Overwatch Thread: UPRISING PvE, HotS Promotional Event 2.0, and New D.VA Skin!

[commandercool]

Played a bunch of Uprising on hard earlier. Didn't win a single round, it's preeeetty tough. I'm finding myself getting stuck as a healer most of the time, but I've been experimenting with other characters. Zarya is kind of sketchy because the enemy burst damage isn't that high for most of the game, making charging her energy meter tricky and making her bubbles a lot harder to use. Mei is great at taking down big targets (freezing the shield guys so they lose their shields is valuable) but struggles against big swarms of enemies. Symmetra's weapon is great in this scenario, both modes, but her drones are very undwhelming because enemies have so much HP and I've been having trouble keeping her alive. Might try Winston at some point since the ability to handle big swarms of cutters seems nice and his ultimate seems valuable, but his lack of burst damage is worrying against the big enemies.

Edit: Okay, finally beat it on hard. I was Zarya on just an all-around balanced team. Noooot sure I can handle expert, might give it a shot later if I can get a few people to play with.

[pineyappled]

Uprising on hard is pretty easy, but you need serious coordination to pull off legendary.

Played ~10 times w/ the default team and didn't make it past the second Bastion before giving up the ghost.

[Silent Harmony]

Expert and, especially, Legendary basically require a premade practicing together (or a very high-skill pug) to pull off. It's intentionally tuned to be a true challenge that requires everyone to perform their job 100%.

Ironically in my experience I've gotten better teams on Normal than Hard. I don't even mean how the mode on Normal is basically boring even for a Bronze-level like me; I mean my teammates actually perform their jobs, aim better, and coordinate better on Normal than any Hard pug I've been in. My friend has a theory that it's because Normal is full of high-skill PvP players that just want to get the 9 boxes out of the way ASAP and with minimal effort, which I guess makes sense.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Most pugs playing on Hard are usually dipping their toes in because they think Normal is drop dead eazy. Hubris tends to settle in by the second AA gun; if not there, usually by the time Bastion shows up.

I've had scattered experience with Hard players. Battle Mercys or otherwise ignorant to wounded players are actually more common somehow, Torbs have major difficulties remembering to go back to their turret to heal it, Reins are more conservative and more likely to shield. Tracers... Honestly not much change aside from having to disengage more due to the higher damage.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

So a few new changes are percolating in the PTR. Genji and Hanzo lose their attack cooldown off a wall (not their actual cooldowns, but they can attack immediately off the wall now), Hanzo can keep pulling his bow off a climb, Orisa loses some offensive strength in exchange for being able to shield more frequently, and strangely enough, Soldier:76 got a reduction in damage... from 20/hit to 19/hit. Admittedly, this does affect his killing power slightly, but I'm not sure a 1 damage reduction is the right choice in that.

[commandercool]

Yeah, I don't know what I want to happen to Soldier but I'm not sure it's that. Hopefully he gets more nerfs or a different nerf after testing I guess.

Can any Genji or especially Hanzo players comment about how big these buffs are? They seem relatively small but I don't know if maybe they open up new strategies or something. I'm sure they weren't intended as huge hero-changing buffs and I didn't even know they couldn't do that before, but I never play them so I don't really know what the deal is.

[commandercool]

So does anyone else play on console? Is console Overwatch dead? I swear my last 10+ games have all either involved one team only having four people on it, or it was a bunch of random level 50s against a six-stack team of level 400+ players in quickplay. I've been seeing this stuff increasingly often in the last month or so, sometimes matching me against the same premade team four, five, six games in a row. This is the kind of matchmaking that I expect to see from a game that hasn't been popular in years, not a very popular modern game. I've been playing at like 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM, probably not quite prime time but it's not like I'm playing at completely unreasonable hours.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Console activity's died out a little bit, though I'm of the opinion that it's because people are burned out after the Uprising event, are doing other stuff while waiting for the Anniversary event, or are busy in comp because the season ends sometime this month. Queues for me in QP aren't particularly longer than usual for me, but I'm used to waits around 2-3 minutes.

[Aya Reiko]

Console activity's died out a little bit, though I'm of the opinion that it's because people are burned out after the Uprising event, are doing other stuff while waiting for the Anniversary event, or are busy in comp because the season ends sometime this month. Queues for me in QP aren't particularly longer than usual for me, but I'm used to waits around 2-3 minutes.

And based on the datamined info from the XBox Version, the Anniversary Event starts this Tuesday (According to the info, the Event Crates will stop being sold on June 5.) 

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Anniversary event confirmed for May 23.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Welp, I still suck ridiculous balls in 1v1 Elimination, even if the format's changed slightly. You now have a pool of three heroes (chosen at random; Lucio is banned) that both of you have free pick on. This changes from round to round, so one engagement might give you Genji, Soldier:76, and McCree; another might be Roadhog, Soldier:76, and Sombra.

[Aya Reiko]

Anniversary Event is on with new Dance emotes for everyone...

And Mei's is Hare Hare Yukai.

[commandercool]

Does anybody really like 1v1? Maybe Some people love it, but it could not be less fun for me. I don't know I guess I just suck abysmally at FPS games and not having teamwork to fall back on brings that into stark relief, but I hate it and everyone I play with seems to hate it.

