Your first problem was listening to Zeke. I don't main Torb, I main Lucio/Zen. We've only played once, I didn't mute though I may not have been on the channel, and I'm sure you were Soldier 76 or another class.
You're right in that Hanzo is a high skill player. That's part of the problem: the majority of the players I've seen use him have been utter garbage and simply aren't good enough. You either get a pick or you're useless. Then, useless as they are, they won't switch off him. Other characters, even without the pick, can do a lot more with a lot less skill required. In a game with limited players on your team, if you're a terrible Hanzo, and odds fucking are that the Hanzo player on your team is bad, you're effectively outnumbered.
He told me you had 40 hours in Torb. I'll have to double check with him or peek on your Overbuff myself. I'm pretty sure I was a Hanzo at least a few of those times. I remember since Quote was trying to convince me you've turned a leaf on your demeanor but given the tone and timbre of your posts in this thread maybe I was misinformed on that as well.
Hanzo being a high skill character isn't a problem. People have to play to get better and not everyone is on the same point on their journey. Being bad at a videogame is not a character flaw. Part of the interest in videogames is driven by the learning process of mechanics (especially for me). If something is too easy interest tends to drop. If there are no mountains to climb many gamers won't stay in the long term. This is essentially why achievements exist in games and why they are so popular. People challenging themselves is something to be celebrated. If you can play a character and "do more with a lot less skill" then it's game design issue not a player issue. For the record I don't believe this is the case with Hanzo. His balance exists on a knife's edge but he definitely has his place.
Carrying an Overwatch game a man down or even two men down is not a big deal either. I play with other gaffers all the time and I do it all the time
. In fact it's far easier to carry a weak DPS character than say a tank or support. A dps that is struggling is MERELY absent. A healer that can't farm their ult in a timely manner or a tank that feeds their ass relentlessly is essentially an asset to the other team. 5 v 6 is winnable. 4 v 6 is winnable. But a 5 v 7 and a 4 v 8 are different beasts entirely.
Hanzo is almost always a bad pick. What good is his damage output when there's heroes that do that job better, with a lower skill ceiling? (Soldier) If there's a Reinhardt, which there always is in high level play, then Hanzo is useless. His ultimate is easily dodged if not combo'd with Zarya. (No, picking around the sniper isn't smart) Not to mention that sniper players never get on the objective, making it harder to push.
You have it backwards, healers are carrying trash DPS players. Ana and Zen have infinitely more utility than Hanzo. Matter of fact, even Mercy serves more of a purpose. Not to sound rude, but it's really frustrating to play with people who fundamentally don't understand that the point of Overwatch is to take the objective. Staying alive longer is one of the best ways to do that.
I don't want to be rude either. Which is why I am going to respectfully disagree with everything you said. I want to emphasize this because there is a lot to unpack in your post and the structure of my own post is probably gonna be bullet pointy which tends to look aggressive.
- Hanzo has one of the most complete skillsets in the game and only one that centers around burst damage, which is the most relevant damage in the game of Overwatch. Most characters sacrifice something in exchange for utility. Sombra for instance has a great deal of utility but has a mediocre primary weapon to compensate. Or some characters just flat out have bum skills. Widow's venom mine is a salient example of that. It's a 75 damage dot on a huge cooldown. It does less damage than a basic attack from Ana's bio rifle. Hanzo has vision (sonic arrow), raw burst (scatter arrow), high base damage with critical strike potentional (basic attack), 100 percent uptime positioning tool (wall climb), and a team fight ultimate (dragonstrike).
