The WORST (& Best) of OW2 (Hero Tier List!) 

ok, I know I cooked- what are your hot takes?

I think the worst part about Pharah is that some characters just can't interact with her. Even with a bad matchup, you can still interact with the enemy. If you're a Reaper, you don't get to play against Pharah.

I think a lot of people forget that Lucio got a rework in early OW1 and I have to say that's probably the best rework that's been done to a character with how fair and admirable of a support character he is now.

The unique and fun design of Wrecking Ball is literally what has led me to invest hundreds of hours into Overwatch 1 and 2. Sure, he needs some balancing and some tweaks, but his design is one of the most unique and fun experiences I’ve had in not just Overwatch but all of gaming

I firmly believe that they made moira for when there are two mercy mains on the same team

I was just about to form my own opinion, thanks mr coach spilo

there will be a 2nd row in the lowest tier by the end of the year

That ball segment made me think of this doom quote a lot, and man is it true. “A great leader adapts to their team, not the other way around.”

Brig is very interesting in her current state because on one hand she has problematic aspects in some of her abilities, but on the other hand she is a prime example of good hero design. She has all low cool-down abilities that in isolation are not overpowered (with the exception of her ult), she has no immortality or get-out-of-jail-free cards, she has SO many potential uses for her Shield (the ability that provides her with all her mobility and protection, and is critical to the execution of her burst damage combo), she can do burst damage but it requires her to use all her CDs (including her escape ability), she is one of the only heroes in the game that simultaneously feels good to play with / against and still PERFECTLY fits her character lore in the way that she plays (she was advertised as the “bodyguard “ hero), and she can counter aggression from divers but only by manually denying them by landing her abilities directly on them at the right time (if she misses she is one of the easiest targets for a diver to kill). However, she does have some problems as Spilo mentioned. Rally changes were very bad. Brig did not need any buffs. The changes were literally straight up buffs with no compensation, and it is currently a bit too good and easy to use. Personally, I don’t find the burst armour pack change very bad. 25hp burst is virtually unnoticeable compared to the absurd burst heals Bap and Kiriko can provide with their abilities, and I think it is fair with how high the general damage output has become as of recent (eg. Junkrat, Pharah, buffed tracer, or damage boosted hitscan heroes). Overall, I think Brig has an amazing flow to her kit, easily one of the best of any heroes in the game. She is is a hero that can have a lot of impact on a game, but only if the person playing her is actually good. I also like how she does not hard-counter any heroes and is also not hard-countered BY any. Definitely has some imperfections in her design, but the positives FAR outweigh the negatives.

Mercy? Niche appeal? When she's one of the most popular heroes in the game and has one of the largest, most vocal communities of any character in overwatch? How?

About Kiriko's winrate. I think it's because of her playstyle. The optimal playstyle for Kiriko is to also take off angles and flanking since her kit enables her aggressive playstyle. This does require good timing and balancing her ability to support her team with heals and playing aggressive with off angles. But a lot of players especially low ranks don't do this enough. This combines with heal botting as they don't weave in kunais between her heals and that her kunai is harder to use than ofuda. I can see why her winrate is low.

spilo always stickin up for us ballers

Personally I think what doesn't feel right with Ashe is that she doesn't really have a design, qnd therefore fit as a necessary or unic piece of the puzzle. As she is, she's fine, well design while lacking a bit of weakness, but in general she's fun to play and not cheesy. But her whole design feels very arbitrary. Her abilities are not really integral to her character or really interesting in any way, they are just functional, really disposable imo. Ashe doesn't feel exiting as a design, because well, she doesn't really have a design. The only think that remotely qualifies her as a hero is her gun type, and even then it's not really out of the ordinary. It's not as defining to her identity as a "sniper" would, it's fun and allows her to have a niche but you could give that tool to any hero. Her kit feels more like placeholder for what you'd need for a hero like her to function : *get off me tool*, *arbitrary projectile to throw whenever you need*, ... than an actual cohesive idea and clearly fits in the overwatch headspace. Compare this to a hero like Tracer. All of tracer's abilities work together and are integral to her design. Sure her guntype sort of defined a range of effectiveness like Ashe's does, but it's the rest of her kit that really makes tracer tracer. Tracer don't use her abilities arbitrarily or to respond passively to a situation but it's directly link to who she is at all time. Recall wouldn't work without blinks, tracer as a hero wouldn't work without blinks, the difference between tracer with or without blink is the difference between tracer and reaper. Now do the same thing with Ashe. Would Ashe fundamentaly if you gave her a grapplin hook instead of coach gun, litterally anything instead of her dynamite. No, her abilities contribute in no way to her design, they are serviceable and make the hero better, but you don need them and they don't work together or feel integral to Ashe as a hero. It doesn't help that her animations and physics are just goofy as f, which doesn't really fit her personality and overwatch as a game. Sure overwatch doesn't have very realistic physics, but it can generally be explained by sci-fi tech or is tied to the junkers which are goofy by nature. The way coach gun works just breaks suspension of disbelief and feels super out of place, both in her kit and in the general game of overwatch. To put it simply, Ashe feels like a TF2 character put in overwatch. Very fun as you'd expect, but not matching the game's complexity or universe.

