Mei nerf has made a big difference

The rest of her kit wasn’t good enough to warrant picking her solely for her ult and also OW was dominated by hyper mobile heros/dive meta/snipers who can all easily avoid or leave her ulti.

Current OW isn’t like that, the meta is slower movement and static heroes and comps like Double Barrier and Deathball. If a Mei ults a point in OT, its GG unless you have like a trans or something.

Not to mention Mei’s base kit and time to freeze were alll buffed quite a bit over the past year and a half in order to counter goats, as well as primary tick rate, right click falloff, multi freeze, etc.

1 Like

Fair enough, multi freeze is really the only thing I think she doesn’t need.
Other than that, I think she’s fine

Allow me to clarify a few things:

  1. The freeze time was never buffed the past few years. Only the slow time, and that got recently nerfed.
  2. The only goats changes Mei received during goats to deal with goats was the damage buff to her freeze.
  3. The piercing freeze was added before goats was a thing.
  4. The removal of fallof damage was shortly done after the merge of the assault and defense class. This was a change in mid 2018. Goats wasn’t a thing yet.
4 Likes

Nowadays, at my level, enemy players will not let me freeze so easily. With the recent update, they can run away more frequently. Smarter players knew Mei’s spray range and stay just out of it while shooting her easily.

So for my case, I have to learn slow down them a bit then quickly go right click on their head if possible.

Wrecking Ball and Genji have more chance to escape, so I have to adjust my muscle memory and counter increased mobility from my perspective.

Her range is short sure, but she has a wall, and invulnerability that heals her. Getting into range isnt the problem. It’s how easily she can change the front line of the fight.

She doesnt even have to be fast with her wall to block people off, or accurate with her M1 to freeze peeps.

Her ability to alter team fights is so easy. She can wall a hog, and not kill him, but she sure af makes it easy for her team to kill hog off. …

1 Like

Except it was still added for the sole purpose of coutnering the predicted Tank meta that became GOATS…

Geoff said so in his Brigitte Q and A right when the Multi Freeze buff went on PTR that it was done intentionally to counter their predicited upcoming GOATS/Tanky meta. Do your research guys :slight_smile:

:slight_smile: So yes, multi freeze was LITERALLY made entirely to counter GOATS/tanky comps. Which no longer is physically possible now that 2-2-2 is enforced.

2 Likes

You just dont go grouped into a Mei, so she can’t multi-freeze.

1 Like

It was indeed to done to deal with a possible tank meta, but that one formed almost a year later. Even the Q&A talks about how Moira was just being released, and goats only took place after Brigitte was added.

We had moth meta, double sniper, GravDragon and whatsnot between that time.

But nevertheless a good point from you.

I was only trying to clarify that this wasn’t a goats specific change, and more like a general change to all possible tank comps. When players ask for the removal of goats changes, do I have the feeling they meant this one as well.

1 Like

You do realise the devs play their own game and have access to the game’s stats right? So when you come out with completely over exaggerated, untrue rubbish like '‘Mei is a free win’ and ‘all you do is hold down left click and win’ you sound like a 14 year old that has thrown their toys out of the pram. (no offense intended).If you want to be taken seriously stop exaggerating. I lose when we have a Mei and they don’t all the time. I have over 100 hours on Mei, Ana, Sombra and Wrecking Ball, and Mei is the hardest of those to play well.

3 Likes

Symmetra is still borderline OP if you have a team that actually knows how to play with/around her. Her beam is still ridiculous. She just needs to be supported. She is like a close range Bastion.

At higher ranks, Symm still works with decent team support. Sinatraa was streaming the other night and playing quite a bit of Symmetra - melting everything in T500 games.

When the lower ranks start prioritizing teamwork more, and play a bit less selfishly, more heroes will suddenly seem more viable.

Right now, everyone still has this “I want to carry”/“I need to pop off” mentality.

1 Like

Mei is pretty much the “hey we’re losing its time to cheese” character.

Yea man I just got so outplayed as I get walled off from my team from anywhere in the map, w + m1 and frozen, then headshot. And you know what? Even if she’s low, gotcha! She has cryofreeze and then she can just go at you again. Nah, dude. She’s still broken.

2 Likes

What is “OP” to you? Because everyone uses the abbreviation differently. There’s OverPowered, which also means different things to different people. But all characters can be stopped in this game, so there’s that.

