Blizzard Says D.Va Nerf Gives Her "More Legitimate Counters"

[Lizzy Finnegan]

Blizzard Says D.Va Nerf Gives Her "More Legitimate Counters"

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1373/1373970.jpg
"Nerf this."

Nerfs to D.Va went live on Overwatch's PTR last week in the 1.7 update. D.Va has lost 200 armor, but has gained 200 health. Her weapon also now deals less damage - while she fires more bullets per shot (11 versus 8), each bullet does less damage (2 instead of 3). According to the patch notes, "D.Va's armor often made her feel like she had no weaknesses, even against heroes that are often effective against bigger targets (like Reaper). The changes to her Fusion Cannons will result in a small overall decrease in damage, but they should feel more consistent now."

Apparently, enough players have voiced concerns that principal designer Geoff Goodman has decided to explain the reasoning behind the changes on the official forums [https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20752559736?page=26#post-502].

According to Goodman, the goal was to make D.Va weaker against heroes like Reaper and Tracer, who have faster firing weapons and shotguns.

"The game is a lot healthier when heroes have strengths and weaknesses versus other heroes," Goodman explained. "As she was, it was common to hear people ask 'What do I do about D.Va?'. People often would try to use Zarya or Roadhog, since they both have the potential to deal high damage and pierce her Matrix, but even those answers were marginal at best. Heroes like Reaper that are generally supposed to be good at taking down tanks weren't very effective because of all the armor they had to get through. With lowered armor, she now has more legitimate counters and she still counters many heroes and abilities in the game, especially considering her Defense Matrix wasn't touched."

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."



Permalink

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Good to know Blizzard's issues with character balancing extend to franchises other than just WoW.

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."

And if WoW is anything to go off of... they won't actually fix it, they'll make it worse and say that's just how the class is supposed to be played and they want to give players "variety" so that it's "fun"(boring and streamlined) for everyone.

For all the Overwatch fans out there, I hope that the team in charge of character balancing is better at it.

 

[Bobular]

I think they should have kept her with a lot of armour but make another character able to more easily damage armour, making it so D.Va has her counter but Reaper isn't a counter to all tanks.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Ehhhh...I didn't find Dva that OP in terms of survivability that she needed a nerf, but then again, I'm a low gold player and I play a lot of Zarya who MELTS Dva, so what do I know?

 

[geizr]

Good to know Blizzard's issues with character balancing extend to franchises other than just WoW.

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."

And if WoW is anything to go off of... they won't actually fix it, they'll make it worse and say that's just how the class is supposed to be played and they want to give players "variety" so that it's "fun"(boring and streamlined) for everyone.

For all the Overwatch fans out there, I hope that the team in charge of character balancing is better at it.

In my opinion, Blizzard's biggest problem with their balancing is that they are not sufficiently surgical about it. They make relatively huge numerical changes instead of smaller incremental changes. While they try to counter balance the change to one stat by changing another, I'm not sure they have a complete understanding of the effectiveness of one stat versus another in typical combat situations.

Honestly, I think what makes D.Va so difficult to take down for anyone, except Zarya and Roadhog, is her defense matrix, and D.Va's defense matrix had received, previously, a major buff, as I recall. For anyone except Zarya, D.Va's defense matrix completely negates incoming damage with infinite effectiveness for as long as she is able to keep it up (which, thanks to the buff, is fairly long), because Zarya's beam can burn through it (and, with Zarya, I've burned down many D.Va's that just stand there, dumbfounded, with their defense matrix up, wondering why I'm still killing them). Roadhog simply catches D.Va unaware with the hook and blows her away at point blank.

This isn't to say she doesn't sometimes feel over-tanky, but maybe only a 100 point reduction in her shields, with no buff to health, rather than a 200 point reduction would be a better adjustment to start.

 

[IceForce]

Meanwhile, Soldier 76 is running amok and basically has no counters. (Unless you're a really sick Hanzo/Widow, but good luck with that.)

I used to be able to kill Soldiers as Tracer, but not anymore since his buff.

 

[Buizel91]

Good to know Blizzard's issues with character balancing extend to franchises other than just WoW.

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."

And if WoW is anything to go off of... they won't actually fix it, they'll make it worse and say that's just how the class is supposed to be played and they want to give players "variety" so that it's "fun"(boring and streamlined) for everyone.

For all the Overwatch fans out there, I hope that the team in charge of character balancing is better at it.