I dont believe mauga is entirely unbalanceable. I dont think his design will ever be fantastic but if they gave him the ability to crit through fortify again so he could at least be the counter pick to orisa i would happily take him as an addition to the game

Ramatra feels like a slithly different version of OW1 Orisa. The same barrier, the same projectile, Nemesis acts like a more brawly fortify, even vortex and pull are not too dissimilar. The big difference the empathis they put on Nemesis, where the rest of Ram's kit feel almost non existent at this point. I wish there was more work put into actually making base form feel like a complete hero with Nemesis being a more emergency/impact oriented ult, a bit how you use nade on Ana, rather than what essentially feel like a fortify with a cooler design.

I would be really interested in hearing him come up with hero designs from the bottom up. He has a ton of ideas on how stuff could be engaging and not busted and all that so it’d be cool to see what new concepts he could come up with

weird to open with genji S tier for appeal (true) then mercy D tier for 'niche' appeal (not true). let me be clear, you can definitely make an argument for mercy being C or D for design just because of the skill gap complicating the game's health. but he didnt make that claim, he basically admitted to being biased and not accounting for it

i know the idea behind annihilation isnt great but its just so fun to use for me

Lucio is literally the only reason I still play this game, once I moved to pc and started playing lucio it just stuck with me, I’ve always loved movement in games, and my movement in games has always been phenomenal, it’s my best quality when it comes to my skill in games, nothing like having people compliment you for skilfully dunking on them instead of raging and calling you shit because your character is ass to play against, I just wish they’d stop over designing maps because it feels like a nerf to him when there’s constant map geometry blocking you and having to find the perfect way to navigate it, it just feels ass

I feel like the only hero that’s been released in a good state in OW2, outside of power level, is JQ. She is very fun to play, and I don’t have any problems playing against her. The only hero that probably doesn’t like playing against her is like Winston maybe. Her entire kit just is designed pretty well imo. She was pretty bad at launch, but just some number tweaks made her much stronger, and I feel like she’s in a decent spot rn, maybe some very tiny buffs is all

That speech you gave about playing Genji and that's all it took to make you an Overwatch player? That was what Ana was for me back in early 2017 - and I know many others can say the same. Thanks for having a nuanced take on her.

I don't think you really commenting on design, rather high-level balance. For instance junk rat is, from a design perspective, a literally perfect character. Low barrier to entry, some reasonable level of skill expression, but a much lower ceiling than most heroes... he's a hook for new players that also sees some time in competitive play. Easy to get into character thst is neither overpowered nor irrelevant. that's a chef's kiss design.

They should replace phara's big jump with a second set of jet engines which you can use to propel yourself forward using fuel just like the regular ones.

Kiriko's teleport feels so bad to play against, as long as she's within a mile of her teammates she can disengage risk free. My idea is to add a little delay and indicator to her teleport where she can be cc'ed/killed but still allow her to move so that it isn't a free kill. Idek if it would work and how it would affect tping to save someone though

Reins design enables annoying heroes like Mei and Junkrat Winston enables more fair heroes like Tracer and Genji Argument finished

How are doom and queen not 1 and 2? They gain HP resources by landing abilities that require mechanics. They're the ultimate peak and valley heroes. You can throw a match terribly or carry it on your back.

echo in A tier is diabolical

Never had a hard time playing with a ball. Thats a crazy statement. Im diamond/plat and the amount of balls i see that never come out of ball form is insane. If theres a ball on my team there is a 50% chance that guy is doing 3k dmg per 10

What scales did you use to judge and how important was each one? Fun to play? Fun to play against? Counterplay? Skill expression? Uniqueness? Interactivity?

Your talk about genji introducing people to fps let me realize how much I owe mercy to me now being avid in fps and aim training. Then you give me whiplash by later saying mercy dont count lol. Yeah hot take. Objectively, I think you just forgive genji due to his high skill expression. It saddens me that people dont realize the feminine appeal of mercy. More so the devs because aesthetically they havent created another character close to it. Im hoping the new flying character is better. That was a tangent. But the reason why you should have left out the appeal argument. Is because actually not just mercy or genji many other "one tricks" have certain appeals. In actuality they love the design and playstyle of the character so much. But not because they are easy. No they are actually so frustrated by their limit of skill expression. Its so sad that no one realizes the effort over the years one tricks have made to push beyond the limits of their characters skill ceiling. Forced them to be more creative than what they were initially designed to be. to make them viable in higher ranks instead of just starter characters. Basically taught others how to play the character just for it to be seen as cheese because its easy to learn once created. I say this with mercy but many others too. Mercies created superjumps and superjump rezs way beyond the design of the character because they need to push the skill expression. But then they get punished by the community and get hated on. So objectively even one tricks agree that on the design stand point due to *skill expression* that the hero is bad. They'd rather be similar to lucio. And give them something challenging to work on. Instead us mercy only have the option to micromanage our damage boosts by the second and micromanage our position. We micromanaged our GA and rez so hard the community hates it. Its exhausting we rather blizzard just gives us a gun and delete rez and damage boost. GA and mercy skins are the only thing that actually appeals to us.

