Soe is the best. Adorable, funny, smart, actually talented at hosting. She is a swiss army knife for the OWL and can basically do it all. I think this is a smart move, it puts a very OW recognizable face in the drivers seat where previously they would expect puckett. Honestly, other than using a previous desk host (Malik, Goldenboy - both gone) this is the most obvious choice and will be less jarring for returning fans. Also, Soe is the best.

this gon' be good

I was incredibly impressed with both of them this last TOTH. They were so nice, approachable and all around great individuals. The OWL is lucky to have them in any capacity.

Overwatch now playable while waiting to be played.

Looks strong, really glad to see Ryb locked in. Going to be one of my fan favs.

Flippy -AA- will rise again

Woah. Kyb had such a great story, sad to see him step back. Very mysterious who the 6th might be

Great read!

Back around 15 years ago I passed a recruitment period (yeah... I know) into a TFC sniper specific clan (yeah, I know) called Immortal, the defacto best after their main rival and unbeaten Dot [ . ] jumped ship into CS.

[ I ] was the tag...which by turn of the century standards was basically the bees knees. That name will always hold a special place in my heart. Also, Shadowburn is a TF2 legend, go him.

Good luck, Immortals.

Dummy is the golden boy of gaming, friend, he can play anything (which also gives options as the meta expands).

The only issue for teams who make changes going forward is that they'll constantly be taking a step back in teamwork, not due to any lack on the players part, but because it takes time to work everyone into the same system. I think this is a great movie for LG in the long run though.

Eyyy they gave me that .500ms delay on slept targets. Nice!

So much esporting, TSM picked up Code7 as well

There are essentially 3 new heroes added to the meta, 2 of them are supports and one is a tank. That is incredible for the potential builds teams can experiment with. Mercy/Lucio as default support will be much less prominent as weeks progress. They still are both incredible, but you'll see combos never seen before. D.Va on tank now blocks 2nd most damage after Reinhardt, and is far more mobile. Offense, incredibly, should be easier. And at the end of it all Mc'LeftClick is now a god.

It'll be awesome to see how the top teams progress and if the pecking order changes in light of these changes.

This stuff is bound to happen in mass for OW pro teams. With the game being so team dependent, and with carry potential limited, the team dynamic is the most important dynamic. The usual shuffle of esports teams will probably be less fluid and their will likely be less mass shuffles as teams continue to refine their team dynamic, but pruning on the individual level will likely be high for a while. Some of it will be acting on the planted the seed of a scapegoat; most of it will be looking to round out every possible edge the team has.

GL, 2Easy

Excited to test these performance fixes

I very much agree with this assesment. Takes away much of the ease of use of the hero, which sometimes led to impressive plays, but all in all was just obnoxious. You can feel the impact of the nerf on Widow, but still play well. I think she is in a good place.... Minus the wallhack which needs to be deleted because it's literally a wallhack.

Really strong team, full of cool dudes.. Been a fan of Rob-Wiz ever since seeing him and Pangu battle it out on sniper in the infant days of TF2. OW scen gets better and better.

I expect them to continually do well. Very impressive how they were able to come togethet so quick and execute on all points. Will obly improve with time.

I know how much fun this title was and I appreciate it.

Rolls up sleeves. I can play 2 nights a week. Maybe 3. hmu

That was actually a very useful and thoughtout statement. Sadly, a statement means nothing without an anti-cheat system. We need a game built AC. In game report is cool, (and would be cooler with a CSGO style Overwatch demo review) but without an AC is there really any difference being made here?

The world needs more hero limits.

Agreed ult should not be global.

Lay off my main, fam. Don't do this to me again.

Daaamn.

Love that last one. I always miss the fun things before they're fixed :/

The only thing that makes this better is reading it with your buttery smooth accent.

Nice. Congrats, everyone!

They are really pushing Mei. I think they see that as the counter to Zenlotta. That and Zarya buffs will help as Genji can't reflect Zarya. Still, I don't like how 1 of 3 ways to remove an orb is another Zen.

Genji rebuff is interesting, will have to see how it plays. It sounds to me this does nothing but strengthen a harmonied/shielded Genji. 250 HP with passive regen, dash, reflect...oh god.

I respect the dedication. 8 hours a day is a full time job though. With this sort of requirement you might preclude anyone who already has one. Good luck with the search. Prime can be a solid team.

