Exactly, he’s talking about LADDER
You think people actually care about ladder or play these heroes because they care/are on their mains?? Especially in GM
The most pointless stat ever
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A great change for Reaper to give him a smaller skill gap could be to reduce his gun spread, but also reduce his HP to 200 to compensate. This should make him consistent enough to counter but flexible enough to play in high ranks, right?
Thank you for this clarification. Very interesting on the unmirrored GM+ MMR range. I’m glad you guys are looking at this kind of information. I hope you understand that while we, as a community, are concerned about game health, cc creep and overall ability to enjoy these amazing characters (its very hard to play non-orisa main tank into mei/reaper for ex.), we greatly appreciate this kind of transparency, explanation and openness to dialogue. Community overreaction and toxicity is an issue (non uncommon in beloved games) that we will continue to manage. Again, greatly appreciate the overwatch dev team’s capacity to participate in the dialogue. Hope you had a happy new year 
Hey, Josh, I want to thank you for your reply.
Secondly I’m not trying to armchair develop your game, I just want to make a small suggestion when it comes to nerfing mei.
I strongly support making mei wall into three individual pillars down from four, this way its more worthwhile to break a pillar so we can restore sight lines to our reinhardt and so he can actually have space to retreat through the improv opening back to safety from a choke like hanamura.
Lastly, I’d take a harsh look at freeze targeting multiple players, personally while it seemed to give mei what she needed, i just think it’s clowning a little as it’s such a painstakingly prolonged form of CC and can be repeated.
Thanks again.
There are 5 other players on your team, you might have done nothing but increased the winrate of your chosen hero, just saying it happens.
You do realize he stated GM and not overall, right? So, no, those numbers don’t have anything to do with “low Elos” or smurfing.
When you look at pick rates, do you only look at when the hero is picked for the majority of the match? What if someone plays genji for a minute and then swaps off to a different hero for the majority of the rest of the match, does that still count as a win for genji’s pick? If you look at the total play time of heroes, do genji still lie in the middle of the bracket?
From my personal experience, Genji is extremely weak right now, but I am not surprised if it has still reasonably high pick rates, but mainly because many consider it the most fun and interactive heroes, and are willing to play it even though he is very weak. On the contrary, I think a lot of people don’t find mei to be interesting to play, but they are simply playing it so that they can win. These two types of polar populations could be the explanation of the similar pick rates.
The other thing to consider is heroes like Mei, Doom and Reaper requires so much less skills and practice to excel compared to heroes and Tracer and Genji, where you can make so much more mistakes on the former heroes and achieve the same impact as the latter ones. That’s probably why heroes like genji are perceived as super weak right now, because it is completely unplayable unless the player is EXTREMELY skilled. I think this is one of the result of the so called “power creep” that everyone is complaining about - the game just added so much more CC (almost every new heroes added has some sort of CC, Sigma’s rock (which I am still not sure why Genji cannot deflect it) and ult, Sombra, doom, brig, orisa…), and that hurts a lot of the vanilla heroes (especially the mobile ones, which happen to be the most fun ones to play) that were designed without taking account into all the new cc’s added. If Genji was released today, do you think he would be a reasonable design? He is almost never able to pull out his ultimate without being stunned and cc’ed to oblivion.
I think a lot of the cc abilities that impact movements need to be really re-considered and toned down. Sigma’s rock needs to be deflectable, orisa’s pull needs to have smaller range or less slow time, changes similar to those made to doomfist a few patches back which makes heroes impacted by doom’s ability able to move faster. These mechanics are very unfun and uninteractive and I think is what is hurting the game the most. Once they are gone or tone down to longer cool down or less cc time, mobile heroes will be able to be decent again and that may make heroes like widow and hanzo less oppressive.
Oh my, I didn’t expect to touch a nerve. I posted yesterday this thread, went to bed then off to work to come back and find nearly 400 replies and 14K views! Thank you all for posting replies especially from the Devs, because I am learning a lot about “power creep” and the issues from the community.
In a way I feel good about Overwatch because of this reaction, because it shows a lot of people do care about this game despite its shortfalls, and maybe it will lead to something good! 
literally your own alt… no face no one
Thank you for reaching out to us, that is much appreciated .
From my humble pov the main issue leading to power creeps is indeed the oppressive nature of a few heroes or more specifically abilities , most of these abilities are mostly defensive, and put a stop to the flow of the game, such as immunities, CCs and excessive survivability, that pattern is repeated among all the currently ‘problematic’ characters such as Mei, Moira, Bap, DF, Reaper, Sigma etc… Some more than others of course, mostly all changes made during the GOATS era and still not reverted afterwards.
It is this constant feeling of kill denial and slow pacing of the game alongside the abundance of ‘Oh Crap’ buttons, those factors are making the game slow and slightly heavy, too Low Risk > High reward, and in a certain way stale.
Thank you for taking the time to stop by, wishing you all the best and great future updates similar to the last patch (shield nerf).
