The Great Mauga Debate feat. Samito, Yeatle & Bogur

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Timestamps
0:00 Introductions
3:34 General Mauga Thoughts
12:15 Mauga In The Metal Ranks
17:05 Mauga Decides Compositions, Not Supports?
21:10 Mauga's Balance
32:00 Is Mauga Pay To Win?
55:45 Anti-Nade & Other Support Abilities
1:12:00 Can We Find Harmony Between The 3 Roles?
1:32:00 What We Lost & Gained From OW1 to OW2
1:44:15 Hero Bans & Other Format Changes
2:05:05 Winter Wonderland
2:21:00 Concluding Thoughts

[@GroupUp]

This episode was recorded on 22nd December 2023. Podcast links below! If you're enjoying this content, why not check out SVB's stream (www.twitch.tv/svb_ ) or his second channel The Soak (youtube.com/@TheSoak ) where he does movie, TV & anime breakdowns! The best way to support the podcast is still www.patreon.com/svb Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/ow_svb/the-great-mauga-debate Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6sRWutKTc0gnWuguo62Vpa Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/svbs-group-up/id1490256265

[@LUCKIPUP]

10 hit ignite for squishies is the reason it feels so ass to shoot squishies, taking your time to ignite an ana or kiri who will just self nade/cleanse when they’re actually caught out in the middle of the open is probably one of the most annoying things ever as theres literally other supports that have to completely reset if they got caught out with shitty positioning like that *cough* zen *cough* mercy, if i ignite a mercy or zen in the middle of a fight i can literally see the fear in their movement

[@joshuafruth6420]

I fundamentally disagree that you can't make the game without hard counters.., simply swap invincibility, freeze, anti heal to damage reduction, heal reduction, and slow.. it's pretty simple, messing with numbers when the abilities themselves are the issue is incredibly dumb

[@greyfalconow9467]

What the heck is this conversation? Nerf AntiNade or give Tanks a negative status effect resistance passive. Then nerf Tanks down to an equivalent survival level without nade involved. Why are people acting like it's difficult to do that? It's a 2 step process, but somehow people can only comprehend 1 step at a time. Also, why does an AntiNade nerf mean that Ana can't get compensation buffs?

[@sentokigames151]

Most annoying when he charges...I can't even sleep him...sleepdart just dissapears. The burning is also stupid.

[@ianhunt1866]

Bogur looks like he's chilling in the Death Star maintenance closet

[@kakashigaiden111]

I’m DEAD

[@xXWyTeBreaDXx]

Underrated comment

[@GayestWinston]

that's so funny

[@xXWyTeBreaDXx]

@@ozone005 1: commented 2 weeks ago. 2: it still has only like 250 likes

[@Wannashineiwannaball]

51:29 samitos face when bogur called blizzard smart had me dying😂😂

[@moezbadboy]

"blizzard are smart" is the biggest cope ive heard on this podcast 😂😂😂

[@TheAlreadybeentaken]

@@moezbadboyi know it’s fun to dunk on blizzard but they did create the whole game

[@gi1kxsy908]

@@TheAlreadybeentaken yeh and most have them people have already left blizzard to join games like valorant or apex because of how shit blizzard as a company is

[@Taexer]

Ever since these podcast started ive look forward to them every week and hearing some of my favorite content creators appear on here and hear their opinions. Just wanted to say thank you for these and keep them up. They get me through these boring seasons of Overwatch and i enjoy them so very much. Much Love

[@jamesdolan3046]

I spend more time watching these debates than playing the game

[@hypermobilesinger]

wow the foresight on heal passive

[@SuperScopeRawks]

Funny how accurate chess analogy is. Supports are like rooks and the tank is like the queen. The queen being the most powerful piece but 2 rooks beat 1 queen when the rooks are connected.

[@ld_raine4247]

Svb, you're so conscious and respectful of everyone's opinion. You're also very fair, even when it's holding yourself accountable or others but not in a confrontational way. You also make sure people are free to truly express themselves fully. Mad love brother keep it up

[@Phillospillo777]

Svb is such a great moderator, and host. These are so fun to listen to and could easily get out of hand but he does a great job of wrangling everyone back when they get out of hand. Good job bro.

[@Christian_Crab]

I was literally thinking the same thing then i saw your comment, lol

[@galev3955]

He really is so good at it and also has the self awareness and objectivity to bring in good counterpoints. For example I was so confused when they were complaining about "not enough silly stuff" like, dude y'all are always complaining that things are too silly...? And then SVB brought up the same point. And other times he is ready to change his opinion too if there are good arguments.

[@silast.1470]

2 seconds into answering his first question and Samito already mentions Brig 😂 he just can’t help himself. Love this man.

[@dylanbersano9488]

I think bogur said a very important thing when he was discussing Ana’s nade. “You’re hoping your kiriko will cleanse it”. Well what do you do if your supports refuse to swap to kiriko?

[@joegarrison5911]

Adapt your playstyle.

[@thenipplethiefo2417]

@@joegarrison5911There’s no adapting to anti, you just learn to stand behind a wall to wait it out or hope the other team is pure ass cheeks and doesn’t dive you once you’re anti.

[@dylanbersano9488]

@@joegarrison5911sure that works if they’re terrible on Ana and throw it on CD. Here I’ll put it into perspective. I adapt my playstyle around Ana nading on CD. What happens when Ana adapts and begins to hold it? I’m playing passively on a role designed to take space because of a single CD. If you can’t see why that’s a problem I don’t know then. I believe Ana is a necessary evil in the game; I also believe that if you have a single ability that has the potential to lock an entire role out of the game it needs to be fundamentally changed. I believe illaris pylon is the same way. A perma uptime healing pylon is stupid. Sure there is Torb turret, and sym turrets. They have to be in your LOS to receive value and can be destroyed because of such. Pylon receives value by staying out of LOS. If you try and break pylon though it’s almost always a death sentence.

[@goosechucker2154]

Lose

[@Sunderpun1]

uninstall

[@cheeekeygames]

Thanks so much for getting together and putting these on all of you! This was a fun one and SVB, you're such a legend when it comes to content and coming up with different ideas and keeping things interesting. Keep it up my man!

