Mei is officially the worst hero in the game. Let me explain.
Next to no one mains her anymore, or plays her a substantial amount more than another hero. With Torbjorn being reworked and making his way in to a viable slot in Overwatch, Mei is the last Hero from release date to be broken and unplayable. Mei isn’t fun to play, or play against. She had a 0.71% pick rate in the overwatch league, just over Torbjorn (0.24%) and Symmetra (0.00%). All 3 of these heroes are the only heroes to have less than a 1.00% pick rate in the league as they are useless in higher league plays. However she is very frustrating for lower skilled players to play against with her slow down ability as team-work and accuracy are a more delicate thing in lower skill games. Mei’s endothermic blaster slows her opponents over time until a complete stand-still, this means they are easier and easier to freeze over a 2 second period. Then an easy headshot is easily achieved by the almost dead Mei.
So Mei is sat in the same broken place as Torbjorn (until his rework comes to live) and Symmetra before her rework. Now I know Blizzard have the potential to fix her as they did with Symmetra and (probably) Torbjorn, but weather it’ll take the same ridiculous amount of time, we’ll have to see.
My potential solutions would be to rework her wall in a way it cannot grief or ruin a team mate’s games. And her endothermic blaster and her ultimate, “Blizzard”, should also loose any slow-down ability to them to better improve the experience of playing against a Mei. Obviously there would have to be counter-measures to ensure she is balanced.
But Mei is boring to play as and horrific to play against. Her kit is useful in lower skill but useless in higher skill, she is in desperate need of a rework to make her more viable and less toxicity-fueling.
Mei isn’t weak at all. Just look at the stats. I don’t know if you didn’t do your homework or if you just chose to ignore it, but she actually has one of the best win rates among DPS heroes across all ranks (at some ranks she even has the best win rate for DPS).
And yes, she has a pretty low pick rate, but that’s simply because she has a pretty unique kit and not a lot of players even attempt to play her because of the steep learning curve. Why learn Mei when you can just play McCree or whatever and just click heads?
Mei also isn’t boring to play at all if you know what you’re doing. She has a very
versatile kit and can be useful in just about every situation if you have some creativity.
You talk about her pick rates in OWL, which has close to nothing to do with her viability in normal comp matches. Those are two very different things. I don’t know what rank you is, but from your comment I’d suspect you play at a fairly low rank. You need to realize that what pros use in the OWL has very little to do with your own machtes and that even ladder pick rates don’t say a lot about a heroes viability. It’s more about how hard a hero is to learn.
Your theory that Mei is too strong at lower ranks and useless at high ranks is just objectively wrong. If you look at the win rates, she does better the higher up in rank you go. She’s a hero with a pretty high skill ceiling as well as high skill floor. Definitely not the kind that only excels at low ranks. Again, OWL says very little about a heroes viability in normal ranked (which like 99.99% of us play). Pros play very different from regular players, even from top500/GM players.
Mei definitely doesn’t have the same problems as Torb. Torbs probem pre rework was that he was pretty much exclusively viable on defense. Mei might be slightly better at defense, but for the most part you can play her whenever.
All in all Mei definitely isn’t a weak hero overall and definitely doesn’t need a rework. She’s a niche hero, but that’s only due to her very unique kit. She does well at every rank and has even seen some play at the pro level, which is more than can be said about some other heroes.
You’re either biased against Mei in some way, or you just don’t have all the necessary information and/or experience.
You simply don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to Mei. Do some more research or maybe just try to play her at a higher level and then reevaluate.
As a Mei main, this literally hurt to read. There are far more heroes in need of a rework, Mei is perfectly fine and I see alot of people who do play her. She is a quite enjoyable hero. I really don’t get the hate on Mei, she is so dang adorable lmao. Anyway, I think they need to fix up Mccree a bit.
Mei is a little Satan. Very good in close range duel. Her ultimate is easy to use and universal. The wall temporarily modifies the map: can block many ults and can be used to play “divide and conquer” by separating 1-2 enemies from their team. There is no rank in which her kit isn’t very powerful. If this isn’t enough some players tend to be very accurate ice cone headshotters.
Glad some Mei mains are speaking up. As a Zarya main who knows Zarya’s kit like the back of my hand, a good Mei is one, if not, my hardest hero to fight against. If I switch to Tracer I feel I have the upper hand on Mei, but I’m a Zarya one trick for the most part so I’m not really going to switch to DPS in the middle of an important game, but that’s how frustrating a good Mei is for me, it totally frustrates me that I have nothing but a 2 second bubble to defend against her freezing me and having her way with me. The only exceptions are when I’m v high charge, 80-100, usually then even her ice block and wall won’t save her from me.
Overall I feel like she’s one of those heroes who’s very good in the right hands. She’s not a pick up and play hero like Soldier or Winston. Takes some practice, but the results can be deadly, especially now that there’s no fall off to her right clicks too.
Anyway, I agree with Avarna, there are heroes who actually need a boost, like McCree.
Only thing I see wrong with Mei is when situational unaware players block retreat paths/escapes with her ice wall when there’s no need to, resulting in death fur players that had a chance to escape and recover.
The fact that her playrate decreases from 1.71% (bronze) to 0.8%(GM) shows that she just isn’t that viable.
Mei is not a hero that you can just pick up and do well with. You need to practice her a lot before you can get value out of her. The higher in rank you go the more true this gets. Bronze players just play whatever, while GM players only have a couple of heroes that they can play at that level.
Pick rate doesn’t say too much about viability. Win rate does tho. Low pick rate means not a lot of players play her. That’s all it means. There can be multiple possible explanations as to why that is.
Win rate on the other hand means how often those people who do play her win matches. That says a lot more about viability.
Sym and Torb are bad examples. Their win rates were heavily scewed due to the fact they were only good in very specific situations and people switched outside of those situations.
The same isn’t really true for Mei. People usually play her for whole matches and there are way more Mei one-tricks than Sym or Torb.
I think the fact you need to engage your brain to do well with her puts out of the picking order.
I think she can be super annoying and has excellent ability in the Trump Wall, I am glad not many people play her, the few left that do then to be smart mofos.
That doesn’t explain how the play rates increase after a hero gets buffed. Follow that line of thinking only the win rates would
No, it’s actually both. If heroes aren’t picked much in GM and have a high win rate then that means that they are very niche and aren’t viable in general gameplay. If a hero has both win rate and play rate though then they are viable.
No, because you can just say that the tiny amount of people that do play her that win often win because they play on the maps were these characters are viable that doesn’t make the heroes viable in general though.
The fact that her play rate is only 0.4% higher still indicates that she is a niche pick, just less niche than Sym or torb.
That demon is totaly broken. And one and only thing i want for that thing i want it deleted from the game.
I am tank main. It is already enough things to give me headaches but something that makes me so slow that 1. you cant escape and 2. than makes you freeze is killing the fun with me. Ok, Orisa has a chance but that anoying little thing has more defensive abilities than Reinhardt. BEing frozen every 2 seconds is not fun and i cant help but tilt becouse of this.
Then you really should be asking where the hell is your team because you wouldn’t get frozen so much if they helped you. Removing a hero doesn’t fix teamwork.
Has anyone ever gone against a Mei blockading the point for 2 minutes just to freeze the entire point during overtime and went “Wow, this really needs to be buffed.” ?
