The Great Role Debate feat. Yeatle, Samito, Daniel Fenner & Spilo

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Timestamps
0:00 Introductions & Opening Thoughts
10:18 Support & The Recent Nerfs
50:15 Roadhog & The Need For Tank Ability Mitigation
1:10:30 Fundamental Format Issues?
1:19:10 OW's Balance Vision & The Death of OWL
1:36:55 The State of DPS & Role Passives
2:07:10 Respawn Timers
2:22:22 Concluding Thoughts

[@GroupUp]

This episode was recorded on 16th November 2023. Podcast links below! If you're enjoying this content, why let SVB know on his 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-role-debate Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6sRWutKTc0gnWuguo62Vpa Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/svbs-group-up/id1490256265

[@CZAR.6]

Killer lineup, Spilo especially is always fantastic

[@Taskforce28]

Spilo my goat

[@ianhur]

Bro thinks he's a coach

[@masterofthej9103]

I wish I could bear his children

[@itzpurple_queen9711]

It’s great having an unbiased mediator who doesn’t gravitate towards a specific role, huge advantage to a debate

[@rioriorio17]

He is the greatest goat of all time, Bro also thinks he’s a coach💀

[@torokil7065]

Spilo should be a regular on this podcast imo.

[@iaqh]

Yeah, he would have a great role in this podcast.

[@DylanDValentine]

Coach Spilo is freakin killin it. As a community we need to rally around this mans vision of a more balanced game.

[@coral250]

Nah spilo is hard stuck low masters and thinks hes a genuis because he knows what an off-angle is. Dont listen to anything this clown says

[@AetherMoose]

I can appreciate his desire for a completely balanced game but i actually disagree with a lot of his takes which is fine

[@whaloob]

@@AetherMoosehonestly curious as to what it is you disagree with, he’s one of the most agreeable people in the community and I’ve rarely heard anyone have disagreements with him

[@AetherMoose]

@@whaloob​​⁠i disagree with his thoughts on hogs rework not being a real rework. I think the changes do fundamentally change the way a roadhog player interacts in the frontline, & i also think hog feels a lot better to play. (I wasnt watching the screen so someone else might have said this) but I also disagree with the idea every hero needs to be viable at all times. I think its good for some heroes to be more niche or easy than others. I think its okay some heroes to be much more simple than others as long as the risk/reward is balanced out properly.

[@Pango1028]

Spilo has too big of brain for us gamers. Just nod your head and agree with him. He is literally 2 steps ahead of everyone.

[@ianhunt1866]

I wish I had a miniature Spilo to carry around in my pocket to guide my life decisions lol He is so articulate and presents his arguments so clearly. A great asset for the ow community. Another great podcast SVB 👍

[@charlestonjew7587]

I think they're focusing on short-term issues rather than looking at the big picture. Most of their arguments are on specific heroes/abilities rather than core problems with the game that have a much wider impact. Some of their suggestions like Zen's orb CD's make sense but every podcast is about this hero and that hero. Blizzard is just playing musical chairs with hero balance but none of them address any of the real issues with the game's design.

[@rioriorio17]

@@charlestonjew7587 that’s the exact opposite of what Spilo does but ok

[@charlestonjew7587]

@@rioriorio17 Is Spilo the only one in the podcast? All I hear for 2 and a half hours is they need to change 'this ability' and they need to rework 'that hero'. The only real "BIG MISTAKE" here is Overwatch 2. These discussions are just a big ball of nothing because Overwatch 2 is a big ball of nothing, just like OWL.

[@rioriorio17]

@@charlestonjew7587 obviously not, but you said they as in all of them responding to a post about Spilo being on the podcast

[@mars7540]

Man, everything Spilo says is just so articulate and it just makes sense. The guy never goes out of line on his takes, sure there are some that I disagree with but never to the point where it becomes like Salt's opinions 😂.

[@thedofflin]

Salt doesn't think through anything, his answer to every question is like he just woke up

[@therealzahyra]

Lol Salt is a bad example, he lives the life of an internet troll and his takes are always bs. Probably on purpose to keep people talking about him. Good strat tbf but makes his OW opinions irrelevant

[@Hthe]

I think these are the best types of podcasts having a main of each role then a 4th "flex" person it allows more of a discussion and each role can better see the struggles of the other.

[@PaktNisely]

Spilo and Sam make me happy

[@meeeeemaw]

I hope if pro overwatch fully revives they get Spilo to do casting/live analysis. Such a great mind for the game!

[@rioriorio17]

Not sure if he would be great at that. He’s really good at analyzing afterwards, but he’s not necessarily a caster per say. He’s still the greatest goat of all time

[@Mel_0-0]

Think we can all agree that when possible spilo needs to be in every single debate, bro is never a disappointment. Also i just wish for 1 sniper main to come on the cast be they kenzo or arrge or another really good sniper main, i just want to see some defense and counter arguments against all this one shot hate as a fellow widow/hanzo main that really enjoys not having to shoot 1000 bullets into someone to kill them

[@Ajoi14]

Deku was on the dps debate. She's a Widow main

[@nicholasbryant6122]

This has been my favorite group up podcasts ever! The constructive thinking was awesome! I hope the devs listen to this!

