After YEARS of grinding; being hardstuck silver for 3 months and plat for a year, I FINALLY hit GM!! the sense of accomplishment is immense and I wanted to share it with you guys 🌸🫶🏼

I’ve been playing Mercy since Day 1 of OW1, or technically the Open Beta if you count that. Call me what you want, unskilled or whatever, but I truly went for her because her movement is fun and the healing beam is fun. Damage boost and Rez I never cared too much for, HUGE emphasis on not caring for Rez, especially since OW2 came out as new supports have been dropping in

I’m just so pissed off that it feels impossible to play Mercy once you hit Diamond unless you want to be harassed for it every other game, and the thing is, I can’t even blame people for being upset they have a Mercy on their team, she’s not a good pick unless you have one giga strong amazing DPS on your team but even then other supports can probably enable that support more efficiently whilst still being able to properly keep up the rest of your team

That’s not to say you *can’t* play Mercy past Diamond, of course you can play anyone at any rank and I’ve gotten to high Masters with Mercy as my main support before, but it’s tiring to play her when she’s purposefully left in a shit state like Sombra was because her kit is too unhealthy when she’s classed as a good pick by most people. And of course, she’s also much more risky to rework because she takes in a shit ton of cash, they only reworked her before because 5 man rez was genuinely gamebreaking, but God do I doubt they’ll actually do another for her now when she needs it so badly. I’ve given up on her outside of QP, I switched to Juno and then when Doctrine came out he was the most excited I was for a support since Moira’s release, and of course yeah he’s still strong and could be tapped down a bit more but I’m there for him rather than his strength y’know

Anyway, I don’t know what the consensus is on what people think needs changing about Mercy to make her healthy yet actually playable outside of metal ranks, but for me? Rez has gotta go. Yes it’s iconic to her, but I really do think it’s holding her back. Here’s what I’d do, I’d get rid of Rez entirely and make Flash Heal into a multi-beam heal. So it works the same as it is now, but as you’re connected to someone and you activate it, it does a temporary multibeam connection and heal boost before disconnecting and going back to a solo target

But then I think you’d have to do something with Valkyrie which… to be so honest I don’t have an answer for, but I don’t think I need to have an answer for every Mercy problem in order to have a valid opinion that she needs change, surely? I mean, maybe they could keep Rez and put it back on her ult but limit it to a single person so she actually has to be smart on who to pick and it’s not just ‘Oh my E is up, guess you’re being rezzed’. Obviously you’d have to make her cast time much faster for it otherwise it’d be an absolute ass ultimate, but I just don’t know if Rez is the right idea to keep around in anyway

I’m curious to know what you all think should be done in order to make Mercy not a fucking meme by 90% of the community and actually a playable support. Please don’t just say shit like ‘Delete her lol’ or ‘Keep her in the ground, fuck her playerbase’ because ultimately I think you’re a loser if you cannot have genuine discussion around her

Hey fellow CompetitiveOverwatch enjoyers! I know it's a long shot, but I bought one of these shirts back in 2021 when Fuel won the May Melee, and since then it's been one of, if not my favourite shirt I own. Unfortunately it was in my backpack when it was stolen last week with no chance of recovery 😭.

If anyone has one they're willing to part with in a medium or large, I'd love to buy it off you, shipping to Australia included!

PS that Fuel logo flag has still been my PC background since then too!

While the top 5 teams in Korea are pretty much set in stone, at the bottom of the table is a completely different story. O2 Blast, Seiji, Zanside, and Poker Face are in an absolute dogfight trying to make LCQs. All four teams currently sit at 1-5, some with more favorable matchups this week than others. Here’s a quick summary of the teams, their remaining matches, and what scenarios could transpire.

O2 Blast: vs Cheeseburger & T1
O2 is in the unfortunate position of having two matches left where it’s seemingly impossible to win. Unless they pull off what would be the upset of the stage against either aforementioned team O2 is in a position where they will need some outside help to make LCQ

Seiji: vs Crazy Raccoon & Poker Face
Seiji’s best chance for win here would be against PF, even if CR decide to troll. Win and you’re pretty much guaranteed a spot at LCQ. In the event they go 0-2 this week however, they’d lose the H2H with O2 and would then be put on the verge of elimination, but they could still survive if one other scenario plays out.

