Thoughts on Hero Balance

[AbsolutePitch]

Hello people,

Just figured I'd get your thoughts. This is my personal reflection on the balance between the heroes. Now, I understand they're not meant to be perfectly balanced around one another and that circumstance comes into play. I also don't know what the design philosophy is that Blizzard were going for. Let me know if you agree/disagree with the following, and if there's something I'm missing (i.e "oh when that happens you're supposed to do this").

* "Heroes that don't have to aim are especially damaging to Tracer" - why do we have heroes that don't have to aim in an FPS? There's nothing like Winston running after a weaker hero and just pzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzting him/her to death without an opportunity to escape. The same applies to Zenyatta click click clicking away. This might make sense if he did less damage, seeing as he's a healer, but he does do substantial damage if you're in his line of sight. Same goes to Symmetra, who also slows the shit out of you in the process. All of these are detrimental to melee and close range.

* Tracer has a ridiculous amount of mobility. I understand her health is meant to be low to compensate for it, but her damage is not, especially considering she doesn't shoot in short bursts like Genji or Reaper. Running after her with Genji as she runs back and forth, completing eluding me for the entire duration of my ulti, feels a bit stupid. This could be an anecdote but I think many will agree she is incredibly annoying. This may be her design, but at the very least I think her damage should be lowered.

* Hanzo is a shittier version of Widowmaker. Their aim is more or less equal, especially headshots, but her mobility is more functional and she has way better defense. Widowmaker can either machine gun you down or hook away when endangered. Hanzo can't burst, and his ability to climb isn't that handy when trying to escape. I think his ulti slightly trumps hers, but that's circumstantial. He needs a bit more defensive capacity.

* Torbjorn's turret and Symmetra's sentry pods both are overpowered. It's pretty stupid for me to walk into a room and then be punished for walking into the room. There's no limit on how many of them she can hide anywhere she feels like, and they slow and kill you within a matter of seconds - not much you can do to counter especially if you're not a tank. You're not going to hit all of them once you find them out. You walk into a room and you're dead. This is different than Junkrat's trap, which can be a one shot death but at least you have the option of seeing it if you're perceptive. Same with Torbjorn's turret. It does way more damage than he does, which is cool, but it also has 100% accuracy if you're in its line of sight - it literally locks on you and bursts really quickly. You also can't destroy it with one hero, especially if you're not a tank. It's a hero who has a tool that can mow down other heroes with ease. And it's not like he's useless either. He can still kill you even tho he's quite squishy. I understand the turret is central to his play, but with most heroes 1 on 1 I have some sort of chance of outplaying them because they're human. The turret is pure, automated, brainless damage. Either the turret's damage should be lower, or its speed less, or its health less, or destroying it should incur some sort of penalty like he can't build another one for 30 seconds or something.

* Bastion's damage is a bit too ridiculous. If you're defending and you pick two or three bastions getting past is almost impossible unless you counter with three Genjis. Genji's ability to demolish Bastion is actually comical, but so is Bastion's ability to damage everyone else. Ironically Genji destroys Bastion so hilariously because he's reflecting his own damage back at him. It's literally a machine gun that does massive damage and can heal itself. He can kill Reinhardt in 2 seconds or deplete his shield in 4. I think his damage should be lowered slightly.

* Roadhog's ability to just hook a weaker hero and one shot them, I can accept that if there's a lot of skill involved. His reticle is like 4 times the size of Hanzo's. It's not that difficult to hook someone especially if they're coming down a narrow path. Increase the amount of skill/accuracy involved if you're going to allow a hero to one shot half of the other heroes. His ability to heal is also a bit stupid - it's not his ulti and he's a tank.


That's all from me. I understand that these are subjective complaints and say more about the heroes I prefer than anything, but I do think they're valid. There's a lot of diversity and heroes I have problems with but you can counter those without getting into a composition competition. Maybe the composition vs composition thing is meant to be central to the play, but then what's the joy in playing a hero you actually enjoy playing? I get that the more limited your heroes the less likely you can win, but I don't want to be playing a game where I have to get good at all the heroes and then just keep countering the enemy's composition. I play for an hour to two per session and I don't have the time to get too dedicated to the entire game.



(virtual) pennies for your thoughts.

[AngryCoco]

Zenyatta does not have autoaimed shots and Symmetra can only have 6 turrets up at a time. Not gonna add anything else

[Deleted]

Roadhogs hook is the only thing pissing me off.
Too easy to connect, too much of a hard counter to absolutely anything in the game.
It's stops about pretty much every ult, his followup damage kills about anything, even tanks (with a little support) and he has quite a lot self sustain.. which is okay if it wasn't for that damn easy hook.

