Pharah

Pharah for me is hit or miss (haha) on if I do really well with her or not.

Her rockets have a travel time so hitting people in a current game status where everyone is VERY MOBILE is hard, or in the case of Widowmaker, characters that seem to have a hitbox of a sewing pin. I just happened to get really lucky this time.  It also seems counter-intuitive but her ultimate seems to do fuck-all if you use it from really high in the air.  Sneaking up and blasting people in the face is dumb, but that’s what works the best.   Why is it dumb? Well because you yell “JUSTICE RAINS FROM ABOVE” soon as you start it and are completely stationary until it’s done or you die, with dying happening probably 90% of the time.

The only other character I can think of with such a dumb way of delivering an ult is McCree, who lights up like a bulb, walks extremely slowly, and announces it with “It’s HIGH NOON”.  Then (as I understand it) the longer he holds the ult, more damage is does.  He also has to try to flank and get in a weird place to use it successfully.

Everyone else can either be highly active during their ult (S76, Winston, whoever got Ana’s ult, Rein, Roadhog, Zen, Genji, etc) or they throw it and be on their merry way (D.va, Mei, Tracer, Widow, Mercy, Lucio).  Pharah, Junkrat, and McCree are the only ones who have to stop and “hold” it for a bit.

People think Pharah is OP so, doubt anything will get done.

The dupe fix/nerf

Wellp, they fixed the duplicate problem.  The only issue now is, you get no coins, like, at all.  I’ve done about 25 levels since the event has come out.  I had just enough coins to purchase Mercy’s skin at 3,000 coins prior to the event.   I think I had about 50 left over.  You wanna know how many coins I have now? Oh, about 256.  After at least 25 boxes.

Why is this? Well when you get 2-4 duplicates per box, you got a little bit of coins for the duplicates.  The only summer skin I’ve picked up from a box is Junkrats.  Everything else has been non-duplicate player icons, sprays, voice lines, you know, kind of lame stuff.  (I did get D.va’s game emote though, pretty cool).

I surmised earlier than the overall skin drop rate and event skin drop rate was nerfed severely after the winter holiday event, during the Chinese New Year event.  So, you don’t get event skins with any regularity.  You don’t get duplicates to earn coins to buy the very expensive 3,000 coin event skins.  And now, coins almost never drop either.

Trial of Style

I need to check my in-game calendar more often.  Kady told me about the Trial of Style event and oh man!  You queue for a scenario at a transmog dude, then go in with several other people.  You are given a category and dress up for it.

 

I had the worst time getting 1st place as leather, but cloth was easiest.

Overall a fun cute event, even if most people have absolutely no taste in clothing, at all.  During one scenario three people queued up totally naked, and two of them won that way.  Lame.

Golden Weapons

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.

Playing during the week days is really weird

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?