Overwatch's First Console Balance Patch Nerfs Torbjorn

[elvor0]

Great, another character that I won't play anymore. Blizzard already ruined Mcree, so let's see how many more of their characters they can destroy.

Well if the Torb nerf has effected you, then the Mcree nerf didn't because they're exclusive to console and PC respectively. So unless you play both PC and Console, then you've had no nerfs before this if you play console.

If you find Mcree ruined, it's because you're not as good as you think you are or have the wrong expectations of the character. He's still deadly in 1v1 situations, just the skill floor is now higher and he was never designed to gib tanks. Several Mcrees constantly being used in each competitive team isn't cool. Mcree is still the 5th most picked hero in competitive play.

Why oh why is auto aim even an option in a competitive team-based multiplayer shooter? Are things so goddamn easy now that we can outsource half our reaction times to a fucking AI? Why you trying to please the kiddos, blizzard? Silly question, sorry, of course it's the monies.

Yup, no game ever had a turret before now, never.

And in that team based multiplayer you have many ways of dealing with Torbj?rns turret, to the degree that Torbj?rn isn't really a problem on PC and he will only work through decent turret placement and punishes teams who can't coordinate at all. The turret isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. God god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret. Torb also sees the second lowest pick rate in competitive as per the graph above.

 

[SirSullymore]

Good god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret.

I know! Half the meta-game of TF2 was getting around that beast! They had whole character devoted to it! Torbs turret is much weaker, but he himself is much stronger than the Engineer so it made for a more active experience. If they nerf the turret, maybe they should buff Torb himself.

 

[chocolate pickles]

Great, another character that I won't play anymore. Blizzard already ruined Mcree, so let's see how many more of their characters they can destroy.

Well if the Torb nerf has effected you, then the Mcree nerf didn't because they're exclusive to console and PC respectively. So unless you play both PC and Console, then you've had no nerfs before this if you play console.

If you find Mcree ruined, it's because you're not as good as you think you are or have the wrong expectations of the character. He's still deadly in 1v1 situations, just the skill floor is now higher and he was never designed to gib tanks. Several Mcrees constantly being used in each competitive team isn't cool. Mcree is still the 5th most picked hero in competitive play.

Why oh why is auto aim even an option in a competitive team-based multiplayer shooter? Are things so goddamn easy now that we can outsource half our reaction times to a fucking AI? Why you trying to please the kiddos, blizzard? Silly question, sorry, of course it's the monies.

Yup, no game ever had a turret before now, never.

And in that team based multiplayer you have many ways of dealing with Torbj?rns turret, to the degree that Torbj?rn isn't really a problem on PC and he will only work through decent turret placement and punishes teams who can't coordinate at all. The turret isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. God god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret. Torb also sees the second lowest pick rate in competitive as per the graph above.

Considering you've never seen me play Mcree, you are in no position to make insinuations about my skill level. Mcree's been nerfed into the ground - fan the hammer is useless against anything bar tracer. I know he was never designed to gib tanks, but now he's become pretty useless.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Yup, no game ever had a turret before now, never.

And in that team based multiplayer you have many ways of dealing with Torbj?rns turret, to the degree that Torbj?rn isn't really a problem on PC and he will only work through decent turret placement and punishes teams who can't coordinate at all. The turret isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. God god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret. Torb also sees the second lowest pick rate in competitive as per the graph above.

Hang on, am I confused here? I assumed that the turret was controllable and auto aim was for people not wanting to put the effort in. But maybe that was a misunderstanding. If it's merely the stats of the turret's efficiency, then it's much more understandable. Also I never even said how powerful I thought the turret was, having never played the game, that would be awfully assumptious of me. Though certainly not surprising, considering the initial topic.

 

[SirSullymore]

Yup, no game ever had a turret before now, never.

And in that team based multiplayer you have many ways of dealing with Torbj?rns turret, to the degree that Torbj?rn isn't really a problem on PC and he will only work through decent turret placement and punishes teams who can't coordinate at all. The turret isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. God god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret. Torb also sees the second lowest pick rate in competitive as per the graph above.

