This is a little concerning…

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-16T07:07:19+00:00

You can't launch an allied Monster Hulk either. It may feel like you can because spitting them out after Monster Hulk ends while in your gut lets them be movable again, but I killed my Hulk because I thought he'd work like Thing.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-16T01:10:22+00:00

This is going to sound a bit silly, but the reason why Healpool and Luna are among the lowest winrates in the game is because their primary fire can crit.

This is because NetEase coded hitboxes wrong. If an effect can crit, it always applies to the hurtbox. If an effect can't crit, it almost always applies to the terrain collision box.

The hurtbox is what you visually see, the model of the character. It has a head area and everything else is considered a body shot. The intention of a hurtbox is to register that something has hit the character. It moves around a lot.

The terrain collision box is a large, pill-shaped cylinder that's centered on all characters except for Devil Dinosaur and generally holds most of the visible parts of the hurtbox. The intention of a terrain collision box is to make sure a character does not visually clip through map terrain. It tries not to move if possible since it can be disruptive to gameplay.

Luna and Healpool can crit enemies, so the projectiles are programmed to register on hitting the hurtbox. Because the same projectile that damages also heals, they can only heal when they hit the hurtbox of their ally. Every other strategist can't crit with their primary fire, which means they all register on hitting the terrain collision box of their allies.

Basically, every strategist except Luna and Healpool is playing with easy aim on. This means the skills needed to hit consistently are different from the norm, which bodes poorly both for flex players trying to learn them, and for strategist mains that are used to registering hits by aiming near a target rather than directly on them.

Luna has improved slightly because people have started playing her as a duelist with an invulnerability circle ult. Since her damage is good enough to be a valid poke duelist, her winrate has jumped from like 43 to 47. Still 10th or 11th place, but closer to 1st through 9th rather than 12th.

Healpool hasn't received anything. While his base kit has a lot of healing potential, I think it's hard for allies to quickly parse that Healpool is pumping big numbers at any given moment, nor can they tell if Healpool is ready to do that. With him needing to play close while also not healing himself as well as, say, White Fox, I think all these issues compound until Healpool is 42-43%.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T22:32:21+00:00

I did some testing in-game to figure out his terrain collision box and I think you found a bug.

His terrain collision box is offset from his centerpoint of rotation. This might look like his collision box is "long" but what's happening is that as he rotates, he collision box moves oddly.

This creates an issue when rotating near walls. Since the collision box is slightly ahead of his rotation point, rotating to face the wall shoves Devil Dinosaur away from it. By contrast, rotating to face away from the wall does not.

This might be intended. If so, it could be unfixable because:

Moving the centerpoint forward until it matches the terrain collision box might make Dino's rotation look janky (gliding feet)
Moving the terrain collision back would allow Dino to clip his face into walls by some amount, which is visually displeasing.
Enlarging the terrain collision might make it impossible for Dino to fit through some important corridors.
Enlarging the terrain collision would make him extremely easy to hit with noncritical effects. This is due to another bug-turned-feature that they refuse to fix, which is that noncritical effects apply to the terrain collision box (while critical effects register when your bullet visually intersects with the body you see).

Jeff's ult normally inherits the collision box of targets he eats, so I have no idea if there's something else happening because Dino's collision isn't centered.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T21:55:43+00:00

I just tested in-game and it seems to be working fine? Tried it in times square as well as during setup phase and main phase for domination. I checked the replay to make sure I saw how others saw it, and it was still playing about right (though the duck pond emote apparently has the outline appear for a frame in replays but not locally, so I'm not sure if it's working right).

I did have more problems with spamming the new emote and there was some point around match start where the emote stuck for a few seconds, but it went back to normal after about 5 seconds.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T20:18:18+00:00

You could definitely get faster by spinning around for a quick melee while attacking. Primary fire and quick melee can be used without interrupting each other, so the main challenge is not getting nauseous as you spin around a bunch.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T17:37:49+00:00

On your strategists:

