Overwatch

Had somebody today yelling at me... for playing a second medic. He was playing Genji.

Quote from Minos

On 22.12.2016 at 9:53 PM, Minos said: Another map, this time Eichenwalde

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/overwatch-eichenwalde[Blocked Image: https://cdna0.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/004/302/880/large/thiago-klafke-screenshot-16-12-19-14-09-13-000.jpg?1482215260]

This is coming from TF2 beta player who started over 9 years ago, image above from that level looks way too awesome with all the other shots. Almost tempted to buy Overwatch just to watch around the environments on it.

How many mapcorians are on the overwatch team?

All amazing work. I swear, the levels are a major reason I keep coming back to this game. So well made.

Quote from Quotingmc

On 25/12/2016 at 0:52 PM, Quotingmc said: Got a copy today as a gift from my parents! Can't wait to start playing.

I'll add you later more the better eh

Quote from AlexM

12 hours ago, AlexM said: How many mapcorians are on the overwatch team?

All amazing work. I swear, the levels are a major reason I keep coming back to this game. So well made.

I think it's 4 or 5? Haven't been very active here lately so not sure if one is a member or not

There's a whole lot of people complaining about the "Three tank meta" and "Ana's too good", which is insane IMO. Ana's exactly as good as she should be, Zenyatta should be slightly better. The problem is that people have embraced this bizarre "DPS/Tank/Support" framing that treats Overwatch like an MMO instead of a shooter. EVERY hero is DPS, and the dedicated "DPS" heroes just aren't nearly good enough at killing to be worth the lost utility that tanks, supports, Mei and Soldier 76 have. McCree, for example, has 160 dps. Zenyatta has 150 dps, and can heal 30 hp/s while doing it. Ana has 96 dps, but can sleep dart, which is much more useful than McCree's flashbang. Hanzo can get a bullshit instakill with his scatter arrow, but Roadhog can do nearly the same thing more often and more reliably with his hook, while also standing on the fucking point instead of hiding off in the shadows. Pharah's in a middle ground, because she's really useful as a mobile flight point for Mercy, while also ironically making all the flanker heroes redundant.

Nerfs are a terrible idea to solve this problem. Bliz has already had to redesign multiple heroes, and I see a lot more of that in the future to fix the root problems with the Attack/Defense class heroes. Sombra was an interesting start, but she's mostly ineffective, not so much because she's weak in a vacuum but because teams aren't really playing in a style that works with her.

Yeah sombras ult really requires the team to be well coordinated. When it works though it's awesome.

Quote from AlexM

15 hours ago, AlexM said: Yeah sombras ult really requires the team to be well coordinated. When it works though it's awesome.

Totally agree. It's the only really effective counter to Reinhardt + D.Va that doesn't require the entire team to be coordinated in their shooting... except it requires your team to know what you're doing and be ready to take advantage of it.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

On 2016-12-28 at 6:15 PM, Jetsetlemming said: McCree, for example, has 160 dps. Zenyatta has 150 dps, and can heal 30 hp/s while doing it.

Well, McCree can do 280 damage in one second when you double headshot and am within falloff. That kills most heroes and is relatively easy to pull off since he's hitscan. A double headshot from Zenyatta would be 184, but doing that against players who know what's best for them and don't strafe in a single direction won't be consistent.

Quote from grapen

1 hour ago, grapen said: Well, McCree can do 280 damage in one second when you double headshot and am within falloff. That kills most heroes and is relatively easy to pull off since he's hitscan. A double headshot from Zenyatta would be 184, but doing that against players who know what's best for them and don't strafe in a single direction won't be consistent.

My headshots with Zenyatta are a lot more consistent than with McCree due to the lack of recoil, plus the hitbox advantage on projectile weapons. At 120 damage per headshot (assuming Discord orb), that's enough to double tap most heroes. Again, while healing 30 points per second while doing it. And 3/4 of my HP pool regens. And with all that, Zenyatta still isn't considered "meta" right now because nearly everybody is behind a D.Va field, Reinhardt shield, and Zarya bubble so it doesn't really matter anyway, except to shut down flankers and further reduce their utility.

Instead, a more useful comparison might be to stretch out their damage over time, to look at consistency: Zenyatta has 20 shots per reload, takes eight seconds to shoot them all out (at 2.5 balls per second). With discord, that's 1200 damage. Without (this is mostly for hitting Reinhardt shields), 960. Reload time is two seconds, so the full time for that damage is ten seconds. Range isn't a factor, which means Zenyatta can stay safely behind all those layers of shields and away from Roadhog's hook.

McCree, if he's within 22 meters of his target does 70 damage per shot, or 420 per reload. Takes him three seconds to unload, another 1.5 to reload. 420 damage per 4.5 seconds means ~930 damage over ten seconds. For Fan the Hammer, the range is reduced to 18 meters, and the damage per shot is reduced to 45, so 270 damage per unload, over 2/3 of a second, taking 1.5 seconds to reload. That's 1244 damage per ten seconds, which just beats Zenyatta's damage with discord but at the cost of increased risk, both because of the range and because of the enormous downtime between bursts of damage creating easy opportunities for the enemy to respond (which is why I didn't factor in the combat roll: Its cooldown is eight seconds so it isn't a huge increase anyway, but more importantly you'll need it for emergencies). Soldier 76 does slightly more damage (1272) over the ten seconds, but also has his heal ability and can stand up to 30 meters back while doing so.