Hang on, am I confused here? I assumed that the turret was controllable and auto aim was for people not wanting to put the effort in. But maybe that was a misunderstanding. If it's merely the stats of the turret's efficiency, then it's much more understandable. Also I never even said how powerful I thought the turret was, having never played the game, that would be awfully assumptious of me. Though certainly not surprising, considering the initial topic.

Yeah, there's Bastion who is a controllable turret with crazy damage output (who everyone was calling to be nerfed earlier in the month) and Torbjorn, who can deploy a weaker auto turret (also Symmetra who can deploy six really weak, close range auto turrets).

 

[elvor0]

Yup, no game ever had a turret before now, never.

And in that team based multiplayer you have many ways of dealing with Torbj?rns turret, to the degree that Torbj?rn isn't really a problem on PC and he will only work through decent turret placement and punishes teams who can't coordinate at all. The turret isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. God god Torbs turret is a joke compared to the TF2 turret. Torb also sees the second lowest pick rate in competitive as per the graph above.

Hang on, am I confused here? I assumed that the turret was controllable and auto aim was for people not wanting to put the effort in. But maybe that was a misunderstanding. If it's merely the stats of the turret's efficiency, then it's much more understandable.

As per the other poster, Bastion is the transformable, controllable turret, Torb has a weaker auto turret he can plonk down. Both of them die easily to a coordinated team. Bastion occupying the D tier and Torbj?rn occupying F tier. The only reason Torb was a problem on consoles was because people were stacking 6 of them, and the slower reaction time of a controller was thus causing massive issues for players. In competitive/ranked this isn't an issue due to 1 hero limits and on PC(where he isn't being nerfed) because counter heroes are much more powerful against torb, alongside the quicker and more precise reaction time in general, PC players having had 10 years experience with the much more powerful TF2 engineer turrets and the game being beta/alpha tested on PC, leading to the unforeseen issue with Torbjorn that has now arisen on consoles.

having never played the game, that would be awfully assumptious of me.

But you did go into a presumptuous moan about teh monies and teh kiddos. I mean if you haven't played the game, it's fair enough getting confused, but by your own admission you don't actually know the details, so it's not exactly in great taste to start swearing about teh kiddos and teh monies when you self admittedly don't know the facts.

Considering you've never seen me play Mcree, you are in no position to make insinuations about my skill level. Mcree's been nerfed into the ground - fan the hammer is useless against anything bar tracer. I know he was never designed to gib tanks, but now he's become pretty useless.

You're right, I've never seen you play before, but I have seen pros and high ranking players play. Who still use Mcree just fine, so unless you are actually a pro or very high ranking player, you're unlikely to be as good as them. If he was nerfed to the ground, he wouldn't still be the 5th most picked hero would he? I'm not saying you're bad, and I wasn't trying to insult you, I'm just pointing out that if you think he's "useless" it's probably because you're not as good as you think you are, which is fine, NO ONE is as good as they think they are.


If you think 5th highest pickrate and B tier ranking is "useless", (there are no characters defined as S tier right now and only Mercy is A tier)you've clearly never experienced a to the ground nerf.

Now, a skill floor that is very high is a debatable matter on whether or not it makes Mccree "useless" by your average player standards and skill level, but that's not the point, the point is he isn't useless or he wouldn't still be popular in high level play.

Spoiler: tier list for reference

all other places I could find tier lists for also list Mccree as tier 1 or 2.

But I shouldn't need to post the tier list because regardless of what people /think/ are the powerful or weak heroes, the numbers in competitive play present who is truly powerful.

 

[RJ 17]

I don't play Overwatch on console, so I can't speak for how strong Torbjorn is, but 30% sounds a bit harsh.

From what I hear, Torb had something like a 70% win rate in console versions. This being due to the limitations of using a controller instead of a KBM. No matter what your controller sensitivity is set at, you just can't get the same kind of snap-precision as you can by aiming with a mouse. As such people didn't have time to get a bead on the turret before it'd completely shred them.

