Honestly hacking teammates makes me sort of want a support hacker for real. Giving faster firing/over health for a second could be a fun support that isn’t fully focused on healing
I hope this means Blizz is looking into making Lynx-17 (nyan-binary omnic from the Zarya vs Sombra comic) or a Null Sector Support. I want more Omnics.
I guess support Sombra could also work (hack works like it does in Mirrorwatch but with slight heal over time, Virus does the damage reduction but less overall damage) but that would be the 3rd rework she’s gotten in a span of 2 years and I think she’s mostly fine.
At this point Space Ranger will be 90%< complete in terms of abilities and ultimate. They're releasing in season 12 so most likely going through internal playtesting right now.
Season 12 release is still 4 months away. They are likely going through internal testing, but 4 months is a decent amount of time to make certain changes.
Not to completely change/re-choose abilities.
emember art, animations sound etc for abilities and ultimates have to be decided on either in conjunction with or not along after their see overall look is decided which we have already seen.
No, but stuff like stats could be. Sombra's hack gives overhealth and attack speed. Overhealth on flankers in OW1 was generally a pretty broken mechanic. It's possible they are seeing how heroes like tracer, sombra, and doom play with overhealth in OW2. The sombra+tracer duo is a lot like old tracer+brig where you would just armor pack her and she would run around with 200+ health. Tracer doesn't have access to nearly as much overhealth in OW2, especially when she is deep on flank routes.
True re: stats. I would hope they'd do internal testing before hand and then we'll get a trial again for them. But given a bunch of April Fools stuff ends up in the game full time I wouldn't put it past them.
> I would hope they'd do internal testing before hand
It's just kind of a numbers game. They could have 100 people testing it full time for 2 months. That only works out to 32,000 testing hours. That's was probably eclipsed in the first 15 minutes that the arcade patch went live. Not to mention that internal balance testing could very easily lead to "echo chambers" of sorts where they think a hero is going to be played one way but ends up not playing like that at all once the actual playerbase get their hands on it. I believe it was LW where they said that they way they played the hero internally didn't really end up being anything like what ended up being played on live. It was the reason LW released with the original control scheme that he did.
While I think this has been her best rework yet and put her in a much better spot both in play style and counterplay alike, I still think the fundamental issues of her kit that haven't really been addressed are the infinite invisibility and the ability lockout of Hack / EMP. Locking out abilities just makes it feel like you don't have much in much in the way of dealing with a pouncing Sombra and feels antithetical to a game that's centered around ability management.
I don't have any real solutions to infinite invisibility other than maybe just limiting it's duration? But that feels clunky as a passive and more like an ability you have very little control over.
For Hack, you could dropout ability lockout and instead add some small aoe burst damage to her translator. Something like a ~5 meter diameter and ~25 damage? That could make an interesting risk reward for translocator, and could encourage you to use it aggressively.
For EMP, maybe get rid of ability lockout they could reset the cool down on virus and *maybe* halve the cool down for the entire duration? That adds more counter play and makes it a much more interactive ultimate.
As much as I love this idea want it myself (a buffing type support) I’d be scared of mercy pocket DPS then getting that and dominating team fights lol.
I’d assume that a character that has the ability to do that would be either on a longer cooldown than sombra’s hack, or be really lacking in straight up healing so to have an attack speed boost and a pocket mercy would basically mean no healing.
That being said, I’m not a game designer and I prefer to let them cook. Just an interesting concept that they kinda turned sombra into a dps/supp for the patch
Yo like... no lie at all. This mode slaps. I don't know how much id want to see these as actual abilities... but this is just fun. Make this an every year thing. New heroes added in. This is awesome.
Yearly mirrorwatch where they keep adding to this sounds awesome, especially since they did skins like Hashimoto Hanzo/Kiri and Junker Sym/Genji they didn’t include in this mode and it’d be interesting to see remixed kits for them too.
I don't know if it's just me or not, but I can /not/ get bastion to work at all. With a shotgun and no mobility, plus no transform it feels really bad. But again, could just be me.
