Ice to meet you
Mei is a heavy defense character with an emphasis on slows and freezes. As effective as her main attacks are at locking down your foes, she has a very short effective range with them. Because of this, she works best defending a choke, or corridor. With her wall, she is able to not only completely shutdown a portion of the map temporarily, but she can also provide unique pathing opportunities to her allies.
Pros
- Extremely deadly up close
- Great crowd control
- Can avoid predictable damage and self heal
- Can block off escapes, create escapes or split teams with ice wall
- Ultimate makes an area impossible to fight in
Cons
- Vulnerable to being outranged
- Has a predictable position after Ice Block
- Little kill potential by herself
- Low mobility
Cold, cold heart
So where exactly does Mei fit in? Well from what I've played, she fills two roles very well. The first role is something almost like a Junkrat: denying area and making any push against your team extremely punishing. She does this through her battlefield manipulation and basic attacks. With the ability to not only slow and stop the advance of the other team, but to also close off flanks and retreat paths, she may not do as much damage as the mad bomber, but she can lock down an area with the same deadly efficiency.
But Mei has a second, equally important role. she absolutely destroys characters that like to harass the back line. Tracers, Genjis, and Reapers all fear her ability to lock them in place making them easy pickings for your team. Not only that, but if threatened by one of them in any major way, she can Ice Block and prevent all damage while healing. There's just no easy way for one of these characters to harass against a skilled Mei.
Bringing a coat to an ice fight
As strong as she is against the flankers, she has some pretty glaring weaknesses to compensate. For instance, she struggles heavily against long ranged, quick damage such as Widowmaker and Hanzo. McCree can also cause her problems if he can poke her down from afar, or stun her and finish her off quickly as she has very little health. Pharah has an interesting dynamic since the rockets are fairly easy to see coming and can be avoided, but once your Ice Block runs out you're a sitting duck. Not to mention the fact that she can heavily outrange you.
Give 'em the cold shoulder
So who works well with Mei? She has fairly low killing potential by herself, but she can set up free, easy kills for her allies. So people who can make use of immobile targets pair incredibly well with her. You haven't felt true terror until you can't move with a Pharah directly overhead. Widowmaker also loves for her targets to be stationary, allowing for those easy headshots. A more surprising one would be Junkrat. Not only can they both cover the same flank, alternate flanks and just generally be a spammy nuisance, but his bombs and mine are very painful and a direct hit is almost certainly a kill against most characters. These are all great damage synergies, but there are much more... interesting combos that you can utilize.
An ever changing battlefield
Mei has one of the craziest movement abilities in the game. What it lacks in getting from point A to point B, it more than makes up for it with it's versatility. This is the first movement ability that can be used by allies. From the video, you can see that Bastion can be put almost anywhere given enough patience, but that's just the start. Hanzo and Genji both can climb these Ice Walls to more easily get at those delicious squishies. Reaper can also teleport on top of them, opening up interesting strategic options. While these are the most obvious uses, having a height advantage for anyone is great and should not be understated.
The ice (wo)man cometh
In summation, Mei is an incredibly powerful (if unassuming) defense character whose cute appearance belies her extremely powerful defensive capabilities. She has very clear strengths, and very clear weaknesses, but also a lot of nuance due to the high skillcap of Ice Wall and Ice Block. With her addition, new strategies and counter strategies have opened up in Overwatch and the game is far cooler for it.
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