She is my second most played hero after Sym (400+ hours on her.)
Not sure why they felt they needed to rework her primary when she was balanced before. They somehow managed to make a hero who is both disliked when she on your team and is annoying to face when she is on the other team. The hero in her current form barely contributes anything for the team she is playing for, even with the slow-icicle combo she has very little kill potential apart from spamming her secondary fire to supports in the back or in to chokes to headshot people.
At the same time, even though she is often doing almost nothing for her team, she FEELS frustrating to play against, her rework just made her more annoying to fight because of some weird semi-freeze-slow effect that already has plenty of ways to play around it (any movement ability, any cleanse) and for that you gut her damage? Sheās literally a worse version of her OW1 iteration because of no full freeze.
Just do a revert, a hero who at present that has her current main contribution to a match as to just annoy everyone on both teams is not a good design choice - again, she was balanced before and didnāt need to be changed at all.
I completely agree, and Iāve been expressing the same sentiment even before the patch was released. The ironic part is that the actual gameplay experience feels even worse than what I initially thought from reading the patch notes.
The time it takes to build up the detonation is so lengthy that by the time youāre able to execute the combo, you could have already killed your target by simply spamming ice cycle from the start. While there are a few situations where the burst damage proves beneficial, in most cases, it just feels cumbersome and awkward.
In its current state, I believe Mei works better as a medium-to-long-range character, relying on lucky spam headshots rather than the new combo system. Itās not the worst concept or idea out there, but āto meā it feels like a step down compared to any previous iterations of Mei.
Disclaimer,
I donāt pretend to be a Mei pro, but I do have a few hundred hours on her, sheās my 3rd most played hero. So, I canāt pretend to speak for people who have 1000+ hours on her.
Yeah current Mei I think you still want to right click. Unless itās a tank then you can left click to slow. But squishies, should just be right clicked. IMO itās the exact same thing as Torb, if you can aim it in close quarters, left click to the head is stronger than shotgun.
Honestly, that was always her strongest attack even before the change, her right click, no falloff damage, something like 100HP damage to the head. Projectile travels faster than Hanzo arrow.
Get good at right clicking and youāll be a much better Mei than anyone who just plays close quarters in imminent danger to left click.
I havenāt felt much of a difference simply because Iām a āright click randyā on Mei.
Personally I donāt see how her damage got significantly worse. You slow combo kill squishies or you kill them from afar with the icicles. Same thing as slow kill squishies or kill them from afar with icicles.
If they were going to escape now, they were going to escape before.
But you just shoot them in the face with an icicle. The combo does 200 damage or so in the same time as the spray killed before yeah?
And people could always out damage Mei to her face, 100 damage per second is about Symmetraās level 1 beam or Zaryaās no charge beam. I donāt see the issue.
Lots of things work in numbers but in practice are REALLY hard to do or just donāt work out.
190 if done perfectly. And TECHNICALLY itās more TTK from start to finish with less initial damage, a period of NO damage thatās pretty easy to miss after. She is worse off than her OW1 incarnation.
But now they donāt even have to worry about dying. They just shoot. Thereās no point where theyāre gonna freeze like Old Mei, and with new Mei they retain enough life to not have to totally disengage.
The danger of the engagement has completely gone out of her favor.
Try playing her Iād say. Nearly every Mei player and Mei opponent hates this change. If she didnāt affect you before, sheās gonna do worse now. If she was a counter she becomes INCREDIBLY annoying/frustratingā¦ but weirdly not more effective unless you count tilt factor into it.
And you just completely ignore the part where mobile heroes pretty much can ignore the beam now, whereas it was pretty decent before?
The new Meiās CC is good against tanks and slow targets, but sucks against mobility heroesā¦ so it does exactly the opposite of what CC should do.
I havenāt played the game since the patch, but if itās really so much worse then I suppose Iāll have to take your word for it. The patch notes made it sound essentially like her OW1 combo, just a bit more dangerous to the Mei because no freeze obviously.
Rehardless, I think cutting her damage was the right play if theyāre gonna bump up the CC, so at least she isnāt a complete menace.
They could already ignore the beam though. Either youāre in range and in danger, new or old version, or youāre not in range and in much less danger. And both versions they could just gun the Mei down provided they could aim.
Icicles are Meiās damage and always have been. Even if the beam is too weak now, itās still is, as it always has been, meant to be setup for the killing blow.
Iām sorry but thatās just not true.
There is a big difference between being hit by beam that does 55 dmg for a bit before dashing out, avoiding the freeze or being hit by a beam that does 100 dmg.
With the old beam, you had a really solid option against a deflecting Genji for example. With the new one, you will just tickle him and he will dash away before actually being frozen.
Again, the main issue is that her CC is now a lot worse against slow and big targets, which usually arenāt the one that CC should be focused on.
When someone used to engage a Mei there was an urgency to either kill or escape, because it was so certain that you would die even if her beam was poop damage. You got frozen you were getting headshot, Twice if the Mei was good, so even tanks got scared.
Now? FFFF SHOOT HER!!
Thereās an element to the engagement that made it different and itās VERY obvious now that while incredibly enraging, her slow is not deadly.
The problem was they increased CC against people who ALREADY had too much CC on them and not at all for those who needed it. So again what happened was Mei lost potency but gained exponential annoying factor ONLY against people she was already annoying against and LOST validity against who the debuff is meant to cripple. Not a great move.
Edit: not to mention that they , in parallel, made Cassidy YET AGAIN better at Meiās job than Mei. THEY KNOW HOW TO COUNTER ACTUAL MOBILITY BUT THEY GAVE IT TO SOMEONE ELSE.
Yeah this tbh. Removed the slow, add hindered and maybe a tickle non-stacking DoT that persists if flankers manage to get away. Call it āchilledā or something.
