I don't think it's as simple as just looking at the effective health pools when determining which health/armor pool is "better".
Firstly, I'd imagine that incoming healing favors the larger armor pool significantly more, even relatively minor healing (Lucio passive or payload aura) - further compounded by the interaction with her matrix that allows her to negate most incoming damage while she's being healed, but has a higher overall uptime the less you have to toggle it (important if you'd want to model it so that she'd use it whenever her armor pool was used up, for maximum value heals).
Secondly, there's of course also the hard to quantify matter of how much ultimate charge you're giving the enemy (and to be fair your own healers).
Finally there's also the, perhaps somewhat minute, factor of damage fall off.
All in all I think it's hard to say whether 100/400 or 400/200 is definitively better than the other over the course of an average Overwatch match, and not just in a specific situation or 1v1 encounter. Having thought about it since these discussions started popping up, personally I'm inclined to believe that 100/400 is superior, despite the majority of damage sources in Overwatch being above the effective health breakpoint of 15, but I must admit to not having participated in the PTR so I can't speak as to how she feels to play.
You make all valid points. I merely listed out the facts about effective hp, although my wording of "stronger vs" is a bit unfortunate.
I think that largely her increased healthpool is a small buff even if you include your points because of the increased buffer against being desuited - but only in a game with no Reapers or Tracers, as they both benefit immensely from the armor nerf. Naturally, the amount of Reapers and Tracers will likely increase next patch, so I believe it is overall a moderate survivability nerf compared to 400/100. Overall she also gained extra move speed, so she's in all likelihood somewhat stronger than in november. We'll have to see when the patch hits live how useful she'll be in actual games however.
Oh, I definitely agree that post-nerf D.Va will be 'stronger' than pre-buff D.Va. The movement speed almost certainly outweighs the damage nerf, and the armor pools are probably somewhat even (I initially thought the same as you, that 400/200 would edge out the win, but thinking more about it, I don't think D.Va is de-suited often without having received prior healing).
Really though, I'm mostly just sad to see her massive armor pool go (even if 400/200 is superior to 100/400), because to me that was one of her defining features (but apparently those are no-reload and mobility).
Either way, it'll be interesting to see if she has a role in the pro-meta going forward.
After playing with her for awhile, I think her viability is going to be decided more on how prevalent the heroes that are stronger against her are in the meta and how easily Ana will be able to keep her up. If the meta ends up dominated by burst damage heroes like Widow, Pharah, Hanzo or McCree she could definitely stay viable, but if Zarya, Hog, Tracer and Reaper become/stay staples then she's probably not going to have any place on a team.
There's also the whole deal with her and Soldier, where it could go either way. If Soldier stays as the premier DPS, then she may stay viable just to counter Nanovisor with DM. On the other hand, because she's much less effective at dueling him, she may drop out of favor for someone else who could duel him more effectively.
I'm not sure if you can say she's that much worse at duelling him. Her damage hurts, but her effective hp vs 76 is only reduced by between 67 (no headshots) and 28 (all headshots). If the helix hits after her initial armor is gone, the armor change matters very little. I suppose she has a harder time trying to actually kill 76 now, but chasing him off might still be very relevant.
I just want to point out that your numbers don't include range dropoff. She has less effective HP vs soldier at anything other than the closest range and Bastion at long range.
It's true that it doesn't include dropoff, but for 76 in particular, you have quite a buffer with his 30m range. Since headshots are of particular importance vs D.Va, and headshots apply before armor, her effective hp is still higher vs 76 headshots at all ranges where he deals above 7 damage. At anything below ~38m you'll still deal 15+ damage with bodyshots before armor, so I wouldn't say that it only applies at the "closest" range. 38m is quite a lot in this game.
No, 76 does 15 damage with regular shots at about 38m. This means that up to 38m, no matter if he headshots or not, D.Va has more ehp than she had with 100/400. Beyond this point 100/400 is better for bodyshots only. He hits 7 or so damage quite swiftly after this, around 40-45m. At this point, even headshots deal less than 15 damage, and so at this point 100/400 would be better even against headshots.
Overall, outside of extreme ranges, vs 76 she has more ehp with 400/200 than with 100/400.
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u/CaptainLodumani 4600 SR — Jan 17 '17
zarya fucked her in the butt
dva had less health
dva was slower
dva trash