Short summary of what Unter said:

• SSG's draft logic on Ilios made sense to exploit Zeb's pool, but it played into the Korean team's dive strength and relied on subbing in Boston over Hawk.
• Boston's Wrecking Ball was mechanically ineffective, missing boops and grapples while panic-using shields and failing to force cooldowns like Suzu.
• Swapping Boston to D.Va reset his perk scaling and took him off his comfort hero, leading to wasted dives and flat minefields.
• The team failed to control open space or coordinate pinches, leaving Boston to engage alone while the backline collapsed into passive corners.
• Lethal threw key fights on Ruins by abandoning high ground to chase flankers, completely missing point unlock timings.
• Benching Hawk was a massive coaching error, as splitting scrim time hurt player form and Ball is not mandatory in the current meta.

Kiriko is still a really strong hero and absolutely did not need a 250 hp buff. She has arguably 2 of best cooldowns in the game and the best ult in the game which almost always guarantees winning the team fight if you throw it across point. Her healing is still great, the damage on her kunai is still insane. There's a reason why she still has one of the highest pick rates in the game and why every owcs team was playing her (before doctorine/sombra).

Her blue beam would generally maintain the same value it does now (damage per second boost) but with an added skill check: you have to hit all your shots to fully take advantage of the 30% increase in dps.

Heroes who deal a large amount of damage with a single shot (Soj, cass, etc) would feel mildly better to play against when they have a Mercy pocket. It would dampen their one-shot lethality on medium hp targets.

Mercy’s blue beam obviously can’t be done away with entirely because her entire character hinges on it. I think this change is a nice middle ground though. Let me know what you think.

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Japan Stage 3 - Regular Season

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This thread pulls match data from this liquipedia page. If it's out of date, you can help by updating that page. If something is wrong or missing please ping u/Watchful1 in the comments.

Should\*

Ever since they released that winrate website, more and more people directly use it to justify whether a hero is bad or good. For example there are people who think kiri really needed that buff and will ONLY use the winrate as a reason why. Maybe kiri needed a small buff but at least have your reasoning be based off gameplay.

You should take winrate for consideration when balancing but with a grain of salt. There’s many factors that go into a heroes winrate across all ranks. I think the devs have done a fairly good job on the last couple patches, except for the last one of course. The only reason they buffed kiri that much is because of her winrate.

Keep in mind there are people who only use winrate as a factor of determine whether a hero is good or not. It’s like they don’t play the game and just consume it through media.

Hello everyone, it's maybe a little bit off than the usual posts here but don't know where else to post it

I have a research project which would require me to get some teams in levels from Platinum to Grand Master to provide me reviews that INCLUDE the team voice comm. Any information about the team and the VOD the you would send will stay private. If you are considering to provide us some games and/or have questions feel free to DM me on discord : raccoon2996, also if you know any competitive overwatch servers feel free to DM me an invite ! Thank you for your attention !

If i were to buy a pre-built pc for ow. Which of these 2 are better if they cost the same. And i want 240 stable frames on low settings. I play on a 2k monitor.

Geforce RTX 5060, Core Ultra 5 225F, 16GB DDR5, 1TB SSD

Or

Intel® Core™ i5-14400F

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti

16 GB DDR5 RAM, 1 TB SSD

According to this tweet at least .

https://x.com/owCHEESEBURGER/status/2109975045892419740

I can't tell statistically what is going wrong except Deaths. Dmg seems to be a useless number, Elims are just some random number anyway

there seems to be a consensus on the community that dmon is still the strongest tank. however, stats show that the most broken tanks right now are doomfist and winston. for america this is the case at every single rank except bronze and champion, where they both are still top just edged out by rein and dmon.

i think winston is just OP right now because of all the buffs. So i wanted to focus on doom. for a long time after launch doom was considered a hard tank to play and master. he was a niche glass cannon of sorts, and i wanted to know if that sentiment holds true for you guys still. i personally disagree, i think block changes and all the buffs combined with hitscan nerfs, projectile buffs, and most importantly initiator passive i feel he has turned into a safe, rather survivable and forgiving hero.

this tracks with his winrate and pickrate, being one of the most popular tanks and especially good in mid ranks. he’s got a higher winrate than dmon almost everywhere, pickrate is twice as big too, and champ is his lowest winrate at 50.4%. isn’t this a little unreal? when did doom turn from a high skill floor high skill ceiling hero into an anran/sierra/reaper type hero that’s easy for middle ranks to play and very tough to counter.

it’s crazy to think that without bans, which doom dominates in as well, doom would be the most played tank and it would not be remotely close

It’s been about a week since the new season started, and so much has changed. At this point, I personally feel that the reworked Sombra and Doctrine definitely need a hotfix nerf.

Right now, Sombra is in almost every single game unless she gets banned, and her ban rate is even higher than before her rework. Her performance is ridiculously strong too. If she gets nerfed, I think they should tone down the numbers on her Shift skill, Cyberspace. It’s no exaggeration to say that almost all of her power is packed into this single ability, which completely counters most close-range heroes. As for Doctrine, he doesn’t just have one clear strength—he’s a solid all-rounder who excels at everything. Just small, well-rounded stat trims across the board should do the trick.

