Gonna go down the list and cover stuff I find important in the patch notes, and also address stuff that I feel that maybe should have been addressed in the patch.
- All healing effects now work on shields. This is pretty good for Zenyatta, small buff to Symettra’s usefulness, AND, most importantly, buffs the crap out of Zarya. I can see her being picked more and more, now.
- Display changes to make enemy effects more noticeable is nice. You may have seen a Mei ice block at long range before and at a glance wasn’t 100% sure it was an enemy or teammate - now you know.
- Muzzle flash down for a lot of weapons is definitely welcome. Soldier 76 was especially nightmarish to play in the past.
- Ultimate changes are pretty cool. I would still prefer if you lost a bit of your charge when you died. I understand the competitive game mode isn’t set in stone for how it’s going to be played, and people haven’t figured it out, but it’d be annoying if it devolves into teams playing passive waiting for ults ala tf2 waiting for uber.
- Bastion changes are interesting. Can’t really sneak behind him too easily anymore, and you can’t do the good ol fly at him as D.va with def matrix on to kill him super quickly. Definitely needs to be focused down quickly - Charged widowmaker + a few rockets at the same time should do the trick. Treat him like a heavy in TF2!
- D.va changes weren’t enough IMO. Her defensive/offensive prowess wasn’t just strong for her def matrix, it was her mobility. Maybe nerf the boost by tuning its cd or duration.
- Mercy changes are BIG. Actually has to be in harms way to be able to get a proper res off. Will probably need a zarya shield or monkey to protect her when ressing in some situations for sure. Good positioning even more important.
- Pharah ‘nerf’ made me a little sad. A bit harder to max the usage of your boost when climbing over some areas to go for a sneaky flank, but I can understand the reasoning when you had people hanging out on Hollywood last cap.
- Reinhardt nerfs very very good, plus the minor ‘buffs’ to compensate end up going alright for the hero. His damage definitely was pretty damn ridiculous. I think the stun duration needs to turn down a little bit tho. maybe by 10-15%? thereabouts.
- Not sure exactly about the Roadhog interaction. I think you can still either rewind/ghost form this at the end (unless the roadhog has good ping maybe). Need someone else to confirm
- Soldier 76 bit too strong now, imo. Great mobility, even better dps, and his long range is still good. You can just bink people across the map with your first 5(?) accurate bullets, stop shooting for a sec, rinse and repeat. Maybe make it more like 3 shots, or increase the ‘cooldown’ between 100% accurate and not 100%? Can see him becoming almost staple in comp play.
- Symmetra change is p neat. Some people in pub were able to have a huge teleporter uptime which would have been a menace.
- Torbjorn changes are quite big. He’s essentially a mini sentry engineer now, with a better weapon, PLUS he drops armor for his team which is very useful. Maybe tune down the range on the turrets, though, just slightly!
- Zenyatta. Surprised this hero didn’t get tuned. I understand he’s super damn squishy and his mobility sucks ass, but OoD is just too damn strong. You can cast it almost halfway across the map and just keep tabs on one dude too long. Pharah giving your team problems? What about a Genji? Not a problem. You now have permanent wallhack on that guy, and you can either kill him yourself or just tell your team where they are/track them yourselves. Reduce the max range cast and/or give it a duration. I don't feel you disadvantage your team that much, if at all, if you aren't swapping it to dudes you wanna focus in fights.
- Interface changes they made are pretty neat. Finally a kill feed - woohoo! Scoreboard statistics are nice, too. However, I feel they need to really rework the whole overlay of the scoreboard. Just make it like TF2’s one tbh!
- A lot better visual indicators now, especially for something like Mei’s ult. Very useful.
- New game mode is pretty fun. I think the potential duration for the rounds is too short, though. I understand it’s bo3, but even a max duration game with all 3 games being played (EDIT:) probably isn’t long enough. Not sure how they can tweak this. The map is pretty fun, too.
- Haven’t played the new CP map yet. I keep getting it then getting popped into another game/map.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think of the patch, whether you disagree/agree with any points I made!
EDIT: minor vocab change
EDIT2: I probably didn't touch enough on other heroes (like widowmaker, probably), but I might do a better write-up a few weeks into the beta. This is just after a few hours of playing the new patch
EDIT3: More vocab changes
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