Yeah the new buffs have been pretty good. But I’d also like some small buffs and QoL changes as well.
One really good one I saw was being able to see a see through model of the ice wall before you place it to make placing it at further distances easier. Also letting teammates see through the wall once placed would be cool too.
From the book Art of Overwatch:
I don’t think she needs a rework, the main issues for Mei right now are her fall off damage on her right click limiting her range and the heigh of her Ice Wall limiting her mobility. If you remove her fall off damage and increase the height so that she can pressure the enemy across the map and scale the high ground of Numbani first then she’d be a fairly playable hero as a more utilitarian off tank character.
She’s really not a hard character to fix, people just seem to be confused about what needs fixing. It’s also entirely possible that there’s just no place in the game for more utility leaning “DPS” characters in Overwatch, she kind of has the same problem as Sombra in the sense that her utility just isn’t worth her loss of DPS. I still think the kit is incredibly strong, it’s just handicapped in range and mobility for no really good reason.
I agree that Mei doesn’t need a rework.
About her fall-off damage. They can’t remove it. The reason why she has fall-off damage is because she could snipe with it during the beta. She became a better McCree than McCree thanks to her wall and self healing. Heck, she was even called MeiCree. So Blizzard nerfed her secondary fire by adding fall-off damage and buffed her primary in the same beta patch.
Her wall is an odd one. It can be used to protect yourself, seperate enemies and to reach higher places. I don’t think the height of it needs to improve. It’s a great ability but there should be at least some counterplay to it to make it fair for the enemies.
These are the bugs I want to see fixed.
I think her being a hybrid character is the reason why she isn’t viable.
As a hybrid defense-tank character do I think that Mei will never be on par with DPS’ers and tanks. Compared to DPS’ers lacks Mei range, damage and mobility and compared to tanks lacks Mei health. I think this is the reason she will never be viable.
I’ve never been convinced by the MeiCree argument and think it was a decision that was made before the game was understood, even if Mei is a better “sniper” than McCree at long range she’s still projectile based with a 1.2 second rate of fire compared to McCree’s being hitscan based with .5 second rate of fire per shot. Removing the fall off damage significantly increases her playability and her skill ceiling, and increasing the height of the wall gives her more map synergy. I fail to see how Ice Wall would be OP by increasing it’s height, compare Ice Wall to Concussion Mine which is mobility, knockback and a finisher that comes in 2x and Ice Wall looks practically sedate. If Mei’s core problems are a lack of range and mobility, then those are exactly the problems that need to be solved within reason.
Ice Block and Blizzard aren’t bugged, Ice Block has a low net code priority and Blizzard functions exactly the same as Pulse Bomb does. QOL changes aren’t going to make the character anymore viable, she needs more practical usage outside of a choke.
Well, it is a bug.
Even man in charge of balance has acknowledged it:
Mei could snipe Widowmaker’s, but if Mei was losing the battle, then she could spawn a wall to hide behind it. McCree had to run/roll away.
Mei could heal herself and be invulnerable. McCree not.
I’m not certain but I believe they also increased the cast time with the same patch that gave her falloff damage in the beta.
But I agree with you on this one:
She’s a hero all about crowd control. Because of this is she best used in close to midrange battles, but even then are there heroes who can deal more damage and are mobile than Mei in the same range. Junkrat being one of them.
What’s also interested is that they have tried giving Mei mobility but eventually decided to make her a counter to it:
My reply to all that is Mei is pretty good at what she wants them to do right now.
My main problems for her are that her ultimate needs tweaking and the bugs.
Also there are so many QoL things they could do for Mei players that would make her really stand out.
Things like hud info on which direction you have your wall set on. Maybe allowing you to aim at things other than the ground/walls to place walls. Ceilings or even enemies (aim at enemy and fire, wall is placed behind them). Stuff like that. Very minor I know but in the long run they would all add up.
My contribution:
h ttps://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/mei-abilities-strengths-weaknesses-comparison-snowflake/93389
I think they could still achieve something like the ice-skating, but not through her primary fire. For example, giving Mei a speed boost when in the AOE of her ult. At least then it’s only for the ult. However, I’m not sure if that’s what she needs, she probably needs a little more consistent DPS. Another possible avenue is giving her a little more spread on her primary to make freezing multiple people easier, although that would lower her skill floor, so not sure how I feel about that, it’s good she requires some skill (I’m just making suggestions that might be worth discussing).
Well, what could i write to update the main thread? Are there new issues or is there anything new to talk about?
How about posting tips and tricks of how to play Mei?
You could post them in hidden text.
Example:
Maybe tips on how to deal with the current meta?
Is it cool if I try to make a more cleaner version of the first post?
Going back the the drawing board, I do think Mei’s current kit is what’s holding her back. By this I don’t mean they are not good, in fact they are very powerful abilities. However, they are really inflexible in nature, and don’t really help Mei to contribute during the fight. Reworking them at some point should be considered to improve Mei’s state in the game, which focuses her power on PvP aspects(e.g. provide control impact actively). This would be a more long term approach to improve the experience for Mei, her team, and her opponents.
Wow, never knew of this function. I will update the thread tomorrow to make it cleaner
Ah that’s unfortunate. Maybe it’s a limitation they can find a work around for later. Or instead of being see through, perhaps giving it a sort of limited wall hack to show enemy silhouettes on the other side since we know they can do that.
Yep. That has been suggested. Being able to have enemies marked like wallhack when they have line of sight to the iceblock would be great. Although it you think about it, the code that is needed to make it happen would have to be pretty sophisticated.
Wallhack lets you see every enemy, anywhere on the map. Hanzo’s sonic arrow lets you see any enemy within a certain range, regardless of where they are located. AKA they can’t hide behind a car or a wall if they are in within the range of the ability.
I don’t think they would like something like that for Mei’s icewall. There would have to be limits and ranges and a whole host of weird checks to get it to work right.
I’m not saying that anyone is suggesting Mei have a “icewall hack” but if you think about it that is sort of what would need to happen. One way to control it is to limit its range, but then what is the point if it only shows you an enemy a few feet behind it? It might be useful though. I’d love to see them give it a chance if they felt they could balance it properly.
Well, the main thread now should feel a lot less chaotic. Days by days i will update it, also feel free to share issues you found and proposals you think that will help without breaking her
Since they can’t seem to fix the cryo bug, I was thinking of “workarounds”. I couldn’t come up with one really… I want it fixed! I did have one idea and I wanted to ask what people thought about the idea of Mei having a “save” when she takes a killing blow.
“Upon death, Mei enters cryofreeze and heals back normal amount of health.”
So its an “auto-cryofreeze”. This would give Mei a kind of “double death” like D.Va. If you cryofreeze is on cooldown though, it wouldn’t save you.
I have my own opinions on this, but just thought I’d share this for fun to see what people think while we keep waiting for the devs to fix her ability.
This is STILL going on? It’s been months if not longer has it not?
And people claim that ‘they’ (You can’t say company name) look at things.
Yes… Still.
Yes but not much active as before. We reached almost our objective: she’s viable but she could offer more IMO.
BTW I feel like the icicle are a bit inconsistent:
They’re affected by 3 disadvantages:
I link here a spreadsheet to compare similar weapons
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SD8blc0ocoEBcidgZWfGOrL-36oioxvcQClVpI1dsD8/edit?usp=sharing
As we can see, Mei’s icicles has 3 penalities compared to other weapons. We can’t remove falloff, because if we do it Mei would be a better McCree or a sniper. So, what is possible? IMO raising the minimum damage, adjusting the falloff range or reducing the cast time