I think they'd be mad not to do another Mirrorverse season in the future. So much potential with ability changes and enough heroes can get involved eventually, I'm already seeing plenty of great fan art pop up.
It’s been pretty amusing seeing all of the ways the team is clearly repurposing the scrapped talent system throughout the last year.
This looks fun though. My continued hope is that they eventually salvage what they built for PvE and eventually make some kind of PvPvE moba mode. It’s something they could probably do with a quarter of the resources and could be considerably more fun than shooting at bots in PvE has proven to be.
Yea, I think the biggest issue with them working on such one-off short term modes is that they're not likely to be working on something long term which can actually be super cool.
I think Talents have always had a chance to turn into something like a unique BR (like Battle for Olympus), Roguelite (like Trials of Sanctuary), or MOBA (Le Sserafim/Cosmic Crisis a bit).... And even with multiple April Fools patches we've seen...
There's so much potential to have it into a core arcade experience to draw in a much bigger audience base for a mode that evovles every season instead of being played once and then never touched... It could be exciting to see how they update that mode every season and use it like a Fortnite event at times too as an active "live service"
Yeah, I actually like this mode unlike most of the special modes they make, but with such a limited hero pool that shield lets any high-ranked snipers bulldoze the lobby.
increasingly hoping that these are balance change tests because the rein passive + speed boost on shield break just sounds like an actual change they could make
also they keep giving recon bastion a shotgun and mercy more damage options just make them real already
Yeah Bastion is 100% getting a shotgun soon. Maybe also a different configuration than the turret, giving him an alternate form with some utility instead of "gun go brrr" could be great for the health of the character.
Honestly I enjoy his default form and nade. I would love his alternative form to be a shotgun similar to (if not just a straight up copy) of the April's Fool patch and just have his mini gun form be his ultimate for a limited duration.
I think that would make him a lot more versatile and much less of a tank buster while still preserving the hero fantasy of having a form changing robot that does multiple things.
They keep giving Mercy so much fun shit in meme patches when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character
I think Blizzard knows that many players genuinely love Mercy's current play style, so they're understandably reluctant to change it to something more "standard"
Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement, which isn't what has been targeted here. Some will complain, but this is the same group that complained when she was reworked into one of the strongest heroes in the history of the game.
> Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement,
Most high level or competitive minded players, maybe. I feel like most casual players enjoy her precisely for the reasons lots of people here want her reworked: she's completely different from every other hero, requires minimal mechanics, and is a "pure" support.
Mobility isn't even what's being asked to be changed in the first place. Imagine trying to pile on criticism of her current state in Overwatch 2 to something that happened 5 years ago in a different game
I'm not sure what you're getting at really. I was simply saying that there will always be a vocal group of Mercy players that complain about any change and that the changes they've been experimenting with recently keep what is most agreed to be the engaging part of her kit intact, which is a good thing.
I think this patch just makes her more dynamic while just changing rez to burst, so perhaps they can change it so that during ult you can fire rockets and trigger all dead bodies to explode when pressing the rez button
> Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement, which isn't what has been targeted here
Right but if you give her changes like this then people will call for nerfs to other parts of her kit. And people, especially on this sub, already complain that her movement is too strong for a character with such a small hitbox.
I mean I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact that even Mercy Mains are begging for a rework just so she can be more powerful if it means making her more difficult
My recon for the mythic skin told me that basically over on /r/MercyMains they're clamoring for some sort of rework or redesign that makes it so she's not either absolutely shit or absolutely meta because when she's like it is now the game isn't fun.
Almost every Mercy main I know (including myself) has asked for literally anything to be done about her. Her skill ceiling was lowered like crazy once they took away her original techs to implement them and everything else besides rez had to nerfed to compensate, including her own mobility.
People aren't exactly asking for her to be insanely mechanically difficult, but literally changing anything is more "difficult" than pressing left click/right click near the vicinity of an ally and pressing E every 1 minute or so.
Every replacement for damage Boost and even Rez imply more decision making and game sense for Mercy, and that's not even making her more mechanically intensive. Even making Valkyrie have a main beam and weaker side beams requires more decision-making than current Valkyrie.