Things like this are exactly why the meta and balance changes are - and should be - different between PC and consoles...the different platforms just have different issues to deal with. Torb is apparently a terror on consoles, while on PC he's a decent defensive supplement character, but in pretty much every game I've seen him in his turret is vaporized moments after the enemy realizes where it is.

 

[SirSullymore]

From what I hear, Torb had something like a 70% win rate in console versions. This being due to the limitations of using a controller instead of a KBM. No matter what your controller sensitivity is set at, you just can't get the same kind of snap-precision as you can by aiming with a mouse. As such people didn't have time to get a bead on the turret before it'd completely shred them.

I also think his win rate has to do with the fact that he is picked almost exclusively in the game mode he excels in.

 

[bjj hero]

Torb excels.if the other team refuses to work together. Rockets wreck the turret. Nearly any hero piggy backing Reinhart also shred a turretm snipers.shred the turret...

I could go on.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Yeah, I mean I've encountered the dreaded 6 Torb lineup about 3 times in the last week already, and even a few with just 2-3 on a team and I can agree that that many turrets is just a nightmare to deal with, especially on maps where the turrets can be placed to have overlapping fire arcs, so it's never just 1 turret you have to deal with at a time.

Fortunately though I think people are actually starting to see through the strategy anyway, as the last time I encountered it in a match with randos we all immediately switched to Pharas, Junkers and a Reinhart and proceeded to smash them and win. We even forced a few of them to switch to other characters when they presumably realised they were going to lose. Unfortunately, they switched to Bastion...

Funnily enough though, I've also recently been seeing teams of 3-5 Winstons/Roadhogs, and even once a 6 team Winston, which, though funny/terrifying the first time, is also annoying.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Hang on, am I confused here? I assumed that the turret was controllable and auto aim was for people not wanting to put the effort in. But maybe that was a misunderstanding. If it's merely the stats of the turret's efficiency, then it's much more understandable.

As per the other poster, Bastion is the transformable, controllable turret, Torb has a weaker auto turret he can plonk down. Both of them die easily to a coordinated team. Bastion occupying the D tier and Torbj?rn occupying F tier. The only reason Torb was a problem on consoles was because people were stacking 6 of them, and the slower reaction time of a controller was thus causing massive issues for players. In competitive/ranked this isn't an issue due to 1 hero limits and on PC(where he isn't being nerfed) because counter heroes are much more powerful against torb, alongside the quicker and more precise reaction time in general, PC players having had 10 years experience with the much more powerful TF2 engineer turrets and the game being beta/alpha tested on PC, leading to the unforeseen issue with Torbjorn that has now arisen on consoles.

having never played the game, that would be awfully assumptious of me.

But you did go into a presumptuous moan about teh monies and teh kiddos. I mean if you haven't played the game, it's fair enough getting confused, but by your own admission you don't actually know the details, so it's not exactly in great taste to start swearing about teh kiddos and teh monies when you self admittedly don't know the facts.

That's what my last sentence was addressing, the only bit not quoted. Admittedly, my wording is often obscure from some weird compulsion for indirectness. And that sentence was especially poorly thought out looking back at it. I am vastly imperfect. For now.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Honestly, Torbjorn's only as effective as the team he's in, and as the map allows.

If you're on attack, playing him offensively can be a decent learning experience. You're forced to relocate your turret often and to sometimes forego upgrading one if harassing someone or drawing aggro is more profitable on a short-term basis. You're also forced to target enemies independently, seeing as he isn't quite designed in the same way as Team Fortress 2's Engineer. You can't simply mother your turret and expect to reach maximum efficiency. In my experience, you're better off letting one angle for your turret and to pick another one for yourself.

If you're dealing with Torb, on the other hand, then Junkrat's your best bet. Distance and cover allowing, you can shred turrets without so much as a scratch. That alone means that Torbjorn's best asset is either the presence of other players on the front lines that will soak up most of the gunfire, or the assistance of a Reinhardt.

