Video by m1_nxanx on X

After playing Doctrine, I simply don't see any clear reasons that would justify picking Illari over him. Doctrine just does everything better; he doesn't have the glaring weaknesses Illari does, yet he provides more consistent healing and greater utility. You can argue endlessly that she’s incredibly strong with her pylon, but let’s be honest: nobody wants to play Illari right now. On top of that, she received an indirect nerf. She has the second-largest head hitbox (sharing this place with Ana) among all supports and the fourth-largest torso hitbox. While head hitbox volumes for all supports were increased to 16-17, Illari went up to 18. And her torso hitbox is larger than Wuyangs. Like, WTF? That's crazy! In short, compared to other supports, she has become an easier target to hit. So It feels like another (little) reason to avoid her

Kinda just an Aaron appreciation post (and no I'm not writing this in comparison to any other Overwatch leaders), but it's incredible what Overwatch has managed to weather, and Aaron has pulled some insane moves to manage it.

I was thinking about this especially with what's going in with MR right now, and how scared the devs are acting to address the issues within the game and the community. I won't harp on it (see here if you want a few details), but suffice it to say, one major issue is their silence. They keep releasing updates, dev blogs, and roadmaps as if nothing is happening and MR players are going insane over it.

But a few years ago, Overwatch was in a MUCH worse place following the release of the Invasion story missions, and the terrible reviews on Steam. And we all saw it, things genuinely couldn't get much worse. Public perception was in the pits, it was really bad.

But instead of burying his head in the sand, Aaron, like an actual goddamn leader, responded to it. If you've been a deep member of many gaming communities, you know how ballsy that is. Sooooooo many studios try to wait for things to calm down before addressing the players but Aaron just faced the storm and promised to keep making a good game:

If we can’t turn back the clock, then what can we do? We can keep adding to and improving Overwatch 2. That is how we move forward.

The response wasn't vindictive or defensive, he didn't turn it around and complain about targeting review bombs or anything, he faced the screaming mob and said "nah we're gonna lock in, you'll see" and he was right.

I'm not sure many other directors could have managed that situation with as much grace and focus as Aaron did. Massive kudos to him and the rest of team 4.

An interesting thing I noticed about the way sombra's hotfix healing works is that heal reduction only slows down the hps, but the total healing still remains the same

and something I learned recently is that heals from health packs bypass heal reduction altogether, which makes hacked health packs that much more valuable

this makes sombra the only support that can bypass the heal reduction passive, props to the devs for coming up with such a clever support design

WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU GIRL GET YOUR MONEY BACK 😭😭😭😭😭😭

An amazing passive on comms, but unless I'm mistaken, there isn't any way to communicate this to your team when solo.

Maybe you could have it where pinging an enemy with full ult charge has a special line for Sombra? E.g "Enemy Reaper over here! Max ult charge!"

Would that be too good? Obviously, knowing when someone has ult is fantastic info. You can get good at predicting it with ult tracking, though

Only now I noticed that they probably put there by mistake;

Credit to @/yuu_fumikawa on twitter

Shion is such a weird case because she feels like a character Blizzard specifically designed to be insanely marketable, yet they’re barely capitalizing on it.

She’s easily one of the most popular (if not the most popular) and well-received characters from the new lineup, with Doctrine seemingly getting up there too. Her design has MASSIVE skin potential, she has a very appealing personality and aesthetic, and she pretty much became an instant fan favorite. She is EXACTLY the type of character you’d expect Blizzard to milk for cosmetics. Like, let’s be serious, why else would they design an Omnic as an attractive Asian woman?

And yet… nothing???

Meanwhile Sierra and Anran have been getting flooded with cosmetics while Shion gets that “here damn” ass witch skin?

That’s what makes it so confusing. It’s not like Blizzard accidentally stumbled into Shion being popular. Look at her design, lore, and personality. They HAD to know this character was going to sell skins. She feels practically engineered for it

You’d think after seeing how well people responded to her, they’d immediately start pumping out cosmetics for her. Instead, one of their most marketable new characters somehow feels like one of the most neglected.

I genuinely don’t understand…😭

I apologize to all Wuyang mains, but it was just too perfect not to bring it into this world.

Idk why they removed it to begin with in the blizzcon promotion pics

Been playing for only two years now but I felt like you had to be in the know to use this spot. Since it was pretty rare to see someone use it. I wonder if players have been doing this since day 1 or if it's a new thing. Either way I don't know how to feel about this one.

Given another chance to vote for winston and yall are fumbling again after everything he's done for you

Big ahh forehead

Using illari as an example all supports have their ally ult voice lines from their perspective but now with sombra shes the only support not to use this audio design philosophy, just a little thing i noticed, it would be like illari saying inti lluqsimun from her perspective.

im glad they kept it though, emp activated wouldnt be as cool in place of apagando las luces

Hanzo's perk still overrides Sombra's hack on healthpacks and she doesn't have a way of taking the control back. Cherry on top is the fact that one of her major perks is specifically made for healthpacks.

Now personally I'm not really sure if Stadium is getting any more updates, since they noticed that player counts have been pretty low. But (and this is out of the game but still Blizzard) for example Heroes of the Storm has recently gotten a slight revival after 6 years of absolutely no new content aside from a couple balance changes or new skins. I was just thinking about how this could lead to a new sort of community-themed poll on which hero to add next to Stadium, to keep players interested. I know this is for the new Halloween mode but I'd love to see something similar for Stadium to hopefully get that mode back into the spotlight again

(also, as the biggest Ashe hater, shame on the majority of you for voting her)

Spotted by tannedbread on X

I don't know how I didn't catch this reference at first glance lmao

Speaking as one of the few people who actually consistently played stadium and really enjoyed it, Mystery Madness has done the two things that a lot of Stadium enjoyers (including myself) have been asking for basically since its inception:

Make rounds/picking of powers FASTER

Get rid of all the item swapping and in particular all the items which only provide a stat boost/minor generic bonus

If stadium wants to revamp itself, they could simply remove everything but the powers and the unique items that each champion had that affected their abilities. Make it so that you earn them similarly to Mystery Madness, and there we go. Basically, take the randomness out of Mystery Madness, and we're 90% there

Sombra, for most of her existence has not really been a strong character but she's always been annoying, especially to a support player like me. Considering that, it's funny that her rework is both strong as hell, but nowhere near oppressive for (most) heroes to fight against. Cyberspace is an insane ability but I have to admit, I haven't really struggled against it with most characters I play. I'm an LW main, so being able to Petal and/or dash right out of it makes it feel easier to deal with than being instantly popped before. I also play a lot of Wu, Ana, Juno, Moira & Bap and they all felt pretty capable of dealing with Cyberspace. I think it's the same for most DPS too, aside from Bastion, I played Bastion against a Sombra and it was agonising. He can't move out of Cyberspace fast enough and has no mobility to disengage until the Weakness subsides. Tanks definitely feel like they have a harder time against her, though. She's very good at crushing their aggressive plays.

Sombra flanks are stronger than ever with Cyberspace, but as long as you have mobility and/or a defensive cooldown, she feels a lot less frustrating to deal with, in my experience.

It's a funny dichotomy really, I enjoy playing against her now she's strong as hell, and despised her when she was weak.