Players Have a Vendetta Against Overwatch’s New Addition

Water is wet, the pope is Catholic, and people are complaining about the latest Overwatch hero being overpowered and unfun to play against.

Those are three absolutes you can count on as always being true, and the addition of Vendetta to the Overwatch roster has kept the trend going. No word yet on whether people think the new pope is OP …

It’s been common over the past couple of years for Blizzard to release new heroes in overpowered states so that they’ll be popular (remember Mauga?), but doing so while experimenting with a character who has a completely new play style might have been a bit more than the player base could handle.

The game’s first melee DPS hero has upended play at all ranks, though it’s at the lower ranks that players are feeling the pain of her giant sword the most. This isn’t just idle grousing either; in every region, her win rate is #1 in competitive matches, and #2 or #3 in Quick Play. Why has this one character caused such consternation? And what, if anything, can or should be done about her?

Perpetual Motion

The basic problem with Vendetta is her uniqueness. Similar to how Widowmaker was, at launch, the only character that could one-shot you from across the map, Vendetta is one of the very few characters who can leap in, devastate an isolated backliner, and then leap out with barely a scratch. And people raged about Widowmaker back in the day ...

“But wait,” I hear you saying, “what about characters like Tracer, Genji, and Sombra?” It’s true, they can achieve similar results on isolated targets. What I think makes Vendetta more oppressive is her durability and low skill ceiling. Most similar characters require lots of agility and swift reflexes to achieve their assassination goals without being melted. Vendetta is tankier than all of them, with a higher health pool, armor, a block, perks that increase her survivability further, and, oh, by the way, no reload, two movement abilities (both of which cause damage), increased attack speed when she damages you, and an ultimate with no tell for where it’s going to hit.

With all that, it’s no wonder we’re seeing posts like this all over Reddit:

She’s already received a slight nerf. Though, as some of the newer posts indicate, that hasn’t been enough. Is Vendetta truly overpowered, or are players still getting used to her? That’s a common issue for new heroes in Overwatch. Or maybe her play style just doesn’t work in the game. To explore that possibility, let’s look at a game where it does work.

Learning from your rivals

Marvel Rivals is like Overwatch in many ways, which I don’t need to go into here. But one way in which it differs drastically is in the number of heroes it has who utilize melee attacks as a primary part of their offense. Prior to Vendetta’s launch, Overwatch had two melee-focused characters: Reinhardt and Brigitte (and, some of the time, Ramattra), none of whom had any great mobility.

In Marvel Rivals, though, there are roughly a dozen such heroes, many of whom are duelists (damage-dealers) who can zip into the backline, score a kill, and dash out with nary a scratch. That doesn’t include characters like Psylocke and Star-Lord, who have similar engage/disengage tools but are technically ranged characters despite being most effective at short range.

In other words, when you play Rivals, you’d better be prepared for ultra-mobile threats in your backline, every single match. And while there’s the occasional rage levied at characters like Black Panther or Spider-Man (oh, how I hate going up against a good Spider-Man) when they dominate a match, Rivals players have learned that it’s simply a part of the game that they’ll have to deal with.

NetEase has generally designed its squishy characters to have a solution to threats like this, whether it’s Mantis’s sleep or Loki's duplicates. Overwatch characters have these kinds of tools, as well, but they’re less effective versus Vendetta. Her small and slender hitbox makes landing Ana’s sleep dart a challenge, Brigitte’s shield offers no protection, and Zenyatta’s kick or Lucio’s boop only provide a temporary respite before she can close ground again.

In effect, Marvel Rivals’ roster was designed with the intention of dealing with mobile backline threats from the start, while Overwatch’s wasn’t. (Having an extra character to help with peel is also a factor.) This has led some players to say that Vendetta, or a character like her, simply doesn’t belong in the game.

Personally, I like the idea of a melee damage hero in Overwatch, but I agree that Vendetta’s implementation has been uneven and led to too many unenjoyable interactions. Short of removing her entirely, what can be done?

The larger picture

The recent nerfs reduced Vendetta’s damage numbers across the board, but it’s certain aspects of her design, not her raw numbers, that cause consternation.

Given her tankiness, an increase in size might be on the table. Yes, this can be done without any lore explanation, since Bastion was reduced in size a short time ago. Or maybe Blizzard can say she was working out and her muscles got bigger.

Overwatch was once praised for its sound design and audio clues, but nearly all of Vendetta’s voice lines are of the “HRRG! RAWR!” variety, with no indication of what she is doing until she’s on top of you. It might be time to go full anime character on her and have her announce all of her attacks by name.

The only exception to the above is her ultimate, which, as mentioned before, is all but unavoidable when she launches it from the sky. Showing a field for her attack area and introducing a slight delay, like Sigma’s ultimate, might help to allow for more counterplay.

Or maybe Blizzard can just steal a page from NetEase’s handbook and make her more like Magik. She’s also a sword-wielding buff lady who visually resembles Vendetta but has far more limited mobility. Vendetta's movement skills, as well as great durability and damage-dealing capability, are probably too much overall.

Even with all these suggestions, and many more that I’m sure people have proposed and that the Overwatch devs have seen or thought of on their own, Vendetta isn’t going anywhere. She’ll still be a threat, even if a reduced one, to supports and long-range damage characters, and that’s something players will simply have to get used to. If Marvel Rivals players can do it, so can they.