Yeah, I don’t think he prepared to answer the obviously incoming questions so there wasn’t much to the interview.
“Good step in the right direction” but no real opinions on how to improve her beyond the tiny tweaks.
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Dude… Just because Jardio is able to play Mei in the top 500 doesn’t mean she is good, there are also Symmetra players who have played in the top 500… these are just exceptionally good players that could play any hero in the top 500 with enough practise.
Jardio could make it to top 100 as Soldier, or Mcree, or even Hanzo if he practised those heroes more, but he plays Mei. It doesn’t make her good or balanced, just like a Symmetra making it to the top 500 doesn’t make Symmetra good or balanced.
There is a TON of evidence that Mei is in an incredibly bad spot, I’ve already provided stats multiple times, go back through and read the thread.
Mei is in an absolutely terrible spot, both statistically and demonstrably.
Edit: Moreover, if you actually look at Jardio’s stats, it only goes to prove just how poor a spot Mei is in.
Jardio is the best Mei player in the world, and his averages for Eliminations, Damage, and Deaths per 10 mins are outshined by the average stats of most of the DPS cast from player’s in platinum.
Jardio’s damage per 10 minutes average on Mei is worse than every other DPS hero in the top 500, and worse even than Zenyattas and Moiras in the top 500.
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Hi!!
First, English is not my native language so I apologize for the for the spelling mistakes.
I’ve played around 350 hours with Mei and recently hit Diamond with her ,a Mei oneTrick, (I bought the game for her really…) I play on servers in South America so I play with many Brazilians and a lot of lag.
Following the topic and giving my opinion,I think Mei’s main problem is that he’s very slow at everything even though she controls the ice (it’s ironic no?)
1.- Walk very slowly
2.- Its shooting speed is very slow (one of the slowest of non-snipers)
3.- Skill cooldowns are very long
4.- Her ultimate charge and deploys too slow
Buffs :
1.- About the movement speed we can not do much, is programmed like this and the character looks slow because it’s THICC, what it would do is improve the cooldown of the wall to 5 seconds after the wall breaks. That is, in the two ways it breaks normally in the normal time of the wall or when it breaks with the letter E always be 5 second cooldown, it would give you a little more mobility and the possibility of reaching higher ground faster.
2.- Increase the firing speed of the icicle, just a little, to make it more “viable” and not be the freezing McCree, keeping the character unique.
At higher levels the icicle is used much more than the freezing spray, even I have it assigned in the left click because one tends to have more muscle memory on the fire button in all normal fps.
Having 10 icicles is great but you can not shoot two before a McCree shoots you three times is terrible (it’s an icicle per second approximately), your precision must be very high to be effective and the damage is decreased a lot by distances.
2.1- About the freezing spray Blizz never ever will make freeze faster, I imagine the amount of post crying for the freezing speed, instead it would let in addition to the slow effect reduce the shooting speed by the same percentage.
3.- I already talked about how to fix the wall, in the case of the block of ice I don’t know if lowering the cooldown is the solution but a couple of seconds would help (the cooldown is 12 seconds when entering and leaving the block). I would modify it in such a way that the healing obtained was faster (yeti event), or that when entering the block gives you a quantity of heal (50 HP) and some weapon ammo and increasing the amount according to the time on the ice. Leaving the block as an emergency button and not as a stalling hability, to be able to do more “bait” and leave the ice giving more fight quickly and fix the bugs of the ice block (please please Blizz)
4.- They have already nerfed the charge of the ultimate in the past so I do have not much hope in that. On the deployment of the “Ultimate” beginning the effect when (the robot) touching the ground and freeze twice as fast as it normally does (freezes at the same speed as the freezing spray) is an “ultimate” must have something special, right?.
About refounding the lost “ultimate” to some “ultimates” the same thing happens to them so I have no hope in that, a faster deployment is enough, skill based.
*** Finally the Mei combos the most known and the most used freeze + icicle, this combo generates 220 HP of approximate damage currently and adding the melee generates 250 damage.
