UPDATE: Mauga got a hefty nerf, and it makes him feel a lot worse to play. They nerfed his damage by a lot and increased shots it takes to ignite a target. Good luck lighting squishies on fire I guess?
So…since Mauga has come out I’ve been playing him nonstop and I’ve come to a consensus that most people feel: hes pretty damn broken.
The buffs he got overtuned him WAY too much. But, he did get a lot of buffs that made him feel a lot better.
Below is what I interpret should be the balance direction towards Mauga if hes going to get nerfed (Which is more than likely considering the public sentiment.)
Mauga
Incendiary and Volatile Chainguns
Damage reduced from 5 per a shot back down to 4.5
Fire rate multiplier when firing BOTH guns increased back to 25%.
Max ammo reduced from 350 to 300.
Damage falloff reduced from 30 to 25.
Note: With these changes above, Mauga loses some ability to fight mid-long range, but remains a menace when up-close and personal thanks to the firerate buff when shooting both guns. But, Mauga will have to be careful with the reduced ammo capacity. This also makes his ultimate a bit better to use as well. Mauga still retains other buffs to his guns.
This also means berserk will be a bit more difficult to proc in those ranges mentioned above, but excel when upclose, where Mauga should be good at rather than almost every range.
I feel like Mauga should keep the other changes to his kit to allow more survivability that he previously lacked back in the beginning of November. His damage was fine back then; all he needed was survivability buffs imo.
As always with these posts, share your thoughts below; I want to see what people think of Mauga, or these changes specifically. Either or.
You know this would actually make him do MORE damage right?
He fires 18 bullets per second with 1 gun at 5 damage. That’s 90 dps. With both guns it’s 180 dps (not counting spread or fall-off)
With these changes it would be 18 per second with 4.5 damage = 81dps. With both guns firing, it would equate to 202.5 dps due to the 25% extra firing rate
(Idk if you intended to make his damage better but I just wanted to point it out)
If you wanna just nerf him, I’d personally just lower his Fall-off and damage back to what it was previously
Only upclose though if shots are being consistently landed. Originally he had this value in place when he first came out. I did the math to the damage he does now, which is 5 x 18 = 90, which is 180 for both guns. However, with the old values, the math is correct and he did roughly 20.5 more damage if both guns were fired.
With the other changes I proposed, it makes him less crazy to pull off those numbers with the ammo cut, the falloff distance; the changes I have in mind are aimed to still make him a absolute beast in close range, but lukewarm in others (Which I feel is the point of his kit from the impressions I’ve gotten, especially his ult honing in on that feeling).
Maybe increase spread back to firing both guns as well in that case, which makes him dangerous when upclose, but only at that range. Right now he execls at upclose AND mid range, which is why a lot of heroes struggle with him right now.
To be honest I feel like his ultimate isn’t the strongest part of his kit. EMP slaps it across the face and a lot of heroes have a backdoor against it.
If you don’t mind me asking, what part of it is strong for you?
Mauga overhealth gained is +1 for a bullet fired regardless +1 for it connecting with an enemy target. Shield, buildable, body, etc. +72 overshield on stuff it connects with and
Volatile Impact does 1.5x more damage for hitting the body that’s on fire, but does 2.5x dmg upon hitting a headshot.
The spread on his dual fire mode reverted.
Heal on overdrive from 70% → 60%.
The goal I have here is to make his sustain less lumpy and more viable at all levels of play. Let the overshield aspect be viable whenever he fires, but rewarded upon hitting a target. The Volatile Impact rewards a player for doing more dmg and playing the minigame, but does less total overall damage.
I feel a big issue about Mauga is that he’s a tank buster to pretty much any tank matchup. I feel a tank shouldn’t tank bust and shield bust consistently like Mauga does.
If we could change his crit damage to 1.5 than the standard x2, it will affect his overall tank busting potential and lowers the rate of his self personal hp.
I also want him to have shorter range and/or increase his spread for using both guns.
I feel his fun factor is his chaotic gun blazing nature, so that should feel powerful, but he shreds too fast.
I think changing how lighting people on fire works would be the way to go.
Currently its based on the number of shots hit to light someone up. But if you changed it to damage delt it would nerf his poke power and also damage vs damage reduction mitigation tanks like ram, orisa and doom.
