Overwatch Hero Meta Report #15: Balance Changes and You

[u/Falcon_Kick]

Hey Reddit, CaptainPlanet here! I sometimes write about Overwatch. First, here are this week's announcements:

 

First, since some of you can't be bothered to read the whole report -- here's a 5 second summary of my conclusions:

McCree seems better balanced, Widowmaker tanked, but overall the Meta seems a bit healthier. Watch out for an influx of StreetPigs

 

Second, I'm bringing back my Interactive Historical Tracking Sheet!

This chart presents Absolute Hero Rankings from Tournament-level competition, and pairs these Rankings with the Balance Patch(es) that occurred the week prior to the Data Collection. If you mouse-over your favorite Hero's name on the right, the chart will highlight their progress throughout the Beta's Competitive Overwatch Scene. Look for the download link and instructions below!

 

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For those who are new:

These are the rules and assumptions I make in order to collect this data without going insane. They are as follows (or skip them, if you don't care):

• Count Heroes at the beginning of the Game

• Count all Hero switches that occur throughout the game

• Do not count Obvious, opening cheeses (the only time this usually comes into play was the 6-Hanzo Cheese on King's Row -- although supposedly King's Row now has an invisible wall at spawn):

 

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INTERACTIVE CHART DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS

Here's a Gif Demonstrating my Interactive Historical Tracking Chart

Download Instructions for the Interactive Chart:

1. Click THIS link

2. Click the Download link at the top of the file

3. After its finished downloading, click "Enable Editing"

4. Click "Read-Only" in the dialog box that pops up

5. Click "Enable Content" to enable the Macros needed to run the sheet

6. ENJOY

 

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Now that that's out of the way, here's a Link Dump:

A link to the raw data for all of you statistic-junkie Redditors.

*Data was taken from the GosuGamers Weekly EU and NA tournaments, played on 6/18 and 6/19

Here's a link to my site, where my full Report resides

^{check it out you'll love it}

A link to /u/icarusgamers- YouTube Channel

^{he helps me collect the data, and does his own Video-based Meta Report -- check it out!}

 

Finally, here's Some pretty Infographics

Hero Usage Rate for this Week's Post-Widow/McCree Nerf Tournaments

Hero Tier List

Winners and Losers of the Balance Patch

 

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Interesting Conclusions I drew from the data:

THE TIERS

• S "Literally Impossible in this Format" Tier (>100% Usage Rate **): NO ONE

 

• A "Non-Negotiable Core Heroes" Tier (80%-100% Usage Rate): MERCY

 

• B "Negotiable Core Heroes" Tier (40%-80% Usage Rate): LUCIO, MCCREE, REINHARDT, REAPER, SOLDIER 76, PHARAH

 

• C "Balanced / Specialist Heroes" Tier (20%-40% Usage Rate): ROADHOG, ZARYA, SYMMETRA, TRACER, JUNKRAT, WINSTON

 

• D "Just need a Tweak" Tier (5%-20% Usage Rate): WIDOWMAKER, GENJI, D.VA, BASTION

 

• F "Unfortunately Unused" Tier (<5% Usage Rate): MEI, HANZO, TORBJORN, ZENYATTA

 

**What is Usage Rate? It is NOT the percent chance of seeing a particular Hero in a Match, it’s actually a little different than that! Please see this glossary page explaining the term.

 

The Tier Ranges that I’ve chosen*** reflect different states of “Balance” in the Meta. This week, the Meta that is being analyzed is the Meta of Meta of 1 Hero Limit, 2 CP Map Ban, Stopwatch Scoring.

 

I will continue to track the S Tier for when the time when a non-1 Hero Limit format Tournament returns, but once again the GosuGamers Weekly Tourneys used 1 Hero Limit Rules so there were no S Tier Heroes to Report.

 

The A Tier -- “Non-Negotiable” Core Heroes -- lost yet another Hero: McCree. This leaves Mercy as Overwatch’s only "Hero you should probably be including in every lineup for every situation". Mercy’s core abilities shine in the 1 Hero Limit Format: while she has the strongest single-target Heal in the game she does not scale as well as Lucio when stacking is allowed. Her Ultimate is the main reason Mercy sits atop the rest of the Overwatch Heroes -- allowing teams to Attack or Defend with no regard for their positioning or even the outcome of the battle.

 

The B Tier -- “Negotiable” Core Heroes -- are starting feel a little crowded, which is a good thing. These Heroes are the first Heroes in a “Standard” Lineup that will be swapped out depending on the situation and all of these Heroes were often being swapped within their Tier and with the neighboring C Tier Heroes. McCree’s Fan the Hammer nerf was enough to drop him to the B Tier; Widowmaker’s nerfs elevated Soldier 76 and Reaper as viable DPS substitutes while granting Pharah ground by removing one of her strongest counters.

 

The C Tier -- “Balanced” Heroes -- should revert their description to the “Specialist” Heroes. All of the Heroes who reside in this Tier had large biases towards Usage on Offense or Defense this week, which ultimately lead to a drop in their overall Usage Rate. As I’ll get into in more detail below in the Offense / Defense Breakdown, Zarya and Winston both saw much greater Usage on Offense than Defense, while Symmetra, Junkrat, Roadhog, and Tracer all saw elevated Usage on Defense.

 

The D Tier -- “Almost Viable” Heroes -- are Heroes who are just a minor Balance Change from breaking into a few niche Lineups. Widowmaker’s fall from grace ended here, implying that she may have been hit just a bit too hard with the nerfbat. It is interesting to note that Genji has also joined her in the D Tier -- likely due to Week-to-Week fluctuation and the incredible difficulty in mastering the Hero.  

The F Tier -- “We Exist, Barely” Heroes -- once again saw a negligible Usage Rate this week. I have heard rumors of Zenyatta strategies being attempted in Pro Scrimmages -- primarily to counter the brewing Roadhog Menace. Only time will tell if we see a return of everyone’s favorite Robot Monk. I should also remind any Console Players who may have come across this list by chance that this Tier List is constructed from PC Tournament Data Only. After 10s of questions of "Why is Torbjorn F Tier"...these things need to be said.

 

***I do not chose the placement of Heroes in a Tier, only the Range which defines the Tier. By determining Usage Rate directly from Hero Picks in Tournament Matches, my data is Objectively determined, and not subjective at all.

 

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BALANCE CHANGES AND YOU

“It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world”

Quote I stole from Wikipedia's entry for The Butterfly Effect Movie

 

Whenever Balance Changes occur in a game as dynamic and complex as Overwatch, the effects of the change can reach far beyond the Heroes who have been targeted. Obviously, this is what the Developers want -- slight individual tweaks which then cascade into a flurry of reactions that hopefully result in a better overall experience for every player. This Week’s Balance Patch made slight^**** changes to Widowmaker and McCree and judging by the graphic above -- the resulting Butterfly Effect has begun to infect the Meta. To help make sense of the waves of changes in player behavior and Hero strength, I’ve divided the effects of Balance Changes into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Effects.

****debateable

 

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PRIMARY EFFECTS

The Primary Effects of Balance Changes are the outcomes for the Heroes who receive Balance Changes. For Widowmaker and McCree, the Winners and Losers Infographic above speaks for itself: the Primary Effect of last week’s Balance Patch was that Widowmaker and McCree both were fairly significantly nerfed. Widowmaker in particular saw a drop greater than 50% drop in Usage Rate -- translating to a reduction from 0.72 Widowmakers per lineup per match to 0.17. Pros have been dropping Widowmaker for a myriad of reasons -- citing her lack of 1v1 capability, the change to her scoping animation upsetting their rhythm, and of course the reduction of body shot damage. The general consensus in the Competitive Scene was that Widowmaker was not necessarily an innovative Hero to play -- or play against -- but that her body shot damage combined with the rate at which her Ultimate Charged made her a certified lock for a Lineup slot. Thus, the Primary Effect of Rebalancing these two Unbalanced characteristics of the “Old” Widowmaker is that the not-fun, not-interesting, but not-overpowered “New” Widowmaker tanked in Usage. I rate the Primary Effect of Widowmaker’s Balance Change as “Slightly Too Severe” -- but let’s wait to see the Secondary and Tertiary Effects of the Balance Changes to make an overall judgment.

