✊🏿 Seagull/OWL shows DF was OVERNERFED

General Discussion
105

Amazing post. Totally agree, apart from different ideas as to how to restore him to an average level.

What I’d like to add is this:

The Doomfist Nerfs were just another great example of Blizzard’s inability to be subtle when it comes to Overwatch continued balancing game.

They have developed a trend of overcompensation. Which has been going for a good while now, including a whole trove of patches.

Example the recent McCree + Reaper + Armor changes. changes.
What they should have done (on ptr):

  1. Implement changes to McCree’s Peacekeeper, 45 to 50.
  2. See how it goes for a month.
  3. Adjust slightly.
  4. Wait a month. Go live
  5. Implement Armor changes.
  6. Wait 1 or 2 months to see the impact.
  7. Adjust slightly.
  8. Wait a month. Go Live.
  9. Implement Reaper changes.
  10. Check it out a month.
  11. Adjust slightly. Go live.

Any scientist knows that when you run experiments trying to verify a Hypothesis, you ever only change 1 parameter at a time. So you can test it’s impact and results. The reason being that if you alter several parameters at the same time, you cannot be sure how each one individually alters the final results, nor how the changes interact with each other, as the complexity of the system and parameters involved grows, this becomes even harder.

Instead they keep bashing out gigantic changes all at once.

Blizzard time and again brings in not 1 or 2 Nerfs to characters, but a whole bunch of them. Not to mention other buffs to other characters, that completely alter the landscape of interactions beyond what anyone can foresee.

As a result the keep ending up with a pendulum that swings into extremes. Leaving heroes that were viable yesterday, completely worthless today.

My idea is that either:

  1. They do it on purpose to keep the meta in flux to some extreme, to try and keep the game fresh.
  2. They are being ‘rushed’ into changes, because their culture is changing, just as they are ‘rushed’ into releases etc by the influence of Activision. Basically it’s a result of a changing company culture.
  3. They are just unwilling to face the fact that they are creating more problems with the crude changes they keep making.

Apart from that I can’t help but wonder.
If they wanted to adjust CC, they should have adjusted CC across the board, for all heroes in 1 fell stroke. See how it goes and fine tune on PTR.

Doomfist’s Uppercut CC was reduced by 80%
His Slam CC was reduced by 100%
His Ult Killzone was also reduced by 80%
His Slam Range was reduced by 25%

He was a High skill floor/ceiling hero with a High Risk/Reward package that was dependent on his CC and they singled him out to remove all CC and leave him a flying sack of bones.

McCree’s cc was unchanged, but his gun was buffed.
Junkrat’s cc (trap + mines) were unchanged
Roadhog’s Hook was slightly buffed
Brigitte’s CC wasn’t changed (except that it doesn’t go through shields anymore)
Ashe & lucio’s boop were unchanged.
And it goes on and on…

If you want to reduce CC in this game, you cannot just nerf 1 hero into the ground and leave the rest unchanged, yet that is exactly what they did.

Not to mention his ult. As you said, Genji blade can kill a whole team in the hands of a good genji… Doomfist ult even at it’s best could perhaps do 1 or 2 people more when used in combo. But it required a lot of prediction skill still (except with grav) now you cannot even kill 1 Ana or Zen. Don’t even consider Moira or Tracer or Lucio, they were hard to kill already. Even before Doomfist ult was often used as an escape or engage, rather than damage, yet now it’s useless for even doing decent damage.

Anyway I digress. Blizzard needs to start implementing and testing changes in a more subtle manner, they keep overdoing it and I am (not the only one) getting pretty tired of it… if they can’t do it right, than rather not do it at all leave the game in a set state. So we can at least adjust to that and enjoy it.

As for my idea’s on Doomfist recovery:

Based on his pre-patch dec 11 state:
Doomfist’s Uppercut CC reduced by 30%
His Slam CC reduced by 50%
His Ult Killzone was also reduced by 40%
His Slam Range was reduced by 10%

That would be a more subtle version of what they did and in my eyes way more reasonable.

2 Likes
106

Boy that’s convenient for your narrative.

To bad it didn’t happen that way

Let’s not forget Seagull was also not the only person saying this, most people on here shared that sentiment.

107

We should make this a megathread, maybe Blizz will pay attention to it and fortunately wont take another half a year to do something

3 Likes
108

Doom’s ult is terribly designed as it is and should be replaced.

He should not have both complete protection AND huge damage. If he’s going to instantly leave the play area and then simply select a landing zone like some RTS commander then there’s not enough risk involved to reward with huge damage.

1 Like
109

I am down with the slam distance revert and I am forever for bug fixes. I am interested to see what his ult would look like is it reset his cool downs. However I dont think they should change meteor strike damage or radius though that is fine.

110

lmao, dude it was a joke. I was preemptively posting what these DF threads always devolve into.

2 Likes
111

I don’t think this is what they’ve said—from what I’ve understood, they are simply saying that they aren’t over-concerning themselves with having equal pick rates. It’s not like they go, “No, no, we have to make sure [hero] only has a .02% pickrate, because Reasons™”, I think it’s just a matter of fact that as long as the heroes have meaningfully different strengths and weaknesses, they are not ever going to be interchangeably viable all the time. i.e. Some heroes really do better on defense than on attack, some really struggle in big open maps and some thrive there, some get little value in CQC and others are a nightmare there. All of the heroes should have a purpose that they are very good at; but that doesn’t mean they’ll be a smart pick in every situation. And that’s okay.

