What we've learned from JQueen and Sojourn

General Discussion
1

Sojourn was broken during the last OWL tournament.
Sojourn as a hero was meta, but she didn’t dictate any comp meta. We were seeing different kind of comps based on different maps.
The OWL games didn’t feel “boring” or repetitive imo.

We only saw a dominant comp when a new tank (JQueen) was introduced.

So should Blizzard treat the tank and support roles with caution?
Should they predict the different Tank/Support synergies in a better way?
Should they release new tanks and supports underpowered to avoid hard metas?

2

It depends on whether what you suggest effect fun factor. If we are hobbling tanks and supports for fear of what they can do than that is the wrong direction for me.

I had enough of it with OW1 tanks hobbled, because of synergies. Now you want them to be hobbled again.

8 Likes
3

What we should have learned is that ranged 1 shots and overhealth mechanics are inherently broken and need to come with major drawbacks instead of, well, what ever Sojourn and Junkerqueens kits are.

36 Likes
4

no, they should just buff the tanks to be as fun as junkerqueen. even if she needs a minor nerf, they should buff the other tanks instead of nerfing her even further after that minor nerf. i worry they don’t understand that a lot of the tanks feel weak and unfun in a solo tank setting and they intend to bring junkerqueen entirely down to their level instead of lifting them a bit as well as bringing her down to meet in the middle.

5 Likes
5

Making characters weaker on release for roles that have a lower population while not doing the same for new characters in a role with a high population and notoriously long queue times… would make the playerbase go in what direction?

14 Likes
6

What i learned is nothing. Blizzard released a tank. Said tank was broken. As usual. Tanks determine the meta same old same old.

Jq far more brokenly op that soujorn ever was.

1 Like
7

I feel like if anything, both heroes have shown that giving a hero pretty much everything in their kit is unideal.

Giving any singular hero burst damage, CC, mobility, and utility in one is bloated, and they quite easily and quickly cast a huge shadow over OG heroes.

11 Likes
8

Tanks and supports have pretty much always been the ones to dictate the meta. Mainly tanks.

At least JQ will be nerfed before the game releases for us. Hopefully she isn’t still too strong, or made too weak.

1 Like
9

i already knew this is going to happen. expect future new hero releases where they come out as inherently busted. most newly released heroes always tend to be busted on day 1.

4 Likes
10

There is always more of an impact when a support and tanks comes to the game than the “2000th DPS”. It comes down to amount and choices to pick from.

Tanks and supports are always more “impactful” in an objective based game so thats also nothing they can or should change.

I don’t think they should take even more time. Rather have a complete change of scenery than something very weak. As long as it does not last MONTHS, it’s fine to give new heroes their time in the light and let people have fun with them.

Also the current “meta” does not even exist for us players so we cant even see how it would affect the live game or if it would effect anything. Remember: most of us have no 5 stack and perfect coordination.

Maybe its just me but I find the reaction to see JQ see a lot of play quite extreme. We cant even play the game and they already said they will change things accordingly.

My only worry is that they could ruin a hero and then its a troll pick for most other people. I fear that they will do that to JQ and create the brig effect: strong in highly coordinated environments but bad for like 89% of the people.

11

I figure there’s nothing inherently wrong with JunkerGOATs other than it not being Dive. And OWL hating Brig.

So why not just deliberately make it so that Dive is permanently hard meta in OWL?

2 Likes
12

Just stay away from more aoe sustain abilities……it’s not that hard really

13

I dont think its that bad. It would strongly limiting design space.

I also think this the biggest problem. People HATE brig no matter how good or bad she is. As soon as people is in the game some people act like its horrible while I cant stand a lot of other heroes in the game.

14

I figure it would actually make balancing a heck of a lot easier.

Trying to get ELOs that stick to hard metas, to simultaneously use a wide variety of hero choices is just a bunch of wasted effort.

They’d be way better off focusing on balancing the game for Masters and below.

I.e. The other 98% of their playerbase.

15

What we learned from junker queen is that a single speed boost is great, stacking speed boosts is ridiculously overpowered.

Not that surprising, that was the entire basis of the beyblade meta.

3 Likes
16

Maybe limiting the shout to movement only for allies would help here. So keep the AoE heal/ overhealth in the support role only. They should start to make some rules like:

  1. Only tank heroes have hard CC (exception Ana because its Ana)
  2. Only supports have wide AoE heal/ over health effects

That should also be an easy solve: Only the strongest effect applies if multiple are in place or are capped like damage reduction is.

We could also use it for heal but this would make things a lot harder because a lot of skills are HoT and not burst. So we should at least stay away from that without changing heals completly.

17

This essentially just boils down to the issue of “bigger number win conditions”.

Same as why siege players hated the bulletproof meta, or why the tf2 community changed their own competitive ruleset to prevent heavy/medic stacking (and indeed why weapons like the vaccinator are so universally hated).

Games are just less fun when the winner is predetermined through simply having larger numbers. That’s why the most popular metas tend to focus on changeable hero outputs (say, dive, or hitscan-centric metas), whilst hating on resource-driven metas like GOATs. If you could imagine a game where DPS were designed like tanks and supports frequently are, their output not being mechanically driven, but instead a flat AOE damage over time, it’s easy to imagine just how bad things could be.

18

So why not just have an OWL-specific ruleset?

1 Like
19

Blizzard have been hard at work flushing their own pro scene down the toilets for years now, and you expect them to act rationally?

1 Like
20

They want to make sure that both the live service game and OWL is on the same ruleset to attract more viewers because they want Timmy to believe they can be a super duper OWL pro too.