[@BS-rm2wv]

Really cool to see Daniel get some screentime, man has been slept on for years as a streamer

[@Vastspartan]

True

[@nivyan]

I don't know him, but he came across as not knowing what he's talking about. He brought up a couple of things I feel is WAY out there, but he had no reasons or arguments for it. Like saying Kiriko requiring LOS to tp would gut her and need a compensation. He just spits that out, but a few minutes later he also says there is no counterplay to kunai headshots. You can't both say Kiriko needs compensations for a nerf and say there is no counterplay to her main weapon. There are a few of these. Again, I don't know Daniel at all. But he came across as a support main that doesn't know much else.

[@BS-rm2wv]

@@nivyan He's been a Top 500 support for several years since OW1 lol Not sure why he can't say both - it would most certainly gut her current playstyle as a backline assassin

[@nivyan]

​@@BS-rm2wv I'm definitely not contesting his knowledge or skills. I'm contesting his opinions. The reason he can't say both, to me, is because changing los for TP doesn't change her numbers at all, but he himself admits her numbers are too high - but still wants a compensation if los is changed. According to his logic, if we make the los change, Kiriko should be compensated, effectively resulting in her one-shotting everyone. There's *obviously* a ton of different ways to change her - but that's besides the point. My own opinion on this is irrelevant - whether you agree that what he said is irrational or not doesn't matter. What matters is that he brought up points that he didn't argue for and sometimes were mutually exclusive. Without proper arguments, that comes off as ignorant or thinking with his feelings - which are both absolutely useless in any actual discussion. And hey, there is a very good chance that a lot of what he said had implications that I'm not aware of - these are top players, I'm certain there are elements they take for granted that we don't know about. Perhaps some of that was lost in translation, but that doesn't change the fact he left a weird impression on me.

[@aeloh6921]

You're forgetting that despite how annoying she can be Kiriko is one of the lowest winrate heroes in the game. Being frustrating doesn't mean she's actually OP. Something is OP when it wins games more than other things so she would absolutely need compensation buffs. She actually needs buffs right now to bring winrates in line with other characters but that simply will not happen because of the prevailing belief in the community that she's OP. It reminds me a bit of Hanzo, he's my personal worst character to play against and I absolutely hate him, but he's not OP. He doesn't have a winrate greater than 50%. Being overpowered is not the same as being annoying or frustrating.@@nivyan

[@starwarsboiy4260]

I love how the names always get messed up, it starts off messed up, and anytime someone leaves or changed their view it gets ruined. Please keep this happening it’s a feature at this point not a problem

[@psdjklgfuiob]

SAMS OUR MAN 6V6 LETS GO

[@x4tfxChallenger]

Immortality Field being switch to a “Mitigation Field” would be perfect.

[@youtuberobbedmeofmyname]

I would honestly be annoyed about having so many heroes with constant deployables to worry about. We already have Pylon + Torb turret which are absolute tanks in health and then we have 3 Sym turrets + Hog trap + Bob if you count him as a deployable. Having Immort/Negate come out every 8-10 seconds would be even more annoying than it already is.

[@Seriouspup]

Svb honestly bring the heat with these like weekly uploads

[@wolfbeard76]

25:53 SVB did the thing where you say "Ana" differently within the span of 1 second lmao

[@waddlez7192]

😂😂😂

[@SocialDesignFlaw]

I'm actually really glad Yeatle brought up Sojourn amidst the "Snipers are a problem" element, because at the Design level? She is what's known as a "Scope" archetype; a Hero capable of rapidly adjusting their perspective while preventing the enemy from responding. Sojourn can activate her entire kit almost as fast as Reinhardt can get one hammer swing across the screen. To provide a hero who has that level of responsiveness (regardless of skill input) such a high damage output effect with it's own damage amp mechanic? Really wish they would have listened to Spilo and co. back in beta/alpha. Yet another example of Design Escalation that makes me terrified of what is going to happen with the next DPS. Venture having a Prolonged Invulnerability that can't be targeted will mean there's now a full comp with back-to-back Invulnerability rotation (Kiri, Bap, and/or Lifeweaver + Zarya + Mei). Regardless of viability, that is going to be frustrating as fuck. If they decide Venture's Invul. also has some other AoE mechanic that can affect enemies? Blech. Really good episode with a lot of articulated points!

[@gsoma4022]

Thank you for this upload .. im over here watxhing the ow 2022 recap because i been hooked on this channel. Amazing word SVB

[@x100bullets]

always happy to see another group up

[@ErikBPG]

Man spilo is so great. He should be there every time

[@garrettwoods4940]

Interesting idea for lamp I came up with: drone hovers over bap and moves with him while providing immortality to those in radius except bap. He gets a bit of damage reduction, but now bap is the target for drone. This means if he wants to take sniper duels, he’s in the open or forced to hide around a corner while teammates peek. And in team fights it’s a target priority switch instead of being forced out

[@TheStupidGuyWithBlip]

That's a very interesting idea, making bap choose between peeking and doing damage or staying safe and saving teammates.