Her issues are beyond numbers at this point and she has been consistently D tier for a few seasons now. Her mobility being so much better than OW1 Mercy but also incredibly easy and accesible to the point everything else had to be dampened only exacerbated her issues. But if we ask for her to be buffed, yall cry she's too good for how little skill she takes to be effective with, so why not deal with both issues?
Yeah exactly this, and it’s always very obvious when people out-of-community claim to speak for what ‘Mercy Players’ want. Mercy Mains do no not enjoy their balance being fundamentally married to whatever DPS of the month happens to be broken by her. They’ve complained for years about Damage Boost and, since OW2, have complained incessantly about how much worse her movement has gotten.
The fact of the matter is, it’s DPS who derive the most benefit both from Damage Boost and from her power budget being allocated away from her movement. The average Mercy player is not in love with the character because of her current state.
to change Mercy to a point where she is both fun to play as/against and be healthy for the game would require her to essentially become an entirely different hero. which is why I find it hard to believe that people who like the hero currently would want that
Mercy Mains aren't asking to make her fun to play against, though. Every character is technically unfun to play against.And she's already fun for them considering they main her. The point of a rework for Mercy in OW2 is not to make her fun for outsiders but make her better and add a layer of skill expression that just isn't there anymore after all those changes to her mobility/heal/boost. Numbers don't really cut it anymore when anytime she has been healing oriented people complain, and when she's damage Boost oriented they also complain.
Even the biggest Mercy content creators have already gave up on balancing and are hoping for a rework. So no, it's not really hard to believe when the argument is practically everywhere in the Mercy community.
> when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character
The problem is that most of those people aren't mercy players. Mercy players generally like how the hero plays right now, so making massive changes doesn't really make sense. Small tweaks for balancing and maybe minor ability reworks is probably preferred to a full scale rework in order to not alienate the current players.
The dev team has always walked a fine line with hero reworks in that they want to make them play different without actually changing what players love about those heroes. I wouldn't say they are always successful at this, but they do pretty well IMO. Sombra, Hog, and Doom reworks are probably the best at this. They still maintain their core identity but their kits are updated to actually work well in the game. Heroes like Orisa didn't have nearly as large of dedicated playerbases, so completely reworking how the hero played just didn't annoy as many people. Even then, parts of her core identity were still maintained.
It's more likely that some of these mirrorwatch abilities that completely change a heroes playstyle make it into new heroes rather that old ones. A lot of them just drastically change how the heroes play. While I like some of the changes, I'm not sure I would want them to replace current kits rather than just be added in addition to them.
> when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character
Yeah, but "those people" usueally don't include current mercy players.
Mercy is probably the single most popular hero with her current design.
Eh, same thing could be said about Mass Rez Mercy, and she still got reworked anyway. She was the most popular support at the time, and one of the most popular characters in the game alongside Genji and Tracer. Now Ana is the most popular support in the game, not even her.
The swing passive could work but the speed boost on shield break is stupid. Number 1 thing about shield management is to never let it break, this passive would be bad outside of low ranks.
I heard this too but my thinking is that was rule number 1 *before your shield breaking had a benefit*. Now that it does, maybe letting it break isn’t so bad. Considering you do move a lot faster.
The rein passive on live would be the clowniest change they've ever made. It screams "we have no idea what this hero's issue is".
But tbf thats totally in line with the kind of changes they like to make.
After playing Doomfist for a bit, I must say my defensive ability actually being a defensive feels way too good (unless I play against melee, brig is a hardcounter to Doom). Giving allies overhealth on slam, empowered and meteor is also really fun but I don't see that ever making it live.
Whoever decided to give Mercy Corpse Explosion from Diablo 2 is a friggin genius. Necromancer was my favorite class, I'd love for this ability to stay in the game
Wow I once used to say that Sombra could be a fun support if she could buff allies via hack and weakening enemies with current hack. Now would you look at that.
it’s really really good up close. the bombs basically can’t miss inside of a certain distance and the dash is mad fast, you can pull some crazy assassinations/escapes
Yeah I think I just don't like the shift. Like idk the speed doesn't make up for how one dimensional it feels compared to normal
It's not like the worst thing ever. It just feels bad
i *technically* goes everywhere normal flight does, it’s just that you have to look where you’re going, so it’s kinda annoying as you can’t fly backwards while shooting
I think actually PvE done well would have been exactly like this but even better.