In my opinion, Blizzard's biggest problem with their balancing is that they are not sufficiently surgical about it. They make relatively huge numerical changes instead of smaller incremental changes. While they try to counter balance the change to one stat by changing another, I'm not sure they have a complete understanding of the effectiveness of one stat versus another in typical combat situations.

Honestly, I think what makes D.Va so difficult to take down for anyone, except Zarya and Roadhog, is her defense matrix, and D.Va's defense matrix had received, previously, a major buff, as I recall. For anyone except Zarya, D.Va's defense matrix completely negates incoming damage with infinite effectiveness for as long as she is able to keep it up (which, thanks to the buff, is fairly long), because Zarya's beam can burn through it (and, with Zarya, I've burned down many D.Va's that just stand there, dumbfounded, with their defense matrix up, wondering why I'm still killing them). Roadhog simply catches D.Va unaware with the hook and blows her away at point blank.

This isn't to say she doesn't sometimes feel over-tanky, but maybe only a 100 point reduction in her shields, with no buff to health, rather than a 200 point reduction would be a better adjustment to start.

I would of thought Winston would of been a good D.VA counter, due to his weapon being energy based like Zarya's and being able to get past her Matrix.

Good to see Blizz are keeping up with the buffs and nerfs where (generally) they are needed *Glares at Riot games >.> * it's weird cause Overwatch seems to have some of the best balance out there, when i started playing (about 6 months ago) i thought everyone was very well balanced. Surprised to see so many buffs and nerfs all of a sudden.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Good to know Blizzard's issues with character balancing extend to franchises other than just WoW.

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."

And if WoW is anything to go off of... they won't actually fix it, they'll make it worse and say that's just how the class is supposed to be played and they want to give players "variety" so that it's "fun"(boring and streamlined) for everyone.

For all the Overwatch fans out there, I hope that the team in charge of character balancing is better at it.

In my opinion, Blizzard's biggest problem with their balancing is that they are not sufficiently surgical about it. They make relatively huge numerical changes instead of smaller incremental changes. While they try to counter balance the change to one stat by changing another, I'm not sure they have a complete understanding of the effectiveness of one stat versus another in typical combat situations.

Honestly, I think what makes D.Va so difficult to take down for anyone, except Zarya and Roadhog, is her defense matrix, and D.Va's defense matrix had received, previously, a major buff, as I recall. For anyone except Zarya, D.Va's defense matrix completely negates incoming damage with infinite effectiveness for as long as she is able to keep it up (which, thanks to the buff, is fairly long), because Zarya's beam can burn through it (and, with Zarya, I've burned down many D.Va's that just stand there, dumbfounded, with their defense matrix up, wondering why I'm still killing them). Roadhog simply catches D.Va unaware with the hook and blows her away at point blank.

This isn't to say she doesn't sometimes feel over-tanky, but maybe only a 100 point reduction in her shields, with no buff to health, rather than a 200 point reduction would be a better adjustment to start.

I would of thought Winston would of been a good D.VA counter, due to his weapon being energy based like Zarya's and being able to get past her Matrix.

Actually this is very true, Winston is a fantastic D.Va counter for two reasons. First, yes, you ignore her defense matrix, but second and more importantly is the bubble shield. Since D.Va moves at a snails pace when she's firing, you drop the bubble forcing her to either burn through it very veeeeeery slowly, or stop firing and move in at which point you just switch out and she's in the same position, all while damaging her.
A good D.Va can handle it of course, but not without tons of free damage at which point Winston can just fuck off with the jetpack if he feels he's losing.

 

[Borty The Bort]

I think they should have kept her with a lot of armour but make another character able to more easily damage armour, making it so D.Va has her counter but Reaper isn't a counter to all tanks.

But that would mean that only one character could do anything about D.va. that can cause a stale meta, since if the enemy has a d.va for example, you HAVE to have the exact character to counter her, without any leg room. Other offense can do Reaper's job too, Soldier: 76, Bastion, even a good Torbjorn, but the thing is that all of those characters I mentioned can only do tank-busting secondarily, with exceptions to Bastion, but he can't move while doing so. Reaper is the only high mobility character in the game with a purely dedicated tank-busting loadout, but if he can't take down tanks, then what's his purpose?

Adding another character that does Reaper's job, but better just makes him more redundant in comp picks. This is what happened with Winston, when D.va was buffed to high heaven, she usurped Winston as the squishy hunter, meaning Winston had a very low pick rate in competitive.

 

[TheScorpion]

Uhm, OK but I never had much trouble fighting against her to begin with. But why can't you do that with Mei? Mainly because that's the one that I want nerfed being that she's always giving me trouble and something that I want a legit counter to since I feel like Pharah doesn't cut and the closest that I can find to a counter is Reaper and Tracer.

