…And oh boy, he is a mess. They directly stated the whole purpose of these buffs was to make him feel way more fluid and easier to control. The only reason they are having to do this is due to everyone crying about the meta shift of Doomfist, so they had to nerf him hard into the ground.
This is by far the hardest nerf I’ve ever witnessed, his pickrate when from 4% in GM to 0.3%. He was in a state where half the time his slam or punch wouldn’t register, and he would not get as much out of his abilities as he was putting the skill into. I guess you could say he was in high-skill low-reward crisis mode. Now he was stuck having to use the abilities that aren’t even that great anymore that are also on high cooldowns. He was pretty much unplayable.
The buffs in my opinion are helpful, but the cooldowns weren’t the issue. I frankly think it was uppercut nerf and the slam range nerf that were unnecessary. The ‘buff’ they should’ve gave him should’ve been reverting these two nerfs.
His ultimate should also have been reworked IMO. The initial problem was it was impossible for immobile characters like Ana or Zen to escape on their own, but now with the nerfed ult, it’s basically impossible to score one kill with it. They need to rework the damage in the areas of the inner and outter ring, because it’s not good on either end of the stick. If they had only nerfed slam CC and uppercut CC to 1 second (instead of 0.6), he would’ve been WAY more balanced in my opinion.
The cooldowns are the reason he wasn’t able to be a brawler like they intended. They were definitely one of if not the biggest issue he had. Too much downtime meant he couldn’t stay in fights at all and everything he did had to be fast and precise with no mistakes, or he dies because he won’t get his cooldowns back to defend and heal himself.
I’ve played with him on PTR for a few hours now and honestly, he feels WAY better than I expected. My stats / 10 are also consistently the best they’ve ever been with him. His ult definitely still needs work however.
His main issue is how unviable his uppercut and slam are now. The slam barely registers, and now the uppercut gives them free control in the air, making it way more difficult to follow-up on a combo.
Slam and uppercut are definitely still viable. Mostly because of the fact they can multihit and restore all of your health if you’re attacking groups, but combat wise they are still his bread and butter despite the nerfs.
The slam barely registers
Slam is buggy as hell but it will be fixed soon and is still more reliable then it used to be. There is no pull anymore (until the bug gets fixed) but really you don’t need a pull anymore with how gigantic uppercut’s hitbox is now.
The slam barely registers, and now the uppercut gives them free control in the air.
Free air control after 0.6 seconds. More than enough time to kill most squishies if you’re animation canceling properly. Even then, it doesn’t take a lot to just adjust your tracking when they do gain control, it’ll probably take an extra shot or two at most.
What is happening with slam is it is placing the aoe completely behind where you land some of the time. I noticed that the first time I played him after they destroyed another balanced character to appease lazy babies.
I still fail to see how it was a problem that an ULTIMATE had a decent chance of killing two characters in the game. One of which Zenyatta has enjoyed being constantly in the META for almost the entire life of the game. God forbid anything do anything to counter Zen though we saw that when they suddenly made up a lie about dragonstrike damage boosting being a bug after 2 years because it was countering trans in combination with other characters.
He was never intended to be a brawler. That is a suggestion put forward by the community after seeing the DF WIPs. The cds on his abilities were intentionally set high to leave him vulnerable after using them.
Hammond is your brawler and it takes 1200 hp for that to be viable.
They wanted him to be a brawler/bruiser so the cool downs are a step in that direction. Playing him like a back line assassin is great but that was the only way to play him.
It does : remember that mercy that you can’t slam/uppercut because she activated her 2s cooldown ? The inconsistence of the RP knockback on genji/tracer dashing, or pharah shift is gone as well.
Because any Zen who did not know how to counter the ult (mainly with map angles) replaces your “decent” by “unavoidable” and whines that he’s getting countered instead of switching…
The uppercut nerf was really needed, the follow up headshot were way too easy to land. The fact that we can’t boop anything just deletes part of the char utility and playstyle which I hate but can’t think of an easy fix.
It’s fine to have an opinion, but you just can’t go back to where he was. You’ll have to propose alternatives, or no deal. Not being funny, he’s meant to be a brawler, not an assassin which is where the long distances put him.
But I think the Uppercut nerf was a good idea, it feels more rewarding.
Its good to know they are going to fix the pull issue on SS. I know the range nerf hurts the most but if the pull is fixed then we will have a semblance of consistency back.