I posted a link to this for discussion on /overwatch. The conversation really picked up so here's a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/4a61yi/c9surefour_comments_on_hero_limiting_and_the/

How's that for "meta" ...

You won't find a better mascot than Admirable. As a long time froyotech bench warmer, I am an authority on the matter.

Still cool to see both orgs wanting in on OW though.

My opinions have changed. With a coordinated team Genji is less annoying, additionally so because in scrim/serious match-making you wont usually be up against a team with multiple Genji's. It's still annoying in pubs when there's 2 or more but that isn't the metric. I do think falloff should be applied, but less so than as was done to McCree.

Die, Die, Die

I feel as if he will need a nerf. I made a post about possible ideas for that here: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/19876317450

Would appreciate feedback.

Right now he plays as a better Tracer with a more viable long range poke and vertical dash. It's fun playing as him but very not fun dealing with him. I think a general consensus is that he is just a bit too good, so I propose the following:

A) Keep all abilities and stats as is with the exception of lowering his base health to 125. Since he can do Tracer's harass and "keep away" role better with the added ability to block and reflect most damage, this makes the most sense to me. His ability to counter and escape would pair well if he were more "squishy." With this build, ulting should overheal him back to ~200.

B) Lower base health to 150 and add fall off damage to counter his ability to harass from such a long way away. He keeps his awesome movement (which makes him most fun and most annoying) but he is forced to use that movement to get him in and out of his "effective" zone. Putting him more at risk if he wants to be most effective.

C) Do nothing, wait for teams to find a better composition to deal with. He is just a few days old in the beta, so I recognize the possibility that teams simply havent found his best counter yet. I doubt this, but it's a possibility.

/thread?

100% agree. F2p is bad. It forces the company to make its money some other way; micro-transactions aren't enough so usually the end result is less savory.

Kaplan said during his openning that their game was not about limiting heroes, unless I misheard. I think they rather enjoy seeing team comp's of every kind. I do too.

Dirty Bomb's model killed the game, imo.

It very much seemed the box price gets you 21 with the implication more will follow for a price. This hurts esports as it brings up the issue of how to treat heroes that are not default. Ban them? Allow at the cost of equality? Not good.

Mei's freeze mechanic is another movement stopping feature that is soul-crushing for comp FPS. We'll have to see how annoying it actually is. The other 2 look vert interesting, the ability to switch in and out of the Mech suit looks nutty.

These new heroes have me questioning the game core mechanics for the first time. All of them seem every not FPS-like.

I think there is potential for a good Hanzo player to give insane plays.

While you might not mind putting in hundreds of hours to get a hero, think of it from a conpetitice side:

"They are killing us with Tanks someone go anti-tank."
"We need a reaper."
"Okay, James, go reaper."
"Sorry I haven't bought him yet."
"Anyone?"
"I'll get him in 20 more hours!"
"Great..."

Dirty Bomb had heroes mostly around 10 dollars each and some on free rotation. You can use ingame exp. to buy heroes, but it's around 25 hours or so to get 10 dollars worth. If someone wanted to play comp and have all the heroes at their disposal they would pay more than 60. If OW did something similiar, that would be out of hand.

At the very least, I hope it's one or the other. One way Evolve killed itself was by charging $60 for the game, then releasing additional heroes at 5 a piece and monsters at 10. That is truly awful.

I'd rather $60 over f2p where heroes cost money (dirty bomb). Such a scenario would be worse for comp play. That said, $60 is too high. $20 and some sort of item/micro transaction market would be best. $60 is quite a steep barrier to entry.

Niiice. Things like this will become standard, like jumping around spire as a scout. Cool find

TF2 went about a year or two without having much customization either. Viewmodel fov was locked and forced on, no crosshair option (including no crosshair at all on the sniper rifle), no damage numbers/hit sound, as well as many other options that are almost essential today. Blizzard will most likely keep a tighter lockdown on custom options but I do think they'll open up on a few as they already have for fov.

Not in. Back to practice casting by muting peoples streams.

During the Oct 15 stream they mentioned how they had plans to make the card votes post round count toward something in the way of customization for chracters.

From a casting perspective, it would be nice if the downed heroes were a bit more grayed out/blackened as they awaited respawns. The gray outline that replaces the team color outline around the hero's portrait is too bright and the skull below them is too small. Also, a killfeed at least for spectators would be fantastic.