Blizzard's Overwatch Catch-All

So now that my eyes have rolled back into their sockets after learning that Echo is yet another DPS hero and I've gotten a chance to actually mess with her abilities some, some theorycrafting-type thoughts:

* That ult is getting nerfed. Guarantee it. This is another instance of Blizzard putting something out in a clearly OP state so that they can nerf it back to where they always intended it to be, which would have SEEMED OP except that they introduced it to people in an even more OP state. My prediction is that they make it so that she stops gaining ult charge as the duplicated hero after the first ult; no more quadruple pulse bombs as Tracer or double gravs as Zarya. They might also toy with removing invincibility frames or have her stay dead when killed as the duplicated hero instead of respawning as herself if that's not enough.
* I predict at least one other nerf to the rest of her kit, either her mobility or her damage. I'm hoping the latter.
* Another flying hero to pal around with broadens Mercy's applicability, which is nice I suppose. Be prepared for low ranks to get steamrolled by "Mercho" or whatever we decide to call the new Pharmercy.
* For that matter, how many flying (or at least, very mobile / vertical) heroes can we stack in one comp now? Winston/Ball + Dva, Pharah + Echo, Mercy + ? Not sure who you put in that sixth slot. Probably Lucio, not because he actively does much to synergize with such a comp, but because anybody else lags so far behind that they become easy fodder.
* Dva's going to become even more of a must-pick for a while, being the only tank that can do much against Echo. Sigma might be of some use with his flexible barrier, except that between sticky bombs and focusing beam Echo can tear through it solo. A nerf to Echo's damage or a buff to Sigma's barrier (it wouldn't take much) could address that though. Any other tank Echo can run circles around with her insane mobility.
* Other potential counters: ranged hitscan DPS, Sombra (Echo seems a lot like Doomfist or Genji; absolutely crippled by a well-timed hack).

In regards to Blizzard's 'stupidity'

Everything they do. EVERYTHING. Is data driven. Doesn't mean that everyone will like it, but they have data that most people will.

Data point: DPS queues are stupid long.

Data point: There are twice as many DPS heroes as any other role.

I'm not sure what other data could balance those two points out and make adding Yet Another DPS Hero(TM) to the game a good idea.

Data point: People love playing DPS

I think they could cut the dps heroes by 75% and the DPS ques would still be longer than tank/support.

All the more reason to ameliorate the problem instead of exacerbating it.

Rework the medals system.

3/6 are based on damage status (Eliminations, Objective kills, damage done)

They have the stats (Baptiste’s deaths prevented) but changing the reward system to be more team focused and less individual would be an interesting push for incentivizing team play and less “lone wolf carry”.

Some thoughts on metrics:
- time spent near teammates
- critical heals (healing done when there’s 4 or more enemies within 30m)
- critical kills (kind of like secondary assists, kills that led to another kill within 10 seconds)

Now a lot of that is probably too complicated for general consumption but I think changing rewards (hey Bliz, your endorsement system sucks and is useless too while you’re at it) would perhaps help with a lot of what we’ve seen lately: solo or pubbie DPS who come in, instalock genji/Hanzo/widow and play like garbage the entire game without regard for the team. For the “go play competitive” crowd, I hear you. I also find comp toxic and stressful

I'm as miffed as anyone to get another dps, but it's worth keeping in mind that Echo was in development well before role queues went live. These heroes don't get cranked out in a weekend, so one can hardly expect her to be some kind of response to queue times.

Personally, I think she's 100% a vehicle for OWL highlight reels. She's a flashy high-skill hero who effectively has six choices of ult, so if both teams run her it hugely multiplies the possibilities for sudden unpredictable high-skill swing plays. "Oh my god Sinatraa turned into Zarya and got two gravs and wooooon the maaaatch!"

As such, I reckon that Blizzard shipping a hero like this is akin to NBA refs letting superstars take four steps before a dunk - it's weighting the game towards what they think fans want to see. But I wish there was a designer at Blizzard tasked with asking: Is this exciting new DPS hero going to be, uh, fun to play against as a tank?. Since, you know, that's what fully one third of the player base is going to wind up doing.

Anyhoo the only nice thing I can think of to say is that she looks very hookable. (Though roadhog probably has too many other issues to ever be meta...)

staygold wrote:

solo or pubbie DPS who come in, instalock genji/Hanzo/widow and play like garbage the entire game without regard for the team. For the “go play competitive” crowd, I hear you. I also find comp toxic and stressful

I get that not everyone likes comp, but I think in unranked modes one has to accept that many of your teammates are not playing their best hero. That pubbie (hate that term..) playing badly as widow might be in QP with the sole intention of trying to get better at widow.

fenomas wrote:

I'm as miffed as anyone to get another dps, but it's worth keeping in mind that Echo was in development well before role queues went live. These heroes don't get cranked out in a weekend, so one can hardly expect her to be some kind of response to queue times.

Role queue has been live for nine months, but the imbalance was obvious since long before that. They had plenty of time to notice, holy crap, we have twice as many DPS heroes as any other category. Better hold off on developing new DPS heroes and focus on tanks and supports until that is properly addressed.

Number of heroes doesn't dictate queue times; the game has always had more dps than tanks or supports. More to the point though, Jeff K was talking about Echo's spot in their dev pipeline as far back as blizzcon 2018. Queue times are annoying, but I really don't think new hero design is a hammer for that nail.

fenomas wrote:

the game has always had more dps than tanks or supports.

