I just saw that they took away the concussive blast damage and that was dumb to me... but then I realized I climbed from bronze to gold with Pharah lol I also got 62 eliminations in one game, which is my record

I would change widow in a way where she can only one shot in her ultimate, maybe increase the duration a bit, make it so out of ult her headshot does like 200 or sum, cause im still gonna take cover when im 50hp so she is still denying space that way. Replace mine to be something actually cool and useful since i would give her two grapple charges (but make those interruptable?) since she would be way less deadly with these changes. I think thats worth trying tbh

Lifeweaver is azzzzz!!!!

I thought AVRL had the worsdt takes... but I'm wrong, Custa beat him to it. AVRL at least gives logical explanations to his crazy/bad takes.

My guy Hawk was right from the start see now where are we now the most dog water patch ever 6v6 comeback to us

Jake is so annoying fr

6v6 was better

It takes like 10hrs of game to go from unranked to gm so what's the problem. In less than 40-50 games you reach your actual rank

Lifeweaver main, I understand where Custa was coming from, I do enjoy the healbot aspect of lifeweaver for sure but at the same time, having a big weakness in damage can get really frustrating. If i did jave more ability to fight rather than flee it would be a lot more exciting to me. The increased damage we got in the creator custom mode felt amazing. I can easily see if being possible to take a look at each characters weakness and round them out without erasing the heros identity.

Custa makes lots of noises but i often find it hard to hear him actually say anything

Whay does kirko need more than 1 identity? Shes the only character that can teleport through walls AND has suzu that is the only ability that can cleanse the whole team while simultaneously making them invincible and heals for alot AND does a shit ton of dps. When people talk about getting rid of tping through walls would "destroy her identity" which one? Shes got multipersonality disorder because shes got so many fucking identities

The real question I want answers to is if a squishy or tank is focused by both enemy dps and getting healed by both supports at the same time, should they live or die? Is that a case by case of characters, or should the role strength determine the which direction the balance/game design is heading

The whole segment where everyone was lowkey shook about what AVRL was suggesting for homogenizing the cast of heroes (around the 50:00 mark), the only thing I could think of was Spilo going, "Everyone is having an extreme knee-jerk reaction to what he's saying and thinking something absolutely hyperbolic".

Supports are the worst thing that happend to this game. The worst communities and the most casual pussies in the game that have turned the game into a shit storm to play against. The devs have made playing against supports one of the worst feelings in the game.

They added moira headshot damage why not make mercy heal increase if she aims at the head of her pocket , or damage boost increase / adding a quicker reload instead of to much damage increase

SVB is talking about catharsis and Awkward is talking about sublimation. Both are valid ways of managing emotions

Coming back to this video after the season 11 patch notes and listening to the 5v5 arguments is so frustrating. "Tanks can be balanced for 5v5", "If you didn't pick synergistic tanks in OW1 you lose, it's unfun". "Tanks can be balanced for 5v5". No, they can't. It's been almost two years, tank is still the most underplayed, unfun, and most stressful role in the game and it's not even close. No matter how many buffs they've stacked on tank, be it knockback resistance, headshot resistance, more health, more whatever, it doesn't matter. No amount of buffs stacked on a single role will ever fix the core issues of it. For example, if you were running Hog Winston into Rein Zarya, and the Winston was getting too much value, the Rein might swap to Hog to counter. Sure the Winston might get pressured more, but the loss of frontline presence meant his Hog would have more space and be able to walk in and get more value. THE GAME HAD DEPTH. Now in OW2, it would be like instead of playing Hog Winston into Hog Zarya, it's more like playing Hog Winston into Hog D.Va. Because now in OW2, on tank you effectively get countered twice as hard. Since so much power has been shifted into a single role, you're forced to play 'Counterwatch' at EVERY level of play, no matter what. I played tank with my friends for four hours today, you wanna know how many games the enemy tank counter-picked? Every. Single. One. The tank problem in 5v5 is not a balance issue, it's baked right into the game design. Oh you thought an un-synergistic tank duo in OW1 was bad? In OW2, if you have a Winston and the enemy team has a Mauga, it feels exactly like you have Junkrat Sym against a Pharah-Mercy. Un-synergistic tanks duos were not a problem for the average level of play. I used to play all kinds of bad duos with my friends, and STILL had fun: Orisa Rein, Hog Ball, Winston Sig, Hog Sig, Orisa Winston. Even if we got rolled, at least we got rolled TOGETHER, and could still try to work together to win. Now, tank just feels empty and lonely, no one works with you and no one tries to help you. Best you can hope for is some heals or a nano so you can soak up more damage and more cooldowns for five more seconds, it's BORING. I don't even feel like I'm working with my team on tank anymore, they've turned the role into more of a meat-shield than it ever was in 6v6. Also, I just don't understand the whole "tank synergies are oppressive" argument. The same argument can apply to literally every other role. Fuck I have Hog Ball and the enemy has Orisa Sig, we can't win! Tank synergy is oppressive! Alright, OW2 everyone let's remove a tank and move to 5v5. Fuck I have Mercy Brig and the enemy has Lucio Kiri, we can't win! Support synergy is oppressive! Alright, OW3 everyone let's remove a support and move to 4v4. Fuck I have Widow Reaper and the enemy has Genji Tracer, we can't win! DPS synergy is oppressive! Alright, OW4 everyone let's remove a DPS and move to 3v3. Fuck I have Sig Sym Mercy and the enemy has Winston Tracer Kiri, we can't win! Team synergy is oppressive! Alright, OW5 everyone let's remove all roles and just make the game Widow headshot only free for all. To touch on playstyles a bit, they're basically non-existent, every tank is just dive or brawl. There's no peel-focused D.Va, tank-enabling Zarya, flanking Hog, or disrupting Ball. If you enjoyed those playstyles as a tank in OW1, people arguing in favour of 5v5 basically just say to you: "Fuck you, go sit on the frontline and take damage for me". All the tanks have been so watered down and homogenized that you could cut out half the roster and the game would basically feel the same. Orisa, Ram, Queen, Rein, Sig, Zarya, Hog, Mauga: Low mobility brawlers. D.Va, Winston, Doom, Ball: High mobility dive heroes. Congratulations, we now have two types of tank to choose from, with a choice of slightly different flavours. 6v6 was like chess, and we traded it for rock paper scissors. For background I started playing Overwatch a lot around 2020, one of the worst spots the game has had in its history. I was a high diamond Winston main/one trick who occasionally played Rein or Sigma. You'd think I had a horrible time playing main tank, and yeah sure sometimes it sucked, but it pales in comparison to the absolute joke of a state the role is in currently. Since Overwatch 2 came out I grinded to masters, then GM, then hit T500 playing only Winston, now I don't even want to play tank anymore, it's lonely and miserable. So thanks Blizzard for ruining my favourite role in my favourite FPS game, but hey, with the way they've treated the tank role, they clearly don't give a shit or are desperately trying to slap band-aid fix after band-aid fix over an unfixable problem. Anyway, rant over.