Thinking "Auto Turrets Mean Rival Team Gets Shrekt" is laughably innacurate. Tracer, Widowmaker, Hanzo and Roadhog can all shut down turrets at low-to-medium risk. Apart from Roadhog, they're all fairly small and easy to miss from across the map and all can feasibly take down a turret that's busy acquiring someone else. Roadhog's best bet is to either flank turrets or approach them from the rear, preferably using his Whole Hog ult.

 

[Stick Antolini]

McCree's skill floor skyrocketed: the only heroes harder to play than him now are Zarya and Genji. Instead of the usual flash + Fan combo to kill a squishy, you have .7 seconds to line up a headshot that won't kill anyone but Tracer.

Considering you've never seen me play Mcree, you are in no position to make insinuations about my skill level. Mcree's been nerfed into the ground - fan the hammer is useless against anything bar tracer. I know he was never designed to gib tanks, but now he's become pretty useless.

except that's a lie since FtH still does 45 damage per shot so you now need 5 shots to kill 200hp and all 6 to kill 250 rather than 3 for 200 and 4 for 250, which sounds like a pretty fair nerf to me.

 

[Stick Antolini]

McCree's skill floor skyrocketed: the only heroes harder to play than him now are Zarya and Genji. Instead of the usual flash + Fan combo to kill a squishy, you have .7 seconds to line up a headshot that won't kill anyone but Tracer.

Considering you've never seen me play Mcree, you are in no position to make insinuations about my skill level. Mcree's been nerfed into the ground - fan the hammer is useless against anything bar tracer. I know he was never designed to gib tanks, but now he's become pretty useless.

except that's a lie since FtH still does 45 damage per shot so you now need 5 shots to kill 200hp and all 6 to kill 250 rather than 3 for 200 and 4 for 250, which sounds like a pretty fair nerf to me.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

except that's a lie since FtH still does 45 damage per shot so you now need 5 shots to kill 200hp and all 6 to kill 250 rather than 3 for 200 and 4 for 250, which sounds like a pretty fair nerf to me.

Double post here, I'll reply to the first one.

Flashbang deals 25 damage. Assuming you flashbang a Tracer, you need to deal 125 extra damage with Fan the Hammer. At 45 damage a shot, you need to hit Tracer three times in order to kill her at 150 health. 25 + 45 + 45 + 45 = 155. But since the stun on Flashbang only lasts .7 seconds, and adding in a split second to line up, McCree will, at best, get three or four shots of FtH off before Tracer can Rewind and escape. McCree empties his weapon in one second; it takes him .66 seconds to fire four shots. If you miss any of your shots, which is very likely considering the spread on FtH, Tracer gets away clean.

And that's not even getting into trying to counter any other aggressive flankers, like Genji or Reaper. More math: Reaper has 250 health. Flashbang is 25, which means McCree has to deal 225 in the .7 seconds Reaper is stunned. Best case scenario, McCree gets four shots off: 25 + 45 + 45 + 45 + 45 = 205. McCree simply cannot deal the required amount of damage to kill Reaper before he can Wraith Form, and while you might be able to chase him down, he turned what used to be a sure kill into much better odds for Reaper.

Remember, Blizzard fully intended Flash + Fan to kill squishy, flanker-type heroes...and McCree just can't do it anymore.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

If you find Mcree ruined, it's because you're not as good as you think you are or have the wrong expectations of the character. He's still deadly in 1v1 situations, just the skill floor is now higher and he was never designed to gib tanks. Several Mcrees constantly being used in each competitive team isn't cool. Mcree is still the 5th most picked hero in competitive play.

Here's a more up-to-date version of the chart you used:

In professional usage, McCree plummeted into the cellar with the likes of Mei, Bastion, and Zenyatta, all heroes that are generally acknowledged as weak in competitive play.

Another chart showing the change in hero usage over the past two weeks:

It's still early, and this is professional play that we're talking about, but the data available to me tells me that McCree dropped off the face of the Earth following his nerf. He's barely seeing professional play now.

 

[Stick Antolini]

except that's a lie since FtH still does 45 damage per shot so you now need 5 shots to kill 200hp and all 6 to kill 250 rather than 3 for 200 and 4 for 250, which sounds like a pretty fair nerf to me.

