I’ve talked about this a few times but basically here’s the idea:
remove mei’s left click. Make right click her primary.
Mei’s right click slows target with a body shot. A headshot is a stun. No residual effect.
stun and slow both last .5 seconds.
mei’s alt fire is something like fan the hammer. 3 quick shots but use all her ammo.
this is a buff, but also makes her more balanced. and it makes the game more balanced.
it leans into the character archetypes and mei becomes a more consistent mid range dps option; in line with soldier mcree hanzo. she becomes better against DPS but less oppressive against main tanks (the example I used previously is mei freezing widow in duels, it would also be better against doom fist, tracer).
a series of quick ranged stuns and slows keeps her unique elements, while also keeping her from breaking the main tank balance which in turn breaks the entire game. she becomes useful in more sitautions. the main tank balance should be determined by map pool, not DPS heroes. becuase main tank represents an entire strategy, an entire way of moving a team. they need to balance each other. having one DPS that alone beats 3 of the 4 main tanks is problematic.
and adding mei into the pool of ‘mid range dps tools’ and leaning into that character archetype fixes a lot of problems. It’s healthy for the game, and helps the devs create a situation where DPS balance is about flankers vs mid range vs snipers.
then all you would need to do is nerf storm arrow to be more comparable to FtH and Mei’s alt fire and soldier’s helix. Hanzo has the highest impact primary, so he should have the worst defensive move. Something like 2 quick arrows but full DMG or something.
what this game needs is Rein and Winston viable again. This achieves that while keeping mei strong, while adding to the DPS roster in a healthy way, while establishing what types of DPS heroes should be in the meta. this removes perma stuns for main tanks that dont have fortify, while adding short, long range stun that has more utility but is less consistent.
I mean you can mess with the fire rate and ammo as necessary. her projectile is already slow and inconsistent. It would be better against Widow and Hanzo than it is against Mcree and Soldier.
Dont give it reverse fall off. Then it is still good against tanks, but Rein has a chance to shield flash it and Winston has a chance to bubble dance it.
the cool down is the ammo. it gives more down time in her ability to slow and stun. because you can use cover, you can juke her aim, you can shield flash and bubble dance.
the correct route is to change her primary, not where her character is in the selection screen. because you still need to change her primary even if she’s an off tank.
becuase if you dont change her primary then Rein and Winston and Hamster remain unplayable and Orisa remains must pick. and because it requires nothing to land, a dog can track a tank with it.
A reload mechanic is not a cooldown. A cooldown a time-frame your enemies have to work with while resources aren’t available. In nature it means you have time to act on said unavailability of resources. Reloading does not give time to act on, unless you wanna give Mei a 5s reload, which would be really weird to play with.
A longe range slow and stun that can spammed down chokes like Hanzo logs sounds even worse than what we got now.
