Why & How I Would Rework Mauga

[@nrshocks6931]

I like how his default voice line is ironically "its never boring around me"

[@Selective5832]

You really thought this through. Would love to see Mauga pulled and reworked honestly. In the current state, he feels like a hero that should have been part of a seasonal event. In my games so far, he’s largely used as a desperation pick and rarely right off the bat. That’s a good thing, but it can be frustrating when the team can’t adjust quick enough and you take the L because of it. Love the videos. Thank you!

[@aSuperPi.]

He really does feel like a hero that’s only for casual modes

[@Casual314]

Thanks I'm glad you appreciate the ideas. I have a feeling that when/if Mauga gets nerfed he's going to fall very significantly and become a niche pick that you only pull out in specific scenarios. In my opinion it's the high stats that allows him to outplay his counters right now, but once he's weaker he will feel like a lot of the other brawl tanks that get countered too easily.

[@Selective5832]

@@Casual314 Totally agree. Surprised he released this way with the preview weekend plus a few rounds of adjustments, but I’m confident the team will make it right. Do you have Twitter? I link your vids from time to time and would love to tag you in them.

[@alanolex3962]

Mauga is infinitely more fun when you scream "WHAT'S GOOD?" as you charge into the enemy backline.

[@azura8675]

I think there’s a lot of good ideas in this video. A slight critique would be that if cardiac overdrive is on a resource, while having two guns, it makes the hero the only one who have three toggle-able resources that can be activated and managed at the same time. This can be very confusing and hard to use on a normal key bind on pc(not sure about console). There is a reason the default for DM and take a breather are on right klick because your one hand is constantly pressing down arrow keys for movement and the two mouse buttons control the easily toggle-able ability on a standard key bind. Surely there are work arounds for this but I think it makes the hero unnecessarily clunky to use for average players(kind of like release lifeweaver key binds). If you add the overheat meter on top of that, it will make the hero resources feel even more overwhelming and chaotic. A quick fix is maybe make it have like 3 charges like brig pack. I think the change idea on the guns are fun but maybe too complicated to understand. I would start with a simpler change where you up the gun damage, but give harsher damage falloff when firing both guns. This makes other tanks still afraid of manga, but have more room to work around him, while the higher damage makes the decision making for manga more nuanced. Maybe you only shoot tank when they are within 10 meters. So you constantly go for positions and think about who to shoot.

[@Casual314]

That's a good point, it would be a bit like how Zarya bubbles work, and would definitely make the hero less clunky compared to a resource meter.

[@strangejune]

It could be like the Ball transformation button, except it's on a resource and turns off when empty. Maybe a little clunky, but it's better than what we have imo.

[@alexcat6685]

Could separate your paragraphs? it makes the words become cluttered making it harder to read section by section. As i'm gonna show you now with this its easier to remember each point without having to pull out a Magnifying glass.

[@azura8675]

@@alexcat6685 Sure. I just did it.

[@tickledeggz]

Anything that needs nore than 3 buttons is a nghtmare on console, also any character that swaps gun or has the option to destroy theor own turret (destroy is mapped by default to the left stick)

[@nexxanor-1059]

In a game like overwatch 2, the fact that mauga is the only character I’ve seen that actually requires the entire team to counter him just to have a chance at competing with him is crazy

[@syvulpie]

"We want Mauga! We want Mauga!" to "We don't want Mauga! we don't want Mauga!"

[@robertchitty3603]

I love the rework ideas, I really feel like he's going to be broken or useless unless they do something completely different. I'm not really sure how they thought he was good in his current state, but this was imo the first hero that has felt truly "Pay to win" and it has me really hoping they work towards getting heros off the monetization path.

[@Casual314]

Yeah on the one hand, the game is free to play, and I want Blizzard to be able to get funds, but on the other hand the way the hero unlocks work right now feels a bit excessive.

[@robertchitty3603]

@@Casual314 I think most people understand that the company needs to monetize somehow, I just hope it can be done it a way that's more symbiotic for all parties. It's kind of funny that both games have been "late entries" so to speak in their respective generations of game monetization... But considering the things that were spoken about on the recent Group Up podcast I'm happy to hear that they're open to changes.

[@jayjaygolden5123]

well, 4 months later, they did!

[@stubz6077]

An idea for a rework for cardiac overdrive: Maybe the ability can be split into two, a different effect for each of mauga’s hearts. I don’t know what effects they would individually provide but it would certainly offer more choice for the player. and it could be thought of as a resource where perhaps you can choose to sustain yourself by activating one heart at a time, perhaps one heart offers the increased lifesteal and the other heart offers a different benefit. However if you want to risk a longer cooldown you could activate both hearts at once for the big play-making buffs… Just thought of this on a whim so dont bully me but i think it sounds more decisive and adds some versatility to his kit as opposed to “press E and shoot them really hard”

[@supersourg2922]

Since his current e gives both healing and dmg reduction, maybe split them up so one heart gives healing and one gives reduction? Would make him more capable of supporting his team while also reducing the power of each e cast.

[@musicxxa6678]

That's cool idea. When you press the button, it can show the options like Moira orbs you press m1 or m2.

[@PuppetSquid]

ok this is dumb but; chaingun overheal changed to function like brigs passive and linked to right gun only. right click; boosts Healing recieved (including self overheal) and DR left click; boosts movement, cooldown and attack speed(mini kiriko ult) Whichever you pick, lasts 5 seconds and effects are shared within 10m. When the ability ends you get debuffed with the same effects for 2 seconds (speed up cardiac> slowdown debuff)- this is not inflicted on allies.

[@LovingRonin]

I think you've nailed the idea for the gun and i think it's the right move to shuffle his existing talents around rather than add new ones to avoid bloating his kit.

[@cameronschuler5083]

Great video highlight the issues, giving ideas, and also pointing out what he does amazing. Mauga in the metal ranks goes from one end to the other end so quickly, never know if he works or not. There’s an Ana at the start of half of the games, so I almost always have a friend play Kiriko imagining there should be Ana. I do love how he’s able to pressure out anyone flying though, that’s feeling from tanks that I don’t personally feel, often thinking I’m helpless against that echo/pharah when I’m rein.

[@cameronschuler5083]

Also in that same way I’ve found out that I’m really only shut out by a few characters, Rein, Sigma, Zarya, Ana, and sometimes zen when also paired with a high dps output

[@damianateiro]

Absolutely true it is beastly as in quickplay or low ranks the difference in level every game with mauga.

[@Casual314]

Yeah I really like that we finally have a tank that can poke reliably from range. I would say the all or nothing feeling with Mauga is felt even in low GM games. When the enemy team doesn't have Ana, or if your team has Kiriko, Mauga just feels twice as strong.

[@tristangarrett74]

I think you got a lot of things right here. As a tank main, I've found Mauga to have a lot of great ideas. As you mention, the charge and cage fight are fun mechanics that I think definitely need tweaking, but don't need any major overhauls. my view on the guns is that they're actually my favorite part of the kit, and I would be hesitant to see changes on them. To me, it's really the only tank weapon that feels almost only reliant on mechanics. i agree that the shoot left then shoot right flowchart is obvious and a bit boring, but I find the most fun in learning how to maximize the wind ups on the guns, managing ammo, learning the ranges you can or can't shoot both guns at, and simply the joy of finding a tank hero that can not only find great success (even at range) by having great aim, but you are actually rewarded for continuing to have great aim. The problem for me, is that all of the depth is lost on the hero because why would you shoot anything but the tank. If anything did change, it would be cool if the guns still had the same effects they have but they ramp up over time. Like shooting someone with your left gun for longer slowly adds more fire damage and keeps the effect on for longer, and once someone is on fire, the right gun still crits, but starts at a much lower amount then ramps up the damage as hit your shots on the same target. The effects would be localized per enemy, and wear off after a short time, so that if the fire goes out, you'd have to shoot both guns again to get back to high levels of crit. All of this would reset upon reload. I think that could be interesting because it forces you to use each magazine to its fullest, and the health pool of the character you are fighting, the amount of healing they receive, and how much ammo resource you are willing to spend on a hero would effect how much of each gun you shoot at range. Lots of numbers would be changed for this to keep it balances, such as firing one gun being buffed and firing both guns being nerfed (which I think needs to happen spread wise anyway). Cardiac overdrive sucks. You didn't say anything about it I don't agree with here's some ideas (these ideas are separate. Could be used in combination but these are different disconnected ideas): Self healing during your lifesteal comes from damage your teammates do, not yourself (bad idea) Life steal is gained based on percentage of damage done to enemy health pool. (Example: You receive one healing per 1% of damage. Doing 100 damage to a 200 health target grants you 50 health, but doing 100 to a 500 health only grants you 20) Gain extra health on eliminations during cardiac overdrive You life steal based on healing your enemies are doing to each other (Example: If an ana nades herself in range of you it heals her and you as well)

[@musicxxa6678]

Crit ramp up not a good idea. His damage is already low. He relies on those crits and there are plenty time to avoid those crits when you set people on fire.

