PLEASE READ THIS TL;DR BEFORE COMMENTING
Remove freeze on primary,
buff primary damage to be on par with Symmetra
add a mobility ability to allow her to disengage.
^^ that is in the ballpark of what I’m proposing. I don’t want the removal of freeze to a be a nerf!!!
It’s happening, but it really makes the game unfun because she counters the most engaging and fun characters to play (i.e. the duelists) and at the same time is hard to counter. She even has a built in counter to her counters (snipe-cicles) that have a larger hurtbox than widow or McCree. If you’ve ever been sniped out of the sky by Mei, you know what I mean. Worst yet, the best counter to her is either junkrat, who isn’t a hard counter by any means and still needs to work hard to burst her down, or another Mei. So two defense heroes, one of which is the same hero. That’s bad design if i ever saw it.
Let’s look at a similar ability: d-matrix. If d-matrix, a hero-defining ability that made D.va a must for protecting squishies and halting dive can be nerfed badly enough to make D.va no longer useful in that role (and ushering in the broken reign of dive meta) and if that nerf was brought on because d-matrix was deemed unfun, it’s only fair that be applied to an ability like freeze that is roundly considered unfun and which frankly forces Mei into a niche that simultaneously makes her pretty useless in higher tiers and keeps her from being reworked.
We keep on getting minute buffs and nerfs to Mei but the devs refuse to revisit her kit. If they did, they could actually justify solid buffs to make her a better pick in higher ranks.
Freeze on primary is simply impossible to balance without nerfing every other aspect of the character so please actually rework Mei and stop saying “why take away freeze, she’s already too weak.” Because the fact of the matter is that her main gimmick, freeze, is indirectly responsible for her being too weak. Not to mention duelists already have effective counters other than Mei and are already pretty delicate without freeze in the game.
PS: I know I’m about to get spammed with comments by angry Meins. Look, I got mad when they took away health pack charging from Sombra because she was an ult-bot. That defined her kit, but now I see why they did that because, it took her out of a niche and made her a whole lot more satisfying to play. Believe me: there is life after rework.
Forum Moderator Note: Developer callout removed
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It’s so easy to stay away from mei’s range and to kill her when she is freezing you…
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Mei counters your hero of choice, and even then it’s not hard to literally take a few steps back. And McCree works wonders on Mei.
Incidentally, I swapped freeze and icicle controls because it doesn’t really feel like a primary imo.
Exactly, which is why freeze is useless in higher tiers and should be replaced with buffs to the rest of her kit or new mechanics.
The reason Mei is not being picked in higher levels is mainly because of the Meta and how high level players play.
High-level players generally avoid all short range characters except Reinheart.
And they only pick Rein because he is a necessary evil - not that he is necessarily good.
Short range characters suffer extremely in high levels as peoples accuracy is extremely good, so short range characters get shutdown extremely easily.
The biggest strength Mei has is not her freeze at all but her Ice Wall.
Her ice wall allows her to separate teams and do pick offs. But beyond her ice wall her kit is not that great.
Most importantly though they nerfed her ultimate + her right click ( which did not have a damage fall off originally )
If you want to see Mei back in high levels - bring back her original ultimate and increase range of damage fall off.
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Don’t worry Blizzard will eventually bland and homogenize everything.
Everything fun and unique like pack charging will be removed.
Nah. Mei needs her freezing. And I’m speaking as one of the people that typically has to go after her. As much as I hate fighting that satanic little thicc-cicle, I wouldn’t call for a nerf to her primary. If I was going to ask for anything, it’d be a hitbox reduction/falloff on her icicle. A good Mei is a top tier sniper with that stuff compared to the pixel-perfect aim required to be a good Widow and that’s infuriating.
Ummmmm How are Tracer, Winston, Hog, and D.va not short range? Do you mean b/c they can close the distance? That’s one of the things I think should replace freeze along with other buffs: a mobility ability. Say she freezes a path in front of her and slides on it or her cryo gives her momentum.
so… what you are asking for is Mei to be Mccree?
that spray is practically Mei’s whole identity if anything they need to buff it’s effectiveness
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I don’t know if I need a tl;dr bit but I’m not calling for her primary to be nerfed, I actually think it should be buffed as far as damage but the freezing gimmick is what stands in the way of a buff. It should be a 3s time to kill like Sym with something like an ice-slide to allow her to disengage.
Since when was pack charging ever fun though?
No I get that. I’m talking about the actual freezing aspect. I think it’s fun and unique. It’d be lame if she just killed people with her spray, firstly because it detracts from her uniqueness as a character and secondly because it would take all the fun out of doing it to people already on low health as an insult.
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When was sitting in the back to make sure health bars are full ever fun?
I don’t really know where you’re going with this but with your initial reply I got the sense that you were saying sombra was much more fun and engaging when she was an EMP bot rather than her being more active now
Moira facepalm spray
That’s the entire problem! If it just killed people that would be one thing but it makes counter-play once you get sprayed damn near impossible and that is what everyone finds unfun plus a ton of characters cannot reliably take her out from outside of her range b/c of falloff damage and spread. You also are forgetting that taking away freeze doesn’t take away slow. Slow is still pretty effective at disruption.
If you like schadenfreude and easy tilts, just go play Titanfall and jump on walls. It makes you both near invincible and a pain in the a**.
It’s not effective verse anything that matters though. The whole counterplay to Mei is NOT to let her freeze you in the first place. She’s defense, area denial, that’s what she does, make you go away.
It’s not supposed to be “fun” to get countered, the fun part is supposed to be figuring out how to overcome that. Hence why Overwatch is heavily encouraging of switching characters. They got a Mei? Pick up a Widow or a Hanzo, drop her instantly.
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First off, I play several different characters, including junkrat who, while he’s a decent counter, he’s not terribly fun to play. He’s a killbot and there’s nothing terribly satisfying about it. I only play junkrat if I need an edge against a really tough defense.
But more to the point, the part that is unfun is that getting frozen and taking a headshot is nothing less than an invitation for tilt. You cannot stop it once it’s started. Tracer’s primary is only second to Reaper’s. If Tracer starts dueling you, there are ways to either disengage, take her out-of-position, disable her, or straight up kill her with sheer skill. She also has some pretty hard counters like Moira and Junkrat. On the other hand you can’t outplay freeze and staying away is not a choice when so many heroes have fall-off and spread. Hell, I would even be in favor of her blaster locking out movement abilities like hack does, if they would just get rid of freeze.
I think you’re vastly over-exaggerating the effects of falloff…
As for tilt, like I said, her job is to keep you out of an area, if you’re in that area and you get frozen, any tilt is your own fault. It’s like standing perfectly still the entire match and claiming Widow is tilting because she can 1-shot you and there’s nothing you can do. But there is, you can move, not be an easy target. Just like Mei, you can do something about it by not being in the small range.
You keep on saying stay away but that’s simply not good enough when you operate at close range and when she can actually counter her most effective counters. I mentioned that they changed D.va’s entire play-style by nerfing d-matrix, and in doing so they enabled the dive meta and declared open-season on squishies. Why did they do that? Because people criticized it as not fun to play against. So why is that excuse of “it’s her kit that’s her job” valid for Mei but not D.va? Not to mention her ult can provide plenty of area denial, b/c it charges faster than almost any other, it just needs to be buffed.
My brother is a Mei main. But hates the new buffs as it raising the power of the primary fire of Endothermic Blaster. My brother would actually prefer remove the delay of Mei’s Icicle being released right after RMB click. The amount of shots on the right click actually favored him, but that’s about it. He stuck in silver due to playing an absolute non-meta character. Mei needs serious rework to be viable in the meta.
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