Mei’s inability to completely freeze people with her primary fire was an understandable loss to keep the playerbase happy, so she got an ice flame-thrower as compensation – but now that her damage has been exchanged for the deep freeze spray+icicle combo it is effectively worthless against all heroes but the tank. Her slowing down enemies with little damage and not preventing them from shooting back, using abilities, jumping, or crouching means that landing the OW1 spray+icicle combo is effectively worthless. Here, are some Top100 gameplay examples of how unintimidating it is
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I do not like playing mei, but I think her old freeze mechanic was iconic to her kit.
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I’m not a top 100…but why even bother trying to slow Moira…she’s just going to get away (full hp too)…and second clip he straight up misses a bunny…probably kills if they don’t 
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Thank you for uploading those videos, they really prove they messed up badly with her primary damage nerf. She is like…A DAMAGE HERO. Blizzard keeps doing their BS, now that the game feels like a deathmatch game 24/7 and every dps can solo carry, now out of nowhere Mei NEEDS her team to take advantage of her slow.
BLIZZARD, MAKE EVERY FREAKING DPS A SOLO DPS, STOP WITH THIS BS CRAP THAT OW IS A TEAM GAME, OTHERWISE SWITCH TO 6V6 AND REVERT ALL THE SOLO CARRY DAMAGE SUPPORTS NOW HAVE.
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youre delusional man, just look at how many shots that Moira receives, she should be dead by the lowest of the DPS standards.
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first clip starts with a headshot that gets her low…she immediately throws out healing orb and they decide to slow (reminder that moira has a fade)…another icicle instead prob kills is what i was getting at
and second clip is a straight up miss the first, second and third times ive watched clip…ana moves and the target reticle doesnt…even had the deep chill effect already…like a body shot wouldve prob been enough…its a kill if the mei doesnt aim like me
im more questioning if this is actually top 100…like those are not gameplay decisions im expecting to see there
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Yes That is my point – in OW1 she would have been frozen and could not have moved, but trying to re-introduce the combo in OW2 without preventing enemies from firing back, dodging or using abilities makes it worthless (particularly for so little potential benefit)-- currently you might as well just use icicle 100% of the time when any non-tank is above 5% health.
Yongsa is easily one of the top 5 greatest Mei players of all-time, which means that if he runs into frustrating situations like these then everyone else is running into these situations much more frequently. I know I am.
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It’s really frustrating, and tbh, I think they need to buff the duration of its effect if even top 100 players can’t get real value from it. The fact it also telegraphs to the enemy player when the effect is on just makes it ridiculously easy to counter. Imagine if you were alerted when Widow’s cursor is on you, or if you got an alert half second before Soldier 76 fires helix, because that’s what this ability does. It’s made her a bit of a joke. And don’t get me started on the other issues with her, the stupid wall nerfs (why was wall distance needed?), and the fact primary and her ult no longer stacks, meaning most heroes can simply jump out of it (let alone those with mobility, cleanse, etc).
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thing is im not really arguing that she couldnt use buffs or tuning (and if the numbers back that up…by all means buff her)…im just saying thats a realy bad example…like thats something i would do (completely whiffing)
my issue with this is that that is exactly why they changed it…it feels awful on the receiving end…theyve tried to remove most of the hard CC from the game…think they only ones left are sleep, shatter/blizzard (ults), and trap (can still use your hero)
i dont see the old combo coming back
1 Like
it’s not obvious enough without it being explained - which is already a failure in game design if people don’t know it exists.
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I think most Mei mains have accepted the old freeze combo isn’t coming back. We just need to be properly compensated since they nerfed her primary fire so hard. her Primary Fire is in such a bad place right now – and the current primary fire incentive provides no real value against 4/5 of the enemy team. that’s something that can be said about no other OW2 hero.
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My suggestion for it was easy. Give Mei back her combo, put it on a resource like Moira’s heal. No more “infinite CC on primary”. But she can be strong if you do it right.
When hero mastery becomes a thing, it’ll possibly become more apparent.
What is hero mastery exactly? Most players who played Mei knew real fast that it was terrible. And given how long Ana stands just watching Mei, she knows too.
Hero mastery is a game mode coming next month, which puts challenge missions for each hero.
It can also basically act as a tutorial for every hero.
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Oh? I sure HOPE that makes it more well known. And that with any luck, Blizzard addresses characters instead of leaving them to rot.
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Only 5 heroes will have mastery on the release, and I doubt mei will be one of them. I don’t remember if they revealed all 5, but we know sojourn, rein and mercy will get one each
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Wait…
only 5?
my god, they are just so… sigh.
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nah it was a good change, mei freezing in ow1 was so annoying and unbalanced. it needed to go.
The original super snare she had when they changed her a few months ago was nice because it was a great option to stop Hammond, Doom, etc. from just cycle diving you over and over.
When they re-tweaked it to reduce the snare, but add the explosion damage Mei become fairly bad at everything. Even Hammond sometimes just rolls right through her current snare.
She needs a slight rework at this point… but it takes a year or more for hero reworks to happen in OW2 so Mei is likely going to languish for a long time in her current form.
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