[@squitz7056]

really good video. i love that you dont just say "this is a problem" but also try to give solutions for the problem that seem well thought out. i think you be gaining a lot more popularity in the ow community soon.

[@technounionrepresentative4274]

Mauga feels like an ov1 character to be honest

[@icehead0123]

I think a fun idea is change up the guns' ammo pools. In the spawn room hero menu, he has another menu next to the skin menu. This menu would have different ammo belts like, incendiary, piercing, anti armour, and life steal for some examples. In the spawn room, players pick an ammo belt. Each belt would also change the E ability and the damage numbers. This could make his play a little more expressive.

[@Casual314]

Although fun and interesting, I think something like this veers a bit too far from what Overwatch's fundamental design. With the design of being able to choose different kinds of ammo at spawn, I have a feeling there will only be one viable choice, and 99% of the time it'll be the same ammo type defeating the purpose of the decision.

[@ratchetst3v38]

On the topic of long cooldown auto-win abilities, (I know this has been brought up a ton), but as an Ana main, I'm sad what she's become. Nade & Sleep were waaaaay harder to use in 6v6 (especially if the 2nd tank was Dva or Sigma constantly marking you). The "solution" the devs have done are make tanks less vulnerable to sleep, but they're forgetting that all 5 of the team are easier to hit with both abilities and outside of dive mirrors, you don't have the decision making of "do I save my abilities for an engage or use them defensively." It's obviously a long work in progress adjusting everyone to 5v5, but it brings back negative OW1 memories of "we don't know what to do and we'll leave it this way for eons, hope the experience isn't too bad!"

[@Swordkiller55623]

I'm so glad that other support mains noticed this. I was a Lucio zarya main in ow1, zarya feels completely different now to the point where I don't like playing her since I played off tank not main tank and now she's forced into main tank. Lucio just feels brutally bad now with how insane support abilities are getting now. You have nade, suzu, life grip, etc. all being huge fight changing and Lucio just feels meh in comparison now

[@Casual314]

Yeah I agree, even though Ana is undoubtedly very strong, her gameplay is heading in the direction of just being more lame which is bad for everybody. The band-aid fix for nade at the moment is just to make the cooldown longer, which still doesn't fix it for those that get naded, and just makes Ana less fun to play since you're just sitting around waiting for longer. Ana is probably one of the biggest "pain points" in the transition to 5v5.

[@Swordkiller55623]

@@Casual314 I noticed a LOT of support heroes got that kind of basic "just make CD of the big ability a bit longer. Kiriko's Suzu, Ana Nade and I think her sleep, etc. Is it just me?

[@jamescrawford2547]

I play tank mostly but main Ana on support. The change to 5v5 with one much more powerful tank means that taking out the tank is basically fight winning which of course makes throwing nade on the tank as often as you can extremely strong and also not very fun (for the tank, but also removes decision making from the ana player). I really wish they’d just go back to 6v6. Make off tank it’s own role or just make it so you can’t pick two shield characters.

[@storm___]

Well be prepared to never be allowed to play ana again because of mobility creep and her nade most likely being nerfed to the point of uselessness because of serial complainers. Her nade is easily countered by kiri and bap and they both are way better than her in every way. Ana is fun to play but she wont be when she isnt allowed to have any impact at all. Her cooldowns are all she has

[@rotary2021]

I wonder what would happen if the cardiac overdrive was a resource toggle with a hefty startup animation, but sent out a close-range healing burst on elimination instead of sharing its abilities with the team?

[@mr.g1672]

Long cooldown, auto-win button is the perfect way to describe overdrive, and i believe there should be NONE of those is OW (we already have enough problems with Ana's nade, suzu and immortality field). I think it would be interesting to make Mauga a hybrid poke/rush tank just like Rammatra, and give him a "form switch" button too, though rather than switching bodies he switches guns and it would have a shorter cooldown, allowing him to go from one playstyle to the other at any moment. One gun could be a mid-long range projectile guns with little fall off (think torb's primary or mei's secondary fire but with adjusted dmg obviously) and the other pair of guns could remain as a pair of chain guns. I think this would make him more fun as you would have more options than just shoot the enemy tank, you can poke the enemy tank from further away and also pressure the backline with more easy and when you get a pick or see they waste some resource THEN you can switch to close range and run them over. Though honestly, aside from a gun switch, i dunno what we could replace his overdrive with, maybe he could keep it in his short range form and have something else in his poke form? Not sure

[@damianateiro]

It is not autowin, you can easily overcome the healing you receive, suzu and antiheal are autowin.

[@Casual314]

I think Overdrive is the trickiest part of his kit to make interesting as it makes or breaks Mauga as a viable tank. In it's current form it necessitates some kind of high DPS mode, which is why in my opinion it's poorly designed. Either he will be unkillable while doing tons of damage, or he will be fragile dealing very little damage.

[@rogue4340]

Whoever approved the current Mauga design to be deployed in a competitive game needs to be fired

[@tickledeggz]

They'll get pronoted, i've seen enough of the volcano skin around to see that hes sold a lot of the 35 pound super premium +20 teir battle pass this season.

[@yoyocherio]

They obviously won’t do it but I wish they just removed him, he doesn’t add anything good to the game in my opinion

[@Calamity4]

I think he can add an interesting playstyle but his power is placed in terrible places. His entire playstyle is being dependent on lifesteal and his overpowered 12 second cooldown cardiac overdrive which gives him and his team 30% damage reduction and 70% life steal. His entire thing was that using both miniguns had fire rate drawbacks, but they removed those and have failed to add fire rate incentives for only using 1. Generally I somewhat agree though, he should have something more than what he has now, as he is simply too point and click and press a couple buttons playstyle. His emphasis on lifesteal and limited abilities deemphasizes team play and positioning, leaving him unsatisfying and generally boring.

[@zachszerbiak8094]

He allows the average tank to kill backliner support characters like mercy without leaving the Frontline of their team.

[@shoya420]

"He doesn't add anything good to the game" Bastion: Exists Moira: Wtf is utility Mei: Cheese flavored cheese

[@vlobdam]

​@@zachszerbiak8094 so, sigma? cuz rn mauga entire point is to shoot tank

[@ewgrosslmao]

They will never remove characters, iwas gonna say have you learned nothing but idk how long you've been playing.

[@JoshSaysStuff]

I think a similarly simple hero who is more rewarding to play is Mercy. Yes, her abilities are very simple and straightforward; but her skill expression comes in the form of analyzing the state of the game and using her excellent movement to optimize your heal/damage boost time. With Mauga, I feel like there isn’t much for me to do aside from what you’ve mentioned here. But when I play Mercy and survive by the skin of my teeth, using my knowledge of her movement to evade enemy fire and to close the distance between myself and my allies to save them at the last second? It feels so rewarding!

[@Toast_Sandwich]

I really feel like more could be done to make the chainguns feel like different weapons, instead of something to use in tandem. "Gunny" and "Cha-Cha" are a team, sure, but they've also got unique personalities. I like the idea of the incendiary chaingun being the one to deal crits to burning enemies, but I think that if that were the case, they should increase the number of bullets required to light them on fire. As for the other one, I think it would be interesting if the volatile chaingun just did more base damage, but not more damage than the incendiary chaingun's crit damage. I feel like that could create an interesting strategy of, If the enemy is retreating, I should use the volatile chaingun for maximum damage, but if the enemy is staying in my line of sight, I should use the incendiary chaingun for maximum damage after I light them on fire. And then, of course, at point-blank range, the chainguns become painguns. I feel like Overrun is in a good place. If Cardiac Overdrive were on a resource you could toggle, could it be a good idea to have higher healing from it the more resource you have of it? That way, you could, in theory, always have a small amount of healing, or save it for moments of receiving higher damage from the enemy. I think Cage Fight is alright where it is, but I wouldn't be opposed to changing how it affects movement abilities.

[@ichbuttermirdenlachs]

great video as always, casual, really well structured and amazingly narrated! i always felt that his gameplay is very 1 dimensional; for him, his team and the opposing team, and your take on the little variance on his kit at 5:50 due to his up&down time on CO explained that feeling of mine pretty good. some poeple say ramattra has an up and down aswell with his nemesis form, but even in normal form he has so much more depth with shield and the combination of vortex with lining up headshots. your sugestion to enable movement abilities in his ult 11:10 is also something i thought about how annoying it is to not be able to use anything in such a restricting ultimate. i like your proposed changes, especially with the 2 guns to give his kit more nuance. with the CO i feel like the healing per second and the time it's active should be much lower than what you suggested, since with CO on a resource meter the self healing on range would be too strong with toggling CO and shooting 5 bullets and hiding again i feel like (but tweaking numbers is down to blizzards testing anyway). other than that as i said really nice proposals, hopefully blizz will do this kind of approach to balance him instead of plain number tweaking. with the current uproar in the community they will most definitely take a look at balancing him, but i'm not sure if they have the courage to admit the bad design and do a character rework just after release.

