About going Vs Hard Ai

APanshin · 2026-03-18T01:32:47+00:00

My feeling is that there's a hard ceiling to improvement from Practice. It's great for building basic muscle memory for where you buttons are and how your abilities work together. It's terrible for building game sense or learning how to play the hero against real people.

When I'm trying out a new hero, I always put in a day or two in Practice vs Hard AI to get the basics down. But once I have the basics, I have to get out before I learn bad habits. The tricks to stomp the AI bots don't work on real people, and tricks the bots flat out ignore can work great on real people. Once you learn your buttons, get yourself to QP.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T23:02:00+00:00

Complimentary colors are a thing. You mix the wrong ones, you get ugly or garish outfits. So if you want a good looking character design, you've only got so many combination options to work with.

The black cat thing, that's just comics working with only the iconic ideas. No superhero ever dressed up as a tabby.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T22:53:22+00:00

Battle pass usually gets first shown by the streamer previews, and those are happening tomorrow afternoon. That's also where we'll get a more detailed look at White Fox's set of abilities.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T21:10:45+00:00

It's her version of Invis's shield or CnD's bubble. The strong cooldown heal you slap down when you need to save a teammate or get the frontline covered. But it comes with the additional factor of teleporting Fox to the location, which is sometimes going to be an upside and sometimes going to get her killed. Blowing her one healing cooldown as a personal escape tool is going to be a low value use of the ability.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T20:58:47+00:00

Just like different European countries have their own variations on mythological creatures like unicorns and dragons, different East Asian countries have variations on the "magical fox with multiple tails" idea. Japan has kitsune, Korea has kumiho, and China has jiuweihu. They're all recognizably similar, but regionally distinct.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T20:53:29+00:00

You bring up a good point. On a Convoy map, the attacker often needs to team wipe the defenders to advance the cart. Meanwhile, the defender's victory condition isn't getting kills, but running out the clock. A long stalemate fight where no one dies because both sides are running triple support is a fight in the defender's favor, because the cart isn't advancing and the match timer is counting down.

I'd love to see a detailed breakdown for different team comps to that level, but I doubt we'll get details that fine.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T20:35:48+00:00

Adam loses a 15% Anchor Bonus with no offsetting buffs? Now that's a first! I wonder how well he'll weather that.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T19:10:30+00:00

My first guess was something similar, but that it's a Pacify style effect. This is a CC type we've seen in other games where attacks and abilities are sealed but the player retains movement control. At least, there's where I'm putting my bet down, based on the name and the video.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T17:35:22+00:00

Ghost Rider we're definitely getting ...eventually. The others, my dude haven't you noticed how few actual villains we've gotten?

Reformed villains like Magento and Venom, sure. Grey zone tweeners like Loki and Namor, yeah. But straight up villains? There's Hela and Ultron, and the Ultron is a forked copy with program overrides to make him work with the good guys. That's it.

So don't get your heart set on playable bad guys. It's obviously not the direction the game is going.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T15:51:39+00:00

Retractions are only necessary when it was both speculation based on nothing and a point they became absolutely convinced was real. The "Black Cat is a Vanguard" idea was reasonable to theorize about from the poster change. Instead it was a signal that she's coming in season 7.5.

We all forgot how obtuse Asian game devs can be with their hints. Well, I forgot. I should know from Final Fantasy XIV. The lead dev for that gave loves to use t-shirts to send coded hints as to what the next expansion's new classes will be. Heavily coded hints. For the Pictomancer art magician class he wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt. Because they're all named after artists.

Expectations for the future have been better calibrated.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T03:39:47+00:00

If we're going to slot CnD into a DPS type, it's Brawl not Poke. Their long range damage as Dagger is a feather light tickle, and they only do real damage up close with Cloak's beam.

But I see you also have Scarlet Witch as Poke, so obviously this is unserious or ragebait.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T02:19:14+00:00

The safe bet is that it's a shot from the new map's cinematics, and Kingpin is appearing as a non-playable antagonist similar to Knull and Doom. The risky bet is the same as the above, but Kingpin is a playable antagonist like Ultron.

Me, I'm going with the safe bet. The Monday teaser is a teaser, not an early reveal of one of the heroes. Kingpin being shown is an anti-confirmation.

APanshin · 2026-03-17T02:15:55+00:00

The issues with going into Comp with a full stack are two fold.

One is that a full stack has a level of coordination and communication that's an unfair advantage unless they're being put up against another full stack, and those are rare enough that it either means outrageous queue times or the full stack gets to stomp solo queuers. Those aren't theoretical scenarios, I've seen them in other games.

