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Mr. Hyde

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When two Reinhardts fight, it truly is the best thing to have ever happened in this game.

 

From Reddit:

Reinhardt vs. Reinhardt is one of the most fun matchups in the game for me.

 

It starts off as a stare down. Each Reinhardt shelters their team behind their shield and challenges anyone in front of it to contest him. As soon as a Reinhardt sees the other. It's on.

 

It's a glorified staring contest at first, each one slowly walking back and forth, almost in a taunting manner - "Are you afraid to fight me??" they seem to yell. They'll trade a few flamestrikes back and forth, to charge up their ultimates. It's all a matter of who is going to grab life by the balls and charge first. That's when the real fight begins.

 

The charging Reinhardt wears his honor on his sleeve as he plummets into the enemy. The stationary Reinhardt strafes out of the way, letting the dumb buffoon crash into the wall behind him. Hammers begin to swing, grunts begin to fly. Never have they felt more manly, swinging a giant rocket-powered hammer at another huge hunk of man-steel. Guns and bullets are for kiddies.

 

The first one to get ultimate slams the ground in front of him and proceeds to beat the everlasting sheet out of the other. They say that beating your opponent while he's down is a low move, but when your opponent ALSO has a huge ass rocket hammer, you'll take what you can get. As the final blow strikes the enemy Reinhardt in his chestplate, he lets out a grunt of exasperation. The victor laughs as he revels in his triumph, and quickly scampers out of the way whining for Mercy to heal him.

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Man I really like Zarya.  She's just....so eeeehhhh.  Allow me to explain what I mean.  Note, this is extremely long, and a bit ranty.  But I do feel like I missing something here, so I want to address it.

 

[spoiler My Case]
[spoiler Proving why she has issues]

Her whole gimmick revolves around her being able to shield up to 200 damage taken by herself or her teammates and convert that into boosting her somewhat mediocre damage into very, very high dps at proper ranges.  She is the only tank to have Shielding as health, meaning that only Roadhog and her have the ability to recover without the need of help of health packs or support.  However there are a ton of situations were Zarya just falls flat.

 

For one, her barriers last for only 2 seconds, but not only that, they can only absorb a max of 200 damage before they shatter.  200 damage seems like a lot, and to be fair, so long as you have not actually reached 200 damage, you can still negate any 1 hit, even if that hit does more than 200 (for example you can shield Tracer's ult which does 500 damage so long as you still have at least 1 point of barrier left), but the problem arises when you are taking on several damage sources at once.  For example, a McCree Fan the Hammer does 6 shots of 35-70 damage each depending on range.  Assuming all 6 hit, that's a net total of 210-420 damage.  At mid range, Zarya's shield will break while McCree still has 1-2 shots left in his Fan the Hammer.  Now picture that with a group of enemies.  Zarya's main playstyle is to Bully enemies.  To block the power players with smart shielding, then retaliate with long range, high dps that forces a retreat.  But if they have a Tracer shooting you, and a Roadhog lighting you up, and who knows what else, the shield goes down before you even have a chance to set up your offense, and you start taking heavy damage.  Zarya has the squishiest health pool of all tanks and has no armor, so she can't survive in the fray like that.

 

Not only that, but you can only gain an average of 50 energy per barrier, since you only gain 1 point every 4 damage the barrier absorbs.  This means you lose your charge in a lull period of the map due to it decaying at 2 energy per second.  You need to constantly be in the action in order to maintain a high energy charge.  However, as I just discussed, Zarya's barriers are fairly ineffective at protection the target from more than 1 source of damage at a time, and in the fray of battle, you almost never come across that.  Therefore by definition her design is counter intuitive to how she needs to played in order to be used at max potential.  Not only that, but while her damage at High energy is really, really good, you still need good aim to actually kill people with the particle beam, especially against mobile classes, as the Grenade's damage is generally pretty crappy even at 100 charge (90 per explosion.  Still needs 2 solid hits to kill Tracer, and that uses half your clip in the process).  Plus, when you aren't getting full value out of your shields, you are almost always going to be sitting on 30 charge on average, where the damage is still pretty piss poor.  You need to find a way to sit on roughly 60+ charge in order to start being a threat, but 1 shield can't even get you there reliably.  In my opinion, you just don't get nearly enough REWARD for playing smart, and you can't even compete if you play mediocre.

