This is outside of like masters and gm lobbies and stuff where I (think) cat bastion is more prevalent and problematic? But outside of that and in lower ranks, cat feels really bad to play as. Is she still played in pro lobbies? I am not sure, I don't watch a whole lot of high level comp stuff.

Her guns feel weak, the heals don't feel impactful, and their inaccuracy/lack of homing makes healing anyone far away and not standing completely still or walking in a line kind of impossible.

I know her stats aren't that bad, and her win rate seems okay on average, but idk. She feels like a mercy/weaver-like to me where she kinda just sits there and does nothing. Of course, you have to take advantage of the small hitbox and flight but when you try to, the above problems crop up and (at least for me, combined with the perk nerfs a while back) make it really hard to duel as kitty against anyone competent.

Anyone else feel this way? I love playing cat and wanna get better at them (and maybe this is just a skill issue entirely) but idk, I find myself wishing I was playing another healer to be doing something more impactful half of the time. Thoughts??

Cheers!

edit: i forgot to even mention her ult. jfc what the heck is this thing? its like the most map dependent and location dependent thing ever. if you arent by a ledge its actually useless. good luck flying at a dead eye or something to cancel it w/o getting shot. her ult is kinda ass too, no?

Disclaimer: Yes i am aware i'm coping. Also talking about GM+ lobbies / players and Smurfs in quick play etc... Not a diamond 3 lobby

I really have no "Proof" of this except my own personal experiences

Vast Majority of the people that i assume are cheating are playing 76

and at the same time the absolute worst DPS players i've ever have the misfortune to play with or against also play 76

There is very little middle ground to this hero in my lobbies And i'm never saying to myself "Wow this 76 is good! but he's not THAT good that he must be cheating"

This fucking character just annoys me beyond no end because Dying to < 3 the 76 with blatant XIM along with H I S P O C K E T ! His Mercy E kitten of the month up his ass makes me want to uninstall

Without cheating i genuinely think this hero is next to almost worthless and you'd be better off playing any other hit scan

All i'll say is that there's a reason this character is in a ton of 500's top 3 most played heroes on console and Usually along side Mauga/Orisa and Baptiste

And it isn;t because "76 Just provides so much value!"

Sojourn is a very fun hero to play, but her balance state is currently in an awkward limbo.

She is a low tier DPS hero at all ranks and all maps currently. People still play her quite regularly, probably because of good and bad reasons.

I'm going to present a problem statement for why I as a casual pleb think she is in that state.

Sojourn's Design: Railgun vs Rocket Launcher

She's one of these heroes that have this "quake weapon turned into a hero kit"-designs and I think that's fundamentally great and fun. Think Pharah as another clear example (who I also like for similar reasons).

Pharah embodies the rocket launcher fantasy perfectly of controlling space at longer ranges and having high kill potential when closing in. She is in a really good state across all ranks. As it should be: She has a clear niche as in strengths, weaknesses and maps she's good at, which is reflected in her map specific winrates (maps like Ilios, Oasis, Lijang Tower or Gibraltar bump up her winrate significantly). So her winrate is pushed up by people who play her well in the correct situations. We had 10 years of developing that playstile and map knowledge and Blizzard had just as much time to tune her into a generally good state.

Compare that to Sojourn, who embodies the railgun fantasy pretty well. The power fantasy of the Railgun is ice cold precision and high damage. It's basically saying: If my aim is precise and fast enough, your movement (almost) doesn't count.

The good news is that her gun feels great to use. It looks great, it sounds great and it feels satisfying and powerful to hit people with it. Her kit overall fits the theme of someone holding a Railgun and particularly her powerslide feels great as well.

The bad news is that unlike the Rocket Launcher, the Railgun doesn't translate as directly into Overwatch. I think Blizzard knew this from the start, so the introduced the charge mechanic, but they did a fatal mistake of allowing her to one-shot people with it. You even can't normally do that in Quake either, so I don't know why they thought it's a good idea in Overwatch where one-shotting is even more frowned upon.

My Wish: More Aggression and Less Poke and Pick

So now she's in a very awkward spot in terms of balance and general game feel. The payoff for the "charge Rail on main and look for a pick" is not really there anymore, because we don't want Sojourn to one-shot people. So something has to replace this loop that doesn't feel ass outside of pro play.

My feedback or general wish is that she feels more active and rewards aggression more. I don't think Spilo's suggestion (1) is particularly compelling.

What about faster charge generation, but less charge retention and less effective range or less max burst?

