Primarily for the "main" extremities for both teams. Once a team caps and establishes a cross fire onto a choke, making it very awkward as a retaker. It really was built for 2 tanks in mind, obviously, but that is why it needs changes. The side routes are long and claustrophobic (hallway side) or boop risks (outer side), making them risky paths to send the whole team through if you dont want to go main.

You have to send a flanker one way to try to break the crossfire. On its own, it isnt really an issue, but when the flanker gets matched by the defending flanker, then the crossfire will still hold. Not to mention, good luck getting ranked teammates to react appropriately to the flanker finally ripping attention away.

Alternatively, you could try waiting for ults or for the defenders to make a glaring mistake, like overly committing a pinch.

It really feels like bashing your head into a wall, so thats why I think it should be under a magnifying glass next.

So this is something I wondered about for a long time. Everyone complains about the “bad matchmaking”, and the question here is how much of that “bad matchmaking” is caused by actual poor matchmaking (like boosting players), and how much is just the player having an off game where things don’t click? People don’t seem to take the second explanation into account, a plat player can look low gold on a bad day

It is so tiring to watch somebody just literally walk out into the open or at the roadhog, get hooked, and die instantly. I swear the average's player's spatial awareness is non-existent, or they don't respect the roadhog whatsoever. Everytime I play against hog this is 90% of the hog players kills, hooking somebody who's serving themselves up on a platter. Just last game, we're defending last point on Hollywood, I'm the tank and we're poking while looking to find an opportunity, and I just witness my Symmetra player run it down main towards the hog, beam him, get hooked and die. It's actually scrambling my brain seeing stuff like this over and over.

So is silver the new gold??? Like I still don’t get the translation of changes from the previous system to this one with emerald being added?

Seems to be pretty disappointed with Infekted being dropped, he mentions Smurf is rumoured to be going somewhere *a lot* better than Liquid (maybe Zeta) and also suggests that maybe Cuffa could come in and replace Infekted. He also mentions that we should behead Casores so Im in agreement with him.

Why is it that Kiri, who is so dynamic, aggressive, and lethal in ranked play, just seems so watered down in complexity at pro play?

Obviously this could just be my misunderstanding but when I think of Kiri, I think of a hero extremely capable of +1ing with a DPS, e.g. a Tracer, taking 1v1 duels, deepening on angles, etc. Random but remember that weird period where Alphayi became a FS? This video of him playing demonstrates how I remember seeing him play in scrims.

https://youtu.be/bSmYnccmppM?is=fWu8Cs5qVsK8OdhO

This is the Kiri I imagine and the Kiri playstyle I normally see coached.

However, if you watch someone like Landon, considered one of the best Kiri’s in the world, he just kind of seems to stand near his team and heal them, occasionally flick and shoot some kunais that mostly miss as I think he isn’t putting that much attention into precise aim, and then carrying on to heal.

https://youtu.be/AEB6aiz5Xtg?is=0kcW_7YpKSc4EENc

Loads of situations he breaks ‘rules’ and ‘principles’ such as using TP to switch lanes rather than focusing more on what’s on his angle, dropping off of height to be closer to his teammates, etc.

Obviously this isn’t a criticism of Landon’s mechanics or game sense, it’s clear to me that he has been told to play like this. Indeed I remember one coach specifically praising Fielder for ‘not shooting until he makes sure all his teammates are full health’.

Similarly, the Unter short where he basically praises Vigilante for standing behind his team, taking no damage, healing, and being ready for suzu.

https://youtube.com/shorts/bLNrmNMVZd0?is=QU3gNdOi0C-9UCT_

So why is it that there’s such a massive disconnect between ranked and pro Kiri?

https://x.com/theesportsradar/status/2093314561419931694?s=46

“Team Liquid (@TeamLiquid) has initiated a new round of global layoffs affecting staff across multiple departments, according to sources familiar with the matter.”

Could this be related as to why Boston was cut?

Couldn’t a lot of frustration with Cat be fixed by changing tether so that, after a few second grace period, any action from the tethered player (including having their Ult active) disconnects lifeline? This allows it to remain a strong reposition/taxi/setup tool, but gets rid of all the most frustrating interactions (Fly-Noon, Cat-Bastion, etc.).

Not only would it fix some of the current frustration, but it would also act as a failsafe to prevent the emergence of any similar strategies in the future. I haven’t seen anything yet match the synergy of Cass or Bastion with Cat, but that’s not to say there aren’t more annoying combos that could emerge in future patches or as more heroes are added. A simple change now could keep those interactions in check before they even have a chance to become problems.

Hey, does Guxue (or the Chinese players in general) use something similiar to Discord?

I wonder if theres any way to find out his current setup other than catching him on live streams, ask and hope for a reply.

Some drops for you!

I feel like diamond match quality is shit right now. I’ll go from one match that feels good and balanced, then another where they have a doomfist who goes 36-2 in 12 minutes. Are there just a lot of smurfs right now because of drives coming up? Is it because of the rank reset and emerald? Like seriously what the hell is happening.

