing first. so, it is the SR manipulation which is the problem.

You asked WHY. so it wasn’t obvious you were targeting people who hate the flankers, I thought you wanted to know the answer of why they hate them :slight_smile:

I USED to hate them before I got a handle on what was happening.

My problem isn’t flankers, but, man, people who do SR manipulation really rots my socks :slight_smile:

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it isn’t actually true :slight_smile: - back when I ran a tracker (like overbuff) we seeded it with the forum posters accounts (before private became a thing).

They are mostly flexes. The Mercy mains are loud because they are ticked off with what happened with their Hero - other threads can deal with that - lets not turn this thread into a mercy thread :wink:

13

I think you mean biased against. I’ll exclude Sombra for this purpose, both because she’s bad, and because she’s not really a flanker.

I think there’s some truth in it, but that’s because they’re not flankers. They’re all round DPS.

Flankers, in a true sense may have an easier time against Snipers, Supports, maybe less mobile ‘back line’ longer ranged DPS; and especially wounded players.

But in OW they’re also really strong against mid-range ‘basic’ DPS and Tanks. They simply shouldn’t be. Genji and Tracer shouldn’t be even considering going toe to toe with Soldier or McCree; but they do and they win. It’s not great design.

This is where the Supports feel like they need to protect themselves - because who the hell in the DPS roster is going to protect them?

5 Likes
14

Thank you, I changed my title.

I don’t believe flankers are strong against mid-range damage. I am a McCree main, and personally, I believe him to be very strong. With the recent FtH buff, McCree can cover his weakness (mainly the lack of mobility).

Soldier has a 50/50 chance against most of the flankers, with the exception of Doomfist, and I won’t deny that he is in a really bad spot, not because of flankers, it’s because of shield and aoe stacking in this game, and the amount of mid-range hitscan buff.

Flankers are not tank burster. Tracer’s bomb got nerf down to 300dps, and her general dps output is very low, her one clip burst dps is good against squishy, but it is usually trash dps against tanks. Genji is obviously a bad tank burser.

As for Doomfist, he is very good at targeting squishy, since they can die in his combo, but he cannot do the same against tank. He is not a tank buster either.

I don’t think flankers have that much of an easier time against snipers.

Tracer lacks vertical mobility to climb to their spot, and a good Hanzo or Ashe is a threat to her.

Genji is the only sniper counter, but as I said earlier, tanks are his weaknesses.

There is a support who is very good against flankers, her name is moira.

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One of my goals when playing Sombra is to annoy people so much that they lose focus and only care about killing me.

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A lot of us are realising this and don’t care. What happens a lot now, is if you’re successful is that they’ll switch to 76 and just ignore you 99%, and then still be better than you when you do Hack/EMP us.

Then lol free win.

I’m sorry, Sombra is neither scary nor annoying anymore. She’s a joke.

17

Brig is good against Flankers too. But I still feel like it’s DPS job to deal with them most of the time, and not enough of them can do it.

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how is pharah a flanker?

19

She is good against Genji for sure.

She is kinda bad vs Tracer, but, Brig is good vs Tracer :slight_smile: - so that is ok :slight_smile:

I think he is using “can bypass the shield fight” as the flanker thing, rather than just mobility heroes. I note he also put in Reaper in there as well.

Pharah / Reaper kinda have the same issues as each other in low ranks (their dps counters, don’t counter well) and ALSO have the same issues as each other at high ranks (their DPS counter are too good vs them).

I wouldn’t put them in, but… they do get a lot of hate, which is the thing he is talking about. So I can see why he did.

20

a flanker has to have a way to escape after they go in to flank

everyone can flank including pharah but they risk dying themselves while flankers can escape after a flank