Zen damage orb needs retuning

General Discussion
41

No, it doesn’t. No damage mitigation is consistent enough to do anything to Discord.

It’s also clear that Rein used to have way more shield. It isn’t durable anymore.

The shield isn’t meant to be broken. Again, you balance shield and regular HP. That’s how Rein is supposed to work. Discord destroys that.

Yup, and what rank are you?

I’m asking why you think it’s fair that a single character, especially a Support, necessitates an entire change in team composition.

It’s called brawl. Or poke. The only comp that can actually kill Zen is dive.

No, they’re not.

Don’t function in a way that you absolutely have to kill them as quickly as possible to play the game. Not an even comparison. Not even close.

No. Outright false. You do not have to focus out any other specific target first and kill them early to have a chance of winning. There’s a difference between being the most optimal target and therefore focused and being so strong you have to die for the other 9 players to actually play.

Oh yeah it is. Because at the end of the day, a GM is gonna know the game better than a Plat. You don’t get to give me advice. You don’t get to tell me what is or isn’t a problem. You don’t get to tell me I’m playing badly. I know the game better than you. I play the game at a higher level than you.

42

Dude. You really need to try out support more specifically Moira,brig, and mercy. Your gonna love it

The tanks and dps actually have more of a fair aim to reward basis. The tanks that require aim can real quickly start outplaying the others much sooner.

Same with dps. Cassidy widow get better than junkrat and torb.

If you play support you gotta be pushing high masters before the aim supports can beat the non aim supports your gonna love it! Even then you can still hit gm.

Plat and below only knows how the brawl bc supports can’t heal anything at range. So standing on top of them is the best solution.

Zen isn’t the only hero that counters you. It’s just feels bad bc zen makes you die and you lose the team fight. The Winston/ball/doomfist on your backline countered you rein play but you don’t die for it your supports do.

Widow doming your dps and support out kills your team but not you so it doesn’t feel bad… your still countered.

Hate to tell you this but I do think tank is actually the sweatiest role if u wanna climb and is the most fair for skill to value ratio as you climb.

Hate to tell u tho rein isn’t good past plat and it has nothing to do with zen.

43

Ok, it’s 25% damage amp on one member of the enemy team at any time. You’re confusing things with Mercy’s version of the mechanic.

Convergent destination vs Divergent origin.

How is Zen going to “heal out of combat” when he’s being dove? Snap kick doesn’t launch targets that far. It just means they’ll shoot the Omnic dead a slightly further distance away.

The damage amp might be an issue that needs reduced, but let’s keep steady when refering to everything else! :smiley:

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44

Yes, but its effectively a +25% damage boost to the entire team because all damage that’s directed at a discorded target gets amplified.

I’m aware that it works differently from Mercy amp in valk which would be +30% damage boost to all targets that’re within the range of her beam. However the difference is that this kind of damage has a cooldown tied to Mercy’s ult. Zen discord offers nearly the same sort of power but with constant uptime and doesn’t require the players to be relatively grouped up to get its full effectiveness.

…And then on top of that he still has one of the best defensive ultimates in the game.

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45

I play 70/30 DPS/Support. I main Ana and Lucio right now. My second most amount of hours is either Kiriko or Ana.

I actually like the aim Supports. Ana three shots and Kiriko was my main before tp got bugged. I’m GM on DPS so I have good enough aim to solo kill and heal a good amount.

I main Tracer. Zen doesn’t counter me, I counter him.

First part is somewhat true, but Rein was literally meta last season. And the second part is completely false. Rein is weak primarily because Zen destroys his playstyle and forces him and his team to swap or lose.

I get the feeling you think I’m a Tank one trick because I don’t like Zen. But no, I’m a former Tracer one trick and current DPS/Support main. I don’t play much Tank. So you can save your advice for someone who actually needs it. Oh, and maybe acknowledge that when someone who literally mains an unaffected character sees a problem as bad, it’s REALLY bad.

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46

Acknowledge that any single character should never force an entire team to swap. An opposing team comp can do that. One character doing that means the character is broken. Let’s use Tracer as an example. You can poke with a Tracer on the enemy team, it’s just hard. Now, against a full dive comp, you HAVE to swap. Their team countered yours. One character shouldn’t have the same pressure as an entire enemy team swapping specifically to counter you.

Arguing is useless if you refuse to acknowledge the massive skill difference. You don’t understand what I’m saying because you don’t understand the game as well. Which is fine, but at least acknowledge it.