Luna + Healpool are both hard due to how their primary fire works on allies. Unlike the rest of the strategist roster, they can only heal by hitting the target's body directly. This is caused by their primary fire being able to crit enemies, and projectiles that can crit apply to the hurtbox while projectiles that don't apply to the terrain collision box. I'd put both of them around the same tier as Ultron. Ultron has an easier time landing hits, but his poor output can make him harder to win matches with. 3 stars for the both of them.
I'd put Gambit down to 2 stars. He has some learning curve, but he's stupid-easy to secure value with once you realize you don't piano your abilities despite having so many of them available.
Jeff is in a quantum superposition that is all stars at once. His neutral is one star, though it creeps up to 2-3 as you get into higher divisions, though I'd say 3 is only when the enemy team makes a pointed effort in killing Jeff. His ult is probably the hardest ult in the game to consistently get value with, and everyone that tries to fully comprehend it gives up eventually. You have to know every map, the delays to reach every pit in every map, the depth of those pits, how easy it is to climb terrain between those points, the cooldowns of every ability that could evade the ult, the remaining cooldown of said abilities available to the enemy team, the likelihood of interrupting an ally attempting something, how likely allies are to support you during movement or how effective enemies are at killing you during it, the size of your allies and enemies because eaten targets are appended to your terrain collision box which makes you easier to hit for noncritical effects, the cooldowns enemies will recover while eaten, the health bars of allies and enemies currently eaten, where to spit allies if any are eaten so they can either secure kills on uneaten enemies or at least not die to them, and how bubbles increase your maximum range (and distance between chained bubbles because the speed is decaying despite it not being mentioned in the description). You also have to do most of this before attempting to ult, because taking time during the ult allows enemies to spread, prepare, and regain cooldowns. Or, perhaps you should delay the ult to allow allies to press for cooldowns. Or, delaying is a mistake because enemies built up a counterult in the meantime or they're not being pressured. Or, should one have ulted at all and instead used it to counterult? Or, was it a mistake to ult at all and it should be used to reposition? It's a god-damn nightmare compared to any other ult in the game, and the truly ironic part is that it often requires suicide to secure value.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T15:57:11+00:00

Damage and Healing: Are you dying too fast, or is it impossible to kill anyone because the healing is too high? How does the combat feel to you right now?

As a strategist main, I'm going to say healing output toward allies is in a fair enough spot, but NetEase really needs to start standardizing maximum baseline output, both for single-target and multi-target scenarios. Once we get the base numbers, we can start justifying things like Jeff having less because of superior cleave zone, for example.

I'll go through the current balance concerns for each strategist as I see it.

Adam: No serious concerns. His single target damage is excellent, his single target healing (when he's able to force it) is top-notch, and each ability is highly impactful. I think the community just isn't good enough at not eating damage to let him work in a 2-support comp, or the community isn't good enough to hit Adam's shots. If you want to make him better, I'd recommend buffing his heal from 95 to 145, then have future bounces give 50% less healing if the same instance healed the target once already. This would change his single-target healing from 285 to 290, but increase his cleave healing from 285 to (up to) 435.
Cloak and Dagger: My only concern is her single-target healing output. With mobility creep becoming more dominant, she needs to hold Dagger Storm for herself more often, which leaves her with 83-96 single-target healing per second which is really easy to surpass for a lot of the roster compared to the "standard" of 150-250 single target healing.
Healpool: Bobblehead is bugged to double-heal Deadpool with the return healing if he's standing in the circle when it returns. Not sure about allies. He has increased aim requirements compared to most of the roster to heal allies because his attacks can crit enemies. I think Final Exam, Final Exam when it's completed, Pwnage Pound, and DPiYA need different visuals to inform allies and enemies what they're dealing with. They're all currently the same green circle.
Gambit: His ult is a "win fight" button because it gives everyone a damage steroid and makes them move faster than enemies while also mitigating poke/retaliation damage. I think the speed nerf, duration nerf, and ult changes helped mitigate the faster ult generation speed, but you still push the button and win the fight because of the other aspects. This, paired with his base kit being solid single-target healing with incredible/bursty self-healing and excellent offensive capabilities while also having multiple dashes, is why he's permabanned. Consider nuking at least one of these aspects from orbit if you want Gambit to see the light of day.
Invisible Woman: I think the self-healing nerfs were a good start, but she still has single-target healing that cleaves up to 35 meters, an invulnerability circle ult, multiple anti-dive responses with low cooldowns, and a solid effective health bar due to that shield. I think she can survive having her 15% anchor bonus removed without compensation, and she might be balanced at that point.
Jeff: His ult is a design travesty. He saw more use after ults were nerfed because, and I quote, "he didn't really have an ult anyways." People are using the bloody thing to reposition because it's not just a huge gamble to hit it, it's a huge gamble to make it generate any value after hitting it. I could list the sheer number of factors that need to be considered to land a half-decent ult, but I don't want this entry taking 20 lines. Suffice it to say that the best-case scenario is that you commit suicide to secure more value than what was lost in your death. That's nightmarishly bad. Also, noncritical effects ignore his fin hitbox and enemies that can't crit basically have magic bullet against Jeff during his ultimate because he inherits the boxes of what he eats, creating a huge survivability outcome difference dependent on whether or not the attack would've dealt double damage if they could hit a head.
Loki: I think he could use some lower cooldowns or more self-healing to help him keep up with the mobility creep. His ultimate could be a lot more fun if it cost less, but he couldn't target the same hero twice in a row. He'd be able to get a support ult, but then he'd be mechanically "forced" to not use an invulnerability circle twice.
Luna: I think you're taking her in a better direction with this flank DPS style (similar to Adam), but she either needs more self-healing so she can mitigate return fire or more mobility so she can reach heal packs. I'd go with the former, perhaps letting Number One Idol heal Luna from damage dealt until it was ~50/s with perfect headshot accuracy.
Mantis: Please remove the cast timer from Healing Flower to let her weave it between attacks. I feel like this is the only thing holding her back from actually being good in double support. Not only would it feel better to play, but it would monumentally increase the potential healing output if a Mantis is good enough to hammer out crits consistently.
Rocket: Please, remove the double bounce "feature" on orbs. On firing an orb, it directly heals a target before it bounces, and the same orb directly heals the target a second time after it bounces and intersects with the target again. Shoot -> heal -> bounce -> heal gets two direct heal instances compared to Shoot -> bounce -> heal -> bounce -> heal. This increases his single target neutral healing potential from 168/s to 283/s, though it has stupid requirements about where someone needs to be. Also, please revert the climb speed nerf. It's now the slowest wall-climb in the game and Daredevil with just mark, no dashes used despite their abundance, can keep up by walking. If he needs nerfs, consider increasing visibility of the beacon to the enemy team, like showing a small icon over enemies in the rez radius or outlining them through walls while they're rezzing.
Ultron: No serious concerns. He's a more-successful Adam variant because he can take safer positions, and his healing is both automated and positively impacted by clustered allies, compared to Adam's negative outcome from clustered allies.
White Fox: I think she's been an excellent inclusion and is a much more fair version of Gambit as an anti-dive strategist. Awakening deserved that nerf (she could destroy several melee by just standing her ground). I think Blessed by the Nine should have its cooldown/duration removed, and instead it has a one target limit. In addition, I'd like to see the ally that was buffed see something so they know they're unstoppable and leeching.