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great post. I like hearing from you guys,.
And word on Hanzo changes?
Here’s the idea I like best so far.
Cuts Hanzo’s bodyshot DPS down from 279DPS to 177DPS. (For a normal Arrow+StormArrows combo of 475 damage over 1.7sec, down to 300 damage over 1.7sec.)
Hopefully these changes don’t dumpster the hero.
I’ve been working on a variety of ideas for that
Now is the time to ask for 1 extra ammo for Lucio. He is a high skill hero so deserves 24 sound waves in his gun. Too often my teams DPS are truly garbage and I just need that extra shot to finish off enemies at distance before they get healed.
People will say switch off Lucio and heal more but if the enemies DPS are simply better than yours it makes no difference and the fights snowball. So I think if you can’t beat them, join then and give Lucio an extra round of ammo!
I think something you also need to take into consideration in regards to this is how some people just get bored of having to play the “must pick” hero from the meta and just flat out refuse to play them after a while which could lower pickrates to some extend. However it could also be a minor group which doesn’t reflect on the stats.
Is it the best idea to patch using stats from the top 1% of the player base? Although they may be able to provide the most comprehensive stats and feedback as they have a better understanding of the game, I believe that it’s easier to tell of a heroes base utility and power level with statistics from the lower levels as they haven’t mastered every ability. Of course, Genji players in Top 500 are going to have more success simply because they have mastered that hero. If you look at the heroes base power level, then you can see how much power creep effects the game. I.e: A platinum Baptiste can get more value by simply pressing E than a Genji can by farming a blade for two minutes. THAT is power creep. Genji used to be good at any level, and one of the best heroes when mastered, but with no changes, he is now lower than average in terms of power and only even slightly usable by the highest level players in the game. That is power creep. A hero with no changes power level shouldn’t change.
Mei is not fun the play. Along with Reaper. And Orisa. Eventually, even if a hero is the best in the meta, the player base will get bored of playing them as it simply doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. I think this is one of the reasons the meta and changes in Overwatch are so stagnant and slow. The players no longer play the meta, and therefore it becomes harder to balance, which I think is what’s happening now. For instance, I am a Reinhardt main. Most of the time, both the enemy and my team will run Rein Zarya as a tank line. This isn’t the most effective tank line, and both the enemy and I know that, but that’s the only way as tank players that we can enjoy ourselves when playing the game, even when it means that we lose more often. Winning by playing Sigma or Orisa simply isn’t worth it.
Professional play and Ladder play are different stories as they are entirely disconnected from each other since what wins isn’t fun. People playing for fun don’t play to win anymore, so the environment in the different scenes is entirely disconnected. There are the players that do play the meta, who are in top 500 which is mainly Doomfist Mei and Reaper players, as well as Orisa and Sigma players, with Baptiste at support. And there are people who play for fun, which forms some of GM and everything below. They play what they want to play. There are two metas. The pro meta and the ‘I’m fed up’ meta. You can’t balance based off of the ‘I’m fed up’ meta, which is why you can’t balance off of stats.
A few seasons ago I got Diamond for the first time. I was so excited and barely played for like 3 weeks because I was afraid to lose it. Eventually, I did play, and eventually, I did slip back to platinum. I was utterly devastated to the point where it affected my daily mood. Last season, I got to diamond with support. At the time I was in Platinum for both DPS and Tank, so this was a big deal for me. Or at least it should’ve been. I fell to 2700 mainly because I was playing Ana who was slowly slipping from the meta. Unlike the first time I fell from diamond, I genuinely didn’t care. I felt like I should, but I didn’t. Winning doesn’t mean anything to me anymore as it isn’t fun. If I wanted to win and stay in diamond I could’ve played Moira or Baptiste, but winning with those heroes doesn’t feel good. Which is why you get these backwards stats. People don’t play good heroes anymore, but still have their games ruined by the few who do. So you get negative reports of heroes, but the stats don’t necessarily reflect that.
It’s bad that you use bare statistical data without understanding what’s going on in the field. That’s bad.
It means that your regulations need to be amended. How will the players find any fun if you take it away from them? Who will have fun? There won’t be anybody. Nobody will enjoy Overwatch at their spare time. Then, you’ll have a zero in those statistics. Nobody finds it enjoyable to play Overwatch.
It’s right. They don’t find it enjoyable because Blizzard took the fun away from the game.
Fix this. Play Overwatch and try it out for yourself for a couple of weeks. It’s just ridiculous.
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Do what the playerbase wants.
If something feels bad to the vast majority, then its unhealthy for the gameplay as a whole. Don’t justify bad design with “balanced” pickrates
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Btw.
Power creep doesn’t equal damage being too strong. Power creep is just escalation of power level which incluedes tanks and supports as well. For example, healing being too high is also power creep, as is tanks being unkillable etc.
Mei overpowered? How about Doom and Hammond?
Any changes in the foreseeable future for Brigitte or Pharah…?
TY for engaging with the forums, its a breath of fresh air