Well I hear that. I know a lot of people like ana because she does well just skirting the battle. And if you can snipe she’s a hoss, and a true support character with the healing and grenade as well.
What I can’t get past is Bastion hasn’t seemed to change despite being the most complained about character, and with good reason.
I still feel like the game would be better with that one removed.
Ehh, Bastion is a weird one because he’s pretty easy to counter, but sometimes just no one in the game will do it and he’s crazy dominant. I’m not sure if you can fix that without making him full garbage.
(My view is probably skewed by watching too many pro matches tho)
That’s interesting. I can’t get anyone to play competitive with me, and it’s not worth trying it with randos.
Well, I’m not in a high enough bracket for it to be significantly different than quick match (although I don’t know that I’ve seen a Bastion), so, outside of numbers going up, I’m not sure if I would try to sell anyone on it.
Regardless, though Bastion is…
I find Bastion has a lot of problems accomplishing a much of anything, unless a good portion of the enemy team plays to protect him. A Bastion without any support is super easy to get around.
Also, I like Ana a lot! I play mostly supports in this game; I have 15 hours on Lucio and now 5 hours on Ana. I think she’s super fun, and you don’t really have to be a great sniper to play her. I find she’s actually much better mid-range because the grenade and sleep dart are hard to land and pretty ineffective at long range.
The grenade is actually amazing; 1 grenade + three shots basically full-heals any character (+100hp for grenade, and then +75 heal per shot * 3 shots * 2 grenade multiplier = 550hp. It’s also really good against enemies that have a support baby-sitting them or that have a lot of self heal, since it blocks healing. The debuff even stops enemies from picking up health packs.
Also, it’s great to use against enemies at point-blank range because you can catch both them and yourself/an ally in the blast, which creates a giant health swing. You gain 100 health and they lose 60, for a total swing of 160.
Her sleep dart is an amazing ultimate stopper (I had a game where I hit McCree with it every time he ulted) and sort of hard counters Bastion (unless he has a Reinhardt shield or a very persistant D.Va). It completely knocks him out of turret mode. If the enemy team has a flanker that’s bothering you, it can even be used for that (although flankers tend to be pretty mobile and the dart can be hard to land). If you do end up putting someone to sleep, you have a lot of time to run away. If they’re low enough health, you can even attempt to burst them down with a shot -> melee -> grenade combo (170 damage, and each move cancels the animation of the previous one).
Ana’s ult is probably the weakest portion of her kit, but it can still be very effective if used at the right time. Paired with an offense hero’s ultimate or a tank it can be the little bump you need to swing a fight in your favor. It’s pretty ridiculous when paired with a Genji ult or just thrown on a Winston right before he jumps in. It’s no 5 man res or a teleporter, but Ana more than makes up for it with her high burst healing and the general utility of her kit.
Full disclosure: t he joke among my friends is that I have divided the cast into two categories: characters that require aiming and those that don’t, and I only play the latter. This is not entirely true, but I will pick, for example, 76 over McCree dispite considering him the weaker character. I somehow manage to even miss point blank fans, but that’s a different bizarre shortcoming that has followed me across games. (I suspect TF2’s pyro gave me bad habits, being my first multiplayer shooter.) Ana is definitely a need-to-aim character and plays pretty similar to McCree in my limited exposure. The zoom on her gun doesn’t seem to have any mechanical function that I can see, so, yeah, I have to agree that she’s best mid-range. Additionally, her healing requires aiming (unlike the other healers ) and even her CC requires more than many characters. We’ll have to see how I feel about her after I have a few months practice of pointing the cursor where I want it.
Her scope does have a mechanical function but it’s subtle! When not scoped your shots are actually projectiles, which means they take time to hit their target but they benefit from the larger projectile hitbox (or I guess in some cases it’s a detriment, because you can’t shoot around your fat-ass D.Va.)
When scoped, your gun changes from a projectile to hitscan.