As someone who literally has considered quitting Overwatch because of how much I hate mercy, I think she's a fantastic hero in theory. A very low skill introductory character with a clear niche is great, but the way she has been tuned is just absolutely beyond moronic.

I've always wanted this kind of list

Please do this again in a year

Zen is insanely easier in OW2 than early ow1 when he was actually a skill based character. - +75 hp - kick cc - no need to worry about offtank pressure -Access to broken support peel abilities like suzu, pull and immortality - Discord primarily just shoved on single tank and isn’t moved around much -No need to actually win duels with flankers when you have insane peel from second support - Much more space to work with in OW2 makes positioning much easier

There is no way I commented this in yesterday's video and he actually made it already. The most productive content creator in the Overwatch space.

Hear me out: To change Zen, give discord less damage boost and give it a healing suppression, as opposed to blocking, effect to account for that.

idk i enjoy using Pharah and not bothered about going against one. My main issue with using her....is by the time i get 2-3 quick picks with her, enemy team IMMEDIATELY hard swap most of their team just to counter me. I think out of the whole roster, she has the most counters against her at any given time. As much as i love using the character, its just too much when the whole enemy team swaps just to counter you as a Pharah.

Brig rally update was so stupid.

Honestly: Sojourn’s Rail doing 100 bodyshot, 150 headshot could still be fine, just drop the +30/+45 for the love of god, she does not need it. With mercy damage boost that would become 195 headshot, same as Ashe, while still allowing Nano or Widow combos for big skill required team shredding,

I disagree with the fact that Soldier 76 is bad design i think it was very intentional that they made him simple and this way. Its because he creates an easy entry point for people who come from fps and are not familiar with MOBA type shooters, which in my oppinion constitutes good design, because he has a clear purpose and he serves it well.

On the Wrecking Ball discussion, I def think that a big part of it is community perception/willingness to learn how to play with a Ball in the first place. I cannot tell you the amount of people I've spoken to in metal ranks who just straight up refuse to try to play with/around a Ball/Doom on their team. It's wild.

The fact that half the tanks are in the top 3 tiers and only two supports says a lot about the state of the game, because most people HATE tank and support is the most played role despite this.

Id argue that kiriko design got worse with the recent healing buffs, which clouds her aggro identity. But i also argue her design can be high tier if she moves more towards zenyatta's glass cannon design with more fluid cooldowns that trades heal volume for explosive offensive potential.

I feel like Lifeweaver is most definitely fixable. And right now, he’s the most fun he’s been so far. I agree that his damage is actually a bit too high, and I'd rather not have yet another support who can also deal a lot of damage like Bap, Moira, Zen, and Illari. The projectile speed buff did wonders for LW's thorn volley feeling good to use - great even, but the damage is a bit much. So just tone down the damage numbers a bit, and we're good there. Maybe go from 6 to 5.5 per thorn or something like that. Thorn Volley shouldn’t feel like it can compete with Tracer’s guns that also deal 6 per shot, y’know? One way to fix how heal-botty LW can sometimes feel is to reduce his ammo count even further with Healing Blossoms. Go from 16 to 14, or something like that. Get rid of the movement speed penalty when you hold the blossom for longer than a second though. Why is that even there? Though I will admit, with how they buffed the projectile speed of Thorn Volley, I feel like I’m not heal-botting as much nowadays, because LW can most definitely actually secure kills and still get value out of his Thorn Volley by holding angles and corners with it. Not to mention it’s great for breaking shields. So, I feel like having 14 Heal Blossoms is comfortable enough to work with. I think there needs to be more emphasis on his Petal Platform being used as a playmaking tool for himself or moreover teammates to use, rather than as a purely defensive reactionary ability. Because now it's more or less just a way for Lifeweaver to escape, which is fine, but there needs to be something else to it to give LW players the decision to make: "oh, should I save the petal platform for myself or to possibly save someone from a Zarya/Rein Ult, for instance. Or, should I leave my Petal Platform there for my teammate or even myself to take advantage of and use in advance of the team fight happening?" Other than giving Cassidy's High Noon and 76’s Visor high ground to work with, most other heroes can't really use Petal Platform that well. They just go up to it, look at it, go on it, and then proceed to soon jump off when they realize there's not much they can really do from that angle and high ground. Not to mention that they are still pretty vulnerable up there, staying in one spot for too long usually means someone will eventually snipe you out of there. Fortunately, I think Blizzard already gave us an idea on how to make Petal Platform more appealing for LW's teammates to use more often. In the Trials of Sanctuary mode, one of the upgrades you could get with LW made it so that Petal Platform gave any hero standing on it a boost in fire-rate. I think this is something they could add to Petal Platform proper and try out, while also giving LW more reasons than just purely defensive/reactionary ones to remember to use Petal Platform and make more active plays with it, along with giving his teammates incentive to get on it other than just reach high ground that they can’t normally reach quickly. In regards to Life Grip, I think it's fine as it is. It’s satisfying to save teammates from their bad plays and to save them from certain death, too. No change needed. Rejuvenating Dash, I feel like should be nerfed in regards to the amount of HP it heals (50 is a lot for such a short cooldown that also offers LW mobility, but 25 like before is too little, so some middle ground can definitely be found here), but not without taking a look at the support passive first. Because the support passive coupled with Rejuvenating Dash can make him pretty tanky, especially when he already has 225 HP, with 50 of it being shield HP. But I feel as though they gave him these things because they are satisfied with how his hitbox is like. So, ignoring the suggestion of making his hitbox smaller, they could look at Rejuvenating Dash, but only after they look at the support passive as a whole. With Tree of Life, I think it's fine for the most part; I just think it's kinda boring. I've heard people propose that it should cause a pulse that boops enemies out from its radius when it erupts from the ground and also when it emits a heal pulse with a lighter boop, and honestly I'm down with that.

