Mei Is Useless. Please Look At Her

General Discussion
21

It’s not intended to be a nerf (though it technically is a very slight one).

It’s a change to make mechanics consistent in the way they operate. On live right now, if a Tracer or Sombra is caught in Gravitic Flux, they can’t Blink or Translocate out of it. However Mei and Reaper can just use press Shift and they escape it immediately. That’s unintuitive, a new player can’t know how an ability will interact with Flux until he experiences each and every interaction personally. That’s not good game design.

So that’s why this is changing in the beta. They’re making rules for escape abilities consistent so if a new hero gets released (or you’re a new player that doesn’t know how existing heroes work), you can always know what’s going to happen when Gravitic Flux hits the hero in question. Same applies to Reaper and Moira now being unable to fade out of Graviton Surge and a few other abilities that were changed to make them consistent with the rest of the field.

22

NGL, I actually think Mei is an extremely strong pick in the Beta. She’s been played a lot more, and I’m seeing her dominate matches.

-Tight corridors on the new map really favor her, since her gun is AOE spread and her wall can block them off 100%
-The movespeed passive means she can chase tanks/supports way easier while spraying them. It’s a huge buff to her specifically because she can shoot while moving without really any penelty.
-Her wall is so much harder to kill now that everyone is split up and there’s less people. Trapping someone with wall is a HUGE play that no other DPS can really do.
-Her ult is, bar none, one of the most powerful DPS ults right now because she’s the only non-tank that gets CC on an ult. She can combo it with tank ults to team wipe like mad.
-She can still shoot people to speed up the freeze timer on her ult, and with less CC in the game, having her ult is a huge leg up.
-Her primary projectile is AOE damage and extremely reliable to hit, which makes her a fabulous counter to a lot of the really fast flankers.
-Her primary fire is a beam, which is actually really good now that 3/9 of the tanks have some form of defense-matrix ability. She can shoot straight through it, and she’s one of the only characters that can.
-Having 250 HP and a self-heal self-defense ability makes her a lot bulkier than most DPS, and with less people, it’s harder to focus her down.

Like, I thought she was going to be absolute garbage, but playing with/against her, she’s a SUPER good pick right now.

23

Mei on the fire engine map (I think NY) is so strong to me bcs of her wall + she spawn camped me twice :sob: but it actually got us the cap on the point as she was busy spawn camping a Mercy while my amazing Moira friend was still with our team making up for me dead weight lmao.

Dunno about 2nd point though onwards, but 1st point she really strong bcs like all the areas u can go is a mei wall width my team be getting owned until she spawn camped me lmao

But outside of that map, I’ve not seen Mei as “scary” tbh, but I have been playing Moira the other times I was against a mei, so yeah.

24

Mei is actually the best character in the game according to ‘pros’:

Btw she was nerfed exactly the same week this video was posted.

25

No, she isn’t lol. There is objective proof above that she isn’t fine.

The whole point of this post is to help them with addressing her.

I decided to try and be the voice for all other Mei players. We aren’t represented ever, there aren’t enough of us to have players go into extensive detail as to the issues with her and many of us think that the effort of making a post like this isn’t worth doing because we will just be ignored like always. I mean I literally got downvoted on the reddit for posting the wall throwing you off the top of it bug.
But I also love Mei so much that I wanted to try to make a difference for her. Have a place all of us can collectively gather to give extensive feedback for Blizzard so we can have our hero A: Not be annoying to play against and B: Not be terrible.
If Mei is unplayable like this come launch, I will be quitting OW2 and if that happens I want to know I did everything in my power to try and prevent that from occurring. Rather than quit knowing I didn’t do anything to try and stop it.

It’s amazing how I knew people like you would come into this not having read anything, cntrl F’d to find something along the line of freeze is removed and try and make a terrible take that was already made in the post only that had context and explanations of how to deal with it all while yours added nothing of value to the conversation.