[@xristobalramirezromero3469]

This content is some of my favorite in the overwatch space. I love the podcast and watching them on KZbin feels so much more involved and enjoyable

[@grazi747]

50:03 Raise the amount of games required before you can play competitive to 100 wins, everyone gets all characters at 50 wins, so they can practice them before they go into competitive. Characters being locked doesn’t make sense in OW

[@-.Outlaw.-]

100 wins is way to many hours invested. Just make sure they don’t get placed any higher than gold 1. New players shouldn’t be getting placed in diamond and above that’s just stupid

[@thenipplethiefo2417]

100 wins is insane, some people haven’t even gotten 100 wins after 40 hours of gameplay. I know but there are people who get that unlucky or they’re just bad. 50 wins is fine but locking characters is a counter pick game in the issue.

[@lyrch4803]

Bring back 6v6

[@LeatherNinja]

1:01:35 Doomfist is a new tank but not a new hero, which is probably why yall couldn't remember. Doomfist technically doesn't have a way to stop nade or sleep but he is the best at baiting those CD's of all the new tanks (they usually save it for when you use block so they can't really miss anyway).

[@STartist.]

Technically his ult can save/cleanse him from this unless he gets slept on low hp

[@konrah1486]

@@STartist.Sometimes he doesnt even have to be low hp 😭

[@os3688]

ball is better at escaping after being slept and naded because of adaptive shield. Doom is easily the hardest tank to play because his escapability is ability based rather than ball that has high speed just from ball form.

[@gspeedy619]

​@@os3688 Also Doom's longer cooldowns make getting hit by sleeps and other stuns a lot harder to actually escape from

[@mckoa9485]

Ahh a Cup of Coffee and the Group Up! Podcast, this day is gonna be great.

[@stormRed]

As a silver rank, Mauga is absolutely dominating there, too. His skill ceiling might be high, but his skill floor is also extremely low in my opinion. It's the same situation of "pick Mauga or lose".

[@queenpen1398]

I barely even see any Mauga in silver rank compare too the other dlc heroes. I still have game with DVA/ Orisa but I will agree Mauga do counter theses two but you need to have a good support to back him up or he just melt.

[@dechuggs9129]

The thing with release sigma is that he didn't immediately shake the meta because he was a very complex hero and it took people time to learn his kit, I remember XQC calling him clunky. Mauga is the exact opposite, super easy and immediately dominated after his buffs which imo is a stronger release in ALL levels of play.

[@cadeueland2536]

Love this podcast. Great work🙏

[@Tupackow]

29:04 "What if instead nerfing Mauga, we buff all the tanks?" This Borgur guy is handsome, good at the game and smart. What an absolute unit of a man.

[@YunethAlwis]

Well he is correct about the power level being similar to mauga BUT if you buff all the tanks, it would be power creep like it is with support as of now

[@Tupackow]

@@YunethAlwis Yes i mostly said it for the meme but i agree with your concerns about power creep.

[@sebastianrodriguez8992]

I agree they should just slightly tune up every tank I think good mauga players should still be rewarded with a win since they're playing effectively or poking off squishy targets and diving in when needed but it shouldn't be a guaranteed win every time and I don't think just nerfing him will help that They should buff the other tanks so they feel on par with mauga

[@bradmiles1984]

@@sebastianrodriguez8992 They could probably do a bit of both with only slight nerfs to mauga and some buffs to other tanks. The other way to do it is just make his health regen when shooting other tanks not be as effective like make it 75 or 80 percent of what it is now. Being forced into where both Mauga's are forced to just infinitely shoot each other is boring.

[@johnsonspark171]

@@YunethAlwis Meanwhile, DPS just get left behind. God forbid Sombra and Genji are strong to keep all the no-skill broken support in check. So sad what Blizzard has done to this game

[@endless_del]

i'm pretty sure you can only progress one hero unlock challenge at a time. so all those wins are in addition to each other, so illari and ram together would be 85 wins in order to get both. it's way too high

[@bradhurtz9173]

Game will suffer until 6v6 is back

[@wildeskompositum9556]

Copium

[@maliktyson18]

They should bring back experimental mode and bring back 6v6 in it. Just to try and see how it could perhaps work. You know explore all the options. 😅

[@bradmiles1984]

@@maliktyson18 Just make a mode in arcade or QP to see how it does then re-evaluate. It could come back then people see it is better or it could be a disaster and it will stop the debate. Both 5v5 and 6v6 have merits and downsides.

[@maliktyson18]

@@bradmiles1984 i know I'm in the minority here but my ADHD riddled brain actually like 6v6 more tbh.5v5 feels a lot of the time too chaotic for me to react or sometimes even understand what's happening until I'm dead. Especially as the only tank in the game I don't really like how my performance makes or breaks a teamfight. I.e. if I die the team gets rolled. Idk just my opinion I guess.

[@bradmiles1984]

@@maliktyson18 Nothing wrong with liking 6v6 more. There are pros and cons to both. Honestly I like both and honestly I think they should just put 6v6 mode in arcade and don't worry about balancing it. That would let people who want that mode play it without having to rebalance everything.

[@daviddiett2168]

I feel like we were hitting a meta stagnation with Bastion being so strong that Sigma was the only Tank who could do everything well enough to become the optimum pick in high ranks. But instead of nerfing some of these heroes to open up the meta they added a brand new problem that is even more busted and requires the use of abilities like Anti-nade and Suzu to try and stop him from running away with the game. He could've been okay if he entered Ranked without buffing him further and likely he'll remain that way until after the holidays in the mid-season patch.

[@EJW2003]

Not sure if samito changed his lighting or camera setup or started a skin care routine, but his skin looks so good

[@CJ-jk9mp]

zip up when ur done

[@cbaileychamp]

​@@CJ-jk9mpdamn bro you have acne dont u lmao

[@xeno_ii_8617]

been waiting for y’all to cook mauga lol

[@dermegger7733]

People be like: We don't need tankbusters in OW anymore if me only have one tank, we need to talk about Bastion and Reaper Blizzard be like: so you guys wanna have a tankbuster that is a tank?