Glad to see someone just shit on Moira. She is generally a gatekeep for me to get past Silver. I can move well on Lucio but 90% of the games I play has an enemy Moira and there is nothing I can do, I dont want to switch to a less fun hero because someone is playing the least skilled hero and can demolish me without trying

For Kiriko I do not like how she is able to use her teleport so freely, she basically never has to be in cover to use it even when dueling enemies far from her team. I think the animation should be slightly longer, enough to almost force her to suzu+teleport to have a guaranteed exit without dying. I also dislike the headshot multiplier and think that if it were removed the reload speed could in turn be decreased so you can reload between ofuda throws.

Hey Spilo big fan- about the Ana placement, I thought we weren’t talking about numbers? But the overall design and dynamics in a characters kit. Her range gives her positioning dynamic, nade offensive/defensive (even if the time anti’d on tanks is too much) and sleep dart similar. Are the problem you have with her fundamental to her design or are her numbers just too pushed?

I dont like widow too too much, but I've gotta say. Glass cannons are EPIC. I love tracer. I love that another strong hero has the below 200 hp weakness for some damn good strengths. Imo she could've kept her falloff and maybe go 150 health cause 175 is weird. But imo her head hitbox would wanna be a tiny bit smaller

How would you fix Illari Spilo? I agree that she gets less fun the more you play her and her lore is actually really good so I wish they would make her more engaging and add more choice.

I disagree with the mercy personally. I'm not a mercy player at all, she's like one of the like 6 heros I don't play. But it takes good character design to have a non shooting character in an fps game while having some of the most consistent pick rates in ow in general

You could fix Hanzo. If you swap his primary fire to be like Storm Arrow, but with less damage/attack speed and you replace Storm Arrow with a long-range sniper shot like his current primary fire.

blud in chat really compared sleep dart to hack 💀

Skip to all chapters to get the quintessential "UM!" experience

Hanzo take: He is fun for low skill level players. When I started playing this game, I almost became a hanzo main and got my first potg is on him. Even tho my brain was parallel with the game and my aim was trash, he was still fun to play without ruining the enemy team's experience. I to this day remember a game of nepal, where (in hindsight) I was throwing, but it was really fun, cuz in spawn I made a plan: When the game starts, go in main, wallclimb to high ground, and shoot the enemy from the off angle, while my team runs down main. Because of my aim, I have never died once in that submap, as i did not hit a single shot until the end (where I logged the enemy ashe solely by luck), but I felt really good after that game.

I think rein's biggest fault, if you can even call it a fault, is that hes so perfectly designed to the point all his faults come from other unhealthy interactions in the game and 5v5. In OW1, he had arguably the best tank synergies in th game and the rush playstyle back then felt fair for both sides where I personally feel it was the best meta for the averge overwatch player(Ik lots of you love dive but its at it's best at high elo, not your metal ranks. Removing that second tank and making him a solo tank drops his score cause hes so reliant on other tanks and the way tanks are, he sucks due to other tanks being poorly designed and too strong inherently with their more modern kits.

mauga shouldve been a melee character. keep everything in his kit but replace right click with a personal shield and give his primary fire a shark tooth axe.

I disagree about junkrat. I dont think his spammy nature is terrible design, i think lots of games have a character like this and its fine. But they issue is his largish hitbox and his lack of horozontal movement. This forces him into a playstyle where he cant actually play in a way that lets him takes risks, and instead encourages the player to sit back and spam nades down a choke. But i think he could work, if his fire rate was lowered and his movement was buffed.

