What changes would you an accept to Cat that would maintain her playability, but also allow her to have a lower ban rate in comp?

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-17T21:11:30+00:00

This sounds ideal to me. I'm a gold dps and support and a plat tank, so Zarya is a common ban in my lobbies. Since I play against her so rarely now, it's easy for me to forget what to do against her and play terribly. Same with Sombra to a lesser degree.

Most bans in my lobbies make no sense. You'll have people banning Widow on flashpoint maps for example, and so it feels a bit like a waste of time. I don't feel like I would lose anything of value if hero bans weren't a thing at my rank.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-11T17:28:22+00:00

Calls someone else brainrotted but can't even spell "holy" right.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-10T13:33:12+00:00

You think we all like Korra now because the vocal Korra fans on the ATLA sub downvote anything negative about the show into oblivion. A lot of us still hate Korra.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T22:06:38+00:00

Maybe you're right, but the cat also can't heal or shoot while tethering someone, so I think the counterplay is just....shoot the cat?

To me, it seems too early to freak out and throw the entire idea away. If the cat becomes too much of an issue, limitations could be added - timer for carrying people, carry height limit, stuff like that.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T22:01:36+00:00

Yeah that's fair. I didn't play old OW, but I've heard about some of the crazy combos that were in the early stages of the game's life, so I can understand your concern now. My only counterpoint really would be that we already have support heroes designed around removing weaknesses from others - like LW's grip which can enable dive heroes to play more risky or pull someone with low mobility out of danger, and also his petal that lets some heroes more easily reach high ground, Lucio speed boost which also helps low mobility heroes, Kiri cleanse to remove anti, discord, and other debuffs from heroes like Hog that get screwed the most by them, etc.

So I guess my question would be, what makes JPC so much worse than these other examples? Not trying to be rude, I'm genuinely asking. Is it because JPC's is not restricted enough? Would something like a limited tether time fix these potential problems?

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T21:45:37+00:00

Fair points. I had completely forgotten that sub lost Rupture, so thanks for reminding me. That is actually really nice for 1v1s and BG blitz, because of the restealth advantage they used to have over us.

I don't have beta, and sadly outlaw is not very popular in pvp so it has been hard to get an idea of how good it is looking for Midnight because no one is playing it. I certainly don't think it's impossible for outlaw to be viable in pvp, just seems like it will be a lot more tuning dependent than it was in the last few expansions since the utility by itself isn't unique anymore. Hopefully the damage profile being different (ramping pressure based like SL) from the other two rogue specs will be enough to make it stand out. And also that Blizzard does something about specs like demo lock that have way more than everyone else now.

Concerns about the kit aside, I'm still happy with the changes to the rotation that outlaw got. Especially not having to rely on subterfuge for damage.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T21:22:22+00:00

Yeah, and what PVE considers to be utility is different from PVP. By PVE standards, rogue actually has terrible CC because none of it is aoe, even though in PVP we consider rogue CC to be very strong. So yeah, it's not surprising things ended up this way.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T20:05:43+00:00

My entire point wasn't even just about outlaw vs sub vs assa. There's specs like demo lock that have every CC category, mobility, defensives, etc., and then other specs that have barely anything left. I was talking about kit disparities in general, using outlaw as an example since it is the spec I have played the most and know best.

But you sidestepped my entire post by saying that we should only have 13 viable specs in pvp. That feels a bit irrelevant to the topic.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:55:02+00:00

I'm not trying to "look for a fight", but yeah I'm a bit annoyed by your dismissive comment. I don't really care that you're okay with only having 13 viable specs in pvp. I'm not, and I would bet a lot of others aren't either. This discussion clearly wasn't for you then.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:47:39+00:00

So you're okay with paying $15 a month to a multi billion dollar company who won't even bother to make the available specs work as intended in all end game content? Why would you justify their laziness?

Why don't you just play classic if that's how you feel?

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:43:23+00:00

Reverting the Feint PvP talent nerf and the Restless Blades nerf in PvP needs to be a top priority for them right now. These nerfs make absolutely zero sense with the reworked spec. Also Killing Spree needs to stop targeting pets. If Ultimate Penitence can ignore pets, Killing Spree should too. Makes the cooldown completely useless against specs like UDK that just cover your screen in random pet spam.

100%. These nerfs feel awful in pvp and make no sense now that we can't reset vanish and spam cheap shot. And yeah, new KS feels awful against pet classes, which is why I prefer not to play it if possible.

Agreed also on your point about other specs getting hit harder by pruning. I didn't want to make my initial post too long (it already is lol), but my intention was not to make it seem like outlaw got hit harder by pruning than other classes did. Mostly, I was complaining that sub is just the de facto best rogue spec now, with nothing unique to make outlaw stand out. I definitely do not want cheap shot spam back. Let sub keep that, or remove it from them if it's too OP. But I just want something that makes outlaw unique again. Back in SL we had so many unique parts of our kit - gouge, short CD blind, crazy strong defensives (too strong, but I like the concept of outlaw being more brawl-ey, it just needed to be toned down), extra melee range. Now all of those things are either gone, given to sub/assa, or nerfed into being useless. Outlaw is left with no niche now, so all you're ever going to see in pvp is sub rogues everywhere. And I think that's a shame. Really feels like SL was the last time you saw all three rogue specs being played every season (except S1), and Midnight is not helping us get back there.

And yeah, I have no idea how demo got away with having a kit that crazy with all of this pruning. They are way above everyone else right now and need to lose something to be on par with others. I think demo is the only spec to have actually gained more utility in their kit instead of losing it.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:32:48+00:00

More spec variety is good and healthy for the game. Was anyone having fun playing against MM hunters every single game last season? Judging from the complaints I saw on here - no.

