My Life in WordsThoughts, scribbles, doodles, videos.
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Language is powerful. Hearing new phrases can be exciting, and easily incorporated into daily language simply through repeatition. Video games and streaming platforms Twitch are great examples; there are so many streamers who create their own words centered on memes, to the point where it's become an official term within a certain context, and video games have always had their own terminology that often doesn't leave the context of the game itself. "C9" is a popular phrase found in Overwatch. It means to leave the objective of the map uncontested during the final moments, and essentially grant a "free" win to the enemy team. "PUG" is an acronym for a group of random players joining together to complete an objective, a "Pick Up Group". These are phrases that are easy to understand and adapt to when hearing them in context, or sometimes even out of context. They're short words, relatable, and centered around things with tons of fans and exposure. However, there are a lot of words in the English vocabulary that are just as prevalant, if not more, that have a negative affect on many people. Curse words, slur words, derogatory language, these are all things that are regularly used in day-to-day speech. Often, when taken in context, these types of words aren't intended to be malicious or harmful, but a way to express a feeling like anger or frustration. The usage of negative words has expanded into daily lingo for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean that all of the words or phrases are OK or without consequence. Language is powerful. Words have the power to hurt people, to cause damage, especially if someone's been hurt that way before. Using terms that target demographics, specific people, genders, etc., can be a lot more harmful to the people around you than you realize. There are so many more ways to express a feeling or sentiment than to fall into language that can cause pain. English has some of the most wonderful and descriptive words borrowed from multiple languages, which means there are so many options and variations to get your point across without having to use charged up vocabulary. It's a brand new year, which means it's a great time to start fresh and improve something new and wonderful about yourself. Language is powerful, and using words to create a positive experience for someone else something to be admired.
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This is exciting! It's week two of the Overwatch League, and right in the nick of time, Blizzard announced that Twitch was going to be hosting all the games, in 720p/1080p! The games look gorgeous, the team colours are super fun to see, and the skins are out in game as well!
A lot of the teams seem to be more evenly matched than people initially thought, which makes the games way more exciting to see. Constant stomps and one-sided matches would be way more tedious to watch, so the fact that the base power level of the teams is relatively even is a pleasant surprise. Some teams are struggling more than others, and some may be concealing their true strength until the later stages, content to drop/tie a few maps but win the overall series to maintain their ranking on the leaderboards. The players from Contenders and the Overwatch World Cup are spread out through-out the teams, with only three teams having a single nationality (Korean), and there are enough star players everywhere that those watching can feel comfortable cheering for their favorite player, a team based on their geographical location, or even just their favorite team colours. Personally, I'm cheering for one of my favorite teams from Contenders, the Immortals roster that has picked up new players and turned into the LA Valiant. The colours are great, the players are fantastic, and they've already made some amazing plays. I can't wait to see what each week brings in terms of successes and challenges they'll face. Oh, also, new sprays and player icons have been released! Who to pick, who to pick, for a new player icon? I always want to pick Sombra, but ugh, her player icons are always off-centered, and this one is still no exception. I think, with all her inclusion in the Overwatch League so far, just seeing her icon or a player playing her won't cause as much immediate tilt, so I may just go for it anyway! Wish me luck! The Overwatch League began its inaugural preseason today, and it's already off to a rough start.The stream isn't available on popular streaming websites YouTube or Twitch, and is instead featured on MLG which has no Chromecast support. This made it extremely difficult for me to even begin watching the stream, taking me an extra 30 minutes to explore all my options to see if I could stream the matches directly from my phone (I can't), and then go, turn on my PC, get everything set and stream the full site page from MLG to my Chromecast. Yes, full site page. There's no way to remove or hide the chat unless you install an adblocker, and direct the adblocker to the chat window. Seriously? Where's the TV support? How are people supposed to easily watch this major e-sports event comfortable in their own home, attached at the hip to their PC? Does no one at Blizzard stream to their television, and they somehow didn't anticipate that watching what's supposed to turn into a huge sporting event on your couch would be something people looked forward to? Do people now watch the Superbowl on their PCs instead of in large parties? Did I miss a memo somewhere? I was really looking forward to this whole thing, but now I'm more frustrated than anything else. I don't want to have to come home and go to my PC to watch something on my television, especially when the standard for every single Overwatch event previous has been for it to livestream on Twitch. This is a huge inconvenience, and will likely impact the viewership if they don't get it figured out. I'm literally writing this post instead of watching the stream because it made me so frustrated I don't even care about watching it right now. Blizzard. Seriously. Get some Chromecast/SmartTV support going on, let your viewers watch the streams from the comfort of their beds and couches, and let us hide chat. Not everyone likes seeing POGCHAMP spammed a hundred times in a row. I've played a lot of Mercy in the past, with her being my main choice of healer when I do solo or multi-queue in competitive. I've always found her to pretty fun to play, darting around with Guardian Angel, and doing tempo resurrections to keep the tide of battle in my favour.
