I would especially like to know the opinion of Mercy mains on this issue because according to you guys you can counter mercy just by hacking her:
^Twitch
But sombra can do that to literally every other hero so by your definition does she counter everybody? Then why is a character that counters everybody considered F-tier?
More importantly you guys kept saying Tracer doesn’t have a counter. Well Sombra can “just hack tracer lol” too and unlike mercy who sill has 200 hp tracer becomes a free kill with 150 hp.
Your other suggested way of “countering” mercy was “just shoot her lol” but again that literally holds for every other character.
Also Tracer was this unkillable beast who kept blinking everywhere and no one could shoot her so she was OP. Apparently the “just coutner by shooting” only applies to mercy. A hero that has self regen unlike tracer and has a better infinite version of her blink on a 1.5 cool down.
I also came across this earlier today which makes me wonder:
Zen can literally discord everyone. Every single hero in the cast but it’s only considered a counter to brigitte? A hero that apparently enjoys the benefit of holding her shield up for 3 seconds until the discord goes away, something that no other squishy can do, gets countered by zen but other squishies don’t. Ok nice.
Your hypocrisy is showing. Either that or you’ve never actually felt countered. Completely out of the fight. Unable to help your team in any way. Constantly getting yelled at for playing a hero that you’ve invested more than 300hrs in trying to learn every little detail about them.
You know what an actual counter to Mercy/Brigitte in my opinion would look like?
Something that has a 30 meter antiheal aura as a passive that denies all forms of healing over 50 hps, an ability that allows them to eat souls just by looking at them and keeping mercy from rezzing that widow who died three miles away from the fight, another ability that reduces damage taken on allies by 24% when they take more than 120 damage, a projected bubble as a secondary on a 2 second cooldown that removes the stunned state or prevents it that you can cast on your allies, and an ultimate that does damage to all enemies in range equal to twice the amount of armor they have. Now that would be an actual mercy/brigitte counter. Imagine having to play against something like that.
A counter is someone who stops a hero from doing their designed job.
Lucios job is to speed boost and heal and sombra can stop that.
Widows job is to stay away from the enemy and pick off targets. Winston can stop her by diving her and forcing her to move.
Tracers job is to move very quickly so roadhog, mcree counter her by making her stop
Sombra doesnt counter mercy because she does not heal with abilities. Sombra counters ability dependent heroes and those with shields. Pharah, Doomfist, Zenyatta
To specify. You do not need to kill a hero to counter them.
Not a Mercy main, but since I flex I have spent some time with her. Sombra can hack any hero, but for some heroes, it almost doesn’t matter (see: Reaper, McCree, an ulting Soldier), and for others, it’s a death sentence (see: Tracer, Doomfist, Genji, Pharah). Mercy is in the second group, because her survivability hinges on her GA ability. Sombra is a counter to any hero who is really dependent on cooldowns (and even a few passives).
“A counter” is usually referring to a hero who, by virtue of their kit, can pretty well shut down the other hero, by virtue of their kit. But “to counter” something is any means by which you can suppress the effectiveness of, disable, or kill a hero. Shields can counter snipers without killing them, mobility can counter hitscan, a Brigitte bunker can counter dive.
I’m not sure I would call Zenyatta “a counter” to Brig on his own, but where one of her strengths is her hardiness and self-healing, discord is particularly useful against her in burning her down (as is Ana’s grenade). It mitigates one of her power alleys, making her easier to deal with.
But wasn’t Tracer this OP beast of a character that had no counter and OW was in dire need of producing some kind of counter for her before the game was ruined?
How is sombra a counter to tracer if she had no counters? and if she DID have counters then why did we need brigitte?
I think it has to do with viability of counters. For instance sombra does counter tracer but for like a year sombra was just a trashcan with the mexican flag painted on it
A good sniper can keep any squishy out of the fight does that mean snipers counter every character? I didn’t know widow countered genji! Thanks for letting me know.
This is yet another just shoot her in the head to counter argument which again depends on your definition of counter. This is the reason I made this thread.
I mean, I’ve never argued that Tracer had no counters, so I’m not going to be able to give an answer for that. I’ve had the lights turned out on me as Tracer and I felt pretty doggone countered by it. But proper management of Tracer’s cooldowns makes her very, very hard to pin down, even with abilities that are incredibly effective against her like hack and flashbang. Brigitte is perhaps now the most reliable counter to Tracer, but is a good countermeasure to dive in general.
Mei can counter Genji during reflect by freezing him but by your logic she can freeze everyone so does that mean she counters everyone? Of-course not because some characters are more effected by certain abilities then other characters.
Counterpicks exist to reduce the effectiveness of a hero. Shutting a hero down completely is just a bonus, but the game shouldn’t be designed around those types of interactions.
Sombra does make Mercy significantly less useful, because she can’t escape a pick attempt and hack goes off way faster than res does. There’s nowhere for Mercy to go if she follows someone into the enemy team and Sombra hacks her.
Does Sombra counter the majority of the cast? On paper, yeah, but Sombra’s in G-tier because she’s not able to reliably close any openings she creates on her own.
I think counter picks should and will always be a thing. However im not a fan of delete character picks. Im not a good winston. But ive beaten Gm widows with him cause its so one sided. Same with brig and tracer. Ana can sleep dart an ulting genji but still needs skill
The honest truth is to “What is a Counter” is that first and foremost depends on the changes the developers do in the patch update as well as hero release.
What countered Hanzo in 2016 doesn’t counter as well in 2018. Same for what he now counters.
In the design spirit of the game each hero has a kit that is made to do a job other heroes kit doesn’t do.
Sombra’s hack is a counter but isn’t devastating to a Mercy as it is to a Lucio or a Tracer. All counters or ways you counter aren’t equal. This is why Roadhog is a shell of his former counterplay strategy that kept so many heroes in check.
So we have a lot of variables that influence counters. Symmetra used to be a soft counter to rush in flank. She can still counter him a little but it’s situational instead of consistent because many changes.
There are characters that counter meta heroes but other heroes in the meta dunk on them so hard they can’t perform that function. Sombra, Reaper, Torb, and others that may soon shift into F tier with changes to fall off damage and possible synergies Hammond may have.
In theory every hero can counter until better DPS, better Tank, better Support makes them unable to be in the game to get the optimal gains.
Proper coordinated dive is doing just fine even with Brigitte in play because tanks are picked based on map geometry rather than what heroes the enemy has, something that many people don’t understand. Brigitte only stopped ladder Dive. What she did stop even in pro play was Tracer for obvious reasons.
[Edit: Aaaaand you seem to have deleted the bit I was replying to, so disregard]
That is… not really how any counters work in the game, though?
Brigitte counters Tracer because she can deliver a stun to her. Moira counters Genji because she has generous aim with a non-reflectable weapon (which is why Winston was seen as the best Genji counter previously). Winston counters Widowmaker by being able to quickly close the gap to her and getting in her weakest zone.
No counters instantly ruin all of their target’s usefulness (barring through ults or Hack). Great Tracers and Genjis can play around Brigitte, great Pharahs can divebomb McCree and Widow (watched a GM Pharah do a lot of that just today)!
Countering Mercy can be done through killing her mobility (hack/any stun), antihealing, or honestly just good burst damage, since Mercy’s healing is very consistent but completely lacks burst. I’ve watched my whole team die to primary fire while I was Valking, and I felt pretty useless.