Mobility is what makes these games fun. Slowing down the fun side of the gameplay loop, like what was done to Freja recently, Doomfist before her, Sojourn, etc., is detrimental to our enjoyment of Overwatch.
If Freja’s problem was her high damage output, then nerf her damage. For starters, her projectile size can be lowered down to Hanzo’s level (check the current projectile size charts before you @me with “lolLogs”). Afterwards, her explosive bolts can be rebalanced to favor direct hits over splash damage, like with Farah’s rockets long ago. If that’s not enough, then remove the added damage component of Updraft by reworking the perk that grants an extra dash reset after using it, instead of making a hero that’s designed around taking height waiting a small eternity to do it.
It is a matter of “different strokes” of course, but peeking corners and hugging walls can be done in every shooter, even Overwatch, take your pick; there are even those, like CS and Valorant, that are solely built around it. Those of us who like speed and mobility in their shooters have a much slimmer selection of offerings and Overwatch happens to be one of them. I’d much rather see the Devs leaning into this aspect, than not.
They won’t understand what is competitive, neither. Devs who wants to sit on both chairs, trying to please both casual and competitive community, doom their game to fail with this.
Mobility shouldn’t be hindered by abilities. However it shouldn’t go unchecked.
Mobility is honestly what killed the first overwatch golden age. Blizzard was too scared to nerf the cover girl and so they created Brigitte. (Brig might have always been in the works but her release power level was specifically tuned to counter tracer)
Even now certain heroes (basically still tracer) keep harmful abilities in the game that hurts tanks and the less mobile dive heroes.
Mobility makes heroes fun to play, but often a miserable experience to play against.
It also ends up requiring more abilities and counterplay (typically in the form of CC) that just stacks up over time and makes everything feel unbearable.
Counter-point: nerfing mobility is often the best play.
Also I don’t know why you try to present some weird false dichotomy about cover shooters. It’s not an either-or situation. OW isn’t obligated to either let everyone zip around at 100km/hr OR become a wallhumping cover shooter. It can be neither of those things.
Dashing without a directional input makes her dash up. So with good ability timing he was reaching the sky box and staying up there. It is/was broken for the high rank players abusing it. I doubt low rank players knew about it but would eventually find out.
I don’t know what they nerfed but it was likely to stop that from hapening?..
Now if you just had to focus a dps, but naw you got the support roster flying around too. You can have a whole team of pharahs Juno/ Mercy
Mobility isn’t even close to as oppressive as broken support utility aka a speed ring that gives the whole team speed or discord, immortality, rez, damage boost, anti grenade
If I want to peek corners and hug walls, I can choose from a plethora of games, even Overwatch; however, if I want to fly, slide around and ride on walls, then my options are much more limited.
This is a mantra from some other games that has been utterly inapplicable to Overwatch from day one, as our one true sniper has one of the best movement abilities in the game and all the other marksman heroes can move, as well.
From what I’ve seen, there was little practical advantage from this, outside of some niche set up situations and the “look at me” factor. From my reading of them, the cooldown nerfs were primarily aimed at slowing down her aggression cycle, but they probably affected Yeatle’s ability to scale the Lijiang Tower as a side effect.
Be that as it may, Freja, in particular, is not much of a concern to me – as I don’t really play her, nor do I have problems playing against her – but the overall recent trend to increase mobility cooldowns is. I think that it’s an anti-fun approach at tackling some of the balance problems.
If we’re talking about Stadium then her initial issue was insane DPS ttk output on a hero with incredible mobility that could constantly CC multiple players with a low cooldown that could be hard to reach to punish. She’s been nerfed to where she’s at least tolerable now.
I can understand that this game is made to catter a bit to everyone tastes and playstyle , mobility or not.
But yes, I would like more if the game had more mobility in general as a counter to high mobility or snipers, just let those characters that can’t hit flyers to jump and get her in the air, or just not be a stuck target to those characters with how slow you are. Actually Frejah, and a bit sojourn made me feel that kind of flow feels a lot better for me.
The CoD argument doesn’t work for me because that game is fast until you find someone and stop moving to shoot with ironsight usually
(I didn’t play any since titanfall 2 era but I think it is still like that)