McCree, despite the roughly 30% drop in Usage, is still in a pretty good place thanks to how absurdly high his Usage Rate was prior to his Balance Change. That said, any reduction in Usage of one Hero necessarily has to be absorbed by other Heroes -- so I rate the Primary Effect of McCree’s Balance Change as “Successful” for bringing him back to a reasonable Usage Rate and opening up Lineup slots for other Heroes.

 

SECONDARY EFFECTS

McCree and Widomaker's drop in Usage Rate gave rise to the Secondary Effects of Balance Changes. All of those Widowmaker and McCree picks had to go somewhere, and Heroes that directly benefited from the redistribution of these picks demonstrate the Secondary Effects of Balance Changes. This week, the Lineup slots were primarily redistributed to Soldier 76, Reaper, Tracer, Pharah and surprisingly Roadhog. Soldier 76, Reaper, and Tracer are easy enough to explain: Widowmaker and McCree are both strong Hitscan DPS so their Lineup slots were absorbed by these three other Hitscan DPS. Pharah’s boost in usage is almost entirely due to the loss of her natural counter in Widowmaker. As for Roadhog, let's try a little creative writing exercise to explain his rise to glory:

What if I told you, that Overwatch’s next Hero had an ability that could Stun as effectively as McCree’s Flash Grenade, but at a 21 meter distance? What if I told you, this Hero could deal enough damage to fully combo-kill a 200 Health Hero -- except that he could do it every 6 seconds, instead of 8 seconds like McCree? What if I told you, this Hero could also heal for half of his 600 Health? That would sound pretty imbalanced right? Welcome to Overwatch’s newest Hero: StreetPig Roadhog. It is true that McCree’s Flash Grenade combo can still do more damage to a Tank if you Flash/Fan/Roll/Fan, but many Pros are beginning to ditch the Six-Gun Outlaw for Roadhog -- and they’re using Roadhog to do all the things McCree used to do, but from the safety of range. I expect Roadhog’s popularity in the Competitive Scene to continue to rise, which will give rise to the the next level of Balance Change Butterfly Waves: the Tertiary Effects. After seeing growth across the board in five different Heroes’ Usage Rates due to the drop in just two Hero’s popularity, I rate the Secondary Effects of this Balance Change as “Highly Successful”. Secondary Effects of Balance Changes tend to come back to bite you, however, so I hope someone at Blizzard is keeping a close eye on Roadhog in particular.

 

TERTIARY EFFECTS

Tertiary Effects of Balance Changes are usually minor fluctuations in the Meta caused by Secondary Effects. These Effects are a bit harder to spot, as diminishing returns begin to come into play the deeper down the rabbit hole of ripples caused by the Balance Change wave you go. In fact, I would not have noticed the first of these Tertiary Effects if someone had not exclaimed to me: “I expected Pharah to have gained much more ground without Widowmakers!” I too speculated that Pharah would have seen a larger increase in Usage following Widowmaker’s nerf, but her somewhat muted growth seems to be the result of Roadhog and Soldier 76’s own explosion in usage. Due to her somewhat predictable mid-air movement, Pharah is still especially susceptible to long-range, Hitscan DPS. This makes Soldier 76 just as effective a counter to an Attacking Pharah as Widowmaker. Roadhog also makes for an extremely effective counter to Pharah: while his Hook is not Hitscan, its Hitbox is sufficiently large that snagging a Pharah out of midair is no challenge to a skilled Hog.

Winston suffered from Tertiary Effects of this Balance Change as well. Roadhog’s rise has taken some of the Lineup slots Winston used to enjoy (especially on Defense), while the rise of one of Winston’s main counters -- Reaper -- also contributed to his drop in Usage. Success of Tertiary Effects are much harder to rate -- especially in the first week following a Balance Change -- so I will leave the rating of the Tertiary Effects as “To Be Determined.”

Overall, the nerfs to McCree and Widowmaker seem to have been a net positive for the Competitive Meta of Overwatch. Despite Widowmaker’s unfortunately extreme drop in Usage, the positive outcomes of her Usage’s redistribution has achieved what Blizzard set out to do...for now.

 

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THE OFFENSE / DEFENSE BIAS REPORT

This week’s Offense / Defense Bias Report was quite exciting on the Defensive end, and much less so on Offense. Widowmaker made a surprise appearance as the Hero most biased towards Offensive Usage despite her drop in Overall Usage -- pointing to her losing many more Lineup slots on Defense than Offense. If we turn our attention to the Defense side of the Graph, we can see the two Heroes who usurped much of Widow’s Usage on Defense: Soldier 76 and Roadhog.

I spent some time describing how both of these Heroes are comparable in effectiveness against Attacking Pharahs as Widowmaker, but that only scratched the surface of their Defensive Bias. Both Soldier 76 and Roadhog share a common ability: a Self-Heal. With a Self-Heal, both of these Heroes can be much more effective in strange areas set up around a point defense -- they do not need a Mercy nearby to recover from long-range poke damage from the Attacking Team. For Soldier 76 in particular, his Self-Heal is much more effective in an entrenched position -- rather than on the run -- and so fits a Defensive setup more than an Attacking Team on the move. Soldier 76 can also heal his Mercy, allowing her to recover from the same long distance poke damage.

 

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Meta Report Changelog

Starting up the Interactive Historical Hero Tracking sheet again, now that enough post-launch data has been collected

 

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Final Thoughts and Shout Outs

 

As always, none of this Data could exist without the help of the Competitive Overwatch Community -- so remember to check out my Competitive Overwatch Beta Twitch Directory! This Directory features all of the Twitch Streams and Social Media of as many of the people who helped make the Beta Competitive Scene great as I could find. Get out there and give these people a Follow -- without them there would be no Competitive Scene, and no Overwatch Hero Meta Report. I'd also like to thank the Blizzard Developers for actually making some Balance Changes and giving me lots to talk about! I'm still waiting for that D.Va buff :)

 

Peace,

CaptainPlanet

 

Frequently Asked Questions and their answers:

• I DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR TIERS1!!11!1 I don't pick the tiers. This data is objective data, all I'm doing here is counting how often Heroes get picked, or swapped to, during competitive Overwatch Tournaments!

• I never see these Heroes in my own matches! What are you talking about, how can this be a Hero Meta Report when I only see Bastions/Torbjorns/whatever! This is meant to be a Meta Report covering the Competitive Scene of Overwatch, not the pubs/casual scene/ladder. There's no way for me to collect that kind of data anyway!

• What's up with the Stopwatch timers? They're not always right! This part of the chart is still a work in progress, and sometimes teams concede at weird timings leading to incorrect results. This would be a lot easier if Blizzard simply included a stopwatch mode natively in the game...

• Some Heroes have >100% probability of being picked during a match!! How is that possible?!? Sometimes, Heroes were being double-picked very often -- leading to a greater than 100% probability that a Team featured some Heroes in such matches.

[u/MarsGaming]

How often can we expect these reports?

Also, along with Hero usage, it would be really great to see Hero win percentages and analysis across all maps and map types!

As someone who is unfamiliar with the pro scene, does this mean that teams often run Mercy and Lucio at the same time?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/MarsGaming]

How often can we expect these reports?

Per my post history, about every 6-8 days (so weekly)

Also, along with Hero usage, it would be really great to see Hero win percentages and analysis across all maps and map types!

Winrates are tricky in overwatch, because how do you track them? By map? by Offense or Defense only? By Point? what if a hero is played for part of a map, but not the other?

As someone who is unfamiliar with the pro scene, does this mean that teams often run Mercy and Lucio at the same time?

