Zen is more of a damage support than a healing support in my eyes. The orb can dramatically reduce the ttk on all enemies, and if your team learns to prioritize the orbed target, you can ruin things for the other team.
Ana is going to be pretty situational. Most maps just don't have the sightlines to properly support the team as a healing sniper. Maybe as an auxiliary role, but teams are still gonna need a main support.
Ana is going to be pretty situational. Most maps just don't have the sightlines to properly support the team as a healing sniper. Maybe as an auxiliary role, but teams are still gonna need a main support.
An extra problem here is that Ana doesn't seem to have a movement ability - how does one get up high?
It's interesting, however it may still have some players try to kill more > actual support. That's bothersome because of the situational awareness a support class has to have of their teammates to make sure they don't die. Most people that I end up playing with that play sniper really play like they are in their own world and are just there for headshot/kills > objectives. It's annoying.
I'm finding more and more pugs/pubs have players that pretty much don't give a shit and try not to support/protect their healers. They'll go solo to try to battle 3+ enemies and I'm the only other one there, or people like 76 or back up tanks will just go off and not help with Tracer/Genji getting on my 6. Why do people do this?
I think Blizzard didn't want to do the amount of fine tuning and balance required in order to allow multi-hero, because cheese strategies will be discovered that will dominate when a counter was nerfed way too hard in a previous patch.
Just look at the Tracer/Winston composition seen in pro play. Pre-nerf, McCree was good against tracer by stunning and fanning the hammer, and could melt tanks in the same manner. After his damage nerf, you have much less leeway in being able to kill Tracer before she recalls, and just can't output enough damage against Winston. And so at the pro level, the winning move was not to counter multi-hero because the counter was too weak. You just had to use the same cheese strat. The game systems that mattered at the higher levels was purely the shooty aspect instead of shooty plus compositional skills.
You don't have the flexibility of Dota or LoL where they have 5x the amount of heroes: they have multiple heroes that fulfill the same role. In the rock paper scissors that is Dota/LoL, you can nerf a hero of type paper, but still have other paper type heroes capable of countering rock. In Overwatch, you nerf paper, no other hero is close enough to paper to be able to stop rock anymore. Of course, rock paper scissors is a very basic simplification on how heroes can counter and out-play each other, but hopefully you get the gist.
So Blizzard could have been more careful and precise in how they buff/nerf, but they took the easy way out and disabled multi-hero.
D.Va got the most changes. Next to the change to Defense Matrix her Ultimate now costs 15% less, it explodes after just 3 seconds and NO LONGER KILLS HER. The last one may be OP and I could see that being reverted, but damn. There have been multiple times where I last-ditch effort put a bomb on the enemy point which killed nobody because the enemy team scattered and my team didn't rush in to take advantage of the enemy team running away and I had to hide from my own bomb.
All these changes should make her more than viable. I have also noticed in my time playing that D.Va is by far the hero most unlikely to get Play of the Game or an end card, and if the least likely to be voted to be. Hopefully these bring her up to speed.
Meanwhile Zenyatta has received another 50 shield, his Ultimate doubles his movement speed and the Ult now provides 300 health per second (up from 200). Also his Orbs of Harmony and Discord had their movement speed Quadrupled meaning that they're basically now on their targets instantly.
Other notable changes:
* Mercy's Ultimate cost has been increased but she now can move while she activates it and Guardian Angel resets when she uses it meaning she can get out of the killing field almost immediately. Plus her Damage Boost has been pushed from 30% to 50% (which is kind of crazy). * Ultimate costs have also been increased for Bastion, Soldier 76, Lucio (10% each) and Roadhog (a whopping 45%). I do not really understand why Roadhog's ult garnered such a nerf. EDIT: I just now realized that these have been increased because Self-Heal abilities now give Ultimate charge. However, they apparently missed increasing Mei's Ultimate cost. * McCree's gun now has less damage falloff for longer ranges, making him more effective against Pharah, Hanzo and other enemies that stay at a distance.
Makes no sense if she didn't and have a video of her on high ledges if she isn't able to climb them.
I agree she's situational and a back up support, but damn I'm excited for something different when it comes to healing/support.
Tried her out on the PTR and Practice Range to get a sense of her.
1) She has no extra mobility options like wall climbing.
2) The rifle is setup in such a way that there's no alt fire. Hit an enemy, hurt them, hit an ally, heal them.
The Sniper rifle in offense mode is nowhere near as strong as Widowmaker's it's better to pick off low health enemies than one-hit kills. The basic heal from the rifle is about 1/3 of a standard character's life bar so about 66 health.
Right now on the PTR they have a brawl that's Ana and the Tanks-only.
Oh, I didn't realize she was out already. I imagine she doesn't need to charge up either so she can just blast her rifle. How does firerate compare to Widow?
Oh, I didn't realize she was out already. I imagine she doesn't need to charge up either so she can just blast her rifle. How does firerate compare to Widow?
Teeny bit slower, but she doesn't need to charge. However, low damage and no headshots.
Oh, I didn't realize she was out already. I imagine she doesn't need to charge up either so she can just blast her rifle. How does firerate compare to Widow?
