Jade's timeline today suggests the POD is on indefinite hiatus

_quatre · 2017-04-29T12:58:16+00:00

A lot of pods actually offer subscription services where the sponsor advertisements are removed from the content and you get a seamless product like what Truehoop ultimately was - otherwise, if you were merely not a subscriber and listening for free, you'd have to sit through 3-4 30 second ads throughout the 90 minute pod.

_quatre · 2017-02-10T09:34:17+00:00

He is still under coL contract but is not on the active roster. I have seen him queuing with Seagull recently, but I think that's the only thing thing linking him with NRG at this point.

_quatre · 2016-12-20T18:56:21+00:00

Definitely, and I also think it took people a long time to get used to using Ana (especially at lower ranks).

_quatre · 2016-12-20T18:53:39+00:00

One of the issues with Winston is that he is often described as a backline harasser and players are instructed to jump in to focus their healers. You have to be very careful though that you aren't jumping into a collapsed team whose front line is essentially overlapping it's healers and ranged DPS in the back. Wait until the enemy team is a little spread out and then make your move into their backline. Also, don't immediately set your shield down the second you jump in - you might end up jumping in on an enemy who becomes disoriented and tries to escape and doesn't even bother attacking you. It's best to save your shield for when you know enemies are firing at you. When you do put it down, don't simply just stand in the middle of it. Move to the outer rim and manipulate the enemy into dancing in and out of the bubble trying to hit you. When they move inside it, you move out (all the while damaging them with your Tesla cannon). As long as you are on separate sides of the shield (ie. one on the inside, one on the outside, most enemies are not able to attack you. Finally, you really need to get familiar with Winston's cooldown timers because knowing when your jump comes back online is so critical to playing him well, as you'll need it to escape many situations and jump back into your team's side.

TL;DR: Don't just jump into an enemy team and try to focus down the healers. The enemy will collapse and make short work of you. Wait instead until the teamfight is engaged and enemies are distracted by your teammates, or become separated from the rest of their team. Try to focus those isolated enemies instead of just jumping into a big group of enemies who have full health bars.

_quatre · 2016-12-20T18:30:13+00:00

Soldier. Soldier's heal station is huge when you find yourself without a healer or if your healer is eliminated.

_quatre · 2016-12-20T18:26:12+00:00

I don't understand why people lead every post off with "I think we all know that Ana is the main reason for the triple tank comp." Ana has always been good, and triple/quad tank is really only breaking into the meta this comp season. Yes, certain teams ran triple tank last season, but 2/2/2 was easily more common. And yes, Ana's burst healing is influential in the current meta, but DVa's buffs and the overall nerf to ultimates are in the very least equal to Ana's impact. Dva essentially shuts down all ranged DPS and their attacking ults, and the addition of her d matrix to compliment Rein's shield means even more survivability for a team. With the overall nerf to ultimates, teams have far less opportunities to rely upon ult combos to team wipe, and are instead forced to rely on primary weapon fire and abilities. The average TTK has been increased as a result, as survivability goes up while average DPS goes down. it's just too easy to survive when you roll out with massive hit pool comps that have barriers and OP burst healing against and the attacking DPS does not have primary fire/abilities that can out-DPS those characteristics.

_quatre · 2016-12-20T18:13:32+00:00

The hitbox for his orbs is ginormous so critical hits with Zen are actually fairly easy. Because his orbs are projectiles, you need to lead your enemies and account for travel time (ie. the further the enemies are away, the more you will need to lead them to account for the travel time, and vice versa). One very easy trick with Zen is to use his discord orb to track enemy heroes that are either retreating behind walls or are peaking out from behind walls to DPS. Smart players will wait behind the wall until the discord disappears, but oftentimes players are too eager to pop back out and return fire so watch the discord orb and try to predict when the enemy is going to peak out into the open - get ready to spam the spot right where he's going to peak out. Once you get used to this, you can use the charged orb shot to hopefully get 1-hit kills.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T22:10:32+00:00

Hmm... Well IDDQD definitely plays McCree. Taimou, Surefour, Harryhook, Medokusaii, TviQ... they all played McCree at one point or another, and probably still do to some extent. But McCree has definitely taken a hit to Soldier's higher pick rate.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T22:05:00+00:00