I had an idea for Widowmaker just now. Part of my inspiration for it is from Valorant, but. What if, instead of her always having the sniper rifle... Her ult becomes the sniper mode, maybe with a bit of a faster charge rate if it's a timed ult. And if it's not timed, say like Venture, she gets a certain amount of shots. As for how she'd work outside of the ult, simple, make a kit around her SMG. Buff the damage a bit, rework venom mine into something else. I was thinking a venom grenade, but then it's kind of the same as Ash dynamite. Though maybe, like Mauga, you could give her a damage buff against poisoned targets. And for the grapple... Honestly, keep it. It's a good an inocuous movement tool that would serve her well. I also had an idea for Hanzo, not as much though. Maybe, what about... Decreasing his damage by a lot, say maybe a two-tap to the head. But the trade off is a big fire rate buff, though maybe not as much as storm arrow. Keep recon arrow, wall climb. Not sure what to do with storm arrow in this case, or the ult. But, these were just my thoughts, anyone's free to critique them! Personally I like my Widowmaker concept. It makes her more engaging and less isolated from fights and not just the, 'Oh I just got randomly one-shot cool' character. Turning the sniper into her ult also means she'd have a voice line, so you have a warning of, 'hey, she's in sniper mode. Hide.' Maybe you could even keep the walls with her sniper mode, but maybe just for her rather than team-wide? I'm not sure.

Finally someone breaks out of the recency biase of "nerf Ana" spam. The reason why Anti-nade feels bad right now is because it's the only remaining tool that can consistently punish a tank feeding. Tanks are just so used to be absolutely unkillable if remotely pocketed that they don't even try to pretend they know the fundamentals of the game. If you use cover effectively, track enemy cool-downs, have an escape plan to your pressure, time your engagement with your team, engage in the right dual rather, bait dangerous enemy cool-downs, ... not only will you never die to a nade but you will actually be much more helpful in the tank role. But since most tank nowadays think that to run alone past a choke in the middle of the enemy team trying to 1v4, without paying any attention to which heroes are on the enemy team and if they have cool-down without using cover or having any escape plan is what they are supposed to do, because they always get away with it when there isn't an Ana in the enemy team, people prefer complaining about the only thing teaching them not to feed than to actually get better at the game. TBH for Nade to be a more reasonable tool, they definitely need to nerf the global amount of healing in the game RN. It's normal for players that learned that even while feeding their supports can keep them alive, something like nade would feel unfair. This of course come with lowering the spam damage in the game so there is still a balance. There is definitely a way to have a still balanced and fun game without having 80HPS from the two supports.

I'm surprised about DVa, but once I hear your reasoning I'm not sure if I disagree or not. I would have expected you to put her higher. There's so much choice and decisions to make as DVa. That's what makes her so fun for me. And her style of tanking is unique, I know she's a dive tank, but she's noticeably different from Winston and Doomfist. Diving is only one aspect of her style of play. And the flow of cycling from high cooldowns to low cooldowns, and engaging and disengaging, is impactful on the choice and decision-making. Where do I go and when do I go are two decisions that have a high degree of freedom and choice, and room for optimisation. I know she's never really been a feature in pro play, apart from a few isolated niche situations. And I guess that ties into your argument of her having less of a place in OW2. Like it's significant that she was in 90% of pro metas in OW1 and like 2-3% in OW2. I'm not sure why this is, I'm not big brained enough. I'm not sure any other tank has more room for decision-making to impact their effectiveness (though this point is controversial and I'm not super sure about it). Except maybe Winston. We all know it's easy to have a feeding DVa and have a carrying Dva, and I don't think the difference between the two is mechanics. Apart from Winston, what other tanks are so unforgiving for decision-making? Tanks like Reinhardt, Ramattra, JQ, there's still skill expression in decision-making but they're also more forgiving.

With the brig ult rework, I think, that they should have just increased it's charge rate and called it a day.

Damn don’t tell the Mercy Mafia

I wanted to argue about Mercy, as a no aim player, but after a bit of thought I realized I can't really. Usually best playstyle is quite borring for mercy player (hiding behind a wall and blue beam) and annoying for enemies. Rez is too risky and too potentially powerful. Most fun part of her kit (movement) is discouraged. I wish her design was better

thank you Spilo for filling me up with your wisdom

Well, now it's a dva meta and it is extremely cancer so hold that

I honestly think nano should no longer heal and give speed again like it used to calling it broken because of "beyblade meta" is clearly very dumb, definitely feels like something that only worked because the game was new

Ramattra is my favorite hero and it's sad to see him really bad. The hero is very limited. I totally agree with you. He has good potential though. They should either lean on Rein archetype or Sigma archetype with him. If we are going for Rein archetype, block needs changes and hero needs mobility desperately. Something like overrun, charge or limited jump whatever and then block needs have counterplay against cc and possibly teamplay benefits. If we are gonna lean on Sigma archetype then omnic form needs major buffs, block and movement speed buff needs to go, give him little more armor in nemesis transition. Keep the block only for his ultimate. So he will have a competitive poke war and then when things get spicy, instead of Sigma's rock and suck, he gets armor bonus and punch people. For this, his staff damage needs a nerf but his accuracy needs a megabuff, ammo capacity also needs buff and then he needs more barrier.

