More and more arguments are being hung on this term. Just curious how people are defining it for themselves? What makes a character “viable” versus not in your mind?
To me, a character being unviable is one that relies on the enemy making mistakes to win rather than outplaying them
This is why I think a character like Bastion suffers so much, it’s hard to outplay your opponents with his primary strategy and you end up relying more on your team to do things or for the enemy to just play into your strengths.
I know there are Bastion players out there that can work around this, but most of the time this is what I see.
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Interesting… isn’t losing though ultimately in many cases due to small mistakes at the highest tiers where skills are so close?
Generally I just go by “would it be throwing to play this character in the 2800-3300 skill range”
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Yeah, one little mistake can certainly cost a match, but that’s not as frequent as just plain old getting outplayed.
Generally speaking “Can you play this hero without negatively effecting your chance to win by a significant amount?”
Regardless… Viability should play second fiddle to the following questions.
- Does the Hero have a well defined power fantasy?
- Is the Hero’s kit cohesive and support the answer from #1?
- Is the Hero’s kit impactful?
- Does the Hero provide a decent amount of player agency?
There are at least 2-3 heroes that fail at least some of those questions and they desperately need help regardless of how viable they happen to be (or not be) at the moment.
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Viable means imho and for me, the ability to play the hero, at any time, if played goid enough.
And not playing bad into hard counters only.
If that works, viable.
For a bigger picture, if its played in owl, its viable.
Unless they try and try again and always lose
Do I feel guilty for playing this hero? If so, they are not viable.
or
Do my teammates complain about this hero often?
All I know is It sure as heck isn’t what overbuff tells me…
And that’s not saying it’s BS…it’s just a really poor reflection of what goes on in game
A global pick/win rate tells me nothing about who these heroes are played against…what maps they’re being played on…how communicative the players are…etc etc
Sym OVERALL might be a poor pick…but that doesn’t mean she’s ALWAYS a bad pick…as many have proven she can in fact be very effective in the right situations…and you can go across the board and find places where “non-viable” heroes are perfectly “viable”
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^ This. A viable hero should be able to be used in almost every scenario in the context of the meta. This does mean that most of the OW cast aren’t going to be viable at one time from a competitive standpoint, and that’s unavoidable. It also sucks for people who main heroes that aren’t “viable”.
I actually kinda hate the term, because it often shows how bad the balancing is, especially when the same 6 heroes are labelled as “viable” for months and months. In an ideal world every hero should be usable in some scenarios, but some heroes are just straight up useless almost all of the time (I’m sorry bastion mains).
There’s always gonna be a meta, but OW’s problem is that metas usually consist of power creep, and mirror matchups that stay prevalent for months. People who think this game is about counter picking are just wrong, because every meta has always been about picking the same 6 or 7 heroes that are objectively better than any other combination of heroes at that time.
There are 4 levels in OW: Meta, Viable, Niche, Trash. The meta heroes are the 7-11 heroes who are pickable in pretty much every circumstance and can work because they are good in all circumstances given the current meta. Before I continue my description, I should clarify that there is a difference between THE meta and BEING meta. In the last meta for instance, the meta revolved around Hog and Zarya. There were other heroes who were meta in that meta but the meta itself revolved around Hog and Zarya.
With that said after meta comes viable. Viable heroes are heroes you can pick instead of the meta heroes without any serious dropoff. It is not the most ideal pick but you are better off picking that hero if you do not know the meta hero.
Then you have niche heroes. A niche hero is a hero who reaches meta levels under very narrow circumstances but otherwise are not good (they would be at trash level most other times). For example DVA has generally been bad MOST of the last 6 months, but is more niche because there are still sections, such as Gibralter and Numbani A, where having a DVA is as good if not better than anything else you could pick on that map.
Than you have trash. Do not pick Trash. If you pick Bastion for instance you are wrong. There is no being cute about it, you are simply wrong and you are not an asset to the team, you are merely another obstacle to overcome on the path to victory.
Now in general most of these descriptions generally only apply to the top 2-3% of OW players. Before that you really can pick just about anything and if you learn how to play that hero you will rank up because the difference in ranks is not hero choice but hero execution and awareness. However, that has a cap and once you get nearish to that cap your hero choice starts to matter
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Viable means that you don’t handicap the team with the hero that you have chosen.
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Viable to me means the following:
I am able to win with this hero without having as many built in obstacles to overcome than if I had picked another “meta acceptable” hero.
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For me it means you can win with it reliable with the same skill like others in your elo.
So you if a Diamlnd lvl hog main plays in diamond he has a ~50% winrate.
If you have to be much better then orher players in your Elo to win, you get bottlenecked by your Hero choice, so conclusion:
If you dont get bottlenecked that much by a Hero he is viable
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I have to admit that this is in below 4.5k and even slightly there not really true, example:
Zen was on the same lvl like Ana in hog Meta, but if you play him you always get flamed becauce people dont understand him.
In low elo many dont understand what a Maintank is and ask for a shieldtank if you play Monkey or Ball with an offtank
I mean this to a large extent - If you are good with a character, it doesn’t matter if you take a “meta” and do poorly, you are 8/10 times better off with the character you are better with… sometimes even in the face of hard counters…
Playable without being detrimental at < insert > skill level.
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Playable without needing far too much resources to make any value
- if a character is a strong pick in certain situations … it has to be in at least 25% of your matches
- if there isn’t one or more other heroes who do his job significantly better
- if there aren’t to many counters in the hero pool
- if there is a correlation between skill lvl and value you get out of that hero
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Not really.
For example - there’s inherently less obstacles to overcome if I tank with Say Reinhardt, as opposed to tanking as Orisa.