[@ecclecticsayonce5131]

I think we all just need to accept 6v6 is the move

[@MK-mm7ui]

I was worried about his kit even before he released, because Sigmas kit was originally Mauga, and he was teased so long ago. This made me worried because it seemed like they were really struggling with his kit for a longg time, making a kit that fits his character. The fact that this is how his kit ended up, means that my worries were right and justified. His kit and playstyle is kinda braindead, which is unfortunate.

[@zachszerbiak8094]

Should focus more on the long range aspect of his kit because it's so imactful for the average tank player.

[@damianvaldez9390]

I’m really glad someone else brought up he was supposed to be sigma. It blows my mind how intricate and unique Sigma is. How even though he was strong on release it was because of niche he filled (not just killing tanks and outhealing damage) and clear weakness built into his design. I wish Sigma was Mauga just so we could have avoided this braindead tank design

[@Casual314]

It does seem like they want Mauga to be a sort of poke tank, but in my opinion his current design just doesn't make sense for that. Unlike Sigma, Mauga can't defend himself at all while poking, so the majority of the time poking isn't even going to be a viable option.

[@tomachu7899]

its simple , not braindead. Not every new release needs some complicated high skill ceiling kit. Not every tank needs to be Ram or Sigma. Mercy is brain dead by that claim and so is McCree just for having gun , roll, and auto aim grenade lol. Numbers and abilities need some tweaking, but that's really it.

[@primus_03]

His Overrun is unpunishable, even if he does the "mistake" like running into a wall bec he just keeps running and takes less dmg, etc Any other tank dies bec of that, like if rein hits the smallest ant on the ground he stops and dies of that, monkey if he hits the roof in a bad angle it throws his jump off and dies, + Maugas overrun is just one second less then Winston jump + it has a small rein shatter for 0 reason His ult is also dumb, DF is just a NPC in it, takes very little skill to get value, if u hit a rein slam they get either healed from somewhere, clensed, or u get booped and u die bec you ulted. So much to "Ults should have impact" Cardiac overdrive is also dumb, People complained about JQ shout to be to strong, that only gives 3 sec of speed and some overhealth, He gives Livesteal all its uptime and u can walk out of it and still have the Buff for some seconds, way to much dmg reduction, and it has an LOWER CD Than shout?????? Little fun fact, his Burn deals More dmg than Ashes and gives him crits + overhealth haha 15:43 perfect example of my point with Overrun, you completly fuck up ur Movement but haha ur still fine :) Devs confirmed that The overheat change to orisa made her shot waay more than before so, dont put that on Mauga Just remove that guy, imo he is the worst hero to ever release, yes i played with release brig. Would play Goats for 5 years than 2 weeks with Mauga Interesting video ^^

[@nelsongodoy5101]

I would also lower his critical multiplier during both guns blazing, and highten the base damage for single gun by very tiny increments until you find the ideal mix of value for single and double

[@MutatedAmerican]

Here are some ideas for Mauga, other than just reconverting 100 armor back to 100 health. Note that this will include some ideas from the video (thanks for the ideas btw). 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?

[@Teflora]

Great video and great ideas! I imagined there could be a mechanic that gives mauga some ammo back, so ammo would be a resource needed to be managed more. Like every time you ignite an enemy, get 50 ammo. But the ignite needs to go away and reapplied for that effect to happen again, encouraging to switch targets. You already have a lottle bit of ammo optimisation with his ult. And since its all about the guns it would be cool to optimise being able to keep shooting for longer, getting an advantage over the enemy mauga

[@Aceius]

The main problem I have with Mauga is that whether he's on your team or the opposing team, it's The Mauga Show. Kill the Mauga, anti the Mauga, heal the Mauga, suzu the Mauga and it's even worse if it's a Mauga mirror where they'll just shoot each other for 15 seconds at a time without their health bars ever moving. I wouldn't have a problem with it if the other tanks needed to be babied in the same way but they don't.

[@ProbABurner]

Reinhardt gets stomped on by Mauga lol. D.Va and Sigma are EASILY the best into him, since they can use their mitigation against Cardiac Overdrive and also other do things. Rein has to just consume his whole shield and then die when he doesn't

[@endlessnutellatoast]

These are solid ideas that I would love to see implemented.

[@deolly]

I actually solved the issue that I have when it comes to Overwatch and mauga. I’ve stopped playing this season. It’s been great!

[@Isaiah094]

No way the Ult makes sense. Enemies can shoot through the cage but you can’t. It’s so stupid. It’s like a Winston bubble and grav stuck together except you can’t get out of it and you have to face a 650hp mercy pocketed bastion tank with lifesteal in it.

[@JaysMCworld]

really like your thoughts here, I'm trying to think of reworks as well and your analysis was quite helpful and inspiring

[@blackm4niac]

"Mauga is boring" Yes, oh fuck yes he is. He's kinda got a S2 Roadhog situation going on where his kit is very one dimensional. Throw massive amounts of damage at the enemy and hope stuff dies before you do. You got an escape/engage ability where the only interesting aspect about it is using the slam to interrupt ults (Reaper ults are particularly satisfying to stomp), you have a E that is all about not dying as fast and an ult that is either the most annoying thing you've ever seen or a death sentence to the ulting Mauga. There are no interesting interactions with other heroes aside from the aforementioned slam to interrupt, no deep tricks to learn (as far as I'm aware) other than of course when to shoot with what gun or both guns and who to shoot. And I hate that he is very strong against alot of tanks to the point where it seems like the only counterplay you have is going Ana hoping the enemy Mauga dies when purple, or going Mauga yourself and shred him faster than he shreds you. D.Va can temporarily stop him from dealing damage, Sigma can do the same in 2 ways and stun him and deal damage, the rest... Junkerqueen can try to not get hit as often, Orisa is just dead against him, Zarya can also try not to get hit as often and gain charge from him, Wrecking ball and doom do their own thing, Winston needs to avoid him at all cost, Rein can block his damage but has to rely on his team to use that opportunity. I hate playing against him and I hate playing as him. Right now he is more on the broken side, but I fear he can suffer the same fate as Hog and be nerfed into being just pointless.

[@Casual314]

I think sum up well why he's a bit unhealthy to the state of the game. A very all or nothing design similar to the Roadhog situation. I think a big reason Mauga is problematic is that he relies too much on being able to outspam the enemy tank, which only has a binary outcome. Either the answer is yes or no. Kind of like how Roadhog used to depend very heavily on whether he could insta-kill squishies. The difference is between 200 and 199 damage so there was no middle ground.

[@TaiThePharaoh]

Nah, Mauga is like the top 5 most funnest Tanks. Been waiting on him for like 4 years. Greatly designed character. 💯

[@Flokker]

"Its never boring around me", said the most boring Hero calmly.

[@Casual314]

haha it is rather ironic

[@acanofjuice]

we need more sniper character/characters that have less dps but still have potential to kill. slower firerare but more dmg

[@Tsunder623]

This was honestly an exceptional video.

[@Casual314]

Wow thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video

[@SophSophSoph298]

Im glad you mentioned the whole resource management thing. The reason old Hog and mauga are different from Winston is the fact that winston has 2 cooldowns he has to manage at all times whislt hog and mauga essentially have one to manage in a very boring manner.

[@BloodDemonMC]

14:21 You can base lifesteal on the damage relative to percentage of the damaged hero's health. then you can have a consistent way to generate health without most of the targets being suboptimal.

[@jacksonhorrocks4281]

You have some of the most legitimate takes and suggestions for this game

[@Casual314]

Thanks, glad you enjoy them

[@jonathanm5894]

Love your suggestions. I don’t get how devs can release Mauga and Lifeweaver and think “this is good! This is ready!”

[@Casual314]

I think they've been trying to make more accessible heroes that can be enjoyed by newer players, but I think Mauga crosses a line, and maybe Lifeweaver too, though I don't think Lifeweaver is as much of an issue. (even though I still don't like him)

[@musicxxa6678]

It's remarkable how overwatch can offer different gameplays. That's what makes Overwatch special. This is why i think LW is one of the best hero. The fact that he can exist is impressive. He plays a totally different game. It's like a different genre.@@Casual314

[@BigChessFan]

Why do small creators always make such good videos? I love seeing creators that actually care.