Nonetheless, I hope that I can adapt well to D.Va's new changes though since shes one of my mains in Overwatch.

 

[Victim of Progress]

This has voiced by a trillion people. But I'm going to say this again, DVA's weakness isn't her amount of HP/Armor. it's the fact that her face is just one giant critbox. The fact that she had so much armour circumvented that. Fix her hitbox, and you'll make here a lot more consistent HP wise.

As fare as guns go, they can nerf the damage. Whatever. I highly doubt increasing the amount of pellets will make her damage more 'consistent'. What she needs are improvements that let here fire further than 1 meter ahead of her and still deal actual damage.

 

[Benpasko]

Actually this is very true, Winston is a fantastic D.Va counter for two reasons.

Except for the fact this his gun tickles her armor. You can dump your entire mag on her and only drop her to half, he'll definitely be more viable against her with this change to D.Va.

 

[MHR]

Was Mei just out of the question all the time? I don't play the game much, but when I did, almost every D.VA I iced as Mei just had no recourse. They stayed and got frozen and focused or bailed. Seems like the best counter besides maybe overcharged Zarya.

Mei just isn't viable at high ranks? At low ranks good Meis will wreck everyone.

 

[hentropy]

As a D.Va main obviously I am not crazy about this nerf, she's the biggest target on the battlefield and the extra armor was meant to make up for that fact. She had no "counters" because everyone was a counter, just shoot her and eventually her mech will break. It's the same basic way Rein is countered. Rather than nerf her in other ways, like giving the defense matrix a little less life/recharge rate, they basically killed any chance of her being viable, and in another two months or something we might get a little bit more damage or less spread to make up for it.

Blizzard clearly hated the tank-heavy meta, I can't necessarily blame them for that, but they should really do something Reinhardt if they want that to change. He's basically always been in the meta from beginning but no one ever talks about nerfing him, but as soon as we get a meta that revolves around another tank, we get very quick nerfs.

 

[Borty The Bort]

As a D.Va main obviously I am not crazy about this nerf, she's the biggest target on the battlefield and the extra armor was meant to make up for that fact. Rather than nerf her in other ways, like giving the defense matrix a little less life/recharge rate, they basically killed any chance of her being viable, and in another two months or something we might get a little bit more damage or less spread to make up for it.

Blizzard clearly hated the tank-heavy meta, I can't necessarily blame them for that, but they should really do something Reinhardt if they want that to change. He's basically always been in the meta from beginning but no one ever talks about nerfing him, but as soon as we get a meta that revolves around another tank, we get very quick nerfs.

Big issue with Reinhardt; he's like Lucio. His shield is just so good that if you nerf it, he hasn't got much going for him. Just because he is generally a good choice in comps, doesn't mean he is overpowered(again, like Lucio.) I feel like Reinhardt will always be around, unless a character gets added that completely negates him or eclipses him in terms of viability.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I would of thought Winston would of been a good D.VA counter, due to his weapon being energy based like Zarya's and being able to get past her Matrix.

Good to see Blizz are keeping up with the buffs and nerfs where (generally) they are needed *Glares at Riot games >.> * it's weird cause Overwatch seems to have some of the best balance out there, when i started playing (about 6 months ago) i thought everyone was very well balanced. Surprised to see so many buffs and nerfs all of a sudden.

Actually this is very true, Winston is a fantastic D.Va counter for two reasons. First, yes, you ignore her defense matrix, but second and more importantly is the bubble shield. Since D.Va moves at a snails pace when she's firing, you drop the bubble forcing her to either burn through it very veeeeeery slowly, or stop firing and move in at which point you just switch out and she's in the same position, all while damaging her.
A good D.Va can handle it of course, but not without tons of free damage at which point Winston can just fuck off with the jetpack if he feels he's losing.

It's the other way around...at least, it is for now.

Winston actually has a very, very hard time doing any amount of damage to a D.Va, thanks to how armor works. Armor reduces incoming damage by 50%, but an attack can lose no more than five damage to armor. Long and short, this means that attacks that deal more damage per shot are more effective at piercing armor, while rapid-fire weapons are considerably less effective. This means that Winston only deals 1.5 points of damage per point of ammo to D.Va's armor, instead of the usual 3. D.Va will be able to shoot a Winston down much, much faster than Winston can kill her mech.

Right now, Zarya is still the best counter, if only because her weapon is bugged and deals more damage to armor than it should.