[@NiteRacer]

Mauga's ult needs more counterplay. Let us use our abilities while trapped inside the cage so it's a real fight. Brig can't even use her shield bash when she's ulting

[@therealzahyra]

Nice, another episode, lessgo

[@timm7143]

Hero Bans will not result in ur OTP Winston banning Mauga but in their team banning Winston.... and all of a sudden u can never play ur Hero again in any game

[@johnsonspark171]

then learn a set of heroes. OTP are not good at the game. The worst offenders are Mercy OTP's. They suck at the game and they use that bot support as a crutch

[@Youknowmikekhan]

Goats this is a lit one

[@GayestWinston]

great video:)

[@baraccobama3980]

I don't know if someone already mentioned this but a way to nerf antinade on a way that only affects tanks is to give them a passive that reduces in damage or in duration all CCs or effects over time: in this way, Ana nades still blocks entirely heals on dps and supports allowing easier kills on them (or a easier matchup in close range against divers like genji/tracer when they are pocketed from a healer) but gives a little bit more breath to the tanks; for example, with this new passive we could make that antinades only reduces to 50% the heals on tanks and maybe with this new aspect i think we could even bring back the nade cooldown from 12s -> 10s since sometimes it feels clunky on 12s. The new tank passive would help them even against Mauga/Ashe/Torbjorn because maybe it would shorten the "on fire" status from his miniguns, against JK reducing the bleeding or maybe even against Widows venom mine; on SPECIFIC character, particularly Mauga and Roadhog since they are the most vulnerable to antinade, if this tank passive goes live their healing number and auto-sustainabilty need to be reduced a bit since a weaker nades against them would imply that their worst matchup (ana counter-pick) got a lot better. These small nerfs to these "particularly sensible" tanks are a bit specific to be discussed here and i still have to think about them but i believe it's possible, i believe that in general OW2 philosphy should resemble a bit more what i've heard Spilo say several times: it's okay to have counters exist but the "differences" between counter and countered heroes shouldn't be as big as they are right now; this applies to MANY other heroes, for example i would like to see Bastion's damage a bit reduced so he doesn't destroy every thank that isn't Sigma or DVA with a matrix online. The antinade "nerf" by the introduction on new passives may even make Kiriko a less necessairy pick each and every time you face an Ana and in general it might allow support to have less to think about their tank, allowing them to support in their own way and not just to heal. There are probably some tanks that will benefit more from this passive, likely the one that already have a very goos survivanilty, but i believe the devs can find a way to nerf them a little bit. On a last note and disregarding most of the rest of the post, while we introduce this new tank passive (wich description in the abiluty menu i admit is difficult to "phrase" in a sufficienty general way -> on certain effects it reduces damage and on othe durations) i believe it's time to increase a little bit the time for the Support passive to kick in (following the Metro vs Kiriko on Gibraktar incident lol), it would be cool to find a time window for it to apply "only" when the support is not likely "in a fight" with a flanker, like 3s-3,5s; i believe it should be an "out of fight" advantage and this for example would promote the "new" 10s nade to be used also as an auto-heal mean. :)

[@bradmiles1984]

Exactly, why not just fix the ability on tanks instead of yelling nerf Ana all the time. Like Bogur pointed out even if you nerf anti into the ground so Ana barely is played eventually blizzard will introduce another character with something equally as irritating to play against. You could even just add to the passive only on tanks that don't have counterplay to nade like the new tanks.

[@rezq9109]

37:53 not true. You have to complete 50 games, not win. Ram and Lifeweaver require 35 wins each, JQ, Kiri and Soj require 10 wins each, and Illari requires 50 completed games. So mathematically, there is no way you can unlock every single hero before competetive or even half of them, because for some reason Blizzard decided to not track challenges by default, but made them manually selectable and only then able to track your score. It's stupid and must be changed.

[@BoredomEntertain]

I also didn't know it had to be manually activated so i once spent a whole gaming session doing what i thought added to their unlock to find out I was wrong. Granted i don't play the game that often anymore, but it definitely felt like a bummer it wasn't just universal or multiple at a time.

[@johnmarte679]

Actually you’re wrong, you have to win 50 games to unlocked ranked. I just checked the achievement like 10 minutes ago

[@MichaelSmith2233]

Make Mauga reload speed slower and change cardiac overdrive from life steal to just damage reduction and everyone causes ignite. Let him be a high damage burn character instead of ultra sustain damage character.

[@tropicata]

The reason anti heal feels more oppressive now compared to early Overwatch is simple: healing power creep happened. Healing wasn't nearly as game-changing when Ana/anti nade was first introduced. There was less burst healing, less aoe healing, you didn't need constant heals pumped up your ass just to sustain. It's a MUCH different landscape these days, where you feel borderline chained to your supports if you expect to make any plays at all. 3+ seconds of heal denial is fucking brutal in a team fight as a result of that, and that's something that absolutely has to be addressed. I agree nade itself isn't the problem - but I don't necessarily think giving tanks counterplay is the fix either. I think healing output has just gotten insanely out of control, and Ana nade perfectly exemplifies that

[@elliotdawson1272]

Plus in ow1 there were far more shields and tanks had a second tank to help, so nade was much harder to use and way easier to shield off. Now Ana can easily self heal without the nade and most tanks dont have any protection against it

[@WheelsOfDeath]

I had the thought the other day where you combined Ana’s nade and sleep dart into a sleep nade that slows the enemy over a few seconds (as an unstoppable, uncleansable process) and at the end you fall asleep just as you would when being hit with a sleep dart. You would still be able to act while slowing down and interacting with sleep would be the same as it is now (your teammates wake them immediately). I’m not saying, “THEY SHOULD DO THIS!” But, I think it would be interesting and maybe less annoying to deal with compared to anti, sleep, anti, sleep, etc. Idk what this would mean for the sleep dart skill (like if it would be replaced with something else) or the heal part of nade, but maybe a mini version of nano would be good as a way to make it do the opposite of the effects on enemies.

[@goosechucker2154]

They could shorten sleep so that it's more of an opportunity creator than locking someone entirely out of a fight, and make nade deny a set amount of heal on each person it hits rather than obliterating heals entirely. Then it would also be more attractive to use as a defensive cooldown, and could counteract enemy nades, which I'm not sure why that isn't a thing already. Also remove suzu from the game entirely. I'm not sure why hanzo-but-a-main-healer-with-teleport needs that.

