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).
2 Likes
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:
Primary Fire
- Focus on tanks and heroes with no mobility first. Don't be afraid to walk through shields to freeze the enemy.
- Use her primary fire during her ult to stack her freezing. They will freeze faster.
Secondary fire
- Spam it. Use this as a primary fire instead of a secondary fire.
- Target enemies close to mid range. Her icicles has some serious falloff damage.
- Try headshotting a Tracer with it instead of trying to freeze her. It can insta kill Tracer.
Ice Wall
- Place it under Junkrat's trap to free yourself or teammates from it.
- Use it to seperate enemy teams. Especially the front line like tanks.
- The Ice-Wall can be used to freeze turrets immediately if it is place under or next to it.
- The Ice Wall is great to lift enemies up behind a shield.
- Use it in Zarya's Graviton Surge to gain better mobility and to evade enemy's attack better.
Cryo-Freeze
- Cryo-Freeze can be used to protect teammates from LoS attacks like Dva's ultimate.
- Use her Cryo-Freeze to protect a sleeping teammate by using it on top of them.
- Cancel her Cryo-Freeze before it is canceled by itself to throw enemies a bit off.
Ultimate
- Use it to scare enemies away from an area like chokepoints and checkpoints.
- Don't use it close to enemies with stun abilities. Your ultimate wil get canceled if you get stunned even if you already threw it.
- It's not a bad idea to save it for the overtime or last push.
Stalling
- Use her abilities to stall points. (Cryo-Freeze > Corner yourself with a wall > Try to outlive the cooldown of your Cryo-Freeze once your wall has been broken > repeat.)
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?
5 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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.
1 Like
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
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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.
1 Like
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:
- Cast time
- Projectile nature
- Falloff
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
1 Like
she needs her massive bugs fixed then we can call her balanced, right now her ult is a messy disaster and cryo freeze barely save you from attacks like supposed it was designed.
5 Likes
Compared to her abilities I think her gun is actually more fine, well at least it is a gun. After we have this much discussion I kinda think the main problem is that Mei’s ability does not directly contribute during a fight.
Yes I think here we all agree Mei’s abilities are powerful and I think we know how to utilize them, but she really doesn’t bring anything during a fight beside her gun(that’s why I think it is the “more fine” aspect). As she affects a fight in such an indirect way, it is very situational despite being very strong. It could be balanced in terms of power, but will still be either underwhelming for Mei if it doesn’t work, or extremely annoying for the opponent if it worked.
I do think reworking / replacing Mei’s abilities into a more direct form would be the ultimate answer in the long run. The so-call new abilities should still have similar effects though, i.e. very good area control for E, and defensive/sustain for Shift.
As for what exactly can it be I don’t really have a clear idea right now, but I guess I will try if possible :\
2 Likes
I’m not so sure I agree. The meta is always evolving… with new heroes, who knows what will synergize with Mei in the future.
1 Like
I’m honestly worried it’ll go the other way with all these people asking for a hero that hard counters C/C. Any hero that does that in addition to Zarya will probably kill Mei.
2 Likes
Same, seems like complains about this new meta because they’re new to this playstyle. But at least people seems to dislike more to face Brigitte rather than Mei.
Just got a brief idea of what I mean by “replacing ice wall with some other direct defensive area control”, so have a look :
E Ability - Glacial Shatter
Mei builds a fragile pillar of ice, which shatters after a short period of time or when it receives too much damage. Upon shattering, nearby enemies will be damaged by the debris, and depending on their proximity, will also be rooted or slowed for a short period. Mei can also prematurely destroy the pillar, but its damage and debuff duration will reduce proportionally.
Cooldown : 7s
Ice Pillar Health : 250
Duration : 2s
Shatter Damage : 60 / Damage Range : 5m
Slow Power : 50% / Duration : 1.5s / Slow Range : 5m
Root Duration : 1.5s / Root Range : 3m
*Enemies affected by Glacial Shatter will receive 50% freeze stack
*Uses the current targeting scheme, but Mei’s team can see the targeted location
1 Like
I rather keep the Ice-Wall. Ice-Wall is her strongest ability because it allows Mei to reach higher grounds, seperate enemy team, block damage and break LoS.
I’m certain that Mei’s pickrate will drop massively if her Ice-Wall is gone, even if it is replaced by a pillar that can slow and damage enemies, because you’d still be better of with a full damage dealer.
2 Likes
When designing Glacial Shatter I have the current Ice Wall in mind, such that it still possess some of the setup and out-of-combat potential of Ice Wall (Technically it is the same ability but only one pillar is built instead of five). It can boost Mei and her team even more flexibly with the shorter cooldown, it separates the enemy team at the choke(AoE Root is no joke, though its radius could be increased) while also provides versatile area denial, and it can still break LoS to a lesser extent
Anyways, this is just an idea out there, probably there are other solutions. The point here is still to change her abilities into combat related ones. Currently her abilities are useful outside of combat, that’s why she is weak during a fight.
Moreover, replacing Ice Wall with a weaker, but more versatile and direct ability allows Mei to have an improved gun and ultimate, which she could serve better as a defensive control DPS (and there should also be cryo changes with respect to this). Even this is not the best solution I still think Ice Wall should change to something that is more versatile.