News Overwatch Season 6 Round Up - Last Two Weeks!

Gr1zzy Oct 17, 2017

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    Gr1zzy Guest

    Overwatch Season 6 Round Up - Last Two Weeks!

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    With the final two weeks of Overwatch’s sixth competitive season upon us, how’s everybody doing? Have you hit all of your season goals? Are are you tilted, struggling to deal with the major changes to D.Va, Junkrat, and Mercy? Or are you just busy grinding away for those sweet Halloween loot boxes? Either way, I’m sure that if you play Overwatch you’ve noticed the changes to Mercy, and if anything, that is certainly what season 6 will be known for.


    Mercy was updated with patch 1.5 which dropped on September 19th. This patch brought huge changes to the character, most notably her resurrection ability. And with that change the whole Overwatch “meta” was shaken to its core.


    The “meta” refers to the selection of nerfs and buffs that Jeff Kaplan and team blesses or curses select characters with in every patch. These blessings and curses gently (or not so gently in Mercy’s case) tip the scales in the grand interconnected web of characters, and causes some to be “better”, “worse”, or in this case definitely “played A LOT more”. And not just “a lot” more in the new Mercy’s case...players are picking her on nearly every team in competitive Overwatch: “we have never seen a hero with a near 100% pick rate across every tier - until now”, Omnicmeta reports.

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    As you can see, New Mercy’s pick rate increases with the rank of the players involved (grandmaster teams pick her darn near close to 100% of the time), and other healers’ pick rates pale in comparison. However, contrary to what this data might suggest, I don’t think Mercy is exactly overpowered now - I think that a team with a Mercy has a huge advantage when playing against a team without her.


    But let's not forget about the other two Overwatch heroes whose changes this season caused ripples not only throughout the meta but the community at large: Junkrat, and D.Va (as a D.Va main I felt these ripples personally…) I won't go into too much detail about their specific changes, but you might be able to glean something about their updates from the same graph above. In addition to showing a large spike in usage within the lowest ranks, the usage of Junkrat and D.Va also decreases as the ranks increase. The takeaway from this data varies, but one popular theory is that these changes to D.Va and Junkrat were done to benefit/excite the lower tiered, more casual Overwatch player - which is exactly what it did. And whether this bothers you or not, it is important to remember that although Overwatch is played to an extremely high professional level, these players are not the only ones playing the game, and are in fact the minority.


    But moving on to something we can all agree on: the cool new Overwatch event that just dropped a week ago! Halloween themed too! (The best Holiday) And we all know Blizzard can pull off the slightly-cartoonish-gothic-horror aesthetic like nobody else! This new event means an updated return of a really fun cooperative PvE game mode and new items to buy with credits or unlock in loot boxes: spooky voice lines, emotes, sprays, and of course skins! Zenyatta’s new skin is definitely my favorite, but that’s probably just because I’m a sucker for any Lovecraft references in games:

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    So get on Overwatch and finish up the last two weeks of the competitive season strong! Or if competitive isn’t your thing, you can still get spooked, check out the new hero updates, and try not to get too tilted. Oh and not to worry, the ESRB just ruled last Wednesday that loot boxes are not gambling!


    In an email to Kotaku, a spokesperson wrote:

    “ESRB does not consider loot boxes to be gambling. While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player, unfortunately, receives something they don’t want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectable card games: Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have.”


    So go ahead and fiend over them, and don’t worry about telling your therapist about it!


    Grizzy- Creator in Chief
     

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