[@esaualfaro3447]

Another option would be to keep the kit simple, but still adding similar ideas to yours: Cardiac Overdrive split into charges so you can choose to take long trades or shorter trades. One gun ignites and adds the dot damage, while the other one can have a higher crit multiplier (like Kiri or Widow) if you do single shots (and keep the ALWAYS crit on fire enemies). This way you can choose to ignite enemies with higher dot burn damage, or try to poke at long distance with higher crit multipliers, while still keeping his tank busting identity. My suggestion to the crit changes is because most of the identity of the hero is about crits, so I think it would be cool and add a lot of skill ceiling if you´re able to do higher crit damage on enemies at a distance, while still being a threat up close.

[@dairreagh6468]

I think it's almost there. The most fun part of his kit is his stomp. If that gets prioritised for healing and DR so ur incentivised to constantly be moving. That plus an ignition mechanic where initial ignitions provide equal benefit to critting w right gun and u have a higher skill faster pace hero with more engaging cooldown cycles and more intense decision making.

[@puck2694]

The only change necessary is stats on the guns. Revert the # of bullets to ignite. Lower the damage on the left gun per bullet, slightly raise the base damage of the right gun, so that there is a reason to use the right gun as default. However it keeps the gunplay of bouncing between guns that everyone likes available. The other is to revert the spread on dual wielding so that its only effective within 5m Those simple changes keep his high damage, introduce more gunplay options like you mentioned, without changing the core design or breaking the hero. It also greatly reduces his ability to just sit there and spam the tank unless you are at point blank range.

[@tehfelf]

For the chain guns, I think keeping the flame and crit aspect, but changing the left click to being low spread for range and the right click for being verrrrry high spread with a faster fire rate for close range. Higher spread is less accurate but with the higher rate of fire, you will get more hits on the people close up. That would really change the feeling of each gun too.

[@tpain809]

I really like these changes presented for a mini rework for how Mauga uses his abilities because I personally think all that Mauga needs is more of a meaningful thought process behind when and how he uses his skills in any engagement situation.

[@ragnarokpuppy398]

personally my idea is to make it so his incendiary gun when spooled up ALWAYS ignites on first bullet hit while moving some of his healing to be a hps per person ignited, while maybe making his cardiac overdrive increase the dot effects

[@huntermushero9362]

I haven’t watched the video yet but I think it would be a nice change if they kept the amount of bullets to ignite squishies the same, but double or tripled the amount for tanks. This would give dove tanks more time to dive, and incentivize shooting things other than the tank.

[@Casual314]

This would definitely help dive tanks a bit, but I don't think it would change enough about Mauga in regards to brawl tanks. In fact it would probably incentivize shooting the tank even more since the consequences for stopping are more dramatic.

[@huntermushero9362]

@@Casual314 I didn’t think about that. But if the brawl tank plays cover better than the mauga would have to play really aggressively to peak the other tank. It would at least give the opponent more time to peak the mauga, and damage his team before igniting. Also, mitigation cool downs like Zarya bubble, rein shields, D.VA matrix, etc would be more impactful because the time to reignite them would be longer. If they did that they could reduce his spread a wee bit to make it viable to shoot DPS/supports instead and give a lot more skill expression for the mauga (aim/target prioritization), and give the opponent tank room to utilize their skill sets.

[@huntermushero9362]

Hog and Orisa would still probably struggle though because of how meaty, and slow they are, and they lack the proper sort of damage mitigation to stop the burning effect. They would have to play cover really well, but would most likely just get focused even harder by Mauga like you said. However, that is even like a double edged sword for the mauga because if the hog and Orisa can just simply play corners and live while the mauga over prioritizes them, it still sort of denies the mauga value in some situations.

[@Slogstin]

I'd personally experiment by giving him a reload similar to Ashe, to make sure he actually has some downtime after pumping 350 rounds into a tank. So he'd have a much longer reload, if he wanted to reload from empty to full which might encourage people to not just unload their entire mag in two button presses. I saw the idea of giving him a overheat mechanic, which i don't like, because one of the main selling points of a chain gun is that it doesn't overheat. It would just feel weird man. I'd also change Overdrive so it would give Overheal instead and maybe lower the cooldown. Then change Berserk to do something different. How about instead of Overheal, Mauga gets a small damage boost for a few seconds, after using an ability. And depending on how big that boost would be, shift his regular damage output around.

[@markhumphreys4496]

Mauga feels like Zarya, in that they were not meant for 5v5 fundamentally

[@awesomeness26108]

I like the ideas in this video, converting powerful abilities into more passive abilities is a good idea. The only issue I can see is that having cardiac overdrive on a resource meter, and having it use the trigger-healing instead of lifesteal, would make it the most tedious thing ever. You'd have to hold your cardiac overdrive button, then walk in and shoot a player, and possibly hold your button for the duration of the heal too. Writing this down makes it seem less tedious ngl, but maybe keeping lifesteal and reducing lifesteal from damage against tanks, and increasing lifesteal from damage against squishies would be a better solution to go along with the resource meter.

[@whaloob]

My only major issue is that heat mechanics only on double chaingun just allows him to hold low heat until the enemy tank pushes him. Single gun shooting should still increase heat, counterintuitively helping the enemy tank, since the Mauga now has to choose between lowering his poke in order to maintain low heat for the tank push or having less effectiveness against the tank push. Either that, or shooting both guns should make both guns fire more slowly so that his damage output isn’t literally doubled on large targets, or a mix of both. I do have my own version of a rework for Mauga to share: Tie his survivability not to damage output or crits, but to ignition damage. This makes his survivability come from having multiple targets ignited at once, and induces the decision-making of looking for a kill (that you may or may not actually get, or else it’d essentially always be better to kill) versus looking to ignite another enemy. Perhaps ignition would need to last a tad longer (but do the same overall damage). Make this overhealth as well (replacing the berserker passive-extra damage on crits is plenty of motivation to crit). I’m thinking somewhere in the ballpark of 30-40 overhealth per second for each ignited enemy? Cardiac overdrive on a resource meter is a step in the right direction but it introduces a new problem in which the enemy team cannot easily identify when that resource is depleted. So there’s still a balancing difficulty that comes from cardiac overdrive needing to be difficult to push into, because it is Mauga’s main power spike, but then that power spike ought to have counterplay *during* and *after* it. Ironically, a resource meter might make the resource management a bit too simple. For the after portion, I propose the middleground of making it a 2 charge cooldown with a shorter duration on each charge, and maybe a brief lockout after use to prevent immediately stacking both charge (possibly not necessary since that’s a big resource commitment). This cooldown should generate health, not overhealth, because anti should retain some dynamics of counterplay. The ability does need more counterplay *during* as well, which I believe the flat heal rate during overdrive accomplishes. Finally, overrun is a healthy ability, but it could stand to have more skill expression. Mauga does a hop before landing at the end of his charge, and you can cancel charge in order to act a bit sooner. What if canceling the charge during the hop preserved your upward momentum? I’m thinking maybe about as high or slightly higher than a Bastion nade jump. Right now, left clicking to slam early prevents you from canceling it, but since this ability now offers a vertical movement utility to it, slamming early should be cancellable with another press of lshift. This gives Mauga a timing to practice while being rewarded with a tool to access some high grounds, which also indirectly assists his survivability/uptime. Finally, increase his falloff range. We want Mauga not to be indestructible with good support, and not fall over without it, and we want him to fulfill the midrange hitscan identity. Improving his poke allows him to get more value outside of the extremely polarizing situations in which he regenerates a whole healthbar by popping cardiac overdrive while double gunning the tank, and then falls over right afterwards because his supports needed to reload. With good resource management he will be able to brawl well too, just not so overwhelmingly well as he can now.

[@tau-5794]

Simplest change I can think of to make Mauga less oppressive against tanks but no weaker against squishies is to simply rework how his left gun ignites players. Rather than needing a set amount of shots, it should need to do a set amount of damage over a second or two. 20% means it would take the same number of shots to light a 200 health hero (10 shots=40 damage) but would take significantly more against tanks. Roadhog for instance, you'd need to do 140 damage, which with a 72 dps gun would take a while. His armor should also just be removed or lowered to like 100.

[@Casual314]

I think this might incentivize Mauga's to shoot the tank even more. Because it's harder to ignite the enemy tank you would be incentivized to keep shooting to keep up the ignite. With even less tankiness I think it would especially make it so Mauga is forced to just sit back and spam rather than trying to find ways to move forward.

[@tau-5794]

@@Casual314 Perhaps, but it would probably just incentivize shooting targets other than the tank, which currently he doesn't really have. When it took 15 shots, tank matchups didn't feel as uneven but fighting against squishies was absolutely terrible. So I think a simple nerf to his tank matchup could make his balance seem a lot less lopsided.

[@tau-5794]

Alternative rework: Make cardiac shoot out a ring of fire that ignites anyone who isn't behind a wall or barrier, and while cardiac is active you heal at a rate of 200% of burn damage dealt, to a maximum of 150 hps. Enemies ignited by the left gun would also heal you but the fire ring would predominantly be used for breaking up brawls and getting through the defenses of tanks like Dva and Orisa.

