Mei

Mei-Ling Zhou, Adventuring Climatologist, is a ranged Tank Hero from the Overwatch universe. Lured by her inquisitive nature and a trail of bizarre climate phenomena, world-famous scientist Mei-Ling Zhou stumbled upon the Nexus and was soon enlisted in the fearsome battles that raged within. One of the first agents to rejoin Overwatch, Mei has a strong sense of right and wrong, and she’s determined to stand up for the weak and innocent everywhere, no matter which Realm they hail from. She’s a powerful ally and a spine-shivering foe, with advanced weather-altering technology that shifts the very architecture of the battleground.

Background
Though many blamed the planet's escalating, unexplained climate phenomena on the advent of new technologies, the rapidly growing population, and drastically increased consumption of resources, the true cause remained unknown. To find a solution, established a series of eco-Watchpoints at remote, critical locations worldwide.

Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou (周美灵 Zhōu Měi-líng) was a member of this multiyear initiative. A peerless climatologist, she had introduced cutting-edge innovations in the field of climate manipulation that protected at-risk areas in Asia and beyond. She was assigned to the program's monitoring station at when disaster struck: a sudden, catastrophic polar storm battered the installation and cut it off from the outside world, leaving the facility damaged and the scientists stranded. As their supplies dwindled, they entered cryostasis in a last-ditch effort to survive until a rescue attempt could be made.

But that rescue never came. It was years later when the team's cryogenics chamber was finally discovered. Mei, still in hibernation, was the only survivor. The world Mei awoke to had gone through considerable changes: Overwatch was no more, the serious climate issues had worsened, and none of the eco-Watchpoints were in operation. Any clues that they had uncovered were lost.

Mei has decided to continue her work on her own. Equipped with a portable version of her climate-manipulation technology, she travels around the world, hoping to re-establish the eco-network and track down the causes of the threats to the planet's ecosystem.

Mei received the recall to join the new Overwatch after reinstated the organization, indirectly awakening her from cryostasis. She has since rejoined Overwatch, becoming the second member confirmed to accept the call.

Gameplay
Despite her gentle disposition, Mei is a kind of a bully in the Nexus. Since all her basic abilities offer some amount of slow and an additional form of CC, she can easily control the flow of combat and repeatedly disrupt her enemies. She really wants to get in someone’s face and keep them controlled while her teammates take them down.

Mei is a durable ranged Tank, capable of skating around the battlefield and freezing her opponents. Her active trait is Cryo-Freeze, which encases Mei in a block of ice that temporarily grants a massive shield, makes her Unstoppable, and heals her over time. Her first ability is Snow Blind, lobbing a snowball that damages, slows, and blinds enemies in an area. Her second ability, Blizzard, sends her drone Snowball to an area to slow and damage enemies. When the ability ends, it unleashes a freezing pulse that stuns enemies inside. Her final basic ability is Icing, which coats her boots in frost and allows her to dash forward. At the end of the dash or when Mei reactivates the ability, nearby enemies are knocked away and slowed.

Her first heroic is Avalanche, which launches a massive snowball that rolls across the battlefield, trapping enemy heroes it hits inside. At the end of its path, trapped enemies are released and stunned. Her second heroic, Ice Wall, forms a wall that freezes all enemies in the area in Stasis. The wall lasts for a few seconds before exploding to slow nearby enemies.

Strength

 * Crowd control
 * Mobility
 * Survivability

Weaknesses

 * Siege Damage
 * Burst Damage

Works Well With:

 * Burst Mages
 * Mei’s ability to slow and disable enemies from long range makes it easier for fragile high-damage mages, such as Tassadar and Kael’thas, to land their big abilities. Additionally, Mei’s disruption effects can keep her fragile backline safe from would-be divers.


 * Disabling Heroes
 * Anyone with area crowd control effects, such as Malfurion, Imperius, or Junkrat, can easily combo their disables with Mei’s Blizzard and Icing, potentially shutting down whole teams for long periods of time.