She's on the PTR which is a test server. You can change your region to PTR, it will download another copy of Overwatch and log on.
I played around a bit on the PTR, but was unable to play Ana because every team already had at least one, and most had three...
Anyway, I tried some of the other changed heroes. D.Va is super legit. The defense matrix on right click feels really natural and works very well. You need to know when to deploy it but it is a great and very versatile tool now. However, it also makes killing a D.Va somewhat frustrating.
I even got a POTG once when I was attacking on Temple of Anubs. Just ran into the last point with defense matrix up and there were two Ana, a Junkrat and another character of the enemy team standing on it. Hit Q, jumped under the bridge, got a double kill and then hunted down some stragglers.
Also played a little bit of McCree. His new range is very fun to play and makes him much more viable than before.
Passively Ana seemed very annoying, though I believe that was also a large part of her being overpicked and when you were the first target you were basically perma-debuffed. She is kind of weird though as a support because her self-heal is the grenade and as a sniper she is weird because she has no movement ability.
Zenyatta is also very annoying to deal with now because basically the moment he sees you you get debuffed and shot down, particularly if Zenyatta stays on the cart or is otherwise surrounded by teammates. Junkrat is still very good at dealing with him though through indirect fire.
I have the game now thanks to certain persistent people.
CprlScrotes#1823
I don't think I have nearly enough time to get nearly good enough to play this game on any kind of competitive level but I'll probably make good practice fodder at least?
Also, on my new 4k monitor this game looks great, even tho I'm only running QHD resolution right now, I'm fetching 70 frames, which I'll take all day.
Another thing to mention about Ana is that it looks like you can hit them anywhere on the body for the same amount of damage. I was doing comparisons between her and Widow. Widow of course can one shot training robots with a fully charged head shot, but her body shots at 100% do about 66% of their health. Ana consistently does ~33% wherever they're hit. I couldn't really figure out a good way to see if healing shots do more with headshots or if it's just the same mechanic of "hit them anywhere". It's kinda neat because it significantly reduces the complexity of playing her by not having to bother with headshots.
I also didn't realize this with Widow but non charged headshots do about the same amount of damage as charged body shots. I was testing by shooting close but not hitting then actually aiming, so non charged is more or less having the charge at the lowest bar.
Played a couple of rounds of the Brawl currently in the TPR which only allows for tanks and Ana. Did not play a whole lot of Ana because it was again completely overloaded with people desperate to play Ana. I quickly noticed that the team with fewer Anas was winning so I started playing tanks. Ideally you want no more than 3 Anas and a diversity of tanks.
I played Roadhog on defense of Route 66 and got 4 gold medals and a silver, including gold heals which is rather bizarre when you have four healers on the team. Or perhaps it is not because the Anas really don't want to be in the front line and thus either get killed and don't heal each other because they are dead, or don't even take damage because they don't enter the fray.
On attack I played D.Va and had a lot of fun hunting down enemy Anas and nuking enemies from unexpected places. Her reworked Ult is so good. Got me golds in Damage and Eliminations as well as POTG when I rushed down and killed a Reinhardt, then sent a nuke the way of the enemy Anas and killed two of them. They are really not mobile enough to escape.
An Overwatch streamer did a ~2 hour stream yesterday with some of the devs, introducing Ana's gameplay. Some stuff: - Ana doesn't have a movement ability because they don't want just everyone to have movement abilities willy-nilly, and she's 60 years old - The buff to Mercy's damage boost mentioned above isn't making it into the main-game patch - The artists need to be very careful not to include a lot of red in character designs - They should make a 'caber toss' skin for Hanzo that accurately reflects the arrow hitbox size
Also, I watched a pro stream with Zenyatta and now that he has 200 health he's basically playable as a DPS character.
Comments
If a pro team wins some defense round with five symmetras and a Lucio, I'll be cheering all the way to the bank.
I agree she's situational and a back up support, but damn I'm excited for something different when it comes to healing/support.
Edit: I saw this on Twitter
It's interesting, however it may still have some players try to kill more > actual support. That's bothersome because of the situational awareness a support class has to have of their teammates to make sure they don't die. Most people that I end up playing with that play sniper really play like they are in their own world and are just there for headshot/kills > objectives. It's annoying.
I'm finding more and more pugs/pubs have players that pretty much don't give a shit and try not to support/protect their healers. They'll go solo to try to battle 3+ enemies and I'm the only other one there, or people like 76 or back up tanks will just go off and not help with Tracer/Genji getting on my 6. Why do people do this?
Edit edit: legendary skins
Just look at the Tracer/Winston composition seen in pro play. Pre-nerf, McCree was good against tracer by stunning and fanning the hammer, and could melt tanks in the same manner. After his damage nerf, you have much less leeway in being able to kill Tracer before she recalls, and just can't output enough damage against Winston. And so at the pro level, the winning move was not to counter multi-hero because the counter was too weak. You just had to use the same cheese strat. The game systems that mattered at the higher levels was purely the shooty aspect instead of shooty plus compositional skills.