[@hughmungus2192]

It's funny how they reworked hogs healing ability into a resource and then release a tank hero with a healing ability that just has a cooldown like hogs old breather. 90% of blizzard's budget go into skins and cosmetics. 10% in making the game better

[@kingdanett4043]

Dude! I'm about to get an ultrawide monitor soon!!! OW on it looks sooo coool!!!!!

[@Casual314]

Yeah I've really liked the ultrawide experience ever since I got it. Big game changer in productivity as well. Worth the investment if you can afford it.

[@kingdanett4043]

@Casual314 I had gotten a 29 inch one but realized that it was smaller then my 26 inch standard monitor... So I'm getting a replacement

[@joe727]

Maybe for the gun ideas we can look at Moira healing. Maybe mauga healing abilities has a resource meter on a decently long cooldown. But he can speed up the recovery by shooting his right gun. His right gun however deals a lot less damage however for less damage u get a faster cooldown. The left gun make it so the fire prock is distance based. At long range the fire would be pretty much useless as at maybe a certain range u can’t ignite enemies but close up u can and the closer u r the longer the fire effect lasts (maybe like 1.5 sec up close). You can crit enemies if they’re on fire only with the left gun but at a certain range u can no longer crit maybe. Also the right gun does not crit fired enemies unless both guns r fired at the same time. This is similar to Moira in the fact of as Moira u can get ur resource meter back faster if u tap the suck. But u deal a lot less damage than if u we’re to hold the mode down. With mauga the right gun deals very little damage but u get ur cooldown faster where the left gun deals more damage. But u can’t just ignite people who r far away from u

[@thijmstickman8349]

Something you can do in addition to the heal when damaging instead of life steal change is make it do a burst of healing when he gets a kill, that also incentivizes going after squishies, even if its risky.

[@Casual314]

might not be a bad idea

[@chaosmark101]

God I wish the devs would check out your ideas on him. They sound great

[@derekoreborn]

I think they should make him a little more utility/CC oriented. Make cagefight awesome damage though, like no heat meter when he’s using it. Keep left gun the same, but make right gun apply either a slow debuff, or a debuff that lasts a second that prevents dashes, (like McCree’s nade), or maybe an attack speed slow (first of its kind!) Make cardiac overdrive damage reduction and healing buff similar to Ana’s friendly nade. Remove the life steal from E, put it on Mauga’s passive for when he’s firing both guns together. Make both guns slightly better at range, keep damage not too high.

[@Rurumeto]

I really like the idea of mauga having an overheat meter, as it would incentivise him to single fire his guns.

[@unwono]

holy shit I'm falling asleep watching this video because of the Mauga gameplay. Otherwise an excellent video

[@crypticgnome4698]

Imo, I feel Mauga needs some form of cooldown mitigation, maybe if the start/end of his run provides a fraction of a second of fortify (?), as every tank without cooldown mitigation is always either complete dogshit or broken op since their survivability is completely determined by the enemy team's cooldowns. Aside from that I think the changes you suggested are fantastic!

[@Casual314]

It's possible that they're preparing changes to things like anti-nade so they didn't design Mauga with mitigation in mind, but just speculating

[@crypticgnome4698]

@@Casual314 Perhaps... although I have what may be a bit of a hot take, I think anti-nade is perfectly fine as it is. The issue I think people have with anti-nade is that it is the strongest cooldown in the game against a lot of the roster, such as Hog, Doom, Mauga, Ball, etc. However, imo the issue with anti-nade is less to do with itself and more to do with a bunch of other problems in the game rn. The first and most obvious issue is that healing and damage numbers are just way too high atm, which results in nade providing far more value than it would do if the numbers were lower. The second issue is that a lot of the characters that are countered by Ana are busted strong when not being countered (sure, all the characters I listed above get bullied by Ana, but unlike many other characters in the game they can completely take over the lobby if they’re not countered). I recall from a devblog somewhere that the devs are actually scared of touching anti-nade for this very reason, as its essentially a keystone that keeps the game's balance from collapsing.

[@tamakona113]

okay but can we talk about ana though? she is like the mauga/bastion of supports, an absolute stat block with minimum decision making for efficacy; but also one that enables other stat blocks, with both her abilities being the mentioned long but powerful minimum decision cooldowns. She never gets the spotlight, but we just had an experience similar to mauga in the orisa/bastion meta where you had unkillable bullet rains, and *she was the one who enabled both*. While bastion did receive giga buffs, the complaints last season were about his turret, even after the extra armor got removed. It never made sense that the armor pushed him over the edge anyway, because bastion is a tank sized hitbox with only the equivalent of 400 health in turret mode, and any tank player knows that's not a lot. On top of this, Bastion players never turret when not full HP, because a majority of his durability comes from the combined armor reduction and passive damage reduction *while being healed*. Realistically speaking, bastion starts his turret form with practically the same amount of durability whether or not he has the bonus armor, so you'd counter him the exact same way you did before. But the devil's in the details, bastion's true durability comes *when he still has his armor*, because with his passive it totals to 50% damage reduction, so bastion pairs well with supports that have enough healing to keep his armor topped off as long as he is in turret form. And who do we have as a support who not only has a lot of healing and synergizes off of bastion's zone control and attention draw, but also DOUBLES that healing allowing the other support to keep him topped off for his entire bullet rampage? And then there's orisa, who gets a shit ton of damage reduction as her fucking IDENTITY, which by itself makes her barely tankier than a reinhardt shield, but when she has a pocket makes her feel invincible. And now we have Mauga, a hero who during that trial run got his winrate dumpstered by ana, he gets underhyped as a result, and they gigabuff him so they get returns on the battlepass. Still don't believe me? The highest pick rate hero in the orisa/bastion meta wasn't even orisa or bastion, it was ANA because she enables both of them! Even in the asian regions where I play, where dive being mega popular logically should make players shy away from ana, has season after season constantly seen high ana pick rate. Every season where we've had an absolutely miserable meta, Ana has been behind it, but the spotlight always on the big hitboxes that she enables.

[@gnifemaul]

Very well thought out and put forth! I've seen Mauga launch compared to Brig launch and I think the one area I agree with that on is how all-consuming and boring the meta has become in response to both heroes. Brig was way more powerful and impactful overall, but Mauga has had a similar effect. If one team has a Mauga and plays around him effectively, it's going to be a wrap unless the other team basically mirrors them.

[@marcusaurelius4777]

Brig literally almost destroyed Overwatch dude...impactful is an "understatement".

[@gnifemaul]

@@marcusaurelius4777 agreed.

[@3DSCarnaje]

I think for the most part your ideas were pretty good. I saw another comment I agree with, that it would be too much to manage, but the core concepts are good. It'd be interesting to have overdrive be kinda like a temporary inspire. Currently my solution to mauga is playing jq and yanking him away from his precious supports.

[@cameronb2968]

I mostly play league and Maugas issue is a known design issue there. Old champs in league are very gimmicky and one dimensional. They live and die by their numbers being better than others and pick rates skyrocket and plummet based on patches. Mauga just isn’t a tank. There is nothing defensive about two miniguns. There are a myriad of ways to create space that don’t involve raw damage. I really don’t plan to play OW anymore when he is good.

[@Casual314]

I agree, Mauga feels a bit outdated despite just being released

[@charliechaplin6049]

I wish he was less poke and focused more in his charge and big space making. His charge is the only part of his kit I find fun but the rest is just stand and shoot :/

[@Casual314]

That would probably make him more of a dive hero which would require even more drastic changes to make it work I think

[@ebmario874]

I would love for Mauga to become the *defacto* fire character somehow. Overwatch linda plays around with this idea, with torb, ashe and mauga having one part of their kit devoted to the status effect, but I always felt there should have been a character that really leans into it for every part of their kit, even if it isn't just setting fire to the enemy with every attack.

[@FancyDakota]

If Mauga gets infinite ammo, it also gives the developers the ability to nerf it by making it a resource meter, like Orisa's weapon. Additionally, he could gain a 3rd ability through the Reload button, which would go unused as the weapon is a resource rather than ammo based. Loved the video and I think it aged well. Your feedback and suggestions sounded, honestly, perfect.