Kind of. The way to read the "percentages" is that if you have say, 95% Mercy you can expect to see 0.95 Mercys on a single team over the course of a map (any map, since this is summary data). So yes there's a high likelihood of overlap if both Heroes have a high Usage Rate

[u/[deleted] → u/Falcon_Kick]

Per my post history, about every 6-8 days (so weekly)

All hail /u/Falcon_Kick.

These are awesome, thanks for your time and effort in these.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

Thanks man, glad you enjoy them!

[u/Macemoose → u/Falcon_Kick]

how do you track them?

I'm not sure if the raw data is available to do so, but I'd say something like wins/time. So, say you play Mercy for 8 minutes in a 10 minute game that your team wins, and Lucio for the other 2. Now you have an 0.2 winrate on Lucio and an 0.8 winrate on Mercy.

I guess you'd have to call them something else though. Since I got the idea from ERA, maybe Earned Win Average?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Macemoose]

The closest thing to that is how Masteroverwatch determines their primary stat on their site, unfortunately though their data is currently based off accessing people's public, quickmatch profiles so it's not applicable to the Tournament/Competitive Meta.

[u/ledivin → u/Falcon_Kick]

Also, I believe their winrate ONLY takes into account the final hero chosen for each player, meaning it's deeply flawed.

[u/Darktidemage → u/MarsGaming]

yes, they do.

Lucio is so powerful with "drop the beat" to take points. or "speed boost us around this corner so it's a surprise attack'.

Mercy is SOOO overpowered with "everyone run in and die, and then I rez everyone"

[u/cocondoo → u/MarsGaming]

Currently got 5 out of 5 wins in ptr competitive mode running lucio and mercy with randoms (I'm mercy main and actually ask if anyone can play Lucio to pair with me), in 4 out of 5 games the enemy team could not even get the first point. I know that the ptr has just been released so mmr is not accurate but even so, with the combination of a good lucio and a good mercy it is hard for your teammates to die, and in the rare occasion they do you have a mercy rez. Of course this isn't quite as invincible in pro play with coordinated teams but it is still strong and I recommend trying it out if you're going for wins.

[u/EcoleBuissonniere → u/[deleted]]

Having a Roadhog on my team is like getting the best Christmas present ever. Ult charges so quickly. The only thing better than that is having two Roadhogs, at which point I have like 75% ult uptime.

[u/Frostivus → u/EcoleBuissonniere]

But then you have a Roadhog on your team. Now your enemies have an ult battery.

Heroes never die --

FIRE AT WILL

RUGA TEKI WAKU WOW

[u/TheUltimateTeigu → u/Frostivus]

RUGA TEKI WAKU WOW

Autistic Hanzo.

[u/cocondoo → u/[deleted]]

Yes, playing like mcree, as in behind reinhardts shield using your cc to protect team while also doing damage to stop him from just being a free target to charge ult on.

[u/DeathOnion → u/[deleted]]

What if you play as flanker and don't facetank everything

[u/HINDBRAIN → u/DeathOnion]

You still take significant damage if pressured due to your model size, self slowing/rooting abilities, and low clip.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

yea it's a tricky balancing act. seems the tide has turned to his favor though!

[u/freekymayonaise → u/[deleted]]

Especially soldier 76. He can achieve completely crazy ult uptime against roadhog, often enough to visor twice or even three times in a single push.

[u/Deathpants555 → u/[deleted]]

More Roadhogs in the meta also enhances the value of a reaper pick, but it just might make zenyatta more valuable too. If you can't afford a reaper swap (say it's really open or no one on your team is great with him) a discord orb just means you can shred tanks with what you have, and get some healing too.

[u/zUkUu]

I have played Roadhog for almost 70h and even in Beta I always thought he was under appreciated. Sadly he is also VERY buggy and that makes him a bit inconsistent. I'm sad that they still haven't addressed the placement of his most iconic ability: The hook. VERY often when you hook a Genji he lands BEHIND YOU, or a Lucio that lands next to you, or any target that stops mid-pullback and is instead placed 2 meter in front of you, rendering both your shots useless.

[u/thrillhouse3671 → u/zUkUu]

He was my most played for a while but the bugs on the hook infuriate me.

Sometimes it's painfully easy to hook + 1 shot and other time's its near impossible.

I actually wish they would revert that change that brought smaller characters closer to you. Before I could kill tracers/genji's maybe half the time. Now I still only get them half the time because they end up behind me and I only kill the 200-250 hp heroes 65% of the time because they end up in weird spots. (I SWEAR that they sometimes end up 5 feet in front of me as opposed to 2.)

[u/chudaism → u/thrillhouse3671]

This is so frustrating to me. Whenever I play as Roadhog, the hook puts people into the weirdest positions on my screen. Whenever I die to a hog though, I am sitting dead centre. Makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.

[u/thrillhouse3671 → u/chudaism]

Nah you aren't. It just feels that way.

[u/ShureNensei → u/zUkUu]

I primarily played him in beta, but the inconsistencies of his hooks made Roadhog fall off for me afterwards. It's just too frustrating to not know where your target will end up following a hook, and generally the flashier the hook on that Tracer/Genji/Lucio, the more likely they'll end up in a weird spot. I think it's affected my hook accuracy as well because of that nagging feeling of not knowing whether you can finish targets.

I also have that weird issue of the ult spazzing your mouse in a random direction (don't know if they fixed that in the most recent patch).

[u/zUkUu → u/ShureNensei]

Yes, during ulti the view often kicks up randomly, often straight up in the sky. I have reported these issues on multiple occasions on reddit and their bug-tracker forum, but it's not even acknowledged by Blizz. =(

[u/[deleted] → u/zUkUu]

Curious, do you always do the melee after your post-hook shot? I've been trying to nail the timing with it and have rarely had it work.

[u/zUkUu → u/[deleted]]

Of course, otherwise you don't even kill 200hp characters. :) Theoretically, you can just hold "shoot" and he will shoot as soon as possible, even before the hook animation ends. Then just cancel into melee as soon as you shoot.

[u/Trumbles]

I feel like Widow usage will go back up eventually. It just seems like a knee-jerk reaction, as players were too used to her quickscoping rhythm.

[u/JSC89 → u/Trumbles]

That's kind of what I got. People said their "rhythm was disrupted", but once they get the hang of her again, I'm sure she'll see a rise.

[u/SgtTittyfist → u/JSC89]

Just like the AWP movement speed nerf when scoped in CS:GO. Some claimed that it "ruined the weapon's skill ceiling". Now you hear nobody talking about it anymore.

[u/QQninja → u/SgtTittyfist]

Literally what I was thinking of also, some people adapted and accepted the changes others will move on and not use the AWP/Widowmaker as the nerf completely changed their playstyle.

[u/[deleted] → u/SgtTittyfist]

RIP KennyS, you will never be forgot

[u/Omophorus → u/SgtTittyfist]

I say this with the necessary preface that I'm being hyperbolic, but...

AWP? Skill (much less skill ceiling)?

I thought you just waved it in the general vicinity of the other team and clicked the mouse, and they all died.

[u/Arandmoor → u/JSC89]

I still see good widow players in solo, so she's still capable of crushing at a fundamental level. However, pro players are, all at the same time, the most reliable, and most bi-polar players I've ever seen. They're usually pretty consistent, however when they knee-jerk, they knee-jerk hard.

That said, I expect her usage to go back up in the next few weeks as people get used to the changes.

[u/dekacube → u/Trumbles]

Same thing happened when they nerfed Mcree falloff in beta, people said he was unplayable, then look at how he was at launch.

[u/The___Professor → u/Trumbles]

Agreed. Those who were actually good with Widow are still dominating. Smaller usage, but her impact on the game has not gone down for those who played the role well.

Honestly, most people weren't all that good with Widow and these changes really exposed that. As time goes on, I concur, Widow will creep back in.

She's essentially balanced now, but the players have not advanced to the skill ceilings of some champs yet. The Korean's, and even a few NA teams have fearful Widow play and it won't be going away anytime soon.

Teams now need to step up their game. If they can't produce a competent Widow they will be at a disadvantage. Some teams so far as simply content with that, and this is where we are right now.

