I like both, really just depends on the map. Lucio is the way to go for any control maps or attack on payload (paired with ana or zen). Mercy is more situational and can help hold down a choke point better on defense if damage boosting a junkrat/bastion or any of the hitscan heroes. I have my most play hours behind mercy but I like playing her the least just because morons spread out waaaayyyyy to far which leaves you open for flankers and needing to fly all over the map. If you have a good team mercy is actually a lot of fun. A team I was rolling with was synced up well enough to any time a lucio/pharah blasted me off a ledge somebody would run over to the ledge so I could boost up to them. If you're playing with randoms mercy is a blood pressure spiker for sure.

i should buy a $5 polyester swiss flag and spraypaint "HELDEN STERBEN NICHT" on it in big yellow letters and hang it on my wall next to my swedish flag

is this stupid y/n

I like to play reaper a lot. Was it stupid to walk around work saying "DIE DIE DIE"? I don't think so... still can't believe I got fired. Do what makes you happy man, no ragrets

In your employers' defense, you were also doing a triple-axel with bizarrely ornate shotguns in your hands at the time, so, you know, that's an OSHA violation.

Can't even show up to work with shotguns and a mask anymore. What's the point of working for the .gov if I can't even be a psychotic jack booted thug. For fuck's sake, social justice warriors and their fucking trigger warnings and safe spaces and "terrorist threats and assault with a deadly weapon". Pussies. Like, whatever happened to the days when you could just rub one out in the parking lot to pictures of JMB and Stoner. If the boss didn't want me doing that shit in their car they should have locked their doors.

Also, I bought that Swiss flag.

Never thought I'd see the day I finally got Zarya down at a decent level in competitive. Slowly climbing my way out of gold hell

Halloween event is live. There's a new co-op mission and a ton of new stuff in loot boxes.

Just to add, they did address complaints about the summer loot boxes. The Halloween skins/emotes are purchasable with regular in game currency. The gold skins are at a heftier price of 3k coins with purples at $750. sprays, voice lines, and emotes are the same price as non seasonal items. Ana got a a biotic grenade buff (4m, up from 3m). Junkrat's ult deploys faster, and widow scopes in faster to make her more competitive. There was also a pretty huge UI overhaul. Also, the 1 minute timer to rejoin a competitive game is gone, if somebody drops they can now rejoin at any time. There will be increased leaver penalties coming in November I believe. It'll suck for those with shitty connections but blizzard went on record saying if your connection is that unreliable you shouldn't be regularly punishing your team (sucks, but it's the right choice IMO). No sombra yet but it's looking like she's dropping in November during blizzcon.

Blizzard: "people are getting really salty about mei and genji... I know! We'll make a hero that will be so annoying to play against nobody ever feels cheated by mei or genji again!"

Seriously though, it'll suck to play against the mlg 24/7 16 year olds that get pro with her, but it should shake the meta up a decent bit, looks good.

she looks OP AF. wonder how long the nerf will take.

After thinking about it some more, she *may* be just right. The ult doesn't really do much unless it's coordinated, so it'll wreck in higher level play but anything can with a good team. If anything she'll be the new genji/tracer counter since her ability will keep tracer from zipping away for a few seconds as well as genji. I read some play test notes from people at blizzcon and it sounds like the invisibility will get cancelled out by winston pretty easily and the cooldowns seem long enough to strike a happy medium. She should be in PTR on tuesday so we'll see then

Good. I fucking HATE Tracer, especially when I am running D.Va.

In  PTR they upped D.Va's movement while firing, hope it makes it into the live build

I hope so, too...she is really poor against the faster moving characters. I have had Tracer literally run rings around me.

I bought this the other day. Great game. Really dig Zarya but just not that great with her yet.
I play heals/support pretty well but offense poorly. Need practice and maybe tuning on the mouse speed.