Double post here, I'll reply to the first one.

Flashbang deals 25 damage. Assuming you flashbang a Tracer, you need to deal 125 extra damage with Fan the Hammer. At 45 damage a shot, you need to hit Tracer three times in order to kill her at 150 health. 25 + 45 + 45 + 45 = 155. But since the stun on Flashbang only lasts .7 seconds, and adding in a split second to line up, McCree will, at best, get three or four shots of FtH off before Tracer can Rewind and escape. McCree empties his weapon in one second; it takes him .66 seconds to fire four shots. If you miss any of your shots, which is very likely considering the spread on FtH, Tracer gets away clean.

And that's not even getting into trying to counter any other aggressive flankers, like Genji or Reaper. More math: Reaper has 250 health. Flashbang is 25, which means McCree has to deal 225 in the .7 seconds Reaper is stunned. Best case scenario, McCree gets four shots off: 25 + 45 + 45 + 45 + 45 = 205. McCree simply cannot deal the required amount of damage to kill Reaper before he can Wraith Form, and while you might be able to chase him down, he turned what used to be a sure kill into much better odds for Reaper.

Remember, Blizzard fully intended Flash + Fan to kill squishy, flanker-type heroes...and McCree just can't do it anymore.

that makes sense, but surely that makes it about as good as Roadhog's chain and shoot which arguably serves the same purpose right?

Spoiler

I blame the double post on having to accept the posting T&C

 

[RaikuFA]

Everyone on every team is Trobjorn. I wanna see that.

 

[RJ 17]

From what I hear, Torb had something like a 70% win rate in console versions. This being due to the limitations of using a controller instead of a KBM. No matter what your controller sensitivity is set at, you just can't get the same kind of snap-precision as you can by aiming with a mouse. As such people didn't have time to get a bead on the turret before it'd completely shred them.

I also think his win rate has to do with the fact that he is picked almost exclusively in the game mode he excels in.

Indeed, he can be pretty when defending an objective with proper turret placement, however as a person playing this on PC I can tell you that Torb isn't played all that much - even on defense - because once the enemy team spots your turret it's reduced to scrap in a matter of moments later (generally speaking, there are plenty of derpy teams that allow a Torb turret to kick their ass).

I'd imagine the reason he's picked a lot more on consoles is because of that slight difficulty in aiming that comes with a controller (when compared to KBM).

As I said in my original post, though: reasons like this are why the balances and metas are being kept separate between the console and the PC. The two different communities have two different sets of issues that they have to deal with. As someone who frequents a couple PC Overwatch boards, I can tell the the things that PC players are complaining mostly about now are Mei's freeze spray and the charge rate on Mercy's ult.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

that makes sense, but surely that makes it about as good as Roadhog's chain and shoot which arguably serves the same purpose right?

Eh...kinda. It's inferior, but it can still kinda do it, which is why Roadhog is seeing a surge in play. The hook is harder to land than the flashbang, and the hook sometimes puts the hooked enemy in an awkward position. But, assuming all goes well, he can hook and one-shot those annoying flankers.

I don't really think that was his intended use, though. He's better at doing the flanking himself, grabbing and killing a priority target, and retreating to heal, before doing it again.

As I said in my original post, though: reasons like this are why the balances and metas are being kept separate between the console and the PC. The two different communities have two different sets of issues that they have to deal with. As someone who frequents a couple PC Overwatch boards, I can tell the the things that PC players are complaining mostly about now are Mei's freeze spray and the charge rate on Mercy's ult.

You're not wrong, though I think Mercy is a case of there not being enough good support heroes, and people complain about Mei because she's unfun to play against, not because she actually is particularly strong. Mei's kinda like Bastion: she's a pubstomper who destroys poorly-coordinated teams, but is easy to deal with if a team communicates and switches to counters.

Right now, Overwatch's biggest balance problem is that there are some heroes who are just straight weaker than others, like Zenyatta, and other heroes who just don't feel rewarding to play, like D.Va. That being said, Blizzard has done a better-than-expected job of balancing this game. Still needs some work, though.