Exactly. So take some high ELO power out of the damage boost.
And put that power into some other sort of buff/additional-feature for Mercy.
It’s like clearing space in your closet, so you can put a box in that space.
I think this is an interesting point. It misses the idea that we’re changing it specifically to get rid of breakpoints for one-shots, which are substantially different than a lower TTK, but would Mercy still end up chained to specific heroes because of how well the attack speed boost would synergize?
I think the splash damage characters would synergize the most, especially Junkrat. Pharah wouldn’t synergize with attack speed quite as much, but since pharmercy are already made for each other in every other way I think it’s safe to say she would be just as pocketable as the rat.
How does this compare to the breakpoint metas for Sojourn, Ashe, etc? Well, for one I don’t think it’s as significant a power spike for the DPS heroes. Going from not one-shotting to one-shotting fundamentally changes how you kill the enemy, as said elsewhere. Pharah and Junkrat would get better at what they do, but they’d be doing the same thing: punishing the enemy team for grouping up, spamming barriers and objectives, and two-tapping squishies.
Would Mercy be just as tied them as she is to Sojourn and was to Ashe? That depends on the elo, since you’re mostly just in Sojourn/Ashe jail if they actually land their one shots consistently. Mercy would be incentivized to pocket Pharah and Junkrat at all skill levels. The thing is… I already do that. Pharah and Junkrat are already my best synergies outside of breakpoint characters, and I’m already their best synergy out of the supports.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Every support has some insane synergies, such as Ana’s ult pairing really well with other specific ults, or Baptiste with Bastion and Rein, or Lucio with the low-mobility characters, or Brigitte with other brawlers like Queen. I don’t think we should be worried about Mercy synergizing particularly well with certain characters, in fact we should welcome it. Pharah and Junkrat don’t really synergize with any other supports already, at least not any more than other DPS.
There’s just one problem: Zarya. Fire-rate and reload speed buff would probably be better for her than straight damage boost, and it’s not like she needs any more power or synergy. And if, god forbid, they implemented this change and it reduced cooldowns too, Zarya/Mercy would dominate the game at every skill level. We’ve already seen what that’s like with pre-nerf Zarya.
As you say, increasing both fire rate and reload speed would be necessary for the change to not be an absolutely massive nerf. It just makes sense, I think we can assume it would be included regardless of how you define “attack speed”.
As far as the semantics go, do you have an FPS bible that says attack speed only means rate-of-fire? Attack speed is a pretty general term. Even rate-of-fire doesn’t have a set definition; some FPS use it when they mean rounds-per-minute, which includes reload speed. Personally when I hear attack speed in any context, FPS or RPG or whatever, I expect it to be a catch-all for increasing the damage output of your basic attack through speed. About the only thing I don’t expect it to include is cooldowns, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people out there who think otherwise.
I realize it is still a net nerf since most abilities won’t benefit from it. They could marginally help with that by increasing cast speed, but that could be annoying and reducing CDs would be busted. That’s part of the point though: it frees up power budget for other buffs. Mercy is very popular and Mercy players don’t want her playstyle to change significantly, but she’s been relatively underpowered for a while because she already has such high synergy with certain characters. It would be good if she could be a little more powerful across the board and have her synergies be less frustrating to pocket and play against.
Well, but that is my point here… You either give her a shiny new toy, that still is tailor made for her current play style, so no one will bat an eye, or you make her into a main healer again (and yes, healer… Now mercy i support, and she used to be healer)… And we saw that during Moth meta, it was not pretty. For any body involved…
I thought the consensus was the opposite, Ashe taught us that it’s really hard to balance burst-damage heroes when we have to avoid a breakpoint?
Ashe taught us, that designing ability/hero in a way that they need some sort of dmg amp to break OHKO breakpoints is bad idea…
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To make sure i understand, you’re arguing that Mercy is unfun becahse she is a damage boost bot?
I think you mean. She is unfun because thats how you think she should be played.
29 and 2 game as mercy earlier lets me know she is quite capable of getting kills like anyone
Nah just remove Sojourns 1 shot outside of ult and stop overcomplicating it. She’s completely broken with or without a pocket.
Can we all stop with pretending that Sojourns problem is anything but her 1 shotting? The number of who people don’t get this is mind blowing.
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It’s not fun dying to a hardpocketed Fortnite Ashe, either.
You’re kinda saying the same thing from the opposite direction.
With Mercy damage boost = difficult to balance
Without Mercy damage boost = easier to balance
Just the fact that is a mix of up and downs, just proves the solution isn’t any better. Just shifting the problem which was present since OW1 even more ahead.
Their recoil are really predictable, at least in the past their spread and random pattern were a challenge to overcome soft limiting their rate of fire to better more “stability”. In a couple minutes you can pick the pattern of their shotting these days.