- Not only is Hanzo's skillset complete but each ability is extremely strong relative to other characters with similar abilities and it's not only useful but has multiple uses. Sonic arrow is on a 50 percent uptime, can be shot not only into walls but on enemy characters as well turning them into a mobile ward, and retains it's damage potential even when frozen in barriers. Many a surprised rein and mei have died to a sonic arrow I implanted into their shield/iceblock that then falls onto their head. Unlike Widow ult it's nigh undetectable and completely free (no ult charge required). Even though the vision provided is smaller, the game is centered around chokepoints with small grouped up team blobs. Meaning, the global vision provided by widow ult is superfluous. Scatter arrow is probably the strongest non ult ability in the game. Each of the 6 micro arrows does 75 damage each (higher than a mccree pistol shot) for a total of 450 damage when shotgunned off floors or walls, which is 50 more damage than Tracer's ult. It's a guaranteed elimination when used properly either killing anything from a Zarya on down directly or chunking them so severely they die with minimum follow up. He gets this for free every 10 seconds which coincidentally is the stock respawn time for a character in overwatch. Meaning you can perma stagger one person with it or more in certain situations when you consider travel time from spawn to the point without having to land a single basic attack. Wall climb is a mobility option with no cooldown whatsoever that allows you to seize the highground which is the most important position in overwatch. In OW there is no real cover in most of the maps which consists of corridors and kill boxes aside from the corner leading into said corridors and boxes. The high ground essentially give you another "corner" to peek behind because the floor in this instance provides cover against people who are below you. Hanzo can seize the highground at any time he wishes. And if forced off of it, can simply clamber back up to the same spot. The perch connecting to the walkway on volkskaya's second point for instance is an extremely strong position. It's above the point and yet you can contest/cap while sitting there. A soldier or mccree would have to walk through the backline to get up the stairs everytime to reach that position, but a Hanzo can just scoot up there anytime he wishes, drop there to control the two health packs, and then climb up again. This is a huge advantage. And finally, Hanzo's ult is a multipurpose tool. Not only is it a wombo combo ult, but it can also snipe people through walls, and be used to split a teamfight not unlike a Mei wall. It's cheap and easy to get, and unlike a lot of ults in this game, it doesn't put the user at any appreciable disadvantage to use in contrast to say pharah ult or high noon. The character essentially has three ults. That's not a weak character anyway you look at it.
- Hanzo is one of the most efficient characters to use against rein. Because, his "reload" time is built into his fire rate. Not having to stop and reload a clip like every other character in the game means his sustained dps is quite high. The way the math works out only a few characters, like Bastion, are stronger against the shield. Also if the rein takes any damage at all and lets his guard down he'll get easily deleted by scatter arrow. Hookshot into scatter destroys plenty of reins who tried to sneak out a firestrike.
- Having a Zarya on your team to combo with isn't a bad thing since Zarya is just a strong character overall. The graviton/Dragon combo is also the strongest combo with the easiest execution with the LEAST amount of counterplay. It goes through barriers, it goes through everything. The only effective answer is zen's ult (which in itself is countered by Ana nade). Sound barrier is a mediocre answer to the combo and resurrection often fails cuz the mercy get's sucked in as well. Nanoboost does nothing to this kind of teamfight. The presence of Hanzo/Zarya forces a particular type of draft, zen/lucio,which has the significant drawback of not having an Ana.
- "Getting on the objective" is hard to unpack because it relies on two major misconceptions about Overwatch. First, no 200 hp character in the game is suited to get "on the objective" They are simply too frail with too limited firepower to just "take" the objective. A McCree isn't able to take the objective any more than a Hanzo and is infact often worse at it. A soldier can dance and jiggle in his biotic field a bit longer but will also get clobbered if he's forced to frontline and "get on the point." This misconception about objective play is rooted in the misconception on what objective play actually is. Taking the objective, pushing the payload to the end, etc. these are goals to win the game. It is however NOT the win condition that lets you achieve said goal. The winning condition is to wipe the enemy team or otherwise force them off the point that in turn allows you to get on the objective. And the way you often do that in Overwatch is specifically by NOT getting on the objective. For example, in Dorado defense on the second to last point many high level teams will specifically IGNORE the cart and take the high ground on the church. The second floor here connects to walkways that control both entrances into the courtyard and obtains mastery over all the big healthpacks (the one in stairs, the one in fountain, and the one in statue). This strong position let's them control the cart better than if they just sat on it like a bunch of pigeons.
- The lionization of healers "carrying the trash dps" is just silly. You can't take a character to task for his skill floor and supposed lack of effectiveness and then say the healer was doing all the work. If that was the case why get mad at what dps was picked in the first place? Secondly, it's a total non-sequitur. Yes healers provide valuable utility through sustain but the issue wasn't that healers are useful or not but whether people are provided good incentives to play them and whether their design treats their players fairly. People play Hanzo, whether they are good or bad at him, because he is fun to play. Many people don't like playing passive healers because they aren't as fun to play for THEM. Gaf can post all the pictures and claim to high heaven how fun it is to play Lucio all it wants to like a modern day Tom Sawyer, but the average player is not gonna paint that fence.
