For some reason, Blizzard put in weapons completed done in a gold skin that rewards people with a bunch of competitive wins.  Like 3,000 points worth.  Just like silver and gold portraits, all that means is YOU PLAYED A LOT.  So oooh look that Widow has a golden gun.  Big deal, they just played a lot and got enough points.  It’s not an indication of skill on any particular class.

I personally haven’t done much competitive because golden “guns” doesn’t motivate me.  First off, it barely looks any different at all on some skins.  I believe Mercy in particular has a skin that already has a golden weapon.

The gold barely makes a difference on some characters, like here’s a Reaper example.

Regular weapon (Halloween skin)

Gold weapon

It barely seems worth the work to me.  Maybe if it had a Power Torrent enchant or something.

I was doing some really tedious crap at work so I decided to take a break with a game or two.

I got in with someone named Nine who was playing music over his/her mic.  Then said in team chat “Im so alone”

I replied “well I muted you ‘cuz open mic and shit”

then this dumb stuff happened

Nine: Who are you?

me: I’m me, you?

Nine: Oh lowbie Ocyla

me: oh, plays way too much nine, nice to  meet you (he had a gold portrait)

Nine: I am gets paid to play Nine 🙂 Nice to meet you too lowbie

me: yeah sure

Then he/she bitched about no heals,  but we ended the game with me playing Zenyatta with gold elims at 3.  So yeah.  Then they group invited me just to play some “wah wah waaaaaah” music to which I said “That’s cute, how you are?”  They immediately left group.

Then they friend invited me and I asked if they “had anything clever to say?”  They asked if I wanted to group.  At this point, totally wary and I said no but I’d be on later.  I really didn’t want to group and get an earful of something just in case.  End with me saying “so maybe see you around gold portrait” and they replied “see you level 400s <3”

And question, if Doomfist stole the gauntlet, what on earth are we escorting now?

I’m still trying to figure out the logic of the Play of the Games, especially when it comes to support.  Here’s some total non-potgs:

Ana: sleeps an ulting Soldier or Roadhog.

Mercy:  4 person rez to stop final process on the payload to win the game.

Zenyatta:  Ulting to save team from Zarya’s AND Genji’s ult, ults to save team from D.va’s ult, etc.

What gets a potg?

Ana: Pretty much nothing, ever.

Mercy: A lame, non-critical 2-3 person rez  that had no real effect on the current push or point.

Zenyatta: I don’t even know, but all my Zen highlights weren’t saving the team from 2-3 ults, it was just me killing a person or two.  It feels like kills totally trumps anything supports can do.  Unless of course, it’s Lucio booping people in a hole.  That’s apparently a big fucking deal.  Oh, you pushed 2 people in a whole with a single click? Have a PotG.

I haven’t played Mei in quite a while, but I decided to try her again.  I’ve noticed some changes.

First off, when was the last time you saw a Mei PotG? I haven’t in absolutely ages.

I also noticed she can no longer headshot anyone.  I thought it was just tanks but I tested it on bots and a full icicle to the face or face region absolutely does not one-shot.  They are slow firing in that there is a very slight delay as the icicle moves out of the weapon, which would be ok if it hit for a lot.  It doesn’t.  It took something like 4 full body shots of said slow-weapon to kill a bot.  I had to freeze this Widow solid before I was able to head-shot her, since the ice ray also reduces health. But she was totally not paying attention, you’ll never EVER get that with most of the cast.

Why is that?  Well,  thanks to everyone being very mobile. You can’t freeze people who can get out of range of you quickly.  D.va can boost away, Doomfist can do whatever he does to bum rush things or uppercut.  Genji has dash and crazy aerobatics.  Junkrat can blow himself away, Lucio can speed boost.  McCree is somewhat susceptible but he could also flash-bang you.  Mercy can fly away, Orisa has that cool down that avoids freezing (pretty sure), Pharah can push you away or fly away.  Reaper can wraith, and Rein is likely going to slap you in the face.  The tanks don’t really count because even Roadhog, there is no way you are going to dent his HP yourself anyway.  Soldier can sprint, Sombra can port or spring inviz, Symm will fry your face off before you freeze her.  Torb might be a possibility, but Winston and Tracer are hard to catch.  Zarya just bubbles herself and Zenyatta might be out of luck. You may get lucky and slow them a little, but since you have no movement abilities of your own, if they are slightly faster, they will get away.

So I would say that really only Ana, Bastion, McCree, Roadhog, and Torb have a decent chance are getting frozen or even slowed.  Then you have her ult, which you announce during the throw and it takes a few seconds to take effect so, everyone with any mobility just totally runs out of it.

I dunno.  I just feel like she needs another buff like her ult freezing quicker.

I had a theory that Overwatch had a ‘loser buff’ for teams getting stomped horribly.  It started out when I noticed that if my team, OR the enemy team was absolutely trouncing the other team from 0% to 99%, SOMEHOW magically the other side got good, pushed Overtime, and would flip control.  You could also place a bet that on payload maps you’d hear “OVERTIME!” ALL THE TIME even if you had been blowing the other team apart the entire duration, until they had a few seconds left where they would magically start pushing it at astonishing speeds.

In one major example, my team was defending the payload on Hollywood so hard, the other team barely moved the car outside of the initial turn.  Then a few of us died and BOOM, they had pushed the payload from the door area, all the way down the road, around the turn, and to the second point, in like 3 seconds. What what?

As often as it happened I found it to be quite unlikely it was happening unassisted.  There are just no tools to track things in Overwatch, no Recount damage logs, character stats, rez timers.  I was taking a wild guess that the game was detecting one side was sorely outmatched and then giving them a helpful shove but had no way of really proving it.  I was hypothesizing that is was a combination of slight adjustments that would be nearly impossible to prove.

Some thoughts were, the “good” team got longer rez timers, slightly less damage.  Or, the “bad” team got faster movement, quicker spawn, faster charging ults, better armor/took less damage, faster payload movement,  etc.  I had some examples I was going to pore over after streaming.

However the Doomfist patch dropped and… this really doesn’t happen any more.  If we’re dominating hard on Numbani, we continue to dominate and easily win.  I keep almost flinching waiting for an “Overtime!!” call that never happens.  We hit 99% and WIN, no damn overtime.

Then I saw this little bad-boy in the August 1, 2017 patch notes:

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/game/patch-notes/pc/

• Adjusted the respawn timing to limit defensive stalling strategies when the offensive team has a clear advantage and plays aggressively

THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT.  It’s written generically but I’m sure that was it.  I also felt like a single player had way too much weight on a point.  If 6 people were standing around a payload, and one damned enemy Lucio or Tracer were bebopping around the payload, THAT SHOULDN’T COUNT AS OVERTIME or a stall.

At any rate, it feels more balanced now.  Like the time Guild and I simply walked through the entire enemy team on Volskaya to take point A, then pushed to B and took it near instantly (under 2 minutes).  The other team should be allowed to suck butt unassisted.