So it should be very obvious by now that OW will priotize making money over having an actual balanced and competitive game.
Over time OW will be less about winning but more of a social interaction with friends to hang out, doing some objectives together over the cup of tea/coffee (on the other side of the screen) while talking about the newly acquired skins and the most trendy heroes.
The new grenade, Mei’s freeze and Widow nerfs fit perfectly into this new direction. Gotta slow Tracer/Genji/Mercy down to admire their new skins and trigger the impulse buy. Widow is too far we cant see her new dryad skin, she needs to get a bit closer. And soon the game will slow down closer and closer to the 3-3, double shield pacing of the past.
I’m all for hating on Blizzard for their decisions monetarily, but I think this is just conspiratorial nonsense. This patch, aside from the Cass changes and we’ll have to see how the Mei changes play out, are actually really well done and prove that the new balance team seem to have a much better understanding of how the game actually works. The Queen changes demonstrate this the best imo. In the past, they would have just nerfed some random stuff in her kit just because she’s overperforming, but the nerfs they gave her actually target the problematic parts of her kit. She was way too tanky after the healing buffs so in turn they nerfed her overhealth with shout/
The cowboy changes are the best of the bunch because they actually fix what was wrong with grenade while making it the anti-flanker ability it was supposed to be. The slow and damage would stand to be removed or reduced respectively, yes, but the direction taken with the grenade is excellent and should have been taken years ago.
Its less oppressive against non-flankers, and stronger against flankers.
If anything, nerfing Moira (and maybe Reaper) with zero compensation is the only bad change here.
The main issue that I have with the cass nade is the addition of more CC. I think with Mei it can be okay because of how she is played. She is incredibly niche and maybe some CC would help alleviate that, but Cass is a very popular character so giving him his CC back is a step back imo. I do like the projectile changes though. More of a skill shot rather than a heat seeking missile. I’ve had times where I dash away as Genji and it follows me the entire way even thought it 100% shouldn’t have. I don’t like the 70 damage on the nade either. Either it’s a CC or it’s a finisher. I don’t think it should be both.
Correct me if i m wrong. But didnt they remove the grenade’s range restriction? McCree how can throw it at whoever he wants and not just close ranged flankers.
And allowing him to free kill combo with 150 dmg grenade on any hero without mobility to disengage was better?
Death is strongest CC in the game. A slow is nothing to the heroes that were being trivialized by a 150 homing grenade.
It would be a ‘‘step back’’ if they had given him his free kill AoE stun that was removed for being a slight threat to flankers but trivialized everyone else.
But they didnt, and took the smart route of reducing the damage, and giving him a very specific form of CC that barely even qualifies as CC and only affects flankers.
Look, you people will need to understand that CC is a fundamental part of this game and nothing will ever change that, no matter how many streamers cry about it, no matter how many marketing one liners they threw out during OW2 about how CC would die forever and ever and you will get to hammerbot all day unimpeded.
Or dont. Either way I predict that we are 6 months to one year away from Mei regaining her freeze.
A skill shot is useless against flankers and easy to land against everyone that doesnt have insane combat mobility or a free instant disengage. Like flankers do.
Thats why they reduced its damage and added the Hindered debuff. Removing the homing aspect of it would be counterintuitive to what the skill was supposed to do.
If you are playing as Genji into a Cowboy you are supposed to struggle.
What do you think people bave been trying to tell you.
Also the nerfs aren’t going to do that. Its the fact that this game keeps repelling its players with bad balance. Those changes are good. Even for, and I hate to say it, for the Esports scene.
Teams no longer have to run a sniper all the time.
So in your mind, because I dislike the new changes that means that I have to 100% agree with the current iteration? That’s moronic. I dislike both.
The step back is them going back on their ideology that tanks should be the only role with CC. Besides Ana’s sleep dart, only tanks had the ability to CC.
This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say moving backwards.
Completely irrelevant to my point which just demonstrates how ignorant you really are to anything I said. I used my dash which should have taken me out of range of the nade and at a faster speed than the nade, but it still followed me. Also, Cass is not a hardcore counter to Genji whatsoever. They both have counterplay to each other. Getting dove by a Genji? Use nade. The genji can anticipate this and deflect. I’ts not set in stone that if you play into a Cass that you will lose as Genji. If anything, I find that when I play into a Cass that I have an easier time taking care of him as Genji rather than another flanker like Sombra or Tracer.
The game is slowly starting to feel more like OW1. Less mobility, more healing. Drawn out team fights lasting forever. CC being the main pillar of balance. One shots/high burst dmg being the only way to get kills. It’s not as bad as OW1 but it certainly is trending in that direction. OW2 was way better in seasons 1 and 2 imo when it felt more like an fps. Fast paced games are better.
That I finally got to see a real life example of someone trying too hard.
The balance team is bad because they come up with the wrong solution to a problem creating new problems or making the game less fun. It’s not because of some weird desire to admire the enemy skins.