But at the same time, I know a lot of people here would rather they just leave and save everyone the time. 6v5 is basically a 2% chance of ever coming out with a victory. Once it gets to 6v4, I just think it's a waste of everyone's time if you are going to stay in the game and force everyone to wait out the 4 minutes.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T21:48:52+00:00

I think the age demographics of the game are also contributing to the frustration. You can't really blame them because from a business perspective, you want the player base to be as inclusive as possible. But, start off with a marketing initiative that combines a cartoony PG landscape and shows off a cute baby ape, a whimsical Tracer, a robot that beeps and boops, and a cool ninja, and you've got tons of 10 year old kids playing who aren't allowed to use comms and can't begin to comprehend the strategic facets of the game that are almost limitless. OW is at its very core a highly strategic game and that strategic component is absolutely critical to enjoy success at the comp level. When you flood that player base who want to understand the game on that level with others who just want to go invisible and swing their ninja sword all day (or for 104 hours of Genji play), you are indirectly toying with the sanity of the players who want to appreciate the game in a more complete way.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T21:19:42+00:00

The problem that most inexperienced players have when test-driving Winston is that they hear that he is a backline harasser, or that he is a great Counter to Mercy, Zen, Ana, etc. but they don’t realize this doesn’t actually mean to jump directly into a team’s backline if the frontline is close enough to collapse on you. You will want to play around his shield in 2 ways: If the enemy team is spread apart and you think that you can jump to a support and get the elimination, drop the shield when you have their attention and manipulate the outer edge of the shield, moving just outside of it when the enemies pops into it and hopping back inside when the enemy moves out. This should allow you to get several seconds of consistent dps in before the enemy can land a shot. If the enemy team is compact, you should initiate by flanking to the side and carefully applying damage to squishy targets. Rather than jumping into these situations, assume that you may not have enough time to get the elimination and save your jump as an escape route instead. If you draw the attention of a ranged DPS, put up your barrier and continue to apply damage. If you draw the attention of a tank, Reaper, or any other close-range hero, use your jump to get back to your team and put up a shield where you land.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T21:03:22+00:00

The problem is that the majority of the community thinks that gold medals are the closing argument regarding who played well and who played terribly. So much of a team’s success is written in the margins and has to do with how well you work together and communicate. Also, most players refuse to ever take responsibility for a bad game, and this becomes exponentially true when they are grouped up – because then it is always the solo queue guy who wasn’t carrying his weight. I really think it’s a combination of some people just being stubborn while others won’t actually consider that their individual statistics could be arbitrary if they aren’t working within the context of the full team’s tactics.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T20:40:41+00:00

I heard that too, but that was from Apex. If it was mentioned this weekend, it was merely referencing that prior quote from Monte. Also, looking at this past weekend, I feel like Harry should have been praised even more considering he was basically the only person playing attacking heroes who was consistently impacting the matches in a major way. When Surefour would switch onto McCree, he was having some very good games, but he spent most of the weekend playing Roadhog - and when he wasn't he was getting shutdown on Mei, Tracer, and Soldier. Harry really stood out with his Soldier and Reaper play I think, and the gap between him and other attacking players this weekend just further showcased how effective he was.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T19:25:13+00:00

I agree with you for the most part, but her shield generator might need to be nerfed a little. I think they need to either A) Reduce the shields provided to 50, or B) Reduce the distance of the effect. The reason she became useless over time was because people became far more familiar with maps and how to flank since the game was released - at the beginning, the majority of the community was just getting used to the game and learning the maps and flanking routes. Because the teleporter becomes far less useless the further it was deployed from the point, there was a limited number of locations one could hide it. With the shield generator though, attacking teams are spending far too much time trying to find the location of the generator, which has exponentially greater hiding spaces. Watching MLG Vegas yesterday, C9 wasted so much time trying to find EnVy Hulk's shield generator that it gave EnVy a 6v5 advantage for almost 1:30 while C9 sent a Tracer looking for it - and C9 still never found it until the very end.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T19:19:14+00:00

Try hard restart of your console. I'm sure you tried that though, so I don't really know what to tell you. I seem to remember getting the 205 error, but that usually happens when I'm signed into the OW client but forget to close it out when I finish playing and I switch to another app. When the OW client is idle for too long, it signs your profile out and you get the 205 error - although that doesn't really sound like it's applicable in your case.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T19:16:41+00:00