[@shioramenrabbit]

Really good lineup here. I also really loved that it felt like all of the cast in their own ways really had a more holistic approach. I get so tired about hearing about the problem with this, the nerf that, the delete this character. I just want to know how to make everything feel good, and it's nice to hear solutions that are positive rather than negative is so nice.

[@godminnette2]

I think Kiri tping through walls is a core part of her identity, but the range on it is completely insane.

[@cbaileychamp]

Thank god im seeing others mention this. Its the range that makes it slimey and broken.

[@Daveyjonesvi]

@@cbaileychampwithout the range, the tp isn’t that good. To get away you need to use it on someone far to get safe

[@verdant1029]

Balance > Identity

[@jamesburnett3594]

The range ain't the same as it was in season 1 & 2 when it was actually insane. There are problematic supports like Illari but yo come on she has a 47% winrate at all the ranks and sees barely any play in late OWL or World Cup. She ain't op and everyone is focusing on the wrong stuff. Not to mention her tp enables high mobility dive comps that desperately need more rep amid the slew of boring spam comps

[@jamesburnett3594]

Not to mention her tp is bugged and doesn't work in several scenarios

[@yamchacrater2913]

Love what they had cookin for immortality field ideas

[@AbbyOW2]

As always, good morning and thank you for all your efforts SVB, about to start this on my friday morning and so excited to go through it.

[@BeastmanRage88]

One day I hope you'll be on the panel abby you and spilo talking on the game would be a dream

[@AbbyOW2]

Aw thats very sweet of you to say, thanks for the support

[@cheeekeygames]

Huge respect for everyone being so considerate in their takes. Representing and commanding well deserved respect from the top, which is what we need more of ❤ Another banger SVB cheers for making all these podcast they're so awesome! ❤❤

[@midmoose]

thanks for doing these svb, they seem like a lot to put together and they’re such a great addition to this community :)

[@faraskhan2100]

I would love to see Spilo and Emongg together in one of these at some point, because most people might not know but emongg has a gigi brain when it comes to ow, and it would be great to see him and spilo talk about ow

[@duaneanthony2304]

Might be my favourite debate of the series so far, great work gamers 👏

[@Audacior]

Thank you Spilo for correcting Samito about kiriko, maybe she needs a fundamental change or whatever, but you can't just straight nerf her without buffing something else in her kit. The fact is her winrate is like 45% and a LOS nerf to her teleport (without compensation buffs) would absolutely make the hero unplayable.

[@Kanggaxx]

Samito is insanely biased. He admitted it like twice in just this podcast alone lol

[@opiates8777]

That’s more so on the support playerbase being crayon eaters

[@stompingthegods5886]

Not every character needs compensation buffs when their getting nerfed. Susu would still be broken and her ult is one of the best support ults in the game. A LOS nerf would not make her unplayable

[@fletcherkeel8903]

This is my favorite debate. I loved all four guests.

[@Pango1028]

This is a goated cast.

[@wildeskompositum9556]

Really great Podcast, liked this one!

[@amerhst1201]

Nah open queue is not the way

[@AD_Nelson]

Should have named that one segment "Fundamental Format Flaws" for that sweet triple F

[@averagebmestudent]

I've finally found a fellow fan of alliteration!

[@-NoNo.]

Cooldowns are less effective but they come up faster. See this is exactly what mercy players wanted for mercy. Mercy players wanted to keep the fun movement and didn’t care if damage boost or resurrect were deleted from the game for the most part but instead of targeting her problems (damage boost and resurrect) they gutted her movement which only made her feel awful to play and the problem with her massive with her play style were still present with the nerfed ga. That nerf also made the play style that people hate more prevalent. To add salt to injury, they nerfed damage boost anyways in subsequent patches…

[@endless_del]

one thing i havent seen people mention at all about respawn timers is that reducing them is an indirect nerf to rez. 10 seconds is an extremely long time in mid-fight overwatch, so whenever i play mercy, waiting until near the end of the soul timer is something i do often. might be a blessing in disguise for dealing with rez lol

[@Real_MisterSir]

Something I've wanted to test out with Immortality, is if it has a certain capacity limiter before it breaks - for example if any/all targets within its field take more than 500 combined damage, the lamp breaks. This way you can still burn it down even if it's outside your visible field of view, but you also have to actually deal a lot of damage, especially if it's on a single target enemy inside the lamp. Maybe there could be an adjustment relative to how many people are inside its range as it deploys - say it gains 200 extra damage mitigation per person inside it. This way, if Bap uses it on himself to peek a Widow, the Widow can land a headshot to break the lamp, and then a follow-up shot to damage Bap directly. But say there is someone else in its reach alongside Bap, then you have to deal 400 damage to anyone in its range to break it, aka a headshot + a body shot. This would add more nuance and counterplay even when lamp is in a position where it can't be destroyed directly. Also making it a damage reduction field instead of immortality, but as a buff you put it on a much lower cooldown. You could even make it so enemies within its field take increased damage, so you have more ways of making use of it - or maybe it could prevent cleanses/grips/enemy anti-cc abilities like Suzu, grip, etc. You could also do something similar with Pylon, where it heals up to a certain amount before it goes on a cooldown, so you can't just passively throw it and let it eat poke damage forever with no counterplay/consequence.

