Overwatch: Doomfist Discussion

[Paragon Fury]

>tfw the biggest defenders of Overwatch's meta finally admit the game has balance problems and nerfs too much

It's not that they nerf too much, it's that often they nerf or buff the WRONG things.

Like with Doomfist they keep nerfing his mobility, but his mobility isn't the reason that character is actually overpowered.

With Ana they nerf the healing output of her rifle, but the problem with her is the grenade.

Exactly. Agreed.

They made the same mistake with Roadhog too. The problem wasn't with his one-shot combo (because without it he's basically useless), it was his insane levels of self-sustain and survivability which allowed him to flank on his own and get pick-offs (which the devs never intended for him to do) instead of being a tank for the team.

The correct way of discouraging such behavior would be to nerf his health or self-heal (or both), so an out-of-position Roadhog can be more easily punished.

No, Roadhog was always bullshit.

I don't know what OW Central has been smoking, but Roadhog was neverevereverinthehistoryofever hard to play nor was his one shot combo ever hard to do. In fact it is one of the EASIEST things in-game to do, thanks to it's generous hitbox, overkill damage on most Heroes, the fact that it stuns enemies and that huge range of the hook.

It was a low-skill, low-risk high reward ability that was available every 12/8 seconds depending on the patch. A Roadhog who wasn't brain dead basically got a free kill on anyone who didn't get Zarya Bubble'd every time hook was off CD.

Roadhog is still useful right now; he still has the genre's most powerful ability, the Hook of Death, and does enough damage to discourage most Heroes who aren't Reaper or Pharah from engaging him. But people aren't interested in him now because he can't do his bullshit one-hit combo that could basically single-handedly win games anymore.

A similar thing happened in Rainbow Six: Siege; when a character named Blackbeard was released, he had an extremely high durability shield (800HP worth in a game of 100HP characters) that he could mount on his rifle that blocked damage from the front, shoulders and above.

He was blatantly broken and the single most valuable character in the game. His only counter was to explode him or somehow get close enough to Shotgun him (as it would hit his body AND ruin the shield).

Eventually he got nerfed and changed to where he is now; instead of one 800HP shield he has two 150HP shields, and has a slower ADS time. He is now still insanely useful (depending on the enemy's weapon he can block anywhere from 2-8 headshots) and a good Operator. But since he isn't the insanely broken OP that he was when he was released, people say he is "worthless" and "useless" now.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

>tfw the biggest defenders of Overwatch's meta finally admit the game has balance problems and nerfs too much

It's not that they nerf too much, it's that often they nerf or buff the WRONG things.

Like with Doomfist they keep nerfing his mobility, but his mobility isn't the reason that character is actually overpowered.

With Ana they nerf the healing output of her rifle, but the problem with her is the grenade.

Exactly. Agreed.

They made the same mistake with Roadhog too. The problem wasn't with his one-shot combo (because without it he's basically useless), it was his insane levels of self-sustain and survivability which allowed him to flank on his own and get pick-offs (which the devs never intended for him to do) instead of being a tank for the team.

The correct way of discouraging such behavior would be to nerf his health or self-heal (or both), so an out-of-position Roadhog can be more easily punished.

No, Roadhog was always bullshit.

I don't know what OW Central has been smoking, but Roadhog was neverevereverinthehistoryofever hard to play nor was his one shot combo ever hard to do. In fact it is one of the EASIEST things in-game to do, thanks to it's generous hitbox, overkill damage on most Heroes, the fact that it stuns enemies and that huge range of the hook.

It was a low-skill, low-risk high reward ability that was available every 12/8 seconds depending on the patch. A Roadhog who wasn't brain dead basically got a free kill on anyone who didn't get Zarya Bubble'd every time hook was off CD.

Roadhog is still useful right now; he still has the genre's most powerful ability, the Hook of Death, and does enough damage to discourage most Heroes who aren't Reaper or Pharah from engaging him. But people aren't interested in him now because he can't do his bullshit one-hit combo that could basically single-handedly win games anymore.