Don't forget you can tune the settings for each character individually. So my mouse speed is higher on pharah and the mercy for example but lower for ana and mccree and for zarya/mccree I use a green dot reticle instead of the white dot and circle. Worth tinkering around with

i've been to occupied chasing champion rank in RL this last week to get into the winter games in OW.

may hit it up the next few days. love some of the skins.

I got completely and utterly dicked on holiday loot boxes.

$10 for 11 loot boxes. 9 of them contained all whites and a blue. one of them contained a skin for Zenyatta. The 11th contained a duplicate skin for Zenyatta.

Mother fuck buying loot boxes

New map "Oasis" just dropped.

https://youtu.be/rhVZ-QIu4jk

I kept hearing people talk about this game and finally decided to check it out.  It looks pretty awesome but I've got some questions first.  

I haven't done any PC gaming since Warcraft/Starcraft back in the day.  Haven't really done much console playing for the last 2-3 years (engineering school).  

Will I just get absolutely destroyed by pre-teens all day, everyday and end up hating the game or will I actually get paired with people who might be somewhat my skill level?  

All I've got to put the game on is my laptop.  Would it be easier/better on a desktop?  I have one that'll run it but it's not set up at the moment.  Or do I need other accessories for better gameplay?

I've watched some gameplay but I'm probably 1/10th the skill level of the videos on youtube and I'm a little worried.  

You won't get destroyed by preteens all day. It is very much a team-oriented game, so it is more along the lines of you will get stuck with a crappy team for a match or three, and then get put on an awesome team for a match. If you want to play in the competitive level, you play 10 "preseason" matches to determine your starting level, and are paired up accordingly. Your level then goes up and down based on wins and losses.

There is an option to play against AI, and there is a training room so you can practice with the characters. For the beginning, pick three characters that suit your play style and practice with them, that way, if someone else picks your favorite character, you have another to choose from.

To further expand on what kitulu said about teamwork, there are many ways to play the game. Sure, in CoD, Titanfall, Battlefield, etc, the kids usually run the show if you're talking about time sunk into the game and reflexes. Much like other team based "tactical" shooters it's more about the battle plan than the gun fighting. Of course if you play like a 12 year old hopped up on crack there are characters for that, but if you are slower and more methodical or prefer support roles there are characters for that too. When people complain and run into trouble is when they are obviously horrible at a play style and continue trying it anyways. I've always been horrible at picking random headshots off at range while sniping, therefore I don't play the snipers at all. I don't even try, tried it once and instantly knew it wasn't for me. I'm really good at flanking and tank roles though so I can play like 5 different heroes really well and most of the others OK. I can't play the snipers so I don't. I play the objective too so I have a good time. Sometimes people load up a run and gun character even though they have no physical coordination and then go for kills instead of pushing the objective. These people lose every match and get yelled at by team mates than cry on forums about it.

Anyways, I've found the matchmaking to generally be pretty decent and they are always making tweaks to game balance and the back end systems too. Anyways, the game runs on just about anything. You really don't any "accessories". I'd get a way to communicate, so a headset or a mic and some headphones. They mic+headphones route is more clumsy but you get way better quality for the money. a $20 pair of cans and a $8 zalman mic off amazon will do fine. I'd get a mouse obviously and just use the keyboard on the laptop if you run it on that. If you need an external mouse any of the ridiculous looking chinese "gaming" mice off amazon are fine. I had good luck with a "redragon" one off amazon. Used it for 3 months, no complaints. If you go that route I can send you that one or an unused steelseries kinzu

Thanks for the suggestions on the cheap gear.  Being a poor engineering student that's what I need.  

Sounds like I would fit in somewhere.  I'm definitely no sniper as I just suck at it but lots of the characters look interesting.  

If you're really feeling generous and want to hook me up with the red dragon mouse I'll take it and I can paypal you a few bucks to cover shipping or whatever.  Otherwise I'll just order one as it's pretty cheap.  

Just noticed you're in AZ.  I'm in tempe/mesa area (in the middle of a move) and can give you a pmag or something if you're close by.

