I’m actually curious about this because I always believe close-mid range CCs(either soft or hard) is the answer, people seems to hate it a lot though. What I think is that the dive style relies on getting to where(i.e. the key target) they wanted quickly to unleash their close range power, while CC stops them from getting in.
It is not really welcoming though, but I just can’t think of other ways that would be advantageous against dive(Winston-Tracer-based comps). Obviously pure aim isn’t the answer, Winston is always in your face to deny the space required. Splash damage and area denial could work, but people are also calling PharMercy and Junkrat no skill, and D.Va can block them anyway. Triple tank can sometimes work, but it is highly situational.
I get that people don’t like CCs heroes for obvious reasons. Getting 1v1ed by them feels unfair, so I tried to think of a CCer that don’t really fight, but it is not really possible or is very difficult to design. An on-par CC hero can have the upper hand most of the time even they only have Mercy’s gun.
This is where I’ve left so far, and why I believe this is the case. If anyone have different thoughts please explain it here, such that we could hopefully work it out.
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Yeah your nerf the hell out of the heroes enabling dive as Blizzard should’ve done a couple of months back.
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But the thing is they aren’t really overpowered or something indivually. They have a good synergy to form a good comp and it happens out this play style outshine others a lot.
I do think having an answer to the “mobility is king” play style is better than removing this style to prevent this problem. A more diverse game approach is still better than just one
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The only non-CC hero I know of that can make Tracer’s life a bit difficult is Torbjörn, and well… honestly most Tracers seem to be able to work around him fairly well, not to mention his head hit-box is pretty large and easy to unload into for her. Maybe he should have an alternate turret that does little damage but has a slowing effect (kinda like Symmetra’s turrets, but larger radius)?
Isn’t the thing with dive that many people play together as a team? Why would there be one counter to that?
Dive largely relies on a coordinated alpha strike from multiple heroes to quickly eliminate a target and swing the numbers advantage, thereby snowballing the rest of the fight in favor of the diving team.
Anything you can do to prevent this alpha strike from succeeding is going to benefit you. As a Mercy, for instance, if you time your GA well, you can fly away from the landing zone for a Winston/DVA combo and possibly survive.
If supports are willing to heal each other, that can also greatly help to diminish the effectiveness of a dive attempt. The idea being that the supports live long enough that the rest of the team can at least kill the divers, neutralizing the advantage the divers would normally gain even if they secure kills. Granted, this is somewhat assuming a fairly neutral spawn advantage which is not always the case.
If you can at least make the divers “pay for it” then you’ll be going a long way towards defeating them. Forcing a Tracer’s blink, especially if you get her low and force her to expend a lot of time can potentially help out. Your team would still have to win that 5v5 situation but hey there are worse odds.
Perhaps best of all is simply not giving the divers the opportunity they would like. If the tanks and dps can play conservatively and avoid drawing the supports into a bad position that will help. Zarya can also help to some degree, bubbling the primary target of the dive, and again, the longer that target lives the less advantage the dive grants.
Sorry for being a bit rambly, hopefully I said something of value though. Good luck. 
Tanky comps would already be able to contest dive if there was a way to force engagements. They can’t as the lingering stall mechanic exists. Remove it and see what happens.
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How was triple tank beating dive back in the day? Just outlasting them?
You could nerf mobility in general but nobody actually wants to see that
They weren’t necessarily beating them it was just a better option…then they buffed Winston and dva and some other changes and well dive got rolling…
Ana was keeping everyone alive, while Roadhog protected her from everyone with his 1-shot combo that was on a 6 second cooldown.
Throw in a Lucio for extra speed, and Winston’s shield being pretty bad, and Triple Tank was pretty unstoppable.
I’m sure there are other ways.
Blizzard can just look at the abilities of their other games, like spirit link.
Spirit Link - when cast on a teammate, 50% of the damage taken by that teammate is redirected to the rest of the team, lasts 3 seconds. (numbers can be tweaked) I actually wanted this to be Orisa’s ultimate instead of the offensive-oriented Supercharger.
Inspire Aura - for every teammate who is within the aura, everyone within the aura has damage increased by 3%, damage taken reduced by 3%, up to maximum of 15%.
Might be op. Might not. But at least it isn’t CC.
Like Darsidian said, basically you need to keep Dive from getting that first kill for as long as possible. If you are looking for things that aren’t CC, you are mostly looking at things that either make their initial target not a target or ways to give their initial target Damage Reduction or extra HP.
