Ni Hao! Welcome to 
Todei’s topic: Buffs
It has been exactly one month to the day since Mei’s Freeze buff went live. I don’t play comp, ore really even Quickplay anymore, so I’d like to take the temperature of how everyone feels on the subject.
Is the buff not enough?
Too much?
Just right?
Discuss.
Mei is in a weird spot. Honestly, I feel like she is maybe undervalued a bit. She doesn’t feel weak to play, but it usually feels like there may be a better option.
And I think sometimes even when you want to play Mei that others might give you a hard time about it just because of their perception of the hero vs what Mei can actually do for the team.
She has the 5th lowest pick rate at the moment, but her winrate is appropriate. I definitely don’t think she’s OP or anything. But I just feel she’s stronger than her pick rate would have you believe at the moment.
I think maybe if her damage falloff was tweaked on her secondary fire or her ult was made to be a little stronger then you’d see more Mei play.
The addition of Brigitte isn’t helping.
To be fair brigitte doesn’t really come into conflict with mei due to her filling a support slot and mei filling a dps slot.
Stun can be blocked by mei cryo and wall. Wall is also extremely effective at handling deathball.
The real issue right now is lack of impact compared to other dps heroes. Her wall isn’t a strong enough asset to warrant a pick.
I think she is incredibly risky without the reward and at the same time she isn’t visually impactful as most of the other DPS are. You can contribute to teamkills but most of the time you arn’t going to be on that killfeed as often as other DPS so it looks like you arn’t doing much.
Even if you save your team with a wall, unless they have the proper awareness of that situation it just looks like you are blocking their shots for no reason. Her ult needs some work, she can’t even be a character who’s main value is her ult (which is pretty low tier balancing but it’s something).
She’s niche, and that’s exactly what Blizzard wanted…
That’s a win in their books, they aren’t changing her any time soon.
Like Symmetra?
[20 characters]
Pretty much.
On a rein v rein earthshatter to team kill situation where the first brigitte to land a stun wipes the enemy team, the strongest asset to stop that from happening is a mei wall/cryo getting in front of rein. This meta is really strong for her but other than helping rein not being a punch bag the pickrates aren’t reflecting her utility because she shows absolutely no results and the skill required to land icicles are better used on other projectile heroes such as new hanzo.
This. A lot of people would say her ultimate is fine because it’s just meant to be a zoning ult, but why even bother with it when we now have a strong Spamzo with his zoning twin noodles which he can get much faster than Mei can get Blizzard
Looking at the pickrate: no.
The thing is: her value comes out of being able to play together coordinated with a team.
To really raise her viability, she would need a hard rework of her abilities, because on lower ties she’s viable, but as soon as the enemy plays hit scan heroes reliable, she’s out of the game.
as long as they buff something that doesnt make her more annoying im COOL with it
That and people are already using Zarya + Hanzo as the main kill potential for that comp as well as bubble protection, it’s also not limited to small confined areas like Ice Wall is. Wide open places like Junkertown drops the value of Ice Wall considerably.
One is your only protection ability that’s on more than double the cooldown ,the other is the most valuable part of your kit ,wasted to stop a 5 second CD.
Fact is ,Brigitte just hard counters mei ,and if you somehow corner her and is trying to freeze her ,stun + whip = goodbye.
And if you waste an ability to somehow block an instant stun ,she can still just knock you away.
Cryofreeze is better used at baiting stuns, hooks, sleeps etc than at actual self healing. That’s what you have healers in your team for.
And no, brigitte is a neutral counter to mei in a team environment. Mei can block the stun and brigitte has to focus her shield on mei if she doesn’t want to end up frozen.
Again ,whip ,for knockback.
And by the meta she’s pushing you back behind your rein. Which you can just walk back up since 5-10 m pushback isn’t that much considering mei freeze beam range is 10m.
And by the time you walk back ,her actual stun you baited earlier has 2 seconds left on the CD ,guess what happens next.
(oh and also her whip is extremely close to that too since it’s on a 4 second CD)
Then i laugh at the brigitte still trying to kill me instead of trying to stun my rein instead.
See why people consider mei v brigitte in a team being a neutral counter? This matchup goes on forever.
I mean ,if she won’t let you do anything then you’re being countered hard here.
It’s like the Brigitte vs Reaper matchup ,sure she won’t kill him ,but she’ll still make him useless
As with most heroes, I don’t see it being mei needing a buff, but rather there are not enough people willing to learn and play mei to know when she is able to be used and how. But if she was to be changed, I would make it so that the moment snowball leaves her hand, her ult can’t be canceled by stunning her.
I believe mei has the potential be quite good in this meta, given the maps and points you pick her on are actually complimenting her kit.