[@ACE670]

I like a lot the idea of the reworked cardiac overdrive, I enjoy the roadhog rework and I think the same treatment should be given when it comes down to "healing abilities". Same goes with chainguns, but just overheat would be good, the rest is not necessary honestly, mauga is fun to play, ofc because him being so op at the moment it is a must pick so becomes "boring", but honestly, just with increasing the spread in short distance, giving him 5 meters more of dmg fallout , change cardiac overdrive to toggle, add the overheat to chainguns it would be good enough as a start, that's it. A tank shouldn't have that much dmg and this is why: You want to buff the dmg from 72/s to 90/s, that would translate around 110dmg per second, with just one gun, without having to reload, without having to worry about overheat, even If you lower that amount to 80/s still is around 96/s, and the best part is that I'm not even counting the dmg of the crits when burning. A bad idea overall. If I were a dev, I wouldn't rework him, probably just the cardiac overdrive. which is the worst part of his kit (as you said is press to win) and the overheat. But first of all, we only had mauga for less than 2 months, we haven't even waited to see the nerfs they were supossed to apply before holidays, the changes to the guns you were talking about(secondary effects) sound actually pretty bad and even only beneficial for those in high ranks with better aim, which would translate in mostly using the left gun, and only the right one to prepare a push or when low on health. because of that I don't see an actual benefit from it, heroes don't need more complexity, If you do so yeah, high ranks can get the best out of him but the metal ranks probably won't, and that would create a similar problem like kiriko is right now. (kiriko doesn't have a high winrate in low ranks and that's why is not being nerfed atm). Still good video, some mistakes but also great ideas!!!

[@biggerthanyouraverageboat6842]

for cage fight, you said that certain movement abilities shouldnt be disabled but that that would also result in strange interactions like with kirikos tp. i think the way around this is simply not disabling movement *passives*. getting trapped in maugas cage and not being able to wall ride AT ALL on lucio feels incredibly unecessary along with heroes that can climb walls like genji or hanzo

[@peegeeop4513]

i think they should make is cardiac overdrive a toggle that increases his ammo consumption but 45-55% with a 5 seccond cooldown between toggles

[@Casual314]

I have a feeling this would make him very very weak against any tank with high damage mitigation

[@musicxxa6678]

His ammo should be a resource so he can't constantly shoot the tank but his damage needs to be buffed and his surviveability shouldn't be tied to damaging enemy tank. Your suggestions are great but too complicated to expect from this dev team. My simple suggestions would be: 1- Cardiac overdrive works like a Lifeweaver tree. Heal pulse + damage reduction. 2- His damage per bullet goes from 4 to 5 3- His ammo goes from 350 to 250 4- Convert 50 or 100 health to armor 5- Ignite dot damage returns back as heal over time to help him in poke 6- Considering his vulnerability during double gun shooting and his hero fantasy, i might also suggest 5% dmg reduction per second when you use double gun. 30% dmg reduction cap. A ramp up mechanic to your surviveability. Mauga shoots 36 bullets per second and has 250 ammo which means he can shoot for 7 seconds. Reaching 30% cap after 6 seconds. His ult last 8 seconds. I think best part about this hero is that he can do mid/long range hitscan damage. A new tool in tank roster. You can shoot down pharah's, Mercy's. Fun ignite/crit mechanic. Good reliable overrun. What is bad is his feast/famine playstyle, cardiac overdrive, tank shooting. Edit: Now thinking about it, i think i buffed him lol. Ignore the 4 and 6 it seems too much.

[@Bluefire6567]

15:00 what if mauga’s life steal was based on the percentage of damage to the enemies health you dealt. For example doom with 450 health and tracer with 150. Doing let’s say 150 damage to doom and doing 50 damage to tracer would give the same amount of life steal. That way the life steal gets equal value when shooting anyone.

[@Casual314]

Hmm not a bad idea, but I have a feeling it would make the balancing even more of a nightmare. Mauga would be heavily impacted by things like health pools and hitbox size which varies significantly making it difficult to predict how he'll interact with different heroes once you make a change.

[@ackerizzle]

Biggest problem with your rework is that for both hog and dva the resource that was moved off a cd was remapped to 2ndary fire, which make sense from a ludic perspective as holding down M2 or a trigger on console doesn’t disrupt your mechanics, which having to hold e key would. So while I like the idea, the implementation would probably require getting rid of the twin cannon and move him to a primary fire like tracer has. Obviously this puts a damper on the last 3rd of ur video and I guess I’m interested in how you’d like to see primary fire change if this was a necessary part of the cardiac overdrive solution

[@Casual314]

Yeah I will admit this is one of the more difficult things with my suggestions. I was thinking to move his cardiac overdrive into a toggle on the shift key, but I can understand that it might make him too clunky for most players. I really like one slightly different suggestion I've seen in the comments which is to give him charges like Zarya's bubble. I think that might be an even better idea as it makes him not too clunky, but creates a similar affect to having a resource meter.

[@RD-um9dy]

Yeah I think the duel guns of his design is way more interesting. Maybe cariac overdrive could just have a lot shorter of a cooldown, but a weaker effect maybe

[@kyleallen1421]

What would be interesting, for his dual guns I’d make it similar to road hogs alternate fire where it used to have an area that does crazy amount of damage. But put that area 10 or 15 m away so it will do less damage close to you but will do max damage begging to allow pressure on lower health pools. Now positioning would be the most awarded.

[@franklinsmith5201]

he's literally a "statstick" champion from league, very 1 dimensional character that uses his insane numbers to win matchups. He doesnt have any skill expression to allow for outplays like genji or doom, so he has to rely on pure stats to get him through. Now the devs are at a crossroads, either lower his numbers and make him unplayable since as stated earlier, he has little in the ways of outplaying opponents, or keep him as he is now (not a good idea). He reminds me of garen, trundle and tryndamere and thats NOT a good thing

[@Casual314]

Yeah Mauga feels like an outdated design despite just releasing. Having played League a lot back in the day I would say that simple champs work a bit better in league because the game itself is so complex already that they can fit in. Overwatch is undoubtedly complex as well, but I wouldn't say to the degree of MOBA games, and so overly simple characters will feel extra boring.

[@CrocodileWhispers]

Ramattra/Moira/Ana/echo (for beam damage below 50%)

[@blahthebiste7924]

As an OW hater, Mauga is the first time I've enjoyed the game in a long time. I quite like how he encourages aggressive play. Your gameplay here was much less aggressive than how I was playing him though, so maybe his kit doesn't encourage aggressive play quite enough. I think you're on the right track with health regen instead of lifesteal. But what if we swapped the effect of Cardiac Overdrive with his primary fire? Here's the concept: whenever Mauga deals damage, he gains a stacking health regen effect. How strong the regen is increases with how many stacks he accrues. It is represented with the same yellow fire visual on his skin, though it burns brighter the higher his stacks, so as an enemy you can see whether he is vulnerable or whether you should avoid him and let him cool off for a little while. More consistent, lower health regen should also make him less reliant on supports for healing outside of big team fights. Meanwhile, his guns no longer light enemies on fire. He has to use his active E (the replacement for Cardiac Arrest) to gain a strong burning effect on his guns temporarily. The DOT would be more significant and last longer, meaning it would be more effective at depleting the smaller health pools of squishies, and do less vs tanks. (Note: I generally don't support DOT effects in FPS games but I'm just trying to keep his current design elements intact here). I think that increasing the spread on his single-guns would actually be healthy. Make his worse at poking from a distance, and more reliant on aggressively pushing up close to enemies. You could argue that removing his long range poke option would make him more one-dimensional, but I actually think that constantly choosing how to reposition to force close range fights is a great source of constant strategizing and decision-making. Pair that with his stacking health regen, and you have a tank that is actively encouraged to go in and fight all the time, but has to be careful and strategic about which fights to pick. This is the kind of fun gameplay that I personally have been missing from OW (which Mauga already provides pretty well.) This was more of a "how to rework him without butchering any of his existing design elements" attempt, obviously you could do a lot more by changing more.

[@Nortio]

Agreed. As always another well thought out and articulate video. 1 more change we NEED is to change reins charge to work exactly like mauga run. Its a massive armored man being powered by a jet in his back yet he can be stopped by anything and everything in the game, while mauga is just a fat guy using his legs to....run??? With some exceptions like make reins charge still able to be hacked since that does make sense but a sleep dart or hinder shouldnt work.

[@darkgt91]

by that logic, ana couldnt neither heal rein, since she shoots darts with healing, those darts could never penetrate rein's armor xD Dont seek to much logic, otherwise half of the game and charactesrs falls apart :P

[@Casual314]

The counter argument is that since Rein can one-shot most squishies, his vulnerability is justified as opposed to Mauga who's run doesn't really do much except move him faster and maybe apply a small CC and a deal some damage.

[@Nortio]

@@darkgt91 within reason of course. I'm not one to call for the game to be totally based in logic but some things just don't make sense at all. And it's simply not fair that reins charge is just worse than mauga run in every way.

[@Nortio]

@@Casual314 yeah that makes sense. It just seems weird to me. But despite that, what's even weirder is when flats asked the devs about it they literally told him rein was totally fine. That bothers me.

