@mrasshat: Yep, due to her teleporter being short lived and her requirement to constantly setup turrets that get destroyed in 1 hit she quickly becomes 'only ever use on the first point and if you die switch character'.

reinhardt's ultimate severely needs a wider cone. I'm never excited when I get his charged.

I honestly don't think that much at all needs to be changed. I feel like most of the complaints that I have read on here are from people who just aren't aware of how to counter certain heroes (Bastion) or people who seem to misunderstand how a character is supposed to be used effectively. The only complaint I have is that Torbjorn's turret is too strong on consoles. It can be very hard to combat, even when using heroes that are supposed to be good counters. Mostly I think it is because the range is too long and the lock on is too quick.

I think they should give D.Va a weapon when she's in Mecha mode.

@clearleaf: Try pressing right trigger or left click.

I think the console nerf to the Torbjorn turret is definitely needed. I've been on too many offense teams on payload maps that get rolled by teams with 2-3 torbs. I use characters that let me take out 1 turret no problem in these scenarios (mainly reaper) but by the time I have one down the other gets me and then they can build it back while I respawn. Sometimes I have some teammates who know whats up and we're good but that is rarely the case in these scenarios.

Also they need something for D.Va, I have had some good runs with her but the combination of the movement slowdown when shooting, the fall-off of the range at which the weapons are useful, and the headshot hitbox being both huge and centre mass makes it difficult to stay in the mech long.

I'd also find a midpoint for Mcree on console. I think the damage nerf was justified but it is much harder to be accurate on console so I'd maybe give him a little damage back.

Oh and I like Symmetra but I think she could benefit from something simple and small, like a slight boost in how fast the secondary fire on her weapon charges. Not a huge increase but a small one would be cool.

I'd say the the only real problem about balance right now on the Hero end of things is stacking. It's not much of an issue in quick play or 'bronze league' play, but the higher up you go in competitive the more of a problem it is. There is nothing wrong with Lucio, Winston, Tracer and Zarya on their own, for example. However, when you start stacking these heroes in pairs of two, all balance goes out the window. It's really boring to watch in tournaments, and really frustrating to play against. It also enables things like the D.Va overtime stall cheese. Blizzard doesn't seem to agree, though, they think it's fine. I hope they change their minds.

It almost doesn't matter what Blizzard thinks. tournament organizers can set hero limits if they want to and it's already being done in some cases. Pros and people who watch tournaments all generally want hero limits, so that's the way things will start moving. Like you said it's really only an issue at the highest levels of play, so I can understand and appreciate why Blizzard wouldn't want to set limits across the board for everyone.

All the Bastion talk in here. I think Bastion's nerf should be that is could be slower to rotate around when in Turret mode. If your team can effectively flank a Bastion, you should be more rewarded for that. At the moment, even if you get around a Bastion, it just turns, mows you down, and keeps going

Zenyatta is terrible in competitive. He needs to be given the ability to call up a shield or increase the time before his orbs dissipate because of line of sight.

I think I might like it if the D.Va buff was that her shield healed her based on damage block.

I'd love to see some kind of change to Mei, I fear her far more than any other close ranged character. Maybe slow movement, turn rate, and firing rate?

Finally, I'd like to see them replace Mercy's damage boost beam. Instead, I'd like it to make the teammate you're connected to "Just do something already!"

Mei is already one of the slowest characters in the game save tanks, and two of the five tanks are more mobile. If she was any slower, she'd be terrible. She needs to sneak up on most characters to get in freeze gun range. There are also plenty of ways to counter her. Junkrat, Pharah, Reinhardt in combination with others, snipers, and Torbjorn's turret can all take her no problem. Mei's entire purpose is to discourage you from engaging another team up close, so she needs to be good at that. Most characters should lose engaging a Mei up close.

Mei's really good in quick play against uncoordinated teams, but she's fairly easy to counter for any group working together.

This. I played a lot of Reinhardt early on, but kind of grew to hate how lame his ultimate was combined with how useless he was based on the all too common PS4 Quick Play team makeup of at least 3 of offensive Hanzo/Genji/Reaper/McCree. That's the one change I'd make to him.

Speaking of unsatisfying ultimates, am I the only one who doesn't like Widow Maker's?

Look, I know all the ultimates aren't supposed to be equal. But I think they should all be significantly beneficial. Widow Maker's sight has never seemed to be all that helpful to me. I think at the very least it should last longer?