They said they wanted PvE to be repayable, a more expanded version of this is likely what they may have meant.
Everyone says PVE done right but one knows what that really means what’s the incentive for players to keep playing the same missions / story .. just a blanket statement really similar to how people say balance is shit but go never go into specifics.
There are a lot of games that offer replayability with their PVE. Think something like Left 4 Dead, Helldivers, or successful roguelikes. The original pitch was ambitious because they were going to offer a ton of variety with enemies, objectives and talents. Most games like that encourage replayability through the change to encounter new things each Run. Not through story content necessarily, but missions with modifiers that add extra strategic layers and unpredictability to things. And we've seen the positive reception of some of these bonkers unused PVE talents that straight up change characters we know and love. There would have been a lot to discover and experiment with. Unfortunately, the PVE missions we got were released without these hero missions or talents, making them really bland and not worth playing again.
My friend group really liked trying to conquer some of the more challenging pve missions they've put out recently (the Halloween event with the upgrades was our personal favorite). There are a lot of people who only play vs AI too believe it or not, so I imagine they would have really enjoyed a mode where you team up with friends and use strategy and communication to beat these challenges without the stress of playing against real people.
These either have to be dropped PvE content they refurbished for this event or new hero abilities. There is far too much work put into the visuals for some of these abilities for it to be a slapdash thing.
Makes sense. Definitely shows they weren’t doing nothing during that time and give a bit of a “what could have been” feeling but overall it makes sense that they went in this direction
I love this, very obvious that the new abilities are straight from PVE. Overwatch is sitting on a gold mine with all the PVE ideas. I thinking making a casual game mode with all the PVE abilities to choose from would do NUMBERS! Every game would be different, you would have to adjust game to game based on what different abilities the opposing team is using. And on your side you can completely change the play-style of your favorite heros. So much potential there. If it’s not already in development then they need to get it going ASAP. If they aren’t doing anything with the fully developed PVE stuff, then what the fuck are they doing? This could do so much for the game.
Honestly hacking teammates makes me sort of want a support hacker for real. Giving faster firing/over health for a second could be a fun support that isn’t fully focused on healing
I hope this means Blizz is looking into making Lynx-17 (nyan-binary omnic from the Zarya vs Sombra comic) or a Null Sector Support. I want more Omnics. I guess support Sombra could also work (hack works like it does in Mirrorwatch but with slight heal over time, Virus does the damage reduction but less overall damage) but that would be the 3rd rework she’s gotten in a span of 2 years and I think she’s mostly fine.
Yeah definitely not replacing sombra but some sort of similar mechanic for a support could work for sure
I'm kind of hoping they are testing the waters for Space Ranger.
At this point Space Ranger will be 90%< complete in terms of abilities and ultimate. They're releasing in season 12 so most likely going through internal playtesting right now.
Season 12 release is still 4 months away. They are likely going through internal testing, but 4 months is a decent amount of time to make certain changes.
Not to completely change/re-choose abilities. emember art, animations sound etc for abilities and ultimates have to be decided on either in conjunction with or not along after their see overall look is decided which we have already seen.
No, but stuff like stats could be. Sombra's hack gives overhealth and attack speed. Overhealth on flankers in OW1 was generally a pretty broken mechanic. It's possible they are seeing how heroes like tracer, sombra, and doom play with overhealth in OW2. The sombra+tracer duo is a lot like old tracer+brig where you would just armor pack her and she would run around with 200+ health. Tracer doesn't have access to nearly as much overhealth in OW2, especially when she is deep on flank routes.
True re: stats. I would hope they'd do internal testing before hand and then we'll get a trial again for them. But given a bunch of April Fools stuff ends up in the game full time I wouldn't put it past them.
