Ugh so in Overwatch shields have been a problem for a while now, but it’s especially obnoxious since Sigma showed up.  The classes with shields, which right now is Reinhardt, Winston, Orisa, Sigma, and they can be layered.  They are being nerfed though for obvious reasons.

I will predict the next problem though.  Hear me out.  I think the next problem will be ‘the bots’.  Not like L2 type bots, but those classes that have AI do their work for them.

First, Moira.  She’s fun to play, I guess.  But, don’t act like anyone is a skilled player using her.  IT IS NOT HARD.   You throw a healy ball in the general direction of your team mates and IT AUTOMATICALLY  heals them. You throw a damage ball in the general direction of the enemy, which goes forever and ever and bounces of its own account, and IT AUTOMATICALLY ATTACKS THEM. You hold down fucking right click and your attack AUTOMATICALLY TARGETS ANYONE CLOSE and you kill steal like a son of a bitch.  Oh you got all golds?  Yeah, me too as her.  You know why? Because you fucking kill steal everyones kills.  Or if you get your own, it’s because you don’t have to aim while having better mobility than most of the cast and can just dance around them while they try to aim.  Fuck right off Moira.  No joke I can’t even play her any more because it’s stupid game play.

Anyway as I was saying.  Moira doesn’t have to aim on ALL OF HER SKILLS, Torb only half has to aim, Sym has like 30% auto aim, Bob auto aims, Soldiers ult sorta has to aim a little, McCree’s ult can aim even if someone is off his screen, etc.  I dunno it just feels like there is too much auto aiming.

I had a discussed on reddit recently in the girlgamers section about what to do with chat goes toxic.  I’ve not really had problems over my 10+ years of online gaming and when someone has acted up, the way I handle it tends to work.  I discussed it briefly on there and basically got told I was rude, it wasn’t polite to fight sexism with sexism, , it wasn’t nice, etc.   I’m sorry but if you want to fight toxic with being polite and nice, it’s not always going to work.  Here’s methods I’ve used with actual examples.

Hiding:

Play a male character, only type but not ‘like a girl’, and never use voice chat.

Example: I played a male in Lineage 2, and my typing style isn’t like ‘a girl’.  I’m not sure what that means either.  You can join a voice channel and just not talk, but that is going to give away you are female or a dude playing a female.  But in my experience, you’d be pegged as a dude trying to be a girl if you are on a girl character and refusing to talk.

I don’t hide but in L2 playing a male character kept away a lot of crap.

Deflecting:

When an insult comes in, don’t argue, don’t cry, just deflect it.

Example:  I was fighting a rogue on my mage which I wasn’t terribly good at and, he decided to PM me and say how terrible I was.  I admitted I wasn’t very good at the mage but I was trying to practice.  Basically ‘yeah I know I’m bad, whatcanyado?’.  The guy ended up, a few days later, getting back to me and apologizing.  We were friends for quite a while after that.  Or recently when I was playing Pharah and got harassed that I was bad and I should switch, I just said “I am not listening” and stopped typing to them.  I didn’t say “that’s mean” or anything.  They ended up calling me a 20 chromo cunt and I reported them.  End of story.

Stand your ground:

If they were being just, wicked toxic, let them know it’s unacceptable without letting them know it bothers you.  They LIKE bothering you, that’s the whole POINT.  It’s blood in the water.

Example:  Some kid, probably, was going on and on being annoying as heck in Overwatch.  I said “please stop talking so much it’s distracting” and they replied “your mouth is distracting”.  I then said “cool well I’m muting you” and went on my merry way.  I want them to KNOW I am not listening to them.  If you mute and say nothing, they think they are getting to you and you’re just holding your tongue.  You ARE, but on your terms.  I choose not to hear you, I am not just sitting listening and crying.

Counter-punch:

Sometimes it’s just over the top ridiculous and at least with me, I can’t just let it slide.  Reply back with a ready insult showing you are not afraid and you aren’t about to cry about it. Don’t say “that’s mean” because that’s the point.  You are admitting they are bothering you that way.

Example:  Overwatch, I talked.  I hear “OMG a girl gamer omg girls don’t exist!”.  I reply “yeah I know weird isn’t it we’re like 50% of the population”.  I’ve done this multiple times, they have nothing to say.

or “Get in the kitchen and make me a sammich!”  I reply on the same level “get in the garage and fix my car” or “sure but first I have a jar for you to open since it’s the only thing you’re good for”.  Is it mean? Fuck yeah it is.  I didn’t start it, did I?  Fire with fire.  I could go on and on about all the people I did this with who I ended up on good terms or friends with later.

Other examples are “suck my D” and I reply “if you had one” which really riles them up.  Or roll with the insult.  In one particular situation in WoW, a guy was insulting my healing and a friend stuck up for me.  He said something like “you must have stuck your junk down his throat really well” and I accepted and replied “maybe I did, jealous?”.  I turned the insult into a jab that THEY would LIKE that sort of thing.  He ended up apologizing.  This one is in my rage tells list as well.

Just some thoughts.

I realized making some classes easier was beneficial, for example hunters in MoP, I believe it was, were energy starved all the time, you had to use the shot that brought back focus (I forget the name, focus shot? I dunno) sometimes 2-3x in a row and after every few shots.  That got fixed.  Feral druid, for me at least, was SO DIFFICULT in MoP I literally could’t play it successfully until WoD where it was very enjoyable. At least, for killing Horde.

But a lot of classes lost not just silly flavor spells that were of little to no use.  They often lost giant mechanics that were kind of an interesting thing to think about while playing.

For instance, during Cata when a disc priest cast PW Shield, they got Borrowed Time, which was a haste buff to their next spell which was typically Penance.  Penance applied Grace which increased your other healing spells to using a big or fast heal was augmented.  That’s all completed gone and although we have ‘atonement’ to keep an eye on, it’s barely anything.

Or my resto druid in particular, eesh!  You don’t have to stack Lifebloom, thank goodness but, I liked keeping it refreshed with a direct heal.   You can’t do that any more.  I liked keeping up Harmony, which was also refreshed by casting direct heals.  I liked needing rejuv on a target to use Swift Mind.  It made you think a little bit.  That’s all gone. Swift mend is just a cool down, you have to manually refresh lifebloom with lifebloom, and as far as I know, Harmony doesn’t exist in it’s old form.

It’s basically just randomly pushing buttons that have nothing to do with anything.

I did start a new monk to relearn Mistweaver and it appears it hasn’t changed much (other than losing fantastic Grapple Weapon!) other than not watching Chi stacks.  I LIKED WATCHING CHI STACKS.   You can still cast enveloping mist and uh, the other one, instantly while channeling soothing mist but there is nothing to track any more.  It’s just, boring.

So, I decided to make a new mistweaver because it’s been a long while since I played it and I honestly don’t remember how now that chi generation is gone.  I’m still on the Wandering Isle but about to choose my faction, and holy geez is it heavily horde biased.

You first run into a Tauren who comments he was a prisoner of the Alliance but he seems like a nice guy.  Then you run into a goblin who is going to help dislodge the Alliance ship who apparently carelessly crashed into the giant turtle Shen-zin Su, but when they do so, it leaves a critical wound.

God damn alliance right!

During these questions you run around collecting things and you only see horde npcs also killing the things fighting you (an orc is what I saw).  Then on top of that, once you cure the wound, all the human female does is threaten to toss the kindly Tauren right back in jail.

ASSHOLES!

You aren’t fooling me though Blizzard, Alliance all the way!  But I can’t imagine any new player would EVER choose Alliance thanks to these quests.