 

Don't believe me?  Zarya's beam fires 20 rounds per second at 4.75 damage per round, and her damage per round is boosted by exactly (1% * current energy level).  At 100 energy, that's double damage per round.  So if you fire for 1 second, you deal (4.75 * 2 * 20) 190 damage.  BUT WAIT, remember, her energy decays at 2 per second, or 1 every 0.5 seconds.  Which means that if you get 100 energy, and then start firing on the literal first frame, then the first 10 rounds are double damage, but the next 10 rounds are slightly less.  So instead of 190 damage, you do 189.05.  It's a minor point, I know, but it's important to realize that her damage decays as she deals damage.  It follows the following formula:

 

f7PRVBw.jpg

 

or, if that equation scares you, you can instead view it as:

0.2375(b^2− a^2) + 47.5(b − a)

 

Where b is the charge you start firing at, and a is the charge you stop firing at.  Since you have 100 ammo and consume 20 per second, you can only fire for 4 seconds at a time, i.e. (b - a) cannot be more than 8.  So lets say I want to fire for 4 seconds at a charge of 70.  Therefore, as I fire, my energy will drop to 62.  If we assume that energy does not decay at 2 per second, and instead that 70 charge lasts the entire 4 seconds, then you would do (4.75 + (4.75 * 0.7)) * 80 = 646 damage.  However, if we calculate it with the actual formula, where b = 70 and a = 62, then our damage is 0.2375 ((70^2) - (62^2)) + 47.5 (8) = 630.8

Notice that there is 15.2 damage absent due to the decay.  Just something to bring to your attention before I continue.

 

Now, in reality, you aren't going to hold down M1 and hit every round perfectly in those 4 seconds in most situations.  Instead you may fire at 2 second bursts at a time, or maybe you miss a few rounds as you try to track your target.  The point is you lose an insane amount of damage due to imprecision of the moment.  So lets take a real scenario.  At 60 charge, where you want to be sitting pretty, if you fire for 1.5 seconds, or fire for long enough to land 30 rounds (lets just assume that you do this perfectly for the sake of not modifying the formula), you will do roughly 225.86 damage, give or take a couple due to timing.  This can kill most light classes in the game, and does a solid amount to the medium classes.  However, unlike Mei's ice ray which has a mechanic that makes hitting with continuous fire easier, Zarya has to perfectly track her target over the entire 1.5 seconds.  Against a very mobile class, like Tracer or Genji, that's quite a long time since they can dodge some of the damage by moving away from the beam.  Additionally, while tanks are much easier to hit, 225.86 damage doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, and most tanks can very easily realize what is happening in 1.5 seconds and move away from that damage.  So we get the following implication:

  1. She has a hard time tracking very mobile Heroes, meaning it will take even longer to kill them from this energy level unless the player is extremely good at tracking said hero as they jump around the screen.
  2. Tanks couldn't care less about such a low amount of damage in comparison to their health pools, and since Zarya literally can't headshot you have no way of boosting that damage besides gaining more energy.

So that means she can deal with....who?  low mobility heroes with around 200-250 health.  So pretty much only Mei, Junkrat and Zenyatta, and in addition, if they can't use their mobility skills due to cooldown or whatever, Mercy, Genji, Reapter, etc.  Soldier 76 maybe if he doesn't have Bionic field up, but if he does he can more than likely completely out damage you.  McCree just doesn't even care at all.  Hammer > Falshbang > Roll > Hammer consumes your soul faster than you can even ask "Where the hell did you come from?"