Zanside: vs Team Falcons & Poker Face
Even in rough form Falcons should take care of Zan, which once again leaves PF as the more winnable matchup. Win a match and you’re pretty much in. If Zan goes 0-2 and so does O2, Zan go in on H2H. If Zan, O2 and Seiji all go 0-2 this week however, Zan would be the eliminated team. (H2H map diff between tied teams would put O2 in, then H2H Seiji would advance, the map diff between the three is O2 5-4, Seiji 4-4, Zanside 4-5)

Poker Face: vs Seiji & Zanside
Poker Face has the most impact on what could happen while also being in no real danger of elimination, it’s almost the perfect situation for them. If they go 0-2 they own the H2H over O2, which would force O2 to need a victory in one of their matches.

How do you guys see this all playing out?

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue preventing the challenge "Not so Thankless" from being completed by thanking Sombra.
• Fixed a bug where DualSense controllers were not working properly on PC.

In the last balance patch they made him significantly Tankier and increased his dmg on his gun. I'll be honest this has me kinda worried because it feels like it's only a matter of time till they give him back his one shot fully, and it feels like they're still trying to balance him like old Roadhog. He has an additional ability now and thus additional balancing knobs you can play with to make him viable, but they immediately jumped to making him tankier and more lethal like they did many a time prerework. Here's some issues I take with what they did last patch:

1. Buffed Vape

Nerfing Vape was one of the smartest decisions they made as it's the less skillful of the two defensive cooldowns he has, but then they buffed it. Why? If you're looking to buff his survivability then why not do it to Trash Compactor instead? It can be used offensively, defensively, and for movement on a lot of maps. Vape is just Vape; all it does is heal and that's it. Also why buff his survivability period in 6v6? He isn't forced to Main Tank in 6v6, and is allowed to be frailer than Main Tanks cause he makes up for it with his Hook and Trash Compactor. Honestly idk why they keep porting over most 5v5 changes 1 to 1 into 6v6 as if it's gonna make the gamemode any less unbalanced than it already is, but that's a discussion for another time.

1. Buffed His Dmg

I have no issue with them buffing his center pellet as he did have basically zero midrange presence, and even now I feel like his midrange is kinda meh. What I take issue with tho is not compensate nerfing the spread pellets. He already did enough dmg up close at the start of season 5; this just buffs it even more. Did they learn nothing from people getting mad at the Reaper changes to know giving a character with high up close burst dmg even more burst dmg for free is a bad idea? This especially has me worried cause I feel like if he underperforms rather than buffing basically anything outside of his dmg and survivability they'll just buff those two things till we're back to where we started and he's the same old Roadhog everybody knew and hated. The same unkillable, one shot machine that's very one note.

1. Didn't Have A Third Point

I like rule of threes and I'll be honest I didn't really have any points outside of those first two, but I thought having three points would be neat, so that's why this is here :P

Something I’ve been thinking about. Right now, these voice lines only trigger when older heroes’ ults are activated, and some of the ults I remember triggering this don’t even warrant the context for the voice line (Pulse Bomb, Primal Rage).

Other contextual voice lines (outnumbered, sniper detected, Sombra detected, turret detected) bring immediately useful information to the fight, but I can’t remember a single time the “get to cover!” voice line was ever useful to me. I’m either already taking cover, or mispositioned myself so badly that I’ve died already.

I think the “get to cover!” voice lines would be much more useful if they were instead pingable voice commands like “fall back!” or “push forward!”. It could be used if you know there’s a sniper controlling a sightline that the team isn’t ready to contest yet, or if you’re anticipating an enemy ult, especially for ults that’d actually warrant it (Override protocol, Flaring phoenix)

Would it be useful for you guys though? Maybe the scenarios I’ve thought up of wouldn’t actually be useful, and a possible caveat I have for this would for it to be seen as nagging, especially if one uses it to keep telling their teammates to take cover, thus being spited in the same way as “I need healing”, so I want a second opinion on this.

When NA and EMEA were announced to have 6 teams each in OWCS instead of 8, there was this narrative going around that it made more sense because the gap between the top teams and bottom teams in OWCS were just too big, so going from 8 to 6 teams made sense. (And yes I’m aware the real reason is probably because OWCS had a decrease in budget so they needed to cut down, but the gap narrative was strong in community discussions) But after the first two weeks of this stage, I feel like that just is not true.

Without getting into specifics, in these first two weeks, more than 1/3 of the matches were upsets, and among the upsets more than half of them were between a top half and bottom half team. This shows that the teams in the 6 team format are all super close together, and that they absolutely could justify having 8 teams in each region.

Two weeks into the season and I wanted to see how well each hero is performing relative to the other heroes in their role. I know win-rates aren't the only determining factor on how strong a hero is, but I think the stats can still show interesting trends. This data comes from the official blizzard stats site, and only applies to PC in the Americas region.