47

I’m not refering to Mercy’s ultimate. Yes, that definitely amplifies (ha) things further but its still a case of effectively apply Discord Orb to the entire enemy team. One beam or splintered beam; still the same.

My apologies, as I had thought you were refering to Discord as debuffing the entire enemy team rather than buffing the allied team.

There’s still the issue of DO being slightly more shakable that Blue Beam. You can’t stop Mercy amping her ally unless you kill her, and we’ve all seen how much grief it seems to be to actually do that. Zen just sits there, hoping he can find a hole and that his assailant will come closer.

48

Right, so you can actually stop being condescending now. Because you aren’t anywhere near me in terms of skill. Fact is, I don’t play Tank. I know Zen is a problem because I see how he plays at a GM level.

That’s called death. Charging in while Discorded is a free death.

How about we acknowledge the fact that Rein either dies slowly to Poke or quickly when he tries to take space?

Don’t play Tank.

Bubbles have 200 HP. That’s nothing, and once they are gone you get melted. Zarya is not a Zen counter. You talk about her removing Discord, but not about the fact that he can just place it again. At least try to make sense.

49

I’m so confused. Ana is good into zen tracer is really good into zen. Rein has no vertical mobility…. Nor can he peel. Everyone knows he’s a low elo stomper.

I’m also sorry for your top 500 problems with zenyatta. Unfortunatly heros that require aim really arnt that good for the rest of the player base your too far removed. I’m also happy for you and other top 500 that get to enjoy the fps component of the game.

But realize the more you rally for every hero to be viable for top 500 play the more oppressive hero’s like reaper brig Mei become for the rest of us.

95% of the player base wants the game balanced for us… not the %1

I also am confused… you say zen is too oppressive to rein but also say rein was meta last season…. Yet zen didn’t get changed last season.

Can you please add some clarity?

50

Have you played tank into Zen? Being permanently discorded?

Discord was designed for 2 tanks gameplay.
Now we only have 1 tank and many abilities need rebalancing, including Discord.

When you’re a tank with Discord on you, you can either hide or die.

A tank who is dead or hiding, can’t tank.

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51

Mid. Neither goes for eachother. Zen you don’t have los on and gl killing someone as far back as an Ana with projectiles.

I know. Zen is by far the easiest Support to kill as Tracer. That doesn’t fix anything for Tanks though, and Tracer can’t play into that without a Dive comp. She’ll get focused out.

Nor does Tracer, and she’s the best DPS in the game.

He isn’t meant to. Rein is played with self sufficient Supports. Bap, Ana, and Kiriko have great healing outputs for a reason. They take care of themselves and enable Rein.

Don’t know what rank you’re playing at but hitscan+Echo is pretty hard meta at like Diamond, maybe even below that.

I’m not rallying for viability. I want a nerf to a specific character because he’s overtuned. I’m not asking for a Reaper buff. I’m not asking for a Brig buff. Especially when Brig is one of the better Supports. And I’m not asking for a Mei buff. Zen counters Tanks and that’s it. Nothing gets more oppressive at lower levels.

Rein was soft meta last season because every other Brawl Tank was worse than him at the moment and map pools heavily favored Brawl comps. Zen wasn’t as much of a problem for Rein then either, because Rein was nerfed from last season to this one. Rein is no longer meta because he was nerfed and JQ was buffed.

But you know I’m not just talking about Rein, right? It’s ANY Brawl Tank. Poke plays too far away to be affected and Dive counters Zen, but Brawl has no counter to him. A single character doesn’t just invalidate Rein, it invalidates an entire comp by rendering every Tank in it unplayable. That’s why Zen is a problem. His existence has the same power as a team comp.

Nerfing Zen doesn’t hurt anyone. It just removes one of two overpowered characters.

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52

So your high rank. Your gm that means your in the top %1. I understand if you have frustration with zenyatta there. But also understand it is not fair for you to demand that the game is balanced around your elo. Why should the game be balanced for the %1 instead of the other 99?

53

The game is already balanced around the top, that’s why Tracer isn’t getting buffed. Regardless, changing one character doesn’t hurt low levels.

What would changing Zen hurt in lower levels? I want something specific.

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54

Yes I absolutely have an answer for you! And would love to answer!