[@CuimeraEmariti]

I want anti which has capped mitigation value. I imagine it looking like purple health which has to be healed off before you can heal your actual health. Or you can wait it to end like right now. 150 anti health should do, maybe less

[@STartist.]

that could be interesting. maybe bigger health bars (tanks) means more "anti health"

[@verdant1029]

Reduced healing would be better. It's consistent with biotic grenade healing and very intuitive.

[@bradmiles1984]

@@verdant1029 It should be normal on everyone but tanks, tanks it should be like 50 percent as effective since they are the ones where it is the big issue.

[@johnsonspark171]

Or they could just delete anti-nade. Why don't people listen to the top players like Bogur when they spit facts about how "piss easy" playing support is? Support is BUSTED. It's pathetic. Hero bans now

[@bradmiles1984]

​@@johnsonspark171 They should listen to Bogur because he also said anti-nade is fine.....

[@beermarket9971]

I didnt touch Overawtch in a month or so, listening to this podcast made me want to give it a retry. It was a short session 3 games, 3 L and it felt like i was cheesed out of victories: - First one had a pharmacie in it and we had just 1 hitscan (me) - Second one had a bastion and we didn't - Third one they had a Zen and we didn't. This game needs more counter play, it's just insane the amount of free value some characters have to that you add the counter play and it's the most tideous and painful gameplay you can have, if this was a solo i would have just used cheats to skip those boring levels.

[@galivar607]

6v6 with good balance. Thats the answer

[@Mika-xw1xp]

Zen is easily outplayable idk whats the problem there? And if your not in top 500 so is Bastion. I personally as a Tank main had never problems with Baiting out turret or discord. The real problems starts when having to face multiple problems at once (turret,Nade and sleep,Discord for example)

[@galev3955]

It is always so wild what OW players will complain about (not in this podcast but in general). Like ppl are upset about Mauga having too much sustain, but also about antinade but at the same time they are upset about healing being too strong but also at the same time they think Sombra is too strong because she can kill supports. I hope the devs look at the more fundamental problems and fix those instead of playing around with individual stats.

[@davidnewhart2533]

The funny thing about the Sombra one is that a good chunk of supports actually counter Sombra (Baptiste, Illari, Kiriko, Lifeweaver, etc). So yeah people complaining about Sombra is a bit wild to me.

[@bradmiles1984]

@@davidnewhart2533 What is your definition of countering? Only 1 of the heroes you listed counters her consistently. Bap can counter but lamp is long CD, Kiriko can cleanse which is a hard counter. LF can grip but long CD and that's if you see it intime and he can't grip himself so a smart sombra would kill him first. All Illari can do is if they are really good is kill her and if that is the standard every character is a sombra counter. Counters are someone that fundamentally shuts down a characters abilities or playstyle like snipers vs a flyer or ana vs mauga.

[@vopcracker3193]

Samito has been the only content creator that genuinely knows why OW2 gameplay is so poor. It's a shame he gets disrespected by his own community.

[@muckdriver]

The ignite of squishy vs tank is annoying they need to just make tank have specific higher level values on this stuff in general. Anything going forward should have a separate tank value. I don't care if it's broken or impactful just the effort of having tanks be treated a bit differently in balance values would be impactful.

[@Daveyjonesvi]

I agree tank on tank interactions should be specific

[@nickdegirolamo7000]

As a gm Ana player, if nade gets tweaked too much, there’s pretty much 0 reason to play her and it wrecks the character, why play a nerfed Ana when you can play weaver, bap, illiari, or Kiri? Sleep and nano are great abilities, but nade is what has kept her relevant, period. I would be ok if support passive gets reduced and I’d have to nade myself more often, but getting rid of anti-heal will make her almost a throw pick in ranks above plat/gold.

[@x100bullets]

Watched some of the stream and looking forward to catching myself up on the rest, awesome stuff you do thanks

[@frea2191]

Mauga needs these changes: his ult should cost more and/or it gets cancled when he dies

[@mikeillgaming4224]

Hell yeah

[@iswearimworking6662]

I'm a Zen main, so the support passive has been great for me, but I have to agree that Nade was a lot less of a pain before the passive was introduced. Oftentimes the Anna would have to use Nade to heal herself, meaning it had far less up time, now it's used almost entirely to anti the enemy tanks.

[@KJ_Jizzle]

I wholeheartedly agreed with Sam about open queue and role queue. I love open q and was shocked to hear role q is most popular. I'm ranked too high to play open q with friends and role q feels so limiting. If i want two tanks i can play open q

[@jaismith1760]

Open q is actually dead on most servers, I can’t even get a low masters game on open q in Australia, however the same drop off for role q queue times is gm2-1

[@vaynardnorgard2161]

For both hero balance and ranked integrity for unlocking the hero why not just lock the hero behind qp for a bit longer and/or reduce the unlock level for free to play. It would give free players more time to unlock and more time for them to try to get the balance more in line for ranked. Also I think any battle pass experience earned on that hero''s battle pass release should deduct in some way the amount of games needed if you didn't get them during their battle pass. So if you were, lets say halfway to the unlock level in the bp you'd get half of your games autocompleted that you need. All small things that could help a lot.

[@353darkesthour]

I think a solid change for Mauga would be to make firing one gun at a time more responsive. If you want to fire both guns, they need a wind up before they fire + a bigger spread, like melee range. Maybe even make it a total ammo dump so that it’s quick, risky, and hard to abuse like it is now.

[@sebastianrodriguez8992]

I think just nerfing his fire rate while using both might help

[@dafilthycasual2628]

Hearing a ton about the counter swapping issue, my only thought on limiting picks is what if everyone picks their characters at the start, and then once the game starts, each player has 2 swaps. Rather than making it so they can only swap twice and then being locked in on a third character, we make it so the roles essentially draft a roster as they play. Tank would most likely have one extra slot just due to the roll, but in essence that would mean tank has a potential 4 characters, and then support/dps would have a potential 6 characters to choose from.