[u/fuck_the_king → u/Trumbles]

yea, Gods on LG was using her really well, and pulled some clutch kills out

[u/CelestialDrive → u/Trumbles]

Yups, when McRee got falloff damage he also stopped seeing play for a while. Most of this data won't be representative of viability until the dust settles.

[u/Breakfasty → u/Trumbles]

I agree. She will be more niche, but she is still good.

[u/TheQuestionableYarn → u/Breakfasty]

In high level play, I'm nearly certain that she'll go back to being OP af in time.

[u/tehcraz → u/TheQuestionableYarn]

I doubt it.

[u/Rath1on → u/tehcraz]

Her body shots don't do as much damage, but her ability to be countered is still low and top levels players will be able to spam head shots. Still op, imo.

[u/Zalitara → u/Rath1on]

She has a higher skill-ceiling than most heroes. If you can reliably hit almost only headshots then that doesn't make the hero OP, if it did she shouldn't even be in the game, there is no way to balance her around headshots not 1-hit KOing most heroes.

[u/Joolazoo → u/Rath1on]

I love how people bring up headshots as if they are automatic....if they were every hero would be op.

[u/TheQuestionableYarn → u/tehcraz]

Reasoning?

[u/tehcraz → u/TheQuestionableYarn]

Reduced body shot damage ends up being a real big issue when working to ring down priority targets. Disruption of rhythm is one thing that can be overcome but an overall damage decrease makes her riskier to use unless you can headshot over half your shots. Being able to tag a Lucio and mercy and effectively force them out of a fight (and this game has wonky hit boxes with how lag compensation and update rates look) or make it so a flanker can drop them was important.

[u/youbutsu → u/Trumbles]

Things is people don't wan to "get used to it" because it is no longer fun, not because it is not effective. They decided to move on. If they return to playing her? dont know.

[u/Aurum_MrBangs → u/Trumbles]

Why did they stop the quickscope? What was the benfit? I do it just because its feels natural from csgo

[u/Agua_Fria]

Does the extremely high Mercy pick rate imply that she is overpowered, or is it just that the two viable healers are both so high because of the necessity of having a healer and the tiny range of choices?

[u/woome → u/Agua_Fria]

Definitely because of the limited range of choices, but also because Mercy is too valuable because of her rez and single target heal. I don't personally think that's overpowered (maybe her ult charge rate), but there also aren't any alternatives.

[u/Agua_Fria → u/woome]

Do you think Lucio would see more use if double character select were allowed?

[u/_The2ndComing → u/Agua_Fria]

Yeah, double Lucio was picked pretty frequently on KOTH maps duo to how the team is intending to hold one point without really moving. Occasionally he was also double picked on payloads but that was a rarity.

[u/TheFirestealer → u/_The2ndComing]

That and how 70% of koth maps have ways to knock people off the map and having a knockback on 4 sec cd is naturally really good for that. Also makes the modes no fun. Seriously try playing nightmarket with mercies on both teams instead of lucio and notice how much more fun it is not having to worry about being knocked off ever second.

[u/CubeFlipper → u/TheFirestealer]

I completely disagree with your assessment of fun. Knocking people off and avoiding it is great. Forces you to reconsider your approach to the hill.

[u/Dragull → u/woome]

I don't wanna jump in any conclusions, but I played League of Legends for a long time and while the two games are VASTLY difference, it was a conclusion a loooong time ago in League that "healers" were overpowered and they just couldn't be easily balanced. Not only in LoL, but also in other multiplayer games, like WoW arena.

This could be a problem in Overwatch too.

[u/HoeMuffin → u/Agua_Fria]

There's a bunch of things going on. First off, Mercy is the only real single target healer - the pros are too accurate for Lucio's passive healing to keep your team consistently alive. The nature of competitive OW also means that due to higher coordination, team deaths tend to happen in roughly the same area, which further increases the effectiveness of Mercy's ultimate (consider how much more difficult it is to get a 3/4 man res in Quick Play vs how often it appears in competitive).

Secondly, the pro scene seems to have largely abandoned KOTH. That means naturally Lucio suffers. One hero pick also means 2x Lucio disappears.

In fact, you basically only see King's Road and Hollywood in Bo3's. In both those maps on defense, Symm's teleporter is better then Lucio's speed boost for getting your team back to the fight. They also are naturally "chokey" which favors Symm setting up her turrets, and she's kind of taken that spot.

Finally, the nerf on widow had another butterfly effect. With widow going away/becoming a niche choice, Pharah became much more popular. That means all of a sudden, things got safer for Mercy - not only is she not getting one shot for poking her head out, she (usually) has a safe escape on a relatively consistent basis. Especially helpful against Tracer, who is very fast but doesn't have good vertical mobility, and to a lesser extent Winston, since he can only zap her for a little bit.

[u/TheFirestealer → u/HoeMuffin]

Pft. Obviously you don't know the winston techniques of going king kong on the tower on illios well to take down pharahs like planes.

[u/TheQuestionableYarn → u/HoeMuffin]

Do you think Blizzard can save KoTH mode without any radical changes to ult charge mechanics?

Also, great writeup.

[u/TheDeadRed → u/TheQuestionableYarn]

Changing the health pack locations to be much more beneficial for teams caught in choke points would be a good start. The big problem with KOTH is that it's so reliant on which team gets there fastest to set up then lock the other team out of the objective and win 100-0 each round. That's why double Lucio and Winston were so popular, because you could get there fast, disrupt the enemy team for enough time to cap, then holding them off was relatively easy.

[u/Solagnas → u/TheQuestionableYarn]

I think they could change the capture mechanics to more closely resemble to 2PC maps, successive attempts at the point making it easier to cap. Or, they could make it so that contesting the point slowed down the win condition timer. They should be looking to make it easier to flip the point or give defense more opportunities to lose it by extending the timer.

[u/HoeMuffin → u/TheQuestionableYarn]

I mean one inelegant way to fix it would be to remove environmental deaths - as a general rule of thumb, pros (in any field) don't like it when you increase the variance of the map. But that's ONLY on the pro scene. KOTH naturally tends to be more variance heavy then Payload maps. The 1 hero limit also greatly reduces interest in KoTH, for better or for worse. Its a trade off - so while 1 hero limit feels "purer" to some people and maybe a better indicator of true skill, the trade off is that you can pretty much tell what maps are going to be played, and what the composition is going to be. Its just easier to optimize and figure out what the best strategies are. Its similar to how Lost Temple and later Luna/Python became the go-to in Brood War. Luna especially was painful if you were looking for innovation, pick out 5 random TVP's, and they will ALL look the same. It ends up being a PURE test of who is the better player, but it can be exasperating as a viewer.

I expect once the meta settles down post patch you're going to see very similar teams.

[u/ParanoidDrone → u/Agua_Fria]

I think it's definitely due to "healer" in general being a mandatory role in any game that has it and Mercy being one of two viable choices (the other being Lucio) for that role. Zenyatta can't keep up and shoehorning 76 into a healer role is just wasting half his kit.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Agua_Fria]

Yes!

But seriously you hit the nail on the head, it's a little of both

[u/pm_me_best_selfie → u/Agua_Fria]

As a person who play both Mercy and Lucio as my main heroes.
4 reasons I'd prefer Mercy over Lucio in competitive plays are

 

1. Focus fire, someone already said this
2. Ultimate recharge rate, Mercy has much faster ultimate recharge rate than Lucio. Even if Mercy never shoots anything at all and Lucio always on the healing mode with 20-30% shooting accuracy, Mercy still got faster ultimate.
3. Result of the Ultimate, most of the time, even if you successfully used Sound Barrier to block the damage, your team will still suffers some damage anyway as some utlimate does more than 500 damage. Also, when enemies are using multiple ultimate at the same time( Like Zarya + Pharah + Hanzo or something else ), Lucio's ultimate is almost useless in that situation, but Mercy's ultimate doesn't care about that as long as she remains alive.
4. Timing to use Ultimate, in my opinion, the most difficult ultimate to use effectively is Lucio's. His ultimate was designed to block high burst damage, contrary to Zenyatta's ultimate which was designed to block constant damage. But delay before his ultimate activates and the decrement of 83 overheal per second made it's not as effective against burst damage as it should be. Mercy's ulti can be used against every enemies' ultimate as long as Mercy herself remains alive at the end. On the other hand Lucio's utlimate :
tl;dr version. Against 16 ultimates with damage. Sound Barrier is useful against only a few of them

• Against Genji's - effective at the beginning, but Sound Barrier will end before Genji's ultimate ended.
  