A similar thing happened in Rainbow Six: Siege; when a character named Blackbeard was released, he had an extremely high durability shield (800HP worth in a game of 100HP characters) that he could mount on his rifle that blocked damage from the front, shoulders and above.

He was blatantly broken and the single most valuable character in the game. His only counter was to explode him or somehow get close enough to Shotgun him (as it would hit his body AND ruin the shield).

Eventually he got nerfed and changed to where he is now; instead of one 800HP shield he has two 150HP shields, and has a slower ADS time. He is now still insanely useful (depending on the enemy's weapon he can block anywhere from 2-8 headshots) and a good Operator. But since he isn't the insanely broken OP that he was when he was released, people say he is "worthless" and "useless" now.

A scary masked psychotic assassin who cannot assassinate effectively is one hell of a worthless joke. Another character who spams gun-shots is unworthy of the roster and further unworthy of their character. He went from being the best realized character to being the worst realized character. You would be surprised how much gameplay can make or break who a character is. His gameplay no longer feels good and his style of gameplay no longer fits his character. Just a fat dumb hick who spams a shotgun; might as well have built him around a negative southern stereotype at this point.

 

[DaCosta]

A scary masked psychotic assassin who cannot assassinate effectively is one hell of a worthless joke. Another character who spams gun-shots is unworthy of the roster and further unworthy of their character. He went from being the best realized character to being the worst realized character. You would be surprised how much gameplay can make or break who a character is. His gameplay no longer feels good and his style of gameplay no longer fits his character. Just a fat dumb hick who spams a shotgun; might as well have built him around a negative southern stereotype at this point.

Do you really wanna go there? I'm pretty sure we already had a several pages long thread by you, involving Overwatch, about how you have no idea what good design is, and clearly you took nothing from the comments in that thread.

Roadhog is not an assassin, he was never meant to flank or kill enemies by himself. He is meant to punish bad positioning, and his hook still does exactly that, except that now he needs to be with his team to confirm the kills. In this team based game.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

A scary masked psychotic assassin who cannot assassinate effectively is one hell of a worthless joke. Another character who spams gun-shots is unworthy of the roster and further unworthy of their character. He went from being the best realized character to being the worst realized character. You would be surprised how much gameplay can make or break who a character is. His gameplay no longer feels good and his style of gameplay no longer fits his character. Just a fat dumb hick who spams a shotgun; might as well have built him around a negative southern stereotype at this point.

Do you really wanna go there? I'm pretty sure we already had a several pages long thread by you, involving Overwatch, about how you have no idea what good design is, and clearly you took nothing from the comments in that thread.

Roadhog is not an assassin, he was never meant to flank or kill enemies by himself. He is meant to punish bad positioning, and his hook still does exactly that, except that now he needs to be with his team to confirm the kills. In this team based game.

In a boring world such as this one, I think you will find not even God knows what good game design is. We can build our knowledge, organize our thoughts, analyze our feelings, and polish our statements to perfection; but we can still differ in our perspectives since game design is far more a subjective art than an absolute science. When making a choice in how to build a character, if that choice will in some way reduce the overall quality of that character, then that choice should be avoided. I believe nerfing Roadhog's signature move which defined his scariness and justified his slowness with effectiveness, was a poor choice that took away from what has defined Roadhog for more than a year now. And you are right; Roadhog is no longer the quality assassin he was. Now Roadhog is just another character who spams bullets. Welcome to the nerfed apocalypse.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Roadhog is still useful right now

/

/

No he isn't, He is shit now. He's sitting at %0.79 and his winrate being shit
at 44.72%( https://www.overbuff.com/heroes/roadhog/trends ) right now on ranked and has a big fat 0% in the competitive scene ( https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-07-12-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-meta-abridged ) now along with any other tank that isn't D.Va or Winston who has a (94%) and (100%) respectively (Which I believe a %100 pick rate has never happened before for any hero in competitive).