But the game hasn't always had a strict 2/2/2 role lock. The role imbalance was already a problem before that, but that was the moment when it became pressing.

The game needs more variety in the tank and support categories, and it needs it a lot more than it needs Yet Another DPS Hero(tm). That's not a panacea for every problem that it has, but it's still a necessary step.

hbi2k wrote:
fenomas wrote:

the game has always had more dps than tanks or supports.

But the game hasn't always had a strict 2/2/2 role lock. The role imbalance was already a problem before that, but that was the moment when it became pressing.

The game needs more variety in the tank and support categories, and it needs it a lot more than it needs Yet Another DPS Hero(tm). That's not a panacea for every problem that it has, but it's still a necessary step.

Pretty sure they know they need them - they've discussed that very thing, especially with the release of Echo.

But to fenomas's point, character development does take a crazy long time - and they're going to put out the content that's the most ready, even if it does mean queue times skew toward dps a bit more.

Queuing isn't broken, it isn't terrible, it's mitigated by playing other arcadey games before the match begins, and yes it can be frustrating sometimes, but we all keep coming back - that's the data they see. Especially when there's new content, whatever it may be.

Echo was originally a support, but they didn't want her ult to remove a healer for the duration of the ult

https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/ov...

Minotaar wrote:

Pretty sure they know they need them - they've discussed that very thing, especially with the release of Echo.

Yes, they've made the proper noises, but actions speak louder than words. Supposedly they have supports and tanks in the works for Overwatch 2... so why weren't one of those fast-tracked instead of Yet Another DPS?

You're fitting curves to a single data point. Echo got a big FMV teaser trailer like a year and a half ago, and between then and now blizz released Sigma and Baptiste, each with less fanfare. Who's to say that she wasn't originally meant to come sooner but other heroes got fast-tracked instead?

fenomas wrote:

Who's to say that she wasn't originally meant to come sooner but other heroes got fast-tracked instead?

If so, then good. Do that more.

Got so bored queuing as DPS that I made this:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/lLOp0zu.png)

The full queue time was 50 minutes. Halfway through I tried "skirmish mode" - it put me in an empty map and I left ten minutes later without having seen another player.

When I got into a ranked game it was horizon lunar colony, lasted five minutes start to finish.

Whom have I angered?

Whoa that is a long time. Longest I've been to is 18 minutes. Which is still way too much. I do chores around the apartment with my headphones on so I hear the sound when it finds a game.

This season is the first in quite a while that I even bothered to do DPS placements, ended up firmly in silver, which was a-ok as I really haven't played DPS in at least a year. Man I still don't understand the rankings, I'm gold support, silver dps and low bronze on tank. I'm best by far on tank, then as support and last as healer. Oh well.

Fun game still.

Yeah, until that game I'd never seen it go past 20-ish minutes, so I reckon I must have wound up on a server that died or something. Afterwards I switched to US servers and it was 8-10 minutes, which is more the norm for me.

Balthiar and I managed to pull this off with a Rein hammer + D.Va bomb combo.

Earlier today we also had a pubbie Mercy main in our group was a very good Mercy player and had a name that made me laugh. Probably the second best name after seeing someone with the Bnet name "Cooter McGavin"

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/wx01Jvf.jpg)

That's a good name.

60s of of Junkrat carnage ended with a double death nade kill from other night..

Anyone who is reading this, please do not scroll down any further. Do not check Twitter or YouTube if you follow anyone who talks about Overwatch.

Instead, boot up the game right now.

This is not the update we deserve, but it is the update we need right now.

That is great.

It is my favorite.

Spoiler:

The Hanzo dragons are priceless.

I experienced a fun little interaction between various forced movement abilities in game and Gumbie and I were curious about what happened. So on Lijang Tower I was Wrecking Ball and I plowed into a Reinhardt as he was charging, his Roadhog teammate pulled me back against the charge but the hook broke then my Brigitte teammate stunned the charging Reinhardt.

Here is a recording of it from the replay:

That Rein was like yeah sucka you gona die ball! Then at the last second the brig took all his happiness away and save your life.

Or at least that is how I interrupt how it went down in his head.

Nothing more enjoyable than watching someone fall to their death off the map. The Ult was ready just in case.

Keep hearing people talk about Valorant as the next big overwatch killer, so I watched some twitch streams of the closed beta today. For like two minutes I legit thought it was just people playing CS:GO on a custom map.

fenomas wrote:

Keep hearing people talk about Valorant as the next big overwatch killer, so I watched some twitch streams of the closed beta today. For like two minutes I legit thought it was just people playing CS:GO on a custom map.

With more emphasis on gun-play over abilities, more opportunities to solo carry, and less reliance on teammates, a lot of high level OW players and content creators who are unhappy with the state of OW are making the jump.

Us GWJ'ers who play on the discord rarely run into the issues other players do since we play 6-stack quickplay with an SR ranging from high-bronze to mid-plat so I don't see many of us making the permanent jump.

The game will be free though so I'll give it a spin. Hoping it will turn into my secondary FPS game to solo-queue when there are no GWJ'ers online to play OW with (I haven't touched solo-queue OW in years since it makes me want to throw my mouse out the window)

Stupid fun fact: Carolina Ravassa the voice actress who voices Sombra in Overwatch also voices Raze in Valorant. For some reason I'm surprised she was allowed to do that, I assumed there was like a non-compete clause in her contract with Blizz