[@dafilthycasual2628]

The roles dps and support ofc having the option of picking characters the other player has chosen. So if my duo support picks mercy, Moira, and brig, I can pick any of those, and then I have 3 characters to choose as well that they have access to

[@Nett11]

We say this game has had its share of bad moves but to make a character so strong to the point where you feel obligated to buy the battle pass in order to have a chance against the opponent who has it and you don’t is a disgrace. They say they would never do it but a BP with weak skins has clearly underperformed so they force sell it another way. If they want to go this way add hero bans as soon as possible

[@Trae4k]

Idk man mauga has weaknesses that are very exploitable when you arent playing the best players

[@taigerpendragon5938]

But Mauga is free at lv 45 It’s not a p2w cause everyone can unlock him for free

[@Daveyjonesvi]

That’s an over exaggeration. It was jokes tbh and should not be taken into account in any extent

[@LeatherNinja]

​You have to play for 45 lvls worth of games to be able to use him so you basically just cant play comp properly until halfway in bp@@taigerpendragon5938

[@STartist.]

@@taigerpendragon5938 if you aren't constantly grinding this game that's a lot of time you have to put in. Especially if we're talking 2 weeks to not only unlock him before comp but actually have time to practice and learn the hero, there's a pretty big advantage you get by just buying him. Then there's the issue alt accounts but I don't use alts so I don't really personally care about this issue.

[@carsonsharp2339]

Let the swap currency (tokens) also be used for hero bans. So you can put it toward pre planning or reacting. Maybe it’s 2 tokens to ban and you start with 5. It doesn’t have to be 1ban equals 1 swap.

[@coreypohlman8539]

if there is a swap currency it has to be individual, or you're gonna have someone troll and use the teams switches

[@IsMyNameUnique]

i love that most dps players dont even realize they have a passive, thats how neglected the role is now simply bc "oh u have the most heroes" which means nothing if they all feel useless except bastion

[@vopcracker3193]

At least in 6v6 they had a job to do along with the expanded roster. Now they just shoot the lone tank or try to out-DPS Support with way too much mobility and healing

[@prestigini3150]

1:26:40 And they are letting dps heal y’all ! Samitos wish came true

[@TysonASMR]

Fr 😂

[@ChiefYona]

1:14:25 Bogur being a gigachad, based individual as always

[@johnsonspark171]

LA LA LA can't hear you! Our class is so tough. We are the focus of the entire team. We are constantly getting dove and we need stuff to protect ourselves! This is what every support player says BTW. SUPPORT IS EASY MODE! Support is where bad players go to climb. Masters PC role-queue support BTW

[@austinmcmahan6267]

@@johnsonspark171 agreed support is way easier than the other roles it's ridiculous. I believe everyone has their own skillset and some people are more adept at tank or being aggressive. but the skill for reward ratio for support is busted.

[@tiggle5485]

If Maug is going to keep his self heals, it should NEVER EVER be tied to how much damage he can do, because that incentivizes shooting tanks, and it’s terrible against squishies. I’d rather it heal for a set amount, like how take a breather used to work

[@Valqrose]

Ana is the most played character because she's been the best character in the game since she released in OW1 (coming from a person who was a tank main for years). Hands down. I don't mean the best as in the strongest, but she has great design, character, utility, fun, and, yes, you are rewarded based on your skill. Fucking over Ana now is less work at the moment, but more work later on. A bandaid will not fix the tank issue. Playing tank sucks. No one likes it. It's not Ana's fault and removing her utility as a "solution" is pure laziness.

[@johnsonspark171]

no it's not. Ana is the most played because she's the third easiest hero on the easiest role and it's not even close

[@ccalvac18]

My prediction on possible balance change discussed: Only for Mauga during his shout, reduce heal % on damage BUT give burst healing on ELIMS. I feel it would reduce the boring "use-enemy-tank-as-health-battery" playstyle while rewarding skillful players for getting elims on squishies because shooting the squishy has more benefits. For overhealth passive, I'd like if he got more overhealth from crit-ing squishies than tanks. With that balance in mind and in a Mauga mirror, ideally the Mauga securing elims on the squishies would heal more than the Mauga shooting the other Mauga for health % and therefore be rewarded for his target priority. Choosing evasive DPS and Supports would become even MORE of a counter to Mauga.

[@ccalvac18]

Another idea for helping the tank matchup into Mauga w/o adjusting the character specifically (AKA, buffing the tanks): Apply the ult charge difference from healing/damaging tanks to other debuffs and lifesteal effects (similar to Ana sleep nerf). Exactly how you get 30% less ult charge from healing or damaging tanks: Mauga heals 30% less from damaging tanks & gains 30% less overhealth from crits on tanks, Reaper gets 30% less lifesteal from tanks, Anti effects lasts 30% less of the time on tanks, Hinder/Slow is 30% less effective against tanks etc etc etc Edit: both my comments have so far been partly affirmed in the podcast lol

[@sebastianrodriguez8992]

​@@ccalvac18 I agree it should be less effective vs tanks but they should also compensate and make him better vs squishies so he's not useless

[@STartist.]

actually that could be a potentially interesting but maybe a little broken flank dps passive. Sort of like fortnite siphon you get let's say 50 health on kills to keep the flank going kinda like genji dash reset

[@theno0b316]

when mauga released me and my school team played some scrims to test out how they matched up against the rein comp we’ve been trying to play the entire semester. basically we concluded that our tank player has to grind the battle pass to get mauga before our next practice

[@mckookie2967]

queen with dive and its very hard for him to heal

[@keeganbate8935]

Somehow, Bogur returned

[@gg4935]

Bro, 2mo ago he said ppl that complain about anti are fucking stupid (to be fair it's good against mauga) and now he concedes tanks need a way to deal with it. Lil Bro needs to think more before he talks

[@pierreramzy8448]

​@gg4935 wait, your telling me people can change their opinions and don't live and die by them??? That's ridiculous, if someone said something once that's wh they are forever!

[@johnsonspark171]

@@gg4935 Support is still brain dead easy mode. Hero bans now!

[@BlackFoliageVol1]

It’s so weird to get takes from people that play 80 hours a week, they act like we all don’t have jobs or families and want the game balanced around their weird use case

[@johnsonspark171]

@@BlackFoliageVol1 dude, Blizzard can EASILY balance the game for EVERYONE by just putting in hero bans. It's a simple fix for every rank

[@Link2855]

Hero bans just need to be totally blind. No seeing the enemy team, but also no seeing your teammates of communicating with them before the ban phase is done. If you're in a stack and thus able to coordinate that, then the whole stack only gets one vote towards the ban. This is the only fair way to do it I can see. Anything but swap tokens though please.

