Overwatch: Competitive Mode is here!

I have been waiting for this since the game launched. Thusfar, the game's mainstay has been Quickplay Mode, which features fun gameplay but lacks a sense of progression. Once I learned all of the characters and map layouts and mechanics, I found myself with a frustrating sense of being unable to compare myself to others. Sometimes I would dominate matches and other times my opponents would wipe the floor with me and I'd be left wondering if it was due to skill, teammates, bad luck, one poor play leading to snowballing, pre-made teams and a host of other variables. With the advent of an MMR-rated competitive system, I can finally put a few of these concerns into perspective.

The new mode requires you to be level 25 to access and severely penalizes leaving matches as this game mode is meant to be more serious (you can be banned for an entire season for repeated offenses).

Pre-made teams will be matched more frequently against other pre-made teams rather than purely by MMR, which I think is a good thing given my experience under both types of systems through the evolution of sPvP in Guildwars 2.

Anyway, ten skill placement matches will determine your initial MMR and then you are set to rank up. The top 500 players will be listed on leaderboards for all to see. Maybe I can get myself up there. If I can tear myself away from Hearthstone laddering. I guess. Ahem.

You can read all the rest of the details over at playoverwatch.com

For Patch Notes go here.

Overwatch - Thank you for nerfing McCree

Blizzard's latest Overwatch patch has nerfed two often complained-about characters - Widowmaker and McCree. While I personally think Widowmaker was in a good place and nerfing her was unnecessary, McCree is a whole other story. His combo of stun and fan-hammer (complete unload of his weapon in half a second) was completely overpowered and uninteractive. There are always people who will argue that you just need to "git gud" to deal with him, but assuming he hits you with a stun, your controls are disabled and you just get to sit there while he unloads lethal damage with impunity in the flash of an eye. While landing the stun is not automatic, it is fairly easy to do given that it has a generous area-of-effect.

It will be interesting to see if he still sees competitive play but, in the meantime, thank you, Blizzard!

For the complete patch notes, see: June 14, 2016 update

My new favourite Hearthstone Deck - Pirate Warrior

YARRR