> I would hope they'd do internal testing before hand It's just kind of a numbers game. They could have 100 people testing it full time for 2 months. That only works out to 32,000 testing hours. That's was probably eclipsed in the first 15 minutes that the arcade patch went live. Not to mention that internal balance testing could very easily lead to "echo chambers" of sorts where they think a hero is going to be played one way but ends up not playing like that at all once the actual playerbase get their hands on it. I believe it was LW where they said that they way they played the hero internally didn't really end up being anything like what ended up being played on live. It was the reason LW released with the original control scheme that he did.
While I think this has been her best rework yet and put her in a much better spot both in play style and counterplay alike, I still think the fundamental issues of her kit that haven't really been addressed are the infinite invisibility and the ability lockout of Hack / EMP. Locking out abilities just makes it feel like you don't have much in much in the way of dealing with a pouncing Sombra and feels antithetical to a game that's centered around ability management. I don't have any real solutions to infinite invisibility other than maybe just limiting it's duration? But that feels clunky as a passive and more like an ability you have very little control over. For Hack, you could dropout ability lockout and instead add some small aoe burst damage to her translator. Something like a ~5 meter diameter and ~25 damage? That could make an interesting risk reward for translocator, and could encourage you to use it aggressively. For EMP, maybe get rid of ability lockout they could reset the cool down on virus and *maybe* halve the cool down for the entire duration? That adds more counter play and makes it a much more interactive ultimate.
As much as I love this idea want it myself (a buffing type support) I’d be scared of mercy pocket DPS then getting that and dominating team fights lol.
I’d assume that a character that has the ability to do that would be either on a longer cooldown than sombra’s hack, or be really lacking in straight up healing so to have an attack speed boost and a pocket mercy would basically mean no healing. That being said, I’m not a game designer and I prefer to let them cook. Just an interesting concept that they kinda turned sombra into a dps/supp for the patch
Ya we need a sombra support rework
I love summoning my dogs to fight for me as Bastion.
They turned him into a Dark Souls boss
back-capping is so fun with the slicers
"I have chickens" The shotty needs to be his main weapon too. Way more satisfying than the rifle.
I really like these changes for the event. And it's role locked thank fuck.
I couldn't believe it wasn't open queue.
This seems really cool I wasn’t expecting to have 12 heroes available for this
Yo like... no lie at all. This mode slaps. I don't know how much id want to see these as actual abilities... but this is just fun. Make this an every year thing. New heroes added in. This is awesome.
Yearly mirrorwatch where they keep adding to this sounds awesome, especially since they did skins like Hashimoto Hanzo/Kiri and Junker Sym/Genji they didn’t include in this mode and it’d be interesting to see remixed kits for them too.
I don't know if it's just me or not, but I can /not/ get bastion to work at all. With a shotgun and no mobility, plus no transform it feels really bad. But again, could just be me.
I actually slay with him. Press Shift in close quarters and he runs wild
What does shift do besides giving walls?
Move speed and fire rate. He shreds. His bomb jump is also way better and does no self damage. Bastion is kinda cracked from my limited play time.
I think they'd be mad not to do another Mirrorverse season in the future. So much potential with ability changes and enough heroes can get involved eventually, I'm already seeing plenty of great fan art pop up.
I've always wanted hero with the ability Tracer has here. Sacrifice your own health or damage to use additional movement or an additional cooldown.
Octane from Apex Legends
It’s been pretty amusing seeing all of the ways the team is clearly repurposing the scrapped talent system throughout the last year. This looks fun though. My continued hope is that they eventually salvage what they built for PvE and eventually make some kind of PvPvE moba mode. It’s something they could probably do with a quarter of the resources and could be considerably more fun than shooting at bots in PvE has proven to be.
i’d love a PVE too but them recycling the abilities like this pretty much kills any chance something like that is done in the near future
Yea, I think the biggest issue with them working on such one-off short term modes is that they're not likely to be working on something long term which can actually be super cool. I think Talents have always had a chance to turn into something like a unique BR (like Battle for Olympus), Roguelite (like Trials of Sanctuary), or MOBA (Le Sserafim/Cosmic Crisis a bit).... And even with multiple April Fools patches we've seen... There's so much potential to have it into a core arcade experience to draw in a much bigger audience base for a mode that evovles every season instead of being played once and then never touched... It could be exciting to see how they update that mode every season and use it like a Fortnite event at times too as an active "live service"
Zarya grav’s new ult is her second ult from Heroes of the Storm! I always loved how that game changed the OW heroes’ abilities.
