Overwatch: September 17 update has “broken” Mei’s Ice Wall
Blizzard EntertainmentThe latest update to Overwatch seems to have made it more difficult for Mei players to place their Ice Wall.
The September 17 patch introduced a variety of changes, focusing primarily on nerfs for the likes of Sigma, Symmetra, and Zarya, but it also adjusted the way ground-targeted abilities such as Mei’s Ice Wall and Symmetra’s Shadowstep are aimed.
Going forward, such abilities will “more heavily prefer edges over placing as far away as possible”. The change is designed to fix an issue that could cause the placement to be inconsistent, especially when trying to place on higher terrain.
Unfortunately, the update seems to have caused issues of its own, with u/Mitsiee identifying multiple locations in which it is now much harder to block off common locations.
For instance, on King’s Row, it now appears to be impossible to block off the upper room of the attacking spawn, a spot often held by snipers, without going dangerously far forward.
In other cases, the wall now seems entirely impossible to place. On Hollywood, placing the wall on the Saloon balcony in the second phase appears to no longer work at all, and there are a variety of new inconsistencies in other locations on other maps in which the wall cannot be placed while aiming at certain spots.
Mei has been a notoriously bugged hero throughout most of the game’s lifetime, with minor issues cropping up with almost every aspect of her kit. With her Ice Wall being a major zoning tool, however, Mei players will undoubtedly be hoping for a quick fix for this issue.
This isn’t the only issue that has arisen from the latest patch. Assault map Paris has been temporarily disabled due to a bug that allowed players to shoot through one of the spawn doors, and some players have also described the new Brick Bastion skin as “unplayable” due to the LEGO-style muzzle flash animations impairing vision.