I think Widow's ultimate is one of the best in the game. It's the only ultimate that instantly and directly benefits everyone on the team regardless of where they are or what they are doing, and it provides a major advantage to the whole team. It lasts a really long time at 15 seconds, too. Now, if you have a team that isn't taking advantage of the wallhack, then of course it will seem lackluster. But that's a problem with the team, not the ability. Having that much information about the enemy team is super strong.

The funny thing is many competetitive players were asking for nerfs because it is so strong in higher end competitive play. (Changing it so you can't see the specific unit just an indicator for example) They didn't end up doing much to it (yet) but they did increase the volume of her callout when she uses it so the other team can prepare better.

They just recently nerfed how frequently you would get access to Widowmakers ultimate because of how strong an ability it was coinsidered to be. I wouldn't bet on them changing it further for a bit.

I know I can personally feel the difference when playing with or against a team that has a Widowmaker who frequently triggers that ability. (I don't really play Widowmaker myself because I have zero faith in my aiming ability)

Bastion isn't difficult to get around if he is made priority in certain situations, so I don't really feel that he needs to be nerfed, weakening him would mess with the dynamic.

I agree that Widowmakers ultimate is not useful 75% of the time. It may be useful in escort or if Hanzo also has his ult, but I would add something to it, like being able to shoot through walls to nail someone once for a potential kill shot.

Singular Bastions aren't much of a problem beyond normal quality of the player. I think, from the console perspective at least (i'm playing on PS4), the "nerf Bastion" cries these days are a combination of lingering resentment from the beta and the deadly multiple Bastion/Torbjorn defensive strategy. While a lot of people know you can counter this by running multiple D.VAs/Genjis/Hanzos, it's really hard to get a public team to do that. And on top of needing a team to make the counter-picks, you need to coordinate attacks to cover the different angles they're using. Plus, it's super easy on console to track with Bastion vs. say aiming arrows with Hanzo from quick duck and fire attacks. The thing there though is the "nerf" would be to ban picking multiple instances of the same character.

We'll see what happens to those teams when the Torbjorn nerf comes out.

I want to see what happens when someone counters that strategy with six Winstons just leaping past the turrets and chaining shields on the capture point. I have to imagine that would make that look silly.

I'm not sure if anything needs to be done or not, simply because of the very high skill ceiling required, but Genji is able to shut down the entire enemy team and carry a team to victory.

People finally know how to counter Torbjorn and his turrets, I'm sure he still wrecks face in low level play but since I've leveled up to the 50s he seems super rare and whoever he does come up it's rare for him to be effective. Discovering soldier out ranges his turrets was a ureka moment for me and dva wrecks them.

@yesiamaduck: can't remember the last time I saw somebody use Torb or Bastion in competative. Far too easy to shut down completely. Kind of a larger problem with defense hero's as a whole at the moment I think. Only defense hero worth his salt st the min is Junkrat.

@frodobaggins: I'd actually say Symmetra is a defence hero despite being classed a support. But yeah widowmaker, bastion and torbjorn are pretty bad once you are in a level where people have learnt to counter them.

1. Bring the no hero duplication over the Quick Play. I'm sick of seeing teams of 3 Soldiers, 2 Reapers and D. Va or some shit like that. I'm not high enough level to play competitive and probably won't when I get there, since I've heard the toxicity of that part of the community is everything I hate about competitive shooters.

2. Change to the method of scoring in control maps. I get that they want to make games quick, and that's good, but right now the balance is skewed way too far towards quick games given the way the scoring works. I'd say that in 85-90% of the control games I play, the first team to capture the point wins the round. Points are scored so quickly that by the time the other team respawns, walks back to the objective and manages to organize itself (no small feat in casual play), the other team has an insurmountable lead. It makes it feel pretty pointless to continue the round after the initial capture.

Also @yesiamaduck is correct about Symmetra. I don't know why she's classified as support since the only support ability she has is giving a small amount of shields. Most of her abilities are better on defense, although I've found you have to make a good initial guess about the skill of other team. If they aren't skilled, they don't know how to deal with her turrets and get wrecked. If they're good, they know to look in the more common spots and get by pretty quickly. Then you've got to find creative spots to put them.

@lawgamer: if you don't want a toxic environment you DO NOT want to single picks as, talking from experience, this is one of the highest causes of toxicity in MOBAs. Your skill is pit under the magnifying glass if you pick someone else's main and they'll often make you very aware of every mistake you make. Or they'll just throw a strop and throw the game if you don't give them their hero.

@yesiamaduck: It's the placement that matters. Hide that shit behind corners. oh and if you got a reinhardt, having him cover a torb and bastion on either side of him is awesome.