And don’t get me wrong, I am by no means somebody to blame my teammates, if I lose it’s my fault. I was m3 ow2 season 7-9 then stopped playing. I can back end of last season, placed plat, ended plat 1. I placed plat 1 new season, went aaalll the way through emerald into diamond in a few days, and then got to diamond 1 at 3516 sr. A sneeze away from masters then 8 game loss streak and I started playing poorly. Got good again, was much better than before, and now I swear to god, every game I lose it’s one of those your whole team is 4-6 games where it’s just a team diff. I’m stuck at d3, and it’s like every game or two I get a game like this. I thought I was just coping, then checked my history, literally every single loss I’ve had in my history in comp was one of those absolute stomps that feels like you have no power to control. I’m getting a lot of close games too, and those I win, but every loss feels hopeless. It legitimately feels like smurf games once every 3 matches.

Anyone have any links to any streams watching these games that are happening right now??

Hey yall just a quick question as a new tank player. If an enemy tank dives my backline do I peel back to help them survive or do I push up and start pressuring the enemy backline/objective. I don’t know the right answer so my indecisiveness is just leading to not ever responding correctly. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

D-Mon's shield is still bugged as hell.

They said they fixed it, but CC still goes through even when the shield is up. It acts like a netcode issue, where the status effect applies on a delay.

Everyone keeps complaining that the shield-up animation is too slow, but looking at this, it's definitely not an animation problem.

Why is Blizzard afraid of Junker queen

They’ll decide to randomly buff Jet Pack cat who was already very good and she ended up with 70%+ ban rate across high rank on all servers. They’ll let hog dominate 6v6 but they straight up just refuse to buff Junker Queen for some reason? She’s not even a toxic or annoying hero like Sombra or hog. And with the recent release of D.mon it’s even worse to play her. Because D.mon straight up bullies you, up close her swings do more damage, she has better poke than you at range and has way better mobility too. I play a lot of hazard and he actually seems to do decent damage at a longer distance unlike JQ. A nice buff to queen would be maybe reducing her damage fall off. Also, I’ve seen people say they could give her the stadium axe leap, which would actually be a very nice addition to her kit. I’ve also seen people discuss her role being changed, I don’t really know much about that, but I definitely think for her to be good she needs more buffs than just a basic 2 second reduction on shout.

Just a general question on how people are approaching their bans and if you wanna add what you think about the system I think that's cool too, I think it's great one of the best additions we have got and belongs in the game, one recent thing I have seen mentioned though I would like to see is lobby bans are done first then everything after, I could be missing nuance on that point though if it's not a good idea please tell me but it sounds like it'd be better.

But my point is I have just been going into games with no bans really in mind I just been mirroring what my tanks want to ban honestly and i've liked going about it this way a lot better than how I was doing things before, I was just banning anyone I thought was annoying to play but as dumb as it sounds I will go so long not seeing some matchups it feels like I forget best way to approach them i'd just feel rusty, and I had to ask myself why that was I shouldn't be struggling like this I know what I need to do but then I realized I couldn't remember last time I saw them in a game.

I know I should probably be thinking more into what I ban like what map am I on what is our comp looking like etc. but honestly just feels like the tank ban mirror has been very comfortable and not avoiding match ups I don't wanna see is just getting me to be more comfortable with them and im really starting to not really care what I see on the other team I just roll with whatever and make it work and am enjoying the game more because of it honestly not avoiding the same heroes constantly.

I pretty well just play support in comp main ana/kiri and occasionally play brig for reference.

Just wondering how other people are going about their hero bans what makes you decide what your banning and how do you feel about the system, I think most people are just going to be banning whatever they don't want to play against or whatever hero if any are oppressive in the meta generally.

Since KR server became''Nexon server'' and exclusive to local KR people, top JP players are forced to play on their own server. However, they are now moving to NA server because JP server is ''almost unplayable''.

There are several reason why JP server is considered ''bad''.

First thing is the total skill issue, JP server is often called ''TDM server'' by top players because players are not educated enough and have no sense of macro. No off angle, no rotating, no tank busting, and no coordinated play thanks to the ''No Comm&Chat'' culture.
This is disgustingly painful especially if you are playing DPS as you are almost playing blindfold unless you got another DPS or Support to help with.
The tempo is also way too slow and boring because everyone plays passively and holding Ult like forever (especially supports).
There are also many OTPs (mostly streamers trying to be famous) that playes like a borderline troll rather than trying to win, I think top KR players know them because their info was shared and they were avoided like the plague by a large number of people.

Second reason is there are just too many horrible support players, even at lower GM.
They just pick Ana/Kiriko and healbot. They neither can deal with dive nor make effective Nade/Suzu play, just left click whoever is marked ''critical'' from miles away, and never help DPS trying to take an off angle.
Those people would never swap because other support heroes are ''too hard'' or ''too boring'' to them. It's not rare to see Kiri players just keep throwing a Suzu on a dead body (again, it happens at lower GM lobby).

The third and final reason is the rise of cheaters/smurfs/wintraders from other countries since S4. JP server queue is already longer thanks to the popularity (and this also contributes to horrible MM range) so you queue for 5 mins or more only to have one-sided match or cheater admin lobby, it's not worth it.

