When a new character is introduced in a game like Overwatch 2, there’s some kind of point of contention regarding balance. Are they on the weaker side and will contribute nothing to the meta or will they shape a new meta? Well, it seems that with Mauga being introduced in Season 8, he’s in the latter, for both bad and some good.
Mauga is the latest tank to join the ever-expanding roster of Overwatch 2 and he’s been a problem. Before he was available in Competitive play, his kit was so powerful that just a week later, he was nerfed. Yeah, that wasn’t enough. And that comes from a newfound Mauga main.
Admittedly, I have had a lot of fun playing him despite how unfair he can be. He’s the only hero who can consistently face-tank a Bastion’s turret mode and win the fight by holding his primary fire.
He can also take down harder-to-hit foes like Pharah and Echo. All you have to do is shoot at them with his left chaingun first, then switch to his right. When shot individually, they have almost no spread. Once you get the hang of alternating the fire from the guns, you don’t even need someone to switch to a hitscan hero like Soldier: 76 or Baptiste. Mauga can do it all!
His role as a tank is to be on the front lines in battle, dealing constant damage to his enemies and sustaining his health due to his Berserker passive ability. The thing is, he can sustain himself a bit too well while dishing out abnormally large amounts of damage from all ranges.
Mauga’s chainguns complement each other very well, with the left one igniting enemies after every ten bullets while the right guarantees critical hits on burned enemies. Because of the rapid rate of fire for both guns, he’s always setting his enemies on fire and constantly triggering critical hits. This then always activates his Berserker passive, making him feel invincible.
This cycle of invincibility has many players in the Overwatch community divided. On one side, you have people saying he’s fine the way he is and there’s counterplay around him. The other side says otherwise.
Does Mauga have viable counters?
Luckily, not all hope is lost because this large man has two forms of counterplay against him. The unfortunate part is that it’s basically the same combo of using Ana and a high-damage DPS character to take him down. The other is to just pick Mauga and have a burst-healer character pocketing him like Mercy. This highlights a few issues with the current balancing system in Overwatch 2 right now.
Having set counter-picks is healthy when someone’s specific character becomes a huge threat. What isn’t healthy about it is when the same character setup is the counter-pick for someone new again. Ana also isn’t the easiest character to use. She’s one of those characters with such a high skill ceiling. Her kit’s amazing, but if you have a player who doesn’t know how to snipe or use her abilities, that enemy Mauga is going to steamroll her team.
If you always have to swap to the same Ana and burst DPS combo, that means that something feels off about the counterplay meta. Now, I’m no game designer by any means, but is the new character meta something to look more closely at, or is the anti-heal status effect too strong?
As for using the same character to fight a problematic character, this brings up another issue. New characters aren’t made available right away to everyone. You either have to buy the Battle Pass to get the latest character or play enough to hit Tier 45 to unlock them. Players who don’t opt to play a lot or pay are at a disadvantage here.
Mauga’s dominance in the meta right now does come at an unfortunate time, though. We just received a universal nerf to counter-picking, so switching to other Heroes to deal with him became more difficult. Pairing that with using a specific setup or not having him available can be such an uphill battle.
Where Mauga will go after future balance changes is to be determined. When he does get nerfed, time will show who true fans are. It’ll show who really likes Mauga for his gameplay rather than just being a powerful pick.