I can totally see this. I'd still like to see the option, though. Overwatch still has so many players that Blizzard could get away with splitting Quick Play into two hoppers (one with the hero duplication rule, one without) and not divide the playerbase too severely.

The only things I can think of that need immediate changing is Junkrat needs a serious reduction in the blast radius of his ult. It's ridiculous how far away you can be and still get one shot. They also need to reduce the damage of his grenades somewhat. He can get so many random picks by just lobbing his grenades cross map, no aim required.

Other tweaks would be to reduce Bastions turret ammo to 100 or add a longer reload because it encourages a spray and pray type of gameplay rather then much aim. Maybe give D.va a slight cool down on her ability to summon a new mech immediately after her ult.

My two cents.

I kinda think that they need to up the requirements for Lucio's ult. You gain it so fast, and if properly deployed it's incredibly devastating. I like how it is, and I don't think it should be nerfed, but I think the timer on it should be increased.

@liquidprince: in my experience because Junk usually uses his ult from a safe place, 9 out of 10 times you have such a long time to prepare for the tyre that it's a non issue.

As for his grenades, that's his whole thing. It's how he's able to lock down an area. I feel if you reduce his damage you make his as bad as most of the defense hero's and he doesn't get picked just like most defense hero's.

Zenyatta - As much as I'm enjoying my newfound success playing him, if he's going to stay at 200 total health/shields, discord orb needs to be dropped from a bonus 50% damage to 30%. There's rarely a reason to pick Mercy now when Zeny has a better ult, can continue to attack, and can heal characters like Genji from afar.

Mei - Mei needs some serious rebalancing all around. Her only real use in higher level play right now is in dividing teams via ice wall on maps like King's Row which have narrow passages. Meanwhile, in casual play she's notorious for capture point cheese because she can become invincible in her Cryo-Freeze for four seconds, then immediately can throw up an ice wall. And if she can put the wall down between opponents and a wall so you can't get to her minus a Junkrat or a Pharah, she can buy her team a healthy 10 or more seconds to get back on the point.

Meanwhile, most characters don't fear Mei the way they probably should because her offense is too much about the theory of one-on-one encounters. Tracer blinks away, Reaper just warps away, and even Genji players (keeping in mind "in theory" Mei is the hard counter to Genji, even though in reality Winston is what most teams bring out to counter Genji since he can actually pursue and finish him off) know how to use double-jump and Swift Strike to get away. And the second any encounter involves multiple opponents, Mei just about entirely breaks down.

So here are some ideas:

• Keep Mei's freeze time the same, but have it lock out the use of escape abilities. This is probably too much. You could alternatively have it so partially frozen characters suffer a movement penalty using blink/roll/whatever.
• Alternatively, adjust Mei's freeze time based on the health of other characters. Right now, it takes about 2 seconds to freeze an opponent. So change it so Tracer or Genji are frozen in 1.5 seconds whereas it takes 2-2.5 seconds to freeze say a Reinhardt or Hog.
• Lower Cryo-Freeze time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. Increase health regeneration speed to compensate.
• Lower ice wall length from 4.5 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Lower the cost of Blizzard. Blizzard is currently considered one of the worst, if not the worst ultimate ability in the game. If it cost less and could reliably be used as an alternative ultimate blunter the way Zenyatta's and Lucio's abilities it would make Mei more viable.

I have more ideas on other characters, but this got pretty long as was. I'm going to just point to this guy's post on Reddit for a way to rebalance McCree, as he actually plays him and has some excellent ideas on how to adjust him.

I feel like mostly Genji needs to be toned down. A well played Genji is really hard to counter unless you save ults specificly for him and can break an entire enemy team.

I understand there are counters for him in theory, I'm just saying that unless you play pitch perfect on those counters even a decent Genji player can decimate whole teams, unlike any other character in the game.

@2headedninja: Yeah, the issue is the counters to him right now are more about theory than practice and largely involve slow characters that can't finish the job before Genji gets away.

Mei - I covered Mei in depth. Sure, Mei mauls a Genji one-on-one if he sticks around long enough to freeze him, but most of the better Genjis know how to get away from a Mei.

Pharah - Genji can hit reflect, wait out Pharah having to land, and tear her apart the second she does. And on top of it, swift strike can nail her in the air.

Winston - Winston will maul Genji one-on-one. In fact, Winston can often even take out or just about take out a Genji during ultimate. He's right now the most reliable counter to him.

Zarya - If a Genji is dumb enough to try to take on a Zarya player on one one, he'll lose. But there's not much reason for him to do so. She's only really good for pushing him back.