[@moetrash3296]

Another option could be to simple make Mauga more vulnerable when shooting both guns. While he heals perhaps he is vulnerable taking extra damage in return, forcing him to hit all of his shots or be at a disadvantage. Perhaps while using cardiac overdrive his tank passive is negated and he takes regular damage. I also think he should have a healing cap and the game should have one generally. Much like how damage boost has a cap, HPS should be maxed out so even through cardiac overdrive and bio nade and half held mercy healing etc… he still only receives x amount of heals

[@justsatan6747]

Imo tank healthpools are fine but i think they need some sort of passive resistance. A tank should never feel squishy but most of them do and have felt squishy for a while, even before Mauga. I feel like his character design took that to the extreme, and instead of giving us a tank to deal with the ridiculous Orisa wall meta, they gave us a meta defining tank. Regarding his healing, I believe Cardiac Overdrive should be something that is applicable as a passive on crits, and keep the shield passive with crits. That'd be a simple copout and make adjusting the numbers a possible solution.

[@divinegopher]

I feel like Mauga would’ve been a lot better to balance if he was designed with the same kit but with only one minigun, the overheat would apply after a certain amount of time firing and burn targets, reduce the spread to have an easier time hitting crits, and speaking of spread it would slowly increase over time whenever you fire, so you have to have a good understanding of the mechanics to decide whether to burst fire to hit heads or yolo it and hit as many bullets as you can

[@Casual314]

With all else equal, I think that would make Mauga too reliant on poke, and cause him to be too vulnerable when being pushed by the enemy tank. So you would probably also have to give him a lot more mobility options to avoid the enemy tank, which would really change up his concept.

[@divinegopher]

@@Casual314 yeah, unfortunately it was like 2am when i wrote this so there's a lot that wouldn't be balanced with that. However i feel like if from the very starting concept they went for something like this Mauga wouldn't be so strong/boring/intimidating, I'm no game developer or balancer and I've actually stopped playing tank because of Mauga all this all might be a bit biased but i do believe that he could potentially be easier to balance/tweak his kit to help him fit that poke/brawl "hero fantasy"

[@bradleygarnet3500]

I agree. Two different ammo pools for each of the chain guns. Players are more incentivized to hold down both triggers with really no draw backs. Double fire should have more spread than single fire, slow mauga down, and give some damage reduction. Nerf the over drive by the same amount that the damage reduction gives to double fire. I say 40 percent for cardiac drive and additional 20 for double firing.

[@Oliver.Pfahl.]

I like all of your ideas, though the using abilities inside the cage is a must, maybe increase the time it takes to get movement cooldowns back so it doesn't get to obnoxious for mauga, but it can not get more obnoxious right now. I also thought instead of an overheat maugas weapons could deal abit less damage if he continuously shoots the same target (like -15% after 3 and -35% after 4,5 seconds).

[@Casual314]

Interesting idea with the reduced damage overtime, but I'm generally not a fan of overly specific ability designs. Sure for now it would just be on Mauga, but it sets a precedent for doing it on every hero, which will eventually make the game to complicated to understand without a lot of experience.

[@awhitney3063]

Watching this gameplay just made me realize that he basically is just Ball without the tether and fun aspects of ball; his guns are virtually the same and play relatively the same, and there's just not much else that he does that feels very interesting or active. Also I can't help but think that this problem would be somewhat solved if we still had 6v6; the tanks being entirely vulnerable while their long CD's are down is mitigated if you have a second tank who could also be cycling through their cooldowns, giving your team two people who are able to 'carve space' and thus complicate matters and make it less visibly obvious to the enemy 'oh, their tank's (important CD that keeps them alive) is down, let's go!' moments like there clearly are now.

[@IzzyKindaFizzy]

I would like to see cardiac overdrive remove his left gun (the fire one) and work as a recourse based ability. I think this would force him to manage two different stars in his health and the enemies fire while also forming players to actually aim instead of just shoot with both thns

[@Wiltings]

I had a very similar idea to yours in all the changes, but with some small differences. I think the overheat mechanic for the guns should apply to both guns, but has 2 separate resources. One for the left one for the right. Then it raises the lowest resource of one one quickly when dual firing then matching the resource speed for both meters. This in turn could allow for a better balance of forcing the swap between guns. As for the dmg of both, I do believe the single shots should be buffed but dual seems fine since it seems in the code they have a segment that can calculate dual guns and single shot. As for the left gun right guns, the right gun I agree should do more. What I think would be better is have the right able to be laser focused while the left gun have less accuracy but when reaching a threshold on the meter, also apply flame to the ground where he shot. This could add a small ignite effect that could open up ways to threaten space such like hog does with his hook. As one of Mauga's biggest problems is that everything is tied to his damage to threaten space. For Roadhog, pigpen did wonders for him, adding another depth of space creation to deny a route or to setup a hard 1 shot. Maybe also have his flame gun take less shots to ignite when over the threshold on players. I think this would in all help his passive a bit, and offer him some more needed protection. As for cardiac overdrive... i think it just needs to apply an overhealth HOT on him to a maximum amount or just a flat dmg reduction, remove the aoe, the life steal, and for the guns... pause the heat meter or make it build up 50% slower for the guns as suggested. This would remove the long CD problem, and tie his HP gain elsewhere. As for his running stomp. Have his stomp be the heal sorta like ball's shield, and scale based on how many enemies he hit. Keeping the anti heal immunity til after his stomp concludes. This would enable his brawl style, and nade counterplay, to either decide to stay in or to escape with a base heal of maybe 100 to help sustain slightly. This would remove a hard counter and push it towards more of a soft one. For his ult, i think cage fight isnt fun. Its just an instant kill button unless your team has 1 of 3 escapes. I think his ult should enable his teammates more to jump into the cage with him. Such as applying a buff to those in the cage, and just raise the walls to the skybox so enemies cant escape. maybe something like a mini kiri haste buff and pause the heat buildup on his guns. Overall, nice vid!

[@Tayleron]

I know it's a personal thing, but I hate constant tracking aiming. It's tedious. I simply dislike that gameplay. The fact that he's so busted means he gets a lot of play and I feel like I need to be able to play him. But since I don't like to play him, I won't, and I feel at a disadvantage because of it. I don't like to play doomfist, but he's not a must pick, so I don't feel bad in the same way. Does that make sense? Also, I don't dislike tracking completely. I like soldier, but he gets a rocket to aim as well. And sombra, she gets a virus and translocator. It's just the fact that you're constantly tracking for minutes on end. I hate it.

[@Casual314]

I think that's a sentiment held by many FPS players. It indeed requires consistent focus which can be quite tedious. For some reason I find enjoyment out of it.

[@beingbag2606]

What if each team had two tanks instead of one so not every tank has to be a one size fits all monster.

[@Casual314]

I don't think that's ever been tried before (sarcasm)

[@wauchi1895]