Does her primary need to feel weak and awkward? Does she need to be terrible at dueling without rail up?

I don't really care how it's achieved. But what I want is a more active Sojourn that is slightly stronger, but not frustrating to play against.

(1) Spilo has mentioned lowering scaling the recovery time of the Railgun with the charge. I think that's a very interesting, but completely defeats the purpose and feel of the gun. You're then going to weave in weak shots into primary fire spam. Nobody plays Sojourn for this kind of experience. The Railgun shot has to count and execute another squishy if you get the jump on someone or win a duel.

I'm support main but I'm trying to learn some DPS (Freja specifically because she's super fun), but as a DPS what do I actually need to be doing more to be winning games? I've lost loads of my placement games whilst having the most kills and the fewest deaths (despite not having particularly great aim), I feel like my positioning is fine in terms of being around cover, staying alive, but we seem to never be able to help but just keep walking backwards and giving up space. What exactly am I supposed to be looking for? As a support it feels easier because the majority of my kit helps my team in some way, but as DPS my entire kit is "selfish", but just playing for few deaths and high kills isn't enough

Since its next week, surely teams should be scriming already. Does anyone have any info on what the teams are playing or if any team is standing out within the scrims

With the recent buffs, Freja has become a lot more popular in ranked play, especially in high elo where she finds good results. Now that she is in the spotlight, it is the perfect time to ask this question to y'all... How high do you think Freja's skill ceiling is?

1 is Moira, 10 is Tracer. Where is Freja on a scale of 1-10? It would be wonderful if you could elaborate as well!

800 dpi - 2.08 in game

Diamond 1 peak

I've been at this sense for months now and feel very comfortable. I was even lower at some point but I noticed that my aim felt a bit too slow and heavy so I reluctantly increased it. Any fraction higher and I'm overaiming like crazy. Anything lower and it feels sluggish.

I don't have any tactical shooter background. I mainly play hitscan characters. Right now I'm really enjoying Domina but Emre and Freja are my mains.

why she felt so clunky to play now ? she feel like not dva that i remembered back on OW2 season 3

what i remember you cancel boost with melee now you can't do that

you can cancel micro-missiles now you can't also do that

and sometime when trying to combo boost + ult the boost just stopped boost at first sec

what did they do ?

Im an ex kiriko/Ana player that swapped to being a ramattra player because he was really fun at the start of the year. I played a lot of games and I feel like I really learned him well. However im having trouble going back and doing the placements on my support because I feel that the tanks aren't playing to the lv of my ram and the level is lower.

How do I have the same impact on support?

Stutters and performance issues, 5v5/6v6 discourse, stadium comments, idk I feel like there were more pressing matters personally.

On the new japan map

I was bored and went and found every player from Overwatch League Season 1 still in the overwatch pro scene in some capacity: I found 13 players out of the original 122 players from 2018, 13/122 or about 10.7%, 8 years later more than I expected NGL

Still playing: (4)
(BUP): Kellex https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Kellex
(SHD): Diya: https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Lu_Weida
(LAG) Void: https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Void
(LAV): Fate: https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Fate

Current Coaches: (7)
(SLD): Fleta https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Fleta
(LAV): Kariv https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/KariV
(LAV): Izayaki https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Izayaki
(SHD): SIO (formerly known as FiveKing) https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Chen_Zhaoyu
(SHD): Daemin https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Daemin
(SHD): Ado https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Ado
(LAV): Soon https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/SoOn

Just dropped, I assume they'll be on another team: (2)
player (BUP): Kalios https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Kalios
coach (BUP): Neko https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Neko

I've been stuck in bronze open queue as tank and it's literally impossible to rank up unless you're plat/diamond at least. It's bad enough with the smurfs but man the damage is crazy high. If 2 or 3 people even so much as look at you, you instantly die even as a high hp tank. Doesn't matter. Low ranks has people spamming massive amounts of damage and if you don't have an excellent pc you die faster than Black Panther kills in Marvel Rivals. I'll often have no baring if I'm safe to dive or do whatever, because sometimes people trickle damage and then suddenly in a nanosecond I'm dead. They'll snap to you and instantly kill you. Again, this is the lowest competitive tier. Which means either the game is full of smurfs or new people aren't joining, which is a problem either way. But it feels like damage got ramped waaaay up since OW 1. Am I wrong in that? So it feels like in low ranks you get rewarded for spamming tons of damage and if you're on a coordinated team it's very hard to lose. In high ranks it's a different game and that's fine. I don't care about high tier OW. I care that I can't play ranked even at low tiers without having a conniption. I feel like you should have to earn kills and not just be able to kill a tank faster than a pico second.