Then there’s OPressive. Which arguably, some characters are. But they can fall into this category in several different ways. There’s Hanzo’s problem with being too good at too many things, rendering many other DPS obsolete or pushing down their respective pickrates because he’s always a good choice.

Mei’s problem is that her character by design is frustrating and annoying to fight against. In a way that almost no other character has to deal with, she feels like a character you put into a game when you finally admit you hate your playerbase and you just want them making each other as miserable as possible while you sit back and laugh. And that’s solely because she has some amazing CC/stun without a cooldown.

It boils down to this - things that remove player agency need to be used very sparingly. Most of Overwatch items of that nature are on long cooldowns, are ultimates, and have very short durations. Mei violates this rule with having the slow effect without cooldown, meaning she has infinite CC slow with the possibility of full-on stun. So if she gets into your battle line, you’re going to have a miserable time.

The “teamwork keeps her at bay” thing works perfectly in very high elos, but the lower ranks are more casual players who don’t coordinate or call out as well and she makes life miserable, even if you’re winning. Because sitting there as you rapidly lose control of your character is frustrating as heck, and she specializes in it with no cooldowns to have to manage.

Fighting within her primary attack range is about suicide, which some characters do not have the liberty of fighting outside of it. Others don’t have mobility cooldowns (many of my mains don’t, sadface). Even if you do, some mobility cooldowns don’t have sufficient range, and you might not even have the time to aim in the proper escape direction and activate it because you’ve been slowed down. Even if you do, that slowdown means she still has an opportunity to close that distance again and grab you unless you have a guaranteed out like wall climb. That’s also assuming she didn’t use Ice Wall to prevent your escape anyway.

So she’s an aggravating character to fight against with some wildly bad character design. That’s it.

1 Like

She freezes you and one shot you nothing changed. Waiting for the next updates on her. Her ult radius is a joke. Her self healing very fast recharge and so on.

1 Like

Wow, so there is 1 hero in game she can’t counter now? RIP indeed.

She still makes my life as tank miserable even if I now have a slightly bigger chance of escaping. If she uses wall, the walled off victim dies just like before. Wall still needs a nerf. Lower hp and/or fewer broader columns.

Mei holding M1 while I have to actually aim all of my shots while also being frozen.

Yes she truly outplayed me and deserved it.

1 Like

On The Changes
Agreed. However, one of the strange ‘benefits’ from this nerf is that I feel like people are actually less aware that they are being frozen due to the lack of immediate / apparent speed reduction that was present pre-nerf.

Where before people would react much quicker if I started freezing them from behind, it now takes them a little more time which results in the freeze resolving before they can actually do anything.

There is an obvious effect for being on fire, but I wonder if there should be a more obvious effect for being frozen.

Beyond that, I think her kit feels like it’s in a good place for now. She’s more engaging to play with the changes to how people maintain their speed, and forces you to use more of your kit to better prevent people from escaping you.

Overall, more fun!

You realise that you’re talking about the same devs that just nerfed her this patch, and blizzard has always nerfed heros bit by bit instead of all it once. It’s why brig was as dumb as she was for as long as she was and why hanzo is getting his 5th nerf in a row. Also if it was just casual players playing Mei than you may have an argument that she’s balanced, but the fact that she is considered a must pick all the way up to gm even after her nerf is a pretty clear sign that she still needs to be toned down.

Freeze isn’t the only broken thing in her kit, wall is insanely strong because it acts as an extra shield and it’s on an incredibly forgiving cooldowns for how strong of an impact it has, and she still can stall points far too easily contributing to 2cps issue of feeling you have to outplay the enemy team two or three times In a row to win on attack.

If this was something that took enough skill only good Mei players could pull it off consistently it would be fine. But I’ve seen my 8 year old cousin who’s never played an fps before overwatch and got the game for Christmas this year can pull off this crap.

yes somewhat

I’d have to disagree here and say EMP is definitely the best dps ult.

There is skill in meis kit, however the cheese strats heavily outshine the skill requirement. I’m sorry mei players but camping a choke holding onto wall until you see a tank rush through to wall them isn’t challenging or big brain it’s pretty damn easy and straightforward/simple.

More for me too is just Mei never feels good to play against even outplaying her doesn’t feel good more just like 8 seconds of relief.

3 Likes

There’s also the fact that meis abilities are so forgiving and on such lenient cooldowns that it takes way more skill for you to kill Mei than it does for Mei to kill you.