You'll probably not read this, as this video is 2 months old. But as somebody who one tricks Mauga, I agree with your issues but not the solutions. **To Summarize**: Keep the chainguns the same, and the interaction between Gunny and Cha-Cha. Rework Berserk passive so when Mauga crits, he gains the buff for X duration where he gets X amount of flat overhealth per second, with continuous crit hits resetting said duration. After not hitting crits for a while, Overhealth gained through Berserk will slowly deplete at an X amount per second. Increase Overrun's inner stun radius, and give him a flat burst of X amount of Overhealth per enemy hit with inner radius, said Overhealth will rapidly decay at an X amount per second, as it is only needed there to make Mauga not pop like a balloon being in the center of the enemy team. Make Cardiac Overdrive grant a burst of X amount of Overhealth to Mauga which disappears when the ability ends, additionally it'll grant X% of Damage Reduction and X amount of healing to his allies who are within X range of him for the duration of the ability (including himself, but the healing value with be smaller, so mostly DPS and Supports will benefit from it). Keep Cage Fight the same, it's good as it is now. Overrun is balanced, but suffers from the issue you outlined in the beginning. There is only one way and only one way to use it correctly, in this case saving it to dip out with it undercover as you get 50% dr and unstoppable whilst in it. Which was definitely not how it was intended, as in all of his dev footage it is specifically used to engage, not to disengage. Then we can diagnose the problem of why nobody engages. You gain no value for it whilst exposing yourself to the entire enemy team with your massive hit box, so you pop like a balloon. My solution would simply be to increase the area that counts as an inner radius of his stomp, so it was much easier to hit the stun, since as it stands it's very hard to do so since you need to be on top of someone to do it. And give him overhealth burst for the amount of enemies he landed the stomp at (but it rapidly decays). This in turn adds way more incentive to dive in with Overrun, whilst surviving the aftermath. But adding an element of judgement to it, since if you incorrectly decided to dive in, you might only stun 1 or 2 targets, gaining little to no overhealth for it, and dying afterwards as you get focused down without a disengage. Cardiac Overdrive is certainly what makes Mauga terrifying, since as long as he focuses the enemy tank with it, he is unkillable. But that is a blessing and a curse. Since in the heal denial match ups he gets folded like a stick (Zarya, Orisa, and etc). So we've got an inconsistency here, where either he is allowed to heal and he wrecks the opposing tank, or he is getting heal denied and gets wrecked by the opposing tank. So this is the first time I'll clap my hands and say that the balance team is onto something, since the leaks say that they are planning to buff Cardiac Overdrive by decreasing it's cooldown and duration, but subsequently granting him 100 overhealth on cast. It's a simple change with massive impact. Since the simple solution is just to make Cardiac Overdrive more consistent, make Mauga gain value without relying on his life steal. Subsequently we can nerf the life steal, so he could rely on Overhealth and 30% dr, which he gets regardless of the situation, and makes it easier to balance him. So in the end he doesn't become useless in heal denial match ups, nor does he farm the tanks that can't deny his healing. Also changing Life Steal to Healing is probably for the better. I thought of keeping it, as it's a fun gimmic. But I feel healing would grant his ability more synergy with others characters. As characters who don't deal a lot of damage could still benefit, allowing for him to save his supports from a dive or what have you. As for your healing value issue, with Overhealth on cast in place, it's fine if the amount of healing might not be considered enough for him as a tank, as that healing aspect is mostly for allies surrounding Mauga to benefit from. Cage Fight doesn't need changes, at least not removing hindered effect from it. As Cage Fight is the only realistic way for Mauga to kill a decent Kiriko, Moira, Tracer and other high mobility heroes who'll just yeet themselves away when Mauga gets close to killing them. Sure it's a tilt inducing ability, but its not without risk. Sure unlike Zarya's ult, it creates a big shield, but also unlike Mauga, Zarya can just throw it from range, whilst Mauga has to specifically be in the action in order to deploy the ultimate and is forced to stay in it. Plus plenty of ultimates already counter it, such as Hog's ult, Ball ult, Bastion ult, Reaper ult and etc. In my opinion Cage Fight is good as it is, and a rather well designed ability by your own characteristics of what a good ability is, aka being multi use. With Cage Fight you can just put it onto a choke point for what is essentially a massive Reinhardt shield, you can use it you trap enemy tank and deny their healing, or you can try to trap the entire enemy team in it and synergize it with something like a Reaper or Mei ult for a team kill. The it lots of decision making and plays you can make with Cage Fight. It's a high impact diverse ultimate, but isn't without risks unlike Kitsune Rush. You have to account for enemy team, with something like Hog match ups being rather fun for myself since I and him engage in mind games who blows their ultimate first, or whether the opposing tank even gained their ult by now; since if hog didn't I win due to him failing to run away from me, but if he does then he just ults me, killing both me and my ultimate in the process. All this thinking creates decision making, which as you've described it, is a good thing. The most problematic part in my opinion are his Chainguns. Mauga is unique out of any tanks in his targeting priority. Most of the time you'll be targetting the opposing tank, which is just the reality of playing tank unless you are of dive category. The issue comes in is when you have a choice of targets between a tank and a squishy. Most tanks will go for the squishy, as killing them is easier and more beneficial for the team. All except Mauga, who always goes for the tank, despite having the option to shot at a squishy. But lets diagnose the issue as to why is that? Well he deals significantly more damage to tanks, but that's not an answer since Junker Queen and Hog also deal massive damage to tanks, yet when a squishy shows up, the prio them. Nor is Mauga having issues hitting his shots like Sigma. So what could be a reason for constant tank targeting? Well it's his Passive Berserk, or simply dependence on it. We see the same issue here as with Cardiac Overdrive but to a lesser impact, but an impact nonetheless. If Mauga shots a squishy instead of a tank, most of his shots will miss, in turn he'll gain little to no Overhealth from Berserk, leading him to just die. A solution to this is just to make it more consistent and not as dependent on the enemy team. And we do that by making Berserk passive be Brigitte's equivalent of Inspire passive. As in, as long as Mauga critically hits, he gains Berserk passive buff that only effects him, whilst it is active he gains a flat Overhealth generation per second. Continuing to critically hit resets the duration of the passive. Thanks to this simple change, Mauga wouldn't farm tanks but also wouldn't starve of overhealth when shooting squishes, finally breaking him free of the need to target the tank if he wishes to survive. As for Chaingun mid range switching, I honestly think it's irrelevant. Sure it's tedious, but the matter of the fact is him even having a mid range to begin with, considering most tanks don't. So having to put in effort by switching your guns to maximize damage is a fair trade off for even having the ability to damage stuff like Pharah and etc. Plus it does have it's uniqueness. At least most people like it, as it adds complexity to the character. Sure you can just shoot Gunny for burn effect, but you can also put in effort to shot Cha-Cha just to squeeze out a bit more damage out of it. And so you get this juggling between keeping the target burning with Gunny, whilst maximizing damage with Cha-Cha's critical hits. I think interaction should stay, it's a cool one and the community likes it. Because of all those changes Mauga becomes much less of pain to deal with, whilst much more fun to play as. If you've read my comment and even more so this far, please comment under mine so I knew I wasn't writing into the void this whole time, thank you :)

[@Chorismos]

Another way to rework berserker would be to give a flat overhealth upon an enemy ignited. Encouraging Mauga to switch and not focus the tank.

[@Takemura77]

No one cares

[@sebastianrodriguez8992]

Honestly i want his damage to go back to 4.5 and give him back the 25% fire rate when using both but give it double ammo consumption so its 2 per shot so it just a mag dumping option and reduce the effects of healing he gets by like 30% for using both and keep the single fire as the primary option 90% of the time so you can actually poke and do well in medium to longer ramge combat but if you do get close and use a good cooldown you can just eat all his ammo because of how fast he burns it

[@Jamboslice123]

Hey I posted the flat heal idea weeks ago! Good video lol

[@Casual314]

Cool, it seems to be an overlooked suggestion but I think it would be a good change.

[@omer7895]

Lifesteal should be based the percentage of the targets healthpool. For example 1/150 damage to a tracer heals more than 1/600 on hog

[@Casual314]

Maybe but this creates very character specific interactions which I think might make the game unnecessarily complex and difficult to balance. The majority of heroes have 200 health, but vary greatly in hitbox so I'm not sure this change would have the desired effect, it might just make Mauga extremely weak to thin hitboxes.

[@gladiolus3181]

As a tank and support player, Mauga feels straight up awful to play against. As support, I feel like I’m locked on Ana, and without her my team is just gonna be run over by this unkillable machine. As a tank player, I didn’t have Mauga for a while and it was terrible. I felt like I was just being shredded over and over, and when I asked a teammate what they thought on how to counter him, he told me “swap to Mauga” who I didn’t have at the time, and it made me extremely frustrated. I like the idea of his kit, but the execution has be horrible, and I wish they’d emergency nerf him for the time being, while focusing on a rework.

[@gladiolus3181]

Also adding onto what you said, this is definitely a problem I noticed without noticing. I’d think “oh here’s a good time to rush in” run into the crowd, and then realize there’s nothing I can do besides just shoot, and this rush in was completely pointless

[@Casual314]

Yeah the Ana thing is in my opinion one of the biggest issues with the game. So many tanks just change so drastically between Ana vs no Ana.

[@gladiolus3181]

@@Casual314 yeah, I think if a game centers around one ability, that ability definitely need a change. I think a simple solution is to just half anti’s effectiveness on tanks

[@nadavg1176]

I really like your suggestion to the 2 guns, but maybe as a way to discourage him from firing both guns, make it so when he fires both guns, enemies don't ignite, nor will Mauga gain overhealth (Basically make it like he is shooting 2 normal miniguns that just do damage)

[@jonathasvieira6414]

Discouraging players to do anything doesn't sounds good. It's better to offer them the decision making. Like when it's better to shoot both guns or just one. Right now, you only shoot with one gun when you're poking, but Mauga is played from close range most of the time anyway, so you will have the other tank on your face all the time and will shoot them with both guns 24/7 not only to do more damage but to survive as well (since both things are correlated). The overheat mechanic is a good thing because Mauga would have to choose between do more pressure at close range but in a shorter window or pressure a squishy at longer range but in a longer window. Shooting only the tank with both guns all the time would make you overheat too often and you won't be necesseraly more survivable (because of the changes to overdrive) so Mauga would have to make the decision of manage he's resources, the overheat and his overdrive. Engaging and retreating at the right time and at the right range. At least on paper, these changes sounds really good, I'd like to test them.

[@Casual314]

Hmm, I have feeling then he would be too weak unless you make his single guns do crazy damage, which would then make ignited targets get melted instantly. He "only" does about 144 dps without ignite and since shooting is his only move, he would probably get bullied by other brawl tanks.

[@samash.32]

So. We make his healing ability a resource, oh but then (my idea) instead of overrun, he has an ability that pulls people in, so it’s not just “don’t overrun second” great idea! Also, what if he just had one big gun that did both? Bit also remove all his armor.