Kiri shouldnt be able to tp thru walls or out of spawn. Suzu if its gonna heal it shouldn’t give invulnerability (meaning they can be booped/moved without taking dmg) if you wanted to change the imor then it can be changed to a speed boost onto a player to get the away from danger or to support them on an engagement

I like how poorly this aged. It is WILD how little AVRL and Jake understand this game.

we do have things like petal platform in the game, the elevators in hollywood work the exact same way as petal, you step on it it goes up

hot take: OW2 heroes dont have an identity, they feel like the OW team threw a darts at a wall to see what character model will get what gun and what abilities and what ultimate OW1 heroes seemed to have cohesion to their kits and the kits were a representation of the character so making changes to OW2 heroes wont affect their identity because they dont have one

Space ranger might not even have speed. They might have a turret or a Rez. They said that only one other support hero has the same utility. Illari and Mercy match that respectively.

The birth of 6v6 Samito

Just go 4v4

This comment section is about to cook itself in irony. I agree Em and KarQ are fantastic guests. I've advocated for them every since I've been a patron. But to write off a particular guest such as Custa if they have zero value is wild. It's ironic bc you want to treat guests you don't like the way you felt they behaved on the show by not letting them speak. I would like to advocate SVB with forcing guests into a vote instead, or maybe a community poll during the stream. Conversation is necessary, but in the end a solution isn't. This podcast is great bc it invokes ideas not solutions. Albeit I do believe solutions implemented in OW2 have come from this podcast, but its wasnt the intent. So to skip silly debates like homogeny vs identity or 5v5 vs 6v6 just do a vote and keep it short.

KarQ looked like he checked out during the Mercy portion. I would have loved to hear more of his opinion on the podcast. He's addressed what he feels somewhat on his own channel.

40:00 TL;DR AVRL wants Overwatch to become less and less about individual heroes and abilities, and he wants them all to basically do the same things like in COD or CSGO where everyone is the same. What an awful awful take. The thing that made OW so great and unique was the concept of having different heroes do different things that were able to work together to overcome any shortcomings any other heroes had. You only have to go so far as to watch the cinematics, Mei's cryofreeze bomb was used to blow up the robot but they needed someone to get it there, Mei can't throw it or get it up to the robot by herself, Winton (a different character with different abilities and different backstory and different physical abilities) threw the bomb up to tracer (a different character with different abilities and different backstory and different physical abilities) who caught the bomb but was about to get caught by the robot when genji (a different character with different abilities and different backstory and different physical abilities) sliced through the hand with his blade (which is used in his abilities and no other hero has a sword) enabling tracer to get to where the bomb needs to be, recall (another unique ability enabling her to recall her position back in time) safely out of range of the bomb. Even the Overwatch concept disagrees with you AVRL, if every hero could do the same thing, then what's the point of Overwatch and giving them all different abilities? In AVRL's world the same cinematic would be, hero 1 jumps has a bomb, jumps up, slices through the hand, places the bomb, and recalls back to safely all by themself without any help.