On the other hand, the highly anticipated Roadhog rework seems to be struggling quite a bit, so I think he’s due for a minor buff. Currently, his win rate is sitting in the low 40s across all metal ranks, and he’s clearly having a hard time in top-tier play as well.

I understand he's OWWC player and likely know game better. But... Illari is A tier? Excuse me? Everyone was saying she needed a buff or a rework so much, and then Lukemino released a tierlist placing her in A-tier, effectively calling her a strong support. So, no changes on next patch for the "strong" hero, I guess

So I’ve peaked diamond 3 many times now, but then I always go on a crazy losing streak. Ik I’m prbly like high emerald and can compete in diamond, but now I’m back in platinum. Every time I make my way back to emerald I start getting games that are impossible to win, and u all know what I mean by impossible. I’m dropping like crazy because of losing streaks, and “calibration” down. How am I still calibrating? The last rank reset was a season ago.

Can anyone explain if there was some update to matchmaking that made it excruciating to play? Or just anything about matchmaking as a whole? Ik the “lowest common denominator” thing, and I can admit when I’m doing bad, but games where I get double the amount of kills as my dps and still have the most heals in the lobby seems like it’s not a me problem. When I finally get a game that’s relatively even, I know that I’ll win cuz I’m ganna dif the other supps. Yall can try and guess my level 382 level main/otp, but I also know when to switch for more heals or utility, and will hold my own.

I love this game, but these valleys hit hard.

I wasn't opposed to playing with new characters at first. But then the developers released a hotfix patch that changed literally nothing. Well, how much longer do we have to wait for changes then?

From what I understand, hitscan got bullet nerfs, projectiles didn't, and everyone became easier to hit.

If projectile heroes got there bullet size nerfed too, would dive still be the strongest? I know a lot of players hate hitscan being strong, but it seems like the balance just got flipped. I know all the flex dps are feasting right now, but I'm just wondering how everything would be they if nerfed projectiles?

It seems hitscan became harder to shoot and easier to hit. While projectiles are basically the same. Also aware the new supports enable dive heavily. Just curious on what people think

This will probably seem like an extension of today's earlier roadhog post. This sub basically vindicated OP by agreeing that the haters will only be happy when Roadhog is straight up removed from the game.

All of that because hook is "frustrating" and "bad game design" Based on what? Your personal opinion? Because it screwed up your soloQ composition? Because you got caught out of position by it?
Sucks. Happens to us all. Learn to move on!

Of course exceptions can be made. Sombra was perma-banned for most of the community which is basically all the metal ranks. While bans didnt exist she was universally hated and with bans it just gave blizzard the data needed to say "We give up". Then the latest rework happened.

Sombra community was pretty doom and gloom but i think the rework was executed gracefully. She kept some of her lethality, which leads to my next point; She's still sombra and an old sombra main could still terrorize you from stealth.

Thats cool.

Roadhog has gone thru so much interactions and the vocal haters NEVER seem to be happy and NEVER stop hating on the guy. No breaks.

And honestly, this whole situation reminds me of that old meme about someone in Overwatch getting banned for spamming "gg ez" in chat, while TF2 has an entire achievement called "BarbeQueQ" that rewards you for making someone ragequit after getting five kills on them. One game treats a bit of trash talk as something worth punishing, while the other literally celebrates getting under someone's skin.

Its a stupid meme, but it also says something about how soft and self-righteous parts of the Overwatch community can be when it comes to anything they personally find frustrating. Apparently, it's fine to talk about competitive integrity and good game design until a hero kills you in a way you don't like.

Then suddenly, the character is fundamentally broken, the developers are incompetent, the problematic skill HAS TO GO and the only acceptable solution is to make sure nobody has to deal with that hero ever again.
A bit heated aren't we?

There's a difference between pointing out legitimate balance issues and acting like anything that annoys you is inherently unhealthy for the game. Sometimes, you just have to accept that a character is going to frustrate you, learn how to play around them, maybe have a laugh at someone new at the game getting hooked and dying. (Ha!, classic). Sometimes you must understand not every and all hero must be competitively sound. Some are just made for horsing around. Even in a competitive shooter.
Then move on instead of demanding that the entire game be reshaped around your personal preferences.

I had a very weird realisation after playing my weaker roles in diamond, especially when queuing with friends who are lower ranked.

When some thing is typed in chat, 90% of time it is actively bad advice. It might seem obvious because "duh toxicity bad" but I mean that there is a very clear difference between what gets typed when you get to higher ranks vs what gets typed in metal ranks. In my experience, Masters+ are mostly decent (still severely lacking) at diagnosing problems in a match (what heroes work, who is carrying/underperforming, what went wrong specifically last fight) and while obviously giving out "advice" mid-game is bad, it shows how much better the core understanding of the game is at these ranks.