[@whelksome]

i know everyone says it but SVB is such a good moderator. this is one of my favorite podcasts now :)

[@superrdad3461]

best podcast host every my man! off to play the game and listen ♥

[@beingbag2606]

I didn't play original open queue but it feels like a super underrated mode in OW2 RN especially for my fellow tank mains. 1. Tanks have less health so the duels are way more reasonable and 2. Usually you aren't tanking alone which mean you have the freedom to leave the front line without your team falling over!

[@deadflesh1000]

issue was: you were always gambling to have a tank player on your team, diamond and below you had 4 DPS and 2 supports or a ball, it happened so often and people just forget about it

[@GetQuakedOn]

it's crazy how all of overwatch competitive / balance problems can be found and solved on a single podcast. I really hope they listen to these and take real action because every patch that comes out misses the mark by a lot and it ends up being disappointing. overwatch has so much potential for being one of the goats but things like this is holding the game back by so much.

[@dergr7283]

I hope you can get on one of these. I’d have loved to hear you takes on the idea of reworks and the tank debate.

[@GetQuakedOn]

naw i suck at articulating thoughts to words. ive watched every podcast so far and they've all hit the mark on issues consistently.@@dergr7283

[@user-cy6xl3vd3f]

He is here 👊🗿

[@TeaHauss]

The best part about these suggested changes are even if they don't fit for the current cast, some of these ideas would be really interesting for new heroes

[@RavageDionne]

Glad to see Spilo in here. His takes are always pretty nuanced and considerate to all parties.

[@praisedsquishy]

A 5 second grace period for point during ot gives the last player a chance to make a play. Those 2 seconds in cover can lead to ult, an opportunity to get a health pack, or reposition for support los. Respawns increased by 5 seconds during ot

[@CookieeeZzz__]

I REALLY ENJOY THESE PODCASTS

[@marcusbullock2753]

I would love if they had a random member who watches these streams have a personal take on the whole whatever discussion we are talking about. I think it’s also good to listen to a commoner among streamers as well to see the reall take of a public majority.

[@ketchupgalli6379]

yeatle my beloved

[@Hiroth86]

I'm so sick of being stuck in this loop of... Knowing what the problems are > talking about the problems > devs refusing to address the core issues and tweak a few numbers > us complaining that the problems are still there. It has been YEARS! We've gone 5v5 for this, we dropped PvE for this, they have all the time in the world, and they drop the ball every damn time.Maui and the "reworked" Roadhog are proof that they have no clue what the problems are or how to solve any of them. If I could give one message to the devs: Stfu until you figure out how one anti-nade ability doesn't dumpster a whole role into the garbage can.

[@ALongrunner]

It’s called Cleanse bro

[@karl_margs]

"Name labels are off" Classic SVB

[@10Neon]

I'd like to see a concept like "deferred damage" in the game. In the context of Immortality Field, it could convert all the damage you take to a DOT that doesn't tick down while in the field. So someone in the field won't die (preserving the core concept of the ability), but as soon as it ends, they are still experiencing an emergency unless healed out of it.

[@youtuberobbedmeofmyname]

Displaying negative health without damage numbers directly overhead would lead to confusion plus if you had a situation someone was negative 1 health and died it would lead to frustration that they could be saved but werent.

[@10Neon]

@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname Eh? It's not negative health, it's a positive dot. You'd indicate it like any other status effect.

[@Imbadatleague]

Lets Freakin Goooooooo. I just got to work and was hoping to have something to listen to

[@steel2572]

Random thought but what if anti nade didnt stop self healing only healing from other outside sources. Eg hog could still use breather, jq can still get health from wounds, maugas overdrive heal thing would still work. But their supports couldn't heal them. Because their survivability comes from self healing instead of a shield or matrix anti nade is so brutal for them. Anti isnt so bad for rein or dva because at least you can block it or if you get hit you still have a defensive tool.

[@Kanggaxx]

That's super confusing and weird

[@skarloeythomas5172]

Come on, did you not see the point that heroes with mitigation abilities are not as susceptible to anti nade, so it matters not that they don’t benefit from this guy’s proposed change.

[@skarloeythomas5172]

@Kanggaxx how is it confusing and weird? You pick tank, get hit with anti, healing stops, you use personal heal ability and see that’s the only thing that healed through it. Monkey brain make conclusion.