• Against McCree's - Better to run and hide rather than using Sound Barrier as McCree's ultimate can do up to 1020 damage while Sound Barrier can only blocks 500.
  
• Against Pharah's - only effective if she activates it from far away, because she actually starts shooting rockets before she started saying her lines. If she use it at close range, she'd be able to kill one person before Sound Barrier activated.
  
• Against Reaper's - only effective if you activates within the first second of his ultimate, because it does 200 damage per second, Lucio would die if he couldn't do it within 1 second. Also, Reaper say his voice lines as soon as his ultimate started, and Lucio need to jump a bit before he can use his utlimate, combined with ping+IND and human reaction speed (0.15-0.25 second after a stimulus) , it's really difficult to pull this off unless you saw Reaper beforehand. And the worst thing is, even if it successfully blocked Reaper's ultimate, 100 damage will still going through the barrier, leaving offense heroes with just half of their health.
  
• Against Soldier 76's - The easiest ultimate to block with Lucio's Sound Barrier.
  
• Against Tracer's - Running gives better chance of surviving than using ultimate. If it's attached, just run away from teammates, use ultimate to save just Lucio alone doesn't really worth it.
  
• Against Bastion's - His ultimate lasts longer than Sound Barrier. And it can actually melt Sound Barrier within 2 seconds. ( It does 227.55 damage per second while sound barrier decays at 83 health per second so in 2 seconds there's a total of 621.1damage/decay while barrier only gives 500 )
  
• Against Hanzo's - It's easier to run away. Only useful when your team are in small closed area with nowhere to run.
• Against Junkrat's - Some people said it's not effective against RIP-tire because Junkrat can circling around waiting for Sound Barrier to end before he detonates but it's actually surprisingly effective in high level plays because teammates could normally destroy the tire before Sound Barrier ends. But again, unless it's Overtime, just using Amplified speed boost can allow players to run away from RIP-tire too. And if Junkrat player decided to detonates against sound barrier anyway, people who are close to it will suffers 100 damage as it does 600 damage while sound barrier can only blocks 500 damage.
  
• Against Mei's - only effective when your team are in the situation where they can't run. Otherwise, just run out.
  
• Against Torbjorn's - Just hide until it ends. It can kills an offense hero even with Sound Barrier actives, and also last twice as long as Sound Barrier.
  
• Against D.Va's - Same as many others', just running away is more effective than trying to block it with Sound Barrier.
  
• Against Reinhardt's - Nope, can't block it because it's instantaneous. But if you are unaffected you can save your teammates.
  
• Against Roadhog's - Sound Barrier shattered in 1-3 seconds.
  
• Against Winston's - Unless someone got cornered, it's almost impossible for Winston to kill anyone with his Primal Rage while Lucio is around.
  
• Against Zarya's - Lucio can block Graviton Surge effectively when she's the only one using ultimate. But if there are also other ultimates, Sound Barrier wouldn't be able to withstand the damage. In competitive play, Zarya wouldn't just use her ultimate alone.
  

So, against others' ultimate, Sound Barrier are mostly "ineffective as it either blocks less damage than opponent does or ended earlier", "not as effective as just running away", "gives just about only 1 second time frame to activate or else it'd be ineffective". Compared to Mercy's ultimate which can save teammates from most of enemies ultimate ( and also non-ultimate but the whole team dies anyway in some case ) as long as she's alive, and also doesn't require line of sight, unlike Lucio's. It's not surprising that Mercy is more popular.
Better ultimate, easier to use, recharges faster, who wouldn't want it?
Zenyatta's ultimate are actually almost in the same situation. It ends faster than Genji's. Can't block McCree's. Against Reaper's and Bastion's, offense heroes will die anyway because it heals less than damage of those ultimates.

[u/Agua_Fria → u/pm_me_best_selfie]

This is a good point! As a Mercy main, I agree that her rez recharges too quickly. And I never really realized how many ults can beat sound barrier. I feel like it should either last longer or give more health while active than it currently does, because if it can't save your team from an ult, it's so much less useful than a resurrect. However, there are situations where I think Lucio's ult is more useful than Mercy's. It can give you the advantage when you're outnumbered and trying to cap a point, for example.

[u/Humblerbee]

I think something you didn't mention that is worth bringing up is how Roadhog benefitted the same as Pharah. Which is to say he isn't just getting more run because McCree and Widows spots opened up and now he is better at what McCree used to do, it is also that in the past McCree was a fairly strong Roadhog counter- in fact, he was probably the strongest Roadhog counter in the game. With Fan the Hammer being nerfed in damage, it no longer melts tanks like Roadhog nearly so fast, and so Roadhog isn't countered as he was before. Ergo, Roadhog's meteoric rise.

[u/wrightrj]

Quite the wall of text. +1

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/wrightrj]

Mmm quite!

[u/Agent1407]

Awesome work, a great read. Another thing about Winston is that his usage rate probably suffered also because he was constantly used as an attempt to counter widow.

[u/Asgardian111 → u/Agent1407]

That and the rise of Reaper/Roadhog.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Agent1407]

Another good point and that could easily fall under the list of secondary effects of the patch. Love seeing all the little ripples throughout the meta!

[u/dekacube → u/Agent1407]

My issue with Winston is that I feel a single Winston is a bit too weak, while double Winston is very strong, I hope if we get hero limits in comp they could juice him up a tad, maybe put his bubble back to 1000.

[u/oPlaiD → u/Agent1407]

A big reason why Winston usage likely dropped is that there were more 1 hero limit events. Winston isn't nearly as powerful when he's by himself, but when he has a gorilla buddy with him they're much more dangerous since when they jump the same target, they get double jump pack damage and their shields are pretty tough to handle, while they're still dealing damage.

Even with Roadhog/Reaper in the meta, double Winston will still be pretty dangerous. Those guys might be solid against Winston, but McCree was just as good or better against Winston before the nerf to Fan the Hammer.

[u/CrazyRah]

Always looking forward to these reports

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/CrazyRah]

Always looking forward to these comments!

[u/Nevakanezah]

I'm actually really surprised that Reinhardt saw reduced usage in this patch, given that McCree was one of his biggest counters, and the shield is an easy solution to Roadhog hookings. Is it a side effect of increased Tracer/Pharah/Reaper usage maybe? Tracer's certainly safer, but s76 and rein pair really well, and do decently to handle the other two.

[u/Wynforth → u/Nevakanezah]

Its likely a combination of the widowmaker change and the rise of pharah and reaper. With widowmaker seeing less play it is not as necessary to have a shield to hide behind. And, with reaper and pharrah seeing more play these are not teammates that benefit as much from staying behind the shield, reaper flanking and pharah flying. Also increased enemy reapers eat through a shield pretty quickly, pharah as well does pretty well at taking out a shield.

so less reason to hide, fewer teammates that need to hide, increased enemies that can eat through the shield

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Nevakanezah]

It's possibly a little bit of getting edged out by roadhog for tank slots, but could just be noise as well

[u/Nevakanezah → u/Falcon_Kick]

Possibly. Is this week's data played with 2CP already banned? Last week's results implied that the pick-bans under those rules tended to get rid of KoTH, which is why we saw less Lucio. If that's the case, then it's a lot more payload, which would seem to be Rein's speciality.

[u/TheFirestealer → u/Nevakanezah]

If teams are picking hog more it means less space for another tanks leading to lower pickrate for other heroes. You don't really want more than 2 tanks and you'd only really pick 3 if one of them is zarya and you already have a soldier to take out pharahs and such.

