The game in my opinion feels pretty awful right now, some characters feel good but I can’t help the nagging feeling its just not very satisfying to play them just cause they do everything better than most other characters. The thing that really confuses me though is how they’ve been approaching balancing the dps since the imo stupid hitbox changes and health changes, they seem to have 0 consistency. They always said oh oneshots are bad but then theyre ok if theyre combos that take timing or mechanical skill or positioning to do. So why can venture full combo any squishy with ease with an ability that not only closes the distance but pushes your target and is not difficult to use in the slightest but junkrat cant mine grenade shot combo anyone but tracer, the hardest to hit as most characters in the game character, or baby dva even though the combo takes timing, positioning, and mechanical skill? Why does widow both gain more range that she can oneshot and keep it along with it becoming easier, but hanzo has his projectile sniper identity gutted and is nothing more than budget paladins archer dude now but without the cool invis? They rework pharah into a dive character that cant really hover around nearly as much and then release a dive character that outclasses her in every single way and even wins 1v1s pretty easily cause of that easy any direction full to 0 combo. I want to love this game like I used to but it feels like the devs will tell us their balancing goal and by the time the next patch is out it doesn’t match that goal really at all and feels like they just swapped goals altogether without a word. Its frustrating to see some characters just blatantly keep things other don’t for no understandable reason other than they must just be the devs favorites or mains and they don’t want them to feel bad to play, it just overall sours the game when all your favorite characters have felt like hot garbage and or had their mechanical identity removed entirely while others just had theirs strengthened or were left unravaged at the very least for an entire season. If you want onceshots removed don’t toe the line and leave a few characters intact while others are barely able to squeak by, if you want fun and unique characters, stop trying to balance the game as generally as possible and recognize things will need more specific balancing than oh give everyone of this category this change, balancing things in smaller, more frequent, and more targeted and specific ways is more effective at removing parts of the matches that are unfun, or unfair and avoids fully gutting or gigabuffing things by not being able to think of every situation that it could affect. I think it would benefit the game overall and especially in the long run to do smaller but more frequent patches trying to slowly nudge and adjust things to fit together better rather than these occasional hey a bunch of stuff is kinda randomly changed with maybe one or two asked for buff or nerf and usually in the least impactful or severely heavy handed of ways with no in between, heavily defining what a large portion of your matches will look like with the handful of obviously in a better spot characters and the characters that just don’t get to play the game. Then it stays that way for a pretty long time and theres no guarantee your character will even be touched even if they feel miserable and everyone you see talk about it says it too. TLDR whats with the favoritism and inconsistency in balancing and it would be better to have smaller more frequent patches than large, nonsensical, and occasional patches.
What you have to remember is “balance” is a myth.
So it’s a constant battle between making sure there isn’t anything obnoxiously strong, or so weak it doesn’t get played.
Do they do this well?? No, I Personally don’t think so. But, they also can’t please everyone.
For every me that wants to see Hog removed from the game, there’s some numpty that wants him to be the strongest.
Blizzard have at least moved away from locking heros behind paywalls. That should go a bit to resolving balance. Blizzard have never really been reliable when it comes to balance.
Whilst the right move and an excellent change (making venture immediately available for ranked was questionable though)
This has zero to do with balance though.
i personally dont think balance is a myth, there a bunch of things you could do to balance the game. for example they could make it so dva doesn’t have so much hp seeing as she has a second form. Or maybe make dps actually viable again, by nerfing the amount of dmg healers and tanks do. Healers are 100% the number one issue of this game. They’re just dps with the ability to heal. Overall making tanks be tanks, supports be supports and dps be dps would make the game fun. Right now the only reason why dps still has the highest pickrate is because thats where the most characters are. I personally used to be a dps main but recently swapped to becoming Illari one trick seeing as she is perfect for everything.
You can make balance changes.
But there are far too many variables for there to be “balance”.
If it was possible. Between hero releases, we’d have it and they wouldn’t need to make other changes.
At that point you have dead weight tanks and heal botting supports. That neither balanced or healthy.
I don’t mean that you should reduce their dmg to 0. I mean that they should reduce it slightly so dps are more important. If you lose a tank, the fight is instantly over. If you lose a healer, the fight is instantly over. You lose both dps, the fight isn’t always over. Dps just kind of feels like sacrificial pieces right now. If they buff the healing for certain healers and nerf their dmg that would make dps more important. If you’ve ever tried open queue you’ll see it’s often 3 tanks 2 healers, sometimes 2 tanks, 2 healers and 1 dps and the dps is 9/10 times sombra. This is because healers like Baptiste and Illari can deal just as much dmg as a dps and put out healing. I’m obviously not an expert and I am just stating what i think the issue is, whether it is or not. This is just my opinion.
True. But this has been the case for years now. The DPS passive has helped a little… But it has enabled bad DPS players to stat pad and then flame everyone else. Which is quite funny to watch.
I mostly play open queue these days as the games are more fun more often. And yeah, it’s pretty much always 3-2. But I’ve seen 1-2-2 comps and 1-3-1 comps win. As ultimately, a misplay and focus fire means the tank just disappears.
Sadly though, nerf tanks and no one plays them (it’s already on the edge as in role queue, the DPS passive makes the role boring to play)… Or buff dps, and immediately the role is beyond oppressive.
It’s a tough call. But I think the passive was a bad idea, still think they should have just nerfed all healing. that way tanks wouldn’t of needed the extra HP to compensate, whilst actually giving the DPS some agency to get stuff done.
I think one thing they could do to make tank heroes much more enjoyable to play as they could add a rearview mirror option!
Passives for roles were just a bad idea in general. It’d be great if they just removed them.
Amen to that.
It’s a weak bandaid to save them from making much needed changes.
Don’t need to nerf healing, can pretend Hog is fine if you just add a passive.
One day they’ll learn. One day.
Blizzard? Learn? We can dream.
Tank hasn’t been fun for me since they removed one. There’s no longer the synergy between tanks, and more often than not it turns into Counterwatch.