Overwatch - Blizzard's new IP

Welcome to a decade ago.

Sure, but it’s still pretty cool that they’re expanding the custom game mode like that and are allowing you to earn xp while playing on those maps and modes.

Oh, it’s no small deal. Most new big-budget MP games have completely done away with a server browser.

It’s just funny to me that the urge to get rid of the server browser comes and goes all the time.

They’re fishing for ideas from the community, like how the Warcraft 3 community invented MOBAs with a WC3 custom game mode.

I’ve had a good run up to 1900 over the last week or so, teaming with some regulars that communicate well and messing around in Mystery Heroes when not in competitive to practice other heroes. I’ve pretty much switched from a Mercy/Lucio main to an Ana/Zenyatta main, or tanking as required. Having great success with Zen as my aim must have improved and a little bit of practice leading his shots slightly means when I fill that role I become a significant contributor to damage and eliminations. Discord also is indispensable in the tank heavy meta.

Buy boy, match-making is still a crapshoot. Last Mystery Heroes game:

That’s a ~120 player level average vs a ~60. I don’t care what Blizz thinks, your effectiveness in this game is a combination of your skill (MMR) and game/map knowledge. A team with twice the playtime like that will stomp you as they are better at filling roles, have played more characters for more time and inherently will tend to combine abilities and ults better. And stomp us they did, in short order. Average match-making.

Though it is all made better when you roll a double Mercy roster out of the gate, play Battle Mercy the whole game and end up with a 10:1 K:D ratio, gold elims and obj kills, silver damage, silver healing and a final point rez. Lost that screenshot to a power failure. :(

And it seems smurfing has become a real problem since Christmas. They seem to be everywhere. <level 50 players grouped with much higher level players in almost every match last night.

Wooo, made it to gold!

Placed at 1400, season low of 1200, managed to work up to gold though sticking with a good, communicative group, continuing to main support, but switching to mostly a Zen main. Turns out Zen is my best support with a 61% win rate with high percentile performances mostly across the board.

That said, the biggest contributor still remains teamwork. I feel I can certainly hold my own playing support in gold, I am certainly contributing enough, but being surrounded by a competent, communicative team means the tanks and DPS apply pressure and allow me to actually do my job. If things get a bit screwy, Zen turns out to be my best option to defend myself and carry on. So, I am happy with gold and think that is probably the level I can play an effective support at.

Another thing I think may have helped is adhering to a relatively strict ‘lose 2 comp games in a row and call it a night’ methodology to help avoid individual tilting, teamwork devolving into arguing, or the MMR putting you on a losing streak (presuming you prescribe to that being a thing).

New hero, released to PTR:

A tank, with a place-able barrier, mini gravity surge alternate fire, damage reduction active, AOE DPS boost ult and a whole fuck ton of general ranged DPS potential.

Not a lot of mobility, but kind of plays like a survivable bastion turret on legs. Only played a couple of AI games to try out the abilities and on Route 66 attack racked up 85 eliminations, all the non-healing gold medals and POTG. Look, the AI is dumb as a fence post, but I have still never managed more than about 40 elims in a match! It was crazy damage output!

So, hope you like tanks, 'cause their dominance in the meta ain’t changing anytime soon. Expect barrier meta to be a thing, though - Orisa, Rien, Zarya, Winston/Symmetra/healer, Bastion/Soldier and a healer. Infinite barriers FTW!

Honestly, poor Reaper and McCree - this new tank is their DPS equal, but loaded with tankiness. I guess Blizz are trying desperately to force Sombra to be relevant in a tank heavy meta, but her hack is inconsistent, takes too long to cast and has too many exceptions (her ult is more or less useless half the time).

And two days after the Bastion re-work hit the public server, it already has a nerf on PTR. PTR feedback was advising for weeks that sentry mode had too much damage mitigation (particularly nano-boosted). Blizz did not comment and pushed the changes through anyway, now it seems they are looking to correct - and a new season just launched.

I am not sure these guys know what they are doing when it comes to balance changes, or communication for that matter.

They know what they’re doing. Making money.

Mmmmmm, sweet, sweet loot boxes.

On that note, is anyone on QT3 still playing? PC or console?

I wonder sometimes as I get grouped with a lot of the same opponents. I think there are heaps and heaps of smurf accounts, which is great for Blizzard sales, but less so for the size of the actual active community. I don’t think it is as active as Blizz would have everyone believe. I guess revenues are still strong though…

I’d like to play but I agree with the sentiment that Blizzard has no idea what they’re doing with balance, and that has killed my motivation entirely.

Hanzo!

I play pretty regularly on PS4. Usually a Lootbox a night starting around 8:30pm EST of so.

I still plan to play Overwatch regularly. I got a little caught up with movies and television since December (I watch too many CW shows, and was trying to hit a bunch of Oscar nominations in the theaters). Now that that’s behind me, I’m looking forward to getting back into Overwatch though.

Oops, just bought Zelda.

Traitor

I am playing on Xbox most nights.

Last night I played with a buddy and we rolled the Bastion-Mercy-Reinhardt combo every match and went 11-0. Someone always picked up the character we didn’t cover. Bastion is hella OP right now.

Enjoy it while you can, Bastion nerf has already been pushed to public on PC - Ironclad passive now reduced to 20% damage mitigation instead of 35%.

A nano-boosted Bastion is still gonna be a pain, but it’s not like it’s the only ultimate that is just best hidden from.

I’m playing with a group of friends on PC usually 2-4 times per week still. We play around 8-10 PM EST.

Blizzard made custom games a thing, and inevitably players figured out that they could use them to farm XP easily - which is exactly what people said would happen based on similar issues in Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO.

What’s really interesting about Jeff Kaplan’s post is that he claims Blizzard knew this would happen, and they planned for it.

[quote]
We are not naïve to player behavior and motivation. When we put this feature live, we had an internal escalation plan for how to combat this behavior. Today marks the first steps on that path. And in a lot of ways it really makes me sad. The feature is so much cooler and better for everyone if we do not have to put draconic restrictions on it. To fast forward a bit, the end of the escalation plan will result in experience gain being turned off in Custom Game.[/quote]

This makes no sense. If Blizzard knew people would do this, why hold off on the restrictions? What, they thought the Overwatch community was somehow special and above this kind of abuse? Please.

Papa Kaplan is very very disappointed with you. Go to your room.