Overwatch Has Changed A lot

Hello ladies and gents. I'm back! I was afk for a couple days and I actually tried going to sleep early and waking up early. I liked it! Anyways, let's have a deep disscussion about Overwatch.

Overwatch has completely changed with the last patch and I feel like its affected the game in a bunch of major ways. The biggest and most obvious change is the increased ultimate ability cost by 25%. The game has a much better pace to it now than it did before. Before teams could teamwipe enemy teams by just building up their ultimates really quickly and if they had great communication they could use all their ults at the same time and win engagements everytime. Basically the team that had better communication would always win because their ults would be timed better.

Now, ultimates are much more important and timing for them has to be perfect for the teamwipes. In addition, shooting in the game feels a lot more important.. Shooting has become important in a first person shooting game! How exciting!

Soldier 76 is like god tier right now. He does something like 150 more dps (damage per second). The only dps better than him right now is McCree and I would argue that unless you're a pro McCree you should play Soldier instead. He can melt through Reinhardt shields pretty quickly if he's defended well too. He's definitely going to become a must pick in this new meta.

Pharah got a nice buff with 35% lift thrusts so she's in the air all the time now. Pro Pharahs will rain death from above and do fine but I also think that she still has the same problems she had before in the sense that Zenyatta can discord orb her, Soldier can shoot her down, Ana/Widow/Hanzo can snipe her, and McCree can just pistol her at medium range. She's great but she has so many weaknesses I just don't see her coming back even at my level of play.

Now, for Sombra. Sombra is an interesting concept put in Overwatch. I love her kit, her voicelines, her skins, the fact that she's a cute latina hacker, etc. She's freaking great. But honestly I don't think she will become a part of the meta and I don't think she will become popular in the pro scene or even at my level of play.

I'm saying this because that's what I'm seeing in the game right now. I've seen pro players play Sombra and even I've played better with her on my good games. Obviously we still have a lot of learning to do with her and her kit but her damage is so low why would anyone prefer Sombra over say Tracer/Genji/Reaper? The other flankers do a much better job of killing. Sombra is more of a poking and finishing hit kind of hero. She can be played aggressively but we haven't seen any fantastic Sombra plays where she's killing everyone on the enemy team like say a Tracer, Genji, or Reaper.

What's the problem you ask? The main thing is that her gun is very weak. Not only that but the spread is kinda all over the place because its an smg. I like the fact that she can hack health packs but if you're constantly running around hacking healthpacks sometimes you aren't going to be there for your team. I notice that Sombra players like to go off on their own a lot. Her stealth is good but you can still be spotted and shot at even when you're running super fast. Her ultimate sounded bad ass and overpowered at first but in practice I haven't seen anything too special from emp other than a cancelled Lucio ultimate and a Reinhardt shield cancellation. Lastly, she goes down like a wet paper nap. Very much glass cannon.

With all these problems its easy to see that Somba will have a hard time getting into the pro scene, even my current level of play. Nobody is running Sombra for competitive at my level. I was actually shocked at first because I've been playing everyday since the new patch and I've only seen her in one comp game. I think they can tweak her in future patches and make her better.

Honestly they should do what they usually do. Buff a character so strong that everybody plays her and then nerf her hard so that she can fit into the meta when everybody likes her. Blizzard does this with all their heroes and I bet they'll do it again with Sombra. They did this with Ana and it worked like a charm. 

In conclusion, Overwatch will never be the same game again. I like to think that the game has changed for the better but sometimes I miss the old days, which were only like a few months ago. Sure, every team is running Lucio still but comps are becoming more diverse (at least at my level) and Blizzard is trying new things like Sombra. Not everything is good but at the same time its great that the game is getting updates and still going strong. I'm still getting into games within 30 seconds during the day. That's pretty neat.

Hack the planet.

Overwatch General Discussion

Here I'd just like to talk about Overwatch in general. Let's start with talking a bit about Competitive. Competitive Mode might possibly not be my favorite part of the game. Although I am extremely competitive when it comes to games, having been on a Starcraft 2 team, participating in tons of Super Smash Bros 4 tournaments, and now delving into competitive Overwatch. There's times in Overwatch in competitive where I literally wanna scream out of anger and frustration. Sometimes I wonder if my dad or neighbor hear me when I do. They probably think I'm crazy.

Anyways, I like to think I have it under control now. I still get a little sad and mad when I lose a competitive match but when you're a solo queue player like myself you eventually come to the understanding that you will lose many games. However, you will also win many games too. You'll still have like a 50-50 win ratio, sometimes even higher if you play your mains a lot and you have more time to play than the average gamer.