Anyone else feel the damage is crazy high?

So here's my situation: I've been queuing a lot of comp recently. I consider myself a flex DPS player, I like playing heroes like Genji, Tracer, Echo, and lately Vendetta. But I can also play hitscan pretty well, even though I don't have as much fun when playing point and click adventure- I mean hitscan. But because I can play both very well, I usually just decide to pick whichever role we need. I lock in a flex DPS at the start of the game, but if I see the other DPS also lock in a flex, I switch to hitscan. Lately however I've been getting very frustrated with flexing to hitscan so much. Especially when I pick hitscan because of my teammate just to see them also pick hitscan after one death (which happens way more often than I'd like it to). So lately I've started wondering, does it even matter? Am I at a high enough rank where it actually matters that you're not running double flex? Or can I just play whoever I want? I've specifically decided not to include my rank in this post, just to avoid getting yes/no answers. I do actually want to know at what rank you guys think this starts mattering

Been playing since OW1, mained Lucio and got high plat (2915 sr in the old system). Quit for 5 years, came back recently and things changed a lot, Lucio didn’t feel the same so I started maining Winston, Orisa and Mei instead.

On my main account I tried climbing to diamond, peaked at plat 2, then dropped to gold and kept bouncing between gold and plat. Every game felt off, matches werent even close, I’d have games as Winston getting picks and distracting half their team for ages and my team just wouldnt capitalize, then other games as Mei where I was the one getting all the picks and carrying every teamfight, mess up ONE time and lose the game. Add in leavers, trolls, 5 dps teammates, and it felt rigged, but everyone always says “youre the rank you deserve.”

Then I met a couple plat/diamond players who said their ALT accounts were masters, and duoed with a guy hardstuck plat on main but high diamond on his alt. Found that strange, did some research and saw people saying the game weighs your QP performance and placement matches heavier than people realize.

Not saying im the best player or deserve super high rank, but I dont think I deserve to be struggling to win games in gold 3.

Im sure there will be people who don’t believe me and thats fine i just wanted to prove to myself i wasn’t insane. Anyone else in the same position as me and found this interesting please go give it a try yourself. Also those first couple quick play games on a new account are funny asf.

I never post on reddit but felt like this was one thing i wanted to share if you read this far… Thanks 😊👍

P.S. I’ve played this game so much my A and D keys fell off, had to replace them with keys from the other side of my keyboard, they started breaking too so now theres tape on them. At least I can say I got diamond, even if it wasnt on my main. Also Blizzard randomly changed my name from ppdiddy to coralrhino which was annoying.

These predictions are a mix of basic assumptions IMO and also assuming NA is gonna fraud out to an extreme degree.

I usually play on Asia but been playing NA for a week to get some fresh air.

One thing I noticed is that most people just die to Bastion and Sierra even at GM/Masters, with discord it's literally a melt. I've never felt discord and mercy beam so op on Asia because people play around the cover.

Also there is almost no point playing flanker because you don't get any help as most support players are just back seating healbot so you better abuse their habit and let them pocket my Bastion.

The last match I was playing Venture on Oasis (QP) our Juno was spamming ''No, No, No, No, group up, group up, group up, retreat, retreat, retreat.'' from the capture point while other 4 members are trying to secure the front. We lost the round because it was literally a 4v5, Juno just flies away when someone dies. And no, Juno was not a noob, I checked the profile and he was a 9-year-old seasoned player.

I swap to Bast then the Juno spammed ''Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, yes, yes'' only to pocket (?) me. We took the rest of 2 rounds and won, but it was so wierd and boring experience.

When enemy tank see my Bastion they mostly swap to Orisa but they still die, it's not that I'm good, they just die for some reason.

I just don't get it, OW on Asia and OW on NA is almost like a diffetent dimension.

About a year ago, tracer's spread was nerfed, which gutted the character's front to back pressure. You used to be able to play tracer alongside another flex dps pretty comfortably. Now this is just impossible on escort/hybrid maps, which were designed with tracer's initial lethality in mind. Is there genuinely any chance her spread nerf gets reverted? I would have stopped playing this game if there was any other experience in gaming like the old tracer, but there isn't. I think about it all the time and it actually pains me. You used to be able to pump out like 9k/10 easily, and now it seems like 7.5k/10 is the limit.