How often do we see "hook accuracy 80%" cards and you know that it's nothing special..

[AbsolutePitch]

Zenyatta does not have autoaimed shots and Symmetra can only have 6 turrets up at a time. Not gonna add anything else

6 turrets will kill most heroes in < 2 seconds. lol

[Deleted]

Do you play on Console? Because Symmetra turrets are pretty much nothing but a small DPS increase in most situations on PC. No matter where or how you place them. You might be able to trap a single hero here or there, but that's not really helping a whole lot in most situations. Your team has to play around your sentries and most peeps don't do that.

[AbsolutePitch]

Roadhogs hook is the only thing pissing me off.
Too easy to connect, too much of a hard counter to absolutely anything in the game.
It's stops about pretty much every ult, his followup damage kills about anything, even tanks (with a little support) and he has quite a lot self sustain.. which is okay if it wasn't for that damn easy hook.

How often do we see "hook accuracy 80%" cards and you know that it's nothing special..

Yep. If I charge with Reinhardt and he hooks me it stops my charge.

[Pottersan]

6 turrets will kill most heroes in < 2 seconds. lol

But they die with 1 hit, I mean any bit of splash damage destroys them - I agree they can be ridiculous maybe at the start of a match, simply because you may not know where they are, but once you figure it out, they are cake.

[AbsolutePitch]

Do you play on Console? Because Symmetra turrets are pretty much nothing but a small DPS increase in most situations on PC. No matter where or how you place them.

I play on PC. Genji walks into a room with 3 or more turrets he's dead in about 2 seconds, 3 tops. Reinhardt dies in 2-3 if there's 6 turrets behind his shield. The bad part isn't so much that they will kill you, it's that you can't destroy all of them, and trying to pretty much seals your fate. Also if you walk in to a room and they start attacking you, they're usually placed on the wall facing inward so they still attack you if you try to leave the room the way you came. They don't attack you at the line where if you just go back they'd stop.

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But they die with 1 hit, I mean any bit of splash damage destroys them - I agree they can be ridiculous maybe at the start of a match, simply because you may not know where they are, but once you figure it out, they are cake.

They also slow you down. That part is the icing on the cake.

[HumbleDuck]

It seems you want something like CoD:MW2.
Overwatch is fun because almost all characters feel overpowered and yet can be countered.

[Chaosinciter]

Hello people,

* Hanzo is a shittier version of Widowmaker. Their aim is more or less equal, especially headshots, but her mobility is more functional and she has way better defense. Widowmaker can either machine gun you down or hook away when endangered. Hanzo can't burst, and his ability to climb isn't that handy when trying to escape. I think his ulti slightly trumps hers, but that's circumstantial. He needs a bit more defensive capacity.

* Torbjorn's turret and Symmetra's sentry pods both are overpowered. It's pretty stupid for me to walk into a room and then be punished for walking into the room. There's no limit on how many of them she can hide anywhere she feels like, and they slow and kill you within a matter of seconds - not much you can do to counter especially if you're not a tank. You're not going to hit all of them once you find them out. You walk into a room and you're dead. This is different than Junkrat's trap, which can be a one shot death but at least you have the option of seeing it if you're perceptive. Same with Torbjorn's turret. It does way more damage than he does, which is cool, but it also has 100% accuracy if you're in its line of sight - it literally locks on you and bursts really quickly. You also can't destroy it with one hero, especially if you're not a tank. It's a hero who has a tool that can mow down other heroes with ease. And it's not like he's useless either. He can still kill you even tho he's quite squishy. I understand the turret is central to his play, but with most heroes 1 on 1 I have some sort of chance of outplaying them because they're human. The turret is pure, automated, brainless damage. Either the turret's damage should be lower, or its speed less, or its health less, or destroying it should incur some sort of penalty like he can't build another one for 30 seconds or something.

* Bastion's damage is a bit too ridiculous. If you're defending and you pick two or three bastions getting past is almost impossible unless you counter with three Genjis. Genjis ability to demolish Bastion is actually comical, but so is Bastion's ability to damage everyone else. It's literally a machine gun that does massive damage and can heal itself. He can kill Reinhardt in 2 seconds or deplete his shield in 4. I think his damage should be lowered slightly.

