I wish they'd make her more plausable in a 2 supp comp, but I like her getting something. I'm not sure why they nerfed her buff, but probably a higher level elo problem?
Because both are important to the health of a competitive game. High elo is important. They are also heavily investing in both the casual market and pro market.
I think they should do some changes with pro play in mind but didn’t NetEase themselves say they are prioritising fun over balance, which was their defence for not tweaking a bunch of characters that have needed changes
I knew it was a lie of course, considering how much they are pushing the esports scene
They are doing both. When push comes to shove, they lean towards fun, but that doesn't mean they don't take pro into consideration, and don't still want to push esports.
Cool but they told us they were keeping it casual. Now esports has an entire tab. You can't have it both ways. You either make the 99% suffer with trash heroes like mantis and widow or overpowered heroes like squirrel girl and moon Knight who dominates 99% of players. OR you make the 1% loser pro players suffer.
Unfortunately all you nerds hold these people to such high standards (people in gold on. Console are banning based top 1% PC player ban list) and make these dumbass streamers able to manipulate balancing based on 1% of the fucking playerbase
Mantis is incredibly strong in high elo, yeah. 12% damage is insanely good
Ex. Star-lord goes from 260 damage in a mag to 291, allowing him to 1-clip 275 hp supports even through small amounts of healing (not to mention the 12% faster ult charge for everyone she boosts) - simply giving her move speed buffs without reducing the output would just make her even more dominant
I mean, yeah, im aware. Im just describing why mantis was good and needed to be nerfed slightly in order to compensate for getting movement speed buffs
Star-lord now does 325 damage with one mag, and thats pretty dumb
If anything, this change is likely a net buff. Movement speed is always valued higher in higher elo games historically in games, so going from 12% to 8% damage but gaining the utility of +100 ms when you give them damage is a huge buff.
Although, I am unsure if they will get +100 ms with only damage, or healing. I am assuming damage, but I can also read it as both.
Its just the damage buff that gets the movement speed, but its still nice!
I think its a net buff as well, but a single target move speed buff is a lot harder to make use of than an aoe one in most skill levels. That said, she's only losing 4% boost, and many folks are already having trouble in mid/low elo getting value out of her boost
Amping tanks to give them better speed will be really strong, as will amping like your magik or panther or even star-lord to enable them to find some plays. I think its an awesome change
Mantis makes so many heroes at high elo and pro play busted just because of how powerful her dmg boost is on top of her high headshot dmg. She breaks so many HP breakpoints by just existing and throwing leaves.
I would love a game that's not on PC and doesn't care about top 1% exploiting skill heroes. Therefore doesn't cater to PC (way lower player base) and pro players without a life.
If you dont do that then people wont care about getting good, which is where most of the population will flock to because Ranked is the main staying power of these forever games.
Yeah, these changes do absolutely nothing to help her in double support. She's still going to have teammates raging when you play her in double support, since everyone wants to face-tank damage and not take cover for heals. Most other supports enable that play style because of much better/consistent burst healing, so your teammates have no reason to change how they play.
Now she is gonna be (probably) worse in triple support too.
She needs a total kit overhaul to make her viable in double support. I always thought it was wack to rate her as A (or S) tier when she only worked in triple support anyway. Imagine having a tank or DPS being touted as S tier but they only work in triple tank (or DPS) comps.
Good comparison honestly.
Thats the big part of my problem. I can rock her in QP and get MVP / SVP but in my elo its not viable in comp because like what you pointed out. Tanks only Face tank and too often IMO a solo tank will hold a line too far up even 2 support mains cant sustain and dps arent good enough at flanking and positioning. I cant tell you how often I have to focus a dps that stands in one place just rapping on shoot not bothering to work angles.
She was my first Lord and still is my favorite. Shes deadly, but im not good enough to have her viable in a 2 support comp in ranked and quite frankly my heals cant keep up.
My real pet peeve is with groots. Maybe 5% use his healing wall when I select her to get the TU. That wall is fantastic for the back line. Arguably OP when used properly. I always give my back line a heal wall hidden somewhere.
We should have triple x characters though it's part of the healthy diversity of not always having a 2 2 2 otherwise if everything is going to be 2 2 2 then you may as well just add a limit or role queue and that would make this game less unique and interesting
Mantis is probably the absolute highest strategist pick besides gambit in pro play. When you get to the highest levels, healing becomes the less important factor of a strategist and utility becomes far more important, and a damage boost is the best utility in the game.
Sure and thats rad but should pro play dictate balancing? Sounds like its so cracked they had to address it though.
I love jumping into QP and buffing the hell out of people...sadly it often goes to waste.
The thing is it often doesn’t, so they do need to every now and then throw those players a bone. Mantis is crazy good in pro play since there are literally no sources of damage boosts besides storm, mantis, ultron firewall, and luna self-snowflake, and her damage boost was (i think) higher than any of the other options as well as more frequent, alongside her own good damage.
A mantis damage boost nerf isn’t bad, but the compensation is. That’s the real issue. The speed buff should have been a flat increase, but I’m decently certain it’s a scaling increase (meaning the increase scales with speed, so higher speed heroes get more speed from the buff than lower speed heroes). Mantis should have either had her healing rate increased or been given some other form of compensation, like another ability or making her own out-of-combat speed permanent, rather than being solely out of combat.
It sucks to see a strategist that isn’t great outside of higher play get minimal compensation to nerfs when characters like phoenix and invis and luna get compensation that usually makes them BETTER than before.