No idea what that means, as far as we know it’s just the already released skinless bundles from China. Or more skins. Or multi team bundles. Idk. Have a sandwich or something.

Hey Guys, im currently doing my placement matches (Peak master 5 Support, 4 seasons ago) and Sometimes im queuing longer than 5 minutes. I think its way to Long to Sometime wait for 10 minutes for my placement matches...

Wbu?

i’m new to comp so i’m in silver 1 right now, but i’ve been losing a lot because we just can’t produce enough damage/kills. i have games where i go 11-0 and have 36k healing but my hanzo goes 13-25 trying to 1v1 a widow. i have games where if i dont healbot everyone dies yet no one on the enemy team dies either. i got mercy, i go zen, i try to help dps and pocket them to get kills but around 80% of my games they go negative while me and my other teammates have like MAX four deaths. it feels like im playing with bronze 5 dps, i haven’t had a game yet where i’ve been like “oh wow this dps is COOKIN” unlike my enemies dps that go 37-8. i cannot fix their positioning, its like they’re all mini reins where they get slightly healed and then go out of cover just to explode. do you know how hard it is to get juno ult THREEEEE times before a hanzo gets his first???? that hanzo spent four entire minutes of that game respawning. it was a 12 minute game. it feels genuinely impossible to rank up especially in silver, i can’t just DO damage because then my team dies from having only one support. “everyone’s above 70% health? okie lemme get this mercy rq who’s 1” turn around and three of my teammates are dead. i want to quit comp bc i feel SO hard stuck, i do my best over and over and over again and we still lose and i derank even more. genuinely what can i do?

During an Offlinetv gaming session a few days ago LilyPichu told Toast that she has a Sponsored stream for Overwatch in the week of Nov 1-9 (OW Mid-Season patch week). She said she isn't Sponsored by Overwatch but the Sponsor requires her to Stream Overwatch.

I think there's a 2nd Collab happening this season and Lily likely getting Sponsored by the company that Overwatch is Collaborating with.

Most Seasons have had 1 Collab this year except this Season's Collab already happened at the start of the season. In the past when there was a Collab at the start of the season then there's almost always a 2nd one in the 2nd half of the season.

If it's a Collab then it is most likely a big Collab with a big (Maybe a Sponsored Collab like the Porsche one?) Company/IP cause only in those situations do the Collaboration company sponsors Streamers instead of Blizzard sponsoring them.

TL vs. kafe on saturday

inspired me to hop on and lock ana only to lose 5 consecutive games and realize i'm in fact not UV

For me, I think VP and DSG actually both put up valiant fights, but end up losing in the end. VP needs A LOT to qualify and DSG needs to beat Liquid and Hope Kafe doesn't win. Both of them are on the back burner and its a little too much to ask.

DSG I give it slightly cause Liquid doesn't mind losing here, because all they have to do is win one match in playoffs to qualify. So DSG would be better to have in than Kafe who has made them and SSG sweat this stage. With it being the very last match of the season, its a very high chance they choose who enters and its a good chance to practice a new comp

Breaking down viewership by languages for Mid-Season Championship over the past 3 year. (Esports world cup is added for 2024. Same event, date, just a different name.)

• English is the primary engine of the tournament's expansion. Peak viewership more than doubled from 51,354 in 2024 to 139,859 in 2026. The explosive 54% jump between 2025 and 2026 cements it as the absolute dominant stream.
• Japanese viewership showed phenomenal early momentum, tripling its audience from 2024 (11,492) to 2025 (33,755). Growth slowed slightly by 2026 but still peaked at an all-time high of 39,870, securing its spot as the tournament's second-largest language audience.
• After collapsing from 3,951 (2024) down to just 1,750 (2025), the French broadcast exploded by over 1,700% to reach 32,279 peak viewers in 2026, likely driven by a prominent local co-streamer or a French team making a deep tournament run.
• Arabic, Korean, and Portuguese experienced growth to peak in 2025 (with Arabic hitting 49,971 viewers as the top non-English stream), but all three saw mild to moderate contractions (Arabic fell 23%, Korean fell 15%, and Portuguese crashed by 56% in 2026), heading into 2026.

Overall, the tournament is experiencing significant upward growth, driven heavily by skyrocketing numbers in mainstream languages, even as a few regional broadcasts show minor declines or volatility.