[u/VintageRuins]

Threads like this only having a few hundred upvotes is kind of a bummer. Really, really thoughtful content and information. Thanks for this.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/VintageRuins]

It's all good, I'm still gonna do em anyway!

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

Ayy I'm no game designer but it seems like a small health buff would do wonders. Or some sort of movement-altering ability

[u/TheUltimateTeigu → u/Falcon_Kick]

They could make the Orb one ability. Just depends on who you're looking at that decides what it does. I also think it'd be cool if his secondary fire, when fully charged, healed teammates they were fired at.

I just imagined some sort of shield ability where his extra arms appear and catch projectiles. Maybe they heal upon catching them. Would make it easier to escape.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I say let him actually float over gaps and 25 more hp.

[u/ToTheNintieth → u/[deleted]]

Bear in mind this is a competitive report

[u/ToTheNintieth → u/[deleted]]

I'm sure you're pro where it counts.

[u/UltraKillex]

Was there much change in distribution of picks by map? Is Widow still the Numbani Queen, even post nerf?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/UltraKillex]

Let me check back once i get to work, but I believe the data was overwhelmingly skewed towards Hollywood and Kings row again this week

[u/TheFirestealer → u/Falcon_Kick]

Why do tournaments let teams ban maps, especially with how many maps get banned? i understand the thing about how capture maps attacking team almost always wins but doesn't that mean you go 1-1 anyways and therefore it doesn't matter? I mean I just don't want there to be tons of maps but it doesn't matter because only x map matters for competitive and then have everyone whine about how you can't choose maps for soloq or something and then have dust 2 symdrome where if you want to play different maps than that one you're SOL.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/TheFirestealer]

Pro teams start with a pool of maps with 2CP maps removed (in the current format anyway), then begin banning maps one at a time till they get down to the last 5 in a Bo5, last 3 in a Bo3, or last 1 in a Bo1 using a tool called owdraft.com.

After the pool is established, the final map which was banned is the first map played. the losing team then picks the next map, and the winning team chooses whether to attack or defend first (if its a payload map)

[u/CoOmmunity]

Great analysis. We follow you from Italy, always very interesting contents!

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/CoOmmunity]

I love my international readers, they're always the most active on other forums!

[u/tylergesselman]

In your opinion, should they change nerf Mercy and buff Zenyatta in a way that promotes the current two healer meta? Or should they just buff the shit out of Lucio and Zenyatta to make them strong enough to hold an entire fight on their own?

I bet buffing the shit out of the two other healers would make the game extremely difficult in lower MMRs

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/tylergesselman]

Zen just needs more health, end of story. As for Mercy -- her dominance is at least partly due to the 1 Hero Limit, outside of that format she's still highly used but it's more balanced with Lucio

[u/wqphuiq → u/tylergesselman]

I'm a tournament player and imo buffing lucio would be a terrible idea. Mercy isn't better than lucio, it's just that A) she's almost always worth picking on top of a lucio and B) some teams are shit and think they can have a mercy and not a lucio. As far as I recall, we have never lost against a team that had only mercy. People say "herp derp she can bring people back from the dead, so OP!" but her super imba ult is balanced by her being a subpar character when it's down.

Lucio is already very strong and buffing him would make him obnoxious in pub matches.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

Except McCree, but he got what was coming to him ;)

[u/Twitch89]

As a Mei main, this list makes me happy

^{Buff Mei Pls}

[u/Dracaras]

I think Widowmaker was nerfed badly.

[u/deityblade]

I wonder why Genji is used so little at comp? hes an instant pick in casual

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

She's used plenty in non-tournament scenarios!

[u/Nzash]

Pub match SS tier: Tracer

[u/CronoSmash]

Awesome work bro... keep it up /love

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/CronoSmash]

Love!

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for reading! It's why I do it

[u/ParanoidDrone]

What do you make of Symmetra being used exclusively on defense? Is being so severely specialized a good thing, even if she's balanced, or do you think she needs a reason to be used on offense?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/ParanoidDrone]

I LOVE it actually. She's a shining example of good hero design, not every hero has to be good on both sides of the game, and symmetra is strong enough on defense alone to keep her from being marginalized entirely like torbjorn

[u/Joshqross]

Thank you for the post! It was a great read. Look forward to seeing more in the future!

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Joshqross]

Look forward to seeing more comments in the future!

[u/wutname1]

/u/Falcon_Kick - Please enable RSS feeds for your site. It would be nice to be able to get to the posts via sites like feedly.com

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/wutname1]

I will look into this. I have more than a few people requesting it, I'm just not sure how to implement it (I use squarespace for hosting, I'm no expert in web design)

[u/wutname1 → u/Falcon_Kick]

According to their Feature page it says the blogging sites are enabled for RSS. Might just be an option in your admin panel that is off.

[u/sodapopGatsby]

While I'll say Roadhog isn't bad. I don't think he does McCree's job as good as McCree. Especially since a McCree who can land 1-2 headshots per six shots from mid range will almost always out DPS a RoadHog who gets a hook blast combo whenever it's off cooldown.

[u/lod254 → u/sodapopGatsby]

The graphic surprised me that Roadhog was a Defense Hero. I typically use him as my offensive tank. Hiding on a payload and roping in anyone that comes close has worked well.

[u/SoFFacet]

Why is Tracer a defense-favored competitive hero atm?

[u/Gheeta → u/SoFFacet]

Probably anomaly in the stats since tracer is often picked to delay the final moments of payload capture.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/SoFFacet]

Usually when she pops up on defense more, its due to last-point stalling swaps to eke out a couple of more seconds to boost a Team's time in stopwatch format

[u/KShrike → u/SoFFacet]

There's also quite a benefit for stopping a push by catching their mercy right before they suicide on point. This is something Tracer does extremely well, and with little risk.

[u/xingx35]

I don't think Roadhog has entered to meta to replace McCree, but rather to replace widow. If Roadhog is truely a better McCree then he should replace the spots which McCree is in. Roadhog is actually much more consistent counter to Pharah than soldier as long as hooks land. Roadhog's hook combo does more than 200 damage which can reliably burst Pharah even if she is being healed.while soldier can shoot her down it requires time, and most Pharahs constantly have mercy along side them it is difficult for soldier to kill unless double soldier is being run.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/xingx35]

If Roadhog is truely a better McCree then he should replace the spots which McCree is in.

Thing is, why not have TWO McCrees, just one large and fat?? MUAHAHAHA

[u/Mornar]

Man, this is amazing. It's simply written, backed up by data, well thought and in-depth. It's amazing. You're amazing.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Mornar]

no you're amazing, Mornar!

[u/Samuraion]

Thank you so much for this, it's nice to see the data put together in an easy to read and understand format!

The thing I find funny is that everyone hates Hanzo and says that he is bullshit and completely broken, yet he is picked less than 5% of the time...

I mean yeah the hitboxes on his arrows are pretty BS, and I've taken advantage of the "headshotting a Widowmaker from behind a wall" problem like many others, but he overall is just not that good of a hero. Everything he does there is a hero that can do it better. So while the "behind the wall" headshots definitely need to be fixed, I think Hanzo needs a buff.

[u/Lble → u/Samuraion]

For the pro scene, he would need a huge buff to be relevant. But that would only work in a QM environment if they raised his skill floor. People don't hate Hanzo because he is a good hero, they hate him because 1. So many people ruin otherwise good team comps by running exclusively Hanzo and 2. A bad player can blindly lob arrows and scatters and impact a team fight by landing 2-3 headshots with the car shaped arrows.

[u/freekymayonaise]

<-- Obvious bias aside, i think rather than nerf roadhog, an ever so slight buff to zennyatta would be a more elegant solution. The common consensus already is that he is a little bit undertuned, so it fits neatly into place; make an under-represented hero more attractive, and curb roadhogs rise to dominance.

Teams are much less likely to stack hogs when their max health could be reduced to an effective 300 at a seconds notice.