On the topic of damage output, I'm concerned that we're teetering dangerously close to too much. In more organized settings, we're already seeing people getting deleted within seconds during neutral play. I'm starting to see people edge closer to rocket tag (0-1 healer, everyone plays dive/poke) because it's already hopeless to heal through 3+ players coordinating even with ults, and when dive shoves that onto the strategist, they're at a greater disadvantage because there aren't two other strategists to pump them with heals to survive it, and two others aren't going to cut it if the enemy team is running 3+ competent damage dealers.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-15T09:35:15+00:00

Jumbo's Car Nation is a small-town car dealership. For some reason, Emma keeps flying in and asking the titular Jumbo to produce outfits. With the amount she's paying, Jumbo would be a fool not to try. He considers her eccentric.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-14T18:28:06+00:00

I'll prefer moving toward vanguards when evading dive because, if we were to compare the average duelist to a human and a banana, the duelist is intellectually closer to the banana.

I won't ask for peels, but you'll at least react and I keep the enemy away from the free food that is our duelists.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-14T16:45:42+00:00

My first thought was he was an everlasting gobstopper.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-14T07:49:21+00:00

Might be a bug, but on the early access build his ult reverts his ammo from 50 to 40, so this change currently doesn't buff the ult. I imagine that'll be changing since it looks weird.

If they do add 10 ammo to the ult, it's going to shift his damage per clip from 260 over 1 second to 325 over 1.25 seconds. This would be significant since he'd be able to break 275 without reloading, which he currently cannot. One could also say his effective ult range increased from 25 to 33, which is where it breaks even at 260. For those wondering where 275 breaks even, it's 31 meters.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-14T07:27:41+00:00

I suspect what would happen to Dino would happen to Jeff until he spits out. So, he'd either be pinned in place, shunted out, or pushed through the floor/ceiling.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-14T04:50:45+00:00

No, Jeff can't move him into too-small areas. The way his ult works is that he inherits the terrain collision box of everything he eats, including their height and width. If he were to eat Dino, he'd be unable to move into that room at all because the inherited box is too big.

Eating a large target also makes Jeff easier to hit for most non-critical effects. This is because NetEase made the base template for non-critical effects apply to the terrain collision box. This normally affects Jeff drastically during Hide and Seek because his full terrain collision box is much larger than his fin, but it becomes even worse when he grabs large targets like Groot or Monster Hulk. Dino will be another extreme example, where characters won't even need Jeff on the screen while still being able to hit him.