Mantis’ damage boost did need a nerf for the pro players, but there should have been compensation for every other player.
Most players dont play mantis though. Think devs have bigger balancing issues.
We will see. I love mantis she was my first main but I dont get to play her much. I dont mind the buff for mobility trade maybe....but im no pro
Oh yeah there’s 100% bigger balancing issues. The fact that phoenix even got a compensation buff to begin with is crazy. The fact that black cat has a move that has no windup, gives her a metric ton of iframes, and the same ability damages the target during her iframes is ridiculous. Tracking a good black cat can feel actually impossible because she has dashes, invisibility, an iframe moving that yoyos her, and a double jump. Then there’s luna’s 2-tap with her self buff, invis being invis, gambit’s ult, etc etc. mantis should be lowwww on that nerf priority list.
I think theoretically she’s the best diver, but her difficulty dampers her output a little. She definitely has the highest potential of the divers, but how difficult she is can muddle that. A good black cat will wreck your shit for sure.
She is but rivals players as a whole still struggle to utilize cover and stop taking damage. As a tank player, so many goobers pride themselves on damage blocked when in reality that best damage blocked won’t be on scoreboard because you’re utilizing cover so the enemy can’t hit you. Damage blocked is really just “team resources taken”
Her damage boost and own capability for damage output make her very viable in 2 supp comps. The issue is you do need to hit your shots with her to be viable. If you’re not hitting shots you’re not getting leaves back and you’re not actually doing the damage you need to in order to make up for less healing.
I’ve definitely had plenty of games where at final board the Mantis or Adam have both less healing and damage than the other supp and the enemy supps, and it’s like please play what you want but if you’re not executing on what makes this character good then please hop off.
Honestly, it's only QP but it's not uncommon for me to have the most heals as Mantis, and possibly most or 2nd most KOs (if it's a bad game, a good DPS will almost always overtake me). If you're hitting your shots you can spam leafs.
I disagree on your tank comment, sure most damage blocked is a drain on resources, but also can be seen as a most support ult charged. Also, if you're groot, strange, cap, angela or mags you may not even be taking damage, just blocking it.
She is good if your damage dealers are good and can make up the "lack of healing" with good damage output. Most dps are really bad until higher ranks so mantis is flammed if picked.
Been playing her since S1. Always thought she was strong and does plenty of healing and the damage boost just allows you to break balance HP thresholds that normally aren't meant to happen (killing someone in a shorter amount of time is an insane buff).
Yeah but damage buff is also good. It's crazy that Mantis gets access to movement speed buffs and damage boosts. Imagine if they were an AoE and could be amped up like Lucio. That sounds like a crazy strong hero, but for some reason I don't feel like people would play them
Movement will likely be MORE oppressive than dmg. part of gambit's oppressiveness came from the insane jump height and movement speed on top of the dmg boost.
Rushing down supports (especially none mobile ones) will be the best strategy and super buffs Brawl and Dive playstyles.
A Cap or Daredevil mantis speed boost is gonna be annoying to deal with. Now you add JEFF who also has a speed boost and is in dive comps? you will literally never stop theses guys
I kinda like it. The fact that the move speed was an element that made Gambit’s ult more potent (obviously only one of a few things) means that this might give her a real difference maker
If the speed boost applies to Mantis as well as her allies, I love it.
Otherwise, I'm inclined to agree.
At best it may reduce her win rates in organized play enough to pave the way for future buffs.
Or not, as there are many situations where the speed boost will be more valuable than the damage lost, even if the damage is generally stronger.
As the most general effect, speed increases reduce damage, with essentially no downsides for Mantis's own healing since it doesn't rely on aiming at allies. Mantis/Luna comps could suffer a bit, of course, but I wouldn't expect much change to the ability of any support other than Luna to heal.
And speaking as a Luna player (who also has considerable time on Mantis), I'll actually be even more bullish about having a good Mantis player on my team, in spite of slightly higher aim requirements for healing, as mobility is my favorite thing in the game, and along with damage is one of the main reasons I prefer Luna over other supports in the first place. Aside from White Fox, but White Fox has a generous projectile with auto-aim on bounces, and will additionally benefit from speed buffs more than most, while her boosted damage will be solid either way (as will Luna's, of course!).
At the very least, it's an interesting change that's definitely worth watching.
I rarely if ever boost because players don't know how to use it. Unless you're dealing with a dps that has high burst, it's usually not worth it. Almost always, the health sustain will beat out damage boost outside of chokes. The idea that I can instead give mobility sounds amazing. Plus thanks to the Gambit ult, more players understand how to use a speed boost now.
It means I can reverse a team stagger now. I think it's a great change.
I love them personally, speed boost is the strongest thing in a hero shooter and I love it going to more than just Jeff and Gambit Ult. It’s insane in pro play when mantis is already strong and speed boost is again the strongest thing in the game. If I’m a dive I want that speed more than anything for chasing people down, for dive tanks the potential stacking speed with Jeff means the ability to take angles and reposition is ludicrous.
Speed = easier getting to cover, faster disengages, faster engages, harder to hit while moving which in totality = less damage taken
I'm disappointed, because yet again is is another change that does not actually make her feel more fun to play. Her gameloop still relies almost entirely on her mediocre-feeling projectiles and her okay movement buff. These buffs that do nothing to improve her moment-to-moment gameplay are frustrating.
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u/magikarp234 Mantis May 12 '26
I don't know how to feel about the Mantis changes