Then there's the other people on the Overwatch gaming experience spectrum. Some people just like the game because its so damn fun. These players focus on Quick Match (non-ranked).  I've noticed a lot of girls are this way about Overwatch. I've met a lot of girls online that play Overwatch and they enjoy it more for this aspect of the game. I can enjoy and see the game in this aspect as well. But the extremeness of my personality just makes me only want to play Competitive Mode. I only play Quick Match when my friends are online. It's a blast playing with them.

Another factor to keep in mind about this game is the fact that once you play the game for an hour or so you've pretty much seen everything that the game has to offer. It doesn't have a robust character learning system or anything. Instead, you just jump in and play. Every character is already unlocked and you just start in and play. That's pretty neat.

Overwatch has not only taken over the gaming circuit its also taken over the cosplay world too. My friend was at Anime Expo this year and he said he saw a ton of Overwatch cosplays. Mei is bae. 

Everybody's favorite cyborg ninja was nerfed pretty hard. Genji was always pretty overpowered but he needs a good team around him in order to be that way. I feel like he was nerfed too hard but I still think he's still super strong. Like yeah, they nerfed him but it doesn't matter because super good Genji players are still gonna annihilate with him. Besides, now that Genji isn't the hero that everybody complains about there's going to be someone to replace him in that aspect.

Mei might possibly be the most annoying character in the game now. There's something about being frozen and one-shot insta-killed in the head that is really frustrating as a support player. I main Mercy, Ana, Zenyatta, and sometimes play Lucio so when Mei freezes me and right click head shots me I pretty much die every time. I'm going to have to learn to stay away from Mei's during this Competitive Season.

Roadhog's hook seems annoying too. On the new map Eichenwalde, it seems like it has too many great opportunities to get hooked and right click insta-killed by his shotgun. One thing that a lot of people have been talking about is the fact that sometimes Roadhog's hook goes through walls. That's geeked. It is cool though that Roadhog can hook Dva when she uses her mech ultimate and throw it somewhere else, thus protecting the team. "I'm a one man apocalyspe."

Many of the characters in the game are designed to be annoying. It feels humiliating and shitty getting hooked by Roadhog or frozen by Mei but at the same time that's what makes this game so great. When you see your death on the kill cam feed you think about how shitty it was and how you're going to straight up revenge kill that player and help your team take the objectives. Out for blood.

Although this game can be frustrating it is also extremely rewarding. I've only been playing first person shooters for a short amount of time and I like to think that I've gotten much better over a short period of time. Team Fortress 2 was my warm up for Overwatch and I've become pretty good. I could always be better but that will take more time and practice. The great thing about Overwatch is that you don't have to put in too much time for the game to be fun. If you want to be great you will have to practice many hours a day but most people are content to just enjoy the game casually.

To make a long story short Overwatch is just plain awesome. If you haven't tried it out yet you definitely should. It's still the hot game out there and its been like three months already. I hope it keeps up the momentum. Also, when are they gonna reveal Sombra? They really messed up on keeping up the suspense with that. That'll do it for tonight. Keep reading and keep gaming. 

"Life is more than a series of ones and zeroes".

New Skill Tiers In Overwatch

 

So the new skill tiers system is on a 5000 point scale instead of the 100 point scale in Season 1. This means you should expect your Season 2 rating to be a multiple of five compared to Season 1. The ratings work like Starcraft where there's leagues. There's Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster. Between each there's a 500 point skill difference. A lot of people are most likely going to be between Silver and Platinum. Getting higher will take more work for the average gamer with limited time. The Season 1 conversion to Season 2 looks like so:

Rank 20 (1000-Bronze)
Rank 30 (1500-Silver)
Rank 40 (2000-Gold)
Rank 50 (2500-Platinum)
Rank 60 (3000-Diamond)
Rank 70 (3500-Master)
Rank 80 (4000-Grandmaster)

You can't fall down ranks if your at the 3000 level. Anything higher than that and you can start to fall down in ranks. This is a feel good sort of change. I think you should fall down in rank even at the lower ranks. They should make it more competitive in that aspect. It would be like Starcraft where when you lose games you lose points and drop rank if you lose a lot. Perhaps I just have that competitive Starcraft mentality but that seems like the way to go.

I feel like Overwatch is going more for the fun aspect of their Competitive Mode. I think Blizzard listens and knows their fan base so well that they knew this is what the players want. Good on them. Sometimes in games Competitive Modes aren't so fun and eventually people stop playing. Hopefully Overwatch lives up to all the hype for many a gaming sessions.