It's really striking how similar these totals are over time, imo. Going up against a team of high HP and survivability, you need high HP and survivability to match, or you need overwhelming force to counter that. Since there isn't really any dedicated "overwhelming force" in Overwatch that can massively out-punch the other hero types (the point I was trying to make with the comparison), you need to be bringing the high HP and/or survivability to the table to really contribute well to your team. Blizzard could solve this by massive nerfs to most of the game's cast, but that would be bullshit and horrifically un-fun compared to buffing the weak heroes, especially by giving them more utility and usefulness in different situations like they did Symmetra.

PS: Over that same ten second timespan Roadhog and D.Va can both do about 1600 damage in close range (ten meters for D.Va, at least nine for Roadhog if he's using his right click), which is why they're both so good at taking down Reinhardt's shields. Too bad most people playing those heroes don't realize they have that utility, though.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

28 minutes ago, Jetsetlemming said: My headshots with Zenyatta are a lot more consistent than with McCree due to the lack of recoil, plus the hitbox advantage on projectile weapons. At 120 damage per headshot (assuming Discord orb), that's enough to double tap most heroes. Again, while healing 30 points per second while doing it.

Personal experiences aside, headshots with hit scan will be more consistent than projectile, given that skilled players jiggle strife and jump at random. An unprotected squishie will be (range) bursted by McCree, which is his strength. Zenyattas healing is moot since he dies within the second or two it takes to kill him in a duel.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

31 minutes ago, Jetsetlemming said: Instead, a more useful comparison might be to stretch out their damage over time, to look at consistency: Zenyatta has 20 shots per reload, takes eight seconds to shoot them all out (at 2.5 balls per second). With discord, that's 1200 damage. Without (this is mostly for hitting Reinhardt shields), 960. Reload time is two seconds, so the full time for that damage is ten seconds. Range isn't a factor, which means Zenyatta can stay safely behind all those layers of shields and away from Roadhog's hook.

McCree, if he's within 22 meters of his target does 70 damage per shot, or 420 per reload. Takes him three seconds to unload, another 1.5 to reload. 420 damage per 4.5 seconds means ~930 damage over ten seconds. For Fan the Hammer, the range is reduced to 18 meters, and the damage per shot is reduced to 45, so 270 damage per unload, over 2/3 of a second, taking 1.5 seconds to reload. That's 1244 damage per ten seconds, which just beats Zenyatta's damage with discord but at the cost of increased risk, both because of the range and because of the enormous downtime between bursts of damage creating easy opportunities for the enemy to respond (which is why I didn't factor in the combat roll: Its cooldown is eight seconds so it isn't a huge increase anyway, but more importantly you'll need it for emergencies). Soldier 76 does slightly more damage (1272) over the ten seconds, but also has his heal ability and can stand up to 30 meters back while doing so.

It's not really a reasonable comparison when McCrees strength lies in bursting, shredding armor and zoning (somewhat). You point out the reason for him to be out of the meta though, since shields and big HP pools are effective against his kit, unlike S76's peeling style. A McCree that isn't hitting his headshots frequently is of low caliber, and Blizzard can't balance based off these guys. That's why they nerfed his falloff distance, since skilled McCrees were one-taping from across the map.

When the squishies return, McCree will be out in full force doing what he does best. Deleting Tracers, Genjis, Zenyattas, Lucios etc.

I'm not saying McCree isn't good in a vacuum. He's just not good right now, because there's all these barriers in between him and heads. He actually still excels at taking down Pharmercy more than Soldier 76, because of the burst damage, but nobody seems to remember that either

I miss the Ole Mccree. Before the nerf..

Oasis is now out!!

Throughout really beautiful looking maps! but that's no surprise, considering how many top talented env artists are working on those...

I was surprised to see the new map Oasis in Competitive-rotation already, as I (and many others) haven't played it for one minute. Eichenwalde was at least introduced first in Brawl, before throwing it into Competitive. I wasn't surprised in a good way to be honest.

What comes to the map itself from one play: It's gorgeus and seems to have a lot of routes and ways. Not really into it that much though gameplay wise yet. Too much vertical-space, my virtual neck breaks when trying to find someone on the upper platforms. Also, I noticed a lot of areas that go pretty much unplayed totally. Anyway, we'll see how it goes once I get more used to it learn the map more. Only mentioning the first impressions here.

Still getting used to my new mouse. Dropped my in-game sensitivity from 7 to 4.5 and made my McCree accuracy jump from 30% to 50% across the course of one Oasis match

https://blizztrack.com/overwatch_ptr/patch_notes/338357

May this be the end of the tank meta?

I don't know if that's enough

Probably not. Roadhog's hook is ruined and D.Va's super weak, but the root problem of the Attack heroes being shitty is completely unaddressed (no buffs whatosever in the PTR), and so people will continue to default to other heroes. Roadhog + lucio can still blast people's faces off in close quarters, and Reinhardt's shield still forces people to get up close anyway.