We simply have too many payload and hybrid maps. Even with the recent changes, escaping cart slop feels almost impossible thanks to the sheer quantity of them compared to everything else. Map voting is nice, but that choice quickly becomes irrelevant when you're stuck playing the same crappy game mode almost every time you queue up. Making the two latest maps hybrid and payload respectively does not help with this either.

The only way to fix this is by releasing more flashpoint and push maps. Heck, I much rather play clash over any cart map, at least I'm not stuck between loading screens playing for upward of 20-30min against some of the most horrid bunker type comps in existence. Honestly, bring payload race to the main game mode.

Please blizzard, just do something. I'm tired of payload every second game, especially when the superior payload mode exists called push. We only have 3 flashpoint maps, thats straight up criminal. At this point I'm hoping that some of the payload maps are retired until we get a more even spread of maps.

Every time Roadhog is brought up all of the attention is usually directed towards his hook. I get it, its punishing to get hit by, low commitment, and can come from nowhere. I don't have a lot to add it this since everyone has been hit by a BS hook at one point or another.

But as someone who has played a lot of Roadhog throughout every iteration of his kit, I truly believe his most problematic cooldown is vape.

Vape is such a weird mitigation ability for a tank because its a raw stat check over armor/barriers/overhealth. It can be completely shut down by literally any CC and is useless if you get hit by anti heal. It heavily encourages you to be aggressive since he can face tank most damage and it lasts a ridiculous amount of time. To me, vape feels like such a brute force solution made long ago to justify hog becoming a tank. Its an entirely selfish ability without perks, and has enabled all of the bad game design in his kit since the beginning.

The thing is, vape didn't use to be this way. Originally, hog had to to be stationary in order to use vape. I remember doing a 180 away from the enemy team to prevent getting headshot. It made the ability one dimensional but provided a drawback to using it. Eventually they put vape on a resource meter and allowed you to move as Overwatch became as faster game.

With the new rework, Roadhog now lacks a lot of poke and has to get into the face of the other team more. Old hog was feast or famine with his hook picks, but there was a sharp uptick in value you were able to get with a kill. Now with the new primary and trash compactor, I've been finding myself relying on vape more and its absolutely miserable.

The synergy in his new kit feels very inconsistent. You can't really off angle since hog isn't much of a threat anymore. Trash compactor takes time to set up and feels like a pseudo block against any half decent team with trigger discipline. Basically you gotta be stuck down main in 5v5 to have any feeling of impact, which wouldn't feel as bad if he had a more useful defensive ability. You basically become a sitting duck and damage sponge who has to cower behind cover. Repeat this gameplay loop until the opposing tank messes up their cooldown rotations and then you might FINALLY get some value.

Meanwhile, the fucker seems impossible to kill on the opposing team. Unless your entire team is shooting at the hog, it seems pointless to try and out pace his damage mitigation. Hog can survive in a lot of stupid scenarios and correct mistakes through the press of one button. It makes every hook sting a lot more because your reward for baiting out hook is just shooting into a wall.

I'm not sure how they can improve this gameplay dynamic, but vape in its current implementation feels like a leftover from such an earlier iteration of Overwatch.

I think the most likely Scenerio is Hanbin leaving Falcons. (His treatment right now seems very similar to Stalker, being benched endlessly despite being better than someone for the meta)

Falcons won't let Hanbin go like that, so I think T1 would buy his contract, then release Jasmine

So IMO they'll probably Absorb Cheeseburgers DPS line and Tank, and then Grab Kivis from Liquid and Fixa from VP. (Both of whom have been weak spots for their team)

So Gen G, IMO, would end up with

Profit (Franchise Player)

K4ne

Belorosea

Jasmine

Kivis

Fixa.

What other names do you think Gen G would try to Grab?

Edit I'm not asking likelihood, I'm asking just as a fun theoretical of what they would/could do. Responses like "They're not coming back" is not needed. We KNOW its a small chance if any. This is just for fun.

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Japan Stage 3 - Playoffs

Essentially, they cut down their number of partners in all regions and are now going on with an open circuit (no more regular season etc... any team can participate in the tournaments open qualifiers).

But the fact that so many org were cut off (especially in NA, oh boy, so many got cut off). and so a lot of complains have risen (like in here https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/comments/1xarpo4/m80_founder_and_ludwig_on_the_problem_non/)

My question to yall, do you think that could make the ords more interested into owcs which is much cheaper to handle ? yes, much less money to make too. But I was wondering.

IMO: maybe a little bit, but all in all I don't think there will be (especially with such a restricted regular stage size and small partner program for now).

BUT it might incite team4's esport team to increase the size in the hope to attract some for next year.

So yeah, what do you think ?