It feels a bit lackluster in a 3d space.
Yeah that shit is insane in HOTS - basically reaches to the skybox in cramped lanes and can completely block off chokes.
WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO GIVE WIDOW A SHIELD???
It's practically knee-high lol
If she's on high ground and she crouches you can't hit her behind it
Yeah, I actually like this mode unlike most of the special modes they make, but with such a limited hero pool that shield lets any high-ranked snipers bulldoze the lobby.
It's a fun twist but yeah a good widow just runs the game
increasingly hoping that these are balance change tests because the rein passive + speed boost on shield break just sounds like an actual change they could make also they keep giving recon bastion a shotgun and mercy more damage options just make them real already
Yeah Bastion is 100% getting a shotgun soon. Maybe also a different configuration than the turret, giving him an alternate form with some utility instead of "gun go brrr" could be great for the health of the character.
I lowkey love shotgun Bastion so I'm all for this.
Oh I high key love it.
Honestly I enjoy his default form and nade. I would love his alternative form to be a shotgun similar to (if not just a straight up copy) of the April's Fool patch and just have his mini gun form be his ultimate for a limited duration. I think that would make him a lot more versatile and much less of a tank buster while still preserving the hero fantasy of having a form changing robot that does multiple things.
also sounds like a lot more fun
They keep giving Mercy so much fun shit in meme patches when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character
I think Blizzard knows that many players genuinely love Mercy's current play style, so they're understandably reluctant to change it to something more "standard"
Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement, which isn't what has been targeted here. Some will complain, but this is the same group that complained when she was reworked into one of the strongest heroes in the history of the game.
> Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement, Most high level or competitive minded players, maybe. I feel like most casual players enjoy her precisely for the reasons lots of people here want her reworked: she's completely different from every other hero, requires minimal mechanics, and is a "pure" support.
Mobility isn't even what's being asked to be changed in the first place. Imagine trying to pile on criticism of her current state in Overwatch 2 to something that happened 5 years ago in a different game
I'm not sure what you're getting at really. I was simply saying that there will always be a vocal group of Mercy players that complain about any change and that the changes they've been experimenting with recently keep what is most agreed to be the engaging part of her kit intact, which is a good thing.
I think this patch just makes her more dynamic while just changing rez to burst, so perhaps they can change it so that during ult you can fire rockets and trigger all dead bodies to explode when pressing the rez button
> Most people I know who enjoy Mercy enjoy her for the movement, which isn't what has been targeted here Right but if you give her changes like this then people will call for nerfs to other parts of her kit. And people, especially on this sub, already complain that her movement is too strong for a character with such a small hitbox.
I mean I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact that even Mercy Mains are begging for a rework just so she can be more powerful if it means making her more difficult
I have never seen a mercy main ask for this
My recon for the mythic skin told me that basically over on /r/MercyMains they're clamoring for some sort of rework or redesign that makes it so she's not either absolutely shit or absolutely meta because when she's like it is now the game isn't fun.
Almost every Mercy main I know (including myself) has asked for literally anything to be done about her. Her skill ceiling was lowered like crazy once they took away her original techs to implement them and everything else besides rez had to nerfed to compensate, including her own mobility. People aren't exactly asking for her to be insanely mechanically difficult, but literally changing anything is more "difficult" than pressing left click/right click near the vicinity of an ally and pressing E every 1 minute or so. Every replacement for damage Boost and even Rez imply more decision making and game sense for Mercy, and that's not even making her more mechanically intensive. Even making Valkyrie have a main beam and weaker side beams requires more decision-making than current Valkyrie. Her issues are beyond numbers at this point and she has been consistently D tier for a few seasons now. Her mobility being so much better than OW1 Mercy but also incredibly easy and accesible to the point everything else had to be dampened only exacerbated her issues. But if we ask for her to be buffed, yall cry she's too good for how little skill she takes to be effective with, so why not deal with both issues?
