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Brawl With Only 1 Tank: (0:00)
Secondary Win Condition Poke!: (0:50)
Dive Finds Isolated Target: (1:06)
Dive Actually Wins With Secondary Poke Win Condition: (1:38)
But What About Offense Or A Different Point?: (3:12)
And It All Falls Apart: (4:39)
Brawls “Solutions” Don’t Work: (5:39)
Fundamental Problem Or Meta?: (6:18)
Subscribe For More!: (6:50)
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Spoilers But In the First 2 Days of OWL Brawls Track Record Is:
Shock Beats London's Brawl. Badly, on both Lijiang Tower and Eichenwalde
Atlanta Crushes Florida's Brawl on Eichenwalde
Boston chewed up Vancouver's brawl, but then threw harder with their own poke comp vs dive to drop the map.
Brawl of course still has place it can work (like Eich 3rd) where there simply isn't enough space to stay away from them, or the very beginning of 2nd on Midtown, but for now it looks to be a lot less flexible than in OW1.
This is an interesting problem I hope they have the creativity to solve. I wonder if somehow buffing teleport mechanics on Sym and maybe(hopefully?) on new heros would create the means for Brawl to get around as a unit. I don't know if that's actually something we want though.
Yeah this is clearly an issue, I am not sure if an elegant solution is possible. Mobility will always be powerful. Even if you hard nerf Winston for example teams would just gravitate to Doomfist, D. Va or Hammond. Whoever the strongest mobility heroes at any point in time theoretically will be played. It's controversial, but I think maybe pro meta might ultimately benefit from a pick and ban system like moba games. They pick Winston, we pick Soldier who was clearly powerful this patch and ban Genji or Ana etc.
Can’t think of a good way to solve this with the hero’s we have now, but with 4 or 5 (hopefully) new heros one of them could bring brawl back into possibility.
My idea would be a support that could refresh a teammates cooldown on one ability. Obviously that could be really good when used on some high value abilities, but immortality is a crazy idea with a crazy cooldown and it’s gotten pretty balanced. Imagine running a sym and using a tp that forces out a dive character’s mobility, and then the sym being able to tp again to capitalize on the cooldown. Obviously there are some problems with that thinking but overall it could turn into some interesting ideas and help with the sustain that brawl needs. Maybe I’m missing an obvious broken combo with an ability like that
After watching this, Brawl is definitely more in trouble than I initially thought
But I think a lot of this is quite map dependent. Eichenwalde 2nd has a ton of highground for a dive team to utilise, and not much/enough cover for the brawl team to turtle up and push the cart (I mean even if they could, it's less viable now as you said due to 5v5 having less defensive abilities hence I presume mobility is more at a premium than sustain).
However, London's defense on Eichen 2nd wasn't bad,
Yes London got 2-0'd pretty badly on both Lijang maps but Lijang Gardens neutral, Backbone actually got S9MM to 50HP, walled off Proper on Soldier meaning it was actually a perfect time to rush and take the man or two advantage but Hadi gets slept + naded
I presume London knew most of Brawl's downfalls especially going from 6v6 to 5v5, and I presume the coaching staff didn't want to mirror because of the logic that their mirror was going to be worse hence 'play something different' but I still believe that there are places for Brawl to exist – Perhaps sticking on it in Eichen 2nd or even Eichen 1st but maps with enclosed spaces (We didn't even see Lijang Control Centre for instance) I think it'll fair better.
maybe giving brawl heroes slight cc abilities might help, but we don't want a death ball. it could be some slow effect or some tether effect like (orisa creator experimental patch) to make it so dive have to be more cautious about who and when they dive if not they might get bashed by brawl and die
I think there are a few ways that this could be handled:
Increasing how fast points cap when 3+ players are standing on it. This would give an intrinsic value to a point control playstyle and would slightly lower the appeal of safe angles. Another work-around could be 1 defender on point doesn't fully contest when 3+ attackers are on point, it just slows progress. This could be also be extended to payloads and robots. On obvious hole in concept is that it only gives brawl an advantage on attack, when perhaps they need it most on defense.
Outside of match mechanics, I think the current brawl characters are just not as effective. Yes, brawl loses their dva in 5v5, which is certainly a hit, but the standard bearers of brawl (sym, bap, and mei) have lost too much value to force point. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw reworks to all of those characters. Seeing new abilities like snares, enemy damage reduction fields, or buffed ice wall, would help increase poke-stage survivability without making sustain disgusting. I also wonder if brig has a place in brawl with the new 5v5. It would harden the brawl considerably, rein is not AS much dependant on a lucio, and the main struggle for brawl–dive has better mobility anyway. That would certainly be a creative solution, though I believe it has potential.
This is for sure something to keep paying attention to as we're fed more matches. In SoloQ even when we happen to accidentally form a brawly comp, proper coordination is still a diceroll so I feel like "risking" a brawl hero pick only if the map/point leans itself to that playstyle. The current OW2 situation might solidify such a map reliant compositional choice even in the presence of polished pro coordination and while we mostly seem to be okay with niche heroes, making an entire formation niche might not sit too well in the bigger picture, with many maps closing themselves to such a classic strategic approach.
I don't think Soldier is the culprit. With the versatility in the DPS roster someone else will come to fill his role. Rather than meta, this is a fundamental puzzle that needs to be solved along the growing pains of adapting OW2 to the turtling options of this less robust single-tank brawl.
It's true, temperate increases to health pools or heals are either not enough or misguided. Short of having to turn a pure brawl tank like Rein into an actual raidboss-esque fortress, I'd bet on incoming new DPS or Support heroes that add interesting non-cc-heavy utility to the brawl, at the expense of reliable offensive range. Current Mei (no full freeze) might be the closest thing we have to that in the game and it checks out with her being present in this footage and having been the poster girl (perhaps earlier than Doom) for the many times people suggested turning certain DPS into Tanks. It'd be interesting to imagine what could have been if Team 4 had decided to rework Moira with a transition into more utility in mind.
I guess my question is: How was this solved on OW1? Let's say theoretically, the matchup is this:
Rein+Dva, Soldier/cree + mei, bap lucio vs winston dva, tracer echo, ana lucio. Or something similar.
Is the existence of Dva just that powerful? That she could negate enough spam or dive pressure to give brawl some edge?
Or is it more the existence of hard CC in OW1? The fact that divers have to respect Cree a lot more in ow1, or brig(Shock ran brig bap torb cree as sort of a "bunker-brawl" comp).
What I'm asking I guess is why brawl fundamentally works in OW1 vs dive(given the balance and meta situation allows) where as according to you in OW2 balance on its own might not make brawl viable?
Hi, would be really interested to hear your thoughts on Orisa and why she is not being played in OWL. On casual level it feels like she’s really strong, sometimes even oppressive, but maybe casual players just have not learned yet how to properly play vs her ?
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