[@steel2572]

@@skarloeythomas5172 Yea I dont think its that confusing lol

[@toons4934]

Yea literally not confusing at all ? You must have a smooth brain

[@TinyLokiGaming]

For Immortality Field, id like something where it's changed to Immortality Drone, and you attach it to a character, next time they would take fatal damage, they go down to like %20 instead, perhaps on a zenyatta esk cooldown and attach mechanic

[@Quintonieum]

I think if they wanted to fix hog they could try adding a barrier on top of the trap to help his frontline presence. If people trigger the trap then the barrier is destroyed, but it puts them in kill range for hog.

[@CoconutYoyo]

One more idea for a test on the experimental card for Kiriko is trying to split the cleanse and the invulnerability into two parts. For example add the cleanse to the Teleport ability. And leave the invulnerability + heal on the suzu. In that way perhaps you have to think about if you want to reposition or rather save the TP for cleansing, but when you do cleanse you are also vulrenable as you have to tp into the action. Or can try other way around with cleanse on suzu and invulnerable duration on tp. At least there is some skill expression plus it takes away some of the frustration with ability on rather short cooldown compared to others.

[@jusapikachu5212]

Listened to this over on the pod side & loved the whole conversation. Everyone brings interesting perspectives & I love the back & forth idea bouncing. Would really love if we could get Alec Dawson & Gavin Winter on here to give arguments from the actual dev team side of things. The only point that I couldn’t disagree with more thoroughly is the return to open queue suggestion. I prefer 5v5 but I wouldn’t be against going back to 6v6. I think both bring a lot of pros & cons, while both need significantly more time to actually get into the full balancing act. I don’t think 6v6 got enough time & I don’t think 5v5 has got enough time. Don’t mind either. But open queue? I will absolutely riot if I have to return to that horrid design. As the person who always had to flex to what I probably didn’t want to play in that moment, I will be just as against it & obstinate as my teammates used to be about switching. Everybody else always got to play what they wanted, while I was always resigned into “okay I guess I’ll play this.” & I f**king refuse with my entire being to go back to playing like that. I think I got to play damage less than 25 times between 2017 & 2020. Not because I didn’t want to, but because if I did it would be a 5 Damage, 1 tank team comp. I got to Diamond hard flexing so it’s not like I was horrendous at it, I just hated being the whipping boy every match. I will legitimately have to stop playing if the game returned to that format. There are almost zero ways I quit playing Overwatch within the next couple years, even if we returned to zero content. But going back to open queue? I would almost certainly quit at this point after enjoying the game the most that I have since launch in the role queue era. Not trying to be whiny but there isn’t a fundamental change I would be more against than open queue.

[@deadflesh1000]

I couldn't agree more with you when talking about open queue

[@LeadLeft]

The Great Counters Debate is coming soon I hope 😃

[@tannim2227]

There is a solution for tanks and effect mitigation: Five tanks a passive where damage resistance also reduces the values of negative effects and the durations of stuns. For Hog, he can hit his TaB and get that 30% DR, well if he is anti-naded he now can get 30% if his heals in. For other tanks reduces damage which then gives them effect reduction. Counter play - damage them down so they don't have armor.

[@newspin2477]

Maybe instead of a placeable trap that has to be triggered, Pig Pen could be a special attachment that he could apply to his hook every x seconds (like hanzo sonic arrrow but on the hook), and then instead hooking someone the pig pen's slow/DoT applied on impact to break up clumped enemies... also maybe it'd deploy even if it hits a shield or once it hits max range for the hook.

[@youtuberobbedmeofmyname]

It would do better as a short range AOE behaving like Sombra's Virus than a deployable tbh.

[@cjk2590]

oh this is gonna be a good one and Sam is back wow cant wait

[@JeromePhiffer]

One discussion around support immortality abilities/Ana nade that I would like to see is changing them to reduction skills or other affects. What I mean by this is immo field reduces damage, but doesn't eliminate the possibility of death. A Dva bomb shouldn't go off on top of your head and you walk away with 50hp. Ana nade instead of blocking all healing maybe reduces healing by a significant amount, or as mentioned maybe just shorter duration on tanks if you want to keep that. Suzu should just be a cleanse that removes status effects. It doesn't need to make you invulnerable too. Lifegrip you can still be hit while being pulled. A 5HP target getting yanked out of a bad situation shouldn't have invulnerability as well. The skill should be about pre-emptively removing someone from a bad situation. Also life grip movement is so quick that I think there is a low chance the target gets killed during it anyway, but the option for counter play should be there. Years ago Zen's ult was deemed bad because it wasn't fun to play against a situation where no one in it could die, but now we have multiple abilities that can do what his ult no longer can do. I would just ask we apply that same logic to normal abilities. You can make them impactful without forcing a situation where you can't counter play them. Also luring them out isn't counter play that is adding hurdles, and in most matches there is enough hurdles where your windows of opportunity are only because a teammate tried to ult first. Edit: Just unpaused the video and Spilo mentioned the damage reduction LOL

[@chargedelementscr]

best lineup yet, get them back again please!!!