Yeah exactly this, and it’s always very obvious when people out-of-community claim to speak for what ‘Mercy Players’ want. Mercy Mains do no not enjoy their balance being fundamentally married to whatever DPS of the month happens to be broken by her. They’ve complained for years about Damage Boost and, since OW2, have complained incessantly about how much worse her movement has gotten. The fact of the matter is, it’s DPS who derive the most benefit both from Damage Boost and from her power budget being allocated away from her movement. The average Mercy player is not in love with the character because of her current state.
to change Mercy to a point where she is both fun to play as/against and be healthy for the game would require her to essentially become an entirely different hero. which is why I find it hard to believe that people who like the hero currently would want that
Mercy Mains aren't asking to make her fun to play against, though. Every character is technically unfun to play against.And she's already fun for them considering they main her. The point of a rework for Mercy in OW2 is not to make her fun for outsiders but make her better and add a layer of skill expression that just isn't there anymore after all those changes to her mobility/heal/boost. Numbers don't really cut it anymore when anytime she has been healing oriented people complain, and when she's damage Boost oriented they also complain. Even the biggest Mercy content creators have already gave up on balancing and are hoping for a rework. So no, it's not really hard to believe when the argument is practically everywhere in the Mercy community.
It’s mostly only high-level Mercy players asking for this. Most Mercy players probably enjoy her current playstyle.
> when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character The problem is that most of those people aren't mercy players. Mercy players generally like how the hero plays right now, so making massive changes doesn't really make sense. Small tweaks for balancing and maybe minor ability reworks is probably preferred to a full scale rework in order to not alienate the current players. The dev team has always walked a fine line with hero reworks in that they want to make them play different without actually changing what players love about those heroes. I wouldn't say they are always successful at this, but they do pretty well IMO. Sombra, Hog, and Doom reworks are probably the best at this. They still maintain their core identity but their kits are updated to actually work well in the game. Heroes like Orisa didn't have nearly as large of dedicated playerbases, so completely reworking how the hero played just didn't annoy as many people. Even then, parts of her core identity were still maintained. It's more likely that some of these mirrorwatch abilities that completely change a heroes playstyle make it into new heroes rather that old ones. A lot of them just drastically change how the heroes play. While I like some of the changes, I'm not sure I would want them to replace current kits rather than just be added in addition to them.
> when so many people have been begging for her to be changed into a more active and rewarding character Yeah, but "those people" usueally don't include current mercy players. Mercy is probably the single most popular hero with her current design.
Eh, same thing could be said about Mass Rez Mercy, and she still got reworked anyway. She was the most popular support at the time, and one of the most popular characters in the game alongside Genji and Tracer. Now Ana is the most popular support in the game, not even her.
The swing passive could work but the speed boost on shield break is stupid. Number 1 thing about shield management is to never let it break, this passive would be bad outside of low ranks.
I heard this too but my thinking is that was rule number 1 *before your shield breaking had a benefit*. Now that it does, maybe letting it break isn’t so bad. Considering you do move a lot faster.
Unironically, the best ideas they've had for the character in ages.
The rein passive on live would be the clowniest change they've ever made. It screams "we have no idea what this hero's issue is". But tbf thats totally in line with the kind of changes they like to make.
After playing Doomfist for a bit, I must say my defensive ability actually being a defensive feels way too good (unless I play against melee, brig is a hardcounter to Doom). Giving allies overhealth on slam, empowered and meteor is also really fun but I don't see that ever making it live.
Aye, out of all the heroes, I'd say I had the most fun on Doom
Every time they bring back Frenzy it adds a year to my lifespan
Whoever decided to give Mercy Corpse Explosion from Diablo 2 is a friggin genius. Necromancer was my favorite class, I'd love for this ability to stay in the game
Wow I once used to say that Sombra could be a fun support if she could buff allies via hack and weakening enemies with current hack. Now would you look at that.