Playing with a good team.As a result, I've been playing the new Mercy on the PTR as well, and I've come to some conclusions given her current state. As she stands on the PTR, she is less fun to play, and less fun to play against. In a GOOD team, she has the constant ability to provide tempo resurrections, and her team will be able to protect her. She seems to be encouraging a Deathball team composition, especially if you take into consideration the pushing potential of her ultimate ability, Valkyrie. In a Deathball composition, she can heal/buff her whole team as they move forward for 20 seconds, and resurrect fallen teammates every 10 seconds. This makes her even more of a "kill this hero first" than ever before, but on a GOOD team, she'll be protected and able to do her thing.
Playing against a good team.If you're facing a good team, then this will be a nearly impossible Mercy to kill, unless you solo ult her. This is pretty much what happened to me every time. I would get solo ulted by a Pharah, a Junkrat, Hanzo, Soldier, you name it, they focused on bringing me down before anyone else. In return, when I was facing a good team, I did the same thing. Getting to that Mercy player in the back was so difficult that I felt the need to use an ultimate to break through just to hit her, and then if I missed, seeing her resurrect someone immediately, then ult and again another person, feels even worse than it ever did seeing her get a 4-5 man resurrection on live.
Playing with a bad team.If you're on a bad team with Mercy 2.0, it's so difficult to do anything. Your teammates run off, die on their own, you can't get to them to resurrect them due to the 5 yard resurrection limit, plus line of sight, or if you do, then you can't get back to safety easily either. You may not have any protection, or people to dash away to, so then you just do what you've always done, sit back around a corner and heal people. I've done more healing hiding behind cover as this Mercy than I ever have live, because I can simply do less for my team with the limitations on the E resurrection. My ultimate gives me a free resurrection, this is true, but everything is still 5 yards, and still line of sight. I still can't get to anyone without being in trouble myself, I move too slowly, so it's simply too dangerous to play aggressively. If anything, the ultimate is useful to run away from enemies, unless it's a soldier who pops his ultimate as soon as Mercy flies up, because we can't actually duck or stay very close to the ground. On top of this, when two people die together, you can't actually select which person to resurrect. It's a gamble which the server will pick, because the icons are literally on top of each other.
Issues with "E" ResurrectionOr better yet, when there's an icon floating somewhere, but no matter where you stand, on top of it, behind it, circling it, you still can't resurrect the icon with your teammates face on it? If a person died, say, inside a building, the resurrection icon has shown up outside the building, even though they actually died inside. If they were outside on a balcony, the icon may fall down even though the player died up above. This means that on occasion, if you go to resurrect that person, you may not be able to because where the icon of the person is showing isn't actually where it is, and is line of sight. So now as Mercy 2.0, you're in danger out in the open, you can't actually get the resurrection off, and your Guardian Angel is still on cooldown for another second, where you have to fly through a mild-moderate battle to get back to safety.
Is it "fun"?It's honestly really boring to play as a Mercy, it's not fun to play as her, and it's really not fun to play against. On the PTR, I've won every game I've been Mercy in, and I stopped playing it because I just got so bored. I felt like I had no impact in the game with anything I did. Sure, the tempo resurrection helped by keeping the pressure up, but so what. If I killed an extra person on the enemy team as a Zenyatta, I would've had the same effect, plus a way more impactful ultimate where not only am I invulnerable, I actually can heal through multiple enemy ultimate abilities. Why should I play as this new Mercy? What does she bring to the table that's better than the other healers?
"But she has a really high pick rate!"I've been seeing a lot of numbers thrown around on the forums where she "needed to be nerfed due to her pick rate". Friends, there are 4 healers available. Two of those healers can be classified as main healers who can survive as a solo healer in a match, and she's one of them. Of course her pick rate seems high compared to some DPS heroes, there are 15 of them!
Final thoughts.I really hope this new Mercy doesn't come out in her current state. If she does, it's very likely that many players will either avoid picking her in a pug game, or will only pick her in a Deathball composition team.
I'm guessing Blizzard will likely keep her as she is, since it seems like they're encouraging the Deathball meta with the recent buffs to the heroes, to break away from the Dive meta that's currently active. They've yet to respond to any threads referencing Mercy on the PTR forums, whether it's a "We hear your concerns" or even better "We hear your concerns and are working on some changes". All they've actually done is nerf Mercy 2.0 twice already, without responding to any active feedback. On the plus side, Zenyatta is likely going to be an active pick regardless, due to his kill potential and ultimate ability, so time to learn some Zen. Very glad I didn't buy my golden gun yet. RIP Mercy. |
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