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Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
4,437
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Sad end to a great season for LA. I really wonder what the story was for not playing Fissure, probably their best player. Not going to blame Iremix only though, he didn’t do great but entire team played poorly. Birdring totally dominated Surefour on Widowmaker.

London played great.
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
10,216
7,563
Healer changes incoming finally!

In the next patch we’re reviewing the current state of support heroes and are making some changes to nearly all of them to keep them competitive with each other. I’ll start by just listing the changes below:
Ana 2.2k
  • Nano Boost additionally heals the target instantly for 300 HP.
Brigitte 852
  • Shield Bash cooldown increased from 6 to 7 seconds.
Lúcio 487
  • Sound Barrier effect increased 50% from 500 to 750 shields.
  • Crossfade aura radius increased 20% from 10m to 12m.
Mercy 1.1k
  • Primary fire healing beam reduced 17% from 60 HP/s to 50 HP/s.
Moira 369
  • Healing resource base regen rate increased 20%.
Now that all the changes are listed, I’ll go through each hero and talk a bit about the goals of these changes and our current views on each support hero in general.

Ana

Ana has a very strong and unique toolbox, with the potential to dish out more healing than any other hero in the game. That said, she has a couple disadvantages that can be difficult to overcome, such the potential to miss your targets, not having any mobility options, and having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up. Her ultimate can be very powerful but often feels like it can be difficult to use effectively unless it is used in combination with other allied ultimates such as Genji’s Dragonblade. This new change allows Ana to use her ultimate as a clutch save on a dying teammate, or even use it in combination with her Biotic Grenade for a huge instant heal on even the biggest of tank health pools.

Brigitte

Shield Bash is Brigitte’s strongest ability, and its short cooldown makes it very difficult to play around. We’d like to keep her Shield Bash and subsequent melee combos powerful and effective, while just allowing a little more counter-play against it. We’ve talked about possibly reducing her defense somewhere, such as reducing her barrier health. However, her tank-hybrid nature is a core part of her kit and we want to make sure she maintains that feeling of being a difficult target to take down. Overall Brigitte’s win rate is still the highest of any support, despite dishing out the lowest amount of raw healing per second. This speaks volumes to how powerful her kit can be outside of her direct healing numbers.

Lúcio

Lucio’s Crossfade aura can be an invaluable addition for any team, but it can sometimes be difficult to keep your whole team boosted. We’re increasing the radius of Lucio’s Crossfade aura to allow more flexibility in how he moves while still maintaining his powerful support songs to help out his team. His ultimate is also being increased to help counter large spikes of damage. For example, Junkrat’s ultimate can deal a maximum of 600 damage, which Sound Barrier can now potentially negate completely. It is worth noting that even though the initial shield he provides is larger, it still takes the same amount of time to destroy itself.

Mercy

Mercy is intended to be able to consistently pump out more healing than any other healer over the course of a match. While this is currently true, the difference in healing is so significant that it makes it very difficult for other healers to compete with her for a spot on a team. Reducing her healing output will close this gap a little, but she will still maintain her status as the go-to pick for raw healing power. We’ll keep an eye on her to make sure she is still a strong pick.

Moira

Moira is a strong hero that doesn’t need a ton of changes. The resource change her is mostly to help her out in the situations where you’re just not able to get close enough the enemy to drain them for resources. Now if you’re team is sparring with the enemy team at super long ranges, you’ll have a bit more resources to work with to keep your team topped off.

Zenyatta

We aren’t making any changes to Zen right now, as we feel he is in a pretty good spot. He is doing his job well as a hybrid damage/healer and being able to provide discord orb for your team will always be welcome.
These changes are coming to the PTR very soon. We’re always looking at our stats, gathering feedback 290 and playing the game to make sure we keep all the heroes viable. We will have time to watch and iterate on these changes throughout this PTR cycle, so please play and give feedback!

Upcoming Balance Changes for Support Heroes
 
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ex-genj

Golden Squire
638
115
Ana change is bigger than I initially thought, allows for really aggressive play with her ult, kinda love it. Also fuck mercy.
 

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,298
11,938
That ult 300 heal is pretty damn nice for Ana...and scary if you're on the receiving end of the boosted character.
 

Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
4,437
2,599
The healer changes are interesting, they might bring more diversity to the support selection which would be good.

The changes to damage drop off to a lot of the DPS will have a bigger impact. I think we'll be in a McCree meta.

I'm more happy about the nerf to Widowmaker than anything else...I just hate her. Only character that can truly counter a good Widowmaker is another Widowmaker...so games are decided by who has the better Widow...even in OWL it's like that. Whichever team has the better Widowmaker wins the game.
 
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Heian

Molten Core Raider
698
403
When you think at all the Mercy nerf since 4-5 months. She was so much OP back then. I'm glad for Lucio. I played him for like 300 hours.
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
10,216
7,563
The healer changes are interesting, they might bring more diversity to the support selection which would be good.

The changes to damage drop off to a lot of the DPS will have a bigger impact. I think we'll be in a McCree meta.