I think Moira is an okay character design. She's the classic "lifesteal" archetype. She's also the only support that doesn't have any utility - she's just straight up a high dmg + healing character. That makes her unique which is good for the game. She also has probably the highest survivability out of any support, which makes her a great pick for someone who's getting dived and can't seem to stay alive. All in all, I think she rounds out the support category very well and she would be missed if she was removed

1:22 of all the characters you chose to name, you picked the one character i have refused to play. only you have the power to reject the cancer

The bottom two rows are also the problematic "counterswaps". These are the heroes that people swap to after one fight. Devs should not cater to playstyles that discourage proactive gameplay with the press of a button. The skill required to outplay the abilities of the bottom two rows is FAR greater than the skill required to play those heroes. I was playing some matches with my 5 stack last night. We raged and complained when losing matches against Hog, Sombra, Junkrat, Lifeweaver, Moira (and other bottom tier heroes). They counterswapped after a single fight. We didn't feel like swapping our comp. It's QP, we want to enjoy our heroes. Guess what happened when we lost our match against a Monkey Lucio Genji comp. "Wow they were really good" "GGWP" "well done Monkey". Heroes in the top 3 rows don't feel cheap or corny. You respect their gameplay and can learn from your mistakes. Some of the bottom rows are salvageable. I know Blizzard will never delete heroes, but honestly how much healthier would the game be if Roadhog, Moira, and other major offenders weren't Overwatch? How much better would the game be for our mental health? And how much more would we be encouraged to improve our fundamentals?

Hey man, I mainly consume your content by listening - only occasionally gotchu glancing at the screen. Do you you mind saying the name of the hero that you're talking about? You do sometimes but I have to do a lot of guessing.

Illaris gun is one of the coolest weapons overwatch has ever seen. It is powered by a STAR and wielded by a walking fusion reactor. It is one of the most badass rifles ever, it even doubles as a sword. Yet it is the worst sounding weapon in the game, it’s just so disappointing.

Maybe someone here can explain this to me because I've always been confused by it: The winrates on Overbuff. Brig has a 53% win rate in comp and a 1.79% pick rate. Someone like Ana has a high pick rate at 8% but 48% win rate. A lot of people would argue Ana is the better character to climb with, but brig has the higher win rate. Is Brig being undersold and actually pretty good? Or does Ana just have a lower win rate because more people play her so it's easier for the numbers to inflate?

Hi Spilo! I dig the content and the vod reviews you upload on the second channel are a godsend. If I can be honest though, I think this take here is absurd: 14:52. I've been agreeing with the vast majority of your takes on this game, namely your focus on dynamics, so why place reinhardt in A tier of all things? All of my experience when it comes down to Rein is that he slows down the game massively by being able to to always shield, his all-in or all-out style is the exact opposite of dynamic as well. All of his abilities are mutually exclusive, as in if you're fire-striking you're not charging, if you're shielding you're not swinging etc. I also find that he needs constant healing and support, meaning that he is not only non-dynamic, but requires everyone around him to become non-dynamic as well, he vacuums up fun with the best of them. Keep in mind that I was a rein main in OW1, I have all the reason in the world to be nostalgic about this hero but it just doesn't hold up when actually looking at his design. Surprisingly enough, this would not be my hot take. Genji being S tier is seemingly a unanimous opinion, but his reliance on his ult for value is so extreme versus his base kit that you sorta just watch him blade into your team helplessly very often. Again, all in or all out. He's definitely a C or even a D tier pick for me. The "highs" you get from Genji are mostly artificially given to you by the game because of the difference in power that I mentioned before. Also, you mentioned power block being a badly designed ability, so why is deflect any different? They are both designed in a way that punishes you for interacting with them, something that doesn't strike me as dynamic.

Been watching your content more recently. It's really good 🙏🏽

One thing about Sigma that I noticed recently with the Quick Play: Hacked is that he is one of the slowest characters in the game. Normally characters with no mobility like Zarya or Ana either excel in the back line or are aggressors and push into the enemy team. Sigma doesn’t do either as well as other heroes. His projectiles don’t have enough range and speed to poke long range. He can use his shield or grasp to push, but these abilities are easily counter-able and not being able to cancel grasp or have an escape tool to create a window of relief makes playing Sigma a little frustrating when playing against other heroes like Ramattra. The game is going to speed up, and I think Sigma would be glossed over for the more mobile tanks.

If Rein wasn’t allowed in the Holy Grail category because of Winston, I don’t think Genji should be there either because of Tracer. All of them are of great character design, but since Tracer edges out over Genji, he should get the same downgrade treatment

As a tracer sigma echo ashe main and a ball-in-training, w list

Glad to see Echo and Queen so high, they're the only reason I still play as much of this game as I do.