So the problem with low level game play is… we want to play all the hero’s the top level players are playing. You know the fps heros

Low level players want to play hero’s like Ashe, mccree, genji, widow, tracer, Ana zen, doomfist, ball. But most of the time we can’t output enough on these heros to outplay hero’s like

Mei reaper mercy Moira rein… and we know this. And often it feels like we are negatively impacting our team by not playing easier heros that add more value by existing.

In low level play you find hero’s like zenyatta are actually super helpful to you tank bc zenyatta discord does a good job of countering hero’s like tank busters that just want to melt your tank.

Bastian Mei reaper junkrat… bc they do not engage him. At the same time it’s very rare the zenyatta kills much.

Unlike gm. If you play support everyone and I mean everyone wants you to play mercy every single game. Even reins want to to play mercy

Doesn’t matter if your playing bap with a rein Ana ect….

So in terms of rock paper scissors and general gameplay for plebs. Zenyatta actually helps us deal with the obnoxious amount of tank busters.

Lastly and most importantly. We want to play fun shooter heros

Zenyatta is so important bc he has dmg boost and so does mercy. So in a sense he’s the only option we have if we don’t want to play mercy.

Now I understand at top level mercy Moira brig Bastian Mei reaper arnt as much of a problem….

But for us…. It’s crazy how good these hero’s are and it’s honestly hurtful to see how much more value you can add playing these heros instead of the fun engaging ones

While I understand how high level players may be frustrated by hero’s like doomfist ball widow mccree Ana zen….

We just want to be able to play them without being flammed to play an easier hero… then begrudgingly switching to said easy hero and obviously and instantly doing more without much input required. It makes you not want to play ow at all.

That’s why I think top level players should have to deal with outliers so we can actually play the game. That’s why I feel like every hero’s shouldn’t be viable at top 500

55

You can still play Zen even if his dmg amp is nerfed though…? I could concur that if Zen’s orb was nerfed then Mercy’s boost could be nerfed too so she doesn’t become the only pick for damage boosting, but its not like all that much is effectively changing.

You’re still killing things faster than someone else on the other team. You can still duel squishies. You can still boost your team. It doesn’t change Zen’s effectiveness at low ranks because the other dps probably don’t have good enough aim to counter you or coordinate a dive on you, and Zen players probably don’t have good enough aim to be offering all that much value anyway.

56

If zen discord mercy dmg boost we’re nerfed together that would be %100 fair. But they should also revert all the dps that were nerfed bc of dmg boost. Or dps tank counters and flankers will take over

57

Ehhh…I don’t think launch Brig and Zen are anywhere comparable.

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58

Great post.

I think Zen is fine and in a decent, blanaced place right now.

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59

He doesn’t. One character, at most, can swap to beat Zen.

That skill difference, in the way you’re presenting it, does not exist. You’ve said things that are factually wrong about Zenyatta, and crazy things like “what if, somehow, no one on your team can deal with zen” as if that’s a real scenario. I’ve played for years, and I’ve never been in a situation where literally no one can deal with zen, so EVERYONE had to swap. And I play tank.

You people don’t have a clue on how Overwatch works. You play a game, get countered, and legitimately think “that guy shouldn’t be able to counter me. Nerf him, rework him”. That’s why arguing is useless.

Do you legitimately think that tanks, with multiple damage mitigation abilities AND the ability to physically move targets backward to take space, shouldn’t have a counter like Discord which could make it difficult for them to move without help? You guys do think that because you don’t give a damn about game balance. You care about your personal experience playing, and the second you see anyone trying to stop that, you think its bad game design. That’s why arguing is useless. How do I talk about game design and balance to people who don’t care about game design or balance?

Yes! For years! But the problem is you’ll say “Oh, what rank?” and if its anything sub GM top 500, you’ll say “Oh well, you see, because in that rank-”.

The fact is, this:

Has never happened to me. I’ve never seen it. Show me footage of a tank who literally can’t do anything besides hide or die. Understand that I’m calling you either wrong, or someone who’s lying due to selfishness.

Show me footage, and I want to see a tank literally unable to move because of the pressure discord applies despite everything that tank tries to do, and everything his team tries to do to help him. I don’t want to see bad playing and you pointing like “See, Zen shouldn’t be able to punish a tank who’s playing bad, or not getting help!”.

I want to see a tank that, despite every available option, can only hide or die.

60

In years past there were 2 tanks and more shields which made managing discord orb damage much more manageable. That needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating the effectiveness of damage boost abilities before and after OW2.

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