No one is lacking skill to pull off anything, not in GM at least (where OWL players play anyway).
The problem is you need perfect timing, communication and team work to make some characters work. Which is not something you can expect from ladder, which is literally “putting six random people together and have them work as a team.”
Those aren’t “skills.” You don’t train as an individual to get them.
The OW team is doing the same thing the HOTS team did. To the point where they do the same absurdity of nerfing low winrate heroes, just because pros use them. The death of HGC was actually a massive improvement in that regard, and would have been an even better thing for the game is Blizzard didn’t decide to put the team on skeleton crew. Though HOTS still gets big balance patches (more often than OW too), events/skins and heroes.
shes been nerfed like twice and one of them (2 sec cd when interrupted) was based off player complaints mostly, not owl.
no, it was not. little playtime in ranked is still some playtime. when I say that it “wasn’t the only contributing factor” i’m not saying that she was popular or meta in ranked, I’m just saying that owl likely isn’t the sole reason.
dm cooldown was when she was good on ladder, dm range was when she was good on ladder and booster cd was when she was good on ladder.
idk what timeframe you’re reffering to but im pretty sure this is false
this here doesn’t make sense. utility and uniqueness add to a heroes power level and they are factored into balance for this reason. synergies are only possible because of the tools the heroes provide. if the combination is to powerful, reasons may be because there isn’t available counterplay or because the comp is enabled by an overpowered hero. op synergies should be adjusted/nerfed.
Pro* players. Ladder players wouldn’t complain about a hero they never see in their games.
Sure, being in less than 3% of the games is playtime.
Not enough to warrant a nerf though, especially when combined with the lowest winrate in the game.
Rein/Zarya was meta ever since Brig got released. D.Va had half Zarya’s pickrate in GM.
No, she wasn’t good.
That’s kinda wrong. DM is unarguably trash nowadays, but since it’s the only ability that can consistently block stuff like Blizzard or Firestrike, it will always be useful for pros who are min-maxing and going the safest route.
Devs can nerf it over and over for the pros, all this will achieve is either nothing, or D.Va being replaced by the next best choice (which is Sigma).
On ladder though, it serves no purpose. Nerfing D.Va only makes her less and less picked. The nerfs she got back then made her go below Bastion in GM.
While utility can add to a hero’s power level, and only when it’s good, uniqueness doesn’t. Uniqueness only serves to interpret pickrates. Problems only appear when a piece of utility is its own best counter.
DM isn’t like that, speed boost is, Rez on a cooldown is, BioNade is.
no, that patch wasn’t even used for owl and sombra wasn’t prevalant in owl either.
you cut out what I said, so ill say it again. by saying not “the only contributing factor”, im just saying that owl likely isn’t the sole reason. I personally think outcry from ladder players (especially tank) over her hack feeling oppressive could have been a reason but we can only guess (unless they tell us).
?? okay.
okay? she still had a healthy pickrate and winrate. she definitely wasnt subpar or bad.
top 3 tanks in gm and top 2 in owl is pretty good.
this exact logic was used to claim that lucio and mercy (or even zen and bap) were to be meta forever because of their unique utility. with the powers of hindsight we know that such claims are false. also dm is not trash lmao. stop downplaying dm to make d.va look trash.
if by uniqueness you just mean unique utility (rez, dm, speed, etc.), I disagree. if the hero is better/worse, with/without the ability, I think its safe to say that it affects the heroes overall power level.
how does nade counter nade? how is nade a better nade counter than shields/dm? if it cleansed anti, this would make a bit of sense to me but it doesn’t.
OWL is still playing OW…they’re just very organized “teams” and so the game “looks” different…but they’re not doing anything that a top 500 player couldn’t do given the same opportunities
No, OP is correct. OWL plays a different game from the rest of us. You cant scrim in coordinated teams and queue up as a 6 stack in GM. You cant set fixed maps which are predetermined against certain team you plan to play against.
80-90% of ranked is solo queue with random map selection. Its nothing like the league. Which is why its stupid to think this could be practice ground for pros. Same balancing or not, ranked in no way or fashion can replace legit scrims.
The devs only try to make it look alike, but everyone who plays the game know it simply isnt.
Overall the pros did directly interfere with hero balancing and not for the overall benefit of the game. Sombra is the prime exampel.
Balancing for OWL and for a normal game should be done separately.
OWL is a game of TEAMS. The characters can have synergies if played by a team that has PLANNED ahead and can easily COMMUNICATE their thoughts, plans and everything they see.
