Rally has a misleading mechanic, it's actually very broken

General Discussion
101

How do you know that? You work with Bill Warnecke at his office and heard him saying the opposite and he’s just caving to demands?

I don’t think so. I think you’re making up slanderous accusations about developers in their own forums that they set up for you while hiding behind the veil of anonymity.

I also have the veil of anonymity, but I don’t use it to make scurrilous unfounded and irrefutable accusations against public figures who put their reputation on the line.

I have clearly stated why this bug is bad, it should go not just because it is a bug, it should go because it’s bad.

All you seem to be seeing is that Rally should be a better ultimate and maybe it should… but not like this. This is a TERRIBLE way to make Rally as good as it should ever need to be.

I think that is a TERRIBLE reason to turn a blind eye to a bug this bad.

This is going to lead to such frustration for anyone who is on or against a team that has Rally. It’s going to lead to such inconsistent performance, it’s like trying to defend extreme lag and packet loss against an excessively weak hero.

The answer to that is an unequivocal:

YES

It’s just so far beyond dumb to not want a game breakingly inconsistent damage bug to not be fixed because a character needs to be saved by an unreliably much more powerful ult.

It’s an ultimate… it’s not a core ability, it’s going to be rarely used. A hero can have a terrible ult that’s never really used and still be very viable, like McCree’s ult.

If you can’t see how this is different from something like bunnyhopping I don’t have the patience to explain it to you. Everyone else understands this.

Far FAR more bugs were removed because they were bad for the game.

This Rally bug is: bad for the game.]

I an using capitalisation for emphasis PLEASE STOP acting like the only opposition to this is because it’s technically a bug. Address that this is BAD. It’s bad how inconsistent it is.

If Rally was supposed to be better it should be CONSISTENTLY better. Don’t accuse me of not being calm, because you’re continually glossing over how the problem with this bug is how INCONSISTENT the effect of Rally is.

There is no reason this bug fix cannot then allow Rally to be buffed to have the sufficiently consistent and predictable protection.

Those were good because it was NOT good for Doomfist to be made so weak, whether he was weak because of bugs or weak intentionally.

Yes there are a lot of irrational haters who hate on doomfist, but guess what? Those haters are wrong. They are just using doomfist as a scapegoat, an easy target, they want to blame his state for them losing and they are being completely irrational about it.

When you cut through their BS you find they have no legitimate reason to have a problem with doomfist, they are just bad at the game and want the game rigged in their favour and think they can get doomfist nerfed.

1 Like
102

and the walking disaster that is brig continues. pull her and fix her already.

2 Likes
103

Ok now your just going delusional

what are you saying? im not accusing anyone? you really gotta chill out now

its ironic that you claim im doing slanderous accusations when you literally just psyched yourself intodoing the same tihing

I am not doing any kind of slanderous accusations,

im literally pointing out a fact

they made that mechanic clear, in that thread, where people where saying ashe didnt get ult charge anymore and were confused if it was a bug fix or not, the OP thought it was a nerf

Quoting the OP HIMSELF

its a fact, im not beeing slanderous or anything

they literally made that mechanic clear for the first time, up until that point WE DIDNT EVEN KNOW IF IT WAS A BUG

i never said it was wrong, it was bad, it was good

NOTHING

you made up a story in your head, and ironically, only made yourself seem like the exact thing you are accusing me off

If all your going to do is jump into conclusions like that then i have no intrest in following up this conversation

104

Sounds to me like how armor has always worked…? Sustained damage is the worst against armor of any kind. You want burst damage to deal with armor because you can easily prevent it from stacking.

I’m not seeing the problem but that could just be me.

105

So multiple different instants of armor simultaneously reduce the incoming damage on one source of damage instead of only reducing once? That explains why she feels extra sturdy…

106

His Overload armor is a separate layer from his base armor. So, if he takes enough damage to cut thru the overload into his regular armor the armor will mitigate it twice.

That’s why I’m curious how old this bug is, it might be brand new with some of the newer brig/torb changes/armor order or it might have been like this since launch.

107

No you’re not, you’re saying the exact opposite happened of what actually happened.

You claimed “Ashes ult, Your not meant to gain ultimate charge while your ultimate is up, yet she does,”

Then when I provided you a source where the developers said “Ashe should generate ultimate charge while B.O.B. is active” she did gain ult charge before and the developer was absolutely explicit that Ashe later being unable to generate ult charge during an ult was a bug, so… unintentional.

This is barely relevant to this rally bug except for your poor attempt to cite this as supporting your rationale to not fix this Rally bug.

So to steer this back on topic… dealing with the reality of Ashe’s ult, how does Ashe’s ult justify any consideration at all of not fixing this bug with Rally?

And don’t quibble that “this might not be a bug” that’s pure semantic.

1 Like
108

Armor was and still is oppressive to low-damage, high-velocity heroes like Wrecking Ball, Sombra, and Tracer, and certain shot-gun based heroes like Reaper, D.va and Doomfist who deliver large burst damage in smaller, spread-like bullets.

The problems with armor considered an okay-perk to the tank class heroes given that they tend to be very large targets. However, with the introduction to of Brigitte and her Rally’s improved armor mechanic, and the introduction of Wrecking Ball, who’s low-damage high velocity fire mechanic furthered a need to reduce the effectiveness of armor. Even among the beam-based heroes, such as Zarya and Winston, armor was naturally oppressive, but very effective against low-health heroes.

Rally’s improved armor, is not new stuff, and I’m pretty sure that Blizzard is at least somewhat aware of Brigitte’s Rally issues which is why they changed it from adding permanent improved armor to temporary improved armor. It needs to be an ult for a reason, and simply giving basic armor isn’t really enough to justify it as an ult.