Read the whole part and you’ll get the point…

She’s played more because she has changes. People try to play her, realize she sucks and then swaps to another hero.

Which new map are we talking about? Circuit royal very much doesn’t have tight corridoors and it mostly open. Midtown has the beginning area but outside of that it’s all open from there making her pretty useless and the two push maps are just purely open in all the major positions. Then the flanking positions don’t matter because the heroes flanking have the movement tech to get away from being walled off. Also since wall HP has been nerfed to 250hp, every hero that isn’t support can just instantly break a pillar and no longer be walled off as explained.

Yes she can, but it doesn’t change the fact that freeze does so little damage that you’re never realistically ever going to be killing a tank on your own combined with their drastically increased health pool and supports can out heal it. You’re having to left click enemies for upwards of 6 seconds in alot of cases in a game where heroes like sojourn, soldier, genji exist who can burst damage 200hp in under a second. Then heroes like Sym are far better with their left click as explained already so there is 0 reason to ever use her for the left click.

It’s has it’s HP drastically reduced to the point you don’t need the team to destroy a pillar.

LOL. Guess we are just going to ignore all the passive nerfs it has had then which again, I extensively explained. It’s ONLY good when combo’d with other ultimates which is something other DPS with better base kits don’t need to worry about.

Okay so you just didn’t read my post at all. Thanks for replying and wasting my time reading to this point. If you aren’t going to bother reading a post, don’t bother replying.

4 Likes
26

As one of 5 Mei players in the world, it’s crazy that they’ve nerfed her TWICE. It’s not a bug that you fall off the wall, they purposely got rid of the top so that you can’t boost yourself up anymore. I don’t mind losing the freeze as long as I can keep the wall - but they should make her ice picks more comparable to Hanzo’s arrows at that point.

2 Likes
27

While I agree buffs could totally be put in place here, I personally really enjoy playing her in the beta simply because Shields are minimal right now. I’ve always been a bigger fan of hitting meis icicles rather than going for freeze kills. Even so, the freezes 50% slow is still really good at making it easy for your team to kill flanking dps without a huge burst movement option like genji and tracer, who Mei has some trouble killing in OW1 anyway.

28

I use the top of the wall very often in my games in both OW1 and 2. I’ve never, ever once fallen off of it in that fashion. Idk what’s really going on there.

29

I love how this is the forum’s reaction to everything. “YOU DIDN’T READ MY POST!!!”

Mei can still shoot people to make them freeze faster in the ult. You have other issues with the ult, but your post legitimately includes a video that demonstrates this and you agree it’s still a thing.

How on earth does me disagreeing with you by citing something that you, yourself, acknowledge, mean I didn’t read your post?

I read the entire wall of text. I disagreed with most of it. You severely underestimate the value of several things that mei brings to the table, including consistent slows, AOE, easy to land weapon, extremely good self-sustain (she’s one of exactly 2 dps that actually can heal themselves on an CD), an area-denial ult that is a literal death sentence to anyone without mobility and further allows for combos and setups, and at least 1-2 seconds of isolating someone from their team with a wall.

Grow up, and stop clinging to “You’re wrong because I have a wall of text!” People can read what you said and still disagree.

30

By making her ice picks comparable to arrow you would combined with wall, self heal and close range weapon make her really overpowered.

31

Amen to that. If the devs managed to make most people go from hating Doom, the one punch hero, to liking his tank rework (I know, dps nerf got many doom mains upset, but still), I think Mei can still make a comeback, somehow.

32

Interestingly, you make similar points which I was also going to bring with the feedback I was planning for another post, but with a different conclusion. Its true, Mei still provides some utility-base value as a dps hero because her kit is designed towards that.

I am sorry that I dont have time to respond to all of your points, just like with OP, but overall I think we just have different views with what these strengths indicate about the character. If I understood correctly, you see the potential that Mei can have with these in the dps role, which is understandable. Personally I just wished she was either taken out of the dps role so she could focus in providing these area control/denial, survivability and protecting her team as a tank better (meaning buffs) without needing to worry to much about popping off (shes taking a dps slot after all) or reworked as Sombra from utiliy base to more dps/fragging. Either way, just making changes so that she could do better either one or the other (certainly not both, which I think it might be a problem balancing her right now).