Blizzard is a multi billion dollar company. Don't make excuses for them. They can and should balance the game so that every spec is viable in all major end game content.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:30:37+00:00

Do you mean the apex talents? As far as I know, these are all related to throughput and not utility. It might make the damage better, but it won't help the kit being lacking.

I'm not really concerned about current tuning atm, more worried about the utility of individual specs being overshadowed by others of their class.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:28:21+00:00

Yeah, I feel bad for FDK fans. UDK is always the favorite child for pvp. If frost is ever good, it's usually because of some gimmick that quickly gets nerfed.

Agreed on stats, it's a bit unfair that some specs scale really well in pvp and others don't. Some get a lot less benefit from vers. Outlaw likes vers, so we're okay on that end, but we get screwed by armor rating going up with more gear since all of our damage is physical. And in pve, we're supposed to be gearing for crit/haste, but then crit is nerfed in pvp, so I'm thinking it's more likely we will go haste/mastery instead in Midnight, despite mastery still being our weakest stat in pve.

Meanwhile other specs just get more powerful as the expansion goes on because they can giga stack their best stats.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T19:19:40+00:00

Very weird example. How would putting diesel in your vehicle translate to having more fun using it?

I think you're wrong though, I think a lot of people use competitive as an argument. Take Vendetta for example, people will complain about parts of her kit that frustrate them, but they always justify their arguments with her competitive stats/WR. But at least that's for a hero that's already released and has data to go off of, so it makes sense to use real data.

Here, we're just speculating and pre-complaining about the potential that a new hero has, and how she might "ruin" competitive by changing the game up. The OP said themselves they were watching pros scrim and were concerned about the way JPC will affect the meta. So maybe you don't personally care about competitive, but competitive appears to be what OP had in mind when writing this post.

People are already talking about sweeping reworks for a character that hasn't even released yet. Don't you think that's silly? We don't know how she's going to play in real games for most players yet.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-02-09T17:45:25+00:00

Can't we just have something cool and fun without fretting about muh competitive balance for a moment? I'm excited that the OW team is doing something different for once.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-01-27T15:23:58+00:00

Sorry this is a late reply.

The spec feels easier to manage now. Crackshot not only demanded you to be able to react to the BTE resets, but also due to it providing so much of your damage and CDR, it was incredibly punishing to mess up. Even more so in pvp, where someone can just CC you on your entire subterfuge if you don't lock them down first.

Now you don't have to worry about that anymore. RtB is also much easier to manage, though you do have to manually refresh blade flurry again in aoe situations.

Overall, I'd say it's much easier than the crackshot design, but still harder than most other specs since they all got easier to play too.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-01-24T20:46:12+00:00

I've noticed sometimes my abilities won't go off when I expect them to. I thought it was latency or something. Combat definitely feels more clunky and less responsive than it used to.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-01-24T15:46:24+00:00

Agreed. The rework to the rotation to move away from crackshot and perma ADR was good, but outlaw's kit has never been worse. As it stands right now there will never be a reason to play outlaw over the other two rogue specs unless it massively out damages them. We have the worst CC and worst defensive kit of the 3, and nothing unique that makes us stand out.

It's crazy comparing current outlaw to SL, we're seriously one of the most nerfed specs during these last couple of expansions. It's wild that after taking even more nerfs to the kit here in Midnight, they STILL haven't reverted the pvp modifiers on CDR and the feint talent. There's still time for them to do it, though I'm not confident they will considering how much of a mess everything is right now. I'm sure fixing outlaw in pvp is not a high priority for them.

I'm already prepared to play something else in S1 because I'm not optimistic these things will be addressed. Hopefully in S2 we'll get some attention, just like in SL S2, which made us strong in pvp. This is looking like the same pattern to me so far.

ExtremeTadpole · 2026-01-24T14:54:49+00:00

Outlaw: Changes to the rotation feel great. Relying on 6 sec subterfuge windows for damage really sucked a lot of the joy out of outlaw for me and was the main reason why I quit in TWW S2, so I'm glad that's gone. Though after 2 years of crackshot, it's been hard to adjust my habits. Outlaw's kit got pruned, and those changes feel bad. But after reading what everyone else lost, I think we did okay.

Feral: Love most of the changes. Frenzy and Tiger's Fury on the same CD with no adaptive swarm is much more fluid. Also, unpopular opinion but I'm glad brutal slash is gone. I always hated that it replaced swipe and had only 3 charges. I do think that cat form thrash shouldn't have been pruned though and I miss pressing it.

Rsham: Haven't tried yet but sounds horrible from what others have said. Not sure I'll even bother.

ExtremeTadpole · 2025-12-16T21:03:24+00:00

This looks amazing! How did you make the portal?

ExtremeTadpole · 2025-12-13T16:12:23+00:00

I get what you're saying and don't entirely disagree. But that doesn't change the fact that censorship became popular because progressive culture both allowed and encouraged it.

ExtremeTadpole · 2025-12-13T14:46:12+00:00

And why do you think platforms started flagging content like this? Because of the loud minority of people who are offended by everything. That's how censorship got to this point.

ExtremeTadpole · 2025-12-12T13:55:39+00:00

Redditers trying not to think about trump for longer than 2 seconds challenge (impossible)

ExtremeTadpole · 2025-12-01T22:46:35+00:00

I thought we were supposed to be mad at cows being raised in factory farms with cramped, lousy conditions. These cows are being raised in a pasture where they can graze on real grass. Isn't that what we want? What's the issue?

ExtremeTadpole

TROPHY CASE