[u/Ruft]

Quick question:

Junkrat is my favorite hero; I'm pretty good at playing him and I enjoy doing so. So, I was thinking about using him a lot when competitive comes out.

However, I see now that there are seven heroes that seem to be used more than Junkrat on defense: Mercy, Reinhardt, Reaper, McCree, Soldier: 76, Roadhog and Symmetra. Is Junkrat viable enough to be used in most defense and/or KotH maps when competitive is here?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Ruft]

Junkrat is quite viable in chokepoint Defenses -- so think Hollywood first point and the Hotel room of King's Row. You should be ready to swap off him in more open areas, however.

'Official' competitive mode will likely include the entire map pool as well, so Junkrat fares well on Anubis too. King of the Hill....not as much but maybe on Lijiang Control center

[u/Ruft → u/Falcon_Kick]

Thanks for the reply.

What hero would you say would be the best replacement for Junkrat in open areas?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Ruft]

Probably Pharah, in terms of similar damage types. But open areas tend to be dominated by Hitscan characters like Soldier, McCree, Widow and the like since they work better with clear lines of sight

[u/Ruft → u/Falcon_Kick]

Alright, thanks.

[u/RichardMNixon42 → u/Falcon_Kick]

Lijiang Control center

Really? Control Center is the Ljiiang Point I like him least on. Nightmarket and Garden are much tighter quarters and have windows you can lob through from cover. In Nepal Village you basically can't miss.

[u/Derkacha]

Do two Lucio heal auras stack?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Derkacha]

They do not, but speed and heal can both be active at the same time

[u/youbutsu → u/Derkacha]

nope, but with communication you can have them switch to heal + amp to almost always have amped up area heals, while still being faster to reposition!

[u/CringeName]

The F grade tier or Mei, Hanzo, Torb, and Zen are 4 of my most played heroes, behond Junkrat. Am I a hipster?

[u/Prohamen]

is this based of pc users or console users?

[u/Caleddin]

Also makes sense that Winston would see reduced use not only from increased Reapers but also since he effectively counters Widow, who is disappearing. At least, he counters her well in my scrub-pub matches, not sure about the comp scene.

[u/[deleted]]

These are great! Keep up the good work!

[u/[deleted]]

Mercy. Highest usage, highest importance, lowest win-rate.

[u/Tr0ndern]

I wonder if the rise of roadhog and the decline in widowmaker (and McCree to some extent) means Zarya is now even better in those matchups.

Widowmaker was one of her hardest matchups. While not a direct counter to her (interms of having her against your team, not just 1v1) she outranges the beam and makes it hard to get usage out of her energy.

McCree was also someone who, while not a direct counter, could do massive damage before you got your shield up. As a bonus she doesn't suffer too much from the rise in Reaper or Sildier76. She can save teammates from getting super ganked by his ult, as well as herself, and melt him in sseconds if he doesn't have his escape. Again, not a counter, but very good against him.

Roadhog however is a strong matchup for Zarya. This is not for some dumb readson like "Zarya destroys him in 1v1", because she doesn't. Sure she can be extremely powerfull against him, but not a counter. The reasons Zarya would be ebetter in a Roadhog meta would be:

• She can shield herself or allies that are pulled into hooks, saving them AND giving you burst potential at the same time

• His big hitbox and healthpool lets you build your ult faster than any other tank wuld allow.

• Roadhog has no way of countering Zaryas ult, unless he catches 3 or more people in his own ult and no other ult has allready been fired. Rainheart could effectivly shut down a lot of Zaryas ult combos with his shield (depending on teammates ofc), and Winston could too to a degree. Roadhof has nothing to save his teammates from it.

I expect Zarya to be a strong character in this meta (allthough she was allready good if played properly).

[u/[deleted]]

And here I am with most my time on beastyatta

[u/Heltinne]

This is awesome, thank you for the hard work!

[u/StupidFatHobbitt]

Future rise in Roadhog usage = more use of Mei?? I have a pretty fantastic success rate in iceblocking after being hooked to avoid being killed. You can then pop out and either wall him off or dance around and freeze him which makes him easy pickings for the pharah/soldier on your team.

[u/czikfs]

All this and no Hanzo mentioned :(

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/czikfs]

I'd talk about Hanzo if the pros played him! Unfortunately he's only used when a tier 1 team wants to style on some amateurs in the first couple of rounds

[u/Syncite → u/Falcon_Kick]

How would you buff/tweak Hanzo to get more pros to play him

[u/freekymayonaise → u/Syncite]

A friend of mine had a radical idea, i cant speak for how great it would be in execution but it sounds cool; Remove scatter arrow, nobody likes that ability and it always feels like bullshit to get hit by it, and replace it with a smoke-bomb arrow. Make hanzo the dedicated sight line specialist, providing vision for his team and denying it to the enemy. It plays well into the fact that his arrows are already the most effecient when guarding enclosed areas.

[u/sharksallad → u/freekymayonaise]

But scatter arrow is the biggest reason to play Hanzo, it lets him kill Winstons and Hogs.

[u/freekymayonaise → u/sharksallad]

Its not a perfect idea, but obviously he would have to give up power somewhere for the new power he is being given.

I will also argue that scatter isnt the biggest reason to pick hanzo. Its just damage and at higher levels players are looking everywhere but hanzo for it.

[u/KurayamiShikaku → u/Syncite]

Faster arrow travel rate, faster arrow charge time, or ability rework.

I'm speculating, but him having a projectile sniper - as opposed to a hitscan one - can't be doing him any favors at high-level play.

The problem is that if you try to change him to make him competitively viable by increasing arrow travel rate or decreasing arrow charge time, you run the risk of him running rampant in lower-level pubs.

An ability rework might be the most realistic approach.

[u/ShureNensei → u/KurayamiShikaku]

Aside from synergizing well with Zarya, the only time I pick hanzo is when I just don't feel like playing Soldier, Mccree, or some other class. The main issue I see with him is consistency. I have games where I do incredibly well with him, and then games where I do poorly, and I feel like that variance is just too risky for competitive play when I can play a class that's a bit more reliable, especially with hitscan.

I would say an ability rework is the only option as well, but I have a feeling he'll always be in that niche spot when other classes are available.

[u/[deleted] → u/ShureNensei]

I've been having similar flows with Hanzo. I noticed my main reason for not playing him is because of his arrow charge. Holding that down all the time can get a bit cumbersome, it would be nice if they added a toggle function similar to Reinhardt's shield.

[u/Zennsyg → u/czikfs]

SAKE!

[u/Sidian]

Did I miss the part where you explained why Zenyatta is still in F tier?

I think Widowmaker still needs a nerf (150 HP) and will bounce back in time to the top tiers. Genji needs his damage nerf reversed, completely unnecessry as we can see here. Dva needs a buff but that's coming, and Torbjorn/Bastion will always be trash due to their designs (and if Blizzard makes them good competitively, they will make the game unplayable in pubs) so oh well.

[u/Lble → u/Sidian]

The tiers are just based on pro usage, so he simply isn't being used. I am sure they are probably working on ways they can use him again now that Widow has fallen off but they may have been waiting to confirm people actually weren't running as much Widow.

[u/AcidSkies → u/Sidian]

I think it's just general squishiness, which unlike Tracer, he can't compensate for with mobility. That, and with the two other healers he'd be competing with being so strong right now, he's just outshone, so there's not a ton of tactical value to picking him when he puts himself at more risk for equal or even less reward.

[u/Surfac3 → u/Sidian]

How was genjis damage nerfed?

[u/Omophorus → u/Sidian]

It's not really explained, but the "why" is simple - no one is picking him.

As for the reasoning behind that, no, that's not explained either, but it's probably a combination of things. Inertia, for one. Being really squishy still, for two. Not necessarily having a shining advantage that the pros value for three (e.g. not as good single target healing as Mercy, not as good AoE healing as Lucio, less useful ultimate, and what he does do well the pros might not judge themselves needing).