Nerfing Roadhog (Who was at a 7% pick right before the nerf https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-06-07-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-tale-of-two-tournaments ) maybe the worst idea they had at this point. Dive comp was already dominating the meta and then they decided to nerf one of the few heroes that could fight against it. I know what you're going to say "but that's reapers job." Reaper barely has a (5%) pick rate and he isn't slowing dive down. The Roadhog nerf was extremely unhealthy for the game, it reduced dive comps counters to only one hero(And I have evidence that I've linked). bizzard completely ignoring the actual overpowered Heroes at the moment and instead went after a hero some people couldn't deal with.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Roadhog is still useful right now

/

/

No he isn't, He is shit now. He's sitting at %0.79 and his winrate being shit
at 44.72%( https://www.overbuff.com/heroes/roadhog/trends ) right now on ranked and has a big fat 0% in the competitive scene ( https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-07-12-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-meta-abridged ) now along with any other tank that isn't D.Va or Winston who has a (94%) and (100%) respectively (Which I believe a %100 pick rate has never happened before for any hero in competitive).

Nerfing Roadhog (Who was at a 7% pick right before the nerf https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-06-07-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-tale-of-two-tournaments ) maybe the worst idea they had at this point. Dive comp was already dominating the meta and then they decided to nerf one of the few heroes that could fight against it. I know what you're going to say "but that's reapers job." Reaper barely has a (5%) pick rate and he isn't slowing dive down. The Roadhog nerf was extremely unhealthy for the game, it reduced dive comps counters to only one hero(And I have evidence that I've linked). bizzard completely ignoring the actual overpowered Heroes at the moment and instead went after a hero some people couldn't deal with.

I think Roadhog did need a nerf, but not a nerf to damage. All they've ever needed to do was fix the hitbox on his hook (which I would consider less of a nerf and more of a bug fix since I refuse to believe that the hitbox on his hook was ever meant to be as gigantic as it is), but they proved to be incompetent in that regard, so they've opted to completely kill his damage.

Like I've said, blizzard nerfs and buffs the completely wrong things on characters.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Roadhog is still useful right now

/

/

No he isn't, He is shit now. He's sitting at %0.79 and his winrate being shit
at 44.72%( https://www.overbuff.com/heroes/roadhog/trends ) right now on ranked and has a big fat 0% in the competitive scene ( https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-07-12-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-meta-abridged ) now along with any other tank that isn't D.Va or Winston who has a (94%) and (100%) respectively (Which I believe a %100 pick rate has never happened before for any hero in competitive).

Nerfing Roadhog (Who was at a 7% pick right before the nerf https://www.overbuff.com/blog/2017-06-07-overwatch-hero-tier-list-and-meta-report-a-tale-of-two-tournaments ) maybe the worst idea they had at this point. Dive comp was already dominating the meta and then they decided to nerf one of the few heroes that could fight against it. I know what you're going to say "but that's reapers job." Reaper barely has a (5%) pick rate and he isn't slowing dive down. The Roadhog nerf was extremely unhealthy for the game, it reduced dive comps counters to only one hero(And I have evidence that I've linked). bizzard completely ignoring the actual overpowered Heroes at the moment and instead went after a hero some people couldn't deal with.

I think Roadhog did need a nerf, but not a nerf to damage. All they've ever needed to do was fix the hitbox on his hook (which I would consider less of a nerf and more of a bug fix since I refuse to believe that the hitbox on his hook was ever meant to be as gigantic as it is), but they proved to be incompetent in that regard, so they've opted to completely kill his damage.

Like I've said, blizzard nerfs and buffs the completely wrong things on characters.

Jeff Kaplan, nerfs and buffs the wrong things on characters. I feel it is important we don't let an organization act as a broad inhuman shield since he is the person responsible for okaying and denying changes.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Gonna retract an earlier statement.

Doomfist IS a rip-off of Kratos.

People are overrating Doomfist waaay too much to be overlooking that.

 

[Catfood220]

So what does everyone think now he has gone live?

