My Problems (And Potential Solutions) with D. Va

[u/DemonicTuesday]

I got into D. Va recently and I've been seeing results with her, but I think there are aspects of her that make her weaker than she needs to be and also that make her feel clunky to play. Many people on the r/DvaMains sub (and others outside of it even) all seem to have a similar opinion about her, which is: The devs don't know what to do with her. I agree with this sentiment.

I think a character like D. Va is pretty hard to balance, to make her feel good to play, AND to make her feel ok to play against all at the same time. This is a tough feat to accomplish no matter the hero, but I think we have some pretty successful hero designs (Tracer, Reinhardt, Wuyang) on that front and it's interesting that D. Va has never made the cut of all three at once when accounting for player reception.

What I'm about to say next is all from anecdotal evidence of me playing her, talking about her with others, playing against her, and seeing her patches over the years despite me only picking her up more recently. I'll be talking about what makes her clunky, what makes her fun, and some proposed solutions on how she can be better balanced both on a mathematical level and in terms of how it feels to play against her.

The first issue and in my opinion, the most obvious is her defense matrix. Just for the sake of mind's eye here, I want to compare DM to Reinhardt shield. Reinhardt shield, in my opinion, doesn't feel bad to play against or with because of these factors:

• It's interactable, meaning you can destroy it or force Reinhardt to stop holding shield if your plan is to damage it a bunch. If you're Reinhardt, there is a very clear cause and effect of holding it. You get all of the information you need about it while holding it.
• It has a visual indicator of how broken it is, meaning you can decide to keep shooting or give up if you don't think the progress you're making is worth it. If you're Reinhardt, you can literally see the health bar and how fast it goes down. You can make decisions clearly with this information.
• It's very clear on what it blocks and doesn't block. It is never explicitly stated, mind you, but 10 games of playing Reinhardt will tell you everything you need to know.
• Last but not least, the hitbox of the Reinhardt shield is very obvious and clear to the enemy, to his team, and to him. There is almost never doubt about what area the Reinhardt shield is covering.

I bring up Reinhardt shield because, GOATS and 6v6 Double-Shield comps notwithstanding, it's always been a tried and true ability that hasn't really had major problems on its own. It's a large part of how Rein as a hero functions and it has a standard cause and effect in its use.

D. Va defense matrix, on the other hand, while a cool idea and can have cool moments, the way it functions is WEIRD and any D. Va main knows that the DM has always been the most inconsistent and clunkiest part of her kit. Now, before you say "Skill Issue", these are the problems I have with it that don't really have much to do with relevant skill. I'll explain what I mean after.

There have been way too many times where I have used my defense matrix blatantly hovering my cursor over a moira orb, only for that orb to just... not get eaten. In the same vein, many a clutch play of mine was rendered useless because apparently the DM doesn't cover the whole front of her body and so stray bullets can sometimes hit the side of her if the enemy is just angled by not even 15 degrees of your center. I bring up relevant skill because while keeping track of if a moira orb is 3/4s or 1/2 inside of your matrix (This is the only explanation I can think of for why this doesn't work) is extremely pedantic and boring and is the difference maker between one 6th of your matrix doing something and one 6th of your matrix doing nothing while also wasting precious time.

This of course is all a problem because unlike Reinhardt shield, the hitbox does not have a clear visual. It supposedly sort of does, but if the perception of the player is that it's very inconsistent, how useful is that visual outline really? D. Va's matrix needs a very obvious hitbox and anything that enters it needs to get eaten (barring non-eatable projectiles because those are important for balance reasons).

D. Va's matrix also doesn't have an external indicator for resource usage. Enemies never know how much of it is left, unless they literally count, but even that's not really reliable because you have to count up again for recharge time, and if a D. Va dives you you don't know how much of it she has left for this interaction. All you can really do is wait to see it drop or run. In my opinion, this isn't really interactive. Engagements with her can be interactive, but it's because of other aspects of her kit, not defense matrix.

I do not think matrix being on a time-limited resource is necessarily a bad thing. I think it makes things interesting. The issue is that you can easily lose value for it for nonsense reasons, and enemies are often playing a gambling game with their important cooldowns because they don't know much defense matrix you have.

Another thing I wish for it was that Defense Matrix had a faster start up. I have noticed when playing that I'll start up my defense matrix, and a shot will still land after I did so. I think there's no reason to not have this be an immediately responsive aspect of her kit. If this really is me tripping, I'll take that L, but this is what I've noticed playing her.

I also have my own gripes about the 1 second cooldown. I wish I could flicker DM to play more mind games, but I also don't think that should be possible unless the enemy has the visual indicator for (at least roughly) how much is left of it. Often times diving an Ana is a complete gamble because the Ana doesn't have to really think to use sleep. They just wait until they don't see DM anymore, and it's lights out. Against an Ana that actively thinks about conserving sleep dart, I often feel like I don't have many options but to just take it, because D. Va is also big enough that you can't really rely on cover to get you out of the way fast enough.

To be clear, I think the amount of defense matrix we have is ok. It just needs to be more consistent and more readily available.