The combo takes approximately 3.5 - 4.00 seconds, 2.5 ~ 3.0 seconds in freezing and 1 second to launch the icicle, in a constant freezing, on mobile targets like Genji can be more.
The combo is very very slow and it happens so many times that when freezing and giving the shot a Zarya bubble or a diva approaches even a Genji with deflect in front of you and save the enemy.
The problem is that the damage generated is very little for the time spent, for example compared only with the defense heroes in 4 seconds:
Bastion : In turret mode the damage is huge!! even in normal mode it does more damage in that time.
Hanzo : 3 charged arrows or 2 charged arrows and scatter arrow.
Junkrat : 4 bombs or mine + 3 bombs or trap+mine and 2 bombs
Torb : 5 normal shoots or 3 shotgun shoots. Adding turret damage
Widow : 5 normal shoots (scoped) or 3 scoped shoots (full charge)
Without comparing it against the attack heroes since the difference would be greater.
The question would be why choose Mei currently? McCree generates more damage in equal time, Junkrat generates more damage and even Torb generates more damage. Mei is far from being a balanced hero despite what others say which is oppressive hero so she does not receive a good buff/fixes and never reaches the balance.
I will continue playing with Mei until I get bored of this game (normal cycle in games) despite being one of the worst OW characters currently.
I play with her because I like her and as I said I bought the game for this character…but it is clear that she needs a lot of love from the developers.
Sorry for the wall text <3
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This isn’t true, there are other top 500 Mei’s such as Elysion, but you do have a point about them being extremely uncommon.
This isn’t true in the slightest. If Mei was an ‘F-’ tier hero, why does she have one of the highest winrates at GM level. You could say it is because she is picked to stall, but both teams can do this so it shouldn’t affect the winrate. I know the overbuff winrate stats are a bit dodgy because every hero at GM has over 50% winrate which doesn’t make sense, but if you look at the stats, Mei’s winrate increases up the ranks it’s about 45% at bronze, 52% at platinum and diamond and 54.5% at Masters. Sure on the website most of the heroes winrate increases as you go up, but Mei has one of the biggest changes in winrate. Clearly she isn’t an F- hero, she is just difficult to play effectively.
I guess they could lower the skill floor slightly but at a plat/diamond level of gameplay, I’m not having issues with her when I’m playing her. Sure, my aim sucks some games and others it is incredibly good, but this is the same on a lot of heroes like McCree, Widowmaker, etc. Season 6, I had 7 hours on Mei (my most played that season) and I had a 57% winrate. Season 7 I had 4 hours on her and a 50% winrate. Season 8 I had 3 hours on her and a 68% winrate. She’s not an inaccessable hero to play at ranks like plat/diamond, think of Genji. Most Genji players at Gold and below are going to be pretty useless. They’re not going to be able to consistently kill the enemy backline and their ult usage is going to be poor. It’s the exact same with Mei. If you can’t land right click headshots with reasonable consistency, you can’t land successful ults often, you simply aren’t going to be useful on her.
Regarding her needing more help, she doesn’t really need anything major, probably just bug fixes and an cryo-freeze change where it is shorter in duration and heals faster and have the cooldown start on usage rather than when it finishes. I guess it is easy to fall into the trap for me to say she doesn’t need anything major to make her slightly competitive for most people, just like Sombra probably didn’t need anything major. If she got an ultimate buff I guess it would put her on the powerful side along with Sombra but not too OP. But I’m not sure on it.
The video didn’t actually say this.
I did not knew this. It’s great to see more top 500 Mei mains in the pool of top 500 Tracer mains.
It is a fact.
Just read any meta reports from Overbuff, Omnicmeta, Metabomb or any other meta reports.
Characters are listed based on their average performances and pickrates. Mei does not only has one of the lowest pickrates, but her average stats are not on par with the stats of heroes from the same class and other classes.
So it doesn’t matter if you think she isn’t F-tier, she is in fact listed as one.
She is clearly a F-tier hero.