[@ceroluthor]

My thoughts on Ana nade should be it's a heal absorb that lasts for 3 seconds or until X amount is healed (say 150hp). This gives counterplay and still gives windows to burst the target down

[@boboyobo12]

47:53 Rather than zen heal decay, you can reframe that. just say for the first 2 seconds on a hero there's a burst of healing, or maybe even just on switch, encouraging you to flop it around your team for "max heals" or just one person if a pocket is needed.

[@i.r.weasel7042]

great pod as usual. My take on the respawn/regroup mechanics is: It shouldn't be too hard for people to understand that they should regroup with their team, I learned that in OW1 beta (and yet we still see people trickle in 1v5 all these years later). It took a little longer to understand that prolonging my inevitable death would be detrimental; press the issue and just die with your team, jump off the map if you can to deny ult charge (escape if you can, but it can be risky to try). You also want to stagger the enemy's deaths, which people STILL fail to understand. Now, at least in QP, the system is hand holding respawns because too many players lack awareness/sense.

[@aussiecossie5816]

You guys are having a great discussion on how to balance the game for the top players.

[@20ecupirate13]

If Roadhog uses 2 consecutive seconds of Take a Breather, he cleanses negative effects. Give Hog counter play but make him use a big resource to do it. Edit: Spelling

[@skarloeythomas5172]

That’s another reallly good idea. Now it’s a resource, I’ve seen a lot of people give ideas that introduce survival decision making which is an interesting counterpoint to how he had damage range decision making before.

[@koto2211]

Yeah but now the problem switches from Hog to Mauga and then to whatever new tank that isn't a shield tank/have a mitigation ability like defense matrix

[@tryingtochangemyways5074]

225 is good for zen because he gets to last a tad bit longer when i feed on him with sombra..He can occasionally survive the assassination attempt now..

[@barley9864]

1:10:30 Makes me wonder what an OW Classic format would look like with the current balance.

[@sakitoshi]

what if pylon had to be charged? what i mean is, let's say pylon can heal up to 400hp total and after that it does nothing until illari goes and charges it with her healing beam and if it gets destroyed (either by illari or the enemy) it slowly recharges like rein shield. that way it would not have infinite uptime. deployment cooldown obviously would need to go down, but it wouldn't matter since it will need to be recharged to function.

[@seriodenoyarohi7403]

What would you think if Tanks were affected by CC for less time? Like with Ana's Sleep Dart, just for every CC. (For Sleep, for Nade; for Stuns for Slows; for Hack for Trap, etc. pp.) Tanks in OW2 are usually the easiest Hero to land you CC on from a mechanical aspect as well as usually the most high-value target. (Ultimates should maybe be exempt from this, idk.)

[@Starwolfe64]

PRAISE THE PODCAST

[@huntish3760]

I love when Spilo shows up!

[@ronnythetrooper]

6:50 when he said he doesn't think Illari shouldn't do 75 a bodyshot is so spot on. Especially when you look at someone like Cass. He does 70 and has a shorter falloff range than Illari (30-50m vs 25-35m). Kind of crazy to think a support does Cass's job better than Cass lol

[@CoconutYoyo]

Some ideas I would like tested on experimental. Mercy: Test damage boost on a resource meter. Maybe same concept as moira so that it auto refills over set time or increase fills with healing? Not sure if it would make a difference but at least it gives some added skill and devs can tweak numbers on up time of damage boost vs heal? Kiriko: On cleanse test if she just did one of the two current effects (either makes invulnerable or it cleanses) or test a change where she has to choose between them. Either she uses the cleanse or she uses the invulnerable. Alternatively they could just test adding a base percentage damage reduction rather than full invulnerability. Also change damage amount or speed of throwing again to mitigate some of the instant damage potential she has and add some falloff to damage amount at range? Probably easier to lower the overall damage. Tanks: Would like to see more mobility options built into their OW2 kits. Like test giving Hog some mobility when he uses his take a breather. Test Reinheart with 2x charges instead of his 2 firestrikes. Like swap them around so that he can get around the map easier / he can go in and go out of fights. Slow moving tanks just feel like cc and damage sponges in OW2. That is why orisa can have a lot of success at least in lower ranks as she provides mobility and damage mitigation along with her offense potential. All tanks need to be able to close the gap and chase down target not stand around getting shot at which is even worse for tanks that dont have shields or damage mitigation such as hog...

[@CoconutYoyo]

Oh and for characters like Bastion which is high potential burst damage they should test having high damage for shorter periods more frequently rather than currently where there is a long up and down time. It will allow the character to be more dynamic as well as give more counterplay opportunities. Worth a test in the experimental card.

[@harrisj1616]

Blizzard should try making anti-nade be a max health debuff. So if you're a tank for example, your max health might be 600 HP. You take damage and now you're at 375 HP, then get hit with the enemy Ana nade. Now your max health would be locked at 375, so any more damage you take can still be healed, but only up to 375 until the effect wears off. So it would still be a very strong support status effect ability, but not an auto death sentence.