33

I said this in another topic and I don’t mean to dishearten you people but… when they moved Symmetra to damage completely changing the hero and ruining her for alot of players, I and many others made literally hundreds of topics asking for reverts or general changes, and the devs didn’t reply to a SINGLE one. So don’t waste too much of your time/energy.

34

Her spray should, instead of current freeze, disable mobility actives for a 1-2s duration.

The ‘‘but she is annoying to play against!!1!’’ nonsense should literally not be a balance and design metric in the first place.

Otherwise Widow and Tracer should be instantly removed from the game to keep it fair.

Turns out any and every hero is annoying when they are winning. A hero that isnt annoying to fight against is a hero that isnt have an impact in the game.

5 Likes
35

Mei feels kinda janky right now. I think they need to revamp her toolkit because holding left click isn’t fun on her. Neither is right clicking. She honestly feels like a wet noodle at times. Her ultimate is okay but it’s so easy to get out of it.

She feels like a generic hero. That’s the best way to put it. Her ice wall is her only saving grace but it looks like even that is glitchy and not very useful. I expect to see Mei get some major changes in the next few builds.

36

100% agree. Gotta iron out all the uniqueness and make it so every smooth brain mouth breather can pick it up.

37

I don’t think it is, I haven’t seen anywhere this is an intended change and it glitches you off of it like it did on live a year or so ago when they broke the wall in the exact same fashion.

You are literally repeating stuff I had already put so yes, that is my reaction. I say “hey you can still do this thing” then in an argument trying to prove she is good you say “hey she can still do this thing”. I am very well aware she can still do it, which is exactly why I pointed it out. The fact she can stack her Endo with Blizzard doesn’t offset the fact every DPS hero has a base movement speed buff that lets them walk well away from Blizzard BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN USE ENDO. Or the fact that tanks have had their entire kits buffed to walk out of Blizzard, or cancel Blizzard entirely. Or how everyone is using hyper mobility because of the lack of CC so can use those abilities to escape the radius of Blizzard before the tick even begins.

Something other heroes like Sojourn can do while still having 1 shot capabilities + high mobility while being easier to hit.

Against moving targets, no it’s not and it still doesn’t do enough damage to justify it. Sym is significantly easier to hit targets while doing more damage while having more range.

Something I already said she is great at and one of the only reasons to pick her, but it doesn’t matter when 95% of your uptime you are not getting value.

So Zen and Ana. DVA, Orisa, Rein, Sigma, Winston, Wrecking ball, Zarya, ashe, Bastion (can boop himself with his grenade), Cass, Doom, Echo, Genji, Hanzo, Junk, Mei herself, Phara, Reaper, Soldier, Sojourn, Sombra, Sym, Torb (overload makes you move faster so you can pop it as you hear Mei voiceline and begin walking out of it well in advance), Tracer, Widow, Bap, Brig, Lucio, Mercy and Moira all have consistent ways to escape Blizzard. The whole tank roster even if you catch them off guard, have so much HP and burst healing is so high they will stay alive throughout it anyway. 3 heroes of the whole roster are the only ones that are a “death sentence” for Blizzard. Meanwhile you have an ultimate like Dragon Blade where it’s only counters are other ultimates and they are on the tank roster or support and the 2 support counters are counters to every ultimate in the game.

Again, it’s 250hp pillar. Pretty much every single hero in this game has 250hp burst damage that is under 1-1.5 seconds so wall is only good against completely clueless enemies.

LITERALLY not the point I was making but okay dude.