As others have said, he is extremely squishy with his low health and massive hitbox, I mean I have been able to take out a couple of players using Mercy's peashooter at long range. However, unsurprisingly at close range he does tend to wreck me quite quickly. I think that as players get better at using him, he is going to be incredibly annoying to deal with with his quick movement speed and high damage attacks. Having said that, he is quite fun to use, his charge being especially fun. I imagine that getting good with him and chaining attacks together to take people out will be pretty satisfying.

As for his ultimate, meh. It don't see it as being any more annoying than everyone else. I seem to get hit by every single D.Va exploding mech going, but Doomfist is not so bad. You see the red rings of death on the floor, you run away or get blown up.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

So what does everyone think now he has gone live?

As others have said, he is extremely squishy with his low health and massive hitbox, I mean I have been able to take out a couple of players using Mercy's peashooter at long range. However, unsurprisingly at close range he does tend to wreck me quite quickly. I think that as players get better at using him, he is going to be incredibly annoying to deal with with his quick movement speed and high damage attacks. Having said that, he is quite fun to use, his charge being especially fun. I imagine that getting good with him and chaining attacks together to take people out will be pretty satisfying.

As for his ultimate, meh. It don't see it as being any more annoying than everyone else. I seem to get hit by every single D.Va exploding mech going, but Doomfist is not so bad. You see the red rings of death on the floor, you run away or get blown up.

I think the reason everyone finds him fun is the same reason everyone found Roadhog fun.

He does one-shots.

The decent speed on his character doesn't hurt either.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

And you are right; Roadhog is no longer the quality assassin he was. Now Roadhog is just another character who spams bullets. Welcome to the nerfed apocalypse.

Oh for-

For the last time. Roadhog was never supposed to be a flanky assassin. Flanky assassins aren't big fat giant hitboxes that take around a minute to completely abandon their team as they slowly waddle off on a mad flank to get kills.

To say nothing of spending upwards of 30-40 seconds to go off alone and do basically nothing but slowly waddle around the map to get into a position where you can actually do something has a LOT worse flow than "stick with team, pump damage into enemy barriers, use hook to snatck people who are our of position, or to hook flankers going after our healers and drag them into the team where they will get instantly wrecked."

Seriously, claiming that Roadhog is supposed to be an assassin because he has a one-shot kill is like claiming that Ganji is supposed to be a tank because he has a Deflect skill with a large hitbox.

Anyway, though, you should be happy, withteh mobility and defense updates that roadhog is getting, you can go back to sustaining all day long behind enemy lines while leaving your team to fight 5-6 while you waddle sloooooowly out of position behind enemy lines again.
--

As for the meta discussion, I think this is why I like Your Overwatch. Rather than whine about "Wah, character broken, dive sucks, etc", they try to come up with weird creative ways to deal with things, like using Sombra as a healer to farm EMP to stop a push, using Torb to make their backlines much harder to dive, using Doomfist as an "enforcer" to protect the backline from flankers by instantly killing anything that threatens the healers.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

And you are right; Roadhog is no longer the quality assassin he was. Now Roadhog is just another character who spams bullets. Welcome to the nerfed apocalypse.

Oh for-

For the last time. Roadhog was never supposed to be a flanky assassin. Flanky assassins aren't big fat giant hitboxes that take around a minute to completely abandon their team as they slowly waddle off on a mad flank to get kills.

To say nothing of spending upwards of 30-40 seconds to go off alone and do basically nothing but slowly waddle around the map to get into a position where you can actually do something has a LOT worse flow than "stick with team, pump damage into enemy barriers, use hook to snatck people who are our of position, or to hook flankers going after our healers and drag them into the team where they will get instantly wrecked."

Seriously, claiming that Roadhog is supposed to be an assassin because he has a one-shot kill is like claiming that Ganji is supposed to be a tank because he has a Deflect skill with a large hitbox.

