Want to see how poorly balanced this game is right now compared to a year ago? Here’s two charts comparing pro pick rates from OWL Stage 3 and just prior to the patch on March 21, 2017.
Link: https://i.imgur.com/LV5KcQg.png
The actual numbers can be found on Overbuff’s blog and Winston’s Lab if you want to see them for yourself.
Two important things happened in the March 21st patch which drastically shifted the meta into what it is now:
Ana: Biotic Rifle - Damage decreased from 80 to 60
Winston: Barrier Projector - Ability cooldown now starts when the barrier is placed, instead of when it ends
As you can see from the chart, Winston was doing just fine before he was buffed. His pick rate was barely below that of Reinhardt at the pro level.
The buff to Winston not only secured his spot (and dive comp itself) at the top of the meta for a year, but the bubble buff also slaughtered Ana’s viability because of her inability to heal through Winston’s barrier.
Before Winston’s buff, every single tank had a pick rate between 38 and 53%. Now, there are two tanks which are considered must picks by the pros.
Maybe it’s time to look at the real culprit of this stale dive meta: Winston’s unneccessary bubble buff from last year. Maybe it’s time to consider a revert of the buff which broke the meta for an entire year.
honestly winston has always been extremely bad for the game and the stronger he gets the worse the game is, that said i love having winston on the enemy team because roadhog destroys him
I think this is just because Blizzard don’t tend to balance specifically for the pros.
Winston was the least played hero in the game and Ana was mandatory for the top 33% of players or so.
Dive is a hard and skilful meta to run, but triple tank Ana was very, very easy. Naturally triple tank basically ruined ladder play, whilst dive was only played by the pros.
Like, just consider that Rein has always been the main tank of choice since day 1. That update you want reverted has made him the main tank of choice for 4% of the community, and his winrates are still way below Reinhardt’s. Bit harsh to want that reverted, no?
The reason I have always said trip tank was the best meta, was because you could beat multi tank comps with triple dps. Sure multi tank was the easiest to run In essence all comps were valid at that point.
Winston needs a CD nerf to his barrier, Ana needs her 80 dmg per shot back. Bring back the world of tanks.
I only started playing competitively after the rise of dive. It’s quite upsetting to be honest. I find every other composition more enjoyable than dive at the moment.
But as it is, the meta heroes are simply the heroes with high mobility. Hopefully we will see a shift in the meta once Brigitte is released into competitive, due to her powerful and consistent cc’s. (Although I can see that getting old quick)
high mobility, low error rate heroes making the game to fast so other heroes cant compete. All heroes which have a significant higher mobility are picked much more than others…
We need more aim based non high mombility heroes and a buff for low mobility heroes.
why do they allways nerf heroes like Zen because is rightclick is to strong. I agree but why is not buffed a little in return? maybe change the hitbox from a barn door to a normal hitbox or slightly increase movementspeed.
What did they to DVA: this is just hilarious!
Dev: “Oh Dva’s matrix is to strong, lets reduce it by 50%”
Jeff: “But I like to play DVA!!! BabyRage”
Dev: “Ok Jeff in return we will give her little OP rockets and she can shoot while flying!”
Jeff: “Sounds fair!”
I suspect Brigitte will just cement mobility characters as mandatory because they are the only ones who can avoid her CC. She’s yet another counter to McCree, Ana, and Reinhardt - as if they needed more counters at this point.
It’s because the meta was already transitioning to dive but it didn’t happen instantly
Dive didn’t start with winston’s buff
It started with DM matrix buff which was ~1 month before Winston’s buff
That already caused the meta to shift since D.Va could now reliably prevent Hog from killing the hooked target while also being to more reliably deny Ana’s healing. She could also always eat the grav (she couldn’t before if Zarya fired it at her feet) She also became much more effective versus Soldier who was in the meta at the time.
That already caused the meta to shift but it took some time for teams to realize that
Winston’s buff only cemented it, but it wasn’t really crucial
In fact, according to all data, Winston isn’t the one overperforming in that meta
Apex Season 2 is not a good example because it was played on different patches.
Group stages were done on the patch where neither D.Va nor Ana were nerfed.
Playoffs were done on patch where Ana’s healing was nerfed, Ana’s damage was not nerfed yet, Winston’s bubble wasn’t buffed, D.Va’s matrix was buffed and D.Va lost armor.
Yes, but even just looking at the finals alone and you have an extremely balanced meta, especially the tanks.
Arguable. LH played 4 times more Winston than Reinhardt. Runaway played more Reinhardt than Winston. Runaway also lost. My point is, it’s not necessarily an indicator of balance, more likely it’s just that Runaway didn’t feel comfortable running dive, especially after playing an almost entire tournament on essentially a different patch.
Remember that Haksal and Whoru were both Genji mains(that’s why he had the pickrate he did).
Yeah but Genji himself isn’t “dive indicator”
What matters is the change between D.Va and Zarya as well as the increase of Tracer and Winston
RunAway lost a 4-3 heartbreaker. I don’t think it was an indicator of Dive being more powerful than Deathball.
It’s not necessarily about it being more powerful, it’s about it being actually playable. More of a proof of concept thing. And map pool also didn’t discourage Rein based comps (Hollywood, Oasis University, Route 66 (now a heavy dive map, but Widow wasn’t really meta back then))
Because it was tried before and it generally failed, at least in Tier 1 competitions
For example, here’s a game in December of 2016, during peak tank meta, where Rogue and LW Red both attempted playing dive on Route 66 but failed and then swapped to tank comp and they started pushing. At one point, Rogue managed to play quad tank + solo heal Ana and LW Red wasn’t able to push through it, who was playing basically a dive comp. When they swapped, they managed to push.
If Dive was more powerful, that just shows how terrible of a decision it was to buff Winston.
Maybe. Maybe not. I think that according to stats at least, he doesn’t show signs of overperforming, even after that change. I think it was a bigger mistake to buff D.Va’s matrix at the time.
