I’m going to speak frankly here. I think Ashe’s nerfs completely robbed her of her identity, and pummeled all the flow of playing her to the ground.
For those who don’t know, Ashe’s damage used to be 85 per shot, later nerfed to 80 and finally to 75. Along with the second nerf, she received a compensation buff to her scoped fire rate which roughly keeps her overall DPS the same pre-nerf. Sounds fine on paper, but absolutely horrible in practice.
First of all, let me make this clear: This change was probably done to stop the Ashe-Mercy synergy which allowed her to one shot HS squishies. I admit, it wasn’t the most fair thing in the world, and should have been removed. I completely hated the Ashe-Mercy synergy, and I’m not only referring to playing against it. I never asked any healer to switch to Mercy for me, and I never asked any Mercy to pocket me, and I never will.
However, with that change, a lot of Ashe’s combos have been completely butchered. Scoped HS + unscoped bodyshot, unscoped bodyshot into scoped HS, Scoped HS + Melee. It also has taken away the ability to 3 shot 250 health heroes, and now she needs 4 body shots to kill them assuming no healing or protection.
She now shares every breakpoint with McCree, as well as the same exact damage falloff distances. She technically has 5 more damage per shot over McCree, but it mostly amounts to nothing so long as the breakpoints are still the same. McCree kills 200 HP heroes in 3 shots, and 250 HP heroes in 4 shots, and so does Ashe. She still retains the ability to OSK Tracer… barely. If Tracer was only 1 m outside of the beginning of the falloff range, she survives and recalls.
But the 5 extra damage per shot that rarely prove useful come at heavy costs: ADS time, movement slowdown, and animation stiffness. McCree doesn’t get any of those and still reaps the same exact benefit as Ashe does. There has to be something extra for Ashe to justify picking her and yield to those weaknesses. As of right now, there is nothing. Her gun has the same power as McCree’s but with a hell lot more drawbacks.
“Well, you did get a compensation buff for the firerate, didn’t you? Her DPS is still the same.”
OW isn’t a game of dumping math equations at each other. Just because technically I can dish out the same amount of damage over time, doesn’t mean that it usually happens. In fact, it rarely ever does.
For one, Ashe has a very long reload. Damage per bullet and damage per mag, as well as bullet management, are absolutely vital to Ashe. You can’t just dump DPS at your enemies constantly like the math suggests, you still have reload downtime, and still need to use your ammo very effeciently.
Second, Ashe is one of the very few heroes in which you can’t hold M1 for maximum firerate, and you have to manually click each shot at the right time. It is very hard for a human to continuously make use of the milliseconds of RoF even if he adjusted his muscle memory. It’s not going to be right on perfect timing every shot.
Third, opportunities are limited. You might have been able to 3 shot that Reaper or Mei but since Ashe now requires 4 shots, the enemy slipped back into cover before you could fire the last shot. The DPS math with the RoF increase might have only came in usefulness over an elongated period, and you don’t have that luxury most of the time in a fast paced shooter.
“But you’re using McCree as a comparison, he’s overtuned right now, it’s not a fair comparison!”
I’m purely comparing gun mechanics, irrespective of the kit. This is only gun vs gun comparison. McCree’s entire kit (healthpool, flashbang, FtH, roll) are completely neglected and are irrelevant to the points I’m presenting. If you think McCree needs a nerf, that’s fair, but we are not here to discuss that.
“NO HITSCAN BUFFS PLZ HITSCAN TOO STRONK, DIE YOU FILTHY HITSCAN PLAYER DBXNWPFHCHSNQPZBFOAP”
Grow up. Read the thread again. Understand exactly what I’m trying to present here, and discuss accordingly. Any comments that can basically translate into hitscan hate will be ignored as a non contributive post.
My suggestions:
Revert Ashe’s damage per shot and RoF. Nerf her boosted damage selectively. As in, make Mercy’s damage boost and discord orb only buff Ashe’s damage to a lesser degree than the usual 30%, enough of a percentage to not be able to do 200 HS in one shot. This ONLY applies to Ashe, hence why it’s a selective nerf. This doesn’t apply to other situations where damage boost or discord orb are being used. Make BOB ult charge not generate while BOB is out on the field.
Selective nerfing has already happened before, but Blizzard seems to be extremely conservative about it. It has happened to selectively not allow Hanzo’s dragonstrike to be damage boosted during the GravDragon meta. I don’t see why Ashe couldn’t get a selective nerf like that since she only proved too powerful with a pocket. But with that nerf Ashe has been completely butchered both with and without pocket.