 

[Fappy]

Good to know Blizzard's issues with character balancing extend to franchises other than just WoW.

Goodman also reassures players that if D.Va ends up too weak after the changes, the team will take steps to even her back out - however, that won't be done "in the form of a bunch of armor," as doing that "would just put us back the problems we had to begin with."

And if WoW is anything to go off of... they won't actually fix it, they'll make it worse and say that's just how the class is supposed to be played and they want to give players "variety" so that it's "fun"(boring and streamlined) for everyone.

For all the Overwatch fans out there, I hope that the team in charge of character balancing is better at it.

I think I found the hunter. RIP 7.1.5.

 

[hentropy]

Big issue with Reinhardt; he's like Lucio. His shield is just so good that if you nerf it, he hasn't got much going for him. Just because he is generally a good choice in comps, doesn't mean he is overpowered(again, like Lucio.) I feel like Reinhardt will always be around, unless a character gets added that completely negates him or eclipses him in terms of viability.

This is true in many ways, reworking Reinhardt would require rethinking his whole role. But does anyone really love his role as it is now? It's necessary for most strategies, but it's boring as all get out and makes most high and mid-level matches just poke-at-the-choke, Rein just standing there and waiting for those around him to make plays, at most he can do real well at cleanup. I suppose my answer to this would be for him to keep a weaker shield, but make him more of a short-range death-giver, rather than needing 3-4 hits to kill DPS, he needs much less, but make him slower than most overall. That's not necessarily fool-proof, of course, it would need testing, but right now he's just a bore to play but every team needs one forever. Lucio is at least more fun in that regard.

Ideally there should be a few different viable strategies and ways to play the game, it seemed like the tank meta was the closest to dynamic, as you could mix up tanks and heals/DPS depending on the situation, but wasn't really as "fun" as the dive meta, which was all about chaos and brawling.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

When a D.Va (A tank) can make a Roadhog shit his pants in a close quarters 1v1 fight you know your character needs some work. The nerf is too extreme but a nerf needed to happen. She's a better Reaper (higher heath and better escape) and Winston (better damage) and is hard as shit to kill to even heroes like reaper or roadhog. Her ult is a "you may die to this and I get my hearth back" button. and even heroes like mei who are supposed to "counter" her, she can just nope out of there pretty easily. I would have just nerf her damage and have the nuke kill her again. Hopefully they look at her like they looked at Roadhog's hook and we will be rework her changes in the ptr.

I would of thought Winston would of been a good D.VA counter, due to his weapon being energy based like Zarya's and being able to get past her Matrix.

Good to see Blizz are keeping up with the buffs and nerfs where (generally) they are needed *Glares at Riot games >.> * it's weird cause Overwatch seems to have some of the best balance out there, when i started playing (about 6 months ago) i thought everyone was very well balanced. Surprised to see so many buffs and nerfs all of a sudden.

Actually this is very true, Winston is a fantastic D.Va counter for two reasons. First, yes, you ignore her defense matrix, but second and more importantly is the bubble shield. Since D.Va moves at a snails pace when she's firing, you drop the bubble forcing her to either burn through it very veeeeeery slowly, or stop firing and move in at which point you just switch out and she's in the same position, all while damaging her.
A good D.Va can handle it of course, but not without tons of free damage at which point Winston can just fuck off with the jetpack if he feels he's losing.

It's the other way around...at least, it is for now.

Winston actually has a very, very hard time doing any amount of damage to a D.Va, thanks to how armor works. Armor reduces incoming damage by 50%, but an attack can lose no more than five damage to armor. Long and short, this means that attacks that deal more damage per shot are more effective at piercing armor, while rapid-fire weapons are considerably less effective. This means that Winston only deals 1.5 points of damage per point of ammo to D.Va's armor, instead of the usual 3. D.Va will be able to shoot a Winston down much, much faster than Winston can kill her mech.

Right now, Zarya is still the best counter, if only because her weapon is bugged and deals more damage to armor than it should.

Winston being able to ignore armor would make him pretty viable

 

[MeatMachine]

Blizzard clearly hated the tank-heavy meta, I can't necessarily blame them for that, but they should really do something Reinhardt if they want that to change. He's basically always been in the meta from beginning but no one ever talks about nerfing him, but as soon as we get a meta that revolves around another tank, we get very quick nerfs.

To be fair, a lone/unsupported Reinhardt is basically an ultimate battery for the other team without his own being ready. D.Va isn't the top-tier team meta tank, but she has plenty of health, mobility, defense, and even damage to accomplish a few things on her own.