I fully agree with you. Mei’s kit is great and she doesn’t need a rework.
If her bugs could get fixed than I’m certain that will help her a lot.
My biggest issue with Mei is that she has an unclear role.
According to Geoff Goodman, the developer who is in charge of balancing, was Mei designed to slow down and stop movement. This is also why she doesn’t has any mobility herself. She is meant to counter it and not being part of it.
She can, but not of very mobile heroes, because they can easily evade her reach. Heroes like Tracer and Genji doesn’t fear Mei for this. Heroes like Ana, Roadhog and Reinhardt does because they lack any mobility.
Heck, even the buffs she has got was made to make Mei stronger to more elusive heroes like Tracer and Lucio according to Jeff Kaplan in a Developer Feedback.
https://youtu.be/rDbkDWsyguU?t=50
In my opinion is Mei not a reliable counter to mobility and is she better fit for stalling and separating the enemy team.
The buff I would love to see are ones that make her less a point staller and more like a counter to mobility. I would also like to see her ultimate in a better state.
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I was about to post it now.
BTW sorry if i’m not very active in the thread, i needed a pause from the forum and i’ve got also to study for school. I’m very glad overall to see the discussion is still active
Well…when some heros are easy to get value from and others are extremely difficult, doesn’t that emphasize the imbalance we criticize?
But so is the opponents’ ability to counter it going to be poor.
I’ve told you numerous times - when you look at lower ranked Meis you also have to look at lower ranked opponents. Otherwise it’s gonna be an unfair comparison/matchup.
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No it doesn’t. Genji is difficult to get value from and he’s one of the strongest heroes right now. Difficulty has nothing to do with balance. If Mei is not balanced, it isn’t because of her difficulty.
If you throw your ultimate in an open area, it doesn’t take a high skilled player to walk out of the way, the ultimate by nature is easier to avoid than to use so at lower ranks, the ultimate isn’t going to be in favour of the user. As you go up the ranks, the user is going to be favoured in getting value from the ultimate.
You can’t be serious.
He’s not that difficult - especially not compared against Mei - to get value from.
If you throw your ultimate anywhere it doesn’t take a high skilled player to walk out of the way. However bad players are gonna realize the ult later and aren’t gonna be prepared for it.
Why though?
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In the video, Chro suggested having the wall cooldown be reduced to 5s and begin from the moment you break the wall. This is essentially the same remaining time as when her wall breaks after 4.5s on the current patch (5.5s remaining). It would do wonders for her viability, given that her walls are her best ability. Having it available more frequently would be huge.
I would be interested in testing a shorter cryo with faster healing and a reduced cooldown (and pretty please some ammo regeneration too), but it would need some careful balancing.
For comparison, Hog’s selfheal heals 300hp (half of his max hp), grants 50% damage reduction, allows movement and has an 8s cooldown. Cryo, on the other hand, heals for 150hp (over half of her max hp), grants total invulnerability at the expense of mobility and has a 12s cooldown.
Some things to consider with changing cryo:
- Having cryo come up more frequently could be too much sustain and make Mei OP
- Shortening the length of cryo reduces her stall potential, which is admittedly cheesy but is also the only mainstream playtime she gets, sadly. If the change isn’t good enough, it could actually tank her playtime even more.
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So that’s why he’s got a really low winrate at ranks Gold and below…
It doesn’t matter how good a player is, if you are being frozen by left click at the same time and are walled off, you aren’t going to escape the ultimate. If you have cooldowns as a Winston and are in the middle of the ultimate, you aren’t going to escape. Freezing someone whilst ulting speeds up the freeze rate significantly.
Because any rank can escape the ultimate if you use it poorly or in a mediocre way. You have to use the ultimate well to get value from it (1-2 kills) which takes a reasonable amount of skill.
We don’t actually need the ammo regen buff now because of the extra 2 shots.
Mei shouldn’t be picked for stalling, it’s not enjoyable on the attacker’s end. It doesn’t matter if her pick rate dropped to 0.10% if it meant that she wasn’t as good at stalling anymore. I’d be fine with that.