Anyway, though, you should be happy, withteh mobility and defense updates that roadhog is getting, you can go back to sustaining all day long behind enemy lines while leaving your team to fight 5-6 while you waddle sloooooowly out of position behind enemy lines again.
--

As for the meta discussion, I think this is why I like Your Overwatch. Rather than whine about "Wah, character broken, dive sucks, etc", they try to come up with weird creative ways to deal with things, like using Sombra as a healer to farm EMP to stop a push, using Torb to make their backlines much harder to dive, using Doomfist as an "enforcer" to protect the backline from flankers by instantly killing anything that threatens the healers.

Roadhog was a very unique flanky assassin then.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Roadhog was a very unique flanky assassin then.

You believe that Genji is just a very unique Tank then?

And that a sieve with all the holes duct taped up is just a very unique soup bowl?

And that Elite Dangerous is just a very unique future-military First Person Shooter?

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Roadhog was a very unique flanky assassin then.

You believe that Genji is just a very unique Tank then?

And that a sieve with all the holes duct taped up is just a very unique soup bowl?

And that Elite Dangerous is just a very unique future-military First Person Shooter?

Tank is a cheap made-up term just like Support and Defense. Blizzard should have replaced those unfitting uninformative categorizations a long time ago.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Tank is a cheap made-up term just like Support and Defense. Blizzard should have replaced those unfitting uninformative categorizations a long time ago.

So what would you replace them with?

Because aside from a few stupid outliers (Symmetra should be Defense, Roadhog should be DPS), I think they do a decent enough job at helping people get a handle on what a team composition might be missing. It's mostly there for new players anyway who might need a quick guide to what the team will need so they don't pick Ana and assume she's a DPS.

Singling out "tank" as a "cheap made up term" is just funny, though. If Reinhardt isn't a tank, what the heck is he?

 

[Sonmi]

Roadhog was a proper threat tank.

One that could be neutered rather easily, and that punished poor team placement. As he stands right now, he's pretty damn useless since the hook is barely a threat anymore.

Personally, I see three ways to fix him:

1) Give him a passive allowing him to tag another player, transferring 20-30% damage from said player to Roadhog as long as they are within decent distance from one another, give Roadhog a 10% damage reduction on transferred damage. There, Roadhog's a more useful tank, and it fits his backstory as a bodyguard.

2) Keep the hook as it is, but allow it to go through barriers. He's supposed to be threatening, that would make him a proper threat without giving him back a 1hko.

3) Give him back his damage, he wasn't that problematic to begin with.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Roadhog was a proper threat tank.

One that could be neutered rather easily, and that punished poor team placement. As he stands right now, he's pretty damn useless since the hook is barely a threat anymore.

Personally, I see three ways to fix him:

1) Give him a passive allowing him to tag another player, transferring 20-30% damage from said player to Roadhog as long as they are within decent distance from one another, give Roadhog a 10% damage reduction on transferred damage. There, Roadhog's a more useful tank, and it fits his backstory as a bodyguard.

2) Keep the hook as it is, but allow it to go through barriers. He's supposed to be threatening, that would make him a proper threat without giving him back a 1hko.

3) Give him back his damage, he wasn't that problematic to begin with.

Those are all great ideas. I really wish they hadn't broken him.

 

[IceForce]

2) Keep the hook as it is, but allow it to go through barriers. He's supposed to be threatening, that would make him a proper threat without giving him back a 1hko.

That would be broken as hell, and it would make Rein basically unplayable/useless.

Rein puts up his barrier? Just hook him through it. He wouldn't be able to stop it, and he would offer his team basically no protection at all.

Like I say, t'would be broken as hell.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Having played Doomfist in a few matches now, and after playing at least a dozen 6v6 doomfists I can say that I don't really like the feel of the character.

His punch is great, it feels exactly like it should, the rest of his abilities feel too floaty though. The uppercut and the ground slam combo feels extremely slow and floaty, and the ground slam covers too much distance. It just really doesn't have the right feel. I'd much rather that he move faster with the ground slam, but cover less distance.