[@hlepme7861]

On esperanca if you win the 1st fight, u r almost guaranteed to win the 2nd because u get control of the oppressive bridge high ground and better ult charge. So just from that u get the bot capped and get it to the corner. The defensive team are forced to play the other side of the corner to stop u making progress. However, the winning team doesnt have to take a fight. They can just put their tank on point, leave a hitscan and ana sitting on the bridge and the other 2 just playing for map control. Because of this, this fight often lasts over 2 minutes in OWL, so the winning team has successfully stalled out a lot of the time bank. Because they capped, even if they lose they can amp speed out of spawn from forward spawns and get to the bridge high ground on their side before the losing team can get any significant push on the bot. Also, the winning team is likely to have at least lost and traded for 2 people who will therefore be staggered for the losing team and get back late. So only let's say 3 people will be pushing the bot and will have to run away when the 5 players on the winning team get back faster with the closer spawns. But even in the best case scenario for the losing team where they won the fight at the corner without losing anyone, the winning team still gets to the bridge first. Because they have the high ground, the winning team is more likely to win this fight. However, even if they lose they can still amp speed from spawn and get to the corner before the losing team caps. This fight is again very difficult for either side to win but keep in mind that the winning team (now defending the corner) have an advantage because the stopped the losing team (now attacking the corner) from getting close respawns by capping. As a result, the winning team will slowly win due to faster respawns and again stall a very long time. At this point there is only about 4-3 minutes left probably. After winning the fight at the corner the winning team will push the cart past the losing team sided bridge and will again be able to just sit on the oppressive high ground and have an insane advantage. If they win the fight the game is 99% over as they get it past the corner and the losing team will have to win at least 4 fights in a row in overtime without losing anyone. Even if the winning team loses they will stall out for a long time likely with trades so the losing team wont be able to push the bot far before waiting for respawns to group. At this point they have to win probably 3 fights with a minute left without losing anyone important a single time, so almost impossible. The point is not only are push maps terrible, but are now the most important map type to consider when changing respawn time. The faster the winning team respawns, the more fights the losing team has to take to recover the distance, and the more impossible it becomes

[@mcgalister3705]

An idea I had with Illari's heal pylon is to make it so that the pylon has a resource that is recharged by Illari dealing damage or healing with her beam. Maybe it could have a slow recharge on its own. This way, the pylon doesn't just sit there and get value forever. It relies on Illari getting value in order to continue pumping out heals. Edit: Another idea is to just have Illari directly recharge the pylon by shooting it with her beam.

[@floofflez1134]

The direction amd the flow of the conversation in SVB's podcast is so different from guy's at PlatChat. While I love both, it's like night and day lmao

[@Maxarcc]

I main Ana, Kiriko and Zen and, weirdly enough, my two favourite balance patches involved nerfs to two of these characters. I legitimately think the discord orb nerf is the best balance change so far, because it fixed a fundamental issue with his play style. Discord botting in the backline was never fun, and what they buffed to balance things out actually made Zen's most engaging play style even better: which is finding cheeky angles. Secondly there was the Kiriko healing and ultcharge nerf in the beginning. A pretty huge nerf, yet it changed her from a heal bot to an off-angler over night. Again: way more fun and engaging. It leads me to believe that passive value and hard counters are indeed the problem.

[@exasperrating9479]

I don't think it'd be balanced, but if experimental comes back I'd love to see them try making it so pylon does nothing on it's own, but if illari shoots it with her heal beam it can be a sort of beam-splitter, like a force multiplier of her active heal, rather than a passive heal, providing it to multiple targets but forcing her aim away from enemies, hopeflly making her more of a "thinking" character

[@T3hn00bz0r]

It really hurts that Blizzard can't just leverage these shows to help balance their game. There is so much value in listening to these conversations and I really think they need to learn what actually makes their game fun.

[@ironsideRSA]

I think the idea of baps lamp if the target takes damage a certain percentage should go to the lamp really great idea

[@akai_shuichi_x]

I feel like the balance philosophy around competitive play contradicts itself sometimes. I feel like every hero having a high skill curve is better, since every hero's curve can still look different. (E.g. some have more complex abilities focused on gamesense of when to use them, and some are simpler with their curve coming from mechanical execution).

[@virtual_pete]

I haven't quite finished the podcast yet but I want to write down my thoughts about the point re: "niche" characters and whether we should change them or not. In general I agree that it's okay, maybe even good to have characters that have strong appeal to some and none to others. I agree that they shouldn't be "meta" as SVB put it, in that they should be playable but not dominant. However, in 5v5 role lock with 1 tank, the discussion changes regarding heroes in the tank role in my opinion. In the scenario where your team has a Moira one trick, you always have a second healer that can pick up the slack on Moira's lack of utility. On DPS, if you have a Junkrat one trick your other DPS can go a hitscan and cover the weakness that Junkrat has. This simply isn't true for the tank role anymore, so when Roadhog has an issue like this it is not okay to leave it. He has to be viable, he has to be strong enough to compete by himself. Tanks have to be generalized and homogenized to some degree in this format. Otherwise you have an INCREDIBLY frustrating game where BOTH teams are playing around a singular player rather than just the one role buddy covering for them.