On live it takes 10 hits to light someone on fire. If you made it like 35 damage instead I think that would make him worse at the midrange and also worse vs block tanks.
Blizzard needs to mess around a bit more with multipliers I feel. Many, many, many other shooting games have body multipliers such as a body = 1.5x a limb might be 1.1x. Head = 1.7x. Blizzard has more recently started messing with hs multipliers more often and I think its for the better.
Kiriko went from 3.0x to 2.5x.
Roadhog is down to 1.5x on his primary fire.
Widow is still at 3.0x.
Most heroes are at 2.0x.
Arguably, headshot multipliers on shotguns should be innately lower to avoid the situations where say you chunk someone in the head for an entire shot and just 1shot them. Very rare, but less likely to happen at 1.5x
Cage Fight needs a few balance changes, definitely. I would recommend removing the infinite ammo, and just letting him refill his ammo completely once he starts a Cage Fight.
It needs actually hit something, otherwise it too strong. I can pre-load Overhealth this way, otherwise.
Or just doing 50% more damage on critical hits instead. Still viable, less dangerous up-close and avoids instant deletion.
Not needed.
Not needed.
He doesn’t do both very well.
Wouldn’t need to do it because of sustainment, only because of the damage output. Sustainment can stay the same, just reducing the amount of critical damage would be better.
10 hits is 50 damage. Better to just keep it at the hit numbers; it works just well enough to leave it as is.
Yeah. Though on that note, critical hit multipliers in other games are actually based on weapon and are much more complex damage calculations in those games than in OW. Blizzard is trying to keep it simple, but they seem to constantly run into the same problems by keeping everyone on the same modifiers; or nearly everyone.
They could decrease his crit damage multiplier to 1.75-1.5 instead of completely reverting the damage buff, people forget that it’s a big factor as to why he shreds people since ignited targets get crit damage when hit by his volatile chaingun.
The aoe hinder is kinda bonkers. If your “backdoor” against his ult is a mobility skill, yeah, not happening. Infinite ammo and aoe shield on top, thats a lot on face value.
Just don’t get caught it in it right? On payload missions, not that simple.
It has counters. Still overtuned imo. His whole kit is overtuned right now. Theyll roll his damage back somehow at comp time.
He has an on demand Damage Resist ability and enough DPS to shred duels. On top of that, his charge also had in built DR. Idk why he has good armor on top of that.
Both Chainguns
Windup decreased from 0.16 to 0.1s
Movement Speed reduction increased from 15% to 20% but now doesn’t stack for each chaingun
Simply more intuitive and fun
Incendiary Chaingun
Shots needed to burn enemies decreased from 10 to 9
Fire DoT damage reduced from 15/s to 10/s
Fire DoT duration reduced from 3 to 2s
Retains it’s buffed 5 damage per shot
Volatile Chaingun
Damage reduced from 5 to 4
Extends DoT duration by 0.35s on hit
I also have no idea why his miniguns weren’t made to be more different from each other. Even modifying their base damage like this is enough. This also slightly lowers overall DPS which is something that needed to happen yesterday.
Overrun
Cooldown increased from 6 to 9 seconds
Contact damage increased to from 25 to 30
Stomp damage decreased from 45/90 to 35/70
Getting stomped or hit sets you on fire
Overdrive
Cooldown increased from 10 to 11s (Total: 15 → 16)
Lifesteal reduced from 70% to 50% (I seriously have no idea what they were smoking)
DR reduced from 30% to 15% on allies.
Radius reduced from 10.5 to 10m
Both of these abilities are just more busted versions of previous ones. Overrun specifically is just better Rein charge. At least these changes should make them more unique and in line with similar abilities (Charge/Queen Shout)
Cage
HP Reduced from 1500 to 1300
Killing Mauga removes the Trapped effect, enemies are still confined by the cage until it’s duration is over.
Simple as.
The issue is he’s even more oppressive than Orisa, capable of running both Poke and Rush even better than Ram can with better performance at close Range. Rein stands no chance against him. Orisa feels obsolete in comparison.
You should also look at him from support perspective. Currently he needs two healers babysitting him all the time. This is awful experience if you are not one-trick Mercy (worse kind of mercy).
Imho he needs thicker skin and less damage…but it will make him another dps.