Tbh i see 2 options for kiri. She becomes a dps or stays a support. Dps. Swift step is free movement, 10 sec cooldown. Moves through 1 wall max. Closest wall only. 25 m distance. Suzu self cleanse (use while stunned) keep momentum up basically. Offuda short range snare/trap. Kunai 60 w 2.5x Higher velocity. Damage falloff starting at 25 meters *Still 2 tap widow max range, always* Support. Swift step heals kiriko+ 1 sec cooldown Suzu does 0 healing + 10 for cleanse Give kiriko offence utility outside of kunais. Aka #KeepKikosBoop and buff it. Rest of suzu is in a good state but personally .75 invulnerability not .65 ^ reduce self suzus and try use earlier in fight to help engage. Can still cleanse and all. Risk rewards. Same logic as anna nade. *Bell = soft cc* Offuda, blue papers are more aoe a s slower(8mps) Kunai, slow the rate of fire (gives so much ult charge rn + body shot dmg) Tbh i like the 3x multiplier. I know unpopular but t2k with new kunai is quicker. I dont like that. Dmg fall off still but faster velocity. To me this just seems right. Reward precision and less spam. Smaller hit box too. (Still good cqb*possible buff* worse at range) And either way, please make wall climb feel more *consistent* . One way is to remove the bunny hope that the game tries *if* wall climbed/ on bunny hope refresh wall climb. (If you ever wall climbed and it disconnected, then u hit the ground and couldn't climb for a second *above* has happened and its infuriating as you effectively got to climb 3 times.

I maintain that my favorite Brig state (as a Brig player) was season 1. Repair packs didn't need to be buffed, Rally didn't need the rework it got, and it was before they started messing with stuff like her whipshot damage.

I’ve never enjoyed listening to 2 hours of ow talk like this. Nice work good insights.

i just want them to swap valkyrie and resurrect. that would solve a lot of grievances on both sides of the mercy argument. a fun impactful active ability that you get to use every fight and the enemy team doesn’t have to deal with rez often. damage boost can be tuned down outside of valk but be really potent in valk then you compensate her somewhere else.

Could not agree more with what you’ve said about sojourn, been saying the same thing for ages

I think I can guess what kind of meta he likes 😅

somewhere in the first half of the video i thought that this man was just very biased towards dive heroes, so is just every hero without massive mobility options bad by design? Then he got to rein and sigma and i was like wait this man is cooking what i don't agree is with this man in the chat saying "ram bastion mauga are the same hero", bastion and mauga i can see but ram? How so? his omnic form does only a fraction of the damage these two do point blank and is best for mid-long range poking or tracking someone in the vortex, his nemesis form is the "up close and personal" option that does, yet again, only a third of bastions dps in sentry mode. Besides, it is good for chasing people down since you get a slight movespeed boost, while bastion can either move slow or slower (aka cannot chase anyone). Ram's ultimate is a little bland and uncharacteristic for tank ults since it just pumps out damage if you're close to someone instead of providing area denial or cc for example, and that is something that's not very good by design. Still, i would place him a tier or two higher.

How about this rammatra rework: you can go between staff and nemesis form at ANY time, staff form doesn’t reload when swapping back and forth, nemesis form has less speed by a bit, no longer grants armor, just converts some of your current health to armor. Shield has a shorter cooldown, block has less damage resist but has a little less movement speed penalty. This should make the character much more fluid, let you go between forms whenever you want, so if you need poke you can do that, if you need brawl you can do that. And it makes it so leaving nemesis form early doesn’t feel so bad. His ult could maybe also have a different effect in staff form, like much more range but less damage , and you can go between them. This way it truly feels more like a form, as in a major trade off between each one, and not just “now I can do stuff” in nemesis form. His primary grin could also have a faster rate of fire or faster projectile speed

When I first saw ow1, I knew I wanted to play 2 heroes: Rein and Mercy, I wouldn't have bought the game for either one alone, it had to be both and I think that has to count for something, but I respect your opinion; Mercy as a character is very divisive, and always some type of broken, be it broken bad or broken good yeah...

Ngl i don't understand hero balance and hero design but id love to see Hanzo turn into a short range bowman. Having a strong close to mid range brawl design but struggle long range would make me happy. Also maybe it's just because I've been playing allot of MHW but stealing that bow dash mechanic would be cool too

Just delete Hanzo. I think that would be the best move for the OW2 dev team right now