* Roadhog's ability to just hook a weaker hero and one shot them, I can accept that if there's a lot of skill involved. His reticle is like 4 times the size of Hanzo's. It's not that difficult to hook someone especially if they're coming down a narrow path. Increase the amount of skill/accuracy involved if you're going to allow a hero to one shot half of the other heroes. His ability to heal is also a bit stupid - it's not his ulti and he's a tank.

(virtual) pennies for your thoughts.

ill comment on these 4 as i have the most experience going against or playing as them.

Hanzo: Now while i kind of get peoples obsession with comparing Hanzo and WM this really has to stop. They fill two different roles within the same archtype think of it like a Sniper (WM) vs a Marksman Rifle (Hanzo). While WM does have the advantage at picking targets off due to her hitscan rifle if you can ever close the distance she's pretty much dead (Winston, Genji, Tracer are the three that counter her the hardest Tracer to a lesser degree of course Pharah can do work as well but she has to be careful) even if her Grapple is off CD as Winston can usually just jump right after her, Genji if he gets close can just use his animation cancel combo to burst her almost completely outright and then pick her off with a shuriken or 2 either that or with a properly predicted Deflection can kill her with her own shot, and Tracer can usually kill her before she can grapple if she has decent aim. Hanzo's strength (specially post WM nerf) is that his Sonic Arrow (vision one) is up far more often than WM's ult and allows him to keep an eye on the team if they are trying to push through a choke or if they are going a side route and his ability to actually one shot most the line up with Scatter when aimed correctly and it also acts as a decent tank busting tool as well (in the case of all the Scatter splinters hitting it does 450 damage which is enough to just pop a Winston from 90%). The reason he's considered a weaker pick than WM is just on the fact that no Hanzo ever will land 100% of his shots which makes him a situational gamble as he can just not land over half his shots and do next to nothing or just pop off and wipe the entire enemy team with one dome after the next.

Torb/Symmetra: Symmetra actually does have a limit to the number of sentries she can have up it is 6 at max couple that with the fact they only have 1 health apiece so a Junkrat/Pharah can easily clean out a nest with on well placed explosive even Rein can just walk into the room swing once and take out every single one in the arch of his swing Hanzo's Scatter can also do this rather effectively as well. Torb's turret actually doesn't do more damage than he does it's just the pretty much auto lock-on that makes it seem that way, his primary does 70 damage per with a fire rate of 1.33 so he's getting close to 100 damage per second from his primary fire, alt fire does 60-150 depending on drop off distance (but if you are using his alt fire you should be in pretty much the 5-10 meter range which would be close enough to land all pellets and not far enough for drop off to take effect) now this changes during Molten Core as his turret fires rockets at a rate of 4 per second each doing 14 more damage ontop of the turret firing at 5 RPS for 14 damage each so it does 126 damage per second from his turret but he also gains the 50% fire rate from Molten Core so it evens out. the key to playing against Torbjorn is just knowing the range (maximum lock on range is 40 meters) and then if he is causing issues to switch to Pharah/Hanzo/WM/Junkrat to just bombard where he has his turret setup so he is forced to place it defensively which reduces the overall effectiveness of the turret itself. But if anything Torb actually needs a small buff (unless you are playing on console as it's auto lockon makes it an outlier in the restrictive mobility that console has) since he doesn't really do much well.

Bastion: Bastion's damage is a bit crazy, but he's far from an issue the only thing i would say he could use is like a .5-.75 second wind-up time before he hits full fire rate otherwise he's easily taken out by Pharah/Junkrat/Hanzo/WM. Genji should only be killing him if he's stationed up in a bad spot and thus easily flanked which would be poor play on the Bastion's part cause otherwise the Bastion just stops firing when Deflect goes up then tears Genji apart after it goes down.

Roadhog: Thing is he can actually kill a tank outright, but people haven't fully caught onto his animation cancel.Can do RMB+Hook at the same time into LMB+Melee and if you are at the right distance it should be just barely enough to just flatline a Rein. it is (his hook) already a somewhat skinny skillshot, it's just that it has a 20 meter range which is a tad insane. He has the heal because he has no other defensive options for his team, he's literally a damage soaker/offensive tank his role is basically to be a bullet sponge and then if he catches someone to kill them.

[Tryuk]

It seems you have problems with being countered/countering people? Sure Winston doesn't have to aim, but his damage isn't the best so higher health heroes (Reaper) will make him very unhappy. Similar thing at the next point, although Tracer really isn't a counter to Genji, she is better at killing Genji than Genji is killing her -- better yet how she uses her mobility to dodge a ulting Genji is actually pretty hard considering you only need to connect twice. Tracer's damage is pretty high (3rd highest dps or something like that), but she also has to reload often.

