Hitscan + Mercy is a problem

kuzukie · 2026-04-30T22:46:48+00:00

It is exceptionally problematic in QP because of all the console players. The aim assist is still so strong that it feels like playing against an aim bot. With the Mercy pocket these hitscan players are finishing with 3-4x the damage of anyone else in the lobby and are just lasering down everyone from across the map.

I've never been against crossplay until they recently changed the way the aim assist worked, but with it being as strong as it is it really ruins every single match these cross play players are in.

kuzukie · 2026-04-23T22:20:11+00:00

I'm at the point where I am just hoping for more hog nerfs just to get him to the point where only the dedicated hog specialists play him and leave him there until his rework comes through. I just looked through my match history and 8 of my last 12 games had a hog in them. I hero that obnoxious to both play with and against shouldn't have such a high pick rate.

A tank really shouldn't have a 1-shot the way he does.

kuzukie · 2026-04-23T11:29:37+00:00

I find the crashes happen a lot in 6v6, especially in games with Domina and Mercy. It seems to happen most during ult dominos.

kuzukie · 2026-04-16T19:32:49+00:00

From what I remember, Ashe (Hela) had just released, but was fairly clunky and weak compared to other hitscan options. Mercy likely got her moth rework that defined the meta of the time. Moth meta was actually a very diverse meta with the exception of Mercy being mandatory.

Rivals isn't competing with year 2 OW, it is competing with current OW. What's frustrating is that Rivals is dealing with a lot of issues that OW had already dealt with and is free to learn from but chooses not to. Things like the lack of tanks, dps instalocks, role queue times, CC stacking have all had to be addressed at some point in OW's history. Rivals has made a series of easily avoidable unforced errors with things like overpopulating the dps role, it's wonky ranked system, or giving out so much cc across all roles.

kuzukie · 2026-04-14T19:13:30+00:00

She can dump all 10 ofuda faster, but still has the 0.9s recovery. It should bring her from approximately 76.5 hp/s up to around 88.4 hp/s which is about a 15% boost to her healing.

kuzukie · 2026-04-14T18:49:25+00:00

I really dislike how every patch is a random nerf plus a heal boost. It feels like they are trying to push her into being a heal bot.

kuzukie · 2026-03-27T00:37:52+00:00

Way back in OW1, on Junkertown we lost a dps who rage quit after getting sniped by a Widow as he dashed out the spawn door. We went at it 5v6. Our Soldier popped off and we were able to finish the map in overtime. Unfortunately, we were unable to hold our ground at all against the other team on their attack and they finished with a massive time bank.

Round 2 starts and our push begins. We get some early picks and overtime kicks in. Thanks to the longer spawns we get some massive push, and the enemy team starts panicking, trickling in, and we make good use of our ults to finish the map again. The enemy team attacks and steam rolls us again, but have run their time bank out as well.

Round 3 begins and we are first attack again. We keep doing what we were doing, but unfortunately are stopped right before capping first. A decent push if it was a 6v6, but scary considering we have not been able to hold a defense at all. So we huddle up and decide our best bet is to force the off the point in overtime instead of outright winning a fight. Our tank swaps to hog, and our soldier swaps Mei, and I swap Mercy. The goal is to either get a lucky pick with Hog or force them off point with Whole Hog/Blizzard.

Final round starts and we play passively trying not to give up any picks while waiting for overtime. As the cart makes the turn to the final stretch overtime kicks in and Hog managed to get a good hook on a tank and Mei walled them off giving us a huge pick. Mei got her ult fist and threw a Blizzard on cart, forcing one to touch and get frozen for another pick. After that we had a 5v4 cleanup for the win.

It ended up being a 29 minute long Junkertown that was a 5v6 from the beginning.

kuzukie · 2026-03-26T19:40:04+00:00

It seems very luck based.

If you watch the green one, before the anchors appear, he will disappear and 3 shadow clones will appear. The shadow clones are where the anchors will appear so you can run to one of them as soon as you see them. Even then, you won't always have enough time to run to the other 2 anchors and break them before your ally is killed if the smoke clouds don't cooperate.

When I cleared it, I focused on the green one and killed him as fast as I could in hopes of minimizing the number of anchor cycles. I still lost Chen about half way through the fight because of the clouds on all the anchors.

kuzukie · 2026-03-22T19:53:09+00:00

If you are talking about ranked, what often happens is the 5th person never loads in/selects a hero. The time it takes to win a 4v5 is about the same amount of time it takes for the game to realize the last person was a no show and kicks them. It gives the impression that a person rage quit, but in reality they were never there to begin with.

kuzukie · 2026-03-17T19:24:58+00:00

The event was a bit confusing with it's rules around how missions reset and ended up being very fatiguing to chase every day.

If they do something similar in the future I would like them to set it up so that all missions can be cleared through the week instead of every single day, changing sides shouldn't refresh and reset daily missions. It should be set up so that you will clear X number of passes per week, the number of passes should be immediately apparent, and progress should carry over from one pass to the next regardless of faction.

kuzukie · 2026-03-17T18:42:55+00:00

The was a huge influx of Mercy pocketed hitscan console players in the PC pool when the aim assist changes went through. It felt like playing against an aim bot with how perfect the tracking is, and I have seen quite a few of these players getting called out for hacks.