 

There is something else I want to point out here, and that's Armor.  In Overwatch, how Armor works is it reduces the amount of damage taken to that health pool by a flat 5, unless that hit is under 10 damage.  In that case, the damage of that shot is halved rather than reduced by 5.  Zarya can never get above 10 damage per round with her beam.  The most she can do is 9.5 at 100 energy.  Lets look at D Va.  She has 500 health, and 400 of it is Armor.  If we have 100 charge, how much damage would a full clip do?  Well all damage until that armor pool is down is halved, so you might as well be using Base Energy zarya at that point.  Over 4 seconds of continuous fire at 100 energy on exclusively armor, she does 372.4 damage.  She can barely even touch D Va at Max Energy.  At Base level?  She does a whopping 186.2 damage over four seconds.  This makes it so she has a really tough time against heroes like Bastion who don't really give a sheet about her barrier, but also have Armor as part of their HP pool, making it so even with the like 1 second at most you can protect yourself against his onslaught, there is no way you could deal enough damage to him before he kills you outright, even at full charge.

 

This is all a game of numbers, and might not make any sense to most of you who don't care, but it really does stun me how bad Zarya's numbers can truly be in non-ideal circumstances.  She needs a Team Comp that can support her, unlike just about every other hero in the game that can at least carry themselves in most situations, and in the cases that can't fend for themselves, they are generally the Supporting characters.  I want to see Zarya be pulled out from this super niche that she has found herself in.  She's a fantastic counterpick to certain heroes, but has almost zero neutral matchups.  She has a few favorable, but way too many unfavorable.  But she's not without hope.  Like I said this is a game of numbers.  I think with just a few very tiny modifications, Zarya could actually become a long staying, major threat if you let her, and could actually provide substantial reward for consistent, smart play

 

 

[spoiler Potential Fixes]

The way I see it, Zarya needs 2 major things:

  1. A shield that can actually last long enough for her to safely deal damage
  2. Enough damage to become a threat even at mediocre play, and/or to remain a threat for much longer

The shield I think is an easy fix.  I think the barrier should still only absorb 200 damage, but only for the sake of building charge.  Basically, I think instead of being 2 seconds or 200 damage, whichever comes first, I think it should instead be: x duration, and after the first instance of damage that puts you over 200 blocked, you cannot add any more to your charge gain for your personal shield's duration.  I think this could be potentially unbalanced at the current 2 second duration, but I'm not sure.  Maybe 1.5 seconds would be better, but regardless the change allows her to actually be safe when she attempts to deal damage, and still have enough time to get a kill or two before you start taking more damage than your health can handle, which in my opinion is by far her biggest problem.  I think this only needs to be applied to the personal shield.  The one for teammates actually seems fine as it is for the most part.

 

As for the damage, this is is much more difficult.  Zarya is designed to be weak to armor.  That's why, no matter how much energy you get, you cannot break 10 damage per round.  However, armor is by default designed to scale with the damage done for a few counts above 10.  For example, 50% of 9.5, her current max, is 4.75.  11 - 5 = 6.  That's only a 1.25 difference.  So up to a certain point, it is reasonable to hit 10 damage per round and then some.  And 11 is exactly what I think her new max should be.  At a base of 5.50 damage per round, her base damage per second jumps from 95 to 110.  At 50 energy, it jumps from 141.55 per second to 163.9 per second.  At 100 energy, it jumps from 189.05 per second to 218.9 per second.  I think that damage boost is fair, as it allows max energy beams to kill heroes with 200 health nearly a full 1/2 second faster.  This also means that, over 4 seconds, she does 462.4 damage to pure armor vs. 372.4.  Against D Va, that means at max energy and your full clip hitting every single shot, you can actually kill her, since 62.4 of that 462.4 damage is not actually vs armor, so it becomes unmodified, and does more than 100 damage.

