This buff def helps in certain situations A LOT more. She still needs some small tweaks but this is a good start.
"Endothermic Blaster
Now pierces through enemies
Developer Comments: This change helps Mei combat multiple targets that are clumped up and also makes it easier to keep her freezing a specific target if another enemy gets in the way. In addition, this change helps her ultimate more consistently be able to freeze more targets, especially if they are near each other. Note: While her shots now pierce enemies, they still do not pierce barriers such as Reinhardt’s shield."
Any idea what the bold means? Do they mean she can now potential freeze more people faster if they happen to be close because of the buff or something else?
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You can stack the freezing of her primary fire and ultimate.
Before could you only speed up the freezing of 1 enemy at a time who was in her in ultimate, but now you can do more at the same time.
It’s a pretty nice buff if you’d ask me.
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After some more theory crafting, I’ve found that this new buff improves Mei’s self-synergy by a lot. Previously I’ve said that her kit feels disjointed, where different aspects of her kit does not work well together. Piercing shot emphasize her AoE capabilities and helps to clarify her abilities.
Her gun’s firing modes are now more defined. Frost beam is better against grouped enemies and close areas, and icicles are better at 1v1 and longer ranges.
Her wall is now less awkward. Previously splitting off more than one enemy is not really useful as she can’t contribute much. It is now a decision for Mei to isolate one or multiple enemies to control the fight better.
Blizzard was an AoE ultimate that was usually only effective enough on one enemies. With the new frost beam she can actually use it as an AoE when executed correctly
Cryo freeze…good 'o cryo freeze is still awkward…
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I hate to bug, but could you maybe add my idea to the icewall list? If you think it’s a good idea, that is.
Namely; Mei’s team can see the silhouettes of enemies through the icewall (with fade-off based on the target’s distance away from the viewer)
This is different from ‘transparent icewall’ as the devs have more control over what information is relayed to the team through the wall, assuming the engine can handle it.
Also, it may be worth having ‘show icewall blueprint’ as just being when fire1 is held while the ability is active, reducing the visual clutter, avoiding latency issues and ensuring the position the team see is the final position of the wall.
(link to suggestion thread: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/dont-buff-mei-buff-her-teammates/12197, I also put this up on reddit and it got quite a lot of traction; https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/86ozf8/a_2_step_teambuff_for_mei/)
Off the topic of the new buff a bit here. I was trying to work out a DPS-based Frost Mei-ge lately, but decided to give up at last as I’m not really satisfied with the results. However, I’ve got a new cryo freeze concept from the project and it is pretty interesting, so I’ll put it up here and see what you guys think of.
Cryo Freeze
- Duration reduced from 4s to 2s
- Cooldown reduced from 12s to 8s, will only start after the ability ends
- Healing rate reduced from 37.5/s to 25/s
- An extra effect will be applied depending on when the ability finishes
- If the ability ends on full duration, Mei will receive 75 extra health
- If the ability ends early, enemies within 7m will receive 50 damage and 33% freeze
I’m not sure will it be too strong number-wise, but the concept is here. The point is to improve cryo freeze’s flexibility and reward good decision making.
Thats what I thought, I was kind of situational as most time people are spread to far out but still nice.
Configuration : Tank though.
This isn’t something that can be fixed unless they completely remove favour the shooter, and I doubt that’s gonna happen.
Also, was mei REALLY ever supposed to counter mobility ? I don’t know where people got that ,even the devs buffed her in fear of a TANK META ,which is what she counters.
The only problem is we don’t know if or when a tank meta will ever happen.
I don’t think Brigitte has that much of an impact that when Season 10 rolls around we will all be playing in a tank/deathball meta.
And if we don’t see a shift from Dive, this buff means almost nothing for Mei’s viability.
It has the same problem as the last 2 “buffs” she got, they are buffing her to be anti-something-that-doesn’t-exist (and might never exist).
The other thing that needs to be made a priority for Blizzard if they are going to continue down this line with Mei is designing new maps to at least have her in mind. We saw Mei played in the OWL a few days ago but only on control centre… which is a single submap as part of a 3-map control point map, and even the casters talked about how we won’t be seeing Mei on either of the other 2 maps because she simply isn’t viable on them.
Mei’s utility is useless on the majority of maps, she is played to some level of effectiveness and viability on about 3 maps in total.
It’s time we #MeikMeiMeita!
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Well, the new meta will be the “Berlin wall meta”!
They got the idea that Mei should counter mobility cause the Devs said they originally made her to be an anti-flanker back when Ana was first released. Why they’re now making her to be an anti-tank I don’t know; though if they want to make her an anti-tank meta character they’re doing it in a really weird way cause in a tank heavy meta there will be A LOT of barriers (Reinhardt, Orisa, Zarya, Winston) which makes her recent buff of piercing heroes but not barriers almost pointless/useless
Don’t really agree on “heavy tank means lots of barriers” here. Winston and Orisa don’t really provide enough close range protection and damage in a triple / quad tank comp, thus usually it will be Rein+other off tanks, where Mei is excellent against. However, I do agree Mei will struggle a bit if the enemy really run a double barrier comp, but the rest of the team should be good enough to deal with it
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Wrong. Check out the developer video where they explain the principles of latency and why they use favor the shooter.
They said it feels bad if your crosshair lines up with an opponent and you don’t get the kill and that’s why they favor the shooter, except there is an ability involved that can mitigate the damage such as Reaper’s wraithform.
So they do have an exception to the rule. But either it doesn’t work or they deemed it fair that it doesn’t apply to Mei’s cryo.
Which is both like a kick in the teeth of defensive abilities, because it renders them a pure preemtive, guessing-based, easily baitable ability.
2 Likes
I have been testing the Cry-Freeze bug for nearly 30 minutes on PTR and I haven’t got the bug once.
There are some instances where I used my Cryo-Freeze, went to third person, got hooked and heard the sound of Cryo-Freeze cancelling, but the ability didn’t went on cooldown.
Here is an example of this:
https://streamable.com/rjriv
I had this a few time during my testing.
My LATENCY (used to be called PING) is 45 ms.
I’m still not sure if the bug is fixed or not, but I will test it again later when I have some free time,
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Not sure if a test against AI is a good/valid testing environment as we don’t know if they even apply favor the shooter for the AI (as it’s meant to be a QoL/feel-good feature for human players) and as the additional latency on the attacker’s side is zero unlike in a real “peer to peer” situation where both pings are a crucial factor.
This one is recorded on the previous version of PTR (from when Lunar event was on PTR) :
https://streamable.com/3yxc9
The bug clearly works with AI, but I don’t seem to be able to get this bug on the current PTR.
I will try again tomorrow.
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I guess then this is a good sign =)
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I’m not sure if it’s fixed though.
Just because I wasn’t able to get it in those 30 minutes, doesn’t mean it is fixed. I could either be unlucky and not encounter it.
This is why I want to test it again tomorrow.
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As promised have I done some more testing.
(For over a half hour.)
And nothing.
I haven’t encountered a single time where I got hooked out of Cryo-Freeze and put on cooldown. Not even on the live versions.
I was always able to easily get this bug in a custom game, but now I can’t. And I have been trying for over a half hour to get this bug.
It feels like the Cryo-Freeze works faster and that it get it refunded if you do get pulled out of Cryo-Freeze.
Has anyone else encountered this bug on the current live version?
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Thanks for running the tests =D
Honestly, so excited for the PTR to go live. A nice buff and a significant bug fix by the look of it. Also, the Moira orbs going through wall has been patched (documented in the patch notes). So the next update will be very good for Mei players!
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