82 - Omnic Lab: Yeti Hunting Patch Notes

Omnic Lab: A Strategic Overwatch Podcast

In the Lab this week we finally come to circle back to do a strategy revisit on some of the key moments in OWL Pre-season, cover the 2017 Winter Wonderland, Season 8 competitive changes, and also a new PTR patch coming up!

News & Blue Posts:

• Game Night -- DEC. 29th
• Omnic Meta: (Homepage)
• Console Meta: Dec. 14th 2017
• OWL Recap will be moving to it’s own home.
• Overwatch League Skins & Tokens
• Starting in early 2018 the home uniforms for the 12 OWL teams are added.
• You can “acquire these for any hero” and will provide monetary support for the league
• League tokens only used for in-game OWL content.
• You can buy whichever team skin you want.
• Every Player will have enough tokens for 1 OWL skin in the first month
• Opening OWL week starts Jan. 10th

Season 8 Changes - Scott Mercer

• Limit on the max SR difference between the highest SR & lowest SR player on the same team.
• “During the month of December we will be quietly testing the effect of more restrictive SR limits to both match quality and queue times. With the data and player feedback from testing, we’ll then come back from our holiday break on January 2 and apply a finalized set of values for Season 8.”
• Removing Personal Performance SR Adjustments for Diamond tier players and above
• Below is the performance based SR before Diamond
• If you have a higher than 50% chance to win a match, you gain less for a win and lose more for a defeat. Conversely, if you were an underdog in a match than you gain more SR when you win and lose less SR when defeated.
• New players experience both higher gains and higher losses than players who have completed a lot of matches.
• You gain less SR for a win than you lose for a defeat as you more closely approach the system’s mathematical upper limit 5000 SR. (So at very high SRs you do need a greater than 50% win rate to keep your SR stable.)
• A measurement of how well you personally performed during the match. If you perform well than you gain more SR when you win, and lose less SR when defeated. The reverse is also true.
• SUMMARY:
• The adjustment does create a lot of positive system wide effects including rewarding players who make the effort to play well, punishing inactive players, and more quickly providing fairer matches for new players or those who decide to play a new hero or role. So we spent quite a lot of time examining data over multiple seasons, checking a lot of math, reading a LOT of community feedback, and then doing some deep soul searching about this. Especially at the higher levels of online competition where every point of SR matters, we want players to not be distracted and worry about how to optimize around the personal performance adjustment. They should just be trying to WIN. So after we get back from the holidays on January 2nd we’re going to turn off the personal performance SR adjustments for players in the Diamond skill tier and above.

Winter Wonderland 2017 Patch

• Dec. 12th to Jan. 1st is the Winter Wonderland Event
• 7 New Skins: Avalanche Bastion, Rime Sombra, Beachrat Junkrat, Snow Owl Ana, Casual Hanzo, Ice Fisherman Roadhog, & Alpine: 76 Soldier
• Each Skin with a corresponding player icon
• 2 New Emotes:Legendary Orisa Puppy & Epic Zenyatta Snowflakes
• New Reinhardt Shield/Snowball Highlight Intro
• New hero “Toast” Victory Poses
• Heroes that were not here for 2016 now have an ornament and Christmas Spray
• All previous event items are available for normal credit amount
• Developer Update Promo

Dec. 12, 2017 Patch

• Mei’s Snowball Offensive Returns to Arcade
• New Arcade game: Yeti Hunter
• 5v1 Super Winston vs. Mei’s (ultimate is now a giant Junkrat Trap)
• Player Warning Update:
• Players being reported will receive an in-game message letting them know that they have been reported, along with a warning concerning continued negative behavior.
• Players who report someone for poor behavior, resulting in a disciplinary action, will now be notified with an in-game message when the issue has been resolved.
• Players can now clear new item notifications with the “Mark All As Seen” button in the Hero Gallery
• Doomfist Bug Fixing Overhaul (Round 1)
• Prevented Doomfist’s Rocket Punch from destroying objects
• Caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always deal damage when an enemy hits a wall
• Caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always stop an enemies' movement when they impact a wall
• Canceled Doomfist’s Seismic Slam when it was unable to reach the targeted location
• Caused Doomfist’s Seismic Slam to trigger instantly when the ability was used to travel up inclines
• Caused Doomfist’s Seismic Slam to create performance drops when repeatedly used with no cooldown
• Mei
• Fixed a bug that prevented Mei’s Cryo-freeze from clearing the healing debuff caused by Ana’s Biotic Grenade
• Mercy
• Fixed a bug that showed Mercy’s Guardian Angel targeting UI on allies while it was already in progress on a selected target
• Fixed a bug that allowed a Mercy player to cast Resurrect on a player that was in the process of being resurrected by another Mercy
• Moira
• Fixed a bug that allowed Moira’s Biotic Orb to pass through terrain and structures
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from using Moira’s Biotic Orb’s regeneration option when primary fire was disabled
• Fixed a visual bug with Moira’s Biotic Orb that sometimes caused Biotic Grasp’s healing spray effects to display instead
• Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Coalescence from healing an allied Reaper in Wraith Form
• Fixed a bug that prevented Moira from being able to pass through enemies when using Fade
• Fixed a bug that caused Moira’s eyelashes to detach from her face during her Heroic highlight intro
• Fixed an issue that prevented Moira’s self-healing statistic from being collected and displayed in the game stats

Special Thanks to Diamond Sponsors & New Patrons:

• (12/25) Chrisdaplaya, GingerSasquash, Good Apollo, GreatRootBear, Lisome, Magic, Matt R, NotMuaddib, RickyTicky, Sketchy Nonsense Podcast, Silverback, & TragicZac.
• New Patrons this week: Alex B & Aron B.

Omnic Lab Links:

Omnic Lab is now a Twitch Affiliate! Sub now with Twitch/Amazon Prime! Twitter, Facebook, Patreon Twitch, Youtube, MERCH Discord: discord.me/omniclab Email: [e-mail] Website: http://www.omniclab.com iTunes, Google Play Music, RSS -->Full Extended Show Notes<-- Rob: Twitter, Twitch, Velen's Chosen Podcast, Concept Craft Podcast Andres: Twitter, audioblender.studio, soundcloud