BY AUSTIN MUGGY

With update 7.5 coming out the Rivals’ devs managed to completely destroy the meta in the best way possible and added a new dive character with an interesting playstyle.

New Character: Black Cat

Black Cat is the new DPS dive hero with many abilities adding a new playstyle to the dive meta. Her kit leans into thievery and money. Instead of cooldowns most of her abilities have to be bought by coins you earn by stealing them from the enemy team. As far as I know this is the first time something like this has been done and it is done well. You never feel like it takes too long to stack the money for your abilities as long as you stay on the offensive and apply consistent pressure.

Nerfs 

The nerfs this time around have completely changed the previous meta, both Elsa and Tankpool have received nerfs that moved them down on the rankings, still viable but now a lot less of a threat. On the other hand, Winter Solder is basically dead meta wise. He lost a major part of his function and now his kit is just average (this was a needed change)

Cloak & Dagger got a 2 second time reduction to their ult. This was a necessary change as no longer will you have to be stalled for the 13 seconds it’s up. Jeff also got a nerf making his damage fall-off   happen a lot closer and have a bigger effect forcing Jeff players to move closer to the battle field 

CC-changes

As of this update there has been what looked like a massive change to CC abilities stacking where if you are hit with more than 7 CC abilities or are CC-ed for more than 5 seconds you will get a complete immunity to all CC abilities. Before the update came out people were worried this would make heroes who use a lot of CC abilities useless, but these effects actually really don’t affect the meta much or even at all. It was a good change that people over reacted to before it was ever released 

Buffs

Peni Parker got a decent amount of buffs making her better at her neutral play and holding point. Emma Frost received a small reduction in alt cost allowing for her ult to be used more. Human Torch acquired a decent sized buff with his dash allowing him to dash further and allowing him to shoot while going faster. Why this wasn’t in his kit already is beyond me. Luna received a buff to both her damage output and healing and she can now 3-shot a hero with 350 health AS A HEALER this buff will most likely be reverted within the next month because in no world should a strategist do this damage