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.

They fixed the dupes! Finally! I’ve opened about 5 boxes so far and not a single dupe.  I’m so happy about that.  There was no reason for that when there were so many items yet to earn.

D.va’s cards are really odd, by the way.  I got a card for 6 mechs called, that makes sense.  But 3 mech deaths by enemy? What does that even mean?  Did I kill 3 enemies when calling the mech, or what?

Also, the game is curious how it pairs people together.  Several nights ago I played with someone with the tag Gummybear and they were quite good, so I was joking I was singing the “barbie doll” song but replacing the main phrase with “gummy bear”.

Well I ran into them again the other night, along with someone named Vondyk (who I should have friend requested too) and they friend invited me.  We played a bit that night and had a good time.

I had been lamenting my lack of Overwatch friends, but between Gummybear and Lunacy, I’ve had more partners again. People have been speaking in voice chat and I join in, and so far, no idiots or ragers, just nice people.

I haven’t been playing a lot of World of Warcraft.  Both guilds I’m in,  on Whisperwind and Sargeras, are basically dead.  That’s ok but there’s no groups to do anything with.  Even if I didn’t leave SPM, I have no more interest in playing in a big premade.  I wouldn’t mind raiding again but probably not until winter.  It’s hard to sit down and play on the computer without taking a break when it’s still sunny out.

That being said, been playing a lot of Overwatch.  I cannot wait until they do something ABOUT THE DUPES.   There’s 3-4 dupes EVERY GOD DAMN BOX.  I only have about 50% of all skins, not sure about sprays or all the other items, but getting 50%-100% duplicates is absurd.

There is also a problem with highlights were they either don’t save at all (I had a PotG not even save!)

or they glitch out so you can’t even watch them. Heck PotG doesn’t even make sense sometimes.  I got a quad kill on an ultimate on Pharah, and it went to someone slowly headshotting 2 people.  Go figure.