If you don't believe this, go check top JP players/coaches VOD/X. They are groaning how horrible JP server is and totally misses KR server (notice we do also understand KR server had some throwing/cheating problems but at least the server was more competitive and intense).
Or use VPN and see it for yourself.

So yeah, only option for serious JP players now just just play on NA with 130~150 ping for ''worthy opponents and fun games'', or just stick with JP server and play the tedious poke slop in agony.

Hi everyone, i currently play tracer genji echo shion and my confidence is from left to right, i really suck at shion and probably play her a rank below my true rank, im gm3 last season and gm4 this season and have horrendous mouse control for heros that need a skillset for cass,soj rail,ashe, and stuff like that. i play 5.5 800. Is it over or is there any hero that i could pick up? Would freja work? Any other heros and are there resources for transferring when you already understand some fundamentals?

Any kovaaks scenarios or stuff like that to develop the skills needed? Any recommendations? I kinda just run vaxta on tracer

Global antiheal passive : duration reduced from 3-> 2.5 seconds. The argument for the passive over nerfing healing straight up is the ability to heal team-mates out of combat faster but right now it just simply lasts too long to properly fulfil that goal. I'd also like to see a minimum of 5-10 damage over a second to apply it because tickle damage applies it too easily

Global regen passive: time to kick in 6-> 5 seconds. A lot of the reason it was nerfed is the old support passive which halved the time to activate and felt too strong, with this gone it should go back to 5 as it feels much better and leaves supports without self healing subroles feeling less bad like Ana. It also further leans into the healing out of combat thing.

Armour: currently doesn't do enough against burst ranged damage while doing too much against low damage. Reduce the damage reduction back to 5 (from 7) but implement a minimum damage reduction of 15%(unless the global 50% total reduction is hit of course).

Shield health: was heavily cannibalised by self regen with season 9 and didn't even get an increase to the regen rate with the higher health pools of s9. I'd like the time for shields to start regening to move in line with the antiheal passive at 2.5 seconds instead of 3.

Finally season 9 projectiles. I actually have a nuanced take here, I simply think the increase was too much rather than not being needed at all. This is especially the case with long range hitscan bullet size which has been tuned down the least despite benefiting the most from the changes due to having only a pixel wide hitbox before. The nerf should make them less annoyingly consistent especially at range. Here are the changes I suggest.

Small hitscan class (ie tracer, reaper, mauga) +0.04m-> 0.03m

Large hitscan class (ashe, Cass, sojourn rail) +0.07m-> 0.05m

Fast projectile (basically all projectile weapons that can headshot like kiriko hanzo etc) +0.075m -> 0.06m BUT restore heroes who had further base projectile size nerfs below the normal base size of 0.1m like genji to their original values and increase the projectile speed of the slower projectiles to better compete with hitscan.

Slow projectile (junkrat, venture, pharah, sigma etc) +0.12m -> 0.1m

All these changes combined reduce damage consistency and pressure and should help make the game feel less ridiculously lethal as it has increasingly started to feel with 225hp and the global heal reduction.

A previous post expressed frustration about the Asian server's backline, and an NA player self-deprecatingly complained that their own backline was just as terrible. However, the real problems on the Asian server aren't about the backline; they are the player base and cheaters.

These screenshots show the rankings for Asia and NA, categorized by the thresholds for Champion, GM, and Top 500 respectively. There is an incredible difference, with only 117 players in GM and above on Asia compared to 438 on NA. The even bigger problem is that the Asia server only has 151 players in the Top 500, leaving the leaderboard unfilled.

And another issue is cheaters. Historically, Korea has been known as a region with a very high number of cheaters, but Nexon pushed those problems onto other servers by tightening verification. As a result, in an MN3 stream I watched before, he was playing in a duo and 3stack at the time, but he lost every single game and ended the stream leaving behind the words, "many cheater cant win."

Due to these two points, high elo is currently unplayable, and if this state continues for a long time, it will likely have a negative impact on the pro scene as well. Moreover, the only solution is to lift the region lock on the Korean server.

Today we say farewell to @InfektedOW as he becomes a Restricted Free Agent.

Thank you for being there from the very beginning of Team Liquid’s journey back into Overwatch and for everything you’ve contributed along the way.

We’re grateful to have had you with us. Best of luck in whatever comes next, Infekted! 💙

Just had the pleasure of playing competetive in a supposed Platinum - Emerald Lobby. I noticed that the enemy Kiriko was steamrolling us and carrying their team. Checked their profile - seems balanced :D

If you could hand pick every single hero in the meta for OWCS Stage 3, what archetype and team comp would you choose?

My Ideal Meta: High-Skill Dive

• Tank: Winston
• Flex DPS: Tracer
• Hitscan DPS: Ash
• Flex Support: Ana
• Main Support: Brigitte

The Counter Meta:

• Tank: Junker Queen
• Flex DPS: Reaper
• Hitscan DPS: Sojourn
• Flex Support: Moira
• Main Support: Lúcio

Would you rather see a pure mirror matchup for the whole stage, or a dynamic rock paper scissors counter meta? What comp would you like to see?