Beta Impressions

I'd like to share here the results of some discussions with friends about the state of the game.

Overall the game is in a great place, but there are definitely a few things I would like to see improved. Keep in mind these are merely the opinions of myself and a few friends, even if I seem to be stating them as facts.

Mei could use an ultimate buff. Currently it feels like a strictly weaker version of Zarya or Reinhardt's. I would love to see just a 10% faster freeze time for the ultimate.

Genji needs a very small accuracy nerf at range. It doesn't feel right to be able to click on Widow's head from halfway across the map and 1-shot her. At the same time he should still reward good aim, so my suggestion is to give his left click a small spread at long range - say Genji's on the bridge at Gibraltar and aims for the upper spawn door. At that range the spread should be about the size of Widow's model.

Torbjorn's turrets still feel too strong, and I have no idea how to fully balance a character like this - too strong in casual games, too weak against any sort of coordination - but I think a good first step would be decreasing the range on the turrets. This would make them easier to spam down and require more thought from the Torb player about turret placement. His ultimate is much better now, though.

Hanzo is played in 90% of games. I'm honestly not sure why, whether it's the archery + dragons thing or how self sufficient he is, but there are a startling amount of people who snap-pick Hanzo, offense or defense, regardless of team comp, and refuse to do any switching. I don't know how to change this, because he's already not that strong (certainly good in capable hands, but not on the power level of some other heroes) but something must be done.

McCree's primary fire feels off to me. I'm sure part of it is that my twitch-aim isn't spectacular, but it feels especially bad that when you land the shots at mid range they do so little damage. If you don't want to make him a sniper, fine, but change the curve on the damage falloff so he has a little better chance of finishing off that Pharah. Right now it feels 76 is almost strictly better, outside of McCree's flashbang.

Soldier 76, speaking of the devil, feels almost too good right now. I love that they gave him the burst-fire accuracy buff, but now he excels at so many roles. But then, that might just be in comparison to McCree.

The healers are in an amazing place right now, and I wouldn't change a thing about their balance (excepting the recent reversion to the older version of Guardian Angel so that it can no longer target dead allies. I thought that was a very elegant way to help manage the nerf to her ult, and I would very much like to see that back in.)

However, I would like to see more encouragement to play support (and tank) from the game. Whether it's more medals for damage healed and blocked, or better tuning of the fire and potg mechanics, or gaining more progression points for filling a needed role, it needs to feel more rewarding outside of gameplay itself to play support.

I think that's all I got for now, thanks for the read, and let me know what you think!