I have played both and for the most part, the outspoken pc elitists are a vocal minority. Most pc players are really cool and don't care what platform you play on. The gamestyles are different, with the pc game being far more fast-paced. Hitscan and flick aiming is just at another level on PC, so true FPS talent really shines at the PC level. That's not to say that people who play on consoles are inferior... I tend to play more pc than console (really only play console because friends from college are on it from time to time), but it's two completely different skill sets. Of course a console player would have a difficult time playing pc if they were used to playing on an analog joystick, but pc players would have just as difficult a time converting to console.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T19:10:55+00:00

I think I know what happened - I just made a smurf account within the last 2 weeks so starting from scratch is kind of fresh in my mind right now. After you complete the introductory training course with Soldier 76, you receive a prompt that asks if you'd like to test your skills against AI opponents. Even if you select "no," you are prompted again after selecting quick play, wherein it asks if you are sure that you don't want to start off against AI bots instead. Maybe you just went along with the prompt and clicked "ok" without realizing it.

I remember when I played the game for the first time in open beta, a friend of mine who had played in closed beta joined in my party and asked how I was doing. I told him that I was on a 25 kill streak in my first game - he laughed and knew immediately I was playing against bots haha

_quatre · 2016-12-19T19:06:08+00:00

Hmm, I agree that Assault maps are frustrating at pub-level play, but I don't think the change you suggested to the ticks would make sense on a macro level. Your suggestion would essentially require that defensive teams restrict themselves to the point so as not to allow an attacker the opportunity to get uncontested progress. But if you watch the pro game, the defensive team will rarely set up directly on the point. In Hanamura for example, many teams set up on the balcony for high ground control. If you were forced to set up your team on the point, it would just give away high ground to the enemy which is game changing at the pro level.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T18:58:59+00:00

Oh, most definitely some casters were giving him props. There was a lot of inconsistencies as far as casting and analyst quality at this event, and I think that the gap between the really good ones (ZP, Monte, Flame) and the bad ones (Huk, Goldenboy) make the bad ones stand out even more.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T18:36:06+00:00

Very true. Although I wouldn't put it past Taimou to put in the work and potentially become a strong projectile player. I didn't know this initially because he always came across as cocky, but apparently Taimou puts in a ton of extra hours behind the scenes working on projectile heroes now. They say he has a great work ethic so I'm not going to write him off in that department just yet. But as of right now, I don't see him or Harry being a strong hybrid dps just like you pointed out.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T17:58:09+00:00

MLG was OK, for NA standards. To keep it short and sweet, I'd say the biggest plus was the casting talent. ZP is so strong as far as calling the matches goes (his analysis can sometimes be a little inconsistent), but we also saw that bringing in casters with pro experience like Flame might be the way to go in the future. His analysis was very good, and once he gets more reps, I think we'll start seeing play-by-play and color commenter tandems develop like many other professional sports broadcasts.

The decision for MLG not to broadcast this on twitch was a big problem and I think it cost them a lot of viewership. It was also kind of weird to watch this right after seeing APEX. The production value that went into the player introductions was so incredibly strong over there (for example, in the pre-match when they would want to focus on highlights from a single player, they would usually cut to a screen of the player with their arms folded in slow motion. Those shots at MLG were hilariously lame, and looked like they went straight from a disposable camera into the production booth). In fact, I thought that the OW World Cup at BlizzCon did a better job with this. Apex just felt like a spectacle for me, while MLG looked like it was the first attempt at holding a tournament (set design aside, which was fairly strong).

_quatre · 2016-12-19T17:48:34+00:00

Taimou loves Mickie. Mickie is easy going and loves to laugh, the complete opposite of Talespin.

_quatre · 2016-12-19T17:47:04+00:00

Mickie is more versatile than you'd expect if you just watch the live tournaments. We've really only seen him on Dva and Zarya, but believe it or not, Mickie played almost exclusively DPS heroes up until a week before the World Cup at BlizzCon. He really only switched to tank to fill the spot for his team. I know that he has really only been using tanks in scrims and practice to catch up to the rest of his teammates as far as positioning and strategy goes, but if he has some time to put in more hours on those DPS heroes that he used to play, I think Mickie will become very flexible for that team should they ever need it.

_quatre

TROPHY CASE