PM me your address and I'll get it shipped out this weekend. No need for a pmag or anything, I'm sitting on a small box worth of extra stuff and I usually give stuff out to clear out room when I can. Keeps the wife happy. I'm down in green valley so shipping is easier.

PM sent.  Thanks!

I downloaded it last night and played for a couple of hours.  I definitely need some time to get back into PC play.  I missed Q constantly and am really slow with switching weapons on some of the characters.  Right now I seem to do ok with Mercy, Pharah and Bastion.  But I'm going to need a decent amount of gameplay before I'm on an acceptable level.

Don't forget to remap buttons if you need to. I left Q alone but I set melee and voice chat to extra mouse buttons. Also, not sure if you saw this yet but you can set different mouse sensitivities, reticles, crosshair color etc, for each individual character. I use high sensitivity for lucio, mercy, etc but when playing soldier, mcree, zarya, etc I use a lower sensitivity so I just set custom ones for each one since setting a single global one never seems right. You can change the cursor for everyone too, a green dot works best for zarya and mcree for example, crosshair for soldier, etc.

I do remember reading that earlier now that you mention it.  I'll defnitely have to go in and make some changes as that should help.  I'll probably move a few buttons over to the mouse when it gets here and move one or two on the keyboard also.  I've still only played half the characters at best but it seems like when I play someone new I generally do terrible.  I still haven't gotten any good at a tank character so I want to do that.

Just remember with the tanks there are multiple viable playstyles. Reinhardt is probably the easiest to learn but can screw the team over the easiest too. Just keep the shield up where the team needs it and if an Ana tells you they have ult get ready to charge in. Zarya is the hardest to get down IMHO. Roadhog and D.Va are medium difficulty. Their weapons and abilities aren't hard to learn but getting the harasser playstyle down is key

I've hardly played the tanks at all up til now.  I've played Reinhardt, Roadhog and Dva a couple times maybe.  I played Zarya once and realized I wasn't near good enough for that.  

I'd like to get good with one of the tanks for when it's needed because sometimes nobody wants to be it and I've been in games where it would have made a different.  But when I try it out I don't feel like I'm contributing that much and feel much more effective for the team as an offense player most of the time.  

At this point I'm still just trying to get characters down and get good at the game.  I've started playing Soldier 76 quite a bit and do pretty well with him.  I generally medal for damage done with him but that doesn't always match up to with eliminations where sometimes I don't medal at all.  You'd think they go hand in hand but I don't know.  Maybe I need to adjust my play style.  

There also isn't tons of communication at my play level so it's hard to coordinate with the team.

It's amusing as hell when someone starts spamming "we need a healer"...

"well, then,,,STFU and play a healer if you need one so bad!"

Idk if you added me yet, MapleSyrup#1687. I haven't been online since titanfall came out but the basic strategies haven't changed much since then. If you hop on shoot me a msg if I'm online and I can tank coach you since that's usually my main. Also, if you don't use discord yet I'd start. There are a couple overwatch communities you can join that are heavy on communication, the reddit discord is a good place to start usually.

I'll have to figure out how to add people and I have no idea what discord is so I'm going to do some reading.  

I never could stand reddit's format so I've always stayed away from it but I'll check it out.

I've noticed some people like to tell everyone else what to do but are unwilling to do it themselves.  

Seems like lately (although I don't play much because school is killing me) I've been on teams that run multiple healers and multiple tanks and I'm the lone offensive guy.  Sometimes it works and other times we get trashed.  

To me the tank and healer could be much more effective if people were talking and coordinated but that's generally not the case, so for the time being I'm usually running offense unless there is an imbalance somewhere.

I have gotten messaged through Xbox Live in the game lobby before when I pick Symmetra.

in battle.net just go to the upper right to your friend list, click add friend and punch in my battletag (MapleSyrup#1687), then just click add. Or, shoot me yours and I'll add you.