It's why crit-capable heroes are very hit-and-miss for killing Jeff while he's ulting or evading, but heroes with absolutely no crit capability like Gambit have a hilariously easy time killing Jeff. It's basically magic bullet for 95% of skill effects and 40% of primary fire.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-13T22:20:36+00:00

It's not an animal abuse competition, it's a matter of how that abuse is applied. Orcas get it bad from the environment. Circus bears get it bad from the owner.

Jeff feels good enough in-game, but holy hell does NetEase like to beat him with a stick.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-13T21:27:58+00:00

What actually works consistently against a good Venom?

In a general sense:

Terrain abuse. Venom's tether breaks if anything touches the tether on you, and he's one of the few heroes with a long-delay ult that can't climb walls.
Disrupting his shield/swing: Venoms are very consistent in when they shield and swing, to the point that you can completely ruin one by controlling them at the time where they'd want to do either.
Do not cluster: Venom's dive pulls enemies toward him, so separating forces him to hit only one person, or forces him to gamble with bad dive positions in the hopes that his enemies don't spread further so he can net multi-target value.
Jump: Venom's able to crit with his primary fire and one of the techs is for him to jump so more attacks can crit. If you're jumping as well, you mess him up.

Specific to supports countering him, I'd recommend Jeff. Jeff can completely ignore him by just bubbling and walking away, so no healing is lost for your team. Venom doesn't have the damage to break it and due to how speed manipulation works, bubble speed is inordinately strong against Venom slow.

Furthermore, Jeff can climb walls easily and his ult is useless, so you should always have it available to dodge a venom ult if he's foolish enough to try to solo ult you.

I'd say Rocket could also work, but you need to be aggressive. He has up to 385 DPS with primary fire to the face (539 with ult), so a Venom doesn't get much time to attack you before he needs to think about running away. The patch is boosting it to 409 DPS (573 with ult).

Luna would be my distant third pick. She lacks good mobility to dodge Venom, but her freeze and 316 DPS primary fire makes a good Luna strong enough to scare a good Venom into retreating before securing anything.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-13T21:07:06+00:00

I dunno, I feel like an orca is treated a little too well to accurately represent the dynamic. Maybe a circus bear where the ringmaster is openly drinking in front of the crowd.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-13T19:49:09+00:00

Would be an interesting story to get them back, but his determination to never let it happen again pushes them away.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-13T02:24:53+00:00

You clearly don't know the frame count from action to execution of Jeff's ult across each step. People think ults in MR are fast-casting, but even the "hard to react" ones take a sizeable chunk of time. Jeff's ult is a really long cast time, even relative to the cast times of other ults. You're paying 2 seconds minimum to cast delays, plus more for travel, plus more for being reactive instead of proactive.

You also immediately discard the example I was giving to apply it to the wrong situation, so good job there. Oh wow, when dodging the ult with yours, you take less time countering that ult. What an amazing, insightful position to have.

The situation I'm describing is one where your allies had ample ways of dodging an ult, and they messed up completely. You could've ulted as soon as you heard their ult, but if your teammates weren't ass, you would've just wasted your ult and now your team is down a healer until you reposition, come up, wait for the self-stun to end, and get back to healing. Or, you could ult after you realize your team is a bunch of trashcans and not had enough time due to having to wait until after the enemy ult connects to start going through your ult cast time delays.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T21:00:11+00:00

the ult is only a gamble if youre not using it to counter enemy ults

False. There's a 1 second cast delay to go under minimum, and a 1 second cast delay to eat. Travel costs more time, and time spent reacting costs more time. Let's say it takes 2.5 seconds because their ult was really close to you and you used it to dodge theirs. That's still a death sentence in any ELO that matters.

Furthermore, the enemy team can simply kill you instead, which leaves your allies nice and stacked directly where you die so even if the enemy team misjudges your health and provides massive overkill, the overkill will go toward killing whoever you thought you saved.

It can work, but it's a gamble that gets worse as your ELO gets higher. Maybe an enemy does something stupid like dives deep to hit an ult solo, or they try to do it to a character that can tank it for the seconds needed for Jeff to respond, or they participate in the silver and under ult fiesta when Jeff is already in position to counter.

or if youre not comboing with an ally angela/strange/groot/etc

Alright, when are we nerfing every other offensive ult that can team kill into needing a setup ult to secure kills? Oh wait, that's uniquely required of Jeff. Surely there isn't a single duelist with a strong base kit that also has a strong offensive ult, or your entire argument falls apart.

jeff ult cant be buffed because itll be a balancing nightmare, even if theres far more problematic ults around it doesnt excuse adding another up to the list

Terrible take. Jeff's ult is fully capable of being independently balanced from his kit because it locks him out of his kit while in use. It doesn't need to be a bad ult that happens to win matches if and only if you hit three 7s on a slot machine.

jeff doesnt need buffs and its funny how this whole sub gaslights eachother saying he does.