I'm more happy about the nerf to Widowmaker than anything else...I just hate her. Only character that can truly counter a good Widowmaker is another Widowmaker...so games are decided by who has the better Widow...even in OWL it's like that. Whichever team has the better Widowmaker wins the game.

They should have fully reverted the hook cool down to 12 seconds instead of 10. I don't think it'll be enough. In the lower Elo's, it was enough just to switch to Winston and counter her that way. Hopefully 10 seconds is enough that Winston is viable again to counter her.

Hopefully the Mercy nerf is enough to swing the tide to other supports being played. If Mercy is played less then Widow will be a little less of a problem because she won't be damage boosted by Mercy.

I still feel spam arrows or Hanzo's ult charge rate needs to be to be nerfed. I'm surprised they opted to nerf Zarya instead because the real problem is, since the Hanzo's rework, he always has dragon up and it makes trivial for him to combo with grav now. A lot of Hanzo's love to blow their ult before Zarya could get her Ult charged up due to impatience. The rework eliminated that.

Pharah with the fall off changes has been indirectly nerfed. I have gotten better at hitting her in the sky with Mei so she'll become a lot less of an issue for me in my matches.
 

SorrowsEnd

Trakanon Raider
1,448
746
Looking back on this thread I have been commenting since the game launched in beta that Widow should be flat out removed.

Still sticking to that thought. Really there is no place in a game where the only counter for 1 toon is the exact same toon.

Remove stupid snipers across the board. It is a team based game with an objective.

Ignoring the entire point of the game and playing whack-a-mole with a scope makes you a fucking asshole.
 
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Croetec

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,783
1,955
Looking back on this thread I have been commenting since the game launched in beta that Widow should be flat out removed.

Still sticking to that thought. Really there is no place in a game where the only counter for 1 toon is the exact same toon.

Remove stupid snipers across the board. It is a team based game with an objective.

Ignoring the entire point of the game and playing whack-a-mole with a scope makes you a fucking asshole.

But how will the youtube clickbait "INSANE GOD WIDOW" and OWL camera guys be able to handle it? I love it when they just sit on the widow perspective for 90% of a match.
 
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Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
10,216
7,563
Looking back on this thread I have been commenting since the game launched in beta that Widow should be flat out removed.

Still sticking to that thought. Really there is no place in a game where the only counter for 1 toon is the exact same toon.

Remove stupid snipers across the board. It is a team based game with an objective.

Ignoring the entire point of the game and playing whack-a-mole with a scope makes you a fucking asshole.

I think the only reason snipers are in the game is so Blizzard could validate their game as a Competitive FPS since every other FPS has snipers. She really is the opposite of what they are trying to do with the game which is to be a team based game. She gets to sit far away from team fights, and one-shot people at distance with excellent(pre-10 second cooldown nerf) mobility to get away if threatened, and has 200hp. While a hero like Tracer has to get into the thick of a team fight and only has 150 hp.

This thread is full of lulz:
RIP Widowmaker [MEGA Thread]
 
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Croetec

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,783
1,955
They should make her lose 25%+ of her charge if she takes 10 damage, de-scoped if 25 damage taken especially if they won't address the charge speed of her shots. To be able to put out that much damage while literally just quick scoping in and out is utterly stupid because any team and widow with half a brain will not let anyone get on top of her more then a few seconds if that. McCree to me is a good way of balancing damage compared to aim accuracy for hitscan weapons, you have to be in the team fight with good damage but at the same time aren't allowed to 100% anything across the map with normal shots.
 

skribble

Golden Knight of the Realm
488
136
Hanzo is just as annoying as widow these days, he's just too good at everything - tank buster, spammy ability that can headshot and doesn't need great aim, can one shot most heroes, escape ability, verticality.

So sick of playing against him
 
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Heian

Molten Core Raider
698
403
So does that mean that Lucio's new ult + Amp it up survive a grav dragon? Hanzo does like 950 damage. Lucio will do 750 barrier now.

I'm not sure if it's enough, but it will be close. 250 HP hero will probably survive. Having a fadding Moira just outside of the new smaller grav could probably get the job done, an Ana's grenade, flying Mercy or Brigitte ult would probably make everyone survive.

It will definitively open up healer comp. I feel that in organised group lately I either have to play Mercy or Moira and Zen(To counter Grav Dragon) to have a chance to win.
 

Whidon

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,880
2,906
She used to have a longer scope time and people complained she was useless.


People said Mercy was useless post rez nerf. I'll bet if they nerf her to 2sec full charge it would still be used just as they used Mercy since the ability to one shot most heroes from any range is too good.

Grappling should be 20-30sec cd and remove hanzo lunge, remove the no slowdown on storm arrows + 3 shots instead of 6. The downside of these snipers is they should be fucked if you get them in close combat. I won't even play hog since last game i hooked a hanzo with 400 or so hp and got killed after he survived initial combo!

I have not played on PTR but i mostly main Rein this season and the idea of this big tanky, fast rolling knockbacking/knockinguping ball thingy seems sure to annoy the fuck outta me.
 

ex-genj

Golden Squire
638
115
oh man this one hurt. Not seen is zarya killing me 1 second later. 5K and everyone on my team dead while I killed everyone on their team.