Overwatch 2: Mei Is Worthless Without Her Freeze

"Overwatch 2" has finally launched, replacing the old "Overwatch" with new heroes, game modes, and maps. There have been a ton of changes in "Overwatch 2," including some controversial changes to its monetization, now asking players to purchase skins directly and to opt-in to a battle pass. Alongside these alterations was a major change to the multiplayer title, with 5v5 becoming the norm — resulting in each team losing a tank. 

Because of this drastic change to how "Overwatch 2" matches play, heroes already in the game were tweaked or changed to accommodate the new gameplay style. Unfortunately, some of these reworks left certain heroes in a worse state than where they started. One of the heroes most impacted by the changes was Mei, who has become far less effective than she previously was. 

For the most part, the hero changes in "Overwatch 2" focus on reducing the amount of crowd-control abilities in each match. Tanks typically had some of these abilities, so dropping one tank player eliminated some. Then, heroes like Cassidy had their abilities changed and were stripped of their crowd control effects. As for Mei, she also lost her crowd control ability via freezing enemies after damaging enough with her ice beam, but Blizzard never offered the character a tune-up to counteract this massive debuff. Here's why Mei has lost her icy touch in "Overwatch 2."

The key difference between Mei in the original "Overwatch" and "Overwatch 2" is that her primary weapon no longer freezes enemies when fired as a beam; now, it instead just slows them slightly. But that isn't going to cut it for Mei. Her inability to freeze enemies is such a problem because her entire kit is designed around the function, and Blizzard made no other adjustments to reconcile the substantial loss. Her secondary fire still shoots an icicle, which can headshot enemies to deal considerable damage. However, this has always been difficult to land, considering enemies would typically be frozen in front of players. Now, it's borderline impractical.

The other reason Mei's loss of weapon freeze function (her ultimate ability still freezes enemies) is such a problem is that she's now incapable of putting out as much damage as the majority of the "Overwatch 2" damage hero roster. The ice beam deals damage slowly, with hit-scan heroes like Ashe, Soldier 76, and Widowmaker outpacing Mei's icy attacks with ease. At least before, Mei offered some unique utility and was capable of stopping threats in their tracks with her Endothermic Blaster.

Blizzard took away an essential part of Mei's ability set and didn't replace it with anything else, inevitably setting her and her fans up for failure.