Right now, I feel like Genji has ended up filling Tracer's role 9/10 times better than she does because Genji's ultimate is IMO the best offensive ultimate in the game at the moment, and now with more Zenyattas in play, he's even worse because of how well they tag team together.

Also, Genji needs a nerf on console more than on PC I'm guessing because players just spam double-jump on console knowing how hard it is to aim against him.

I really think they need to stop penalizing people if a teammate leaves in comp. If a teammate leaves the game then only that teammate should be given a loss for the match. It really sucks to be given a loss over something you had no control over.

Also, they should perhaps adjust how much comp experience you get based on how well you do. Like if you do really well but the rest of your team doesn't contribute much maybe you should not lose as much rank. Likewise if you do poorly on a winning team you don't gain as much. This may be difficult to do since doing well means different things for different heroes but there has to be some way to measure it.

For instance a teammate dropped out halfway through our defense round on Route 66. I was going to quit but decided to stick it out because I figured I would at least get the experience and I am trying to unlock as many summer loot crates as I can before the event is over. Turns out we were able to win 5 v 6 despite being down a man for over half the round. In the end it was treated like any other win despite this massive disadvantage.

Also the coin flip system needs to go but Blizzard has already said they are taking a look at that for season 2.

Also I realize this thread is supposed to be about character tweaks but I didn't think making a whole new thread for game tweaks in general was worth it.

@n00bs7ay3r: the problem is, I would say 9 out of 10 times somebody leaves it's because their team is getting stopped and they don't want to see it out because they figure they have no chance of winning. What I would do instead of what you suggested is give an automatic full rank loss, maybe even 2 ranks to discourage anybody from leaving.

As to your second point, this is absolutely how the system currently works. If you are under preforming with the hero's you're using at the rank you're at then you will lose more/gain less. Same goes if your over preforming you will lose less/gain more. It's not based on the current players in your game though, so even if you get 3 gold medals on your team you may still be under preforming against the average player at your rank. Hope this helps.

@frodobaggins: That is true, but I still think that the rest of the team should not be punished if someone leaves. After all, there is no guarantee that the game is a loss even if you are stomped for the first half. Many maps are even easier to defend towards the end.

There are already penalties for leaving too often, up to being banned from competitive for the remainder of the season. I am not sure how many times you would have to leave before that happens but from what I understand it is already in place. The problem with having such a harsh penalty is that they do have to account for the fact that sometimes people are disconnected for reasons beyond their control.

Also, I am glad to hear that it works like that, though I can't say I've ever really noticed an appreciable difference. Like I said, that 5 v 6 that my team won felt like it should have been rewarded very highly, but I really did not notice a difference between a normal win.

@n00bs7ay3r: you could then run into problems where groups have one person leave the game if they're going to lose thus resulting in the remaining players not taking a loss. If your team is playing bad enough that somebody leaves I think it's fair to award a loss. I don't know what rank you are, but towards the upper ranks you will hardly see anybody leave at all. I guess the problem could be worse at lower ranks because perhaps people aren't quite as invested.

@frodobaggins: I will readily admit that I am not a high rank player. I have hovered between 40 and 50 all season and I can only speak to my experience of those ranks.

The way to get around the group problem would be that if you are in a group and one of your group members leaves then everyone in the group would still receive a loss. But if you are in a group of 3, for instance, then the other 3 players would not receive a loss.

@n00bs7ay3r: I totally see where you're coming from. From my experience as I've said, the main time I see players leave is when your team is getting badly beat because they don't have the character to see it though. I could see them doing something like if someone on your team leaves (that isn't in your group) you receive much less of an rank loss/much more if you actually end up winning. I think taking the loss away completely would be too much but as I say I hardly see leavers so the problem doesn't really affect me so of course I would say that.

Remove Genji and Winston and then delete Zarya and DVA. Fire anyone who thought being able to accidentally block game-changing shots in a competitive shooter incidentally with one button press was a good idea. The number of times I've had amazing arrows in flight on a Genji only for them to be blocked by an objectively terrible shield from a Zarya that didn't even know Genji was in danger would make Kaplan's head spin. Today I did a really critical long range Mei ult and Genji dashed in and hit deflect just hoping to do some damage, turning the my ult around on our team and losing us the game. By accident.

[DVA eats blizzard designer's Zarya ult from 10yds around a corner because she was spamming her defense matrix at someone else] "This is good"

So glad Genji is finally getting nerfed. It had become insane, a very skilled Genji could carry his team to victory. He may or may not be an instant pick for both teams every single match now.

Should also see some more Lucio+Mercy combos instead of just Lucio+Zen now aswell.

Would it be rude to post a picture of salt in response to this post