But normally OW isn’t a game for teams. People come to play the game and play ALONE. So a character which can work very well in teams is absolute trash when played alone with bad communication. You cannot imagine the amount of work people have to put into Sombra to make her work in normal games, yet she’s still used in OWL because it’s coordinated.
Keeping the game balanced around OWL forces people into teams unless they want to lose, and with random people the communication on OWL’s level is impossible.
It was used for scrimmages.
Ladder feedback rarely reaches devs’ ears anyway.
She was subpar. She was unable to compete on ladder.
And no, her pickrate and winrate weren’t healthy.
She was 4th in GM back then, and 3rd in OWL, behind both Zarya and Rein.
Unlike every tank above her, she was nerfed. Twice.
There’s a difference between always being useful and always being meta. Startegies can change. Which makes using pro pickrates to judge balance even more of a stupidity.
DM only has for it that it can block some things barriers can’t, which isn’t enough to warrant a pick.
It needs to be more flexible and more uptime to be effective at blocking damage.
And yes, D.Va is trash at the moment, that’s why her pickrate on ladder is so low, and why her winrate is so bad compared to other tanks.
Last month in GM, she’s the least picked tank, with the worst winrate.
You’re messing uniqueness with having the utility at all.
Replace any utility with another piece of utility that another hero already has, that won’t make them weaker. But because they’re less unique, they’ll be used less by pros.
Remove the utility and then they become weaker.
Brig has a ClOsE to 100% pickrate in the OWL which is a good represetantion of the OW community since she has had a <%5 pickrate for the past six months.
100%=5% we all know that.
Mercy is a useless pick, we all know that. Even though her pickrate is close to 7% in the OWL she has been the third most picked healer only below queen Ana and Moira for the past six months in the OW community.
Of course she needs massive buffs, why would you say otherwise.
Ana had a 70%+ pickrate in the OWL and has been the queen in the OW community as well for the past six months overshadowing every other healer.
Why would you adjust/nerf her a bit though? It means she is WoRkInG aS InTeNdEd.
The problem is, they think OWL== the entire OW community. Thus, they assume that gold,plat,diamond, etc., play the same characters at the same level that people in the OWL do
I would hoenstly argue that. I was on GM for 12 seasons before quitting and the gap between low GM, high GM and OWL is too obvious.
Well OP isnt argueing for different balance per rank. Only the pros get different balance patches than the main game. Which btw pros for the most part have been playing on for us outdated patches anyway.
“Top level” for us would shift down to GM/top 500 rather than pro play, which is more representitive on the game we actually play.
I mean I wouldn’t go there…you can find many responses from devs acknowledging that they can’t make change X without creating monsters for lower ranks…It’s absolutely a consideration
(That’s not to say they haven’t anyway…cough reaper/mei cough)
The problem is that a hero based shooter like this with such wide variety of heroes is borderline impossible to balance period (let alone for everyone)…and I sincerely doubt that even if you had separate balance rule sets for different ranks you’d get it right…
I think it depends largely on what is fun to watch
Watching a good Ashe player dominate, fun to watch. Watching a Widow…eeeeeeeeehhh, not as much. The one shot kills make the combat too short and not as satisfying. The enemy doesn’t get a chance to react and make the fight interesting, the first shot is a statement, the followup is what makes it exciting to watch.
Hence why the Ambassador to me was fun, and Sniper was not.
owl players wouldn’t scrim on a different patch. the patch where she was nerfed came after the stage started. if sombra was nerfed for owl, it doesn’t make much sense for them to not even play on the patch where she’s nerfed. she wasn’t prevalent at all in owl when she was nerfed anyways.
it could have been the reason though.
top 3 in gm is competing.
she had like a 10% pickrate (tanks) with 52-55% wr. how is that unhealthy or even bad?
are we thinking about the same time? if we are then you are just wrong. im thinking of recently (few months) where dva and orisa had much more playtime than zarya in owl.
how often a character is useful correlates with their power. characters that are always useful will probably be meta.
last month, her pickrate was only a bit below winston in gm and the same is true for winston. based purely on stats its kinda odd to claim that she’s “trash” whenher winrate/pickrate isn’t much lower than her competition, especially since her pickrate is definitely rising a bit with the release of echo.
then its fair to say that their unique utility affects their power level.
idk what timeframe you’re reffering to but im pretty sure this is false