Its undeniable. The communities two major complaints were chain stuns and barriers. Two nessecary evil which gets gutted in OW2.
The two remaining bigger stuns are Anas and Sombras. Anas Sleep got a big cooldown nerf which made it tolerable but Sombras Hack getting buffed shows how a CC can outshine other abilities if you nerf the other ones. Without stuns mobility reigns supreme and OW doesnt need years of Dive again
We are reduced to one barrier and they too are nerfed. Zarya was an utter garbage for example and Rein had 1200 HP on barrier. Without barriers to stop it, damage output especially high ranged damage and mobile burst will reign supreme.
If the other hero changes and new heroes will not get proper balance, the game will start with the most OP version of Dive possible. I hope thats not the case.
Its the playerbase, not the pros who wanted general nerfs to one given category. The general hitscan nerfs are the reason why Pharmercy became mandatory for example and this nerf was on high demand since years.
Its time to watch the exhibition matches and tell ourselves the question: “What do i want PvP to become?”
People always do this dance where we choose to forget (or ignore) how much of the stuff in game (or future game) is the direct result of community input
I had answered that question a lot of times in here even before the exhibition matches.
Long term fights, where hp matters and actually help stay alive longer.
Less dmg, less healing, both not just one.
Or make tanks actually have great defence to work as target to draw at them full might on other team at least for more than few seconds.
My problem with cc is that heroes with it have finishers as well a lot of times, mei, mccree as good example.
Set up hero should be working with someone else to get a kill off the cc imo.
I’ve been wondering about this… do you think tanks were actually beefier back then, or were CC and focus fire just worse?
I ask because people complain about the damage today, but back on release, Discord increased damage by 50%, Fan the Hammer did 70 damage a shot, Scatter Arrow existed, and healing was much lower than it is now.
Ana, Sombra, Brig, and Ball weren’t in the game, which is a lot less CC. All that CC being added was really detrimental for the game, and I’m glad the devs know it needs to be addressed.
It doesn’t seem like the damage was lower, or tank health higher, though (Rein just had 400 more shield).
Maybe the excessive CC is what makes tanks feel so squishy, combined with better focus fire.
Rein had 400 more shield, Orisa’s shield was nerfed after Sigma’s release, D.va had her DM halved and her health pool went from mostly armor to mostly normal. Some tanks did get notable losses to damage absorption between 2017 and 2021.
And then on the offensive aspects, discord was nerfed basically the first patch so we didn’t actually play with that long at all, storm arrow used to be as bad as scatter, but more consistent, though they’ve since reduced it to only 350 without headshots. Sniper McCree got deleted so he at least had to be remotely near you to kill you. If you look at the situation 6 months after launch when things had settled down since in the DPS patch notes, I think they were less likely to melt tanks even with current skill levels.
Healing had changed the game massively in the meantime. Brig’s armor and immortality field in particular have made it so the tanks aren’t necessarily the ones blocking the incoming damage.
Company X chose you to test a new product and you are in a meeting room with all the bosses.
You would dare to speak badly of the product, to criticize it and say that you don’t like it. Obviously not and if you do all your bosses will roll their eyes
The pros and active streamers of OW will speak highly of the game. But it is because of “They live from that product” is as if Stylosa starts making anti-OW videos, or if Samito starts a campaign to defame ow, 2 or if Chipsa organizes a revolt against OW2.
Sadly there were more than one anti-OW campaigns in OW1 alone and i can’t blame the higher ups for some of the pros like Samito or Dafran acting childish
Chain stuns were an issue for Tanks. They could have just added a CC super armor passive that provides immunity if hit by a cc source for a second or two.
Sigma made them a huge problem, but regardless we have only one tank; yet, barriers must now be balanced to ensure that a barrier tank won’t have hegemony over the others.
Winston (60dps) and Mei (90 dps) would be a ruthless rush comp considering both have piercing and Winston has a shield and Mei has wall.
Worse. It would be an OP version of the worst of dive and rush. 2 high damage characters (Mei and Winston) with piercing beams can run over flimsy barriers (if you have one) and shred everything. Focus healing can no longer counter this tactic with the current debuff and global healing nerfs.
Something that encourages fights to be a tug-of-war (between evenly skilled teams). That means that offense and defense needs to compete with each other in a healthy way. It means strong offensive heroes and strong defensive heroes.
I don’t think CC will become an issue if we solve the CC chain issue and perhaps increasing the footsteps volume of dps heroes with hard cc, and if they still flank too easily, then remove the dps movement buff for those dps heroes.
6 months after launch would be November 2016, right around the time Sombra was being released. Orisa wasn’t out yet. Rein did have 400 more shield, but I don’t think that’s nearly as important as D.va being much, much better at damage mitigation than she is now. She was hard meta back then, and may have been a huge contributor to damage feeling less oppressive than it does today.
As you said, Zen had 30% discord at that point, and McCree’s Fan the Hammer was actually weaker than today, at 45 damage. Scatter Arrow was frustrating to die to, but inconsistent. Overall, the damage levels weren’t too far off from where they are today. They were a bit lower, but not by much. The main difference was D.va.
It’s starting to sound like D.va was carrying the game by deleting so much of the damage, and we lost quite a lot when Defense Matrix was gutted.
yeh i know how to protect my team, why should i change the playstyle that my role offers (which is why i came to tank) so dps get catered more? im just curious (sorry if that sounded stupid)