But if they needed to adjust Brigitte’s overall balance tweaks a bit more, they really should drop the added 50 armor to her health. There’s no need for a barrier support hero like Brigitte to be running around with a barrier and armor that’s specifically a perk to tank heroes, Bastion and Torbjorn (for a number of reasons).

109

Should be easy to test, just overload in front of a bot that deals a single attack dealing about 120 damage.

Well I just tested that in a custom game getting a soldier bot to shoot a single Helix rocket at me. And testing against unarmoured “white” health, his helix rockets definitely are dealing 120 damage.

Yet when I’m shot by a helix rocket when overloading I’m reduced from 350HP to 239HP.

Yeah, The 120 damage rockets were reduced by 9 damage… EEEEEEEH?!?

I also tested with Brig using Rally, after the bonus armour increases to +100 the helix rocket only reduced Brig’s HP from 350 to 254.

It reduced the damage by 24, not by only 3 damage as it should.

I wonder, if we had had demo record for longer would we have been able to spot this sooner?

Something has me thinking this might be a new bug, might explain why it’s only being found now.

1 Like
110

Yes because its not a normal thing for any character to gain ultimate while they are already using it,

is what i refered to, you misunnderstood completly

Genji doesnt gain ult charge as he uses his ultimate, to give out an example, the fact that ashe does is a exception, an abnormality, leading many people to belive it is a bug which it wasnt

this ties in with me saying that exceptions are a good thing and why this could potentially also be a meant feature

What im trying to get to

is that if the ultimate is so weak already with a bug that is making it better than it should

then after this bugfix is done, it will need some compensation buffs because its already very weak

hence why im saying, dont fully get rid of the bug, or consider options before you do

111

Oh so when you said “Your not meant to gain ultimate charge while your ultimate is up”

You actually meant “I assume it’s a rule that no hero is supposed to gain ult charge while their ult is active” you phrased your general assumption as if you were saying this was the clear intent for Ashe’s ult.

Nowhere was it EVER said that’s the rule, you just made an assumption that’s all the case when in fact loads of heroes gain ult charge while their ult is active, not only Ashe but also D.Va, Torbjörn, Tracer, and Hammond.

How armour is supposed to work has been specified:

  • For any given damage value it halves it with the damage reduction capped at -3 damage (and exceptions for beam/DoT attacks)

That clearly stated rule in the patch notes is clearly contradicted by how this Rally armour works. The amount the damage is reduced is not capped at -3, it’s getting 8x higher!

Also WHY would this possibly be intentional?!? This is exactly in line with an oversight of how armour is applied, 15HP of armour at a time.

Then it can get some compensation buffs.

1 Like
112

yeah i assumed it was a consistent rule because i never seen anyone other than ashe doing it,

For Dva, she gains ult charge for “another” ult so i kind of passed that and dva is literally two different characters so i assumed that was an exception

but for torb tracer and hammond i literally had no idea they did lol, and i play torb a lot

636×558

it seems like a strage oversight to make, tbh,

the devs have stats so it feels odd that they would miss something beeing x8 better than it should

113

Ill preface this by saying I havent verified the claim- But if its true, its a huge problem.

Youre right in that you should want to use burst to deal with armor.

The concern is that if this is true, burst is deceptively ineffective at dealing with it.

Say youve got an attack that does 75 damage, and you shoot at 75 armor.

Under how we believe armor to work in MOST cases, that armor will reduce the 75 damage by 3, and youll deal 72 damage (In this case, leaving 3 armor)

But with rally working the way theyre talking- That “75 armor” isnt really “75 armor”, its:

15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15

And each stack reduces the damage by 3 as it breaks into a new layer

That 75, gets reduced by 3, and then removes the 15 armor- Leaving 57. That 57 gets reduced by 3, then removes the next stack, leaving 39. Reduced, removes the next- 21. Reduced, removed, 3 left and still 1 stack of armor. That 3 gets reduced to half (cant remember how overwatch halves odd numbers for damage).

Basically, “stacking armor” multiplies the reduction, for each stack of armor that any source of damage blows through. Instead of being reduced by 3, a single source of damage can be reduced by 6, 9, 12, etc.

2 Likes
114

Can she survive pharah ult with rally?

115

Apparently it may not even be brig only?

Torb seems to have a similar bug, although less prominent

The question now becomes

If this happens with Torb overloading and Brig ult, Does this happen as well WIth her E?

and

is this the case for normal “yellow” armor inestead of “orange” one?

it may be either a big oversight on all temporary armor when it was added, or its on prupose to make it not so weak, or they just, completly broke armor when they changed it

116

It makes sense for it to be 15 because that’s how the ultimate works. It stacks 15 armor every .5 seconds. I don’t think there are many heroes in the game that can shoot faster than .5 shots per second.

117

So this has been a thing since her release?

118

It would make sense if adding 15 armor to 30 pre existing armor was 45 total armor.

Not 3 individual stacks of 15 that just reads as 45.

What we currently (apparently) have is an armor system with “stacks” that you can’t actually see so you don’t even know how much damage reduction you’ll get.

Ashe. Bastion. Genji. Soon to be Mccree. Reaper. Sombra. Soldier. Torb. Widow. Dva. Wrecking ball. Orisa. Baps. Mercy. Lúcio. Zen.

119

Here is a nice visual of some of it in action

1 Like
120

It’s 15 armor every .5 seconds. Read that back to yourself.

Brigitte seems invincible because she can generate 30 armor every second.

For reference a 30% accuracy soldier will only hit 3 rounds per second for 60 dmg. Brigitte will generate half of that in armor, mitigating up to 36 damage per second without any healing.

Over half of what Soldier can do in that time frame.