[@P-39_Airacobra]

I dont like how mauga is designed to be almost a support, it's just bad design for a tank. It's like brig on launch, she was essentially a mini-tank and she ruined the game. Now we have a tank which is also a support, and Im feeling the same thing

[@verdant1029]

They definitely made his E way too strong. Remember how strong reaper was with 50% life steal. Mauga gives 70% life steal to himself and nearby teammates and a 30% dmg reduction.

[@nyxnight5162]

Im surprised people havent explored buffing the tank passive be more resistant to CC. Make the reward for the easier skillshot less valuable.

[@Im_Chris13]

I like how supports became the new one shots of the community. Even if some supports are a little strong I just don’t think the community will ever be pleased. There’s always going to be something being talked about and eventually nerfed.

[@ieToastie]

You may be surprised to hear that the devs are capable of adding problems just as fast as they address them. Shocker!

[@MichaelSmith2233]

For things like ana nade and baptiste lamp, I believe they should have upper limits to allow for counter play, similar to Zarya bubbles protecting ppl but ultimately can be popped to further pursue your target, having accounted for giving the Zarya charge. Ana nade could have a limit to how much healing is negated until it allows healing again before the effect is over, that way you can choose to dump healing into a teammate risking needing to reload or a cooldown. Bap lamp could increase in health but the dmg all teammates take within its range will dmg it, allowing for players to still benefit from interacting with their targets instead of having to switch targets, also allowing for wide range dmg abilities like ashe dynamite to be highly effective against a group up under lamp. Also, Kiriko suzu should be changed to do 1 thing and healing either cleanse and heal or intangible and heal, don’t know why they thought doing all 3 was a good idea.

[@controlfreak2112]

Not even one of you streamers talked about AOE dmg reduction from Cardiac Overdrive.

[@MrTrash.]

1:27:00 be careful what you wish for Sam 💀💀💀

[@NastiKing]

Bro really manifested it 😭😭😭

[@MrTrash.]

@@NastiKing ... and the devs took that personally 🤣🤣

[@STartist.]

I think a cool idea that could not only test some of these ideas like going back to 6v6 or open queue etc. but also lessen the staleness of these "filler" seasons would be something similar to apex season splits where one half is 6v6 the other is 5v5 in comp and with rank resets and everything

[@Slogstin]

I'd love if the Devs would experiment with the Berserk Passive. Like making it give overheal on Elim/Assist instead of Crit damage, to encourage shooting squishies more. Maybe remove the Teammate healing from Overdrive and give it to Berserk instead, so that Teammates in range get some Overheal, when Mauga gets an elim. Idk, just throwing crap at a wall here.

[@_reigner]

I like that idea more than what we currently have..

[@theno0b316]

what if we further differentiated mauga’s guns to make him more strategic? maybe his fire gun becomes more reliable but has decreased ammo to where you need to make a choice whether to ignite an enemy, this would also help shields contend against him. my other idea is to adjust his reload to be more time consuming like ashe, and/or each gun needing to be reloaded independently. once they nerf him enough to where other tanks can play the game i think some startup accuracy could be cool.

[@daniel-tv4hx]

What if instead of limiting the amount of swaps they made it hero queue, so you pick what hero/heros you plan on playing before the match, say limit it to 3 or 5, which is still further limited by the role, DPS might have a problem though with how many there are. I also think this would better matches because plenty of newer players think swapping is the only way and will even swap to a hero they're not so good with because it counters x. Definitely need some limitations eventually with how many heros are in now and could be added.

[@2ndThoughtsVFX]

On the unlocking heroes and pay to win topic. I think that problem is only a thing because of the deeper hero swap balancing problem. If the game is more balanced and not so counter swap based then not having a character for this specific comp wouldn't be as much of a problem at all. Overwatch 2 in its current state REQUIRES you to have all the characters unlocked and be able to switch to the only character that counters the enemy team's comp. If that wasn't the case then it wouldn't be a big deal if I don't have Queen unlocked because there's 7 or 8 other tanks that I can play right now instead of just the one.

[@nonipplenoah6179]

if i start a game on winston and see a mauga i don’t even try anymore i walk right back to spawn or jump off the nearest ledge and go ram

[@c_bons]

Ana nade is not the problem, 1 tank is. With 1 tank, you have to find a perfect balance between damage and survivability, and in 1 tank OW, it’s impossible. Either a tank has too much damage but dies too quickly, has too much health but can’t kill anything, or has too much of both. I’m all situations, each can be OP because one stat (health or damage) has to be OP for the tank to be “viable”. Nade is oppressive because blizzard hasn’t found the balance required for 1 tank in 5v5. 2 tank OW allows counter play with nade because the other tank can peal the naded tank. In 1 tank OW, that cannot happen making nade seem oppressive. You have to ask why to everything to find the actual problem. In OW2’s case, it’s 5v5 with 1 tank. Nade right now is the gate keeper to every tank being overpowered.

[@miiinkus]

supports are flexible because they were one of the smallest roles for years. they had to be given jack-of-all-trades kits in order to deal with the insane amount of different high value-spike damage hero abilities, when properly combined with tank setup abilities. the issue now is that tank is weak at their job (being a threat) because there’s only one of them. support had to be given enough power to sustain the tank through the hellfire. i don’t give a shit about 6v6, in order to balance 5v5 you have to make tanks able to command more map space. much like they did in OW1. if it’s not going to be some kind of change to their passive that’s done to the entire tank role, they really need to take a second look at map design because there are too many open areas given the tanks we have to play. in my head it’s like, you can’t just -remove shields and then add 0 cover- in a game where most hero kits were made in tandem with having to deal with or use the safety of shields. it doesn’t play well for the tank without a way to mitigate large amounts of damage. it doesn’t play well for the damage and support heroes because they have no way to safely capitalize on the threat their tank is making. right now the way this is done is extremely execution based and it’s painfully difficult even for the best players. it doesn’t feel good. if tank gets stronger, you can bring up the argument to tune back the support abilities. in that world of stronger tanks, supports no longer have to account for the insane spikes in damage because the tank can actually be a tank.