The team comps are somewhat flexible as well. Ideally you want two healers (lucio/mercy, ana/zenyatta are good combos depending on map/gametype), two tanks, and two DPS on offense or 1 DPS and 1 defensive if on defense. Once again this is flexible though. For a while 3 healers and 3 tanks was huge. Really depends on the other team's comp/play style as well. For instance you might be really good as genji or tracer but if they have a good pharah you're going to have to switch to soldier 76 or mcree.

The people telling others what to play has been a thing since game first came out. If you find a good group of people just add them in game to your friends list or stick with them since decent players don't do this and if they have to in competitive play they'll put it politely.

Discord is really easy to use, you can either download the client or you can actually just run it through your broswer too. All you have to do is make an account (https://discordapp.com/) and download the client (or app for your phone), or just run it through your browser. People can invite you to a chat room/voice chat party by just shooting you a link. If you ever used IRC back in the day it's actually pretty similar just much easier to join servers. You join a server and then then there are usually other rooms to join. Take the reddit one for instance, if you joined (https://discordapp.com/invite/overwatch) you would see a bunch of rooms on the left hand pane. There are rooms for finding a group (#lfgpc, #lfgxbox, #lfgps4, etc). You can go in there and somebody will usually post something like "L4M quickplay join quickplay 5" (looking for more for quickplay). There will be a box that says something like "quickplay room 5" or something, clicking on that will automatically have you join up on that room if there are spaces left. From there you usually just shoot a friend request to somebody or they'll request you and you will get a party invite in game. It sounds kind of convoluted but it's a lot easier in practice. During competitive seasons I can usually get into a group in about 2 minutes and we're in game and playing within 5 or so most of the time. The plus side to using discord is that these are all people that communicate before hand what they want to play, you communicate what you play, people lay out their expectations, and everybody has a mic. If you click with a group you'll usually friend request each other and now you have a good group of people going on a regular basis. I went from 0 battle.net friends when I bought the game to 117 over a couple of months.

I'm going to add some of you guys.  ETA: from Saurel#1481

I just picked up this game.  I've got about 30 minutes playing.  

So far I like Mercy...I was a healer and then tank in WoW.  This game is a ton of fun when you get a team that plays coordinated.

Sent you a request Pancake.  

I'm superdrag67#1869 if anyone wants to add me.  I've got to step back a little and focus on school so I probably won't be on too much for awhile.  Also keep in mind I still am not that good if I'm on and you send me a request to play or however that works.  

Cool, saurel i'll shoot you a request later. I'm not as active as I was since I'm adjusting to a new work schedule and location, but I should be on here and there this week.

I hate the new Bastion.  Ugh.  

I used to be able to hit Bastion with a helix rocket and simultaneous direct fire and take him out but it doesn't work anymore.  I even walked right up behind one and fired most of a mag into the weak spot that they built in and he just got up and ran away while healing himself.  Can't hardly seem to do any damage to him and by the time you get back on him to deal more he has already healed himself.  

I'm still getting used to characters but for now I'm usually running Pharah or Soldier for attack, Mei/Torbjorn for Defense, Mercy for Healer and occasionally Reinhart or Roadhog as the Tank although I play as a tank very little since I still don't feel I do that well at it.  It took me a while to get defense characters down too so I expect Tanks will take a while for me also.

Jeff Kaplan said that they're making changes today in PTR for bastion

edit: Instead of 35% damage reduction in sentry mode it's 20% now

That's good to hear.  I did play him once after I complained about it just to test it out.  Almost felt like I was cheating.  

The Overwatch event was cool.

Got a new skin for Mercy.

It's almost like they intentionally don't give you things you want.  Similar to watching drops in WoW.

"Oh, you main Mercy and Reinhardt, Soldier 76 or Reaper when the team needs help."

"Here's a Hanzo skin and Genji voice."

In my experience this seems accurate. It'd be nice if they had to announce loot box drop rates like in certain countries

I had forgotten about this thread, but if you play Heroes of the Storm, you can unlock skins for Genji and D.Va, as well as loot crates and stuff as the event goes on this month. If you play on Xbox Live, just make sure that your Battle.net account is linked to your Gamertag.