I think as far as many of the community is concerned, this is how it should be—but I don’t think this is the actual design philosophy at Blizzard at all. None of the main tanks or main healers really have deeply difficult mechanics (the challenge with them is close to 100% gamesense, and EGADS that takes some mastery)—the only exception is Ana, whose kit is still noticeably more forgiving than many high-difficulty DPS heroes. All of these heroes have impact all the way up and down the ladder, and have since the inception of the game.

There’s more of a direct difficulty -> impact correlation in the DPS category, but even then the game still rewards the most effective choice for the situation, not just the one that is the hardest to play. (See: Pirate Ship, Junkrat any place his opponents are forced into narrow chokes—heck, for a while Soldier was more meta than McCree in just about any situation you needed a midrange hitscan.)

Back to OP’s points about Doomfist:

Doomfist absolutely should be a viable pick in the game, and anything buggy about his kit should of course be fixed. But that’s not as simple as writing a line of code like, “IF(doing a bug) { stoppit”. I’m positive that bugs in Doomfist’s kit, just like bugs that have existed in other heroes’ kit (looks at Reinhardt), have not been ignored because the devs are just happy to dropkick the hero into the dumpster, but have not been addressed because isolating and fixing the bug takes time.

I’m perfectly content to entertain the idea that Doomfist got over-nerfed, but particularly as it relates to his ult, I think it shouldn’t be re-upped by much. Patch all the bugs, yes. But I don’t think it should get to be an automatic death sentence for whoever Doomfist dropps the bullseye on. In its previous state, Meteor Strike essentially meant, “I get to pick which support dies”.

You compare Meteor Strike to Dragonblade, but even though Meteor Strike will generally net fewer kills, it has a number of strengths that Dragonblade does not. Genji can be stunned, hacked, displaced, or killed while blading. If he misses an early kill, he can waste the entire ult flailing around with his sword and waiting for his dash to reset. Dragonblade only does anything good for Genji’s positioning if he is able to chain dashes.

In Meteor Strike, on the other hand, Doomfist is invincible and wholly unthreatened while setting it up, to the point that it can be used as a guaranteed escape from any bad teamfight (barring Grav). Doomfist can use it to reach some insane vantage points and/or drop immediately on top of heroes who are too far in the backline or high ground to ordinarily reach. Even if Doomfist does not insta-kill people upon landing, he is in a position to use his full kit immediately to begin wreaking havoc. Its invincibility, its positioning, and its setup potential, gives it a number of benefits that Dragonblade doesn’t have.

(I’m not convinced Dragonblade isn’t a hair overtuned atm, but that’s neither here nor there. My point is, MS’s direct kill potential is not the only thing to consider when comparing its ult cost vs. DB.)

I will admit up front that I am hot garbage at Doomfist, and have always been far more likely to get splatterd across a wall by him than to carry a team with him. I acknowledge that he is a hard character to master, and I don’t mind it if he is able to mop the floor with me on a regular basis. Like I said, I think Doomfist should be viable and he should be able to do his job. I just question whether “his job” should entail getting a guaranteed kill upon any squishy he decides should die (whether that’s through unbreakable combos/unpunishable dives, or especially through Meteor Strike).

Absolutely, yes, DF should be effective, and if he’s currently not, that’s a problem.

It does decay, unfortunately. Happened to me too. :woman_shrugging:

112

Now doomfist requires skill instead of m2 insta kill. He’s good dude.

1 Like
113

Then why does he have a low pickrate in GM if he’s good?

114

Thats his primary source of kills right now lol.
His combo is unreliable.

115

I think rocket punch could have a 5 second cooldown. Maybe then there could be room for buffs.

116

captainjeanlucpicardfacepalm.jpg

117

No, simply no, his Rocket Punch is fine the way it is, the rest of him needs buffs

118

I think too many Doomfist players win duels by simply waiting for the cooldown of rocket punch. If it was increased to 5 seconds it would force them to be more skillful and would open opportunities for other aspects of his kit to be buffed.

119

lol when he lands he just gets instantly headshot by hanzo

120

They already need to be skillful to even dare to play him, and fighting him at close distance is generally a bad idea unless you can burn him down or stun him

1 Like
121

Well they have to now since slam is no longer useful

122

not enough risk involved to reward

His ult is literally “jump into the enemy team”, is it not enough risk for him? I’d agree if his ult landing marker wasn’t shown to the enemy at all, and if it did like 500 damage. But now it deals >200 in most cases, it’s a miracle when you get a Meteor strike kill.

123

If he guarantees kills with it every time, then no, probably not. Even if DF dies immediately upon landing, by then, it is too late to do anything about the people who got deleted when he hit the ground.

The fact that there is no way to stop Meteor Strike (and that DF can choose precisely where it falls) means that it gets really, really tough to balance how hard it hits. It should be scary, and it may be too weak at the moment, but if it’s a near-guaranteed kill upon landing, it’s probably too much.

124

It doesnt

1 Like