I would feel ya on the Hanzo thing, because logically I know it's roughly true -- but I'm just to salty from being hit by arrows randomly spammed at another teammate :P

Symmetra's turrets only have one health and a relatively long cooldown sooooo. They can be pretty useful, or shit, depending on team comps and the enemies ability to aim. Just don't leeroy into her nest unless you're Winston.

Torb's turret I can see, people seem to have trouble dealing with it. Only thing I'd say is a problem with it is its range. Anyway, I can definitely kill his turret out of molten core as Zarya and often Winston -- although I don't often immediately go for Torb as Winston. Reinhardt is great at killing turrets if you have teammates to back you up, the turret can't do shit against his shield. Roadhog's range is usually too short to deal with it, but if he gets to around 10 meters, he can kill it quite quickly. Haven't played D.Va enough to see how well she does against turrets though

Genji's Bastion killing powers goes down with MMR, Bastions learn to not shoot, but even better at killing him are snipers. Those 3 bastions often die to a single crappy sniper. Also remember damage interrupts his healing.

Roadhog's hook does feel a little powerful right now, could use a smaller hitbox maybe. Remember it's a projectile, so you can juke it a little bit easier than if it were hitscan. It's not nearly as bad as Widow or McCree were before their nerfs though imo.

In the end, yea heroes are powerful in situations they were designed to be powerful in. Who knew? Honestly though, if the game didn't have the major focus on team comp and countering stuff it would be a completely different game. I love how countering works right now personally.

[chrisnumbers]

Everything is balanced well enough. If I keep getting countered I make other moves or switch hero.
ez pz
Everything can counter something, and everything can be countered by something. Good enough in my book.

[WskyDK]

The game is intentionally imbalanced.
That's the single most significant aspect of the entire game.

[AbsolutePitch]

It seems you want something like CoD:MW2.
Overwatch is fun because almost all characters feel overpowered and yet can be countered.

Thank you all for your contributions so far. I think this quote summarizes the game lol.

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The game is intentionally imbalanced.
That's the single most significant aspect of the entire game.

As cynical as that sounds, after years of WoW I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. It generates interest for sure.

[WskyDK]

As cynical as that sounds, after years of WoW I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. It generates interest for sure.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's true?
The game is a giant round of rock-paper-scissor.

[PassingBy]

The only thing that seems wrong with the game is the ridiculous hitboxes.
They should make it slightly harder to aim.

Other than that it's ok.

[snackfeat]

There are quite a decent amount of balance issues in Overwatch, but "Beam" weapons like Symmetra's and Winston's with literally no aiming required and no way for the opponent to dodge the attack apart from not being in range is literally the most cancerous and unfun thing I have ever experienced in an fps.

[PassingBy]

There are quite a decent amount of balance issues in Overwatch, but "Beam" weapons like Symmetra's and Winston's with literally no aiming required and no way for the opponent to dodge the attack apart from not being in range is literally the most cancerous and unfun thing I have ever experienced in an fps.

Can't you break distance/go over a corner/get behind?

[Mormolyce]

Hanzo is not a shitter Widowmaker. His ulti is much more impactful.

Not that Widowmaker's is bad, but Hanzo's is game-winning.

Also, on D.Va I can mince Widowmakers all day, but a good Hanzo can beat me. Fuck scatter arrow!

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There are quite a decent amount of balance issues in Overwatch, but "Beam" weapons like Symmetra's and Winston's with literally no aiming required and no way for the opponent to dodge the attack apart from not being in range is literally the most cancerous and unfun thing I have ever experienced in an fps.

They're specifically designed to counter certain heroes, if you're getting punished by them you need to swap.

I actually think Winston is seriously underpowered.

[snackfeat]

Hanzo is not a shitter Widowmaker. His ulti is much more impactful.

Not that Widowmaker's is bad, but Hanzo's is game-winning.

Also, on D.Va I can mince Widowmakers all day, but a good Hanzo can beat me. Fuck scatter arrow!

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They're specifically designed to counter certain heroes, if you're getting punished by them you need to swap.

I actually think Winston is seriously underpowered.

It's not a matter whether they are strong or not, it's that this kind of bullshit should not exist in a FPS to begin with.

There's nothing like playing a hero that has to aim and hit shit to actually do damage, and getting into a 1v1 with a Symmetra only to have her be able to jump all over the place and kill you by holding left click.