[@olegdusov4273]

100% i can play on JK vs mauga if there is a natural cover, but a lot of the maps and places leave you with nothing. I thing we need to have cover inside of the points or very close to them, like we have a drum on koth map right on the center

[@dominikhublin3023]

I don't think swap tokens or any other form of limiting the amount of times you can swap is gonna solve anything, but actually make counterpicks even worse, since one of the tanks will have to swap first and, with constant counter picking, will run out of swaps first and ultimately be stuck in an unfavorable matchup. Especially since, currently, most tanks are countered by one or at max two other heroes, so if both teams really feel like ruining the enemy tanks experience, both will succeed and the tanks will be unplayable. You'd ultimately end up just sticking to a somewhat safe tank like Sigma or Dva which can deal with a lot more situations than a Ball or Rein.

[@LongSocks.]

This might be a little overcooked, but on the topic on hero swaps/bans, what if before the match you got to pick heroes that can’t both be on the same team together. For example, you decide Mauga and Kirir can’t be on the same team at the same time. Or you’re a Winston player and you’ve decide their team can’t have a bastion and a dva, so you can’t get omega countered and people aren’t purely restricted in hero picks they just can’t go all in on counters

[@johnsonspark171]

No, just make it simple and give each team two bans. This isn't rocket science

[@chunk1179]

hero bans are just going to feel horrible for the people who get banned… like it just makes room for other characters to now be the flavor of the month, and then they get banned

[@lootbaglu]

i find the best answer to mauga is JQ if youre also playing tank. shes skinny and you can literally just kite him and AD him with good movement. you feel that spread buff on him more than any tank. your shout can be used in rebuttal to his overdrive to kite him further and pedal away into cover. hes also the easiest knife target ever. Its all about maintaining that range where you can hit nearly every pellet without being in double chaingun range. its hard and still feels kinda uphill but you can deal with a lot of other squishies easier than most tanks so that alleviates some frustration there.

[@olegdusov4273]

Except good mauga will shred you and there is a lot of places without cover and jk needs it

[@TheGamer-fz6gy]

I think this issue could be fixed if they buff the other tanks

[@CJNight]

Winter event free track let’s you earn a max of 120 tickets. Rein and Widow skins are 160 tickets each so you cannot purchase any skin if you were to grind all the free tickets during the event.

[@grazzhopper6799]

54:00 after anas nade gets the rework it deserves then they look into balancing the heros that were HARD countered by that ability its that simple of an answer. it isnt fun for one hero to completely shut down others, thus you remove that from the equation then balance them without that present = a more balanced hero for the whole roster

[@bradmiles1984]

Like Bogur said nerfing nade isn't the solution. The problem is blizzard designing tanks as they have in OW2 knowing nade will shut them down. It's just bad design in the first place. Honestly they should leave nade alone and just give tanks a passive to give them resistance to where it's only 50 percent as effective or 30 percent like sleep. That way Ana isn't thrown away while not making her super oppressive.

[@FlipsMG]

Crazy idea, not sure if it's a good one or a bad one to be honest: Give the entire tank role universally an extra ability that is an immediate self-cleanse with no heal or immortality on a set cooldown with a shared keybind across all tanks (think of this as a role active, instead of a role passive). This empowers the tanks to protect themselves and still requires them to play around their cleanse cooldown so they don't become invincible, it also allows for more skill expression in the game.

[@seapower2109]

wouldnt that make Kiriko literally useless? Unless you give her the release quality ULT lol its a skill issue my guy

[@bradmiles1984]

Would make more sense to just add to tank passive a resistance level to cc and things like anti-nade like it's only 50 percent effective on them.

[@skarloeythomas5172]

I've never seen this suggestion before and I like it. A cleanse wouldn't be the greatest, I think the optimal idea is like a 45 second cooldown new ability that applies a self life grip for 1 second. If that anti nade comes out at the worst time and it would be an instant death, you get a second to try retreat. Ana gets anti nade many more times than this new active ability.

[@yyny0]

@@bradmiles1984 ^ What this man said, to the word. And, to nerf Mauga, apply it to his damage and/or healing too (50% less shields/healing/crit damage from shooting tanks, 50% more shots before tanks catch fire).

[@seapower2109]

@@skarloeythomas5172 so the 1200 hp hammond can also life grip himself back to the team when he makes a mistake and dives the Ana when she has cool downs? This is just a straight buff to every dive tank while completely removing Ana from any sort of play lol its literally a skill issue of course the youtuber is going to say its not your fault

[@gidkid100]

I have an interesting rework idea for Ana nade. What if you removed the splash from the anti healing effect that the nade provides. Make it only anti the person it hits directly. Since it's hitting less people per nade you could reduce the cooldown and if you added a little damage it would be used against Squishies more often and be used offensively more often. In that vein of thinking you could also make it so ana could throw it in a more straight arc or hold the button to change the arc like in gold games you can see where you're gonna hit the ball.

[@skarloeythomas5172]

make it a noob tube on her rifle. make anti heal a barrier effect that has to be healed off to break and start healing the affected target.

[@DaiKigg]

on the topic of herobanns or swaps i rather would like a personal heropool that u choose before the game starts, but after u have seen the map. like if ur a dps u can pick 3 heros that u can play on the map.

