[OW2] Solving the "Damage Boost" issue

General Discussion
1

So here’s a really direct way to solve this damage boosted headshot issue once and for all.

OVERHAUL TO DAMAGE BOOST

  1. Limit damage boosts to a maximum of 100% or 2x.
  2. Turn Headshots into damage boosts.
  3. Limit all Headshots to a maximum of 100% or 2x.
  4. Adjust the affected Heroes.

Here’s how I would adjust those heroes:

MERCY

  • +10 HPS on teammates on/near the ground (indicated by an arcane circle below the teammate)
  • No beam disconnect when casting Valk
  • GA can target teammates behind walls (But not fly through the wall)
  • Flying to a teammate gives a little burst heal to a player on the ground. Between 20-40hp depending on GA travel distance. (indicated by an arcane circle below the teammate, that does a glowing pulse visual)
Comments: Brings Mercy closer to that “Former Main Healer” status she used to have by giving her 65hps on grounded teammates. While also giving an easy way for devs to balance PharMercy later. And some big frustrations with Mercy players are Valk beam breakage, and slowly dying off a cliff begging a teammate to come to the edge. It also opens up a whole new realm of movement, and selfpeel for Mercy. The fun stuff. The burst heal is also nice, and encourages a more “Ping Pong” style instead of a “Pocket” style of healing. And this can be adjusted later if it’s popular.

BAPTISTE

  • More horizontal movement speed while in the air during Exoboots jump.
Comments: Movement horizontally is great for retreat, great for offense, and is just really fun.

ANA

  • Speed boost for 4sec after throwing a Biotic Grenade.
Comments: By making both of her cooldowns give her SelfPeel, it doubles the amount of situations she can deal with an attacker.

ZENYATTA

  • Base damage increased by +10.
  • Ult charge cost reduced by 10%.
  • On a 4sec cooldown, if Zen kicks a wall, Zenyatta knocks him backwards a significant distance.
Comments: Basic buffs, and something just pure Fun.

WIDOWMAKER

  • Base damage increased from 120 to 125.
  • Headshot modifier reduced from 2.5x to 2.0x
Comments: Just kind of a matter of time before they do Widow nerfs, after doing Sojourn nerfs. And it greatly restricts how the devs can design Tanks when the potential for a 390 damage boosted headshot exists.

KIRIKO

  • Base damage increased from 40 to 60.
  • Headshot modifier reduced from 3.0x to 2.0x
Comments: Even very high ELO players struggled to consistent hit headshots with Kiriko. It was a nice idea, but if the goal is to get Support players from Middle ELOs, then they should make the damage more consistent at Middle ELOs.

SOJOURN

  • Base Railgun maximum damage increased to 150.
  • Headshot modifier reduced from 1.5x to 1.0x.
  • Ultimate Railgun can still headshot.
Comments: A while back the devs said they wanted Sojourn to have decent winrates in Middle/Low ELOs. Honestly they can’t do that if she’s a headshot focused character, without making her broken in High ELO. With this set of changes, she’s good at all those ELOs, but not overpowered at High ELO.
3 Likes
2

I dont like this. I dont think the game needs any more burst healing, even if its small.

1 Like
3

Mercy is fine the way she is and is in no need or any nerfs or buffs or reworks in anyway shape or form.

2 Likes
4

Thank you. Very constructive.
/s

4 Likes
5

Can you explain these better? I might be stupid, but it’s not clicking for me. Are you saying the damage boost would be 100%? Are you saying that headshots shouldn’t be damage boosted? I’m confused.

1 Like
6

So basically kill boosting on people that can aim, always nano the junkrat and never the McCree.

7

Basically headshots count as a 100% damage boost, and the maximum damage boost amount is 100%.

8

Ah, I was thinking it was in relation to blue beam, that makes more sense.

9

So basically, the game has a lot less shields right now so ranged hitscan poke is already severe buffed indirectly, and it’s got a severe matchmaking problem that can only be fixed by pulling in a metric crapton of Support players into the middle ELOs where the most Support players are.

And literally anybody who doesn’t want them to get enough Support players to fix Matchmaking, isn’t worth Blizzard caring whether they stay or quit. Regardless of they are a Bronze players, or an OWL Pro.

10

Wait… so you just buffed Mercy+Sojourn, then. Sojourn’s crit is 1.5x.

11

More like I kinda assume Sojourn nerfs with this, but I can throw in a Sojourn change. Probably just remove her capability to headshot entirely outside of her Ult.

12

I think the crit should be removed at least outside of ult too but who knows when that will happen, 4 months from now? 10 months?

13

That seems too strong…

That will break her and we will have moth meta 2.0

14

The goal here is to increase the Support Role to be as close as possible to 40% of the playerbase as possible, in as short a timeframe as possible.

If people got a problem with that, they can deal with it, or quit. Even if that means they lose half the GM playerbase or half the OWL playerbase.

Not even exaggerating in the slightest.

15

I know what your goal is… We discussed her for many hours already at this point. I am just saying that all of this would be too much for Mercy, compared to what you gave other supports.

Especially that extra healing on GA. That is just… well…

20 to 40 healing every other second… That would just straight up broke her. I don’t think it is such a good idea.

This might be unpopular opinion, especially that it comes from Mercy main, but I think she should not be meta support. She should be viable, but on the verge of the meta. Something that you can get value out of if you know what you are doing, but if you would invest same amount of time you would get better results on something else.

1 Like
16

That’s fair, but if it’s the case, give more to other Supports.

The name of the game should be “Start with too much, then work down from there”.

Deliberately do not bother with fine tuning yet, and just focus on getting it into the right ballpark. OWL doesn’t start up until April, so they can easily intentionally “break the game”, and then fix it later.

But “boring” is more of a problem with a game than “unbalanced”.

Perhaps, but GA is on a 1.5sec cooldown, and you’d need at least 10sec of flight time.

Either way, the values are all ballparks that would need playtesting.

17

I don’t think this is the right way to do it.

If anything it should be decreasing base damage to 100 and increasing headshot multiplier to 3x. That way they can make her 150HP (you know, like a backline sniper should be) without worrying about damage boosted bodyshots.

18

That would kinda break the whole “nothing can ever go above 2x whether it’s a damage boost or headshot” that I’m going with in this post.

I don’t think a 300 headshot is appropriate if that wanna scale down tank health after the needed Support buffs.

19

Snipers should be an exception though.

20

Why?

Why are they more important than Supports and overall Composition durability issues?