Oh wow! Thanks KarQ for finally saying that balance doesn’t always mean fun.

Waiting to see Costa cry online saying Samito sent his fans to talk shot about him in the comments.

We give a lot of flak to the balance team, and for good reason sometimes, but we need to turn some energy to the design team. You can’t always balance bad design.

The ‘meh’ meta-balanced but not really that interesting or fun. And here we are

Enjoyed a lot this set of guests!!

Avrl is spot on, give more characters OPTIONS, it's about giving players skill expression and not having OvW2 be a counter pick fest.. how is this so hard to understand?

the utility that can save a player, but it isn’t healing & isn’t immortality, & isn’t CC. what utility is even left? lol. it’s like KarQ said, there needs to be some resistance even if it doesn’t “feel good”

Sounds like AVRL fundamentally dislikes the game - why not play something else

I mean this is a great support debate in which the support players can’t even recognize how adding aoe healing and immortality’s and mobility to every new support is problematic… A support debate in which the support players don’t even recognize how the original 5 supports in Overwatch 1 all had specific weaknesses and strengths that made them different and special… A great support debate in which support players don’t realize how giving every single support in the game high mobility high damage output, and AoE healing caused most issues in ow1 and now ow2… If this doesn’t speak volumes about support players, and the audience blizzard has been catering towards for the past few years then idk what will

Sadly people dont understand that heroes like lucio exist and he is not a heal bot and speed is an important part of his kit

1:56:06 I always thought that giving bap a defense matrix in the same circumference as immortality but leaving a small opening by the head and feet would be a good replacement for immortality, make it difficult to hit through the matrix in purpose so you reward skill. but this way it doesn’t bail out ults like dragon strike, bomb, shatter, flux, etc, but it counters ults against other hits and like bob, noon, sights, etc, this would also make blade better. Yeah this would be a dramatic overhaul but I think it would be healthier for the game than straight immortality. Immortality should be an ult period.

I stopped playing ow 2 months ago because of the pharah meta and it still exists? This dev team never changes.

A "Great" Debate requires great players exchanging ideas. CUSTA is lightyears from that. I thought this was a podcast made by players for players, he is clearly just an employee from a company; bro is paraphrasing a script basically. Please keep the podcast CLEAN.

Screw you Avril. Healbotting might not be "healthy" but damnit is it fun.

SVB I am literally begging you stop having AVRL on the podcast. Every single time hes on he contributes very little outside of being super smarmy and condescending, he wont let anyone else speak, won't consider their perspective and constantly derails discussion for his ridiculous hot takes

The thing i hate about tank doomfist is that his whole playstyle is reliant on the doom shotgun. The thing with dps doom was that his abilities actually did alot of dmg and kill potential. I get that support players hate doomfist and it problaby wasnt fun to play against a dps doom, but should we really take away his WHOLE identity just bcs supports didnt like him? Couldve changed his dmg in a way that his dmg output was changed to something else in his kit or his uptime was longer but less dmg overall. Shouldnt change the playstyle of a whole community who liked dps doom for people crying.

59:21 amd that completely can be solved with better tutorials

Wild idea for life Weaver, tue his dps up a little bit and his max healing per projectiles from 80 to 60 with a slightly faster charge

I agree, somewhat. At least with the pro scene. Dude Year one OWL was peak esports then, Brig and goats happened. THEN the nail in the coffin, OWL became KZbin exclusive which really destroyed the scene. And the problems they had earlier that streamers weren’t allowed to stream the OWL stream to their viewers which ruined support from creators. TBH OWL had some huge potiental to actually legitimize Esports and make it digestible to the casual audience but so many mistakes from blizzard and OWL just put esports behind and made gamers believe you can’t go mainstream

6:38 I feel this so much. As a fellow mercy player I too have been suffering for the last few seasons. Imo it's cause her self healing from cadeus staff healing is garbage right now

Damm, you can definitely tell this take is over a year old lmao

The Great AVRL and Custa Debate

I do think that adding an ability to hero 1 that hero 2 has to make hero 1 more well rounded, makes hero 2 less original, and overall takes away the charm of the game that OW strived to create when going into making it back in 2016 if you apply it to every character. I do absolutely hate the counter-swap game, but I think that we're going to have to pick our poison. If adding more well rounded abilities is the only way to eliminate the counter-swapping game, do we throw out the idea of original and unique heroes, or throw out the idea of having a completely balanced game for every character? I do think the idea of hero bans (decided by the players each game) is something that the dev team should look into. But at the end of the day, none of us are devs, and have no idea what would be the most effective way to solve this present paradox.