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NRIP my computer, the power source is broken and I’ll have to buy a new one. In the meantime, I’m still watching this post using my phone and computers in college. Can’t do detailed writing though.
Back to Mei for now. Continuing the thoughts of Mei being this “burst resisting” hero. Do you guys think cryo could work when its timing are halved? Something like this
- Duration reduced to 2s
- Cooldown reduced to 6s
The following are optional changes that emphasizes Mei as a brawling DPS
- Healing increased to 50/s
- Reload ammo at 50/s
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The cooldown reduction shouldn’t be major if any and there shouldn’t be any ammo restoration effect now that the ammo has been buffed. If she got a cooldown reduction it would be nice if they made the cooldown start when you use the ability rather than after it.
Here to support my beloved Mei mains! ![:heart:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/heart.png?v=5" ":heart:")
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- Where did you get that data from?
- According to overbuff dot com/heroes Genji has an overall winrate of 50% while Mei has 48.9%.
According to masteroverwatch dot com/heroes/pc/global/mode/ranked Genji has an overall winrate of 50% while Mei has 47.7%
If you want to use winrate as a measurement of viability, Mei clearly has the lower hand here. By the way - did you know Symmetra has nearly 60% winrate? Nobody would consider her A-tier or even one of the more viable heros in the game.
I don’t think winrate is something we can use to prove/disprove viability.
Sorry to say that again, but this is an unfair comparison/matchup.
Good players will have superior positioning, ult economy, damage output, counterability, teamwork and awareness.
That means good players will
- less frequently be in a position where they can be trapped by the ult, a wall AND your left click
- have more ults and overall effective damage that can hinder Mei at pulling this trap off (or just kill her before the ult effects even started)
- more often just counter/eat the ult itself in the first place
- have more teammates that help them survive the ult
- used their escape ability before the effect of the ult even applied, so they are out of range before her left click or the ult can do anything of use
Taking this as an example, the higher you go up the ranks, the more unlikely a Winston is gonna be out of position with his abilities on CD. Even dropping his shield can save him because Mei would first have to destroy the shield or walk past it. She can’t left click to speed up the freeze through a shield, either. And teammates (e.g. Zarya or Zenyatta) are gonna save their Winston teammates more often from within a blizzard IF he is trapped in the first place.
Remember - you said at higher ranks if you die it’s mostly because of a misplay. If you wanna apply that to Mei, you also gotta apply it to her Winston opponent who is not just gonna invite Mei to freeze-trap him for free…
How does this imply that it’s not still fairly easy to escape for higher ranks if used in a better than mediocre way?
The more you go up in rank, the better Mei is gonna become at positioning and timing her ult. Yes, I agree to that. However, at the same time her opponents are gonna become better at positioning themselves and managing their cooldowns to counter Mei’s ult positioning and timing.
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I know your profile says you’ve played Mei for over 70 hours, but with some of these ridiculous responses, especially this one, I have to wonder if you’ve ever played Mei at all.
We don’t need ammo regen in cryo now because we have a tiny ammo buff?
Ammo regening in cryo is completely different to having 2 extra icicles. The icicle cost reduction to 20 ammo lessens the frequency you find yourself out of ammo to shoot an icicle after using your primary fire, it does very little to help sustainability in long encounters and group fights.
Ammo regenerating in cryo would give Mei much needed sustain, and wouldn’t leave her helpless after the cryo ends, which 2 extra icicles currently doesn’t address.
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They need to rework Mei, her freeze ray is useful but if you make it freeze faster then its overwhelming, if you make it last longer its just more frustrating. They should just do away with the slow/freeze and give her a root. Something she just shoots at a target or the ground and it roots them to that spot basically think of it as being a JR trap. Then switch her ult into a giant root the size of her current ult, just like a near instant thing that just locks everyone in place for 1-2 seconds. Alternatively just swap out one of them for the root.