But yeah, no damage or healing difference between scoped and unscoped. And it’s just sort of personal call whether you should scope or not for any given shot. At extreme ranges always scope, because at that point you’d have to significantly lead the projectile and the larger unscoped hitbox does not do enough to mitigate that.
Also, weird, I actually find aiming with Soldier harder than aiming with McCree because you have to track your targets. With McCree you can just swipe and land a single shot and not worry about keeping the cursor on your target for the whole clip. I have a similar problem tracking with Tracer (although I’m getting better with her, and she has better ways to close the distance).
Yeah, I’ve been playing competitive a lot just because I like the longer match format, and Bastion regularly gets wrecked there. He’s almost too easy to counter, unless the team supports him, which is exactly what he should be. D-Va’s changes are pretty welcome though, and she has been my go-to in Competitive. The kills from the SD are a bit lower, but you still get them, and it is great for point control.
Soloing in competitive is…interesting? Usually pretty fun, but you get the occasional asslord who yells for someone to be a healer but won’t give up his DPS character (usually Reaper) to do it. Or people telling you you suck even though you are at 4 golds. That’s hilarious. Also that I am getting 4 golds as D-Va says y’all DPS’s is slacking off something fierce.
Yeah, I basically assume at least 1 of our offense/defense heroes isn’t going to do an appreciable amount of damage over a match. I often queue with 2 others, and if at least one of us isn’t DPS we won’t win (which is annoying, because pubbies almost always pick DPS; we’d do a lot better with a two healer comp if we could rely on their damage).
Yeah I mostly play as Tanks and Lucio, so I am usually pretty good in Pubs, but the DPSes are usually pretty terrible.
Why is DPS the default mode for people to go to? I never got it. It was my same experience in FF14, which was also funny because I tanked there and didn’t even know what waiting in a queue was.
I think I’ll give this a while tonight
All I learned doing this is that Ana’s hitbox for her head is fucking weird, especially from behind
I gave Ana another shot. I really just don’t think she’s for me. I can have more of an impact in a minute as Zarya or D.Va than an entire game as Ana.
It’s quite embarrassing to see me try to heal a Tracer as Ana
Yeah, I mean, she probably has one of the higher skill floors in the game. I wouldn’t play her if you’re not enjoying her. It took me a couple nights of only playing her before it felt like I was making a significant impact.
It helps if you’re queuing with a buddy that likes the play tanks. The burst healing alone can really change the tides.
I’d like to be good with her because she seems super fun. At this point, picking up any new character is probably going to have to wait for D.Va nerf because she’s a ton of fun and also stupidly good? I wish Mercy had her pistol, it’s crazy how much damage you get to do instead of dying. It’s very hard to justify playing someone else when my favorite character also wins me games.
pretty much all tanks or lucio for me, too, though I have also been playing junkrat and torb a lot. I’ll even go d.va if there’s another tank, though, just because she’s still the best for flanking, chasing off snipers, slamming into ults (so easy to block and disrupt mccree, reaper, roadhog, etc), dogging their healer… d.va just rules.
next time they nerf her, though, i think what they’ll do is make it so she can’t suit up immediately after her ult. it’s ridiculously fun, but it’s a bit much when you can just eject and launch your mech at a chokepoint, then hop right back in.
I anticipate a suit health nerf, myself.
But yeah, I’m pretty set on having two tanks in every game. About the only time I’m not playing D.Va or Mercy lately is if we already have two tanks and two healers which is about never. I should probably swing back and try to learn a offensive character at least, but ehhh
Edit: Oh, that’s not always true. If there’s a really good Tracer on the other team and my team is not peeling for me I’ll play Lucio over Mercy
I know there are separate top 500s in Competitive Play by region, but does the regioning of competitive play block you from playing as a team with players from other regions? It would seem reasonable to me if they did it to make it likelier to have good connections, but I haven’t been able to confirm if this is actually the case (because I’m still grinding towards unlocking ranked).
Doesn’t look like it does, you can pick which region to connect to through the battle.net launcher and it’ll carry over your unlocks, level and skill rating in ranked (which seems weird but I don’t make video games).