Tracer's burst damage was nerfed, she(along with dive) suffers the most from the new hero additions, she suffered the most from the projectile changes. Her melee minor perk was only allowed to shine for 2 seasons before it was gutted. She probably has one of the worst sets of perks for "flagship" heroes. Her other minor literally makes her unplayable, the blink packs perk can be useless, and her other major doesn't make sense because you need what it provides before you use recall.

5.75 damage is also a sneak nerf, because I would rather have her oscillate between 6 and 5.5 than be forever mid.

I understand that tracer a year ago was too strong with her perks, but nerfing everything else in her kit was the wrong approach. This is similar to what they did with reaper. They gave him dire triggers, then took away his health because he gained too much burst???

I don't even consider the projectile "buff" to be a buff because that should have never been taken away in the first place.

The fundamental problem when it comes to balance changes is that tracer's design is too dynamic. This means that nerfs function as a training tool. So your average ranked tracer has now been forced to learn how to play smarter due to decreased lethality, which leads them to be content when nerfs are reverted.

For example, many tracer mains are content with her state right now simply because they experienced the shitty state she was in without the global projectile buff. Objectively speaking, she is probably in one of the weakest states she has ever been.

There is no overwatch without tracer. I can go click heads in any other game, but cannot play tracer elsewhere. Tracer is the best designed hero character in gaming history. Her invention is a genius creative and engineering feat.

Ok, I understand they wanted vendetta to shine, but can I please get my hero back now?

For me, two really come to mind:

1. Twisted Minds vs Al Qadsiah at last year’s grand finals. Just an insane moment, for years OW esports had been dominated by Korean talent, even as we went into OWCS we only really saw teams like Falcons and CR being title contenders. And then the entire OW esports scene was flipped on its head as not just one, but both teams in the grand finals were from the EU. Twisted Minds being crowned as the top team in OWCS is something that has since changed how we approach OW Esports, and since their global LAN record has been first and second. This single moment changed how we approach power rankings in Overwatch.

2. The recent EU playoffs. I don’t think we’ve had a regional playoffs this exciting since NA Summer Showdown in 2020. These three teams have been the top of EU play for the past 2 years. They are the reason the region has risen so much. So seeing Geekay, TM, and VP go at it with each match going the distance and being an absolute dogfight was simply a magical experience. Honestly I think the Summer Showdown analogy is perfect because we got moments like the EQO Rialto Blade multiple times during these series, the dogfight at the end of Circuit in the upper bracket match between Geekay and VP with hero play after hero play, the Seicoe wall that completely flipped Antarctic Peninsula, the Eis rock that cancelled Alphayi’s Sundering Blade to win them the match, Geekay getting not one but TWO reverse sweeps against TM, just so many moments across this tournament that made it such a special experience.

I do wanna add that for the future there’s a few I hope happen. First is The Big One, the one we’ve been waiting for since OWL. T1 finally getting that much needed first place finish. Across Phili Fusion, Seoul Infernal, and T1 now they STILL haven’t gotten that win. If/when they do, it’s going to be the biggest moment in OW Esports maybe ever. The Phili curse will finally be broken. The second one is that I hope DSG remains in the scene and has their own Cinderella run. We’ve seen how incredible they can be with Shanghai and Dallas, and unfortunately teams that don’t perform do not stick in OWCS as much due to the format. Obviously Disguised Toast isn’t taking business advice from some random guy on Reddit, but imo even if they have to partner with another org (dream would be NRG x DSG) they should, because the moment they win big will be so special.

Just some unhinged team rosters back in the day

The question I'm asking is:

How inflated is the 6v6 ranked system when compared to 5v5 role queue?

Some context behind my question:

I recently played overwatch the the first time in half a year and did my 6v6 placements because I wanted to step back into competitive without really worrying about my performance..

I ended up placing in masters5 86% which is the highest I've ever been across all ranks.

Before I previously stopped playing I had the 5v5 ranks of:

Plat 3 tank

Masters 5 dps

Gold 1 support

Diamond 3 openQ

My ranks had a massive distribution due to me not playing support or tank very much in the season I hit masters (maybe 15 games played). With that said I'd estimate my rank to of been around diamond 3 tank and plat 2 support.

That being said, I recently did my 6v6 placements and I placed in masters 5 playing only tank. I'm confused to why this has happened as my previous highest rank in 6v6 was diamond 3..

Looking at the skill levels in my 6v6 games I'd estimate the skill level of a masters5 is roughly equivalent to a diamond 3-4 5v5 player. I'm interested to hear what others have to say on this.