The core issue is: buffs on source shouldn’t be aspd, damage or rd related. Because most of them can’t be prevented, unless you kill who gives it or have an actual way to prevent it to begin with.
Ehp from lucio can be cancelled or nullified. Speed can be countered by slow, immobilization, pin and stun. Db? at best you break her link or stun the one who receives it, both situations are way more scenario dependant.
Buffs/debuffs in target/foe (damage received amplified, damage done reduced, healing improvement, healing negation), those can be countered by bubble, cleanse, nade, bleed.
Buffs/debuffs on ally (ehp, speed boost, cleanse, bubble, healing improvement)
Overall healing in the game should be tweaked to be way lower than it is, but the overall utility from supports should be way better than currently also. Folks want supports to be more “active” and “aware” of the game, but the current state makes more heal bots, ult bots and more “dependant” supports.
Healing lowered by a ton, could imply on lower overall damage needed. If a foe have 200hp, damage role should have 100 damage on one shot by doing 150 per crit, meaning 1.5x not 2.0. That on best case scenario, while if debuff is applied enable it to deal the 50% more.
Healing shouldn’t be higher than 20-30 per sec, damage per sec shouldn’t be higher than 80 aside from snipers with 100 dmg once per 1.2-1.5 sec. HP/armor shouldn’t be higher than 400-450, damage role hp should be 150-225 thresholds and supports 200-225 thresholds
One shots are problematic mechannics if there’s no risk involved by doing so. Anybody that isn’t at risk shouldn’t deal much damage to kill in a single shot. Aside of maybe the target being debuffed. Which would make OW2 be more tactical, even more than OW1 ever would be.
I really doubt they would take this approach, that’s why is better to simply have more rules around what should be a buff towards allies and what should be a buff/debuff towards enemies. That way this whole mess wouldn’t even exist.
Why there are several critique against mercy db but you don’t see that much of complaint about discord orb? Bap matrix how many folks complaint about it and how many complaint about the roadhog breather?
The answer is: Conditions, there are conditions related how discord orb behaves and what nullifies it, similarly to bap matrix. Mercy db mostly doesn’t have, sometimes you can trick it to have without LoS. Roadhog have some counters on that regard but the number is barely minimum: like a few heroes at best, which is why his RD should be reduced during the usage.
One shots often take around 1 sec window timeframe. I would extend to say that anything below 2 sec threshold is too low ttk if there’s no much perks around it.
They need to effectively increase the TTK, only then. Supports would be appealing to be played by broader audience. Because they would have impact and fun on their playstyle. Also would feel included on the strategy.
Tanks open space, supports enables the damage role kills. That way you make supports more engaging to play and less punished by being at constant fights, mostly alone, against dives and flanks. That are metas way worst than bunkers and double shield. Because is a battle of who has the best decoy tank til they wait who has the best damage role to beat the other side supports. While double shield and bunkers could be easily be broken by things like hanzo, junk or bastion, dive and flanks without CC and one tank you barely have options to confront damage role within “equal ground”.
Do a quick test: wait kiriko ult and land on her ult as pharah. You will be surprised the amount of actual damage you would dish out. Her splash damage is a big deal having faster fire rate means less interval between rockets, which makes even harder to avoid receiving any damage.
It is, folks spent 6 months to actually notice ana’s strength when she was released. She made nanoblade become a meta and enabled many others.
Any improvement on source without caveat, is a problematic design. Some will get less advantage than others like sombra having virtually equal damage but spending 6 bullets (10% more ammo).
While others will become more lethal due their strength are related to how many shots they can do per sec paired with other perks around it. Like reaper(melee cancel), roadhog(melee cancel) and soldier (which has helix as plus and melee cancel)
Elo dependant is a excuse to not mess with this kind of thing. Sure skill is elo dependant and the amount of damage will be elo dependant, but the multiplier isn’t elo depedant. Is a constant in there either you hit the target or not. Your damage and fire rate are improved either you miss your shots or not.
While if the debuff is on the target, instead of source. The target at least can do something about it, that is elo dependant. Also as tool to supress the oponent but as tool to improve the team odds of killing the foe in a coordinated way.
They don’t have synergies, they have “subservience” most often than not. Ana’s ult are monopolized from genji, Ashe with mercy, pharah with mercy, soldier with mercy this isn’t a synergy is a dependecy and a point of blame . Synergy is what tanks had one covering to the another, what supports do one to another.
How often damage role covers for each other? In this new paradigm how often tank can peel for it’s team? There are less synergy, mostly lucio have with rein due speed and zen with it’s discord calling the shots on what foes should die.
Zarya becomes a problem, when the team leave her to be a problem. There are several ways to deal with pharah, folks just aren’t playing organized enough. They even made the window of opportunity against her even bigger.