[@lukeeich555]

when I get close to the end I get so sad 😅 amazing podcast especially love Sam and spilo.

[@borisvandepoel2703]

I feel like the lower ranks would really suffer if they would implement open queue at least when it comes to quality of life.. in these ranks people refuse to swap to a support

[@beermarket9971]

I'm with Samito on this, Open Queue has been a blast and role queue is dead to me.

[@KingOfNebbishes]

Honestly, I think each role is pretty well balanced -against their role. The problem is that too many support abilities don't require good decision making. Antinade and sleep are problematic for tanks solely because the Ana doesn't need to hold them against flankers. Why? Because flankers are unpopular due to risk/effort/reward values being out of whack. It costs a Bap zero thought about when to use a Lamp, Illari only needs to take very basic precautions on where she puts pylon for eternal value, Ana doesn't have to hold nade or sleep in poke/deathball situations, etc. etc. Perhaps Spilo has the right idea that all tanks need ability mitigation, but supports also need risk for the easy value. Maybe reduce nade's AoE to 2m, make it an actual skill shot instead of a "I throw it in an area slightly smaller than EMP and prevent all healing." Maybe Illari pylon needs a feedback effect so she takes damage when it's destroyed. Maybe Lamp needs to be a damage reduction window instead of a bubble so it can be flanked. HP, as Blizzard has said, is the biggest mover of winrates, so I hate when it's the tool they keep reaching for. As far as counterplay goes, the reason supports feel best to play is because there's few hard counters against supports. Conversely, tanks feel terrible because too many of them just get shut down by swaps. Blizzard should focus on making bad tanks feel better to play. Lastly, 5v5 isn't the problem. The problem is that the game is only two years into 5v5 development. They only decided on the switch in 2021. It's still in beta. It'll be another year in development before it's reasonably settled and old heroes with outdated kits get reworked fully.

[@KilomiRayven]

As a thought, could you change the tank interaction with Anna nade to be a partial anti (inspo from honkai star rail) where you are anti at 1/2 or ever 3/4 hp so if your supports do turn and pump into the tank they can save them, but it would require much more attendance and resources in general as the tank would be set at 1/2 or 3/4 hp for the nade duration? And as a second point in the role-lock debate, what if you had 3 locked roles in tank, dps, and support but then make 2 flex roles. One can choose either a tank or a dps and the other one is dps and support. It wouldn't be that hard to do que times either as you could realistically que for 3 roles at once.

[@mcgalister3705]

Make Baptiste's lamp absorb a percent of mitigated damage like Samito said. I have thought of this before as a Baptiste player. It would allow people to focus fire an immortal player in order to burn through a lamp that is inaccessible to the team. This way lamp can be balanced by adjusting the HP of lamp, the percent of damage transferred, and its cooldown. The way it is now will always have a line-of-sight problem until the devs either rework the ability or implement this change.

[@tymunster]

Also fun fact: Bastion in turret has an effective health over 400 :)

[@MetalBuffalos]

The right ana change seems so obvious to me, reduce the anti duration to 2s or even 1.5 and bring the cd back to 10. Illari should be 70 body shots and then either make the pylon duration based or increase the size so it juts out more often and is able to be shot. Kiri is fine susu is such a long cd that theres plenty of counter play. Dps just needs a passive buff

[@pingufan1239]

I think it’s fine that Hog is not team oriented, although if I had to make him team oriented, give him some bodyguard ability or maybe passive, and decrease his hook cooldown but have it reel enemies in less so he can’t one shot them

[@chrisgreen2824]

I think they could have changed discord to work a bit like Genji's dash resets. Discord has a set cooldown (lets say 8 seconds, but this could always be changed for balance) and has an active duration on a target of say 4 seconds. It can no longer be cleansed by breaking line of sight, but other cleanses like bubble/suzu still work. If a target dies while actively discorded, the cooldown for Zen resets, freeing him to discord something else instantly. This would reward smart application with discord and coordinated play with teammates that quickly follow-up on the discorded targets during the 4 second window of opportunity, while also removing the still somewhat present issue of certain tanks not really having the opportunity to back up out of LOS to cleanse themselves once they've been discorded. Downsides include: Rapid Discord achievement just got harder :(

[@jaredcz]

I think they need to nerf the other supports to put zen more in line. He is supposed to be the glass cannon of the game but is out damaged/utilitied by Kiri, Bap, Ana and Illari.

[@crush3304]

Dream rework for ball is to replace shields with fortify without dr. This way less counter by cc lock but easier to kill for everyone else. Would also be nice to give him doom's passive, very small amount of skill based sustain.

[@bettyko1044]

Yay Spilo! He is great. Thanks for another great podcast, SVB.

[@kristincatuogno9450]

As far as the quickplay group spawns go I think if they do want to add it to comp it should be something only enabled in plat and below. It is a skill that you need to learn but having it force low elo players to group will help them learn the skill better when it is not enabled in diamond and above. It won't effect high tier play but the games will feel better in low elo.