Mei in OW2 is the weakest she's ever been

General Discussion
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EDIT: People saying “I played Mei once or twice and she seemed fine” is NOT an argument. That gives you zero ground to say what’s actually right for the hero.

I’m a Mei main. I have over 1100 hours on the hero, have reached GM with her in multiple seasons, and have played since the OW1 Beta. Here are my thoughts so far on Mei in OW2.

I am bitterly disappointed. It makes ZERO sense to me how freezing was removed from Mei’s primary fire, and yet Sombra is now able to hack while invisible.

Mei’s freeze was removed, which took away half her utility. All she got in return was a tiny damage buff to her primary fire. What’s more, the range of her ice wall was nerfed. But these nerfs were announced ages ago, and they’re only half the story.

Her ultimate has been nerfed by both direct and indirect factors. It doesn’t stack with her primary fire any more. Everyone now moves faster, so it’s easier to escape without abilities. There are more cleanse abilities in the game now. Zarya can use both bubbles on herself, or on someone else. Kiriko has her AoE cleanse ability. Additionally, since Mei’s primary fire no longer freezes, you can’t pull off the 10 second freeze with her ult any more.

Meanwhile, heroes like Sombra and Bastion have received massive buffs, and Sojourn is extremely powerful from day 1. The power creeper is real, and Mei simply can’t compete, completely left in the dust. Her damage is lackluster, and her kit no longer makes sense without her CC. What even is the point of her primary fire right now?

Moreover, Overwatch 2 team comps are much less anchored around your tanks, which is another indirect nerf to Mei, since she was always a tank-busting DPS primarily used in deathball comps, and deathball basically doesn’t exist any more in the new 5v5 mode. These nerfs were made without any actual understanding of the hero.

She still has her moments on maps like Lijiang control centre, but the overwhelming majority of the time, she is one of, if not the worst DPS in the game. She’s more niche than she ever was, and is the weakest she’s ever been.

Her ice wall is extremely buggy, for example if you ice wall underneath yourself, 9 times out of 10 it will push you to the side instead of pushing you up like it’s supposed to. I expect this will eventually be fixed, however it was a bug that was reported a lot in the beta, and as of now, still exists.

Blizzard basically never reverts changes, even when a full revert is the correct choice, so Mei is gonna need so much more than just a marginal buff to her primary fire to stay somewhat competitive in OW2. But for now, she’s been completely shafted. OW2 Mei is a shadow of her former self.

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I agree. With their change to lower CC, Mei got shafted hard since her entire thing WAS CC.

They shouldve given her better tools to compete against high mobility heroes.

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She is in need of a redesign tbh, her kit while still weak before was built around CC and area denial.

With the new gameplay flow in OW2, and the removal of most CC she can not fulfil her role as a DPS, at this point she is a tank… with a 1/4 of the survivability, and 2/3 the damage.

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Yeah, but she’s still the best looking female hero in the game so at least they did not nerf that.

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She def needs a redesign. She has been the weakest point in any team (mine or opponent) in every game I’ve seen her.

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She still has CC, she just doesnt freeze any more. I like her more this way, i can play her and not feel like im cheating.

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Her Ult got overnerfed imo.

Ice Wall is super buggy and it’s very hard to boost yourself up without being prop bounced off it.

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Mei mein here. I 100% agree, I have 154 hours played on this hero alone and this is the last thing that Mei needed. Mei’s weapon doesn’t do enough damage to warrant removing her ability to freeze, and the changes do not justify that because when you’re fighting a Genji face to face he’s just simply gonna do more damage than you and kill you. That’s the case with almost every hero. Plus, if things go south, they have a mobility ability to escape. In point blank range, aim is almost not a factor to consider, just damage, and Mei doesn’t dish enough of it.

Hero mobility was always the thing that kept Mei in check, because her freeze is not like every other CC in the game. It needed TIME to take effect. Therefore, freezing wasn’t always the best option because you have to consider a hero’s mobility above all else. I would never attempt to freeze Tracer (a really mobile hero) for example, because an icicle headshot is the best way to take care of her. And if we are to consider every hero, almost all of them have a way to escape Mei’s freeze ray. Really, my first attempt at the freeze ray was almost always used to force a dash, a shield, or an immunity.