You don't have the flexibility of Dota or LoL where they have 5x the amount of heroes: they have multiple heroes that fulfill the same role. In the rock paper scissors that is Dota/LoL, you can nerf a hero of type paper, but still have other paper type heroes capable of countering rock. In Overwatch, you nerf paper, no other hero is close enough to paper to be able to stop rock anymore. Of course, rock paper scissors is a very basic simplification on how heroes can counter and out-play each other, but hopefully you get the gist.
So Blizzard could have been more careful and precise in how they buff/nerf, but they took the easy way out and disabled multi-hero.
D.Va got the most changes. Next to the change to Defense Matrix her Ultimate now costs 15% less, it explodes after just 3 seconds and NO LONGER KILLS HER. The last one may be OP and I could see that being reverted, but damn. There have been multiple times where I last-ditch effort put a bomb on the enemy point which killed nobody because the enemy team scattered and my team didn't rush in to take advantage of the enemy team running away and I had to hide from my own bomb.
All these changes should make her more than viable. I have also noticed in my time playing that D.Va is by far the hero most unlikely to get Play of the Game or an end card, and if the least likely to be voted to be. Hopefully these bring her up to speed.
Meanwhile Zenyatta has received another 50 shield, his Ultimate doubles his movement speed and the Ult now provides 300 health per second (up from 200). Also his Orbs of Harmony and Discord had their movement speed Quadrupled meaning that they're basically now on their targets instantly.
Other notable changes:
* Mercy's Ultimate cost has been increased but she now can move while she activates it and Guardian Angel resets when she uses it meaning she can get out of the killing field almost immediately. Plus her Damage Boost has been pushed from 30% to 50% (which is kind of crazy).
* Ultimate costs have also been increased for Bastion, Soldier 76, Lucio (10% each) and Roadhog (a whopping 45%). I do not really understand why Roadhog's ult garnered such a nerf. EDIT: I just now realized that these have been increased because Self-Heal abilities now give Ultimate charge. However, they apparently missed increasing Mei's Ultimate cost.
* McCree's gun now has less damage falloff for longer ranges, making him more effective against Pharah, Hanzo and other enemies that stay at a distance.
1) She has no extra mobility options like wall climbing.
2) The rifle is setup in such a way that there's no alt fire. Hit an enemy, hurt them, hit an ally, heal them.
The Sniper rifle in offense mode is nowhere near as strong as Widowmaker's it's better to pick off low health enemies than one-hit kills. The basic heal from the rifle is about 1/3 of a standard character's life bar so about 66 health.
Right now on the PTR they have a brawl that's Ana and the Tanks-only.
Anyway, I tried some of the other changed heroes. D.Va is super legit. The defense matrix on right click feels really natural and works very well. You need to know when to deploy it but it is a great and very versatile tool now. However, it also makes killing a D.Va somewhat frustrating.
I even got a POTG once when I was attacking on Temple of Anubs. Just ran into the last point with defense matrix up and there were two Ana, a Junkrat and another character of the enemy team standing on it. Hit Q, jumped under the bridge, got a double kill and then hunted down some stragglers.
Also played a little bit of McCree. His new range is very fun to play and makes him much more viable than before.
Passively Ana seemed very annoying, though I believe that was also a large part of her being overpicked and when you were the first target you were basically perma-debuffed. She is kind of weird though as a support because her self-heal is the grenade and as a sniper she is weird because she has no movement ability.
Zenyatta is also very annoying to deal with now because basically the moment he sees you you get debuffed and shot down, particularly if Zenyatta stays on the cart or is otherwise surrounded by teammates. Junkrat is still very good at dealing with him though through indirect fire.
CprlScrotes#1823
I don't think I have nearly enough time to get nearly good enough to play this game on any kind of competitive level but I'll probably make good practice fodder at least?
Also, on my new 4k monitor this game looks great, even tho I'm only running QHD resolution right now, I'm fetching 70 frames, which I'll take all day.
I also didn't realize this with Widow but non charged headshots do about the same amount of damage as charged body shots. I was testing by shooting close but not hitting then actually aiming, so non charged is more or less having the charge at the lowest bar.
I played Roadhog on defense of Route 66 and got 4 gold medals and a silver, including gold heals which is rather bizarre when you have four healers on the team. Or perhaps it is not because the Anas really don't want to be in the front line and thus either get killed and don't heal each other because they are dead, or don't even take damage because they don't enter the fray.
On attack I played D.Va and had a lot of fun hunting down enemy Anas and nuking enemies from unexpected places. Her reworked Ult is so good. Got me golds in Damage and Eliminations as well as POTG when I rushed down and killed a Reinhardt, then sent a nuke the way of the enemy Anas and killed two of them. They are really not mobile enough to escape.
- Ana doesn't have a movement ability because they don't want just everyone to have movement abilities willy-nilly, and she's 60 years old
- The buff to Mercy's damage boost mentioned above isn't making it into the main-game patch
- The artists need to be very careful not to include a lot of red in character designs
- They should make a 'caber toss' skin for Hanzo that accurately reflects the arrow hitbox size
Also, I watched a pro stream with Zenyatta and now that he has 200 health he's basically playable as a DPS character.
I might be free later.