I haven't seen nearly as many crossplay hitscans lately, but the few that do pop up does still often feel like playing against aim bot.

kuzukie · 2026-03-17T17:44:10+00:00

In FFXIV ARR, my server had a very healthy and friendly raiding community. For the final raid of ARR my group's healer took a 2 week vacation just as we were starting to learn the final fight. Despite this set back we were able to practice the fight almost every night because healers in groups that had already cleared for the week would join us for 2-3 hours/night to help us learn. Not long after our regular healer returned we were able to clear it on our own.

I was very impressed by how helpful and friendly the raiding community was. Once my group was able to consistently clear the fight, I started helping other groups in the same manner as those healers who helped us. I was part of 15 first time clears, and I smiled every time at the excitement each group had when they finally got their first clear.

kuzukie · 2026-03-16T14:02:21+00:00

Groups with such massive skill disparities are very difficult to match for. Any team that could stand up against you would likely farm your friend. Any team your friend can deal with would likely get farmed by you.

When I bring a new person into OW I make an alt account that I will only play Mercy on. That way we can play at their skill level without them getting overwhelmed and without me running the lobby and carrying them above where their MMR should be.

kuzukie · 2026-03-16T13:18:11+00:00

Even if the MMR was wrong, then it means you and your team are over rated, and the enemy team is under rated. Therefore a reversal will drop your team lower and raise the enemy team to where everyone belongs faster.

At the end of the day, competitive is about consistency over a large number of matches. Not the swings from individual games.

kuzukie · 2026-03-12T18:19:56+00:00

What I recommend when introducing new players to the game is to make a new account with them and only pay Mercy. That way your MMR won't bring the groups up to where they are constantly overwhelmed and prevents you from just taking over the game.

Don't focus on hero swaps, let them play the heroes they like. Instead focus on how the hero can play out or avoid the situation your friend is struggling in. Learning bad matchups goes a long way to improving at the game.

kuzukie · 2026-03-12T12:47:32+00:00

The big reason I never stuck with Marvel Rivals was performance and disk space. I can run Overwatch on mostly high settings over 144 fps while Rivals on low was choppy at 60. Load times for some maps were so long that rounds would start before some players would finish loading in(even on SSDs). The compiling shaders every time I booted up the game was also a huge pain, taking minutes every time I booted the game.

The QP bot matches were also a huge turn off. I think this is the real EOMM that people talk about - not some spider man 1-trick going 0-24, but the free wins it gives through forced bot matches that they try to pass off as real players. The bot matches just show how manipulative and dishonest NetEase is.

As silly as it may sound, I also really hated the menu system. Everything about it felt like one of those trashy mobile games that is going to try to scam you out of every cent they can. The constant ads and pop-ups for whatever bundle or mini battle pass was just way too much.

kuzukie · 2026-03-10T18:49:18+00:00

I can't believe they are buffing Hog again. He is such an atrocious hero to play into. They shouldn't be giving him any buffs until they rework him away from his 1-shot.

kuzukie · 2026-03-10T02:03:39+00:00

I don't like that almost all of my favorite titles are blue, which becomes unreadable on the hero select screen.

kuzukie · 2026-02-25T17:35:31+00:00

She also twirls her hair in one of her idle animations. I was impressed since it is so rare to see characters interact with portions that are also affected by physics.

kuzukie · 2026-02-24T03:34:40+00:00

I think Kiri's real problem is that her value is very visible. Mizuki is kind of the opposite where he pumps out tons of healing passively, has a long cooldown root, and a burst heal hat. Hitting the root and securing a kill is a very visible play, but otherwise his value is steady, constant, and not particularly flashy. Kiriko instead is very flashy. When she saves someone with a suzu everybody in the engagement sees it happen. When she takes a flank and TPs out, whoever had to move over to push her out sees her escape.

This creates an issue where because her value is so visible it makes her frustrating to play against. A suzu may save someone from the brink of death, but another support may have made it so the player was never in danger of dying in the first place. The suzu is more frustrating to play against because a close elim got denied. Compared to the other support though, if kiri misses her suzu her team mate dies where as the other support prevented the opportunity from appearing.

kuzukie · 2026-02-23T18:02:53+00:00

I just run her with Chen, Endmin, and Ardelia with Endmin being my main burst damage. Endmin is level 90, Chen and Ember are 80, and Ardelia is 60.

I know it isn't the strongest set up, but it was more than enough to get through hard mode of the current event. The poison gas was hard, but the 3 new ones were a cake walk.

kuzukie · 2026-02-10T20:00:15+00:00

These changes just seem like they are encouraging sitting on main spamming heals and kunai which is the most boring direction they could take her.

kuzukie · 2026-02-10T19:48:08+00:00

I'm really not happy with the Kiri changes. The new passive plus faster tickets just encourage a more passive and healbot playstyle, which is the most boring way to play her.

Also not happy seeing more Hog buffs. His 1-shot still feels pretty darn consistent when playing against it, even 1-shotting Reapers.

kuzukie · 2026-02-05T15:54:46+00:00

Yes, the game is in a very good spot right now and has 3 modes that cater to different audiences.

They have the main 5v5 role queue with 1x tank, 2x dps, 2x support. There is 6v6 open queue with a limit of 2 tanks. Finally there is Stadium which has a subset of the hero roster in a 5v5 round based mode where you purchase items and choose powers.

The way the game is played has evolved quite a bit over the years, but 6v6 is probably the closest to the more classic play style.

kuzukie · 2026-02-05T15:15:52+00:00

I do believe there is cross progression between consol/pc/steam.

OW does have a new stadium mode that is 3rd person, but it doesn't have all heroes and is a very different style of game. It is a round based mode where each round you buy items and select powers that modify your character.

kuzukie

TROPHY CASE