I have always been saying Ana is a poorly designed character. She is just beloved and fun because she has the agency in her hands, but that doesn't mean good design. Punishable at times, sure, but there are still tons of problems. Here's my rant: -Strongest CC should not exist on a support and that's why we took all cc EXCEPT for this one off because holy moly would everyone lose their minds if they did. -Strongest CC cooldown that is easy to land on big hitboxes flows into strongest utility cooldown that is also easy to hit on big targets. Both cooldowns alone can easily get a tank killed, and are extremely easy to spam at them. Both stop the tank from playing the game for a long time. On a character picked the most, it's no wonder the one tank in each game feels awful and they are whining. Land one easy shot on a big target, free next one (sleep then nade) then "gg tank fed" toxicity runs rampant on the enemy team. They are the spikiest abilities in the game in terms of value aside from suzu, so of course they go into the tank always. -Why should a character have 2 cooldowns that mark you for death? They just need one to counter all of the same characters. Give her something else that's interesting and put one of the utilities elsewhere (probably the super stun) -Every tank from here on out without a frequent uptime ability mitigation tool will be pretty hard countered by ana. Not only will you have your tanks that counter you, but also this support will do a lot to much of the tank roster for forever more because of the inclusion of nade with sleep -Ana isn't as skill shot focused as people like to admit. Headshots take a lot of skill and she doesn't have them. She still requires a lot of skill so there is healthiness about her as well. Her poor health for the game is centralized in the combination of her two abilities. People act like landing a sleep dart is like landing a widow head shot up close. It takes some skill, but this isn't a large factor when the hitbox of the bullied role completely mitigates this. She is widow for tanks, except when you jump on her, the skill shot is way way easier for her to land than it is with widow. Approaching ana is like approaching a slightly more fair hanzo. Super unhealthy. -The diversity of use cases for nade is not reflected in any other ability in the game. What else does decent damage, decent instant healing, and 2 utility abilities (purple and yellow) that are both very good, one of which can result in hundreds of damage worth of utility (stopping healing) and is game defining because of it. It's great that she can do so much with an ability, but not when other characters can't. Every other ability is basically 1 or 2 other things and all of them are probably less impactful when used right. She'll always feel good if you land your abilities (sometimes you can just throw them at the ground and you'll never miss), and she can't be countered off of her hero like tanks are by her or their tank counterparts, let alone the combination of the two. -this is a small one, but sleeping people turns into a lot of teabagging and similar bad behavior towards a sleeping player who can't play the game -stunning for 5 or even 3 seconds is pretty crazy. Nothing is as "turn your game off for a long time" as this, especially since it's usually coupled with a death. Most games don't include stuns this long for obvious reasons. -not enough compensation was ever given for the massive buff that the support passive was for ana. Might as well throw your nade off cooldown into the enemy tank, because you have self healing and the best disable in the game. Needing a 120 health life swing that you can't miss on the ground was already debatably overkill for the design (but it's nice to present the choices and define playstyles with them). Ana is super unhealthy for the tank experience, people just like skill expression which is great, but it's still a problem.

Not sure what you're discussing here, but it is clearly not hero design - but rather current meta, hero balance and community love towards characters. "No one wants to play with/against Pharah. No one likes playing Pharah" = bad design. "Genji is fun to play and his appeal got many people into the game" = good design. In my opinion, hero design means abilities and guns - and counterplay to them. What's the counterplay to Genji deflecting a Widowmaker's shot to my head? Or him dashing into me, doing 180 to the head, dashing out after? Clearly some issues there because he has same exact issues Widowmaker does. What's the counterplay to a good Tracer? - there is none, because she can undo any mistake at demand - is this really good design, to be at mercy of a Tracer making a mistake? Imagine if everyone had an aimbot, perfect accuracy and played perfectly - what would happen, what characters would be broken? That's how you identify bad design heroes - heroes with no counterplay. But hey guys, clearly Pharah (the one true projectile hero in the game) that gets abused by hitscan and the fact that other heroes above do better job than she does, is bad design. Totally, dude.

Hey Spilo Big fan again- would love one of these but for maps!

Mercy straight up doesn't interact with a lot of the game. My support friend called it "she plays her own minigame". I get that they want to appeal to players that normally won't play a FPS. But that's just wildly bad design. She gets to dip out of something like aiming. And by doing so creates one of the most aim intensive situations in the game. Resulting in a lot of frustration when that same kind of player can't perform when playing against her. And now they can't do anything about it since so many people lean on that exact flawed design. Just really short sighted.

to be fair, nateson has said ana is the worst designed hero in the game since her release im pretty sure

I got some disagreements, but generally hard to disagree with 90% of the picks

To me tanks and supports have complained about Ana for ages in OW1. It was generally muted. Ana is just one CC spammer in a sea of CC in OW1. OW2 shes the only strong CC remaining outside of tank because she wasn't adjusted into OW2. She is the only one left to get attention. The introduction of more non-shield tanks really shows how detrimental it is to play such tanks as hog/dva in OW1 when Ana exists. How Anas existence really solidifies the desire for shielding in OW1.

I hate ashe so much, constant far range pressure with counters to every threat against her (boop away dives, AOE corners) sure you can focus cooldown cycles but you have to waste one of your own to bait hers then take advantage on retake. a theoretically smart rockpaperscissors but awful to play against if your team isn't coordinated

Ok I just started watching, but if you dare to place Hanzo in the upper half I’m not gonna take you seriously

I don't think the Hanzo take is controversial, I VERY much agree. If you take away his one-shot or his long range viability he becomes a tank buster, if you take away his close range viability then he's more vulnerable than Zen but without the super long range viability Widow has.