[@amenphoenix4009]

2CP was frustrating because you fought in two areas. There was so much unused land in those maps, unless you were getting stomped or stomping

[@TrueYankeeFan]

Shoutouts to SVB on the topic of Anti-Nade (and also Hog). I've been saying for so long that people haven't been paying attention to the straight years of buffs Hog has gotten... Back in OW1 he couldn't hook or vape during ult, it did less damage, getting CC'd ended the ult, it didn't last as long... and that's just the ult. His new vape with the meter is way better in terms of survivability than when it was a CD. Anti-Nade gets a lot of talk, along with Suzu, lamp, etc. for being abilities that can be stronger than ultimates, and there's been a lot of talk on if that's healthy for the game. But Ana's kit has been the OG example of abilities being able to straight up beat ultimates all the way back in 2016. I think it's not a good faith argument to suggest that ultimates shouldn't be allowed to lose to abilities considering there's pretty much always been examples where that can happen. Edit: I posted this comment before Samito's comments but I was so scared for his take prior lol

[@Zyborgg]

Svb has a good point about hero bans / swaps. Even if we add hero bans. The hero you want banned won't get banned in most cases if you're not a 5 stack. So on average it won''t really adress the issue. The good thing though is that we would add some nuance to the player experience and maybe see less sigma, widow on junkertown for example. But a swap limit or something similar would add another tactical element to the game. Maybe you don't wanna waste a swap to tp with sym out of spawn. Or swap to counter. Or swap to touch point. There would also be some mind games where you know they can't swap for another minute or so and abuse that. One bad thing about this is that people would end up playing safe picks or heroes that works in most situations like soldier. So if that goes live we're gonna see more soldier players that's for sure.

[@loganandrepont1437]

I saw an Idea of making Ana grenade a heal absorb where it negates a certain amount of healing. This kind of debuff would show up purple health on you HP bar.

[@alexanderhayes9393]

I blame you guys for mentioning that idea of giving everyone self healing role passives.

[@Kavukamari]

i think swapping is one of the most important parts of OVW, honestly, like i tried paladins and I was like "man i wish i could swap hero right now i feel really countered" a few times

[@MutatedAmerican]

Here are some ideas for Mauga, other than just reconverting 100 armor back to 100 health. 1) Chainguns -For his Incendiary Chaingun, roughly keep it the same, but remove its ability to do critical damage from headshots. For his Volatile Chaingun, allow it to gain overhealth on hit and can critically hit enemies, either from headshots or burning enemies. That way, he would rotate between the two over damage versus sustainability. -Increase the base damage for each chaingun and have it where its infinite ammo in exchange for an overheat mechanic when firing both at the same time as well as increasing windup delay between the two. That way, he can better kill smaller targets, but now allow windows of opportunity for tanks to counter him if he's too aggressive. 2) Overrun -Honestly, keep the same (maybe tweak its turning radius and collision) 3) Cardiac Overdrive -Reduce its healing effectiveness as his chaingun(s) should be the main way to heal himself. In exchange, increase the damage reduction to compensate for its lower healing output; essentially switch up the numbers between the two currently and fix it from there. It doesn't need a resource gauge as, unlike Roadhog and Dva, he will have more than one ability to survive. Also, reduce the area of effect and cut the effects by half for everyone else as to make more of a selfish ability like Junker Queen's shout. 4) Cage Fight -Honestly, keep it the same, but as a bonus for Mauga, remove the overheat mechanic when firing the two chainguns. Because.... why not? :) (Though if actually done so, best to increase the charge requirement) 5) Passive -With his chaingun being the main tool to sustain himself, much like Junker Queen's and Doomfist's passive, and his Cardiac Overdrive reducing the overall damage, it may no longer be needed, much like Lifeweaver's. But if still needed, I'd say the passive would now burst heal him for every elimination rather than per bullet. That way, it creates more incentive to hit smaller targets due to its burst healing potential. Thoughts?

[@exolardusk1352]

They need to buff the size of the chainguns hit volume, lower the damage, and make it so that instead of damage resistance CO generates shields for himself and his team when he lands shots.

[@konrah1486]

yeah those are definitely “needed” changes lmao

[@Bismarck9871]

Honestly i do agree with the thought of maybe buffing the other tanks to be at thr lvl of mauga like some times you dont have to answer with a nerf but rise the other strugling characters to be in line

[@joegarrison5911]

If you nerf anti nade, Mauga and Hog just run over the other tanks. I see why they dont nerf it.

[@CoconutYoyo]

When you guys were talking about using points to unlock characters I had a thought. Why don't they allow you to use your competitive points to unlock characters. I don't play comp but I am sure there are players that have loads of points stacked up or are not interested in golden guns. Seems like a simple solution to me. Instant unlock character in comp using comp points. That would give substantial value to comp points and allow for instant unlocks in game if you have the points available.

[@soggybread749]

This is a great idea

[@azucarblanca9047]

Stop being naive. It's because you wouldn't buy the battle pass.

[@CoconutYoyo]

I think you have a jaded view in my opinion. I have bought every battle pass so far. I think its naive to think heroes should be locked out of selection in a competitive fps game where you are at a competitive disadvantage if the hero you select has any forms of hard counters. That is just my opinion. There is enough ways to make money in Overwatch other than locking heroes behind a pay wall. Alternatively the matchmaker can just choose to match you with people that also doesn't have unlocked characters and then there is no need for this conversation. Your comment has no relevance to a useful suggestion making use of mechanics that are already in game. So think for yourself before you just write the first thing that comes to mind@@azucarblanca9047

[@lastdayer101]

SVB quoting Jared Neuss: Pain SVB saying literally anything else: I like this guy.

[@ZzsiegzZ]

If u nerf nade, u will also have to tweak lamp, suzu, hog, and mauga at the same time

[@ksh9037]

No one talks about how hero bans will significantly improve the disparaties among different ranks. Each rank would just ban out the chsracters that are OP in their rank. That would increasingy help with gane balance

[@mito._]

I dunno, I went Winston against a Mauga and won. Our Zen tranced after Mauga's E, and their backline and squishies had no sustain. This was on Suravasa, and we rolled them 3-0.

[@yyny0]

People need to learn to play against Mauga, I don't think he is nearly as good as some people make him out to be. The problem with Mauga is that no other tank can fight him or the space he is holding, you HAVE to go after his teammates. And similairly, a Mauga gets very little value shooting a squishy, he HAS to shoot a tank. And that makes the game boring for everyone. I win almost every game against GM Mauga players by just hiding behind cover and waiting for him to commit, then use abilities to help my teammates or kill the enemy. I don't think it's fun for either team to play without a tank for most the game.

[@G-Realla]

I just want to add my two cents on limited swaps personally I think it’s bad because it leads to whoever swaps first is more likely to loose advantage if i have 3 swaps and they have 3 then whoever swaps 3 times first loses counter advantage like bogur says it’s very similar to the issue that happens with ult retention when swapping

[@tryingtochangemyways5074]

How about a swap limit 🤔