Overwatch

[hitogoroshi]

good ways to deal with bastion:

Hanzo (and Widow with ult, but Hanzos infravision is more reliable) - infravision is super strong against bastion because he has to deploy. You can just dart back and forth behind a wall and pick him off with sniper shots, and he either has to leave or just continually train his gun on the place you're going from (and thus be vulnerable from any other angle). Obviously if you're doing this, don't be directly next to the payload. Also, Hanzo ult is great for Bastion.

Genji - just reflect and fuckin kill him

Mei - ice wall trolls his shit hard. Doesn't solve the problem of killing him but lets you deal with his friends first and then kill him as a team.

Winston - usually Winston can find creative pathing with jump to get into Bastions fortified happy place without getting shot on the way. then shield up and shoot him.

Pharah - map dependent but GENERALLY speaking it's hard for a spot to be well-protected in three dimensions. So Bastion's entrenched places are often a lot more vulnerable from the air. This is only a semi-counter because he'll still wreck you if you go in 1v1 and he knows you're coming. But it's really hard for him to focus on everyone else and still watch the skies.

Also I can't say this one with confidence b/c I haven't tried it but I would think Symmetra full-charge balls just ruin his friggin day

[hitogoroshi]

I think that it strongly depends on map and side (even discounting reacting to weird enemy teams) and that even trying to find a "one true team comp" will probably stick you in perceptual sets that makes you easier to exploit.

Regardless, I think "competitive" play at launch will probably be just a hot mess of a ton of gamey exploits around specific parts of maps. I played L4D versus for a while, and now you can choose whichever hero you want any time...it's not gonna be fuckin pretty. Hopefully Blizzard figures out a good competitive mode later.

[hitogoroshi]

I think that it strongly depends on map and side (even discounting reacting to weird enemy teams) and that even trying to find a "one true team comp" will probably stick you in perceptual sets that makes you easier to exploit.

[hitogoroshi]

The biggest reason OW has a friendly feel is that they work very hard to conceal who's doing badly on your team. Which I think is smart.

[hitogoroshi]

i'll be @ the gym at 6pm sry

also yeah any time i see a widowmaker or torb or bastion on offense i start just screaming

I mean, all of these champs have their niche on offense. for example, bastion and torb are good on offense hanamura A / volskaya A because it's sort of that Y shape where the enemy has to go through the contested area to get to the point. on payload maps, bastion just sitting on the payload can be pretty good as well. and I don't think widow actually suffers all that much being offense instead of defense, except on like route 66 where there's just so much goddamn walking to do. And actually if you have a good team Widow is still good even on route 66, but ime I usually have to babysit the payload no matter who I am so I always do Hanzo over Widow for route 66 offense.

If you're healing someone with mercy but not facing them, if you press shift, you will still fly to the person you are healing
If you don't know this you can accidentally end up flying backwards when you don't want to

also note you can turn this behavior off in the mercy-specific options if you want.

another hot tip is that when you're zarya into mei, use shield AFTER she freezes you for a couple of seconds, if possible. this resets the freeze "stacks" and makes you, or whoever you projected barrier on to, very strong into mei.

[hitogoroshi]

Rank 54 after placements

Oh well. Incentive to improve!

[hitogoroshi]

Rank 54 after placements

That might be good if there's a limit to how high placements can get you. I got 44 from 4-6

There is a limit, but it's 70 or around there.

[hitogoroshi]

Oh, turns out there's a bug where KOTH only has ~1/5th the impact it should on MMR, win or lose. Makes me feel a little better about my rank because KOTH is my best mode.

[hitogoroshi]

I've found a gap of 10+ ranking in a premade in competitive seems to correlate decently strongly with losing. In particular, I think it's strongly against them if they don't join team chat and especially if no one on the premade is on support.

[hitogoroshi]

^Do you need similar levels as those you play with to get balanced competitive matches?

I'm currently level 32-34 can't remember where I was when I stopped playing quickplay last night

like level or rank? i'm level 33 i think and my rank 70 friend is level 70? we were playing with people about my level other than him

Rank; level is pretty much meaningless. The 25+ requirement is just to make sure you're vaguely familiar with the heroes and maps before you do comp.

For placements, I just did solo queue so I had a better idea how I stacked up in isolation and knew who I could queue with productively. If you don't want to do that, you just have to accept the risk that you could be in a Bins situation: where your "true rank" is X, but you get into ranks above your paygrade for placements, so you do nothing but lose and get a rank even lower than you should. You would have won games of a lower rank, but you don't get to play those games because the presence of your friend delays the time when the game ratings decline.

[hitogoroshi]

Level, as in how much you've grinded, matters very little.

Rank matters a lot in that a skewed premade seems (ancedotally!) to do worse. But since you aren't ranked yet, you don't know where you sit. Which is why the safest option is to solo queue until your rating is decently accurate and you know who you can productively queue with. Playing with good friends does help, but the dangerous scenario is that, if they're significantly better than you, your rating will crater.

@Panzer: I think the duoing penalities for this game are a lot less severe than League, so having a friend is probably a help if they're around your level. If they're ranked highly, it's a problem.

[hitogoroshi]

Or to put it another way, suppose alone you'd have a rank X game. I think teaming with friends of rank X is better than going solo. But the way you want to reach a team rank of X is to have a team of players who are all about rank X. If you have a team of, say, X-10, X-3, X, X+3, X+10, I think you're less likely to win with that team than you are solo. Again, haven't found a good OW stats site and this is anecdotal.

The bad impacts of skew are lessened by a.) all six in team chat b.) the biggest premade group in the game fielding the support and c.) the best player in the game being good at and playing McCree or Tracer.

[hitogoroshi]

Symetrra is a support not just for the shield but because her teleporter is effectively a delayed rez. Dead folks are back on the field sooner much sooner than they otherwise would be.