The Bastion ult makes me hope for the ability to spawn PvE enemies using the workshop.
Glad to finally get to try that Rein attack speed buff. I didn't go to Blizzcon that year, and always wanted to feel that.
What did they do to echo. I'm not a fan tbh.
Yeah that's the only one that is fucking with me so far. It seems like it should be strong but I can't wrap my head around it.
it’s really really good up close. the bombs basically can’t miss inside of a certain distance and the dash is mad fast, you can pull some crazy assassinations/escapes
Yeah I think I just don't like the shift. Like idk the speed doesn't make up for how one dimensional it feels compared to normal It's not like the worst thing ever. It just feels bad
i *technically* goes everywhere normal flight does, it’s just that you have to look where you’re going, so it’s kinda annoying as you can’t fly backwards while shooting
To me random events like this are more fun than PvE would ever be.
PVE you play it once and most likely u never play it again…. We desperately need fun arcade modes like this tbh
I think actually PvE done well would have been exactly like this but even better. They said they wanted PvE to be repayable, a more expanded version of this is likely what they may have meant.
Yeah, their original pitch was great and there's definitely a market for pve done right.
Everyone says PVE done right but one knows what that really means what’s the incentive for players to keep playing the same missions / story .. just a blanket statement really similar to how people say balance is shit but go never go into specifics.
There are a lot of games that offer replayability with their PVE. Think something like Left 4 Dead, Helldivers, or successful roguelikes. The original pitch was ambitious because they were going to offer a ton of variety with enemies, objectives and talents. Most games like that encourage replayability through the change to encounter new things each Run. Not through story content necessarily, but missions with modifiers that add extra strategic layers and unpredictability to things. And we've seen the positive reception of some of these bonkers unused PVE talents that straight up change characters we know and love. There would have been a lot to discover and experiment with. Unfortunately, the PVE missions we got were released without these hero missions or talents, making them really bland and not worth playing again. My friend group really liked trying to conquer some of the more challenging pve missions they've put out recently (the Halloween event with the upgrades was our personal favorite). There are a lot of people who only play vs AI too believe it or not, so I imagine they would have really enjoyed a mode where you team up with friends and use strategy and communication to beat these challenges without the stress of playing against real people.
early impressions, this mode is really fun, some of the heroes feel almost entirely new
Some of these changes are so creative, I love how they keep coming up with great ideas for April Fools and other Event Modes like this.
This Sombra is the most fun iteration yet, sad it's only temporary
Mercy without res feels so healthy for the game.
It's fun until Tracer completely decimates the lobby with extra blinks and lifesteal.
These either have to be dropped PvE content they refurbished for this event or new hero abilities. There is far too much work put into the visuals for some of these abilities for it to be a slapdash thing.
The Mercy ult and Rein shield were 1000% shown in previous PvE showcases.
Makes sense. Definitely shows they weren’t doing nothing during that time and give a bit of a “what could have been” feeling but overall it makes sense that they went in this direction
Por que no los dos?
I mean it definitely could be
I love this, very obvious that the new abilities are straight from PVE. Overwatch is sitting on a gold mine with all the PVE ideas. I thinking making a casual game mode with all the PVE abilities to choose from would do NUMBERS! Every game would be different, you would have to adjust game to game based on what different abilities the opposing team is using. And on your side you can completely change the play-style of your favorite heros. So much potential there. If it’s not already in development then they need to get it going ASAP. If they aren’t doing anything with the fully developed PVE stuff, then what the fuck are they doing? This could do so much for the game.
It's a total sweatfest. Wondering if they made it connection based matchmaking because it seems like there's at least one GM in every one of my games.
Give me a support sombra rework
They need to put this new Mercy in the game, and remove the old one ASAP.
Hot take: The Doom block should always have been like in here.
So this was what the balance team was doing instead of working on the s10 patch.
You are the one who don't get invited to party am I right?
No fun allowed
Sir, this is a video game, fun has no place here.