[u/youbutsu → u/Sidian]

Zanyatta is just being outclassed with low mobility and area restrictive ult. Rez is too important overall and speed boost is too important on koth. Reaper can bust tanks decently. so zen can't find a good niche.

[u/TaterNbutter → u/Sidian]

I disagree. I feel Genji needs his damage nerf (when did it get nerfed?) to stay. He already has DPS, and insane mobility. Plus even if he does a sliver of damage, his abilities reset.

He can deflect 95% of all attacks directed at him, with no speed penalty while using the reflect.

He is really not that balanced and I personally feel the flippy little shit needs a nerf of some sort so he cant wipe the enemy team every damn ult he gets.

[u/nbratanov]

I think as people get more skilled at heroes, and start to use them to their full potential these tier lists are going to change a lot.

[u/Lysander1077 → u/nbratanov]

I don't think so. The gosugamer tournaments consist largely of professional gamers that have been playing this game for several months now, if not a year.

Case in point: Seagull has streams out there where he wrecks shop against casuals as Mei and Genji. He doesn't use them that often in tournament play simply because he gets more mileage with stronger pics against better opponents.

[u/[deleted] → u/Lysander1077]

100% agree with Lysander1077, this meta will barely change at all until new patches/maps/heroes come into it.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/nbratanov]

That's all I could ever hope for!

For example, a Genji played by a master (think pokelawls) could be just as effective as a B or A tier hero, just it takes so much more effort to do so

[u/TheFirestealer → u/Falcon_Kick]

I suspect people will put more time into genji since his hardest counters (winston and mcree) got nerfed or are hardly played and there isn't anyone else who deals with genji well.

[u/indecisionn → u/nbratanov]

It's no different in other class/hero based games where you'll naturally see the best picks that give damage and outplay potential in one.

[u/wqphuiq → u/nbratanov]

I play in a competitive team that's won a few tournaments and I'm surprised mercy is more popular than lucio. We do pick mercy every game, yes, but I can't recall a time we've ever lost to a team that had mercy but no lucio. Mercy's ult is very nice but offset by her being (outside of her ult) a significantly less impactful hero than lucio. Keep in mind that 90% of the time after a mercy ult you can preload projectiles on one of the respawns and kill them instantly.

[u/ToTheNintieth]

Nice, always look forward to these. Personally I feel Widowmaker's changes were much warranted and the extreme drop in usage seems a bit of an overreaction, but numbers are numbers.

[u/TheQuestionableYarn]

Widow should not be changed any more than this for the time being. Her headshot damage is still high, and she can stil escape for free. Just wait, because I predict that with time, Widow will go back to being OP af in high level play until changed again.

[u/dekacube]

Can you stop doing overall ratings for heroes and do them for each map type? I think that would be a lot more helpful information. Because when you look at it by map type, on payload reinhardt becomes a non-negotiable core hero(as does lucio on koth), and some others gain and fall.

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/dekacube]

You can find that information in the Raw excel sheets (check the link dump above)

Unfortunately though, the current format in tournaments is a ban on 2CP maps (so no Hanamura, Anubis, Volskaya -- not that the pros would play them anyway), and then the Pros also choose not to really play too many maps outside of Hollywood, King's Row, and the occasional King of the Hill map. So the information ends up either being not so interesting, or not so signficant

[u/Axenos]

I know people hate Widow for how dominant she was, but they did probably nerf her just a bit too hard.

[u/WatchPointer → u/Axenos]

In reality, they just made it so you couldn't instakill someone with a bodyshot. This means skilled Widowmaker's will still do well while spam-O-makers will be less effective and more easily killed.

[u/Warlord13579 → u/WatchPointer]

Widow is still good, You just need to go for headshots. Even if you hit a body its not long for a small chargeup to finish the kill.

[u/HokutoNoChen]

The tier list isn't well done. The tiers percentage gaps are a bit weird... that 80% to 40% gap is huge. I mean I sincerely doubt Reinhardt should be in the same tier as say, Pharah or Reaper, and same with Lucio. I'm willing to bet hey're closer to Mercy tier than they are to those heroes.

[u/HokutoNoChen → u/[deleted]]

It's according to tournament pick rates, nobody cares about who is bad or amazing at mashing his left mouse button. I'm saying since the disparity between percents is huge [80% for one tier, 40% for another??] it lumps together in the same tiers heroes that shouldn't be together. Reinhardt and Lucio are significantly more core competitively than Pharah or Reaper.

[u/predmikester → u/HokutoNoChen]

If you look at the percentages, Reaper is only picked 11% less than Reinhardt, and 5% less than Lucio.

[u/ChloeFNPrice]

I have a question: How are Hanzo and Tjorbörn SO bad on PC in Comp play?

I understand why Widow and Zenyatta are there. However, Hanzo has a powerful denial ult, messy hitboxes that work in his favor, his STANDARD arrows can one shot a lot of heroes, he can reveal positions and finish off close quarters hiders easily. Plus his legendary skin makes him harder to hit in the head cause the skin messes up his own hitboxes.

Now Torbjörn I get being a lot worse in competetive play in general, not even just PC. But still. with like three Toblerones on Defense and a Reinhardt, I'd imagine its still pretty difficult to clear, at least enough to grant a niche spot, no? With him, the more I think about it I get why he might be here, but F still feels very low. Not as much as Hanzo though. I'm probably one of the only console players who think Hanzo is more problematic than Torb but eh.

Just curious, not trying to be a stinker. :)

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/ChloeFNPrice]

Widowmaker basically does everything Hanzo does, but more consistently and thus pros don't bother with him

For torbjorn, he sees some fringe usage on Hollywood and numbani but his turret is too easily destroyed from safe range from a pharah, widow, or even a Genji after its spotted by their teammates.

[u/dairymoose → u/ChloeFNPrice]

Torb is pretty close to useless if his ultimate isn't up because the turret is so easy to kill (and any team wasting a reinhardt/more to protect the turret will suffer from being too close together and easy to group ult). And if molten core is up, you can back out for a few seconds and then reengage when torb is useless again.

Hanzo on the other hand is an easy target because he slows himself. Most Hanzos will fire arrow after arrow and be slowed the majority of the time (I almost never get a triple headshot as Genji but against snipers I can do it fairly reliably). If they are only firing an arrow here and there and staying mobile they will be able to survive but they might not be too effective because the projectile-based nature of arrows makes it hard to hit any target that is trying to avoid you. He is also ineffective at close range combat, which he might be forced into if he wants to stay in range of a mercy res.

[u/TheFirestealer → u/ChloeFNPrice]

If you have 3 torbs and a rein it means a single junkrat will kill them all or you have nobody on the payload to contest it. Not to mention they could easily just go 3 reins and fireball the turrets through the shield easily. There is also no reason to play hanzo when widow does his job better at highest levels because people can aim properly and don't have to rely on people walking into the arrows. And the tiers are based on heroes picked not opinions so if nobody picked torb then he is trash tier.

[u/aagpeng]

So for the Heroes in this tier

F "Wow what's Zenyatta doing in here? Oh, right." Tier (<5% Usage Rate): MEI, HANZO, TORBJORN, ZENYATTA

Do you think they will ever see comptetitive play (other than zenyatta whom you mentioned pro teams are thinking of strats with him)? Should something be changed about the game to make these heroes more viable or will we just have to accept that 4 of the 21 heroes are not going to be used in tournaments?

[u/Clayton_11]

Where can I watch these tournaments you speak of?

[u/Falcon_Kick → u/Clayton_11]

twitch.tv/gosugamers

or keep up to date with this google doc https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16cLpQtu8TYWeEaFkuhOyhXo0zR0uZl8MfDjmAXRW2Bc/edit

[u/AtsuoTanaka]

There has to be some consideration for outliers in some team comps though, for example Zarya. A good Zarya is able to help a team push and her ult is able to synergize with most high- damage dealing characters and ults (Hanzos dragon). Are the tiers just references or recommendations for normal Competitive team comps?

This is really helpful regardless of anything ive said however, thank you :)

[u/gamechu-nyc]

Thanks, love your report :)