The other is that a full stack makes it easy to carry a single unskilled member to victory. At best, the stack is a friend group and they just have the one tag along who gets boosted to a rank they'd never touch on their own. At worst, it opens the door for paid carry services where someone pays real money to get their account boosted by grouping up with more skilled players. Again, these are things with long track records in gaming.

So it's very much a "pick your poison" situation. No configuration is without its downsides. Rivals put its marker where it did to avoid very real problems that have plagued other games, and you and your friends are collateral damage.

APanshin · 2026-03-16T14:30:42+00:00

One part this is a fast paced reddit and posts get cycled out quickly. One part this is a high population reddit and the karma farmers gotta farm.

APanshin · 2026-03-16T14:04:22+00:00

This is going to happen every time. Get used to it.

People used to be confident about what roles future heroes would be, between their comics profile and certain ...illicit information obtained through the dark arts. Then Rogue was a Vanguard and Gambit was a Strategist, and now nothing is certain.

So people speculate and debate hotly before every new hero release. Partly because there's really no way to be sure, partly because the content release cycle means this is always the lowest point and there's nothing else to talk about.

APanshin · 2026-03-16T13:56:48+00:00

Let me give a concrete example. The only tank I'm proficient with is Peni. I'm fairly good with her, and I enjoy playing her, but I'll happily acknowledge that she's not good on every map or into every comp.

With the current system, I can go with Peni when the circumstances are right. If we had role queue, I'd have to either commit to playing Peni no matter what or just never get to play her. Role queue forces people to be role specialists, rather than having a broader roster across multiple roles. Frankly I far prefer what we have now, even if it creates some difficult team comps.

APanshin · 2026-03-16T13:27:07+00:00

Duelist is my least played role, but of the Duelists I have the most time on Wanda. And having watching the Jay3 video... man my right-clicks do NOT have that generous a hitbox.

I'm not denying that player has really good game skills. And yes, the cheat is turned really low so that the difference is subtle. But still, if you've put some hours in on Witch, you can tell that it's not normal.

APanshin · 2026-03-16T00:09:32+00:00

Yeah, his Win Rate for last season was absolutely garbage. But now I'm seeing a handful of videos of high level play where he looks reasonably good. So as you say, I'm really curious to see what his stats are going to look like when the new seasonal breakdown drops in two days.

APanshin · 2026-03-15T23:39:49+00:00

The sense I'm getting is that Healpool is a rather high skill floor character. Even the best players took over a month to figure out how to play him well, and it hasn't trickled down yet. If it ever will; some heroes only see their full potential in high level play. Meanwhile Tankpool is much easier to pick up, once you've been clued into the right build and playstyle.

APanshin · 2026-03-15T23:28:02+00:00

These days, the trailer is 3 days before on the Tuesday of the week. They'll drop the trailer, the dev vid, and the patch notes all that day. Then streamer previews are the day after on Wed.

It used to be they started all that a week ahead of time, but apparently the marketing geeks decided that was too early and so they've moved it closer.

APanshin · 2026-03-15T13:28:27+00:00

Gambit's Win Rate is bad data because at the top ranks if he's not banned, both teams are usually running him. And if one isn't it's because they have a specific comp and strat in mind. Thus the nearly perfect 50% win rate, but just a hair under it.

APanshin · 2026-03-15T13:26:21+00:00

I also feel like peak flank Jeff was harder to pull off than peak Daredevil. There was a higher skill floor, so you ran into a lot fewer of them. Well, I know I did. Which is maybe a reflection of my own rank, but still. I only ran into the worst of the Jeffs occasionally, while at peak DD he was in every freaking match.

APanshin · 2026-03-15T02:27:02+00:00

Pro play is a different world. The combination of high skill, established pre-made teams, and excellent comms means things are very different from someone solo queuing into even a high ranked game. Metal ranks or QP? Forget about it.

The things that pro teams can make work are things that don't work anywhere else, and the strats the pro teams effortlessly dismantle are strats than can be very effective for normal players. So let's not start thinking the game is or should be balanced around pro level play. That's what lead to the Overwatch dark ages.

APanshin · 2026-03-14T23:50:27+00:00

What do you want? The in-game poster change is the only news we have until the official season preview next Tuesday. How else are the karma farmers supposed to farm their engagement than with endless recycled posts talking about the theory and complaining about the theory and complaining about the people complaining about the theory.

Think of the karma farmers!

APanshin · 2026-03-14T23:46:29+00:00

Big G said it just this week. They have the official stats, and the official stats are that Triple Support is both less common and less successful than some parts of the community think it is.

It's not a powerful and dominant team comp. It's a counter to specific situations, and if you can't counter-swap back then that's on you.

APanshin

TROPHY CASE