Is not hard to deal with zarya, is hard to deal with the foes that she distracts your team doing her job. Similarly to doom being bad due nobody actually shooting him.
The game was shifted towards 5v5, without much planning ahead about those kinds of thing. But one thing that was a problem from OW1 and still is a problem on OW2 is that buffs on source shouldn’t be damage, rd or aspd related. How they change that for something else is up to them. But the moment you have a buff that doesn’t have an easy way to disable it is the moment your design is flawed.
Db itself it is a problem, shouldn’t exist in the way it is. Nano also shouldn’t be a thing the way it is, breather should have less RD, the game instead should have more debuffs related to damage done and damage received. Similarly to the experiment with moira, the bleed from JK, discord from zen, cleanse from kiriko, bap matrix and so on.
I figure this is so similar, except for the intended parts it weakens.
That whatever remaining flaws this creates, just becomes simplistic DPS vs DPS balancing.
The issue with that, is mostly there aren’t much parts that weakens it.
Is just a powershift that shouldn’t exist to begin with.
Is fine having damage amplification on a target or within a window. Not fine to have it in a source.
Db widow, as much ineffective as it sounds. Barely have any counterplay aside counterplaying widow. Not everyone have similar flaws as widow.
If you pick db and put in every single character you have a plus with barely any caveat or counter. If you reach this point with aspd also, you didn’t solved anything, just shifted the problem for the next hero.
If you change the ability you fix both mercy and the ones impacted by her. Which is why, discord orb by example have several counters and ways to be disabled. DB you calc who would more/most effective to receive. Discord you pressure the target in all possible directions and make that target:
- weaker, defeating the sensation of OHK meaning that the player was aware of the situation due several hints on their hud.
- improves teamwork, instead of subservience. Due you’re the one coordinating your team on the fly. Making your role more important.
- utility removes the passiveability of the playstyle that several players complaint but those same players want their pockets. Showing hipocrisy on the whole “synergy” argument by being a simply relation of subservience. Folks shouldn’t play around you, you should be able to enable them if you want but is their decision to follow your calls, differently than playing for them or them playing for you. Is a team, teamwork needs to exist, doesn’t make subservience a thing tho.
They even gone far saying that not swapping isn’t gameplay sabotage, they plan to remove hard counters and enable folks play the way they want. Mercy shouldn’t be subservient, I don’t see any impossibility for her not being able to shoot foes with staff and swap between that and healing by example, instead of requiring a pistol. Heck she could even only have healing and the pistol if they don’t want to mess with animation, making the pistol being more hotswappable. They could do a step further and her pistol cause some kind of negative effect on the target that could mimmic some effect like damage received amplified, lessened healing or reduce the damage the target do.
Ideally, but I think it’s very unlikely that Overwatch gets rid of all of it’s damage boosts and attack speed boosts.
The ones on source are like 2. Mercy and Ana. Not even sombra’s one are exactly on the source.
Discord is on the target, kiriko is in a spot Bap is in a spot. You narrow it’s effectiveness by using map geography or simply certain heroes. Db and nano are agnostic to that. Due mercy mobility enables that on a genji by example without much problems and nano being one time activation and persistently stay in it.
Attack speed is generally better than damage boosts because you end up with less overkill damage. Also for area denial specialists like Junkrat or Pharah, attack speed is way better.
Pretty much the only time you would prefer the damage boost is if it gets you over a major breakpoint, like being able to one-shot when you couldn’t otherwise. And there just aren’t that many examples of this outside of Sojourn today.
For the splash damage, yeah.
For the direct hits, no.
Also reloads become an issue the faster the attack speed goes.
But this sort of issue can be addressed on the specific hero, or a general rule for explosives.
Both inherently spray an area and faster fire rate dramatically reduces the volume covered, reduces the time we have to actually do something with our shots, and impairs how long suppressive fire and sombra checking can be sustained. People have strong muscle memory for how long they can fire for, and all the changes screw with sense of time and engage/disengage cadence. It’s also not uncommon for full auto heroes to start firing before aiming over the target.
It’d be different if there was warning and the players knew exactly how long the effect would last. And no, you can’t get used to it, there’s no way you can adjust to a particular mercy player within the confines of a single match.
If anything, the whole point of this is to make Mercy’s blue beam weaker for precision burst damage at high ELO. So to the extent that makes Mercy’s blue beam less valuable at high ELO while causing almost imperceptible value differences outside of high ELO, good.
Honestly I think 30% extra attack speed with 0 cooldown would be crazy OP.
Think about how that would pair with Soldier 76, or Bastion. We’d still have the problem of problematic pocket-heroes, there’d just be a whole new set of pocket heroes.
I have. It’s actually weaker on those characters than 30% damage boost.
Which is fine, and basically an expected consequence of making her less valuable to use on sharpshooters and other big sources of burst damage.