Mei's ultimate is it a set up ult or zoning ult

General Discussion
1

Why is her ult so incredibly bad and worse than her primary fire at slowing and freezing when heroes like zarya and rein can make everyone immobile instantly with their ult.

You can’t use a oh not fighting back for X amount of seconds isn’t fun, that’s what rein does with his ult and no one complains.

You may say oh because hers is a zoning ult. Well other zoning ults like mcrees actually have kill potential in order to properly zone.

A decision needs to be made. Is mei’s ult a set up ult like rein and zarya or is it a zoning ult. If it’s a set up ult give it more restrictions like barriers blocking it and make it FAST.

If it’s a zoning ult it needs to have a better kill potential.

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they should probably keep it how it is cause it’s fine how it is

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I’ve discussed this with other people, I’m on the ‘zoning ult’ train of thought.

Mei’s kit is about area-denial and point holding which is why I feel her ultimate reflects that.

McCree is about killing and his ult, whilst still zoning, reflects his kit.

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Her ult ult could be better at zoning then

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It’s a zoning ult ,period.

However ,it does have decent kill potential if the mei doesn’t throw it on the enemy then decide to jump off the cliff.

In discussions like this people ALWAYS “”“forget”"" that mei can speed up the freezing process to make it almost instant ,and can use the wall to block an enemy from escaping it.

I mean ,it can work as a setup ult if you manage to throw it in a room with 1 exit and block that exit ,or just get a good freeze.

Hell ,even if the enemy is just caught in it it could be enough distraction to say, help the genji get a decent dragonblade

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I agree to an extent. I’ve heard some people say jumping slows down the freeze speed which may or may not be true.

That said, Blizzard lasts 6 seconds and if you stay in that zone, you will be frozen and if Mei’s team is with her, you should be dead.

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It should just do it’s job better, for whatever it is. It doesn’t do anything, it’s so easy to walk out of

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It can be every ult depending on the situation. Thats why i like it so much

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www.overbuff.
com/heroes/mei?platform=pc

Idk her ult kills per game with ult in comp which is around 20 minutes is less than 5 kills on average. I think that’s a sign of a lack luster ultimate.

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10

I think it is a zoning ult, yet even so, there are a few problems I find with the ult in its current state:

it’s blocked by obstacles due to being a line of sight ult. Even throwing it in a room can mess up due to obstacles, stairs, walls, etc.

It has a longer charge than most dps ults due to Mei’s poor dps.

It takes roughly three seconds from the moment of Mei announcing the ult for it to actually activate (cast time on Mei throwing the ult+air time+cast time on Snowball activating). This can be circumvented by throwing it at your feet, however, it always gives plenty of time to escape, and to focus the Mei before she can apply the primary fire freeze, and even then, her primary fire doesn’t pierce, you have to apply it one at a time to each enemy.

It is absolutely countered by jumping. They could easily change this by giving it the same slow effect as her primary. Additionally, most heroes in the game have some form of escape ability, and even those that don’t have mobility still stand a good chance of escaping due to the cast time.

It suffers the same penalties as a Zarya ult without the same strengths. It can be eaten by D.va, deflected by Genji, and can be lost even when cast if Mei dies while snowball is still airborne. The only advantage over Zarya’s is that it charges faster (still longer than other dps, however).

I don’t think the ult needs a lot, as it is good at holding a point, but I think it needs something to help it, slightly less delay on cast, added slow effect, removal of some lOS restrictions (as they did Sombra’s). It’s an ult, so should still feel like an ult considering its significant amount of counter play.

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You can block Reins ult with a barrier.
You can have a tank in grav to block the upcoming damage.
You’re completely frozen in Blizzard. It just can’t be instant.

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That’s why I said in my original post that if it’s meant to be a set up ult allow shields to stop it :slight_smile:

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The only problem with mei’s ult is you can throw it but die a second after and it wont work and ult charge will be back to 0 lol, i can understand dying while it’s still in your hand, but not when it leaves your hand for afew split seconds and it just alt+f4s itself when you die

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14

Mercy mains are complaining about a similar thing at the moment (ult is similar to other heroes but not as effective).

They could reduce Blizzards range, increase the speed of freeze and add a ‘height’ modifier to it (because imo jumping to avoid a snowstorm is beyond dumb…)

That said, I do fall back on the whole argument that Mei’s kit is not necessarily killing focused, she works best with backup and I feel her ult reflects that.

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15

A good chunk of the heroes are rarely frozen solid in blizzard. Here’s a list of abilities that allow (or slightly help) heroes to quickly escape a blizzard:

Doomfist: Literally all of his abilities lmao
Genji: Dash
McCree: Combat roll (if you’re near the edge of the zone, like i said, only slightly helps)
Pharah: jump jet, concussive blast
Reaper: Wraith form, Shadow step (rarely)
Soldier: Sprint
Sombra: Translocator
Tracer: Blink, Recall
Junkrat: Concussion Mine
Mei: Cryo-Freeze (doesn’t allow her to escape it, but prevents her from getting frozen)
Widow: Grappling hook
Dva: Boosters
Orisa: Fortify
Reinhardt: Charge
Winston: Jump pack
Zarya: Barrier
Brigitte: Shield bash
Lucio: Speed boost/amp it up
Mercy: Guardian Angel
Moira: Fade
Zenyatta: Transcendence

There you have it. 20 out of 27 heroes have a way to easily escape from a mei ult. So in respones to your argument, I’d have to say that blizzard is mediocre when compared to shatter or grav
Edit: Forgot one, whoops

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16

You forgot to put Mei in your list. She does lack the mobility to escape it, but she can use Cryo-Freeze instead.

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17

Or wall under herself

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How can you even compare it to earthshatter? Earthshatter has a lower range and can be blocked by any barrier. The only change I would like to see is to stop the ult from disappearing if the Mei dies.

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Any ult that outputs damage/cc is a zoning ult by extent, you don’t want to be in them

Mei just rarely gets the CC portion of her ult to work

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Is Mei’s ult useless? No
Is it useless in a vast amount of scenarios? Yes

When you bring up buffing or reworking Mei’s ultimate, people will tell you it’s fine, you can put up a wall to stop people from escaping, or you need to use it in a better spot… but that’s just crap.

Mei’s ultimate is incredibly situational, and I don’t think a hero that is already one of the most situational in the game needs an even more situational ult.

Most of the time it relies on enemies misplaying.

Can you wall behind enemies then throw it to stop them escaping? Only if they wrongly decide to try and escape backwards.

In reality it can be used in 2 ways:

  1. You hold it until some enemies get themselves into a situation where they are backed into an area where at least 2 sides are blocked off (the corner of a room or something like that) then you wall off another side and throw the ult in, or
  2. You throw it right underneath someone and immediately use your primary to guarantee a single kill, and that’s if you aren’t stunned/hooked/knocked back causing the ult to disappear.

It’s just really poor at doing anything it’s supposed to, and it’s optimal conditions for use are so sparse that it is essentially the most situational ult in the game, that requires so many conditions to get any kind of value, and on top of that it has just about the most denials of any ult in the game.

Blizzard gave Mei her “buffs” already though, they won’t touch her again for at least 6 months, because apparently Jeff thinks that F-Tier with a negative winrate, sub-1% pickrate, and the single worst Kill-Death ratio (avg 10 mins) in the game is a “good place” for Mei.

Edit: Hell, you can throw it and wait for their reaction to try and wall off their escape route, but again that relies on all the enemies (wrongly) deciding to try and escape it the same way.

As it stands, it’s currently a decent way to kill a single enemy, but it’s also more unreliable and less effective than any other ult that does that.

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