 

If that's too extreme, then maybe it would be better if energy drained at 1.5 per second rather than 2.  This way, you can maintain the charge you do gain for 25% longer, have a better change of reaching high energy even with mediocre gameplay, and are able to maintain that threatening high energy presence for longer.

 

I feel like these changes might be too extreme, and I might have gone too far, but you can see what I'm getting at.  Just a slight change to these figures can open up a world of new possibilities for this character.  Zarya should be a character that for just about 1-2 seconds, should feel like an Ubered Heavy.  Something you shouldn't be shooting at.  Something you should be retreating from, or setting up in order to pounce at the first available instant.  Something that causes a bastion to stop shooting for a moment and give your team to approach without fear for that short instant.  That's what I want her to be, and I feel like that's what she was designed to be, but hasn't been given the chance to really stand out.

 

 

So what are you're thoughts on this?  Is she balanced?  Why do you think so?  Otherwise, do you have other potential ideas for buffs?  I'd like to know your opinions.  Hell if the vast majority of you agree I might post this in the Blizzard forums and maybe they'll do something about it, but I want to get some feedback first.

 

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Reminder that Zarya's barrier can stop a single instance of damage over 200 as well, allowing her to blank Rip-tire, Pulse bomb, D.Va's self destruct, etc. This gives her utility as a secondary tank, saving bulkier tanks like Reinhardt from things that often out them.

Yeah I know, I mentioned that already.

 

I actually want to refine my point.  I played Zarya pretty much all day today, and got a better understanding of her timings, how to go about playing her in which game mode on which team, what heroes were best to pair up with her, etc.  After a couple hours, I've come to the conclusion that instead of both things changing, as was my initial stance, only one of the two should change.

 

[spoiler I talk way to much when I do this]

Over that game session, there were a couple games where countless times I recognized a bad situation, personal shielded to cover my ass as I got the hell out, but still wound up dying anyway due to the sheer amount of damage being thrown down that hallway.  Over and over I kept thinking "If only I had one more second I could have gotten away" or "damn it if only that shield had lasted another second I could have shot a full charge grenade to blow everyone around and let me retreat back to my mercy."  However on other games I felt totally in control, and I feel it's because of my team.  What was happening in the second game was that my team was composed of a healer, some power classes, and an additional tank.  This caused me to be come a target of less priority.  THAT, is where Zarya shines.  If you actually take the time to focus down Zarya, she gets obliterated the very instant she tries to push.  But if you don't, that gives her time to start building charge and eating away your health.

 

But I digress.  The main issue here was that those games where I was in a position of not being able to really do anything aggressive really hurt the team as a whole.  They couldn't take advantage of the fact I was drawing fire, cuz I would die almost instantly.  That makes an argument for a shield based on duration instead of damage taken fairly solid.

 

Yet there was one scenario in particular that got under my skin.  We were on Lijang Tower, and it was 99% to 89%, we were winning, and they were about to take the point from us.  Their Pharah ulted.  I waited a moment, then jumped out and shielded.  I was at full health, so my hope was that I had waited long enough to absorb what I could and kill the pharah before she killed my team.  I was also at 94% ult, meaning that after killing Pharah I would be at 100%.  I got 100 energy from blocking most of the ult, and held the beam on her for almost a full 2 seconds.  She did not die before her ult broke through my barrier, took out my shield, and the rest of my health.  I got her pretty dang close, but could not kill her.  There were only 2 others on the point, and they were not shooting at me.  If I had killed the Pharah, I could have turned 45 degrees left, and pressed q just outside of the point's range, where everyone was standing.  That would have forced the game into overtime and, even if I did die from taking so much damage, the ult would have given my team a chance to pick off 2 or 3 and make the fight for the point much easier.

 

That was a situation where either fix would have won us the game.  Slightly more damage would have killed the pharah before she killed me.  A better barrier would have held through the ult and given me the time needed for the kill.  It's situations like those that are surprisingly common when playing Zarya, and incredibly frustrating without a doubt.  That's what I want dealt with the most.

 

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