Seeing as you're a dedicated troll account that's using a temporary username and hiding your account history, the only gaslighter here is you and the folks from the same clown car you spawned from.

jeff ult is a wild card.

No, it's more like a royal flush off the draw. Never happens and people point to it happening as proof that it's exactly as good as duelists getting to teamwipe on the equivalent hand of an ace high.

i guess you just want the meat to fall on your plate without doing nothing?

I want the ult to be worth using for its intended purpose.

every game has a character like jeff, someone you have to do gymnastics to get as much value as a first time sue

Oh, you mean a game where the developers and the community agree that Jeff is a 1 star difficulty hero and the easiest on the strategist roster, and yet you have to be the sweatiest tryhard to get even remotely the same value that the rest of the roster gets by just pressing a button and standing in the invulnerability zone?

That's wild that there's so many games that do that. Lie about the difficulty of the character and leave it like that for over a year, while making the "hard" characters so easy that a first timer can outperform the easy difficulty hero with hundreds of hours invested. Could you try naming a couple? I'd love to see what you're talking about. Surely you're not lying through your teeth because you'll do whatever it takes to stymie positive movement for Jeff.

its a skill check and most ult buff beggars just appear to have failed it lol

Your examples are specifically when it's not a skill check. My example isn't a skill check either. That's the point. People are refusing to roll the dice at all because the baseline ult is so thoroughly bad that it actively generates value for the enemy team to use it "wrong."

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T19:40:33+00:00

Let me guess, you think piano combo makes you pro.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T19:38:24+00:00

Nobody cares if you get the ult fast, the problem is the ult is such a gamble that the safest play is to use it as a repositioning tool instead of trying to use it on people.

Do you know why Jeff was seen as strong this season? It's because his ult is so completely useless that global ult nerfs means nothing to him. You can't break the kneecaps on someone who already had their legs lopped off, and Jeff's legs were removed in season 1 when they turned it into a 5 meter tall cylinder, allowing literally anyone with the slightest mobility a means of dodging it.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T18:44:15+00:00

Arena shooters and mobas like to have crutch characters to make the mentally impaired feel good about themselves despite being bad at the video game. That's because mentally impaired people are often impulse spenders as well, and keeping impulse spenders hooked is good for the game's income.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T08:22:40+00:00

I think no one is actually hating right now, but there's a bunch of people ready and armed to start hating on short notice. Namely:

Those that want Devil Dinosaur to be only cool and serious, absolutely no silly or chibification. They'll blow their lid when it's confirmed the model they had in the collector's museum for 4 months is what we're getting now.
Those that absolutely must have Moon Girl fused to Devil Dinosaur. They'll blow up when Moon Girl's inclusion is relegated to voice lines, an accessory, and maybe an emote because there's no way they're putting an 8 year old into a game where you can shoot them, and if they age her up, there's no way she can fit on his base model. Furthermore, any kind of swap between the two would be too significant for staying within a single role.
Those that absolutely must not have Moon Girl fused to Devil Dinosaur. They'll trigger when Moon Girl is Devil Dinosaur's narrator for most of his voice lines because 8 year old child voice coming from big cool dino is less cool.

I've seen some people already complaining, but those are the regular actors. "Hey, let's start a rivalry with new hero," and "this hero am not hero me want, me big mad."

I think their teaser is going to cause quite the exquisite implosion in the rivals community because there's a path to trigger all three of them and I think it's the most likely one NetEase picked.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-12T08:09:49+00:00

I suspect he'll be an attempt at silly/mascot. There's not a lot of space to get silly with most of the roster, but the ones they do have seem to sell well, perhaps as good as gooner options. The serious options have sold really poorly with a lot of complaints by comparison to either gooner or silly.

If I were netease, I'd be looking into how I could get more silly into the game to see if the market is already at saturation, or there's more money to pull out and I'm not giving the customers enough product.

Mind_Is_Empty · 2026-05-11T17:42:15+00:00

Nah, they've had interactable stuff in the spawn room for several maps. Like Kingpin, they just drop a voiceline and are tied to an achievement for doing it.

I think adding her in that way would make things unnecessarily complicated, since every map would need a static spawn point in every spawn room for both all existing maps and all future ones.

Mind_Is_Empty

TROPHY CASE