3 Likes
38

You made some good points. It’s clear that Mei was low on their priority list for the beta, they just removed all her techs and gutted her to appease to some haters, but she was never about dealing some more stupid damage, especially with how her beam works, utility was what made her fun to play, what set her apart from other heroes and what gave the people who mastered the hero some satisfaction. The increase of ammo and damage are just some bandaid “compensations” that don’t offset in any form what they did, while also lowering the skill floor of the hero.

With the way the game’s changing, everyone agrees that she should just be changed to tank. Reduce her damage, give her back what made her fun (and CC wouldn’t stack with other tank!) and increase the time to freeze based on enemy healthpools so she is less annoying against tanks. I hope the devs don’t keep her in this awful state.

2 Likes
39

She literally isn’t. Her beam is 0.2 meters wide, Mei’s is much bigger and much easier to land, particularly since it pierces targets, is wider, and slows.

You are vastly overestimating how easy it is to get out of her ult. Let me throw some math at you.

Mei’s blizzard has an initial slow of 50% that builds an additional 20%, until after 2.5 seconds, they are stunned every tick. If the stun actually procs, it lasts for 1.5 seconds after the ult, resulting in a total of 3.25 seconds of stun if it goes off (which is a lot.)

Every DPS now moves at 6.05 meters per second (up from the 5.5 meters heroes move. As soon as the storm starts, that’s 3.025 meters a second, then down to ~1.8 meters a second. In 2.5 seconds, they can cover a total of around ~5.75 (rounding up) meters. The snowstorm is 10 meters wide, and that’s not factoring in any walls, any attempts to block them from running out, or anything like that.

The statement that every DPS can run out of it with the new passive is factually incorrect. They can only get barely over half of the way out of it before they freeze. Even if they start half of the way from the center, they’ll freeze at the edge.

Them being at -50% movespeed instantly and then -70% 1 second later also means they are a relative sitting duck while they are trying to escape.

For reference, a hero without the DPS speed boost will move 5.225 meters before frozen. You get about .5 of a meter from the boost.

Your statements that any DPS can outrun it are 100% hyperbole. Your statements that mei has no time to endo before shooting them are also total hyperbole.

More than just Ana and Zen can’t get out. Bap also has 0 way of getting out unless it’s very conveniently next to high ground, rein can’t escape it (charge takes too long to activate, he’ll almost always end up frozen mid-charge), Hog can’t escape it, neither can Torb or Bastion (his grenade jump doesn’t even come close to giving him enough velocity to get out.)

Added to that, almost the entire tank cast has a displace of some sort to force people back in. And if thrown in the right direction, even if people get out, you’re forcing them to a route of your choice. You’re also forcing them all to flee and burn their defensive CDs, and you claim the area as your own.

Idk why OW2 suddenly makes the ult worse, since the DPS passive makes hardly any difference in this scenario and they really didn’t add new mobility to existing heroes (Brig, I guess, being the exception).

Name a SINGLE support that does. Nope. Zen’s entire volley only does 240, and that takes 2.5 seconds just to charge. And that’s the most burst a support has.

Tanks can’t do it either. Hog is the only one who can. No other tank has that kind of burst in that low amount of time.

Most DPS can’t even burst 250 hp in 1.5 seconds. Hanzo, Cree, Soldier and Junk are the only ones. Bastion, but he has to go through the wind-up of using bastion mode, which means it takes longer.

And it’s weird to me that you think if you isolate someone with a wall, them turning their backs on the enemy team to shoot the wall somehow DOESN’T result in them getting blown up.

You’re running quantity, not quality here. Your statements are super full of hyperbole that is just factually incorrect.

40

Your post managed to hit every single gripe I have with Ow 2 Mei. Great job!

The thing I dislike most with Mei is that they’ve incentivized lower skill by buffing her freeze beam damage, effectively saying, “We did nothing to rework this hero and nerfed her entire kit, but hey, just hold left click!”.

Her beam is not reliable because almost every hero in Overwatch has some sort of ability that allows them to avoid Mei.

I have faith in the devs. Hopefully she can get some buffs.

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