 * Jimmy
 * Our favorite Renegade Commander, Jimmy Raynor, loves having Mei around for near constant uptime on his Ace in the Hole talent.

Struggles Against:

 * Disabling Effects
 * Outside of Cryo-Freeze, Mei lacks any way to avoid disabling effects, so she is susceptible to being locked down and interrupted by other tank and bruiser Heroes like Muradin or Diablo.


 * Solo Engagements
 * Because of her low damage output, Heroes with smaller health pools don’t have to avoid confronting Mei as they might for some other tanks. Mei is highly dependent on her allies for dishing out damage and serving up killing blows.


 * Sustained Damage
 * Mei lacks sustained healing and damage reduction, so damage dealers can soften her up between teamfights with consistent poke damage.

Abilities

 * See Data Page for a table of scaled values at key levels.

Development
Brett Crawford said: "We knew that it was about time to add another main Tank to the roster, and given it had been awhile since we brought an Overwatch Hero in, we were discussing the options for heroes that would be a good fit. At that time, we had already begun prototyping a Barrier Field ability to explore the possibility of bringing Reinhardt into the Nexus but were met with some issues. Unfortunately, we were not super-confident in the general direction that was heading, and while we were working through that, another Hero designer chimed in with the thought that he could translate Mei’s Overwatch kit into a Tank role for Heroes.

In Overwatch Mei rests in a unique gameplay niche in between the game's general criteria of a Damage hero and a Tank hero, despite being officially classified as the former. While she technically does have the power to outright kill enemies, her greater strengths are in impairing enemies through unique means. During her development for her inclusion into Heroes of the Storm, Mei was always thought of as a tank since the beginning.

According to Game Designer David Warner: "From the beginning we knew a direct translation of Mei's kit from Overwatch was not going to work for Heroes of the Storm. Being able to attack while moving is already a huge advantage and tacking on crowd control effects would have made her the most frustrating Hero of all time. Looking at the available pieces of her kit, we decided that she was inevitably going to more closely resemble a Tank or Bruiser, as opposed to her more damage-oriented role from Overwatch. Once we made that decision, the rest of her kit very quickly fell into place. We liked how it felt to have Mei as a ranged tank, so we doubled down on that by giving her Snow Blind (Q). Her ultimate in Overwatch, Blizzard (W), was such an iconic part of her Overwatch kit we knew we had to carry it over though it made more sense as a basic ability for our game. We tried a few iterations of Icing (E), but quickly fell in love with its current form because of the natural combo-caster playstyle it created.

The developers didn't feel restricted by her Overwatch kit and didn't mind it not being 1:1. Instead, they wanted her abilities to be inspired from the way she plays. The developers were also inspired by their work with Mal'Ganis to make sure she would not be a bruiser and would work as a main tank. So they gave her a lot of CC instead of raw 1vs1 damage and waveclear.

Trivia

 * Mei made her debut in Overwatch (May 2016).
 * Mei is voiced by Elise Zhang.
 * Mei is the eighty-eighth hero in the game.
 * Mei is also the ninth Overwatch hero in the game.
 * Mei is the eleventh tank hero in the game.
 * She is also the second ranged tank, the first being Blaze.
 * The Mei spotlight was the first one narrated by Ed Cerrato, one of Blizzard Entertainment's Senior Sound Designers. Ed has been a longtime contributor to both StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm and most recently created the sounds for the Tassadar rework and the Dark Nexus II skins.
 * In Heroes of the Storm, an image of Mei holding a chili pepper appears on Misha's rear-left shoulder pad when wearing the Fire Raider Rexxar skin.
 * A few of Mei's talent icons are recycled from other heroes; which happen to specialize in ice abilities.
 * Polar Vortex uses the same icon as Arthas's Frozen Tempest.
 * Acclimation uses the same icon as Jaina's Frost Armor.