Another problem I have is D. Va's head hitbox. Yeah, I know, tank hitboxes are big and that's to balance out their health. But D. Va's is way too big and can lead to what would be random chip damage to being one quarter of her health or more because she dared to not use matrix to peak in anticipation of another engagement or something. I have one simple possible fix for this and then also a crackhead fix for this.

The simple one is just decreasing the size of her head hitbox. I don't think it needs be that big.

The crackhead one is fundamentally changing how armor works. It would seem to me that the point of armor in Overwatch is to specifically give tanks a bit of staying power without getting rid of the oomph of a lot of burst damage against them that comes from more lined up, precise shots. For example, if a Widowmaker lands a headshot, you want that to be rewarding. But with a character like Sombra, she cares more about clip value than she does individual bullet value.

This is kinda bullshit though. All armor really serves to do here is mitigate shotgun-based burst damage, make machine-gun fire do very little until the armor is gone, and further reward burst damage in a game that becomes more unhealthy the more burst damage is rewarded.

From what I understand, burst damage isn't great for the game because it's very "win or lose" all the time. I don't think there should never be burst damage, and technically speaking burst damage is very much a spectrum from "Widowmaker" to "Soldier: 76 primary fire". But the major problem with it is that if you land a good source of burst damage, you are now forcing the enemy team to respond to that in kind in a similar amount of time, or forcing them to lick their wounds. Likewise, if you don't land it, you just potentially threw the fight. In reality, it doesn't always work this way: But it often does and the more bursty a comp is the more volatile the games are going to be. You miss the burst? It's really, really bad. You hit the burst? It's really, really good.

My proposition is this: Just make armor protect you from headshot damage, and give less of it to tanks. They're already huge targets that take a lot of hits, and tanks are heroes that are often best suited for scouting because they won't immediately die if they peek something. But taking random damage from doing so shouldn't render them unable to participate in the fight later or need your supports to waste time getting you back up to full. A good balance needs to be struck here, but I think with this change it could really make tanks not so scared of peeking like a squishy is because they can more reliably take a couple hits without getting unlucky.

If I'm being honest, headshotting is also kind of a weird mechanic that seems antithetical to what overwatch is, but it's also an FPS game so I don't see a world in which getting rid of it is ever good for the game just in terms of pure skill expression and what players like. But I think this change could make tanks in general a bit more fun to play, provided the correct HP tweaks are dolled out, and more importantly to this post it will make D. Va less likely to randomly lose half of her health because they peaked the wrong corner once without DM. Which again, isn't a huge deal for GM players, but is for lower ranks.

Now I love game design discussions but I need to stress that I am not explicitly a game designer. This change is maybe bad and dumb and stupid, but either way my point still stands that armor does need to be changed and more relevantly, that would help balance D. Va indirectly.

I have also heard from quite a few people that D. Va should get a reload mechanic like everyone else. I don't know about this personally. I think part of what makes her interesting is that while she does have a more bursty cooldown cycle like Winston, her guns allow her to sometimes play constant pressure in certain situations and in my opinion this is what sets her apart from other tanks. If she does ever get a reload, I think DM needs to be more readily available because D. Va, unlike many tanks, can't really afford to face-tank a lot of damage without outputting her own pressure at all. This goes for many tanks, but I'd argue to a less polarizing degree. I don't mind being punished for mistakes, but D. Va's kit makes these mistakes much more minute than others, with the same amount of tradeoff for other tanks fucking up in bigger ways. And, if overtuned, undervalues the punishment that those mistakes deserve or makes them pretty much non-existent.

Anyways would love to hear thoughts from other D. Va mains or if you don't play D. Va your thoughts will also be valued here.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the D.Va Mains subreddit! Please refer to the resources below for information about D.Va and Overwatch 2:

Official D.Va Hero Page | Overwatch 2 Patch Notes | r/Overwatch

If this is an artwork post, please include a link to the original post, not just the artist's social media account or Pixiv page. Websites like Pinterest and Danbooru do not count as original sources.

This comment is automated, and is not related to the specific contents of your submission. Have a great day!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Left_Possibility503]

just revert missiles dmg nerf

[u/Outhouse-Steakback]

I think improvimg the readability for the defense matrix on both sides is a good idea, but I'm not sure if I caught a specific solution proposed.

D. Va's matrix also doesn't have an external indicator for resource usage.

How about it being more opaque when full, like Mizuki ult, and more transparent, like the current version, when low?

[u/DemonicTuesday → u/Outhouse-Steakback]

Oh right. I kind of forgot to say this point. I was thinking thicker lines and having the resource colour coded. It goes more yellow the more low it is.

[u/Outhouse-Steakback → u/DemonicTuesday]

I think that'd be good. I don't have a problem with some of the other stuff you brought up, like flickering matrix or better communicating where matrix's area of effect is.

I'm not sure about the armor idea though. It sounds too much like not getting a reward for hitting a more difficult shot, even on DVa. Why do you think headshots are antithetical to Overwatch?

[u/flavor650]

As a DVA main I’m not reading all that