[Tea Devil]

The only fun I or my friends have ever had with it is some meme games with each other. Taking the teamwork out of a team-based game really does not work. Like, at all.

Also, guess who didn't know what the "running man" was until this event :V

[Aya Reiko]

Does anybody really like 1v1? Maybe Some people love it, but it could not be less fun for me. I don't know I guess I just suck abysmally at FPS games and not having teamwork to fall back on brings that into stark relief, but I hate it and everyone I play with seems to hate it.

I'd tolerate it a bit more if it weren't a Best of 9 match.  Having to get to 5 wins is a bit much.

But unless there's a loot box involved, I just ignore it regardless.

[commandercool]

Well, having an event up doesn't reeeeally seem to have helped that "getting matched against the same six-stack team of much much higher levels players for numerous consecutive matches" problem. Is this a very-low-player-activity-on-console problem? Am I picking bad game modes? Am I picking bad times to play? Everyone else doesn't seem to be having this problem, but it's really turning me off from ever wanting to like, play the game.

[Tea Devil]

console

Yeah, unfortunately, that sums it up nicely. Console version is very unpopular compared to PC.

[Aya Reiko]

Coming soon (and live on the PTR):
* McCree's Deadeye his its lock-on charge faster
* Reaper loses his Soul Orb collection ability, and it gets replaced with life steal
* Roadhog's scrapgun get its damage nerfed, but rate of fire and clip size are increased
* New Map: Lunar Colony - a Control Point map.

[commandercool]

I'm excited about the upcoming low-gravity arcade mode. That sounds like a blast. Or maybe it'll be horrible, I don't know.

I've actually been having fun with Capture The Flag lately. Nothing about it has changed, it's still bad in concept, but people have realized it just draws infinitely unless they play like maniacs so every game I'm played recently has just been all offense 100% of the time. I've definitely lost games because nobody was guarding our flag, but I'll take that over endless grindy turtlefests any day.

[Edible]

Kinda wish they'd keep Reaper's orbs, maybe make them drop after he did X damage.  Picking them up is a more interesting mechanic than just auto-regenning health while shooting.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Low-G on the long flanking route? I can dig it.

Low-G in Arcade? holy shit I want that now.

How bad did Roadhog get nerfed? I can't imagine he can't still hook into one-shot anything he already can. Increased capacity might make him a bit harder counter-Tank than he is now.

[commandercool]

Kinda wish they'd keep Reaper's orbs, maybe make them drop after he did X damage.  Picking them up is a more interesting mechanic than just auto-regenning health while shooting.

This new mechanic also seems like it potentially leaves him hanging on by a thread after a big brawl too, as opposed to always ending fights at full health if he wins. The new one is ultimately almost certainly better and he definitely has the tools to safely find health packs, but that does seem like it might be a problem occasionally. Especially on king-of-the-hill I would think.

[O4rfish]

How bad did Roadhog get nerfed? I can't imagine he can't still hook into one-shot anything he already can.

The number of heroes he can one-shot from full health is about half what it is now.  I suspect the successful Roadhog players will get their target damaged first, either from teammates or Right-click, and then hook.

[Edible]

Notably, he can't alpha Genji and 76 anymore via hook-M1-melee, which has huge implications for the competitive meta as I understand it.

[Spotty Len]

RIP Roadhog, he feels like a bigger and slower Reaper now, just a big damage sponge just like before, except he lost his gimmick.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Sometimes Torbjorn surprises me. There's this one spot on Numbani Defense Point A that has overwatch over the side entrances and the Point and is well hidden from the main entrance. Reaper, Genji, and (maybe?) Hanzo can pretty easily reach this spot from Attack, and Lucio has to ghetto wallclimb to get to it from below.

So of course out of an enemy team with Reaper, Hanzo, Genji, and Lucio, only the Lucio had the sense to sneak up to the turret in that one spot. Admittedly, they were quite distracted with the rest of my team, but it took them nearly half the game to destroy it once.

Anyway, Roadhog nerf probably is only personally going to affect my matchup as D.Va, since I basically only main her and Android Krillin, and he's squishy enough that the damage nerf will still end him. Seriously, though, half Roadhog's current kill list needs follow-up when this hits? Jeez.

[Aya Reiko]

New Feature via the PTR...

Actually, a feature has been removed in the PTR and will eventually reach the main game;  "Rate This Match" is going away.   Blizz concluded it gave them no meaningful info other than new players used it more often than vets.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

So, uh, Summer Games is going to be happening again this year, if the PTR leak is any indication. Are any of us any good at Lucioball?

[Silent Harmony]

New Feature via the PTR...

Actually, a feature has been removed in the PTR and will eventually reach the main game;  "Rate This Match" is going away.   Blizz concluded it gave them no meaningful info other than new players used it more often than vets.

Actually it told them something else: people hate losing (rated 1/3) and loved winning (3/3).  :V

Honestly I'm not surprised it's gone. It was a good concept but because of how vague it is and how little it seemed to matter to long-term players it was doomed to fail,

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

So the Game Grumps tried to teach their least-capable FPS player (Dan) how to Overwatch. It'll make you cringe, laugh, or maybe both.