Examples of the First:
Mei Cocoon
Moira Fade
Reaper Ghost form
Examples of the Second:
Brigitte’s shield (self only)
Brigitte armor pack (teammate only)
Edit: Brigitte’s Ult works too.
Zarya Bubble
Torbjorn armor pack
Shield Generator
Nano Boost
You’ll notice that nearly every single item is either fairly new, a self only thing that’s not on Dive’s target, or doesn’t come online right away. The only exception to that are Zarya bubbles.
Oneshot burst damage or even more mobility. There is nothing else.
CC actually isn’t at all an answer to dive, as it can also enable dive heroes to more effectively get picks.
As far as I can tell, we’ve only seen two real counters to dive in the past: Heroes that can isolate or one-shot other players out of position (hog’s hook used to much more reliably one-shot players either diving, or simply not hiding in their deathball; The nerf to him on top of the buff to D.Va’s matrix in relation to Hog has seriously mitigated that), and Mercy’s old ultimate massively upsetting a Dive comp’s pick advantage (Mercy’s multi hero rez used to punish a dive comp making efficient trades by allowing players to group up on death and reset with rez).
As of now, one-shot abilities are generally considered unfun, both by players and the Developers. And resurrecting multiple players is simply too powerful an ability for any one hero.
Unless they release a hero that somehow provides a massive advantage to teams that clump up, mobility in this style of game is too valuable for Dive to go anywhere.
Same way to beat fast paced setups in anything:
You either match their pace but do it better (Mirror dive)
Or you force them to play slower (CC and area denial)
Most area denial heroes are weak currently though, and are better known as the Defence category
There use to be. I don’t think there were counters to dive as a whole, just individual heroes. The dive heroes mostly haven’t changed much, but a lot of their former counters have. I think the only dive hero that has changed a lot is D.va. But some dive counters have gotten better. Like Genji actually has hard counters now. I still want his animations to reflect his hitboxes, but he has counters.
For an example as to how dive counters changed; back when McCree had far less fall off range, Mei and her 150hp headshot icicles were actually used sometimes, RH had hooks that could pull people through time and space, and Ana could 2 shot Tracer; Tracer was actually really well balanced. Tracer was literally a glass cannon. Yeah you had mobility and good damage, but there was a higher than average chance of instant death by unlucky headshot. Reaper was and I guess still is a Winston counter, but he doesn’t counter D.va anymore 1v1, and the changes in the rest of the roster mean he isn’t as good.
But for the most part, I don’t think they took away dive counters on purpose. Most of those changes did make the game better. I’m very happy that McCree is no longer a sniper with a six shooter who can kill tanks with one combo. I’m happy Roadhog can’t hook people through walls, fellow teammate hitboxes, and a partridge in a pear tree anymore. They could’ve handled it much, much better; because they gutted her, but Ana not being the only support that matters is good too.
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Yep, that was it. Although triple tank vs dive rarely happened. It was triple tank vs triple tank and in koth maps dive vs dive. The reason why dive didn’t work against triple tank was because D.Va’s DM didn’t instantly eat projectiles, among other things (the other thing being that D.Va never died and Roadhog hooks and Zarya gravs actually mattered). So even if she dove into the deathball the Ana on the other team could still keep her team up by standing point blank behind her tanks. This also negated Ana’s weakness of not having any reliable self sustain.
Now that doesn’t work anymore because Blizzard senselessly made DM instant without any consideration for how that would change the overall balance of the game. Just for reference, ever since that change nothing has come even close to dive in terms of effectiveness. Roadhog’s hooks now do nothing because D.Va eats the follow up, when that wasn’t possible before. Zarya now has to play extremely conservatively with grav because otherwise it gets eaten, whereas before Zaryas were super aggressive with it because they could shoot it their own feet and it would go off. Anas could keep themselves up in a dive by nading at their feet. Same thing happened when they added micro missiles and let her shoot them while flying or DMing. Now D.Va can just fly into an Ana with missiles and cannons up and if the Ana tries to sleep dart D.Va just flicks DM to eat it and deny any form of counterplay.
There’s a lot of screeching in these forums about Tracer and Genji, but the reality is that D.Va is holding everything other than dive down almost single handedly (with a bit of help from Winston’s overtuned shield).
Short of more things like Mei walls to the point where the enemy team just can’t get to yours? No. And obviously stuff like that would be even more infuriating than just being outright CC’d.