Overwatch League and 3/3

There have been enough matches so far this season in OWL to figure out that the recent changes to game balance hasn’t been enough to reduce the overwhelming efficiency of 3/3 comps. What I’m interested in is what the devs think at this point after seeing their changes haven’t had the desired effect.

1 Like

Some teams have run some different comps sparingly. It has been mostly 3-3

I have seen the other comps, but it they typically end up swapping to 3/3 after losing one or two team fights. What I want to know, however, is how the dev team feel about their recent balance changes in the face of the continued dominance of 3/3 in OWL this season.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant by sparingly. Florida vs Philly on Anubis one of them ran 4DPS a mercy and a Hammond to take point A but immediately swapped to Goats for B.

I wish you the best of luck getting a developer response.

It takes a long time for pro teams to create and practice new comps. The armour, matrix and Reaper changes were fairly recent. It would be risky for a pro team to roll out their new comp with such little experience on it when they know GOATS so well. GOATS might not actually be the most efficient comp right now, but it’s what the teams know.

I’d give it more time before declaring that the changes didn’t work. If in the end they do work then we can all complain about it happening too late.

1 Like

Perhaps, but I feel it’s going to be 3/3 for awhile. I don’t believe these changes recently have had the desired effect the dev team wanted. I can’t speak for high rank since I’m only a silver/gold, but I can say that from what I’ve seen from streamers and YouTubers, Reaper is still pretty much not used at high rank, but at low rank, he’s rolling over people now with his 50% life steal.

Yeah Reaper is in a bit of a funny place right now.

But you should also note that the changes weren’t intended to eradicate GOATS, just to make other comps more viable and introduce some variety. There is quite a lot of GOATS being played right now but it’s not 100% of the time (which dive almost was). I hope to see less of it but I also hope it doesn’t disappear completely.

Something else that I have noticed being a strange anomaly is how powerful EMP has proven to be. I’m sure a lot of people already realized it’s a strong ult, but that one ability seems to be able to cut down a GOATS comp alone. I wonder if that is something the devs considered balanced, or if they think it’s a little too strong.

A number of them have openly talked about why the changes won’t kill goats. Goats does not work because of armor it works because the strengths of the heroes basically nullify their weaknesses.

Aside from non Goats friendly maps we’re still going to see a lot of Goats.

So Brig really is the reason GOATS works but not because of the reasons people usually state? It really works because of the AOE healing and stun and not the armour?

EDIT: Sorry, EXTRA AOE heals. We already had Lucio, Moira and 'nade for AOE heals. Brig was just the twig which broke the back?

honestly the games best at these mid tier ranks where metas not rly enforced. Also if blizz does anything it just result an another screw up on there part cuz they either kill a meta entirely to let the next crappy one roll in, or somehow lowkey buffed the meta accidently, or buff a character that was suppose to counter it an instead somehow became a part of it(looking at u reaper, u were meant to be the chosen on). We now got reaper devouring lower ranks, being useless in high tier ranks still cuz pretty much almost every other dps can do his job better, and now people are testing reaper to see how they can fit him in with goats(note fit him in goats, not delete goatz, bet in the following month the pros come up with a new goatz come alled ropes or reap or something).

Just make each team required to have at least 1 hero from each arch type. Still leaves teams with a ton of flexibility to create different comps but really only exclusively breaks up the 3/3.

My example format is Tank/dps/support I.E. 2/2/2

You could run:
3/1/2 (which i think would become the new meta)
2/1/3 (another viable comp)
1/1/4
1/4/1
3/2/1
or teams might just settle back into the 2/2/2 setup

Gee, you’re getting some mileage out of that post.

Gotta make sure my idea gets seen before it inevitably gets buried :slight_smile:

It is not that simple…

You have 3 tanks with a lot of defense and health pools, AE healing from Brig and Lucio. The only squishy is Zenyatta and how do you exploit that with Reinhardt, Dva, Brig, Lucio and Zarya defending him?

Back when you could play multiple of the same heroes in a match, stacking Lucio was a massive balance issue; mostly due to the auras. Brig obviously isn’t Lucio but her healing aura is very comparable and on top of it she’s harder to kill than Lucio.

DPS classes need to cut through Reinshield, Zarya Bubbles, Defense Matrix, 2 different heal auras along with harmony orb and Lucio booping them around (you can’t get close without getting melee’d by Rein and Brig so that option is out). And you need to deal with all this disruption while taking a ton of chip damage/not getting melted by their Zenyatta.

I know Jayne has been running tournaments with hero bans and protects. Maybe something like that would be worth looking into.

Brig is typically focused and killed first in GOATS because she’s the easiest target. She has low mobility and is the only one not able to receive the 150 instant healing. So

isn’t really true, at least in the GOATS context.

You didn’t really write anything suggesting my last post was incorrect. I guess what I’m asking is if there was a different aura / AOE healer would GOATS still work or is it something specific to Brig which brought it about?

Ok, I’m gonna throw this out there because I actually had a post recently about ideas how to reduce the power of GOATS or 3/3 comps without absolutely wrecking the rest of the game. Take these with a grain of salt since I’m not a pro or high level player.

i think the team truewly knows 3/3’s power at the top levels of play however bronze - low diamond doesnt even play goats often, so ya. hard to balance a game were casual players are changing the actual format of the game by only picking dps heros. hero bans wwould be a good idea but a vast amount of players one trick so forcing them to play maybe the one other hero they play could mess up hero comps even more.

This was a popular strategy before they nerfed Brig’s ability to bash through shields (typically the first Brig to land the stun on the other would win). Being unable to bash through her shield makes this much more difficult.

Goats target selection seems much more chaotic this season, Brig is definitelly not dying first as a rule (it does happen, depends who gets caught out)

They’re going to need to be careful introducing any additional aura healers into the game if they’re going to continue to allow players to stack healers and tanks. It would depend entirely upon whether or not this aura healer’s kit enabled goats more or less than Brig’s

Brig’s kit is pretty much perfect for deathball though. A brawler with aura healing that has a stun, boop good burst damage and a 500HP personal barrier. It’s hard to imagine them coming out with one that enables goats more, but who knows.