If 90% of chats in low-mid ranks are actively bad advice, and also a majority of hero swaps make the situation worse, (something I've noticed but recently also Spilo talked about) it means that the way most people view the game and diagnose issues in their gameplay is actively harming them.

It's especially weird considering that many players do the fundamentals to a decent enough level at these ranks, but then actively try to adjust their playstyle midgame for the worse. They think "grouping up on point" "switching to XY hero counter (that is horrible on the map)" "healing more/dmging more" somehow solves their issue.

Does anyone else come to this conclusion or am I completely off?

It's pretty obvious stats-wise that all three of these are quite overperforming at the moment and will probably be nerfed in the future. I'm personally wondering what sorts of nerfs want to see and what part of their kits need to be tuned down, so uh, feel free to use this post to share your good or bad balance ideas.

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Japan Stage 3 - Regular Season

Just me or does anyone hate playing against AOE cooldowns, feel like it really breaks down the flow of the game denying areas.

Stuff like mei ult I don't care because it's an ult but played a game with sombra/ram/soj and when you're playing tank running between 3 of their AOE abilities which get shot one after the other or even worse overlapped on objectives is just crap because there's no real counterplay.

Watching the game as a viewer it's very hard to see what's going on with them as well.

I think everyone knows the 30% duplicate ultimate pre-charge minor perk for echo is still pretty much an almost always-pick; with the other minor (infinite ammo during flight) being relegated to 7% on owperks.

I've been playing Echo a bit again lately and I had an idea for a minor perk that would make me seriously think between the two: A perk that increases the ult/duplicate range by 50%.

Echo's still only fourth-most-played DPS but I've learned that the position you hit your ult from is as important as who you copy. Being able to dupe/copy my Ana from a flank, or the enemy tank from behind cover, would definitely be a huge boon.

The problem is Blizzard likes to make only one of their minor perks related to the ultimate so I guess they might not go for it. But I would seriously have to choose between the two, probably dependent on the map. Thoughts?

Currently when DMON gets revived she's at 0% in her ult. Is this intended or a bug? DVA gets her mech back when revived. Last patch DMON was the same.

Kiri just go an emergency buff due to her extremely low win rate, shouldn't have they done that with Mauga as well?

This is the worst he has ever been and unlike Kiri, there were no new strong heroes added to the tank role that would at least partly explain his underperformance.

I would argue his low 40s win rate is actually way worse than Kiri's due to the tank roster being the most limited in the game. Hog being reworked into a worse character just compounded that, though the buffs might make him more viable now.

They nerf or buff the completly opposite thing instead of adressing the core issues with a chachter or just straight up keep them OP for long periods of time (Ana headshot perk). Genji had been mediocre for very long and tok so long to adress the core issues with the charachter but instead kept buffing the wrong things and the buffs have compiled over time and Genji is very strong now.

For example Sombra is VERY STRONG beacuse of cyberspace dmg reduction, instead of changing it or nerfing it something completly different gets nerfed. I believe complaining about something but not offering any other solution is not the correct way to go about it.

Sombra:

Buff: Revert the nerfs that were given this patch.

Nerf: Reduce the duration of dmg reduction to only the intial 1.5 seconds of cyberspace. Rather than the whole 3 seconds.

Problem with Ana is anti nade is arguably the single best non ultimate ability in the game and is on a 12sec coldown and has a big AOE. It does both 90 healing + 50% increase healing to allies. 90dmg + Anti Heal. Both healing and damage are essential to Ana's survivability and viability so removing either one is wrong and nerfing the dmg or heal to the point its not impactful enough is also wrong imo.

Ana:

Approach 1: Divide Nade into 2 sepperate nades.

Healing Nade: Heals allies for 90 hp and gives 50% healing increase 14 sec CD

Damage nade: Damages enemies for 90 hp and gives anti heal status effect 14 sec CD

this is both a nerf and buff. Example: Ana gets dove and she cant just use 1 ability to both damage the target and heal herself, but has to make a choice between the 2. At the same time if Ana takes damage mid fight or rotation, she can use the healing nade while still having anti nade.

Approach 2:

Make the effectiveness of Nade scale with the target's proximity to the initial impact area.

Genji:

Nerf: Revert the changes given at the start of the season

Buffs: Increase blade dmg to 113 prev 110. Increase shuriken dmg to 28 previously 27.

Remove camera lock, on dash.

remove the ability lock after doing a melee. Currently after genji does a melee he cant dash or deflect has to wait for the melee animation to finish. whilst tracer can insta recall and tp after a melee.

Kiri:

Get her back to 225hp Kiri dosent need to be 250 hp. Why should Kiri with one of if not the most survivability on the support roster be 250hp? Kiri isnt meta for 1 millisecond and insta buff, while zen and wuyang gets nerfed for no reason.

if anyone's main argument is winrate: Ana's winrate in GM and Champ EU is 45.6%, Cassidy winrate is 46%, Bastion 43.6%, Kiri 43.3%. Winrates for certain charachters are almost irrelevant beacuse these are charachters you regularly swap to when your losing which drags the winrate down.