As it is, especially with her new extremely high TTK (almost 4s on a 200HP target), she might actually end up especially bad against high mobility, bc they will have an extremely easy 4s window to use their mobility to escape. While low mobility will not, which encourages Mei to target enemies that don’t have mobility even more than rn. And if anyone gets healing, they can just ignore it basically with such low damage output.
I think this is how heroes end up trashed in the long term. You implement a mechanic meant to target a problem area (high mobility), but end up punishing already heavily punished areas even harder (low mobility / brawl tanks). After some time, many people complain, then if the hero isn’t particularly popular they get nerfed into oblivion to keep their pick rate low or reworked anyways.
Instead of making her extra annoying with an even bigger slow, which we already know is going to drive tanks and low mobility players crazy, keep her regular slow but let it build up to apply Cass’s nade effect where extra mobility is disabled for some time. Then increase the projectile speed to help with her consistency on applying it to high mobility heroes.
It seems weird to me that they’re making this change adjacent to the Mag Grenade one. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re doing it to see which approach works better more than anything. It’s a shame there’s no way to try out this sort of thing in its own mode - some sort of “experimental” card, if you will - before unleashing it into the game proper, but that would be impossible.
But like OP said, Meis will prefer to go for not-particularly-mobile characters as a result of the change, no? Which seems to go against the intent: in the article they say they’re making this change because of high mobility characters, but Meis will actually be nudged away from them.
I think everyone does. I’m only a Mei tourist but this direction is very odd.
Back when we had experimentals there were times when the devs would moot these sort of changes, but compromise or call them off after they’d been exposed to the real world. For example, BOB sleep immunity, Moira’s purple noodle being lowered down to 40 DPS from 50, S:76 being shifted from spread to recoil. I think this super slow business is really, really something that should be approached with more caution than they’re giving it, and as a bonus new Mag grenade will probably have at least one “interesting” bug.
Imagine the experience of dying to Mei as she slows you to a crawl and you have to sit there for 3 more seconds as she slowly saps your health away. She can probably even prolong the process to significantly longer to stagger enemies. I can’t imagine a more painful way to die.
The difference between this and OW1 is that in OW1 she would either freeze and kill you, or the freeze would wear off and reset the slow. By the sounds of it you’ll just be stuck in a super slow indefinitely until you die now.
When I played Mei, I ran her as a support protector usually from divers and flankers. The freeze wasn’t actually that useful, they moved too quick to get a constant stream but did annoy/scare them enough to target me or break off the attack all together. Combined with a supp that either attacked as well or healed me it was very effective.
Truth be told the only tank I focused on Hog.
And that’s fine to me, but the previous design was actually already solid for that if the beam damage was lowered. The only reason you’d hold down her beam is bc it did slightly more damage as icicle anyways and can hit multiple targets. If Mei’s decide icicle is better, they would already just do a quick burst to slow, then immediately shoot an icicle.
Now with the new design, you need to hold down the more severe slow to let it build up first. So it encourages holding it down longer for the more severe slow. And presumably if you release it, they speed up again - so sometimes maybe they just hold it down indefinitely bc the slow is so bad that they’re confident the team will follow up. And if its not practical to do that on high mobility bc they can easily escape anyways, its the tank who will get it much more than before when there was more value in beaming flankers.
If they just kept the instant slow + lowered the beam damage + added Cass’s movement ability lock after some time in the beam, then she’d fit much better as a high mobility counter, use her icicle more, and not make low mobility players want to quit the game.
I agree she is better vs non mobile heroes, but at least before if she got the freeze, they most likely died. Now if you get the big slow on a genji, so what? He can dash away, or just deflect. While you tickled him to get the slow in the first place. Only high mobility heroes I assume it will actually be good against is like ball. Doom can probably just bunch of leap anyway anyways.