Mei’s freeze should’ve just stayed, there were plenty of ways to escape it and blizzard should have never changed this about her.

So I propose one these solutions:

  • Make her a Tank (her toolkit especially in OW2 makes her more of a tank than a dps)
  • Change the role queue to 1 healer, 1 tank, and 3 dps (Mei’s damage is not enough to fill the damage slot, she works better in a team if there are 2 other damage dealers).
  • Revert Mei to the way she used to be (She dealt enough focused damage to make her a threat, and now she’s in a state where so many others are just better options).

Anyway, Mei was the most fun hero for me, they first ruined her with role queue, and now they completely killed her with this change. I’m done with this game fr.

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Gonna have to disagree with the 1 healer 3 DPS role queue.

I’ve also been against the whole “make Mei a tank” thing tbh, and OW2 only allowing 1 tank has made me even more against this. Mei CAN work as a DPS, it’s just that Blizzard probably isn’t willing to give her the attention she needs right now.

Mei wasn’t ruined by role queue either, quite the opposite actually. There was a Mei McCree meta for quite a while because with the double shield nerfs, people were playing deathball comps again. She also had some utility during double shield meta since ice wall can block LOS, which allowed you to push a bit while the enemy is shooting through their barriers.

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I’ve main Mei for 6 years, I can agree on many aspects of your post

BUT

Mei is still a great damage dealer, why? Because the hitbox of her icicle is bigger than average, with less shields, she is really deadly and with her 250hp, can survive quite the poking on other team.

First problem is with her walls, the pillars get destroyed really easily, have a high cooldown, it could be fixed by giving her control on each individual pillars (like tracer blinks, and give her 5 pillars instead of 4)

Second, her cryofreeze is fine, id keep it as is, or giving mei the possibility to keep popping walls when in cryo (really not necessary but enabling some good escape mechanics)

Third, her ultimate SHOULD NOT BE A SPHERE, TOO EASY TO DODGE, with the added mobility in the game, this is useless haha, instead, give her the same volume availability and let the player draw the shape to be frozen, AND let the primary fire stack with ult freeze only during that period

Last, her primary has it uses, useful when people are stacked or when dva matrix or genji deflect, its even more potent than in ow1, so id keep it as is (high damage, no cc)

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Give Mei’s freeze the ability to slow attack speed. Slowing movement speed isn’t as impactful if everyone is spread out already. She should be a deadly 1v1 hero.

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Mei right now feels like a worse Reaper and you know that means a lot considering how viable reaper is right now.

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She is very strong on new maps, because the value of limited space. Existing maps, not so much.

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She may be weak . .
But she is still the Thiccest hero.

That’s gotta count for something.

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Give her one of the two passives,

  • ICE SKATE- This allows Mei to freeze the floor to gain a speed boost

    • or

  • FROSTBITE- The enemy that Mei is freezing will receive frost burn (DoT) after taking damage from Mei for 0.5-1 second or something along those lines.
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    I used to love playing her and also Brigette. With them losing cc, won’t bother touching them lol

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    I’ve been in a ton of mei matches and both my ally mei and enemy mei were doing pretty good damage and preventing a ton of stuff with their walls. And when I played mei myself she seemed fine.

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    That’s cause she is fine, lol. Folks just don’t like change. If she’s in the middle of the team she’s pretty much free dps with her primary and can get great picks with her secondary. Wall is good especially due to only having 1 tank even with the nerfed health. Plus slow on top of all that… Folks are crazy.

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    I wouldn’t say they have ruined Mei to the same extent as they ruined Symmetra when they moved her to damage, but Mei is certainly alot less fun to play.

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    I would honestly like to see her equip a mech like dva to make her hit box bigger, given more hp, and made into a tank.

    Then maybe take out her snipe and do something like and ice shield in front of her similar to reinhart.

    Nerf her primary if needed but no stun back.

    1 Like